Knockansheen (Part Three)

The conclusion of a three-part modern fantasy, inspired by Scottish folklore

Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1921, for Comus by John Milton. Public Domain (afaik).

When I was little, I loved reading the ancient folktales of the Scottish Highlands. This is written in homage to those tales, re-weaving some of the stories in a modern setting. This is the last of three episodes. In Part 2, parents Mina and Kevin ventured into the sìthean, the faerie hill, but how easily will they find their way back out?

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The gneiss-paved path through the centre of the sìthean sparkled like fish scales in the light of the globes that hung, apparently suspended from nothing, along the way. As they walked, Kevin and Mina both felt they were taking a lot longer getting back to the stairway than they had taken on the way in. Kevin felt the clammy arms of his son around his neck getting heavier and heavier. It was warm, and they were both getting thirsty. Mina pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket to check the time, but it was dead. So was Kevin’s. They walked past one alabaster-columned building after another, but the wall of the cavern seemed no closer. A horde of small clann-sìthe followed them, capering in circles round them, pulling faces and shouting words that Kevin and Mina didn’t understand but that made Ross bury his head further in Kevin’s shoulder. His small body was trembling.

They passed an elaborate fountain shaped from a huge amethyst geode. The water splashed cool and purple with a music like songbirds in spring.

“Have we seen that fountain before?” asked Mina, stopping to look at it. The sound of the water made them both lick their lips.

“Keep going,” said Kevin.

They went on. The horde of children abandoned them, but they both felt desperately tired. The coconut scent of the strange gorse grew stronger, sweet and heady like liqueur. At last, they were drawing near the edge of the city. They saw the blue-lit flight of stairs to the balcony and the arch to the stairway beyond.

There was a wrought silver bench sitting beneath the last of the alabaster light-globes.

“Need to sit for a minute,” said Kevin heavily. He slumped onto the bench and shifted Ross to his other shoulder. Mina sat beside them, and ran her hand in wonder over her son’s hair.

“Ross,” she said softly. “That’s your name.”

“Maybe we should change it,” said Kevin in a low voice. “I mean…” He looked around. “We’re always going to think of the other Ross now, with that name.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” said Mina, her words slurring. She leaned her head on Kevin’s shoulder, holding her son’s delicate hand with its fingers like white roots dug from the soil.

Kevin felt his own eyelids flutter and fall, when he remembered the words of the broonie. He jolted awake.

“Mina!” He shook her. “Don’t fall asleep! Remember what the old man said!”

She jumped to her feet. Her face looked white, moon-like, and she held her hand to her mouth in horror.

“Let’s keep moving,” said Kevin.

They came to the bottom of the broad steps up to the balcony. Kevin set Ross down on his feet.

“Alright, wee man, think you can do the stairs here?”

“He doesn’t understand us,” said Mina. She pointed to the stairs, and pantomimed climbing them. The boy nodded.

They reached the balcony, and turned to take a last look over the glittering city.

“Wish my phone was working,” said Kevin. “I mean, no-one’s ever going to believe this.”

“I know,” said Mina.

“You can come back and visit,” said a voice behind them. Kevin grabbed Ross’ hand as they spun round. The changeling, Prince Ionmhasnabeinne, was standing there. He was now wearing a kilt and jerkin of some material that looked like spider silk. He bowed formally, and held out a small bundle of his old clothes.

“You might want to dress your son in these before you leave,” he said.

Mina took them wordlessly, and began to take the faerie garments off the real Ross. When he was dressed in the jeans and Minecraft t-shirt the changeling had been wearing on their way in, she took her son’s hand and faced Prince Ionmhasnabeinne.

“Well, bye again,” said the changeling. “But take this. A gift to remember me by.” He held out an ornate silver box the size and shape of a crow’s egg. He pressed the side of the box and it sprang open, showing a pendant with a single amethyst crystal on a chain. The stone seemed to glow, and Mina saw that each face was carved with runes and images almost too tiny for the naked eye to see.

“Oh, how beautiful,” breathed Mina. She knelt to look at it more closely.

“Wait,” said Kevin. “Did the old man say anything—”

Ross tugged at her hand, saying something urgent in Gaelic. But Mina stretched out her other hand and took the box. As it settled in her palm, there was a loud sharp crack and a smell of lightning, and she was gone.

For half a second, Kevin stood staring at the place where Mina had been, his mouth open. He made a strangled sound, then leapt at the changeling. The balach-sìthe jumped nimbly onto the balustrade and perched there like a bird.

“What have you done to her?” Kevin could hardly find the words to speak. He lunged at the changeling again, to no avail.

“Rules are rules,” said Prince Ionmhasnabeinne calmly. “If you accept a gift, you stay. Unless someone does the trial, of course.”

“But the old man never said anything about—”

“Guess he forgot that one.” He winked at Kevin, then twirled lightly and slid down the banister back towards the city.

“Wait! What trial?” Kevin yelled after him, but the changeling simply turned a cartwheel at the bottom of the steps and vanished.

Kevin looked around wildly. To either side of the steps, a crowd of the young luchd-sìthe were watching and giggling, like badly-behaved spectators at the theatre. Kevin grabbed Ross’ hand and began to run back down, towards the palace. A wave of high-pitched laughter followed him.

The king was walking in the palace courtyard, arm in arm with the queen, and Prince Ionmhasnabeinne was walking on his hands beside them. When Kevin strode in, Ross running at his heels, they looked at him with amused faces, and a ripple of laughs and whispers echoed from the cloisters to the side of the courtyard.

“Where is she?” Kevin marched up to the king, shaking with anger and fear.

The king clicked his fingers, and the changeling turned himself right way up and stood at his side to translate.

“My dear sir,” said the king, “I thought you were aware of the rules. The contract, you see. Your wife accepted a gift, and is now bound to stay with us until such time as a true love comes to rescue her.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m here now, so give her back and let us go!” Kevin took a step closer, but found himself pushed back by an invisible force.

“Temper, temper! Are you saying you are the true love, come to rescue her?”

Kevin swore. “Yes. I am her true love, and I’m here to rescue her.”

“Very well. We will prepare the trial.”

The king clicked his fingers at some of the courtiers, who scurried off into the back of the palace.

“What trial?”

“To show that you are her true love, you must hold onto her for the space of three minutes. You must not let go, not for an instant, or she will stay here with us forever. Which isn’t a bad deal, you know, for her.” The king looked at Kevin appraisingly.

“Hold onto her? Just hold her hand or something? For three minutes?”

“Three minutes by my pocket watch,” replied the king, holding out an antique silver timepiece that looked as if a Victorian laird had left it behind in the heather one day. Kevin squinted at the watch. The hands seemed to be ticking at the normal pace. “At least one of your hands must be touching her skin at all times. Ready?”

Kevin nodded. Ross pulled at his sleeve, and whispered something to him in Gaelic, his brown eyes huge and pleading.

“We’ll be OK, wee man,” said Kevin, making himself sound more confident than he felt. “Aye, I’m ready,” he said to the king.

The king clapped his hands, and seven of the fir-sìthe marched in carrying Mina on their shoulders. They set her down in the middle of the courtyard. She was unconscious, but Kevin saw her chest rise and fall slightly.

“Take your position,” said the king.

Kevin knelt beside Mina, and held one of her hands in both of his. Ross ran over to him and spoke in urgent whispers, then took Kevin’s hand and made him thread the fingers through Mina’s, palm to palm.

“Don’t worry, wee man,” said Kevin. “How hard can it be?”

The second hand of the king’s watch hit twelve, and a sharp silver bell rang.

For the first couple of seconds, Kevin just felt Mina’s hand soft in his, and he watched the rise and fall of her chest. Then her hand felt warmer. She grew hotter, first as if in fever and then as if she were an ingot in a furnace. Kevin began to feel his hand burning, and cried out. He turned to look at the king, to protest that he hadn’t been told, then saw the glee on their faces and realised this was exactly the point. He had to hold on, no matter what.

Mina’s whole body was white-hot now. Kevin smelled burning flesh, and when he looked at his own right hand, twined in hers, he saw flames and fingers fusing together. His vision darkened at the edges, until he could see nothing but a tunnel of white fire. He cried in anguish but held on, trying to count the seconds. And then the flames were gone.

Without warning, he was holding onto a block of ice. The smell of charred meat was gone, and he saw his hand turning blue with cold. Mina’s hand was solid ice, as if she were a carved sculpture, and it was slippery. Kevin forced himself to grab her wrist with his other hand, screaming as his skin stuck to the ice and the cold pierced like poison.

And then he was holding onto a coiling twist of thick and venomous snakes with hissing fangs and red eyes, and then to a monstrous hedgehog that cut him with a thousand knives, and then his hand was in a vat of bubbling acid and he could see his flesh falling away and the bones beneath dissolving. And then he was holding the hand of a naked corpse. There was no pain, but Kevin retched and his hand almost twitched away from Mina’s as he felt the slick softness of rotting flesh and smelt the foul sweetness of decay. The corpse was bloated, livid, eyeless, and out of its mouth flew a stream of huge bluebottles. The thought came to Kevin that perhaps they’d already been years in the sìthean, and this was truly Mina as she was now. He gagged, and looked around, and saw nothing but darkness. And then he thought he heard his son’s high voice calling, and held on. And then, when he was about to lose consciousness, he heard a bell chime.

“What happened?”

Mina coughed and sat up, looking around in bewilderment. Kevin pulled her close and hugged her soft warm body, smelled the lemony scent of her hair and felt the plastic scratch of her waterproof jacket. Tears and snot were running down his face.

“My father says he’s impressed,” came the voice of Prince Ionmhasnabeinne. “Mina, know that in Kevin you have a worthy love.”

Kevin staggered to his feet and helped Mina up.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

She nodded. “My head’s a wee bit sore, but I’m alright. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later,” said Kevin. He looked at his own hand and flexed it, saw the muscles sliding beneath the sun-browned skin, the scar on the back where he’d sliced it open that time skiing in Glencoe. There was no sign of fire or ice or acid.

“My father says he’ll send you home now. For those who’ve withstood the trial, special consideration.”

The voices of the luchd-sìthe, and the music that had echoed through the cavern all the time they were there, faded. There was a hiss like static, and for a moment they saw nothing but black. Then they felt the north wind blowing sharp and cold on their faces, and the spattering of rain, and smelled wet tarmac. Their vision cleared. They were in the hospital carpark, next to Kevin’s battered VW Golf.

October 2048

Thin constellations of half-formed snowflakes sank slowly from the cancerous clouds above the hill. A young man got out of the passenger seat of a timeworn Transit van and thanked the old man who had given him a lift from the village. The old man, his face brown and wrinkled as a walnut, offered him a drink from the silver hip-flask he fossicked out of an inside pocket, then waved him off.

The young man limped across the carpark. He stopped to look up at the steel-grey sky, shivered in the cold north wind, then looked back to the faded sign. OSPADAL SGÌRE INBHIRSTÒRAIDH, CNOC AN T-SÌTHEAN | INVERSTORRY DISTRICT HOSPITAL, KNOCKANSHEEN. He ran a hand across his cropped brown hair.

“Hello, Ross.”

The brown-haired young man froze, his hand instinctively moving to grasp a weapon that was no longer there. He turned to see a boy leaning against a pre-war Hyundai hatchback.

“Who the hell are you?” said Ross, his Australian accent sharpening in his fear.

The boy pushed back the hood of his jacket. Ross saw the mohawk of silver-blond hair before he saw the eyes, blue as forget-me-nots and purple as violets, in the boy’s white face. He shivered and unconsciously stepped back a pace.

“Long time no see,” said the boy. He added something in a strange tongue, words that Ross half-remembered, as if he’d heard them in a dream.

“We moved to Brisbane,” said Ross mechanically. “It was only going to be a couple of years. Until people forgot what you looked like.” He glanced sidelong at the boy. “But then, you know… the war and everything.”

“I know,” said the boy. He nodded towards the singed and twisted belt of rowan trees around the hospital, some still bearing rust-red berries against yellowing leaves. “It’s all gone now, you know. Everyone’s gone.”

“Everyone’s gone,” echoed Ross. He scratched the tangled scar that clawed white against the tan of his cheek.

In the no-man’s-land over Knockansheen, between the cracked tarmac and the cold dark clouds, a lone gull cried. Ross and the boy stood and watched the bird patrol its zone, until it pivoted and sailed away westward. The boy opened the door of the Hyundai.

“Jump in,” he said, “and I’ll tell you how things went down.”

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!

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Rowan berry icon from https://creazilla.com/media/clipart/59494/red-rowan, public domain.