Wilding

6. 2

2

Thomas snapped awake, the fading edge of a dream falling away. Halloween, Parker’s Field, a strange man—

He looked around, his heart sinking as the dream shifted into reality. Those same trees, their shadows longer now. The campfire burned with a sharp crackle. The stranger rose from where he had been seated beside it, holding a wooden cup.

Lord Something-or-other. Right.

Strapped to the man’s waist was a long leather scabbard, with the hilt of a sword sticking out of it. God help me. His first sincere prayer in a long time. He tried to get up, but everything whirled, sparkles flitting across his eyes. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself up to a sitting position as the man sat down beside him on a log.

“You are feeling better?”

The man’s concern did nothing to erase Thomas’ fears. Who is this guy?

His head still ached, he still felt dizzy and sick, his muscles were stiff. But he did feel marginally better, and his thoughts were not as scattered. The deer. The creatures. His heart jumped, and he took a deep breath. “A bit.”

The man offered the cup. “Here. Drink. It will help.”

Thomas’ thirst warred with caution. Thirst won out, but as he took the rustic cup and lifted it to his mouth, an earthy, sweet, alcoholic smell filled his nose. His stomach lurched. Beer of some kind. He had smelled it often enough to know. But the sweet overtone was odd.

He held the cup back out to the man. “No thanks.”

The other man frowned. “’Tis a fine ale, brewed only two days ago.”

“I’d rather have water.”

One eyebrow lifted. “Don’t be foolish, boy. Drink. It is fresh, as I said.” His eyes narrowed, and he took the cup back, took a drink, then held it out again. “Think, you. If I had wanted you dead, I could have killed you as you lay insensible. As you see, it is safe. Take it.”

The thought of poison hadn’t even crossed his mind. But the man had a point. He had a freaking sword.

He had long ago resolved never to touch alcohol, but thirst won over his resolve. Just a little bit can’t hurt. He accepted the cup and took a cautious sip. He had tried beer once or twice, when he was younger, before his mother’s alcoholism had driven any desire for booze out of him. This drink didn’t taste much like it. A sweet, flowery note underlaid the earthy flavour of the beer, but it was not unpleasant. His thirst took over, and he finished the rest.

The man’s gaze travelled over him, wariness and curiosity evident in equal measure in his eyes. “Who are you, boy? What is the meaning of your strange garments? And why were you running from the demons on the eve of Samhain?”

Demons? He tried to piece together the flashes of memory into something that made sense. “You were there? Did you see that deer, too? It was almost white, with a huge rack.”

A sudden fearful comprehension flooded the man’s face. “The white stag.” He crossed himself. “Mam Duw.” He stood and drew his sword in one smooth motion, the tip mere inches from Thomas’ nose. “Tell me your name, boy, and the meaning of this. And think you, there is good iron in this blade.”

Thomas froze. “Thomas—Thomas McCadden,” he stammered. “And I don’t know what happened. I was walking home. And then I saw those things.” His mouth went dry. Demons? He swallowed, trying to continue. “They grabbed me—” His words choked off, feeling again the claws on his arms, and worse, the co-mingled flood of desire and horror flooding through him. A yawning chasm opened in his mind, fright almost propelling him in. But then anger flared, bringing him back. “What have you done to me? This is not where I was. If you say you saw me, then either you brought me here or you know who did. You tell me the meaning of this!”

The other man frowned, his eyes narrowing, the sword’s tip rock steady. “Did you not hear me? I was travelling down the path, seeking a place of shelter for the night. I heard you cry out to the Saviour. God propelled me to seek you out, and I saw you in the grasp of the demons. You cried out again, and with Christ’s Name on your lips, you broke free. But you tripped as you ran and fell, striking your head on a rock.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” It was hard to think past the word that kept throbbing through his mind with every beat of his heart. Demons. His hand rose of its own accord to clutch the cross that dangled on a leather string around his neck. What has happened to me? Am I dreaming?

“Does it not? I ask you plain, then. Have you come from the Otherworld, the land of the tylwyth teg?”

Sah-win. Till-eg tay. What’s with these words? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man’s eyes roved over him again, and his eyes sharpened. “You are a Christian, then? Tell me true, boy!”

Christian? Thomas’ addled brain was having a hard time keeping up. Then he felt the sharp edges of the cross in his hand and realized he was holding it. It had been a gift to him on his baptism from Dave, and even though his faith had waned and stumbled through the darkness that had consumed him since that time, he still hung it around his neck every day.

A talisman, to remind himself of the faith he had once embraced, or an act of defiance. Most days he wasn’t sure which.

He eyed the man, trying to figure out what he wanted to hear. God propelled me to seek you out. Right. Likely he would be friendlier to a fellow believer. “Yes.”

The other man held his gaze a moment longer, but then sheathed his sword before sitting down. “The white stag, the eve of Samhain. ’Tis a deep mystery indeed.”

Deep mystery. The sense of foreboding that had haunted Thomas ever since he had awakened now clamoured for attention. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t quite pin it down, could only feel it as if in the distance, like a deep bong of a cathedral’s bell, far away. “Wait,” he said, trying to think through the dizziness, the nausea, the sense of impending disaster. “Tell me again, what you said, before—who you are, where we are—”

The man frowned. “I am the Lord Celyn of Bebbanburg. We are three days’ ride south of there.”

The sense grew stronger, this feeling that Thomas was on the verge of a great discovery and that this man held the key. “I don’t know where that is,” he said, helpless. He looked again at the huge trees around them, gnarled and twisting, at the blazing colours of the leaves. He knew the woods around his town of Fort Spring like the back of his hand, and he had never seen this place before. Or had he? The scene chimed recognition within him—if not for this exact place, for ones like it. He had seen it before, in books, or pictures, perhaps, or even in his own imagination.

The man spoke again before he could chase down an answer through the foreboding that was growing ever stronger.

“Bebbanburg is Oswy’s fortress in Bernicia. A kingdom of the Angles in the north of this isle that the Romans called Britain.”

Britain? The word froze Thomas in his spot. His eyes roved over the other man, seeing again his strange clothing, his sword. The revelation rushed towards him. The trees—oaks, and ash and the like. The setting of countless fairy tales and stories, from Winnie-the-Pooh to Robin Hood to King Arthur. He knew those stories like he knew his own heart, and he knew the truth of it: he was there. But how?

“Britain—” he said faintly and stopped as a solution presented itself. Crazy, insane, impossible—but as he took in the man in front of him, his clothing, the landscape, it was the only one that fit.

That, or the stresses of the past few months had pushed him over the tipping point into insanity.

He sucked in a breath. “Tell me—” His courage failed him, but he gathered himself and forced himself to continue. “Britain.” He swallowed down the bile that rose into his throat. “When? I mean, what year is it?”

The question hung there, between them. Surprise flashed through the man’s eyes, and he opened his mouth and then shut it again. “I have not thought of it in some time,” he said, and frowned. “My lord Oswald died this summer, and he was on the throne these past years—ten, perhaps? Nay, eight, I would say.” He nodded. “The monks can tell you for certain, but I believe it is the Year of our Lord 642.”