The Pictish Child (5 page)

Gran ignored him. “The Picts were to us as the Indians are to ye in America. Brave warrior tribes who lived in Scotland before us. They painted—or tattooed—their skins. The name Pict means just that: ‘Painted men.' At least, that is what the Romans called them.”

“Like the first American settlers calling the Indians
redskins,”
Peter said.

“But
redskins
is a racist word,” Jennifer pointed out. “We're
not
supposed to use it.”

Peter frowned at her as if she had just accused him of being a racist. She wanted to reassure him, but when she tried to smile, he looked away. “Is
Pict
the same?” she asked Gran.

“Perhaps,” said Gran. “Perhaps not. We just dinna ken enough about the Pictish folk to be certain. They had no written language and there are no Picts left about to tell us.”

“Well—what
do
ye ken?” asked the dog, stretching out on his chosen stone to soak up the sun.

“We ken they lived from the fourth century to the ninth,” said Gran, tapping her finger on the encylopedia. “That they were ruled by kings but that the line was through the women's side, not the men's. A king's nephew reigned after him—son of his sister, not his own son.” She closed the book carefully.

“Weird,” said Peter.

“Only to you!” Jennifer nudged him. “Oink!”

“Oink yourself!” Peter said back.

“Still, it
was
a king who ruled,” Gran pointed out. “Not a queen.”

“Hah!” said Peter. “One for the male side!” He took another big slurp of the iced tea.

Sometimes
, Jennifer thought sadly,
Peter and I seem so far apart. Not nearly as close as we once were.

“What about my talisman?” asked Molly.

“Och, well—the stone.” Gran bit her lip and looked over at Ninia for a moment. The girl was now on her belly in the wet grass and sniffing at various herbs in the garden.

“The stone,” prompted Jennifer.

“What we mostly ken about the Picts, besides some blether written by churchmen who were busy trying to convert them to Christianity—and succeeding, too, I might add—comes from the strange engraved stones they left. Ye can find these stones all over Scotland.”

“Like
my
stone, Gran?”

“Only a great deal larger, Molly, my lass. Most are taller than ye, some taller than Jennifer and Peter. And several as tall as yer father. We've a few in the Fairburn Museum that were found in the Eventide cemetery. Perhaps we should go there and look at them. The earlier stones had these strange drawings on them.”

“Like my bird and snake!” Molly cried.

Gran nodded. “The later stones—after the Picts all became Christians—have Celtic crosses on them. But no one kens what those earlier pictures mean. They may be magic symbols or they may be clan names or they may be grocery lists. We dinna ken for certain.”

“Grocery lists!” Molly put both her hands over her mouth and giggled.

“Pretty hard to bring that kind of list to the store with you,” said Peter. He laughed, too.

“Maybe it's a list of kings,” Jennifer mused aloud.

“Perhaps,” said Gran. “And perhaps the wee Pictish lass will tell us.”

“If that one could tell us a thing,” the dog said, sitting up, “she'd ha' done it already.”

At that moment Ninia came over. In her fist was a bunch of herbs from the garden. She named them slowly to Gran in her rough tongue.

“Good, good,” said Gran, then she named all the herbs back to Ninia, using the English words. “We call this one thyme and this one rosemary. And this one—”

“Catnip!” put in Jennifer.

As if on cue, Gran's little white cat appeared around the corner of the garden table. Ninia took one look, gave a little scream, and—dropping the herbs—ran into the house.

“I feel the same way,” said the dog. Then he put his head on his paws and within moments began to snore.

Eight

Dark Mist

It took them a good fifteen minutes and three pieces of shortbread—which Ninia ate with a ferocious appetite—to coax her into touching the little cat. But once she'd been convinced to stroke its silky-soft fur with her fingertips—the only parts of her hands not bandaged up by Gran—she began to smile. She picked the cat up in her arms and after that refused to let it go, carrying it everywhere with her.

Surprisingly the little cat let her cart it around, and it took to lying draped over her shoulders like some furry white shawl. She spoke to it continuously, in a lyrical singsong.

“I bet she's never seen a cat before,” said Peter.

“We can let her have this one,” said Molly.

“Awfully generous with someone else's pet.” Jennifer felt snippy because she'd wanted the cat herself.

Peter understood at once; twins sometimes have an uncanny knack for knowing this sort of thing. Immediately he backed her in his awkward way, as if their other arguments were long forgotten.

“What if Ninia decides she needs the fur for a hat?” he said. “Or wants a midnight snack of kitty on crackers? And”—he snapped his fingers—“there goes Gran's cat.”

“Gran's cat,” Gran said, “can take care of itself.”

And that was that.

They had lunch in the garden—sandwiches on homemade bread, big chunks of cheese, crisps, and glasses of fizzy lemonade. Ninia didn't seem to know what to do with the sandwiches until she took them apart and ate what was inside. The glass with the lemonade utterly defeated her. She kept staring into it and turning it upside down, spilling the lemonade everywhere. But she was wild about the crisps and couldn't get enough of them.

“Bet it's the salt,” Peter said. “Salt was probably hard to come by back then.”

“They lived right by the sea,” Jennifer pointed out. “Plenty of salt there.”

Gran shrugged. “Crisps are Da's favorite, too.”

The dog woke up to the sound of eating and begged—not entirely successfully—for scraps.

They were partway through the meal, Ninia licking the crisps bag without embarrassment, when the great black horse, Devil, trotted over from beyond the wall. He liked to crop the long grass in the wilder part of the garden and rarely strayed closer to the house.

“Am I missing food?” he asked, his words bumping up and down as he trotted toward them.

This time Ninia showed no fear. She leaped up, gabbling long nonsense sentences, and ran over to him. He stopped at once and stood rigidly, while she put both hands on either side of his long face and blew into his nostrils one at a time.

“Never seen a horse afore, either,” the dog remarked sarcastically.

Gran smiled. “Of course she has seen horses. There are Pictish stones with horses carved on them in our museum. But …” And she mused a bit, watching the girl and Devil. “She seems to ken
this
one intimately.”

“Blow softly in my nose and ye can ken me intimately, too,” said the dog.

Gran aimed a cuff at his ear, but missed.

Just then the horse and Ninia came over to them. Giving an expansive gesture with her left hand, Ninia launched into a long and completely unintelligible speech.

“Well …” Gran said to Devil, “and do ye have some information to impart to us?”

“My lady and I were acquainted in the long-ago …” Devil began.

“My
lady!”
Jennifer exploded. “In
that
outfit?”

“That
outfit was what young girls wore then,” Devil replied.

“In the long-ago, you mean?” Jennifer said.

The horse nodded his head up and down. “And
she
was no ordinary girl then. She was to be the mother of the next king.”

“She's way too young to be a mother,” Peter put in.

“And ye are way too auld to be a fool,” said the dog.

“Awfully old,” mused Jennifer to the horse, “if you and she lived with the Picts.”

“Och,” said Gran, “now things may be coming clear. Ninia's been sent here on a mission.”

“Or as an escape,” Jennifer added.

“Clear as dirt,” the dog said.

“He bites his tongue who speaks in haste,” said the horse easily.

The Pictish girl gabbled again.

“Och, well, that was certainly instructive.” The dog stood and stretched. Then, stiff legged, he walked toward the garden gate. “Someone best let me out,” he said. “I'd rather not mess the garden unintentionally.”

Peter got up and followed the dog to the fence. Lifting the ironwork latch, he began to open the wooden door. But even before he'd gotten it pushed partway out, the dog was scampering backward, howling hysterically.

“The dark! The dark! The dark!”

And the mist, which had somehow gotten free of the confines of the cemetery and the binding of the ironwork gates, came pouring into the garden with its sounds of war.

Nine

Night for Day

They all managed to get into the house before the mist entirely filled the garden, but only just. The lunch dishes were left scattered on the garden table, the encyclopedia fell to the ground, and two of the chairs were overturned in their flight.

The mist still looked like a haar, only now it was darker and more menacing. It moved like low rain clouds around the house, obscuring the closest objects, even the wisteria that climbed along the house walls.

Relentlessly the mist turned day into night.

“Wow!” said Molly, pressing her nose up to the living-room window and watching as the dark mist changed form. “Look—there's something in it. I think it's a man. No, a horse. No—”

Ninia grabbed her arm and pulled her away. “Me Molly!” she cried. “Me Molly!”

Meanwhile Gran had gone into the cupboard by the kitchen and, moments later, emerged carrying a large grey toolbox.

“Here,” she said, handing out ratchets and hammers, screwdrivers and wrenches to the children. “Stick one in front of each window and door. The brass and iron fixtures on the doors and windows should keep the mist out anyway, but better safe than …”

“… sorry.” Peter and Jennifer finished her sentence together.

“Very sorry,” Peter added. Though he knew it was stupid, he couldn't get rid of the feeling that it was somehow all his fault that the mist had gotten into the garden at all.

Dutifully all of the children—except for Ninia, of course—ran around the house placing the tools and nails by windows and doors. When those were all set out, they used Gran's sterling silverware, teakettle, pots and pans, and old washtub, too. Ninia didn't help, fearing she'd be burned again, though she stuck close to Molly the whole time.

They had just finished on the second floor when Jennifer had a sudden, panicky thought.

“The chimneys!” she shouted as the mist began to scrabble up on the roof. She could hear mourning doves, in panicked flight, leaving their chimney-pot nests.

Desperately the children raced to the fireplaces in each room and scattered the last remaining bits of metal onto the hearthstones. For good measure, Peter placed several portable metal heaters like fire guards in front of each fireplace.

When they were finished they ran back to the living room, where Gran waited with the dog, the cat, and the horse.

“Will it be enough?” Jennifer asked, panting with the effort of securing the house. “Do you think it will be enough, Gran?”

“For now,” Gran said. It was not much comfort.

Day was now entirely night, as the dark mist covered window after window, downstairs and upstairs and—

“The actic!” Molly cried. “What if it comes in the actic?” There were lots of windows up there.

“Attic,” Jennifer said automatically.

“We've blocked the attic door with carpet tacks and paper clips and some screwdrivers,” said Peter. “They should hold.”

Jennifer started to shake again, just as she had in the Eventide Home. “But the iron gate didn't hold the mist in the cemetery,” she said. “And that was much thicker iron. And older.”

“Ye needn't ha' reminded us o' that!” the dog said miserably. He lay on the rug and put his paws up over his ears.

“I dinna think the mist came through the cemetery gates at all,” Gran said. “I think it flowed over the oak tree and down a limb to the other side. Or else someone released it through one of the gates. And then …”

“And then it followed us home?” Jennifer could not stop shaking.

“Like a dog on a trail,” said Peter.

“I resent that comparison,” said the dog.

“But why did it follow us?” It was Molly's turn to whine.

“That,” Gran said, “is always the real question in any magic.
Why.”

They sat down together in the living room, the lights on everywhere. It said a great deal about their state of fear that Ninia didn't question—even with so much as a look—what must have been a miracle to her glowing in each light fixture. She just clutched the cat and sat huddled between Molly and Jennifer, unable to speak of her terror to anyone but the horse.

“Why,”
Gran repeated. “That is what we need to figure out first.”

“The mist is after the girl?” suggested Peter.

“Or the talisman,” said Jennifer.

“Or us,” said Molly.

“Or me.” The horse spoke from the corner by the garden door with a kind of awful sorrow. “When Michael Scot first took me from my Pictish past, he tore a hole in history. And it seems to have allowed other beings to slip through. Like Ninia. Like the mist.”

“The mist isn't a
being,”
said Jennifer sensibly.

“I believe it is the essence of all the beings of a particular time,” the horse said.

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Peter interjected.

“It makes every bit of sense,” Gran said. “That is why the mist is dangerous. If the wrong part of that essence comes loose in the house … or grabs up one of us and thrusts that one through that hole in time …”