Chapter 8: The Hidden People
Author’s note: This is Chapter 8 of my second novel, The Hidden People, a fantasy story with a romance element. The previous chapters can be found here:
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Annurin, it turned out, had arranged for a medicine man to look at her shoulder.
“I don’t want this,” Jo tried to explain to Méabh. “I will be fine.”
“Your luck is ill then, because you have no choice.” Méabh was much shorter than Jo—in fact, she was tiny—but she had a steely grip and somehow, she managed to steer Jo into a bedroom off the corridor, briskly strip off her dress and clothing and then fetch something she called a ‘shift’. Jo had managed to save her ring from being packed up: while Méabh was fussing with the clothing and getting the shift, she quickly put it in a drawer in the bedside table. Then she inspected the four-poster bed with interest—she had thought such things only existed in novels.
Méabh gently pulled the shift over Jo’s head. Jo looked appreciatively down at the loose dress, with only one layer. “This is more comfortable. Can I wear this all the time?”
Méabh choked. “I would as lief you wear bloomers down the main road, girly.”
“Clothing which requires another person to undo the buttons in order to remove it is ridiculous.”
“But you have me.” Méabh was smug.
The medicine man was old, and had long grey plaits with bones woven into them. His garments were blue. To Jo’s astonishment and delight, a red-striped bee gremlin sat on the man’s shoulder. The creature sat up and buzzed.
“Don’t be alarmed!” Méabh patted her arm. “It’s just a rudbeag.”
Jo forbore from noting that she was more alarmed by the bone plaits than the bee gremlin. Did the doctor collect the bones from dead patients?
She smiled at the creature and made a buzzing noise. “Hello! Do you know my other friends?”
The creature flew off the man’s shoulder and circled her, and the old man blinked, and said something.
“He says his beag doesn’t do that for just anyone,” Méabh noted.
“Your cousins were very nice to me when I first came here,” Jo told the bee gremlin. “Can you thank them for me?”
The bee gremlin chittered and went back to the man’s shoulder.
Méabh crossed her arms. “Right. Undo your shift. Show the man where you were wounded.”
Jo unlaced the neck of the shift. “Here.”
The doctor inspected the wound thoroughly and gently, blinked, and asked Méabh a question. Méabh translated. “He wants to know—it looks like an arrow wound? Recent? But someone’s taken out the arrowhead? And stitched you up? Not a surgeon, but neat enough.”
“Yes. That’s pretty much it.” Jo looked sidelong at Méabh.
Méabh gaped. “What?”
“Relationship status: ‘It’s complicated.’” Jo chuckled to herself.
Méabh translated this, a look of confusion on her face. Then she said, “The rudbeag will have to … taste? … the wound. To see if it’s septic.”
Jo stuck out her tongue at the bee gremlin. A grin split the bee gremlin’s face and it stuck its tongue back out at her.
Méabh muttered something and the bee gremlin came hovering over, just in front of Jo’s shoulder. Delicately, it extended its long, curled tongue and very gently licked the wound. Jo giggled. “That tickles.”
The bee gremlin shot up and away and circled around the canopy of the four-poster bed, while the doctor called to it. Eventually it came back, clicking and buzzing in excitement, and did a little dance on the bed cover.
The doctor looked at it and spoke to Méabh. Méabh said, “He says the wound is not infected. There is … something strange. The dance is not as it always is. But it is definitely a dance of wound health.”
“I’m from the real world,” Jo confessed.
Méabh laughed. “Oh, you’re funny. This is the real world. You’re from the Other Land, I knew that, girly.”
“Nope. You’re from the Other Land,” Jo insisted. “The Hidden Place.”
The doctor laughed and rolled his eyes as Méabh translated, as if Jo was being ridiculous.
Then he took out some lotions, put them on the cupboard, and gave them to Méabh with a long, detailed set of instructions. Méabh nodded. The doctor covered the wound with salve and then a soft white bandage.
“What’s this made of?” Jo asked, poking gingerly at it.
“Spider silk,” said Méabh.
With a curious look back at Jo, the doctor went to go, but the rudbeag lingered and he called to it.
“Bye bye!” Jo said to it. “Don’t forget to say hello to your cousins!”
It chittered, then left.
Méabh did up the laces of the shift. “My, my, you’re a mystery. Woman from the Other Land. Talking to a beag. Claimed by the Prince and wed by a Lord.”
“Beag? Is that what the bee gremlins are called?”
“Aye, one beag, many beaga,” Méabh said, tying a bow in the laces. “I say—do you know who shot you?”
Jo blinked. “Did he not tell you? It was Annurin.”
Méabh gaped. “Hold—hold—he did not go to the Other Land to fetch you?”
Jo was confused. “No. What? Why would you think that?”
“That’s how it used to work—go to the Other Land and bring your lover back, if you could glamour him or her.” Méabh sighed, her grey eyes sparkling. “I loved a young bonny lad once—I kept him with me, such lovely blue eyes and dark hair—but he left in the end, for someone back home. He’d be long dead now, poor Tam.”
Jo decided to confess her suspicion to someone. “I wonder—I wonder if my father came from here, Méabh. My mother told me he was an important man from another country—and she was always telling us about this place. The Hidden Place.”
Méabh inspected Jo. “Aye! You’re right! You do have somewhat of the look of us. Something in the eyes. Not sure what clan? Étaín, maybe? You’re a pretty lass.”
Jo snorted. “Me? No.”
Méabh clicked her tongue. “You could be, if you didn’t try to hide it.” She brightened. “Was it a love philtre the Lord used, to woo you? I’ve heard tell of that: put a love philtre on the arrow and then your lover will follow you like a foal follows its mam.”
Jo cleared her throat and stared at the vine pattern climbing up the wooden post of the bed. It depicted a plant she did not recognise. “No. I have known Annurin for precisely two days … three days now? I have no sense of time anymore. Annurin caught me when I was looking for my brother. Then, in that throne room, that Prince said to the freaky Bone Dude that he claimed me, and Annurin says he married me to stop that happening. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful not to be claimed by the gold-eyed arsehole, but there was no wooing.”
Méabh made a face and whispered, “The King dishonours us all by failing to restrain the Prince from his excesses. Mark my words, the Prince will pay one day for his deeds, by blood and bone.” She put a finger to her nose and her eyes glinted strangely in the blue overhead light.
“I hope you’re right. I could tell the Prince was a entitled prick from a mile off.” Jo traced her finger up the wooden post. “I just want to find Henny and go home. Forget the oath; I hope Annurin’s right and that going home will break it and that will be the end of this dumb so-called marriage. I will never, ever, ever moan about having to serve coffee to grumpy men in black turtleneck shirts again.”
Méabh looked genuinely shocked. “Break a Blood Oath? That’s a terrible thing to do!”
“I didn’t know what I was agreeing to,” countered Jo. “Not a real marriage.”
“But what about your wedding night? You won’t be properly married in the eyes of the House of Blood if you don’t—?”
Jo scrambled onto the bed, pulled her knees up under the shift, and curled into a ball. “Annurin’s agreed: this isn’t a real marriage.”
Méabh looked at her sadly. “Oh dear. Poor little thing. Wonder who’s wounded you, other than the Lord with his arrow? Some scars can’t be seen. Well. I’ll leave that between you and the Lord.”
“I had a really strange childhood,” Jo confessed. Then her eyes filled with tears. “That’s why I came, see? To get my big brother back. That’s Henny. He came first and he doesn’t understand anything. I came here to find him, Méabh. I left Simon behind, and after all that—I can’t even find Henny. It’s a disaster.”
Méabh patted her head. “There there. You’re tired and upset. I’ll give you some of this tea the medicine man left for pain relief. Why don’t you have a sleep? ‘Sleep knits the ravelled sleeve of care…’”
Jo drank the tea obediently, then pulled back the blankets and got into bed. “Shakespeare, again,” she said sleepily
Méabh’s eyes widened. “Indeed! You ken him?”
“We all know his plays, where I come from.” Jo yawned.
“Well, isn’t that wonderful? Tell him I’m glad to hear, if you see him again.” Méabh beamed as if she’d been given a box of chocolates. Jo did not have the heart to tell her William Shakespeare was long dead.
Méabh tucked Jo into the bed. Jo didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, but she did. Unfortunately, contrary to the predictions of Shakespeare, it did not help her feel better. She was wracked by horrendous nightmares that Henny and Simon were in gaol and that the snake panther was going to eat them. Blood dripped from Henny’s hands.
When she woke later, feeling uneasy, and if possible, even less rested than before, Annurin was sitting in the carven chair in the corner of the room, his legs stretched out, his eyes in shadow.
Jo sat up and pulled the silken bedclothes around her. “Um, hi? You’re watching me sleep? That’s creepy?”
Annurin startled and looked apologetic. “I was unsure. Should I wake thee or not? Should I touch thee? I agonised about this dilemma for such a time that thou didst awake naturally.”
Jo felt an unwilling sense of kinship. “Problem solved.” Then she said, “What’s up?”
Annurin blinked and looked up. “The roof? Thou canst see it thyself?”
This time, Jo burst out laughing. “No. ‘What’s up?’ means ‘What’s happening?’ In other words: why are you lurking in the corner of my room agonising?”
“I spoke to the head of Clan Hearne. He agreed that the Clan will help me search for thy brother.”
“Thank you.” Jo drew her knees up and put her arms around them. “I very much appreciate thour efforts.”
Annurin laughed and winced at the same time. “Thy efforts.” His face shadowed. “Or perhaps the fault is mine? Have I learned thy tongue incorrectly?”
“Not so much incorrectly as five hundred years out of date,” Jo informed him.
“But—how do people show relationship, if everyone is called you?”
“From the context,” Jo admitted. “I believe in other languages they still have things like this? French? German? I don’t know why it dropped out of English. I never learned another language, on account of Mama teaching us herself.”
“Hmm.” Annurin leaned back in the chair and an awkward silence filled the room.
“So, what now?” Jo hated awkward silences.
“We have supper and then we go to bed. Tomorrow I ride out again, in search of thy brother.”
Jo scrunched the heavy embroidered blue bedcovers over herself. “Is this … is it your bed?”
“No. ‘Tis a guest bed. Thou mayst sleep unmolested.” Annurin hesitated. “I would, if thou’rt agreeable, reopen the cut to my hand over thy sheets, before thou dost sleep tonight, then leave thy room and no one will ask any questions henceforth, and I shall not bother thee again.”
Jo was very confused. “What? Is this some kind of oath thing again?”
Annurin tapped his foot, and gripped the arms of the chair until his knuckles were white. “It’s—” He looked away.
“A sex thing?” Jo guessed, from the feeling of awkward anxiousness and misery emanating from him. “Do you get off on cutting your hand like that? Is that why you’ve got scars all over your hand?”
Annurin’s eyes widened. “What is ‘get off’?”
It was Jo’s turn to be shy. “Er, get really excited, in a sexual kind of way.”
Annurin grimaced. “No! No!” He pulled at his pale hair, and the neat braid began to come loose. Jo hadn’t been able to spot any dark roots, yet. “This is very difficult! And most uncomfortable.”
“No shit, Sherlock, but you’re the one who shot me and then married me without properly asking,” Jo noted. “Spit it out. By the way, I don’t care if you’re kinky, but I’m not into it.”
“So—does this not happen in thy world?—it’s a way to show we have consummated our oath, by the rules of both Realms. Blood and seed must mix.”
Jo squinted. “What? That’s disgusting! What the fuck is that? Some kind of medieval shit? What the fuck is wrong with you people?” She drew in a deep breath. “And-for-your-information-only-but-don’t-tell-anyone-else: I’m a virgin.”
Annurin looked confused. “What about what I described is disgusting?” He looked down, and she was washed by a mix of sadness, concern and embarrassment. “I guessed the latter, from thy discomfort with my touch. I can feel it even now: you fear me and feel shame. There is no pleasure for me in thy fear, if that is the target of thy concern?”
Suddenly Jo’s eyes were swimming with tears; she hadn’t realised that he might find her behaviour hurtful. “Okay. Right. I just have to make it clear: it’s nothing against you personally, Annurin, it’s how I feel about any man other than my brothers.”
“In any case—it will save us both from questions if I bleed my hand—? Then no one will ask for other proofs. I wish to save thee trouble.”
Jo threw her hands up. “If you think it’s a good idea? This is your world. I’ll be guided by what you think is best.”