Chapter 16: So, Um, Yikes

Every one of the people reacted immediately.  They looked frightened, or angry, or tensed to attack us.  If there had been any doubt, there was no longer.

“Fauns!” Georgie hissed.  “I said fauns!”

My mind raced.  If they were baobhan siths, that meant . . .

“Time!” I burst out.  “I stole time from you!  You had it . . . stored in the turning stone somehow!  Right?”

“Correct,” the silver-haired man said tightly.  “And the one who puts it back will lose all their time in the process.  This is not random cruelty.  It is a necessity for our survival.”

“But . . . but . . .”  I couldn’t believe it.  “But you’re baobhan siths!  I thought they were extinct!”

“Most of our kind are,” the clan leader said, his tone very unfriendly.  “We’ve been hunted to extinction.  Only those who are hidden behind time stones survive.”

“How long have you been hidden behind that time stone?” Kegan’s dad asked slowly.

“Thirteen years.”

I stared at the man blankly.  That’s it?  Then why do you look like Pilgrims and talk so weird?

“Oh, my gosh!” Kegan burst out. “Oh, my gosh!  Oh, my gosh!  Oh, my gosh!  I get it!  You only live for one day out of each month, right?  Because thirteen times three hundred and sixty-five days is almost four thousand eight hundred, which is the same as the number of months in four hundred years!  No wonder you look like Pilgrims!  You actually are!”

I turned and stared her my best friend.  I knew she was good at math, but seriously?

“It’s Brigadoon!” Kegan squealed, clapping her hands.  “We found Brigadoon!  I can’t believe it actually exists!  This is so cool!”

Had she forgotten the little, tiny fact that they were going to kill me?

The clan leader looked baffled.  “What is Brigadoon?”

“It’s a musical,” Kegan’s mom said.  At his continued bafflement, she added, “Sort of like opera.  It’s about a village in Scotland that only lives one day out of a hundred years.  Um . . . is what my daughter said true?”

“Yes,” said one of the women said from the crowd, and a man beside her shushed her.

“One month is how much time we must consume to live through a full moon,” the silver-haired man said, eyeing us with great suspicion.  “Living behind a time stone makes it possible to pay that cost out of our own time and while still living a normal lifespan.  It is an old custom for our species.”

“But why are you here?” Kegan’s mother asked, looking puzzled.  “Shouldn’t you be in Scotland?”

“We left,” the clan leader growled.  “Too many treasure hunters looking to steal our time.  We used to get interrupted by a thief every few years, and then we’d all lose a month of our lives.  Sometimes the thief could not be found, and we would have to kill an innocent person to make our turning stone a time stone again.  That is why we left Scotland and came here, where we could live in peace.  And for thirteen years, it worked.”

He gave me an accusing glare.

But my mind was working too furiously to apologize.  So a turning stone stopped being a time stone when all of the stored time came out of it, right?  And somebody had to get killed to put time back into it?

“Why do you even have to go back behind the time stone?” I asked.  “Can’t you just live like everybody else?  I mean, the law could be changed so that all death row inmates are killed by baobhan siths during the full moon.”

“It’s been tried,” the clan leader said with an unfriendly glare.  “About two thousand years ago, when I was a kid.  It didn’t end well.  We wound up persecuted and hunted, as always.”

“Yes, but everything’s different now,” Kegan said confidently, tugging her phone out of her pocket.  “Modern technology solves everything.  Look!  You don’t even know what this is!  It allows you to talk to people over long distances —”

Three people in the crowd pulled smartphones from their pockets and held them up.

“We’re not Luddites,” the clan leader said in exasperation.  “We have bank accounts and investments, too.  Compound interest is very useful when you’re only around for a day out of every month.  Do you think we are complete idiots?”

“Um . . .”  Kegan looked dumbfounded.

“We’ve been doing this for thousands of years,” the silver-haired old man said, snorting.  “We know it’s important to keep up with modern technology.  We can wander around freely when it’s not the full moon, and some of us do.  It’s just that it costs us a month of our lives, so most of us don’t.  And yes, we watch the news!  Loretta Vampireclanbaobhansith hasn’t been very well-received, has she?”

I swallowed.  There went my brilliant argument about there being a baobhan sith living safely out there.  Come to think of it, using a convicted murderer as an example of how the world would treat them might not have been the best idea in the first place.

There had to be a way to convince them that they didn’t need their turning stone turned back into a time stone again.  Think . . . think . . . think . . .

“Are your children baobhan siths, too?” Kegan’s father asked.

I turned to look at him, puzzled.  What was he getting at?

“Of course they are,” the clan leader said.

“So your offer to let Lisette turn someone was a lie, then.”

The clan leader shrugged.

For real?  I was seriously annoyed.  First I’d been lied to about there being hostages.  Then I’d been lied to about there being a time limit.  Now I’d been lied to about being allowed to turn someone if I was nice and let them kill me.  Apparently it wasn’t just Rodrigo who was a jerk.

“What do you do when their turnings fail?” Kegan’s dad added.

Oh!  My eyes widened.  That hadn’t even occurred to me.  The younger somebody was when they were turned, the better the chance their turning would fail and they’d wind up human.

“Obviously they can’t stay in the village,” the clan leader said sourly.  “Non-baobhan siths can’t live behind a time stone without aging at the same rate as the outside world.”

“So you turn infants,” Kegan’s father said.  “Just like mermaids.”

“Is there a point to that question?” the man asked testily.

“Well, I assume you have the same failure rate.  Do a tenth of all your children wind up human and have to be abandoned, just like theirs do?”

“A necessary sacrifice,” the clan leader said stiffly, “for all of our survival.”

“No, it isn’t!” Kegan exploded.

“Have any of your children fail to turn?” Kegan’s mom asked indignantly.

“I get it!  I get it!  I get it!” I cried.  “You leave your babies who fail to turn at the same orphanages mermaids do, don’t you?”

The man gave me a silent, unfriendly look.

There was a quiet murmur from the crowd behind him, which I took to mean yes.

“Don’t you see?  Don’t you see?  Don’t you see?  Don’t you see?” I asked excitedly.  “That’s how Rodrigo knows about you!  He spent all that time at mermaid orphanages!  He must have heard rumors about you at one of them!  Or maybe he figured it out when he saw a parent visiting their kid!”

“There are no rumors,” the silver-haired old man snapped.  “There are no visits.  Everything is done in the strictest secrecy.  To do otherwise would endanger all of us.”

I caught a few people in the crowd guiltily looking away.

“Yeah, I’m not so sure that’s working,” I said.

“Of course it’s working.  Who’d break a rule like that?  I’m sure I’d definitely never put my kid above my clan,” Kegan’s mother added, very sarcastically.

“Enough delaying,” the clan leader snarled.  “We need to fix the time stone.  Come here.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Now, see,” I said, trying to be reasonable, “I was willing before you lied to me.  But since you lied to me, I am no longer willing . . .”

The clan leader lunged forward and seized my arm.  He shoved me towards the turning stone.

I shrieked and kicked and tried to break free.

“It’s either you or all of them!” the old man snapped.

Kegan whooshed straight through us.  She winked substantial, seized the turning stone, and turned banshee again.  She waved the insubstantial green orb with a triumphant grin.

I shifted to vulture and spun around in his grip, stabbing my beak at his hand and slashing his arm with my talons.

The man twisted around and snapped his fingers.

Despite being insubstantial, Kegan collapsed.

I shrieked like an angry T-rex and tried to peck at his face.

“Are you really that stupid?” the clan leader shouted.  “She has one minute left of her life!  If you want me to give back her time, you will stop struggling!”

I stopped dead.

“I’m afraid we’re not really that stupid,” Kegan’s father said, his voice remarkably calm.  “It’s obvious you don’t intend to let us go at all.  You’ve probably been taking our time the whole time we were standing here.  We’re probably all down to our last few minutes, or you wouldn’t have made your move.”

I stared at him in horror.

Dirt exploded at the clan leader’s feet.  The silver-haired man made a gasping noise, and then fell over.

Freed from his grip, I shifted to half-form and leapt away, panicking as I stared at the clan leader with a bullet in his throat.

What’s going on?!  What’s going on?!?!

Earth rumbled aside, and a hideous duergar in a SWAT vest rose up from beneath us, holding a vicious-looking gun.  Like all duergars, he was only a few feet tall, but that didn’t stop him from being imposing.

“I’m not the only one down there who can aim through dirt,” he snarled.  “Anyone else want to resist?”

The other baobhan siths backed away, wide-eyed.

“Now give my daughter back her time!” Kegan’s mom barked.

“And all the rest of us, too!” I added for good measure.

A child in the crowd started crying.  Three more immediately followed, and several more started screaming.  Women hastily tried to shush them, looking panic-eyed themselves.

“You,” the duergar growled, gesturing at a man with his gun.  “Do whatever you need to to fix their time.”

“B-but I’m not the o-one who took it,” the man stammered.

“Do it now!”

“We can’t take time from someone who’s dead!” a woman in the crowd cried.  “When somebody dies, their time goes with them!  If he took all their time, it’s gone now!”

“He’s not dead!” Kegan’s dad yelled, bending over the body of the clan leader.  “He’s breathing!”

“Do it now!” the duergar snarled.

Hyperventilating, the man from the crowd waved desperately to the others.  Half a dozen other men ran forward, bending over their clan leader.  They touched him and kept looking up from him to us, from him to us.

Kegan stirred, and her eyes opened.  She looked around groggily, still clutching the insubstantial turning stone in her hands.

I let out a sigh of relief that sounded like a sob.

Kegan looked around, taking in the silver-haired man lying on the ground and the ugly man in the SWAT vest wielding the gun.

She went substantial again.  “Um, what’s going on?”

“Georgie flew off to find the police who were heading this way,” Kegan’s dad said shortly.  “He told me to stall, so I did.  I hoped we could talk the man down before anyone had to get shot, but . . .”

“Yes, too bad,” the duergar snapped.  “Nobody move!”

Another child burst into tears.

Suddenly I was peeved that Georgie’s family had insisted on calling 911.  I mean, I appreciated being rescued and all, but there were kids crying.  And this was sort of my fault in the first place.

“Hey — they’re innocent,” I told the SWAT guy.  “You don’t have to point a gun at them.  It was just their clan leader who was the problem.  It’s fine now.”

“It’s not,” he said in a clipped tone.  “They’re all baobhan siths.  They’re all dangerous.  This situation won’t be safe until they’re all contained.  Now, all of you, walk back to your car and leave.  We’ll handle this.”

“I’m not gonna let you hurt them!” I said hotly.  “They haven’t hurt anyone for thirteen years or four hundred, depending on how you count it!”

“LEAVE!” he roared.

“NO!” I shouted.  Extremely rashly, I tried to grab his gun.

The gun went off.

The bullet froze, hovering in the air.

An instant later, everything was different.

I gasped as I looked around.

Four men were now carrying the fallen clan leader towards the massive haystack.  Another man walked over to Kegan and wrenched the turning stone out of her substantial hand.

All the crying children seemed to have been comforted.  The log houses were all dismantled, lying in pieces on the ground.

As I watched, a man brushed aside hay and revealed the door to a Greywerehound bus that had been hidden by the haystack, and he opened the door with a key.  The four men carried their clan leader up the stairs and into the bus.

My mouth gaped open.

An old woman with straggly grey hair walked over to me.  She pulled a smartphone out of her pocket and plopped it in my hand.

“We always have a plan to escape,” she said in a thick brogue.  “We held a meeting and decided to give this to you.  Thank you for sticking up for us.  We might need your help again.”

“Wait, what?” I exclaimed.  “When did you hold a meeting?!”

“When the gun fired at you,” she said, as if it were obvious.  “Just because we can only take time at a short distance doesn’t mean we can’t bend it further.  We’re limited mainly by walls, and there aren’t any here.  If we need help, we’ll call you.”

“W-wait,” I said quickly.  “Why would you need my help?  Why would you want it?  I’m the one who broke your time stone.”

She smiled.  “Yes.  Thank you for that.  I lost a grandson when the boy failed to turn last year.  No more.”

Then she was gone, and so were all the others.  Even the houses were gone without a trace.  So was the bullet that had been heading for me, and the duergar’s gun was in smithereens on the ground.

He jerked back and cursed vehemently.  He yanked a phone out of his pocket and dove underground, already shouting into it.

I was left alone, staring at Kegan and her parents.

“So . . .” I said.  “I think I might’ve just unleashed baobhan siths out into the world . . .”

I didn’t know if that was the best thing that could’ve happened, or the worst thing.

“Your mother is going to kill me,” Kegan’s mom said, sighing.