Beyond Time

Copyright © 2015, 2017, 2019

Holly Barbo

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Cover design Darkmantle Designs

All rights reserved. Published by Paper Gold Publishing

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form of by any electronic or mechanical means, including information and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. This is a work of fiction, names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

A BELTANE GIFT

A BELL FOR VALOR

A MAGIC YULE

CHRISTMAS IS COMING AND

SO ARE THE YULE LADS

OTHER BOOKS BY HOLLY

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Description

Summer in Scotland, and Mari is working on an archeological dig of a Viking burial ship during Beltane, a time of the year when the veil shrouding the spirit world thins. What could possibly go wrong?

A Beltane Gift won first prize in the PGP Short Story Competition in August 2015. It is also available as part of the anthologies Change of Tides and Tendrils.

A BELTANE GIFT

~1291 A.D.~

The day was high summer with an onshore breeze ruffling the waters of Loch Sunart. Leda watched as several strong men hauled a small boat out of the water. Muscles strained as the ship resisted the pull of the ropes as if it didn’t want to leave its buoyant home. She knew it was time and turned her head to scan the progress on the moor. A boat-sized hole had been dug to rest the vessel in. Teams of men from the village maneuvered the dragon boat onto skids and fought the graceful craft up to where the low moors began. With every available hand on the ropes, the ship was lowered into the ground until only the short, carved dragon on the prow looked over the grassland to the shore.

Once the small ship was nestled into the ground, more of their friends came, placing Leda’s husband’s body on a prepared berth. Items meaningful to his life were set around him in easy reach, should he need them in the afterlife. This burial was a supreme honor but still the tears trickled down her lined face and dropped onto the funerary objects. As the gathered crowd paid their last respects, several foxes were heard yipping in the low hills. As one, everyone turned in the direction of the sound. There, on a cairn farther up the slope, was a family of the rust-colored creatures raising their voices to the wind. Leda smiled and made a small bow to the animals. Laughter was heard around the boat as comments were made about the tribute. In this lighter atmosphere, everyone pitched in and began to fill the craft with dirt and stones.

~Present Day: Scotland, Ardnamunchan Peninsula~

Mari stood on the hillock overlooking the archeological site. The tang of salt flavored the breeze from the sea as she tucked a recalcitrant strand of red hair behind her ear. Raising her face to the early summer sun, she closed her eyes and breathed deep. It was a beautiful place. She and her team of university students had been working the dig for two summer seasons and it was becoming more interesting every day. The old Viking boat had rotted away centuries ago but the shape of it and the man entombed inside, under dirt and rocks, had left tantalizing bits of the glory they once were.

The dig camp had just been set up three weeks ago, when the weather had moderated and the land became less soggy. Tomorrow was the eve of Mayday and at the moment the sun was setting over the Ardnamunchan Peninsula, bathing the low moors and grasslands with a touch of gold. As the light changed to rose, she heard a fox bark off to her right. Scanning the area, she looked for the wild creature, wondering if it was the one they had seen before. The fox was on the rise a short distance away, atop a cairn said to hold the remains of the Viking Muchdragon MacRi Lochlunn.

Mari had been born to the area and this dig was a homecoming. She was a young teen when her family moved from Scotland because her father had been transferred. She’d gotten her Archeology and Anthropology degree at Cambridge and jumped at the chance to work the archeological dig of a Viking burial mound near her old village.

A friend of the family, Fergus Maclain, was the liaison between the people of the area, the government and the university. The community had purposely not given the university’s archeology department permission to excavate the legendary pile of stones where Muchdragon MacRi lay, preferring to let that particular sleeping spirit remain undisturbed. He’d been dead some 750 years, but in Scotland, folks remembered and respected these things. There were local stories of battle sounds heard near that cairn when the wind was brisk from the sea: clash of swords and yelling. No one wanted to arouse that particular Viking.

Making her way back to camp, the 28-year-old graduate student scraped her long red hair back from her face where the onshore breeze was flipping strands into her eyelashes. Catching it into a clip, she pulled her hoodie up for warmth and for some protection from the annoying clouds of midges that got downright carnivorous as the sun set and the humidity increased. It was time to either retreat into the small trailer or start the campfire and refresh the bug repellant. Opting to stay outside just a bit longer, Mari moved toward the wood pile.

Her supervisor, Dr. Angus Marley, was the leader on this dig and two others in the area so he was often absent. He was a brusque man who’d written several acclaimed papers on the digs he’d managed over the years. His demeanor was pompous and demanding. She was grateful he trusted her enough to focus his time on the other sites. As senior graduate student, Mari was responsible for running the dig, which included setting the grid quadrants, directing the students in the careful removal of the layers, and the security of their finds. It was a duty that carried potential hazards, as over the last several years artifacts had disappeared from dig sites and vanished into the black hole of antiquity sellers. Mari took great care to photograph the artifacts, in situ as well as before and after they were cleaned, not just for academia but in case she needed to file a police report. Her lips thinned at the thought. She’d set up security redundancies in the trailer that even her team didn’t know about.

Rubbing the midge-discouraging-cream on her face and hands, she settled down at the fire to record the notes from today's work.

Hey, Mari! Come with us to the village. The pub is overflowing with pre-Beltane celebrants and at the community hall they are passing out rowan garlands to those who need them. Brigit and Seth stepped out of the shadows and approached the weathered log on which Mari was perched.

The redhead grinned at the couple. This was their first dig and by day they were enthusiastic and dedicated, but this was after hours and they were caught up in the excitement of the pending ancient Celtic festival. She shook her head. You two go on without me. I’d rather get caught up here so I can enjoy the celebration tomorrow. I spent my early years just up the coast, so this isn’t new to me. Enjoy yourself and bring back a couple of those garlands. Can’t have the faeries causing mischief here at the dig. She laughed at the look on Seth’s face. Go on you two. Listen to the stories they’ll be telling at the pub. I’m surprised you aren’t familiar with some of the nuances of the holiday. Be back at camp and ready to work by morning. We’ll stop at three tomorrow afternoon so we need to make the shorter hours productive.

Brigit gave a little Whoop! and danced around Seth, her long dark hair whirling out with each twirl. We’ll be here and ready to work. Promise. And we’ll stop by the community center first. She giggled. Dr. Marley would never trust us at another dig if we had the misfortune of leaving this place open to faerie pranks. Come on, Seth. I’ll fill you in as we walk back to town. She tugged at the young man’s hand, urging him back on the path toward the distant glow of lights.

Mari laughed as their voices faded in the distance. They were an incongruous pair. Brigit a diminutive pixie with silky black hair and Kerry-blue eyes, while blond Seth could have been a linebacker on one of those football teams in the States. Shaking her head, she turned her attention back to recording their progress.

Glancing over at the dig, she could almost visualize the scene when the small ship stood proudly in its wild Viking beauty. The smoke from the fire swirled high and drifted across the keyboard of her laptop before settling on the excavation. There it collected into a grey mist roughly the size and shape of a boat. Mari rubbed her sleeve across her eyes and squinted hard into the smoky apparition... but it was gone. Just a trick of firelight, she muttered.

A half hour later the young woman closed the lid of her computer and laid it on the log. It was time to put out the fire and call it a day. Tomorrow they needed to squeeze a full day of work into three quarters of the time they usually had. She reached for the bucket of sand to smother the fire and was startled by a red fox sitting just on the edge of the firelight. Her lips quivered into a grin of pleasure. Such a curious creature!

The fox had been to the camp before. He was particularly fond of scraps from their sandwiches and the occasional chip. They had admired his beauty and wildness. Not trying to tame him, they were charmed by his cautious observation of the doings of the site. They called him Ruadh, which was Gaelic for