“And he gave me my sword”—Danny held it aloft—“a Union officer’s saber. A brave man, Captain Desirée said, who’d died well. He told me to honor it.” He touched the blade carefully. “The next day, the city fell, and I never saw him again. I hope that he is living still, that none of the worst of us ever found him.”
“So do I, Danny,” Duncan echoed.
“You knew him?”
“For a very short while. He was a true gentleman.”
Danny regarded the sword. “I’ve tried to do what he asked of me, all the years since. Though sometimes, it’s been terrible hard.”
“It is for all of us. It’s a part of who we are and what we do.”
“And does it get easier in time, Mr. MacLeod?”
No, it does not, that was the truth of it.
But it was not his place to say so. Answering such questions was part of what Fitz had taken on. So he simply shook his head, put on his shirt, and led the young Immortal back up to the sunlit deck.
They were nearing the port of Seattle. Crew and passengers alike were abuzz with excitement. But Danny, who had not slept well the previous night, was belowdecks, lying on his bunk, dozing.
It was snowing, big white flakes. They fell softly on the dark hair of the green-eyed girl child who lived in the fine house where Molly Kelly was in service. She nearly smiled at Danny as she swept by him. Then she stepped into her carriage, and a flutter of white linen fell toward the ground from the warmth of her white fur muff. Danny reached for it and it turned into the hem of the snow-white dress Amanda had been wearing that first night at the Queen of Spades. She smiled down at Danny, her dark eyes bright, and—
“Danny O’Donal” Fitzcairn shouted, bursting through the door. “Get yourself up, lad!” He pulled Danny from the bunk. “There’s a sight you must see!”
He was nearly dragged from the cabin and up the narrow stairs. On deck, he saw that most of the passengers, Duncan MacLeod among them, were gathered on the left—port—side of the boat. Hugh pushed him forward with one hand and with the other pointed out to sea. “Look there, young Danny.”
Danny looked. At first he was not certain what he was seeing. But then it became clear. Sea creatures. Huge gray beasts, swimming along beside the boat, rising and falling in the water.
Hugh seemed excited, near gleeful. Even Duncan MacLeod was smiling broadly.
Danny was remembering Father O’Malley, speaking from the altar of his wee dark church. The pews would be full, for many of the folk unfortunate enough to dwell in Five Points were good Irish Catholics, who had fled the famine—like Katie O’Donal, who had died on the boat, and Moira Kelly, who had taken him from her arms—and they heard Mass and took communion every Sunday. He was remembering, most particularly, the Bible story about the man named Jonah.
“Uhh, these beasts?” he began. “It’s whales, they are? Are they—are we—should we be … ?”
No one was listening. A number of smaller gray creatures had been sighted.
“They’re the babes, Danny,” Hugh exclaimed. “See how the grown ones gather round them?”
“They’re called calves, I think,” MacLeod said.
“Calves? Are ye daft, Highlander? These are fish, not cattle!”
Danny edged closer to the rail. The whale fish looked fair big enough to swallow a man all right. But not a whole boat. He relaxed a little. They were a fine sight, indeed. Being here, seeing these beasts, being on the way to this place called Alaska—all this he supposed was part of the infinite possibilities that being an Immortal had given him. Hugh would say so. Right now, Danny would have to agree.
It was their last night at sea. And a fine clear night it was! After finishing their evening meal in the cabin, the three Immortals sat for a time on the deck, near the bow of the ship. Fitz had a small spyglass, and he and Duncan were pointing out the various constellations to Danny.
“Look, Hugh,” The young Immortal pointed into the night sky at a fall of stars. “ ’Tis a shower of gold! Will it land, do you think, where we can pick it up?”
Fitzcairn grinned and raised the spyglass to his right eye. “A pretty thought that, lad. All we’ll be needing to find is a handful or three each and we can live like nobility for a century or so.”
“And never do an honest day’s work again, which would suit some of us, if I recall correctly,” Duncan added.
Fitz swiped at him with the spyglass, and missed.
“Mr. Macleod …” Danny hesitated. “You never did say—why are you with us, then, if not for the gold?”
Duncan gazed into the distance, out over the midnight sea. “The man who lost that nugget of gold to Amanda—he didn’t talk much of what he’d done to make his fortune. But he did speak often of what are called the Northern Lights.” He gestured toward the sky. “Brilliant colors, sweeping across the stars. Sometimes in waves, like the tides. Only to be seen at the far edge of the world. It sounded like a sight that any man, Immortal or not, should see for himself.”
“Like a rainbow of darkness, that’s what it sounds to me,” Danny said, eyes wide at the thought.
“Well, lad,” Fitz said, as he handed Danny the spyglass, digging in his pockets for pipe and tobacco, “if luck is with us, there will be one of those pots of gold at the end of it. And admit it, MacLeod,” he added, “if we were to make a strike, you’d find some use for the wealth. Unless you’ve filled that warehouse in Paris already?”
Duncan smiled. “There’s space left. I’ve only had it for a hundred years or so, you know.”
Fitz answered the young Immortal’s unspoken question. “The Highlander collects, Danny. Odds and ends of things that catch his eye. A lot of it is plaid.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to see the value in anything that could not be eaten, drunk, or taken to bed, Fitzcairn,” Duncan retorted. “But the day will come when some of those things will prove their worth.”
“Do you have any fine glass?” Danny asked, obviously interested.
“Glass? Why, yes, I do in fact,” Duncan replied, surprised. “Some crystal, Austrian-made. Amanda had one vase in the Queen of Spades—”
“Tell him about Temperanceville,” Fitz said, as he made himself a comfortable seat on a nail keg.
Danny leaned back on the rail next to Duncan. “When I was sixteen or so, I moved there—to Temperanceville—with the woman who had raised me as her own. It’s a town just by a city in the western part of the state of Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh, it’s called. It was, they say, built first as a fort, at the fork of three rivers. Have you ever been there, Mr. MacLeod? The countryside is fair green, and hilly.”
“No, but I know of it,” Duncan replied. Pittsburgh had been fiercely abolitionist. Though he had had many contacts there around thirty years before, he had never actually seen the city.
In the dark a match flared, as Fitz attempted to relight his pipe. “One of the places where we fought the bloody French.”
“We?” If it were possible, the single word was said with a distinct burr.
Fitz chuckled, as Danny continued. “There was work to be had in the area, in the mills and the mines and the factories. I found a place in one of the glass factories. The job was hot and hard, it was, but some of the things we made were lovely to see.” He smiled in the darkness. “I often wondered what fine tables they might be setting.”
“You were there before the war?” Duncan asked.
Danny sighed. “Aye. And after, too. Which was my undoing.”
After his encounter with Lucas Desirée, Danny at least knew what he was. And the knowing helped. But when the war was over, he could think of nothing to do but return to Temperanceville.
When he got back, he found that he’d been reported killed, one place or another. Some that served with him who had been wounded were home, too, and he noted them giving him sideways glances. And Mother Kelly was in failing health.
He had been back a bit more than a year when the worst that could happen did. He was at the glass factory, working an extra shift one cold winter day, when a boiler blew. The explosion rocked the building. Hot shards of metal flew everywhere. Clouds of steam billowed. Danny, working closest to the blast, was lifted clear off his feet and thrown through the brick sidewall of the factory. He lay motionless in the rubble. The foreman knelt, felt for his pulse, and shook his head.
To come through four years of the war, and die like this,
he thought.
Then Danny moaned, opened his eyes, and sat up.
In a matter of hours, the story was all over Temperanceville. The old women made signs to ward off evil as he passed. Young wives pulled children from his path. He found his belongings on his landlady’s porch, and she would not answer his knocks.
And standing by an open window of the Temperanceville Tavern, he heard John Kelly—brother to the long-dead Big Tom—talking to the men. About pookahs. And the evil fey. And cleansing by fire.
Though he thought he could not be killed by burning, Danny did not want to test the theory. His bags were packed—his landlady had seen to that. But there was one last thing he had to do.
“She told me then, Mother Kelly did, that I was not Katie O’Donal’s son any more than I was hers. Katie had lost her husband and her wee infant to the famine, so when she found me in the very cradle where her babe had died, she asked no questions of God or man.”
“We’re all foundlings, Danny, you know?” Duncan said.
“Now I know. I didn’t then. And Captain Desirée didn’t tell me that part.”
“Where we came from, lad, is not nearly as important as where we go,” Fitz said. “Captain Desirée may have known that.”
“She said that there were many who called me Katie’s changeling child, left by the faery folk, an unnatural creature who would only bring ill to her. When she died on the ship on the way over, some who knew the story wanted to throw me overboard. But Mother Kelly would not let them do so, and fought with her husband, Big Tom, to save me.” Danny paused. “Do you believe in the faery folk, Mr. MacLeod, that we might be of them? Hugh doesn’t.”
Who am I then? What am I?
Duncan remembered the man he had been, begging an answer from the only father he had ever known. “That’s one thing Fitzcairn and I do agree on,” he answered, “though there are many who have thought that about us.”
“Big Tom Kelly did, long before I—died. That was the reason of his not wanting me when I was a child. And John Kelly had heard the tale, too. After the accident at the factory, he was certain. But Mother Kelly said that it mattered not to her from where I had come—I was her son, as true as any she had borne.
“I cried a bit then—a man can do that, I think, and still be a man—kissed her cheek, and left.”
There was a silence then, each of the three caught for a moment in his own thoughts.
“I’ve been called far worse than changeling, young Danny,” Fitz said finally. “Far worse.”
“With cause, no doubt,” Duncan added.
Danny laughed, a bit awkwardly. He was, Duncan guessed, shy of having told so much, yet pleased to be able to talk to those who understood. He moved away from the rail, yawned widely, and stretched, one hand reaching toward the sky. “The stars are falling still, Hugh,” he said. “Could I catch one to carry in my pocket for luck, do you think?”
“They say they’re made of fire, lad,” Fitzcairn replied, “so that wouldn’t do. But”—he drew out the leather pouch and opened it—“you can take this.” He handed Danny the smallest of the nuggets.
From his coat, Danny took a small snow-white linen handkerchief trimmed in cobweb lace. Carefully, he placed the nugget in the exact center, tied it up, and returned it to his pocket.
“A satisfying lump, it is indeed.” He grinned. “Good night then, Hugh, Mr. MacLeod. I think I’ll slip this beneath my pillow, and have fair golden dreams.”
After Danny left, the two older Immortals were alone in the night. Fitzcairn sat on a nail keg, enjoying his pipe, watching his old friend watching the sea.
MacLeod, he knew, was considering Danny’s story, considering how much alike they all were, all Immortals. Such deep silent thought was MacLeod’s way. Hugh Fitzcairn’s way was to give voice to thought.
“So, here we are, we three. MacLeod. Fitzcairn. O’Donal. And none of us true sons to any man.”
“Aye. Nor bastard sons, either. Though that’s been said of both of us, now and then.”
“Many a time. And I’ve, a time or two, been accused of bringing a Fitzcairn marked with the bar sinister into the world.” He shook his head ruefully. “And what does it say about a relationship when a woman will take your word as a gentleman that you will not tell her husband of her trysts, but won’t believe you when you insist that the child she is carrying cannot be yours?” Affecting a bluff heartiness, he continued, “Well, my dear, I regret to tell you that you shall, in the fullness of time, be giving birth to a legitimate child. Buck up, now, woman. Some of England’s finest men have been legitimate. Not many. But some.”
Duncan laughed.
Good,
Fitzcairn thought.
He is much easier to talk to when he is not in one of his damn dark Scot’s moods.
Fitzcairn wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck. The night was getting chill.
Duncan leaned on the rail and faced Fitz. “He’s still very young, Hugh,” he said quietly, “your Danny O’Donal. And so”—Duncan spread his hands—“he’s had so little and wants so much. Is it good to
need
so, I wonder?”
“Highlander,” Fitz said, rising, “when you were but a young lad, you were still roaming the forests and mountains of your misbegotten land. You couldn’t read, you never bathed, and you wore a skirt.”
“And you, you Brit twit—”
“I never wore a skirt. And I did bathe. On occasion. But my point, which I would have sooner made had you not resorted to name-calling, is that in time we became the fine specimens of Immortal manhood that we are today. Time, MacLeod, is the one single thing we all have a wealth of.
“We learned. Danny will, too. He’s a good man, with a good heart. And if his golden dreams don’t come true this time—well, if a Scot can learn to wear trousers, anything is possible for an Irishman.”
MacLeod sputtered. Over the centuries Fitz had realized that Duncan hadn’t the true gift for insult that he himself possessed. It kept a balance in their friendship.