Page 2 of The Fae Queen's Captive
“How someone digging for a long-lost castle can be such a cynic is beyond me.” Alfie sighs, and with a final pitying look, he goes downstairs to join the carnival sortie.
Sometimes it’s beyond me too, Alfie.
With my own sigh, I find my jacket and a scarf, grab my phone and my headlamp, and shove on my muddy dig boots. Just before I leave, however, I stop by the bound photocopy sitting on my end table.
Hugo de Segovia was a captain of the 1588 Spanish Armada—or at least he was until he was shipwrecked on the shore just a mile away. His record of his time in the armada was rediscovered moldering in some archives just a few years ago, and from there, it had found its way to Dr. Siska, a specialist in Iron Age and medieval fortifications. She’s been using de Segovia writing to search for a missing castle ever since. Thus why we’re all here sifting through the cold Scottish mud, finding neolithic settlements instead of castle foundations, despite the initially promising ground surveys.
I pause—Alfie’s words echoing in my mind—and I pick up the photocopy before flipping quickly through the densely typewritten pages, scanning between the original Spanish and the English translation.
Teine-sith.
I knew the word sith the minute Alfie had spoken it. Sith—or sidhe—is the Gaelic word for fairy, and fan fiction aside, my undergraduate thesis was centered on the archaeological remnants of ritual and superstition in medieval Scotland…and medieval written references to fairies were often rendered in Gaelic—when they weren’t rendered as daemones in Latin or as elves in English.
But it wasn’t until Alfie spoke the word aloud that something clicked for me. Hugo de Segovia hadn’t spoken Scottish Gaelic—not a word of it—and so he’d spelled out the words as he’d heard them.
Tyenha xii.
The Lord,in his good pleasure, had not delivered our ship from the storm, even as we saw the others blown over the horizon. But we were cast upon the shore of a wild place, and there we cried to the Virgin for help, but no help came.
A priest did come upon us, and in Latin he said he could do nothing for us, because it was the equinox and the lights would be on the hill, and it was safe for no man, woman, or child to see the lights. When we asked what manner of lights should be dangerous, he could only name them in his own tongue, tyenha xii, and then exhorted us to go south along the beach until we reached the next village, where we could perhaps smuggle ourselves back to Flanders or home to Spain. But the mist came, and with it the dark, and when we came upon lights at last, they belonged not to a village but to a castle of such luxury, presided over by a great lord, who welcomed us with food and wine and also spoke in Latin to us, and spoke a great many other languages besides, including our own tongue…
Dr. Siska ledthis dig hoping to find evidence of Hugo de Segovia’s lost castle, and so we focused on the geographically relevant details of his writing—the heading of his ship during the storm and descriptions of the beach and the castle. It’s known from his account that he finally made it to Oban—alone—dazed and telling stories of his men imprisoned inside a castle made of silver and mist, and so from Oban and the beach, Dr. Siska had triangulated the identifying details to this lonesome spot in the Highlands, a valley near the coast, freckled with neolithic tombs and standing stones.
But she had not—nor had any of us—paid much mind to the priest’s warning about lights on the hill. That a sixteenth-century Scottish priest would be superstitious is hardly surprising, and anyway, it seemed evident the lights must have belonged to the castle and not any supernatural powers tied to the equinox.
But now, as I’m looking at the lights flickering around the grave outside, the dead priest’s words seemveryrelevant. Perhaps Alfie was right and the lights tonight are from some local tradition—even if that tradition is half-drunk young people daring themselves to get close to the local haunted hill. A folk memory preserved as fun and games. Perhaps it was a folk memory even in de Segovia’s time.
Either way, I can’t have people tramping around our dig site, no matter what Halloween customs they have around here. Several of the totes are filled with unfired sherds begging for a chance to crumble back into clay; half the grids still need photographed so we know where we’ve been when we come back next year. And above all else, we have to leave Historic Environment Scotland a pristine, well-conserved site, without even a rogue stake or Maltesers wrapper, so they won’t revoke our permission to dig next year.
I toss de Segovia’s account onto my bed, zip up my coat, and step out into the velvet-dark night to walk to the ancient grave. It’ll be quick work, and then I’ll be at the fair having fun: exactly the kind of Halloween night I deserve.
Chapter2
The farmhouse where the grad students have been bunking is set higher in the valley, and the eternal Scottish wind fusses at my coat and hair as I walk down to the site. I like the wind, though, and the way it pulls at me, like it’s pleading with me to come play. There’s a bounce in my step as I step onto the narrow lane that winds down to the valley’s bottom.
Above me, the sky is a litter of stars, a glittering waste of them, and on the other side of the hill, I can see the lights of the fair, promising popcorn and cheap souvenirs and fun. Maybe Alfie and François have finally realized their Great French Love Affair awaits; maybe some of the others have paired off too.
The idea makes me happy. As a girl, I used to line up my Barbies and matchmake them until every doll was joined with another, endowing them with backstories long enough to justify entire seasons of a TV show, rewarding them with outrageous weddings and lavish honeymoons in my backyard. In high school, I spent a not insignificant amount of time helping my friends get within kissing range of the people they wanted to kiss—rivaled only by the amount of time I spent trying to getmyselfwithin kissing range of the people I wanted to kiss.
I craved romance and sex, yes, but more than that, I cravedhappenings. Novelty. I wanted everyone to be looking for loveorfalling in loveorhaving their heart broken…I wanted everyone to be poised on the edge of some new cliff, ready to tumble into the next pool of excitement or pain.
My undergraduate years were when I learned that my appetite for—well, foranything—food, drinks, sex, parties—only grew deeper with the slaking.Insatiableis a word we throw around lightly, but it’s more than a word for me. It’s the very signature of my being, my mind, my belly.
Janneth Carter: insatiable.
And it’s why despite many valiant forays into kink, polyamory, and hookup apps, I’m the one tramping alone through wet heather while everyone else is up at a fair stealing kisses and having fun.
Okay, that’s notreallytrue. I’m here because our work matters too much to let kids drunk on Buckfast stumble through uncovered dig pits…but it still feels trueemotionally. I’ve learned the hard way that insatiable girls don’t get happily ever afters. They eat their way through lovers and friends too heartily—and that theyalsowant to be eaten alive, their blood drunk and their bones cracked open, is irrelevant.
Insatiable girls stay alone. Insatiable girls settle for living by proxy, for craving and wanting and shoving those wants down where they won’t scare anyone away.
At least I have archaeology, an even hungrier lover than I am, beckoning with its long hours, its endless questions, its byzantine politics of publishing and funding and permissions.
And you know what? I have more than that. I have amazing friends and the plucking night wind and the stars and now the slow mist creeping over the dig site from the loch, wreathing the bent trees nearby and whispering at the base of the tomb. A pretty Halloween picture, just for me.
When I finally pick my way to the mouth of the cairn, theHalloween picture completes itself, because the lightsarefire—torches stuck right into the soft earth around the turf-covered mound that makes up the ancient grave. The torches are as tall as I am and spaced so regularly that whoever planted them must’ve measured the gaps down to the half inch.
But there is no one here, no one at all.
