Guy Kay - Ysabel

Ned backed up to the tower. Moved on towards Entremont. He was going to skip the walk up there, but Kate didn’t let him. She held up a hand, like a good student in class, and he stopped.

“I was feeling weird all day,” she said. “Like, as soon as I woke up.”

“Weird, how?” Meghan asked, looking over the top of her reading glasses, a doctor in her office.

Kate flushed. She lowered her gaze. “That gets embarrassing.”

“You don’t have to—” Ned began.

She held up her hand again.

“I felt older, and…darker. Stronger. Not dark as in bad. Dark as in…” She trailed off, looked for help.

“Desire?” Aunt Kim said softly.

Kate nodded, staring down at the table.

Ned saw Kim exchange a glance with her husband. “I do know a little about that. It was Beltaine. You were connecting through Phelan. And maybe Ned.”

“Why me?” Ned asked.

His aunt smiled gently. “That’s the hard question in this, you know. Our family line, back a long way. We’re in this.” She looked at her sister. “That’s what happened to me, Meg.”

“But I was never like this before,” Ned protested.

“Everything starts somewhere, dear.”

“You never shaved before this year either, right?” Uncle Dave said helpfully.

His wife stared at him, her eyes wide. “My goodness. Thank you so much for the clarification, dear. That,” she added, “is an amazingly silly analogy.”

Uncle Dave looked abashed. “I, uh, have shaving on my mind, I guess.”

There was a brief silence. No one laughed.

“You’re walking up to Entremont,” Meghan Marriner said, looking at her notes. “Kate’s feeling strange. Go on.”

“Forgot to say, Phelan had told me to keep away that night. He’d overheard Kate and me planning the outing in the café, told me not to go, just before he left, and then we fought the dogs.”

“He tried to warn you?” Ned’s father looked thoughtful, but not as if the thinking was getting him anywhere.

“Why did you go up?” Steve asked. Fair question. Melanie was gone because they’d done it.

“I made him,” Kate said glumly. “Called him a wimp and stuff.”

“Oh, well, that’ll do it,” Greg said. “Really, I dig it, you had no choice. When a girl says that…”

A couple of smiles around the table this time.

Ned said, “It wasn’t far. It was just after five, maybe a quarter after. The place closed at six-thirty. Way before dark. He’d told me not to be there for Beltaine, and I figured it started at night.”

“It does,” Kate said. “But it got dark too soon.”

They shared the story, tripping over each other a little. The moon, the fires, the bull. Cadell and the druid and the spirits that came. Phelan appearing beside them. Ned phoning the villa.

Melanie. Ysabel.

Around the table there was silence as they spoke and when they were done.

“I just had to fall asleep back here,” Greg said bitterly, first to break the stillness.

Kate looked at him. “I’d be gone,” she said. “I’d be Ysabel now, if you had come.”

She began to cry.

Meghan pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and passed it down. She looked at Ned, and nodded calmly. He carried on alone, to Cadell and Brys in the laneway with the boar. He kept the one thing back: what he’d done to Cadell’s horns. He told of Brys attacking Greg.

“My first Purple Heart,” Greg said. “My mom will be proud.”

“After that,” Ned said, looking at his own mother, “Dad and the others came and got us, and then we talked to you.”

“And I called Dave,” said Aunt Kim.

Kate had stopped crying. She was still holding the handkerchief.

“And Dave was minding me in Darfur. We are going to have to talk about that,” Meghan Marriner said, looking at her brother-in-law.

“I know,” said Uncle Dave. “Will I get a blindfold and last cigarette?”

“Doubt it,” Meghan said. “Ned, you’re up to this morning? While I was flying here?”

He finished, taking her through Glanum and the cemetery. His father joined in there, and then Uncle Dave.

As they were wrapping up, laying the druid in his coffin, the telephone rang.

It seemed an alien, intrusive thing. No one moved for a moment. Ned’s father finally got up to answer it at the desk.

“Oliver!” he said, forcing cheerfulness. “How nice to hear from you. No, no, no, we ate early. North Americans, what can I tell you? What’s up?”

Everyone around the table was looking at him in silence. Edward Marriner said very little for a time. “Really?” once, and then, “That is extraordinary.”

And then, “No, no, of course it is interesting. Thanks for calling. I’ll be sure to tell the others.” And finally, “Yes, we might indeed think of a photograph.”

He hung up. Looked at all of them.

“It was just on local radio. Someone on a motorcycle dropped a heavy bag an hour ago in front of a café on the Cours Mirabeau in Aix, and tore off.”

“A bomb?” Steve asked.

Edward Marriner shook his head. “They thought so, obviously. Cleared the street. But when the police and dogs came, it turned out not to be.” He looked at Ned. “It was the sculpted head and skull stolen from the museum.”

Motorcycle. Ned looked at Kate. He couldn’t begin to think of what to say.

“These are the two things Ned saw? Under the cathedral?” his mother asked.

“They have to be,” her husband said.

Meghan sighed. “Fine. I’ve got a note, for what it’s worth.” She looked at Ned, and then at Kimberly. “Is that it? That takes us to this evening?”

“More or less,” Ned said. “I mean, I’m sure I’ll remember other things, but…”

His mother nodded. “But this is the story. Fine. A couple of questions?”

“I knew there’d be an exam,” he said, trying to smile.

“I’m the one writing it,” his mother said. “Or it feels that way.” She looked at her notes. “Wolves, twice, by that tower and in the cemetery, but dogs in the city?”

Ned blinked. What did that have to do with anything? He nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Meghan turned to her sister. “I’m playing along here, you understand? Don’t imagine I am buying everything.” She waited for Kim to nod, then said, “Do these…spirits change themselves into animals or take over real animals here?”

Kim thought about it. “I don’t know. I think they were dogs in Aix because there are always dogs there, and wolves would obviously cause an alarm.”

“Yes, I thought that. But you don’t know which they do, change or…occupy?”

Kim shook her head.

Her sister was still looking at her. “Ysabel takes over someone, right? Someone real? Melanie, this time, it would have been Kate. Different women each time, before?”

Kim nodded slowly. “I see where you’re going.”

“Good.”

Meghan removed her glasses and turned to Greg.

“Whatever else happens, young man, we are going to the hospital first thing in the morning, you and I. Rabies will kill you. The treatment’s easy now, but it must start quickly. I’m not going to be argued with on this. Some things we may not be able to do anything about, but simple medicine and common sense we can use. If these Celtic spirits entered an existing wild creature we have no idea what its condition was before.”

Greg opened his mouth. Meghan held up a finger.

“Gregory, hush. We will say you met an uncollared dog outside the locked cemetery gates. You like dogs, you knelt to pat it, it clawed you and ran away. End of story, end of questions. I show my Médecins Sans Frontières ID, I sign all their forms, and they give me the dosages to follow up. They like MSF here, they founded it. One immunoglobulin shot tomorrow morning and one vaccine, five over the next month. Not even remotely complicated. Guaranteed prevention. Are we done discussing this?”