Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 21:38:19 -0500 Reply-To: mikester@BIX.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Mike Breen Subject: THE CHANGELING - PART III X-cc: 1-9904@terranet.bluethun.quake.com BOSTON, MASS, UNITED STATES, JANUARY 1995 Patrick left a note on his table that said, "Nancy, I'm off to school. Why don't you skip classes today? Imagine that, a professor advocating cutting classes. The board will have my head if I'm not careful! I'll also cancel my last two afternoon classes and get back here early. In the meantime, I have a private workout room on the first floor. Why don't you practice some fencing forms with the sword I gave you. There's plenty of food in the house so help yourself. See you when I get home. Patrick." Nancy smiled as she read the note. She was so lucky that Patrick had discovered her. She had been floating through life for too long. Not academically for sure, she never would have been accepted to Harvard if she didn't take her academics seriously, but emotionally. She didn't have many close friends in school, aside from two or three that she felt _extreamily_ close to. Otherwise she was more of a private person who cultivated casual friendships. Her last boyfriend broke up with her because of what he called her "emotional distance." That was another reason she thanked God that Patrick had taken her under his wing. And she had feelings for him, she may as well admit it to herself. Not exactily love, to be sure, but something similar. She couldn't put her finger on it quite yet. The phone rang, and before she thought twice about it, she was picking the phone up and saying, "Hello?" A man's voice said, "Who's this?" "Well who's this?" she said. The man on the other end hung up. Puzzled, Nancy hung the phone up and thought nothing of it. Patrick walked through the corridors on his way to class when he heard two girls and a guy mention Nancy. He stopped, apparently to take a drink at a water fountain. The first girl said, "How can you be sure it was Nancy?" "She's my _roommate_ for Christ's sake!" the second girl said. And I saw the whole thing from our dormroom window. It was her. There's no _way_ she could have survived it. Her arms and legs were going at weird angles, her back was twisted, and her neck looked broken. But the weird thing was, and I told this to the police, that this person, I couldn't tell if it was a guy or a girl, picked her up, put her in the back seat of a car and drove off." "He probably saw it happen and drove her to the hospital," the guy said. "Maybe. That's probably it. I can't imagine what kind of sick-o would drive a dead body to their house." Patrick finished his drink and walked to class. That tore it, he thought. Nancy couldn't return to Harvard. Someone had seen her die. IRELAND, COUNTY CORK, APRIL 1181 Patrick sharply inhaled. His heart began beating again. He opened his eyes. He looked about him. The last thing he remembered was being run through the gut with a Norman sword. He should _not_ be alive right now. He looked around. The dead were all around him. He looked at his tunic and kilt and saw the blood, still wet, and the tear in his tunic where the sword had run him through. He was _not_ dreaming, then. So what in the Ghods' names happened? He tore open his tunic and looked at his gut. There was no wound. Not even a scar. He looked around and saw Donal, who had been attending the dead and dying, staring at him. "You... you're..." Before Patrick knew what was happening, Donal ran into the center of the village screaming, "CHANGELING!!! CHANGELING!!! FARIE FOLK!!! WITCHCRAFT!!!" "The penalty for witches is burning," said the Norman lord as he spoke to Patrick, who was in irons in the village square. "Tomorrow at noon, you will be the first witch to be burned in my new realm." Gwenna cried for what was the dozenth time that day. She could not believe it. Her husband, a changeling. _Her_ husband. She had made love to an elf. And yet she _still_ loved him. She wanted to find Ramirez, who seemed to know all about such things. As she opened the door, Ramirez himself was standing at the door. "May I come in?" She nodded and led him inside. "Is it true," she said, "what they're saying about Patrick?" Ramirez knew he couldn't lie to her. Despite the fact that she had no education and couldn't read or write (neither, for that matter, could Patrick), she was a bright girl. He said, "Yes. It is." "He's a changeling? An elf?" she said. Ramirez smiled slightly and said, "Something like that." "And so are you, aren't you?" Damn! Ramirez thought. He couldn't deny it now. "Yes," he said. "I am. And I want to take Patrick away from here. To where he'll be safe. If he's burned, he won't die. He cannot. But he'll feel the pain all the same. And they'll still try time and again to kill him." "I want to help. I want to come with you." "Gwenna, I don't think that's a good idea. There's more to this than people with pointed ears running around in the forest." Gwenna's voice grew very cold and she said, "Either I help and you take me with you, or the Norman lord will learn that _you're_ an elf, too." Ramirez hoped to ghods that she was kidding. Somehow, though, he did not feel like taking the risk. He said, "Very well, Gwenna. We have to plan." "Father!" Sean O'Brien heard the thing that had taken the place of his son call out to him. "You're not my son," he said. "Father, how can you say that?" "Because you're not! You were found in the brushes just outside the village! And only your mother, ghod rest her soul, and I knew. She had just lost a baby, and we didn't think anyone would know." Now Sean turned to Patrick and said, "And it was a mistake. We took a... thing... into our home! YOU'RE NOT ME SON!!!" Patrick O'Brien wept. Eventually, he fell asleep. He was awoken by the strangest of sensations. It was as if someone had pulled, hard, on his very soul. He opened his eyes and was about to cry out, when a hand clasped onto his mouth, and a familiar voice said, "O'Brien, keep quiet." The hand came away from his mouth. "Ra... Ramirez?" "We're getting you out of here." "Who? And why? And what's that sensation I feel from you?" "The why is because we two are the same. The who is Gwenna and I. And the sensation... all in good time, Brother." Ramirez and Gwenna had all his chains unfastened and were dragging them over to a horse. "Gwenna?" he said, the fact finally registering in his muddled mind. "Aye, love." "Forgive me, Brother," Ramirez said, "but you're too weak to ride. We do need three horses so that we can ride hard and fast away from here. I'll have to tie you to your horse." "Nothing to forgive," Patrick said. "You and Gwenna are the only ones who truly make sense in this sorry mess." The story around the village was that the fairies and elves had spirited Patrick, his human wife, and Ramirez, who _must_ have been an elf himself, away to the forest. In the years that followed, the story grew to legend, and grew more romanticized with each re-telling. Eventually, the village forgot about Patrick O'Brien and Ramirez and instead remembered the elf who dared love a human. But that was for the future. The next day saw the trio riding through the forests inland. Patrick had so many questions to pose to Ramirez. When they stopped for lunch, he post the first. "What am I?" Ramirez laughed. "You make fun of me?" "No, Brother. I laugh because I asked the same question two thousand and eighty-three years ago in Egypt." "Two _thousand_..." He looked at Gwenna, who had the benefit of an explanation the previous afternoon as they she and Ramirez were planning Patrick's rescue. "It's true, then. I'm a changeling. One of the fairie folk." "It's not as simple as that," Ramirez said. "As much as I would _like_ us to be people with pointed ears running around the forests and living in peace forever, it's much more complex than that. But to put it in the simplest possible terms, you and I are Immortal..." BOSTON, MASS, UNITED STATES, JANUARY 1995 Nancy had finished lunch and was about to go searching for Patrick's exercise room when the phone rang again. This time she let the machine answer it. "You've reached 555-7443," Patrick's voice said, "the residence of Doctor Patrick O'Brien. If this is a student from my last two classes of today, I have a family emergency, so classes have been canceled. If this is anyone else, please leave a message after the tone." "Hi, Patrick," a strangely accented voice said, "it's Connor. I'm in town for a few days on business and I heard about Michelle and how the Quickening scared her. That's too bad. I really liked her. If you want to talk about it, let me know. I'll stop by later this afternoon and see if you're home. I'm staying at the Royal Sonesta, room 518." Nancy stared at the answering machine for a long moment. Quickening? What's that? Sounded like a glass of chocolate milk had scared off Michelle Taylor. As she began to head for the stairs to the exercise room, the phone rang again. "You've reached 555-7443," Patrick's voice said again, "The residence of Doctor Patrick O'Brien. If this is a student from my last two classes of today, I have a family emergency, so classes have been canceled. If this is anyone else, please leave a message after the tone." "Nancy, this is Patrick. Pick up the phone." Nancy ran over, picked the phone up and said, "Hi." "How're you holding up?" he said. "Ok, I guess," she said. Mainly I have cabin fever. I was just about to go downstairs." "Any calls?" "Um, someone named Connor is in town and want's to see you." "Great, I wanted to talk to Connor. Did he leave a number?" "No, but he said he'd be by later this afternoon. And someone else called." "Who?" "Well that's what's strange. I picked the phone up without thinking and this man demanded to know who I was." "And did you tell him?" "No. In fact I asked him who _he_ was. He hung up. It wasn't your friend Connor. I would have recognized his voice instantly when he called again. By the way, I think I'll be up to going to school tomorrow." Patrick paused for a long moment before going on. She could hear him walk over to his door and shut it. Then he picked the phone back up and said, "Nancy, I don't think that's a good idea." "Why? If you're afraid of another Immortal I can stay out a few more days, but people at the dorm will be wondering. Besides I don't want to get behind in my..." "Someone saw you die last night." This time it was Nancy who paused before answering. "What?" she whispered. "A girl, who knows you, saw you get hit by that van. She also saw me put you in my car." "So, you took me to the hospital and I made a miraculous recovery," she said. "That won't work, Nancy. Your neck was broken, so were both arms and legs, and your spine looked broken as well. You were, to put it bluntly, a mess. You _can't_ explain that." "We can certanly _try_. We'll say it wasn't me." "Nancy, the girl was your roommate." Nancy paused again, for a long moment. "So, what're you saying?" she then said, even though she knew by now. Patrick paused again and said, "I'm saying that you can't go back to Harvard. You're dead. It would be easier if someone didn't see you, but that's not how it went." "I could say she was mistaken. It wasn't me. I didn't have any fractures..." "Nancy, she went to the _police_." "So?" "I think we both know that I'm right. If you want me to teach you and be, in essence, your guardian, you _have_ to do what I say. At least for now. I've been though all this. It won't be the last time you have to hide your tracks and pretend to die. I've done just that at least a dozen times now." "I know..." she said, sounding and feeling very small. She began to weep, quietly. "Look, I'll cancel this last class and be right home. We can talk more about this when I get back." "My stuff..." "Huh?" "My stuff. My clothes, CD's, I have a beautiful acoustic guitar I'd hate to loose..." Patrick nearly cried himself. The poor girl was having her entire identity wrenched away from her. He said, "If it's any consolation, I can forge the appropriate documents. We can find a birth certificate of a kid who died at birth who's the same age as you, and we can leave all your possessions to her. Then you take her name and inherit your own possessions. We'll forge a will naming me the executor. I'll get all that ready, and stop off at the Hall of Records. I'll be home as soon as I can." "Thanks," she said and hung up. She was still sitting on the couch crying when she felt it again. The presence of another Immortal. When the doorbell rang, she knew it wasn't Patrick. She made no move to answer it, remembering Patrick's warning about Immortals purposely taking the heads of new Immortals. The doorbell rang once more, twice, three times. She was beginning to get annoyed, and in all honesty hoped someone _had_ come for her head. Her life was _truly_ over, what was left? Who want's to live forever? She opened the door and saw a young-looking man dressed in a trenchcoat, jeans, shirt and sneakers. He had short brown hair and hazel eyes. And he smiled at her, _really_ smiled at her. "You're new at this," he said. It was a statement and not a question. How he knew... but of course he knew. He could feel her. She nodded. "It'll get better," he said. "Is Patrick home yet?" She shook her head. "And he let you answer the door for another Immortal? What kind of Teacher is he?" But he was still smiling, and his tone was kind. Quietly, almost a whisper, Nancy said, "He told me not to. But then he found out that people at school knew I died, and that I couldn't go back there. My life's over, and I have to live forever. And when I felt you, and you rang the bell, I was hoping that..." "That I'd take your head? That's understandable, and sometimes expected." She looked up and said, "Did you ever..." "Once or twice. Fortunately, I had the greatest Mentor an Immortal could have to see me through it. He taught Patrick too. Ask Patrick about him. By the way, I don't believe I've behaved like a gentleman and introduced myself. I am Connor MacLeod of the clan MacLeod. And you are?" "Nancy Peters. For now. You're Patrick's friend Connor?" Connor nodded and said, "Pleased to meet you, Nancy Peters-for-now." She laughed and said, "Come in then." "I don't think that would be a good idea. Patrick will be mad at you for answering the door." But it didn't make any difference, for Patrick was walking up Beacon Street that moment. He saw Connor and Nancy talking on his doorstep and said, "Connor! Good to see you!" "This is the second visit in two months, old man," Connor said. "Connor, this is Nancy. She's a new..." then realizing what had happened, he turned to Nancy and said, "Why did you answer the door?" Nancy shrugged. "Connor, if you'll excuse us, go on in and make yourself at home." "I'll come back. You two have a lot to talk about. I'll call you tonight." "Allright, Nancy. I think you know how lucky you are that Connor MacLeod is one of the most honorable men, mortal or Immortal, to ever walk the face of the earth," Patrick said. "But he could have just as easily been an unscrupulous Immortal who would have taken your HEAD as soon as you opened the door!" Nancy shrugged again. "Do you WANT to loose your head before you even have a chance to pick up a Ghods damn sword??!!" Nancy looked him straight in the eye and, with a clear voice, said, "Yes. I do." Patrick could tell she wasn't kidding. He sat down next to her and said, "Look, I know it's bad right now, but it'll get..." "Better?" she said. "BETTER?! You've been saying that for a day now, and now so has Connor! But it's only gotten worse and worse! And now, to have to not even be ME? Who want's to live forever if you can't be yourself?" She broke down and cried. And Patrick gathered the terrified girl in his arms and embraced her, rocking her back and forth like a father with a small daughter, making small "shh"-ing noises. Nancy clung to him as if he were the only lifeline she had. How long they were like that, Patrick had no idea. Eventually the flow of tears stemmed, then stopped. Then Nancy pulled back and said, "God I'm sorry." "Nonsense," Patrick said. "You _needed_ that." "I did. I'm just so very tired. And sick with worry." She looked him in the eye and said, "I don't want to loose my head anymore, Patrick." Patrick smiled at her and said, "That's good that you changed your mind. I'd like you to be around for a good several centuries. I'm taking a week off and having Professor D'Anati and Doctor Banks give my lectures starting tomorrow. We'll begin your training then." "Patrick, you didn't have to..." "Yes I did. Somethings are more important than others." <<>> (c) 1995 Mabnesswords Mike Breen That's all there is for now. Part IV will hopefully be along in a few days. e-mail me. mikester@bix.com =========================================================================