========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 18:06:00 PDT Reply-To: Mike Goldman Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Mike Goldman Subject: "A Dangerous Game" (9/22) HL Story "I have to get back to the place where my journey started..." After locking the basement door, all three men collapsed in the kitchen, staring at each other across the table. After a minute, Joe reached back, opened the fridge and grabbed three beers out of the door, handing them silently to Mac and Richie and popping open the third for himself. He took a long pull at the bottle, then shoved the cordless phone across the table to Duncan. "You call her." he said dully. Mac picked up the phone and dialed several digits, then hung up. "I just paged her. She should call back in a few minutes." As if to prove him correct, the phone rang. He picked it up. "Anne? It's Duncan." He listened a moment. "We need your help--there's a...little problem with Rory." He appeared to be listening again. Then, "No, I'd really rather not go into it over the phone. How soon are you off duty? An hour? Can you come by Joe's house after that?" Apparently, she agreed and Mac gave her directions. "Oh yeah," he said quickly, "Can you bring some sedatives with you?" Clearly, Joe and Richie heard the tinny echo. "Sedatives?!" Macleod rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "Please, Anne. I wouldn't ask this kind of thing if it wasn't important." Silence. "Thank you." He pressed the off button on the phone and took a drink of his beer. "She should be here in a little over an hour?" "Why'd you ask for sedatives?" Richie wanted to know. Mac stole a look at Joe who was still staring dully into his beer, giving no indication he'd heard the conversation. "You saw how violent Rory got when Stefan took over. We need to be able to control that until we can figure out what to do." Richie nodded. Mac turned to Joe, touching him on the arm. "Joe? The diaries?" Joe took another drink and pulled himself up out of the chair. "Upstairs." he said, and left without seeing if they were following. Mac got up and so did Richie...after taking another swig of his beer. Once upstairs, Joe led them down the hall to the bedroom. As he opened the door, Mac realized that he'd never been in this part of Joe's house before--all their meetings and conversations had been downstairs. He looked around as they walked in and could immediately see Rory's presence in some of the personal articles in the room along with the picture of her and Joe taken at Rory's 670th birthday. Gazing around, he realized he could also faintly smell the perfume she used. Joe walked over to one of the two closets and slid open the door, revealing the trunk underneath the hanger rod. Richie crossed over and dragged the trunk out into the room while Joe felt in the corner of the shelf of the closet and pulled down a small bag, shaking out the key in his hand and throwing the bag to the side. Sitting down on the bed, key in hand, he sighed and bent to his task. As he worked the stiff lock, he said, "She mentioned that she's been working on moving all this to disk so, hopefully, it won't be as much work..." Finally managing to get the padlock open, he slipped it out of the eyehole and opened the lid. Richie looked in. "Did she mention where she was keeping the disks?" he asked, as he looked at stacks of journals and bound books. "No," said Joe, running his hand through his hair and pocketing the key. "I guess we're just going to have to start reading." He looked up at Richie. "You do know how to read, don't you?" In response, Richie picked up a journal and flopped down on the floor. Joe also picked a book and settled himself back against the headboard. Following his example, Macleod also picked a book and did the same. They read in silence for several minutes, then Richie sat up. Both men noticed his movement and looked at him expectantly. "It's not anything about Stefan." he said apologetically. "I think I just managed to grab her first journal and she's relating how she became Immortal." "Really?" Joe said with interest. "You don't know?" Mac asked. "Unless one of us is there and witnesses the actual event, we pretty much have to rely on hearsay, legends and any possible eyewitnesses." Joe explained. "What does it say?" he asked Richie. Richie cleared his throat. "June 17, 1349. It's been one year since I died and didn't die. Simon was the one who found me and he has put himself in charge of my tutoring in this Immortality he talks about so much. One of the things he's told me to do is to start writing down what happens in my life so that I'll have it to read later on as I get older. To be entirely truthful, I'm not sure why he thinks this is so necessary, but since he's done so much for me in the last months, I don't think it can hurt to oblige him in this. The first thing he's asked me write down is the story of my death..." > >> June 17, 1348 (County Wexford, Ireland) >> Rory's eyes opened as the sun fell full on her face through the crude window. She squinted in protest, but the sun continued to insist that it was time to start the day. She rolled out of the bed, wrapping the quilt around her as she stumbled to the kitchen table. Once there, she kept the quilt around her with one hand and sleepily poured some water from a small pitcher into a bowl, then dipped her hand in the water and rubbed her face. Her face now wet and her eyes open, but her brain still pretty much asleep, she threw the quilt back over to the bed and took off her nightgown. Grabbing a piece of rough cloth, she wet it in the bowl, wrung it out, quickly washed herself and then dressed. Running her hands over her skirt to dry them, she poured the rest of the water in the pitcher and set the bowl at the edge of the table. Taking the pitcher, she set it on a shelf and grabbed a small loaf of bread and a knife. Cutting off a piece, she munched it while combing out her waist-length hair. Putting the last bite of bread in her mouth, she quickly pulled her hair back in a braid, tying it off at the bottom and blowing the few escaping tendrils out of her face. Grabbing the bowl of water, she opened the door and stepped out into the bright sunlight and walked towards the small garden at the side of the cottage. "Good mornin' to ye!" she heard a voice call. Turning around, she saw John Flaherty's wife, Mary, walking by. " 'Tis nice to see you're out in this lovely day." "Good mornin'," Rory called back. As the older woman's back disappeared down the road, she added under her breath, "Ye old crone." her good humor of the morning now dampened, she continued over to her garden and began pouring the water onto the small crop struggling to grow. "I swear," she said, talking to herself as she squatted and began to pull the weeds that were threatening to overtake part of the garden, " 'Tis true what they say -- a woman's tongue is a thing that will not rust." Fiercely, she pulled out a weed. "That woman is always sneakin' around here like she expects to find me dancin' around a fire with Satan himself. Mam was right about her." As always, thoughts of Rory's mother made her pause in her work and she sat back on the warm ground as she thought. Rory's mother, Meg Malone, had originally come from this village--Wexford--and had started working for one of the great houses of the English lords that had been emigrating to Ireland and beginning Irish estates. Unfortunately, she had begun working for Lord James Riordan. After several years of service, Lord Riordan had taken a fancy to Meg Malone and had not taken no for an answer, leaving her pregnant, unwed and turned out of her employment due to her condition and her refusal to be silent about what had caused it. Meg had disappeared from County Wexford for a few years, but had returned carrying a small toddler, announcing her name as O'Riordan Deirdre Brigid Malone. Mother and daughter had lived a hand-to-mouth existence, with Meg taking whatever work she could find. When any schoolmaster passed through the community, Meg would have him stay at her home in exchange for teaching her daughter how to read and write. James Riordan had returned to England and Meg and Rory were happy in each other's company until Meg had suddenly taken ill and died when Rory was 14. she thought, . Standing up, she dusted her skirt off, picked up her bowl and walked towards the cottage. Standing in front of it, she let her thoughts run back again to when she had left. . Shaking her head in recollection of several of the suitors that had been paraded before her, she went inside and began to remake the bed. Lori mgoldman@cts.com Bass Player/Musical Director for the SJD Kick-Ass House Band CFW/WAR Chief for Smokin' Joe Dawson in the first HL WAR