Changelings: The Memory of Myth is two days away!
I took a different approach to the book this time around – both stylistically, and in terms of practicality. The E-Book will be available on Saturday, and the paperback a few weeks after that. Instead of the pages and pages of an in-book appendix – lovingly termed The World of the Changelings – in the e-book, readers will be directed to this site, where I’m working on creating an ever-evolving repository of historical fact vs fiction, reference links and general tidbits. The print book will still have the appendix, however.
Stylistically, The Memory of Myth is an all 1st-person narrative, from three different perspectives. I did not intend it to be that way, but it turned out, it was the best way to capture the now-adult Maureen best.
In the first few drafts, I had a chapter or two from Margaret’s perspective. Ultimately, I struck them from the book because I did not have enough of them for it to make sense, and their themes were easily integrated into other parts of the book. They did give me an excellent insight into the story, however, and the one below particularly gave me the strength to continue with the book at a time when I hated everything about it.
Enjoy!
Changelings: The Memory of Myth, Volume 3 in the Changelings series, will be available via Amazon on May 30, 2020.
- Changelings: Into the Mist (Volume 1)
- Changelings: The Rise of Kings (Volume 2)
- The World of the Changelings: Hunted
1964 ~ Margaret McAndrew
The house was empty without her, but – thankfully – not as empty as it had been. Gerry remained – and Patrice and Jenny, as always – but gone were their worried stares and hushed silences which befell a room when I would sweep around the corner.
As if I could still sweep at this advanced age. I am spry, certainly, but I had never been particularly majestic. Even as a chieftain’s wife, I was more lithe and willowy than imposing.
But, I supposed, if I had been imposing, they never would have taken to me.
“They would have.”
“Perhaps,” I allowed after a moment, without turning to address him. “But not as quickly.”
“I was taken with you the first moment I laid eyes on you.”
“You were but a pup, and a bit teched.”
I turned then, but I knew he was not there.
He came to me often like this – in snatches of conversation, in small whiffs of humour or sympathy.
Were they truly gone? Had war stolen the heir to our legacy – my grandchild more than sixty times removed?
I supposed Dubhshìth’s voice was my foolishness, and though we had made plans – so many plans – to say he and Sean were gone, now and forever. . . I did not believe it.
Maureen did not believe it, either. Not really.
Maureen still waited.
She waited in the hallowed halls of the University of Edinburgh. She waited while she presented the findings of her genealogical search to the trustees of the estate.
She waited while she teased Colin McAlister with the treasure troves I kept hidden from him, and the possibilities of what lay within the Dunn Ussie broch.
Maureen and her professor had begun the preliminary work to excavate the grounds. It would take a year or more before they found anything of note – anything the National Trust would give them credit for. I bit my tongue almost daily to stop myself from giving too many hints about where to find what.
As if anything had survived the last 1,275 years.
Yes, Maureen waited, even as her life continued, as full, if not more so than if she and Sean came back from that faerie war unscathed.
Just as I waited.
Waited while I married a rival chieftain, so he would send his soldiers to save my lover and his clan.
Maureen waited as I had as the lady of Teach na Clochach, for that lover to return to me, and again through Culloden, and again through both World Wars – waiting for men who never came home, or who came home forever changed.
“You promised me.”
“And I shall keep my promise. I swear it.”
† † †
“It’s different this time.”
“I’m sorry – what did you say?”
I saved my spot in my book with my finger.
Gerry and I always took tea together in the library – and sometimes in the back garden if the weather was nice, but the rain hadn’t stopped lashing at the windows in three days, so it was definitely not nice.
We took tea, sometimes chatting, sometimes perusing the papers, or a book, or our faraway thoughts.
Without Maureen, and the rigours of managing the day-to-day of the estate, faraway thoughts and dreamy escapes in books and magazines were often the rule, not the exception.
What day was it, even?
“Tuesdays are for art, I know – and forgive me for interrupting your novel. You’ve read that one before, aye?”
“Whether or not I have read the book before does not mean I do not glean enjoyment from it, Mr. Ballard.” I tried to keep my voice arch.
“Ah, so you forget bits and pieces too.”
I sniffed. “What is different this time?”
“The air. The quiet. Before, it was so sad. I mean, I miss the young lass and all, and Master Sean – I just–”
Gerry pulled out his handkerchief and made a lot of uncouth noises to cover the hitch in his breath.
“Aye well, that one still hurts, but with Miss Maureen gone, the quiet is not so bad as it once was. We know where she is, and the Mach 10 can bring her home any time she likes.”
“Yes, Mr. Ballard. I was thinking much the same myself.”
“Aye, I thought so. When you get to thinking about them, you get to thinking about him, too, and it’s almost like your thinking summons him.”
“Him?”
Gerry snorted. “Aye. Him. The one you loved and lost. The one who spirited them away.”
One lonely night, not long after Sean and Maureen disappeared into 1745, I had confided in Gerry – told him of my part in it. He, in turn, trusted me with the part he played in their lives in Ireland.
“There’s this look you get around your eyes, and the tilt of your head is like you’re listening to someone – and the air shimmers around you. Sister Theresa told me what to look for. She thought maybe I was like herself – canny, like, but not able to move about. I reckon she wasn’t wrong either.”
“But I am not like they are – not like you and Sr. Theresa, either. I see no shimmer, or eddies of mist when Faerie is near.”
“No, but he is – and it’s like he’s there. Just beyond seeing.”
It was my turn to cough over a hitch in my throat.
I reached over to pat Gerry’s hand, and he covered mine with his big paw.
I smiled.
“Well, my dear friend, if he is just there beyond seeing, then perhaps Sean is too.”
“Oh aye – I’ve thought that myself. I hope he is. I hope. . .”
“I hope so too, Gerry.”
† † †
The rain had subsided to a mere drizzly trickle – the sky might even stop its weeping tomorrow. Perhaps then the meanderings of memory would leave me in peace.
Maureen still had three years before she completed her doctorate – and a residency after that.
Did this old body – which, the history books and my memory said would not have seen me past 50, much less the 85 I was today – have four more years?
Would I be able to see Maureen to the end?
Would I be able to see myself to the end?
“You promised, my love.”
“And I shall keep it – I swear it.”
Other books in the Changelings series:
Changelings: The Memory of Myth, Volume 3 in the Changelings series, will be available via Amazon on May 30, 2020.
The D/A Dialogues 
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