Turning the Wheel Turning the Wheel by Angel All the usual disclaimers PG for slash, with implications My challenge: write S/Mc set in a different time period. The waning moon had set behind the fairy fort. Len was coming in, late, his sack of herbs full with healing plants that had to be gathered properly. He wasn’t expecting a man on his threshold at this hour, much less a wounded one. He dropped to one knee beside the visitor, and assessed the wounds. A lance thrust had entered the man’s shoulder. Quick work with poultices and cloth stopped the bleeding, and brought the man around. It was then Len noticed the long dark hair covered ears that rose to a point. It explained the sharp features as well. The Fair Folk were seldom seen these days, not since the Christian priests had built a monastery over the sacred well in the next glen. Len worked, wondering what accident his patient had encountered. Once he was sure the Old One would not die, Len moved him indoors before the sun could catch them. He watched over his patient as he worked with the plants, setting some to dry, chopping some and adding others to certain of the numerous pots that bubbled on his hearth. They had to be taken care of before sunrise or the virtue would be gone. He watched the Old One sleep. It was real sleep, not the death sleep that some gravely wounded ones slid into just before dying. Tired from his night’s exertions, Len went to his own bed and slept late into the day. He woke well after noon and spent the day working with the medicines he had collected. The Old One did not wake at sunset, nor at the next dawning. Len watched him, wondering how he could sleep so long. He knew nothing of the Fair Folk, but the body had seemed human enough when he dressed the wound. He changed the bandages twice a day, amazed at how fast the wound was healing. On the second day, the Old One woke. Len was at his side with a cup of water, and then offered him some bread and pottage. The Old One accepted both without a word and returned to his sleep. The old One woke on the fourth day. He took water and an apple. When Len checked beneath the bandage, the wound was gone. His salves were not that powerful. “You are healed. You may return home at sunset.” The Old One shook his head. “There is no home for me. I am outcast from my people now. I chose the mortal world over my father’s eternal realm. They attempted to slay me for this treason. ”They nearly succeeded. It took all I could do to bring you back. I’m Len Herb, of the McCoys of Wheathill.” The Old One said his name, in the lilting language of his people which was nowhere near the Gaelic Len spoke. “Your name is Spock?” Len incorporated all the sounds he could pick out of the jumble. The Old One raised an eyebrow. “It will suffice.” “You can stay here until you find a place of your own. There’s more than enough room.” The healer gestured at his hut, almost double the size a family would have, with real beds instead of pallets. “Thank you.” The tenor of life changed little in the hut. Len did his herb collections and treated the sick of County Fermaugh. Spock merely was. He observed, he walked, he helped gather herbs. But mostly he just existed. Only once had Len found him singing to the stars as the Good People always did. Summer wore on, and rumors of sea-wolves penetrated even as far inland as Wheathill. Len endured, and went about his life. The raiders would come, or not. If they did, all his labor was vain. If they did not, he must have an adequate store of food for winter. Summer waned. Lugh passed. Len continued. Spock continued. Tied to the Wheel of the year, they danced its annual circle. Until Samhain. On the night before, Spock was restless. He wandered, leaving his bed, leaving the hut. He stretched out his arms to the moon and sang to her. It did not help. He could feel the madness rising in him, battle-lust that could be only be quelled on the morrow. Spock walked under the stars, watching the old year die. The burning in his blood was too early, too soon. It should not have come until Beltaine, but the wounding and the casting out had changed him. He had heard of such things before. He sat under the lone oak tree, what humans called a “fairy fort” and watched the stars through its bare branches. The herbman found him there. “I was worried. You didn’t come home.” He drew closer and saw, even in the starlight, the fever that burned within the Old One. “The May Madness has come upon me, and far too early, my friend.” “Aye,” was all Len said as he sat down beside his guest. Friends. They were friends now. He had hoped it was the case, but the Old One spoke little. “Are you consecrated to any of your gods? Is that why you live alone?” Spock asked, hoping that the human would provide him with the solution to his burning. Startled by the question, Len snapped, “I live alone because I gave my wife nothing save twisted things that died months before they were born. She left me for the miller.” “I am sorry. I did not mean to pry.” Spock looked at him. “The Madness is out of season. No woman of my people would take me even if I were not outcast. Help me.” “How?” “Stay with me tonight, here, under the stars as the year dies. It fits the untimely burning. In May, a coupling with a woman brings life as the sun regains its own. Together, we will produce as much life as this dead season.” Len knew a proposition when he heard one, no matter how poetically phrased. He looked at the aquiline profile of the Old One, etched in silver. He had saved this man’s life. He could not let his friend and companion die now. “How?” he repeated, not knowing the old Roman ways, having only heard rumors. Spock stood and removed his clothing and Len followed suit. He let the Old One guide him to the springy turf, and they lay together as the Dead Season saw itself in. The winter passed with cold and snow, and bitter rain. Len did not venture out. He stayed indoors, brewing his potions and listening to Spock’s stories. They slept in the same bed, and enjoyed each other as the mood took them. The Madness did not recur. In March, as the days grew longer toward the equinox, and the frost loosed its hold on the ground, Len started going abroad in search of his livelihood. Spock, too, took an interest in the growing things and cleared a small patch to tend. The equinox came and went, and spring was truly here. Len began to look forward to May, and the attendant Madness. He found a patch of small flowers and carefully nurtured them. At Beltaine, he planned to crown himself and his lover before a long night under the stars. Ostara came. The church bells in the next glen called the Christians to worship and made Spock cover his ears in a miserable ball of agony. The day passed in misery, and only sunset brought relief. For a time. Fear and fire raged in the night. Len saw the people of his village cut down, houses torched and the gleam of fire on the helmets of the invaders. A clout on the head took him and he knew nothing more. Len awoke, wet and cold, bound in the bottom of a longship. He could see a few others, and the Sea Wolves strode among them with the same carelessness with which they stepped over the bags of grain and boxes of chickens. Spock lay similarly bound, not far from him. The Old One was awake and watching everything. A miserable cold rain started up, and drenched everyone. It lasted two days, until they saw the outer islands of the Hebridies. The Norse beached the boat, and made the prisoners carry the looted good to their village. In the community house, the spoils were divided among the men on the raid. The blond captain, as tall as Len and Spock, with the sharp features of Norway unblunted by living among Celts, claimed his share, and took his first pick of the slaves. Young Deirdre, her widow-weeds now tattered and foul, Spock, and Len the herbman were his. The others were to be auctioned to pay for repairs to the ships and the signal horn. “Tonight,” Kirk said in the way he had of pitching the word low for one person but managing to reach the entire room. Len tensed as he sorted herbs. Spock would never tolerate the Orkney captain’s touch. The Old One seemed not to have heard, and continued counting coins into stacks and bags. “Ten pounds silver pennies,” he said, tying the sack. “You would be wise not to touch me.” Kirk laughed. No slave, not even one as exotic and strange as this told him what was wise and what was not. He ran a possessive hand down Spock’s face, and repeated “Tonight.” Spock was tossed back into the small room he shared with Len by two of Kirk’s house-carls. He had not been beaten, nor harmed. “Are you all right?” Len checked him over as best he could in the darkness. “Ah that it were Beltaine! It would make things much easier. “He was not wise. No mortal lays a hand on me without my consent. You know that.” “Spock, what did you do him?” “He sleeps. He will awaken at dawn. Should he try again, I will make him sleep again. Maybe for two days next time.” He wrapped Len in his arms. “You are always wise. Touch me as it pleases you.” ”As it pleases us both,” Len corrected. He lay in Spock’s arms for a time, and stroked a gentle hand across his lover’s pointed ears. “Come with me, y’argr boys,” the steersman’s lantern split the dark of the slaves’ room, and revealed them. “I dinna know what ye’ve done to my captain, but yer witches both. I’ll not have ye under his roof a moment more.” Len and Spock stirred and stood. “Quickly! We must make it look as if ye’ve escaped and without my help.” The burly steersman hastened them through the sleeping house and village and down to the water’s edge. “Your captain will sleep until dawn,” Spock told him. “Get yerselves in that coracle and get gone. Tupping with the Old Ones never brought any man good fortune, whether the fay was woman or man. I won’t have you jinxing us a moment more.” They put to sea, and watched the lantern grow fainter behind them. Spock sang to the spring stars as the great dog of the Hunter hung low in the west. They followed the brightest star in the sky, what the Romans had called the Dog Star, until the sun rose. Keeping the sun behind them through the morning, they paddled. It was fifty Roman Leagues from the Outer Hebrides to Donegl Bay where the river would take them into Wheathill. They made it in two days with the current. Exhausted, starving and bitterly thirsty, Len decided his hut had never looked better, even if the raiders had burnt the thatched roof. It would be a long summer, but they would rebuild. As the Beltaine stars rose overhead, he found the patch of flowers had been neither trampled nor burnt. Under the growing moon, he crowned his fairy lover and together they pledged themselves to the new life of the County.