Turning the Wheel
by Angel
Usual disclaimers
Spock/McCoy
AU
For the 11th Wave challenge: Write the boys 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.
“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.