Chapter 12 #3
He shrugged. “Common practice in the day. We steal someone’s prize cattle, a month later they steal them back.
Your neighbor over yon hill was being troublesome, you harried them.
Let them know you were awake, paying attention.
You didn’t let them have peace.” He gritted his teeth.
“My mother was gone. We had no peace, why should he? I’m not saying I was right, mind you, but that’s where my head was at the time.
The raid went badly,” he said. “We loosed his favorite bull—a great, muckle brute of a beast—but Ercildoun’s wife ran out after us before we could drive it off.
The bull went mad at all the confusion. Trampled her to death. ”
Cadenza gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. The midnight chill wrapped around his hands without hers to hold them.
“That,” he cleared his throat, “that wasn’t the revenge I wanted.
His wife was an unco brave woman, and I had no wish to see her harmed, let alone killed.
It woke me out of my thirst for vengeance.
I tried to go to Ercildoun, to make amends, but he’d have none of it.
He laid a curse to match my crimes. Cattle were wealth back then, status symbols.
And we conducted the raid in our shifted forms.” He pointed to the tattoo on his back.
“A wolf?” she asked. “You can turn into a wolf?”
“I could. Past tense. Under the curse I can’t shift naturally.
I can’t become the wolf, and I can’t choose when to shift.
” He closed his eyes, remembering strength and claws and speed, the absence of that part of him still a raw hole after all this time.
“Instead, after Ercildoun laid the curse, every morning I turned into a great, black bull—the status symbol we raided. And to make sure I never came near him again, the curse won’t allow me to leave the Norroway estate.
Ever. I have to remain on lands we own. Over the centuries status symbols changed, and the curse adapted.
I’ve been the bull, a stallion, a carriage.
” He winced. That one had really felt foppish.
“And now, the Ferrari.” He watched her stare off towards the racetrack, waiting for her reaction.
“You’re the car as long as the sun is up?”
He nodded. “Aye, I’m the blasted car sunrise to sundown. And to answer your earlier question, no, I can’t hear what you’re saying. While I’m transformed, my own mind is gone. I don’t know myself, and I can’t communicate.”
“And you’re you after the sun goes down?” she asked.
“As you see.”
Cadenza pursed her lips. “But when I first got here, the Ferrari was around at night. I worked on it at night, I drove it at night, I sang to it at night.” She blushed, a darker shadow in the night, but his eyes made out the color.
“Why weren’t you yourself those nights? Why did Drostan act like he hadn’t seen you in ages? ”
Taran blanched. The curse itself was bad enough; he’d hoped to save this part of the discussion till after she’d digested the reality of his world, but he wasn’t going to deny her answers.
“This curse, there’s no way to break it.
Leastwise, not that we’ve found, and we’ve looked for hundreds of years.
Ercildoun intended his revenge to last forever, but he did build a way out, in case I decided I’d had enough.
He called it mercy.” His lips curled. “If ever I thought forever was too long, if I wanted a way out, I could choose not to wake. When I’m forced to become the car at sunrise, I have to do so with the intention of waking again as myself that night.
If I change with the intention to not wake up, I will stay the car.
An inanimate object with no mind or will.
And if I remain the car for five years in a row, I’ll never wake.
I’m gone.” He spread his hands as if deciding to stop existing was a simple thing.
Cadenza’s mouth dropped in horror. “You were giving up? You were just gonna let yourself die? What about your father? And your brothers?”
Taran rolled to his knees and grabbed her hands.
“Why do you think I did it? I can’t leave Norroway lands, and my father won’t leave while I’m here.
For us to immigrate here from Scotland he had to buy land ahead on our route and then sell it as we moved on with the intent of not coming back, so I’d always be on our land.
That’s why he calls this place the ‘estate.’ But he can’t buy the whole world.
” He leaned back on his heels and tried for another joke.
“Have you seen the price of real estate in California lately?”
“You can’t leave here.” Cadenza pointed at the ground. “You can’t leave Norroway Automotive property?”
He shook his head. “No ‘Somewhere Else’ for me.”
She pulled an exasperated face. “And you’re making jokes about it?”
He mimed searching the ground around them. “Do you see any other options? Because I don’t. Laughing at my fate is the only thing I can do.”
Cadenza jerked to standing, jaw set. “Fate? What fate? What is this crap about fate?”
He rose next to her. “Fate, aye, the Fates. The ones I work for, remember? They aren’t just a pretty notion for poets. They weave the destiny of every person on earth.”
Her nostrils flared. “Not my life. You make your own fate. If you want something you have to make it happen. You don’t just lay back and let life happen to you. You make the life you want. There has to be a way to break this curse; you just haven’t found it yet.”
Taran gaped at her. She didn’t understand. All these humans, with their naive ideas about free will and choices, thinking they could lay out plans for their lives like bricks in a road. She wouldn’t believe until she saw.
“Stand back a pace, please.” He moved a few steps away as well.
He clenched his fist and sent his anger at his situation rushing down his arm until his hand trembled with the pent-up energy.
He punched his fist into the ground, and waves rolled from him into the earth.
The ground shook, undulating up the hill.
His earthquake slammed into the fence and ripped a wide gap in the chain-link.
Taran bounced on the balls of his feet. The hillside beyond beckoned. Room to run. Sights to see. Life to live.
His cage. Open.
But not really.
Because when he charged and leapt at the gap, the air hardened like a wall. He ricocheted off the empty gap in the fence. Dirt and rocks skidded beneath him as he rolled to the bottom of the hill. Not hurt. It would take more than that to damage his kind, but he was still trapped behind the fence.
Cadenza cried out and ran to him. “Che cavolo ti se fatto?” She patted him all over. “Did you break anything? What happened?”
“What happened is that the curse won’t let me leave.
The fence doesn’t matter. I can’t walk out of here.
Do you see now? I’m never myself in the daylight.
I haven’t felt the sun on my skin in over 700 years.
If I could break this thing, I would, but I can’t, and if the Fates had plans for me other than letting me rot for my crimes, they would’ve broken it themselves long ago.
But they don’t, so my choices don’t matter.
I can’t make anything happen.” He rose to his knees and took her face in his hands, brushed her cheeks with his thumbs.
“I went to sleep four and a half years ago, intending to never wake up so my father needn’t be tied to this place any longer.
I shouldn’t be here. But something pulled me out.
” He kissed her eyelids, whisper-soft. “You. Singing. I woke up. I shouldn’t have; it shouldn’t have worked. But it did.”