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The Secrets Of The Quill

A Curse Undone by Hands of These Times

By Raven WoodsPublished 3 years ago 10 min read
1
The Secrets Of The Quill
Photo by Mark Rasmuson on Unsplash

Eogham stared out to sea, praying that what he was seeing was not real. Specks of red stretched across the horizon, tiny yet, but clear and sure against the cyan blue of the summer sky.

They were coming, approaching his stronghold high on the sea cliffs in the very northwestern corner of the land. If they did not flee, his family would not be spared the brutality of the heathen raiders, the sight of whose vermillion sails was striking terror all along the Scottish coasts. He turned to his wife and daughters, their faces pale with fear.

"You have to make your escape!" he urged. "Go inland, as far and as fast as you can! Take the servants and go! Go now!"

"Father!" one of his daughters cried. "Are you not coming?"

"There is something I must bury!" he replied urgently, "in the oat field midst! Remember that, and return for it if I do not! GO NOW!"

On his knees, he dug frantically with his shaking hands, his nails black and broken, his fine silk and linen garments filthy with dirt. He placed the box into the earth, then covered it quickly, leaving no trace amongst the pale green shoots of the young crops.

Jenny sat in her car in the hospital parking lot, waiting for her brother to text that he was ready to leave. Her window rolled down in the summer heat, the familiar sounds of New York City hummed around her.

"All done?" she asked as Adam joined her in the passenger seat.

"Yeah, and thanks again for driving me three times a week," he told her. "This treatment schedule sucks for you."

"Well, be thankful that you're alive, and that it's saving your life. I'm more than happy to do this for you, and have my little brother around," she smiled, leaning over and kissing his cheek.

Fascinated by their Scottish ancestry, Jenny had spent years online researching their family tree, tracing it back as far as she could into medieval Scotland. Seven generations before, her ancestors had emigrated to America hoping for a better life, evicted from their humble croft during the Highland Clearances. Old original death certificates showed again and again that "Bleeding Sickness" was the cause of the demise of countless males in her line, and she was eternally grateful for the modern-day treatment of replacing her brother's missing blood-clotting factors, which was keeping him alive. Yet with Adam it was still touch and go, for his disease was severe, and she knew that one accident or injury could have him die from internal hemorrhage. Driving him to and from the hospital several times a week, she prayed the whole way that another vehicle would not hit them.

Old Tomas heard the crunch against the wing of his plow. Sighing, he switched off the tractor engine and climbed down to investigate, sure that the skimmer had unearthed a piece of scrap metal. There by the plow shin lay what looked like a box, rectangular and encrusted in earth, slightly damaged from the blade. Frowning, he kneeled and picked it up, brushing off some of the mud. Climbing back up into his cab, he placed the box beside him, for he still had two acres to plow, and the sun was fast sinking into the sea.

That night after supper, Tomas took the box to his barn, and set it on his workbench. It was made of metal, he guessed iron, as it was heavy, and about the size of a child's shoebox. Adjusting the beam of his work light, he carefully cleaned off the mud with rags, noticing what looked to be a strange resin and wax seal all around the lid, thick and unbroken. He gently chipped it away with a screwdriver, then very slowly pushed the lid off with his strong thumbs. Inside lay something wrapped in fur, bound with a strip of leather. Frowning, he carefully lifted it out. The dark fur was velvety soft, which he identified at once as the pelt of a mole. He slowly untied the leather binding and lifted it off, then laid the pelt gently aside. In his hands was a small notebook, bound in faded black leather. The moleskin, leather tie and notebook were beautifully preserved, hermetically sealed as they had been, for how long he did not know.

He needed a clean surface. He carried the notebook to the farmhouse, washed and dried his hands, then sat down at the kitchen table. He opened the little book carefully, gently turning the deeply yellowed pages. The black ink had faded little. He recognized the writing as ancient Highland Gaelic, quilled in the old calligraphy by a steady, consistent hand. The words "Eogham Flannoch" were penned on the inside cover, but he understood nothing, for the Gaelic of his day was far removed from that on these pages. He knew of no-one who could read it, but felt that what he had before him was something extraordinary.

Earl Eogham Flannoch had buried all four of his sons, each dead from the bloody flux. His prayers unanswered, grieving and desperate he had ridden deep into the Highlands, where the old ones had told of a seer, a crone gifted with the Two Sights. The hag had received him on a full moon, scrying into her boulder of black obsidian.

"The blood is poisoned," she rasped, "the male line cursed forevermore by the sorcerer of Fear-a-Ghlinne, paid well by your enemy, Calah."

"Can the curse be undone? Do you see an end to this sickness?" Eogham cried in despair.

"An end to it, aye," she wheezed. "I see gold, the gold of seafaring legions. I see healing at the thrice croak of the toad, upon the touching of this gold by hands not of these times."

"What means that?" Eogham asked. "Where is this gold?"

"The stone gives visions, I only tell what I see," the crone told him, her head rocking strangely as her half-closed eyes stared into the obsidian blackness. Eogham waited beside her in the moonlight. At length she spoke again.

"I see the gold lie true to the west at the top of the Pictish stone of Ardeil, at sunrise on a cloudless morn on Alban Elfed. But your hands are not those that touch it."

"Whose?" he cried. "Whose hands touch it?"

"The hands of one in whose veins the tides still flow," mumbled the crone, "in times yet un-lived, when great silver birds fly like arrows to the moon." Eogham rose, shaking his head, and pressed a coin into the hag's calloused palm.

"Wait! The stone speaks more," rasped the crone. "I see your death before this year end by the sword of one from the sea, but your issue lives on." She rose then and turned to him, her clouded eyes deep in her walnut-wizened face. "You must tell no-one of what the black stone has spoken this night," she hissed. "Not one single living soul, or the end to this sickness will never be."

Over the four days' ride back to his stronghold, Eogham had kept every one of the crone's words in his head, committing them to memory, cradling each carefully as he would the precious children he had lost. Once returned, he took his black notebook from its box, gently stroking the smooth leather cover. His heart was heavy, as it seemed that the curse was to long prevail. Although the seer's words had made no sense, he slowly and carefully quilled them onto the pages just as they had been spoken, for he was a learned man, able to pen the Highland tongue. When the ink had dried, he returned the notebook to its box and hid it well away, lest any in his household should find it.

The following summer, Tomas took the train to Edinburgh to meet with an expert in written ancient Highland Gaelic. Seated in a vast reading room, he carefully passed the notebook into the man's white-gloved hands. The expert was a tiny, scholarly-looking man who gingerly turned the pages, reading silently over the rims of his tortoiseshell glasses.

"Well it's certainly very old," he confirmed. "This Eogham Flannoch is likely the name of the writer. Here there are six other names, four male, with death dates. The following pages tell of a family curse and a bleeding disease, and what seems to be the means to stop it," he said, translating as he read. "The last entry is a scribble," he continued, squinting at the text. "Northmen - now approaching - I will die - by their sword - so help - me God," he concluded. He typed up the complete translation and printed it off for Tomas, whose heart ached with a terrible sadness all the way home.

Tomas knew the Pictish monolith of Ardeil, the tallest standing stone in Scotland and a three hour drive from his farm. How any gold could be at the top of that was beyond him, but he determined to visit it at sunrise on the autumnal equinox.

At Alban Elfed, he drove through the night to the stone and waited for daybreak. The sky lightened, and he stared at the top of the monolith, as if expecting gold to magically appear there. The sun slid up over the eastern horizon, and, once fully risen, Tomas remembered that the notebook had specified "a cloudless morn." Suddenly, he had an idea why. Grabbing a spade from his car, he walked to the tip of the stone's long shadow cast by the newly-risen sun.

"True west," he muttered to himself.

He started to dig. As he lifted the disintegrated leather pouch from the ground, the bright yellow of pure gold fell back to the earth, and as he reached down to touch the coins, he heard the thrice deep croak of a toad.

At his next hospital visit, Jenny waited for Adam in the parking lot as always, her engine idling for warmth in the chilly fall air. This appointment was taking longer than usual, and she began to worry. Had they found something serious? Her cellphone chirped with a text, making her jump. It was from Adam.

"On my way out now," he had typed. "WTF?"

Jenny frowned, her heart beginning to thump. She watched her brother as he walked towards the car. He opened the passenger door and swung into the seat, turning to look at her.

"Are you okay?" she asked shakily, not wanting to hear the answer.

"It's insane," he replied. "My blood clotting factors have come back normal."

"An extremely rare hoard of Viking gold coins, minted around the tenth century, and a reward of twenty thousand American dollars to you," the museum curator smiled, handing Tomas a check. "Congratulations!"

"Thank you very much," Tomas replied. "I never knew there'd be payment involved. This is very unexpected."

He drove back to his farm, guilt and shame assailing him. Slowly he climbed up to the attic, and took down an old yellowed parchment scroll, a record of all the previous owners of his land. Unrolling it on the kitchen table, with his finger he traced backwards over forty generations, stopping at the name Sven Gunnulf, born over twelve hundred years before.

"I’m so very sorry, Eogham Flannoch,’ he whispered. "Your life taken and your lands occupied for centuries by these heathen invaders, yet strangely, your lineage may now be healed by their gold. I pray it be so. It was the very least I could try to do for you. May your tortured soul now rest in peace."

Several days later, the Centre for Medical Research received a letter. It simply read "Please put this towards a cure for hemophilia."

Enclosed was a check for twenty thousand dollars, signed by a Tomas Gunnulf.

fantasy
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About the Creator

Raven Woods

I've loved to write creatively since my teenage years. When not at my keyboard, you'll find me bikepacking, or walking on a deserted beach somewhere in the world.

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