Beltane Night -- Part 6 (con't)

(Con't from Part 5)


The sound of horses, whistles, bones, pipes, fiddles, and .....(is that ...the rumblings of voices raised in celebration ? )...all filled her head.

'Just a few yards now...' she thought, 'I'm going to have a heart attack..... Where is mum surely she's heard my running...felt the screaming out ...my panic, ...'

Then, ... finally, ...she was there at the door...she frantically reached for the door handle, ... struggling to open it ...
then just as she rushed through it ...she saw a torchlight and the small hand holding it....she darted inside, and slammed the door behind her.

Leaning against it and trying to catch her breath,....huffing deep and hard...heart pounding away, like mad and pulsing through the whole of her body, ...now that she'd stopped her furious run.

She felt such relief when she saw her mum standing facing the fire, without turning toward her she said, "Lindella....You're late!"

Her father sitting in his chair looked up from his book, with a calm, but concerned look. When her mum turned around, Lindella was almost struck with fear again, because she looked so much like her Nan, at that very moment.

"I know!", Lindella almost yelled out while still gasping for air, "and you don't know how very ... sorry I am about it!"

Then her Mum softened her voice and said calmly,
"So ....you saw them ... then?"

And she came forward to comfort her only daughter., she wrapped her arm around Lindella's shoulder, and said,

" Lock the door... come inside, " she gestured toward the chair, " ...and sit down by the fire."

Her words hung in the air like a dead weight, ...all three of them just looked at each other, in shock, ...each of them knowing it was a line from the old Beltane Night rhyme.

Her mum shook it off and said, "Och weel, ...here, ... drink this..." She reached for her glass of wine on the table and handed it to the younger, " and calm youself."
Lindella was trembling so, she sloshed some wine onto the floor when first grasping it.
Lindella took a long gulp draining the glass of wine into her shaking body. Took a deep breath, and looked at her mum's face.
At that moment, she also saw a bright movement pass the window just over her mum's shoulder, ... it drew her attention.
She made her way passed her mum to the window, ...and there she saw it...
the whole parade of faeries moving, dancing and prancing, in a winding stream, some holding torch lights. Pipers, drummers, fiddlers, playing, dancing and singing, and not a single foot actually seemed to be touching the ground, but floating slightly above it. The wind whipping not around them but some how with them, faeries of every size and shape and age; were there passing right before her.
All being led by a beautiful almost glowing man and woman each on their faery steeds, each decked out in the finest costumes Lindella had ever seen ...both Faery and horse glittering in the torch lights.

She whispered under her breath, ...."The Queen and King of the Feary Host..." and as they passed by the window of the croft, the Faery Queen turned and looked right into Lindella's eyes, and smiled sweetly and winked, then bowed her head graciously to her.
Lindella was dumbstruck at this..

She turned to her mum, ... eyes wide in her amazement and she almost whispered, "Mummie ...are you seeing this ?"

"Seeing what, ..dear ?" her mum responded in a dreamy unconnected way.

" I always wondered ..." still in this far-away tone, " but I never had the nerve to take the chance...and see it all for myself."
And she looked up toward the ceiling, like in a dreamstate, and said ...

"Your Nan was a remarkable woman, ..ya know...", then she turned and looked deep into Lindella's eyes, ..." you'll always see "them" now.... "

Then she turned away, again as if looking into nowhere and added, in a low mystical voice like Nan's itself, ...
"even when they're not there, ....you'll be looking, ...always looking..... And ...always surprised ...when you do see them, ... for the rest of your life."

"How do you know this mummie ?" Lindella had never heard her mum speak this way before.
It was like she'd slipped into another realm, right before her eyes.

"It was the same for your Nan, ...ya know." as she moved to her daughter with an "all-knowing" look in her eyes, ... "That's why she made up that rhyme for us long ago, ...so we'd be spared from being the next."

"The 'next'..?" Lindella, couldn't comprehend how this night could get ant stranger...but had a feeling in the pit of her gut, ...that it was about to.

Then her mum stepped back to, in front of the fireplace, and stared into the flames, "Come here dear and sit down next to me." She motioned to the chair, Lindella came over and took her place there.

"It's time that I tell you, ...." as she said this she seemed to have tears in her eyes. Then she turned and looked so lovingly at her daughter's upturned face. "To tell you, ...just, ... who your Nan really was, ....who I am, ...and my dear, ....who you are."

Lindella looked from her mum to her father,

"What ?"

Her father smiled sheepishly and raised his eyebrows, ... then raised his book back up slightly covering his face, to formally back out of this particular situation and to let his wife handle it on her own. In a ...'her family-history-not-mine ' attitude.

Lindella turned back to her mum at the fire and said,
"What do you mean, ... mum ? "

Her mother took a deep breath and look at Lindella like she was a little child once again, ... to start her story.

From this night forward, ...Lindella's life would never be the same.
The events that had unfolded on that Beltane Night, changed her view of life forever.
It, of course, changed her future, but amazingly ....

it also changed her past.

The End...

or was it?