Where's Rory?
This story was for the September Elegant Literature contest: Snow & Silence. I tapped into my love of folklore and my Scottish heritage to craft this one. I'm really proud of it!
Cotrìona Guinne steps back to admire her latest collectible; the snowglobe looks handsome on the mantel.
“Perfect,” she whispers to the spirits. A distant, echoing, otherworldly music drifts from the crackling fire to respond. She sucks her tongue of the subtle taste of blaeberries. Cotrìona sighs, losing herself in a memory of verdant aspens and bobbing will-o’-wisps at twilight. She sways slowly, matching the rhythm of the icy wind dancing to puckish triple pipe fugues.
A tiny knocking disturbs her daze.
“Oh?” The beauty steps back to her bauble and gently lifts it to her eye.
Inside is a perfect scene of rustic charm ripped from a Bob Ross painting–a weathered barn, looming pines, a wagon loaded with feedbags, and a man in a blue bomber jacket frantically banging on the glass. Looking closely, Cotrìona sees his tiny mouth moving rapidly, though all she hears from him is silence. She smiles.
Her lowland dialect sings with a hint of glee: “Rory Stewart, now what has you all in a fuss?” She places her ear to the globe with no intent of hearing anything.
The tiny man’s face grows angry while his mouth runs doubletime.
“You’ll have to speak up, Rory dear. Maybe speak from the diaphragm?” She leans against the connecting wall and shakes her bauble casually. The false snowflakes swirl violently with Rory trapped in the maelstrom.
The charming scenery flurries. Rory screams.
“AAAAHHHAHAHA!” The toboggan starts to fishtail until it slides horizontal and rolls, throwing the laughing couple into the fresh powder of Glenshee. Rory climbs out of his cold cushion and brushes the flakes from his blue jacket before offering a hand to Cotrìona, giggling as she tries to stand up, but slipping with each breathless chuckle.
“Whoa! Walk much?” he laughs.
She wobbles for a moment and then playfully punches his shoulder. “Cut it out, Rory! I’ll have you know I’ve been ambulatory for almost three whole years!”
Rory puts on an air of faux admiration and says, “Oh, I didn’t realize I was in the presence of a pro!” He ignores his wet pants and prostrates himself in the snow. “Oh great and powerful Coco, won’t you please forgive this poor wretch for doubting you?”
The girl grabs a handful of powder and flings it into his face as he comes up.
“Hey!” He slips as he stands and attempts to grab her around the waist, but she squeals and pushes him away. They laugh and scream as the sun begins to set.
The two cuddle by the crackling fire pit outside of the Cozy Wooden Pod he rented at Glenshee Glamping. Gazing at the freckled night sky and frigid air tamed by the flames, Rory can’t believe this is his life. He’s always feared devoting himself to another, having left one girl at the altar and breaking off an engagement with another, but as he looks down at the auburn hair, nestled into his jacket, he feels this could be different. She smells of peaches and Earl Grey tea, and her sharp, yet gentle features create an enchanting visage never seen before in this world or the next. Her eyes sparkle under the stars.
“Hey,” he says, drawing her gaze to his.
“Hey,” she smiles.
“Cotrìona–”
“Keep calling me Coco. I like it.”
He shifts nervously. “Coco, will you…eh…would you, perhaps, want to stay here tonight?”
One eyebrow raises inquisitively. “We’ve only just met, Rory Stewart. How do you know I’m not dangerous? Not a serial killer?”
“If you are then I’m dead: I’m dead ten minutes ago, I’m dead two hours ago…and I’d be better for having spent even a fraction of time with you, Coco.” He looks up at the sky, satisfied.
Her breath catches in her throat. Cotrìona has never heard anything so nice. Something about this boy breaks through every wall she’s ever built. Emotion begins to swell within her breast, and excitement begins to overwhelm her senses. Before he can say anything else, she kisses him.
Everything drops away. Rory’s entire being explodes. He holds her tightly and carries her to the double bed, not daring to let their lips part. The flames flutter outside as the moon bathes the glamping pod in soft light.
Cotrìona awakens to the sound of knocking. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes and glancing over, she sees that Rory isn’t there. She shivers, noticing that the heat has been shut off in the pod.
“Wha–” she starts before being interrupted again by a knocking at the door. Muffled voices are speaking gibberish, but if there’s one thing she can easily recognize, it’s annoyance. The disembodied sound is speaking in curt sentences and the sarcasm is practically a battering ram through the entryway.
Quickly putting her shirt back on and keeping the comforter of the bed snuggled around her like a quilted cloak, she shuffles across the cold floor and opens the door in time to hear the gibberish become:
“--bloody selfish is what it is,” finishes a squat man with ice crystals hanging in his ginger beard. His companion, an older woman with a pocked face and brown hair stuffed under a knit thistle beanie, grunts at Cotrìona, causing the grumpier one to straighten up.
The girl shields herself from the bright sunlight reflecting off the morning ice. “Um, yes?”
“Per the registration agreement signed with Glenshee Glamping, your tenancy has expired and we have disconnected the power and heat,” states the man.
“You shut off the utilities? Why?” asks Cotrìona.
“Because,” begins the older woman in a distinct London East End twang, “you were supposed to check out yesterday. We fought you ‘ad–”
“Yeah, until the Galloways tried tae move in three hours ago and saw you in the bed like a little Goldie Hawn,” says the man, ice shards clinking against one another in his scruff.
“Goldie…Hawn?” Cotrìona furrows her brow.
His partner sighs. “Goldilocks, ‘e means Goldilocks.”
The girl just stares.
“With the bears, lass!” bellows the squat Scot. He pitches to a falsetto and says in a sing-song voice: “Oh aye, me porridge is too comfy for the bed! I’ll set down here on me baby bear and eat another man’s soup!”
Both women stare at him.
“Pack it in and pay up!” yells the little hothead.
Cotrìona’s eyes widen. “Pay?”
“S’right, the bill needs se’ling and then you’re on your way.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Whot?”
“I said I don’t have any money.”
“That won’t do.” The man furrows his brow. “Dae we need tae call the polis, lass?”
Emotion begins to well up inside Cotrìona again, but this time it hurts her eyes and burns her cheeks. “I don’t understand, where’s Rory? WHERE’S RORY?” She recoils back towards the bed and falls to the floor, her comforter dropping away. The girl’s eyes dart around the room wildly like a cornered red fox.
The two visitors freeze, unable to process this reaction. “Lass?”
“WHERE’S RORY? RORY? RORY? RORY? WHERE IS HE?”
The woman holds up a shaking hand, a weak attempt at placation. “The young Mr. Stewart? ‘E isn’t here?”
The Scot pulls his partner back and whispers: “Aye, I forgot tae mention, but I saw the lad leavin’ early. Looked absolutely wrecked emotionally, but didnae think it important.”
The skies above the pod begin to grey, the sun falls behind a thick fog.
“WHERE IS RORY? WHERE? WHERE? WHERE?”
“Donald, you berk,” her face crinkles with annoyance, “‘is name is on the registry! If ‘e’s gone, then clearly SHE isn’t responsible! Just a poor, naive girl ‘e abandoned.”
Donald shakes his head. “So less Goldie Hawn and more Ariana Grande. Shame.”
“Ariana Gr–do you mean Ariadne?” she hisses incredulously.
“Aye, of Greek legend.”
“RRRRRRROOOOOOORRRRRRYYYYYYY!”
“Donald, why I married the likes of you I’ll nev–”
A crisp, clear cacophony of ancient triple pipes begin to sound throughout the little cabin; icy wind, much colder than the current forecast suggests, sweeps the feet out from under the two workers. They land in a heap with a crunch. The sun seems to dim as the room darkens.
“WHERE WHERE WHERE WHERE WHERE?”
The music becomes deafening and the pod shakes violently.
“Ah, no! No lass!” whimpers the man, still piled on the deck.
“NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!”
“Nooooooo!” cries the woman as she is dragged into the structure.
“Shite shite shiiiiitte!” The man is ripped by his beard through the portal.
The door slams closed.
All is still.
Silence.
A piece of wood hisses and pops in the fireplace. Cotrìona Guinne sits upon a throne of moss, the snowglobe gripped tightly in her hand. She stares into the eyes of the miniature man, plastic snow settles on and around him.
“And so I called for my siblings, Rory of the House of Stewart, and they flew. Through the waters, aided by kelpies and selkies and even the dreaded Nuckelavee; through the earth, pushed forward by ancient clans of Trow and Sith of stone; through the forests, guided by murderous redcaps and the guardian, Ghillie Dhu; through the hamlets and homes, filled with brownies, quicklings, and the visiting Púca of the Emerald Isle of Éire; they flew, Rory Stewart, they flew across Albion itself to find you.”
Rory’s little fists continue to beat against the unbreakable dome.
Her lips become bitter crescents. “All because you, a mortal, thought to make a fool of me.”
Rory slows to a stop.
“Or, I suppose,” she continues, “a fool of some other wayward lass. Did it even matter? To you? Did it matter who fell in your lecherous wake?”
Leaning against the glass, Rory sinks to his knees.
“The most ironic part of this tale, Rory, is that I came to you when I sensed your loneliness. A baobhan sith, arriving when a man is at his lowest, to seduce you and then feed.”
Rory looks back up at the woman’s face and sees that her sharp features have bloomed. Still gentle, yet an illusory mask has vanished. Her beauty is not of this world, truly. It weighs on him, crushes him; an ethereal peine forte et dure as one from Gaul might say. Though pressed to the floor, he cannot look away. He sees the pain that has captured her, and can trace each wound back to his own hands.
“Yet YOU seduced ME, Rory.”
His eyes lock on hers. His strength is slipping.
“Your innocence, your honeyed words, your embrace…they were more than I could resist.”
Rory feels his loneliness and shame intertwine, becoming infinite: Waiting for the final blow.
“I could have stayed with you as Coco forever, Rory Stewart. I think I–” Cotrìona blinks some tears away, “I loved you. Somehow, for the first time, I felt actual love.”
The final blow.
Her visage hardens: “And then you took it away, Son of Stewart. And that is unforgivable.” She lifts the bauble to her face once more and enjoys the picturesque scene: a weathered barn, some looming pines, a wagon full of feedbags, and a tiny blue bomber jacket laying under a pile of fake snow.
She places the snowglobe back on her mantel and listens to the Seelie pipes sing once more.