Ill-humoured, Danny awoke. Not to a cold dawn dodging the misty drizzle and ghost-lighting the tent's shabby interior, nor yet an obdurate lump of Grampian rock digging into his shoulder through a leaky air mattress.
No, Danny awoke from a dream. He'd had a Highland wildcat by the tail; its body squeezed under one arm and the forepaws clawing the air at his back. He managed to grip the back legs together, but the bushy ginger tail still lashed his face. He'd snapped at it, gotten a mouthful and bit down. The cat was screaming its outrage to the skies.
Danny awoke to the pipes.
Hung-over and unhandsome, he stuck a tousled, black-haired head out of the tent and tried to make out the time by cloud-diffused moonlight.
Stopped again, you idle bugger. The cheap watch and his clapped-out bike didn't always vibrate in harmony, but for sure it was the small hours. Hey, his sleep-fuddled head registered, this is the middle of non-accessible nowhere. Only a horse or an all-terrain vehicle could make it up here, and I'd have heard another motorbike. Danny wasn't in the mood for any company that wasn't nubile and quiet.
The skirl continued with feline enthusiasm as he resentfully unpeeled himself from the sleeping bag and shivered into cold leathers. Danny wasn't exactly a paid-up member of the White Heather Club; the pipes tended to make him leak at both ends, and one bladder was calling to another.
Straining the last of Younger's No.3 ale on to the heather, he tried to place the source and tune. It was an eldritch lament; fine music to piss by, but not exactly comforting in the dark of a misty moist morning.
At least it's better than yobbos cranking up their blaster in a four by four, he grumbled to himself. And this selfish bastard can really press the haggis. Danny pulled on boots and grabbed his flashlight. The music lilted up from the sea-loch as he pressed on through gorse and heather towards its source.
Merged with a wind-blasted rowan, the outline of a piper stood hard by the water. It's not easy to hear someone coming with the drones in your ear, and Danny held off the light for surprise sake. His initial inclination to bodily harm was being replaced with wonder. He'd never heard such piping, nor such a refrain. Sadness, defiance, pride and pain ripped the air and tore at his heart. It was like the pipes themselves were bleeding and, true to form, Danny felt his eyes misting up with more than dew.
He went closer, and then froze. What he'd thought was a branch moved with the piper's head as the man shifted to a different air. The man was wearing anglers and some kind of rough fur was draped over his shoulders. Talk about into the part! The skirl sank to a drone as Danny's beam stabbed out and pit-lighted its player, who turned slowly to the source.
“Jeezy Peeps!” Danny's flashlight was no megawatt, but he didn't need broad daylight to see more than enough of that face. Like some Dr. Moreau reject on a full moon, a feral inhumanity stared unblinkingly back. Eyes reflected redly like a deer caught in his bike's headlight. It wasn't a deer, and it wasn't just some nutter in a stag's hide afrighting innocent campers. Dan had ridden up here because of the ghost stories; half for defiance, half dare. Big mistake!
The piper let his chanter slip from a muzzle full of teeth. “Woke you up, did I, Danny boy?” he asked brightly. “I hope you're to the fancy of company this fine night.”
Danny gasped and stumbled backwards, then a disturbance in the water made him re-direct the beam. He wished he hadn't.
He swung the light back, wishing it was an iron bar. The pipes stayed tucked under the stag-man's arm, but with the other he swept off his headpiece and fur cloak.Danny released fear-frozen breath and cursed his superstitious eyes; for a minute he'd actually believed it was bloody Cernunnos and the Selkies. He must have been getting too deep into all that folklore about horned deities and were-beasts.
“Hey,” he near shouted from sheer relief. “You're all winding me up, right?”
“That is what you do with a stopped watch,” replied a woman's liquid voice. It was one of the seals. She pulled the peculiar wet-suit's hood and goggles over her head and down to her waist. It was all she had on.
Danny switched off his feeble beam in embarrassment, however the full moon chose that moment to shake off its veil of clouds. More suits were shed and laid out on the heather like leathers at a club skinny-dip. Not a stitch of clothing nor a scrap of modesty between the half-dozen men and women. The piper too had stepped naked from his deerskin and raised the pipes again.
“Will you tread a measure with us?” he asked like it was a church social.
That'll be right, thought Danny, shaking his head in disbelief. Dancing at this hour with a bunch of buck-naked loonies. Then it hit him. Full moon, sky-clad, a horned piper… It has to be a skin-divers' coven of pretend warlocks and witches. No wonder the superstitious locals never came up here. Privacy assure, smart move.
The pipes skirled up, and they danced. Yet not strathspeys or reels–more like a eurhythmic interpretation a la Isodora Duncan. God, but they're limber, he thought, edging away. Not a cross-hoofed galoot like me amongst them.
Something snagged his boot heel, a discarded wet-suit. Now the swimmers were lost in dance, he could afford a closer look.
“Ugh!” Danny dropped the heavy skin, for skin it was, still warm and fleshy as if just cut with a sealer's knife. His mind raced. You can dirl the pipes wearing a fresh-flayed hide, he reasoned, but you can't swim across a loch in one. He wiped the oily mucous off on his leathers in disgust; it stunk of fish guts and sea-wrack. He looked around; it was like walking through a seal hunt, pelts and blood-streaked blubber. This was real, too fuckin' real.
A broil of dark clouds was edging over the moon again. Danny backed away in the direction of an outcropping of stone as carefully as his shaking legs would carry him. He made it there without being observed and slid into their shadows with a sigh of relief–it was short-lived.
Something scuttled in the dark. “Don't touch me,” quavered a girl's voice.
“Weesht, woman,” he hissed, with a backwards glance into the shadows. “You'll have them on us. I'm not any Selkie.”
“Liar,” she accused, tears choking her voice. “I can smell you from here and the moon is shining off your skin.”
Danny removed his jacket and held it out. “No, I got some of their slime on my leathers. Look.”
A pale face surfaced in the gloom and a hand stole out to touch the studs and zipper.
“Hey!” She'd grabbed hold and tugged it from his grasp.
“Please,” the voice pleaded, “I'm so cold. I was swimming, then they… ” She trailed off.
Instinctively, Danny moved closer. Poor kid must be petrified, he thought, forgetting his own fear. One of those popping up in the dark would sure scare the bikini off you.
An errant moonbeam confirmed her distinct lack of costume save for his road-scarred jacket. Modesty was taking a back seat to curiosity, and a pert little bum rivaled Luna as the girl peered between stones at the dancers.
“What are they?” she whispered in awe.
“Selkies, I reckon,” Danny replied, more to reassure her than show-off. “Man-seals. Lotsa folk tales, locals still believe in 'em. I think they're harmless apart from…“ His attempt to spare her details of their amorous reputation went south as the music picked up and the dancers partnered with clear lascivious intent. He'd thought them limber at the dance, yet that was obviously only the warm-up. Sex-magic! Old as Adam and powerful strong.
Burns's “Tam O'Shanter” stared with no less bewitchment than Danny, but his eyes kept straying to that far-closer luminous little bottom unconsciously picking up a slow grind to the seductive rhythm and choreographed pairings.
Steady the buffs, he cautioned himself, but some things aren't so easy to ignore. “Er… how come you're out here all alone?” he whispered to distract himself.
“I was with my dad,” she murmured dreamily. “But I gave him the slip.” Her hand fumbled out behind and pulled at his belt, not for a moment turning from the free sex-show. “Hold me, I'm feeling all funny.”
“H… have you ever seen the like?” she husked, rotating her hips. He could feel the moist heat right through his leather fly.
Seen it, done it–fuck it, Danny decided, his fingers tearing at buckle and zip. Real or dream, it isn't everyday you ge… “Oh!”
She arched her back and pressed him into her wetness. His hands found tight-nippled breasts beneath the jacket as the music pounded in his blood. It all but drowned the voice of reason that wanted to ask her name, age, and whether her dad might pop up with a Purdee full of deer shot.
“Where's…” he gasped between thrusts, “… your… dad?”
“It's… okay,” she grunted, forcing him deeper. “He's too busy… he's the… piper.”
“What!” Danny jerked away as if a blued steel gun barrel had suddenly slid up his arse. He staggered back, encumbered by the leather pants around his ankles, and grabbed at a stone for support. Instead his hand found hair; a doe skin, of course.
He threw it at her, his desire transmuted to outrage.
“Here, you rotten bloody changeling. Gimme my jacket back.”
Then he noticed the music had stopped.
She turned to regard him with hard, unearthly eyes. “When you fuck with the Fey,” she snapped, “We tell you when to stop.”
Danny looked about him. The Selkies had ceased their cavorts, and come up to gather round the stones in silence. The horned piper strode towards them through the heather.
“So,” the seal-woman hissed. “You list to the music, spy on our revels, then would offer scorn in exchange?”Growls of assent surrounded Danny. He was caught at bay with his pants down.
“… and take your will of my daughter.” Moonlight gleamed off sharp points as the piper shook his head.
“Hang on a bit,” Danny expostulated. “You woke me out of a sounder, and I was trying to sneak outta here when she stuck a bare arse in my face. As to having my wicked way–I didn't even come.”
“I didn't mean to tell him, father,” the girl sniffed. “It just sort of slipped out.”
“Ach!” He threw down his pipes, and they squealed in sympathy.
A chorus of groans issued from the Selkies. “All that performance for nothing,” the seal-woman complained. “Mortals today are scarce worth the effort.” She looked down her nose at the sniveling girl. “I mind none left my bed with their seed.”
Danny was thinking fast. Mortals studding for the Fey? He shuddered. Maybe Kelpies and their ilk are like mules–an interspecies cursed with sterility. The realization that it wasn't his blood they were after might have had something to do with it, but Danny suddenly felt a wave of unexpected sympathy for the blubbering girl. It was hard to blame a woman for wanting children, especially such a young, pretty one. He dug into his pocket and offered an oil-stained hanky.
“Wasn't your fault,” he consoled. “Truth often pops out on the pillow.” Danny turned to face them. “And don't you go blaming her, you lot got plenty to learn about courting and foreplay–we've been evolving, you know.”
It seemed the antlers slumped a little, and the stag-man spoke more softly. “It's long we live, but longer since I've heard the patter of little hooves.”
No wonder, thought Danny. This is about the last place horny young bucks would come looking for action.
“But why me?” he demanded. “I'm just a nomad biker with no real prospects.”
The antlers shook sadly. “Ach, she saw you riding up. The snarl of the bike and the setting sun on your leathers.” He shrugged. “Even the fair folk know not women's fancy.”
The others were slipping off to the loch, and he picked up his sighing pipes. “She took you for a wild rider, like centaurs reborn. I told her you were but a paddler in the shallows of freedom.”
“Aye,” the Selkie woman said scornfully over her shoulder. “It's a wonder he could even get his sporran wet.”
The stag-man turned his pipes outside-in with a gesture of irritation, and a very Wildcat leapt hissing into the dark. “Come away, daughter, he'd sooner while his meager life away in the dole queue than split the blooming heather at your side for eternity.”
Danny stiffened. It was the look she gave him before turning to don her hide. He'd always heard the Fey couldn't cry.
“Izzat a fact…”
“Now there's something you don't often see,” the pilot shouted over the rotor's din.
The police observer picked up his binoculars. “We're meant to be looking for that missing camper, not bloody deer,” he grumbled.
The rescue helicopter banked over, then hovered close to the small herd.
“Oh, you mean that jet-black buck?” The observer steadied himself, and adjusted the lens. “Must be a mutation. Well, it's either deaf or not scared of loud engines.”
No, he thought, focusing on the six-point head. Not scared of anything.
“What's that flecked silver blaze down its chest?” asked the pilot. “Damn thing almost looks like a zipper.”
His observer didn't reply. It looked ridiculously like a zipper.
The stag snorted, turned its head, and spat in a surprisingly human gesture of dismissal. The mouth writhed in a distinctly un-deer like fashion–especially if you were trained in lip-reading. The observer let his binoculars dangle, and watched the stag trot away to a nervously waiting doe.
“Want to bet we never find that biker?” he asked quietly.
