Chapter 3: The Price of a Secret

Chapter 3: The Price of a Secret

My brain felt like a shaken snow globe, with jagged thoughts of Fae Courts, Soul-Eaters, and cosmic keys swirling in a chaotic blizzard. I stumbled out of Alistair's antique shop, the dissonant jangle of the bell echoing the alarm bells screaming in my head. Fiona walked beside me, her usual bright chatter replaced by a tense, protective silence. The world I had walked out into was the same Edinburgh I knew, but it was all a lie. The familiar grey stone of the tenements now seemed to hide monstrous secrets, and the shadows in the closes felt deeper, hungrier.

My desire, my all-consuming, desperate need, was to rewind the last twenty-four hours. I wanted to be back on my tour, making bad jokes to bored tourists. I wanted my biggest problem to be a looming gas bill, not being the magical equivalent of a car key for a dimension-hopping psychopath.

"It's a joke, right?" I said, the words coming out as a harsh croak. "He's just a crazy old man. You're both having me on. This is an elaborate prank to get back at me for mocking your tea."

Fiona stopped, placing a hand on my arm. Her expression was painfully earnest. "Dan, I wish it were. But my gran... she told me stories. Not fairy tales, warnings. About staying on the path, about not attracting the wrong kind of attention. You haven't just attracted it; you've got a bloody neon sign pointed at you."

Her sincerity was a cold slap. This was real. The Bodach Glas was real. The murder was real. I was a marked man. The sheer, overwhelming absurdity of it all threatened to swallow me whole. A comedian from Leith, hunted by goblins. It was a terrible premise for a sketch.

Fiona walked me to the end of her street, insisting I take a taxi the rest of the way. "Stay in the light, Dan," she warned, her voice tight with worry. "Don't take shortcuts."

But the stubborn, cynical part of me, the part that refused to be scared of things that shouldn't exist, rebelled. I was not going to let some geriatric occultist and a few ghost stories turn me into a gibbering wreck. I waved off a taxi and decided to walk, defiantly taking my usual shortcut through the winding closes that connected the Cowgate to the Bridges. It was an act of pathetic, stupid bravado.

The shortcut was a narrow, stone-walled canyon, perpetually damp and smelling of stale beer and regret. The sounds of the city muted, replaced by the drip of water and the scuttling of unseen things. The prickling sensation of being watched returned, tenfold. I picked up my pace, my heart beginning to hammer a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

A skittering sound echoed from the alley behind me. Not a rat. It was the scrape of metal on stone.

I glanced over my shoulder. Three figures had emerged from the shadows I’d just passed. They were small, no bigger than children, but moved with a wiry, unnatural speed. They wore ragged clothes and thick, iron-soled boots. On their heads were filthy, conical red caps, the colour of dried blood.

Redcaps. The name surfaced from Alistair's lecture, slick with dread.

One of them grinned, revealing a maw of needle-sharp teeth. It held up a rusty, hook-bladed sickle. "Got a juicy one, lads," it rasped, its voice like gravel grinding in a cement mixer. "The Master'll be pleased. We'll paint our bonnets fresh tonight!"

My blood turned to ice. My pathetic act of defiance crumbled into pure, unadulterated terror. I didn't think. I just ran.

My feet slipped on the greasy cobblestones as I sprinted, the cackling laughter of the Redcaps echoing off the stone walls behind me. They were impossibly fast, their iron-shod boots striking sparks as they gained on me. I burst out of the close and onto a wider street, nearly colliding with a startled couple who swore at me before melting back into the night.

I scrambled up a steep flight of stone steps, my lungs burning, my legs screaming in protest. The chase was a nightmare tour of Edinburgh's underbelly. I dodged through bin-strewn back alleys, vaulted over low walls, and plunged into the darkened kirkyard of St. Giles, the great cathedral looming over me like a silent, stone judge.

The laughter was getting closer. A searing pain shot through my arm as one of their sickles grazed me, tearing through my jacket and drawing blood. I cried out, stumbling over a tilted gravestone and crashing to the wet grass.

I scrambled backwards, crab-walking away as they closed in, forming a semi-circle. Their eyes, like chips of obsidian, glittered with vicious glee in the dim light. They were savouring this. The one in the middle, the one with the sickle, took a slow step forward.

"Nowhere left to run, key," it hissed. "Just a wee prick, and then a long, long scream."

This was it. I was going to die in a graveyard, butchered by garden gnomes from Hell. My life wasn't flashing before my eyes. My only thought was a single, bitter regret: I never did figure out a good closing joke for my stand-up routine.

Suddenly, the lead Redcap froze. Its head cocked to the side, its foul grin faltering. The others stopped too, their bloodlust replaced by a sudden, sharp fear. They weren't looking at me anymore. They were looking past me, at the shadows by the kirkyard gate.

A figure stepped out of the darkness.

It was her. The woman from the tour. The woman with the storm-dark eyes and the impeccably tailored black coat. She stood there, an island of perfect stillness in the rain, which had started to fall again. She looked at the Redcaps not with anger or fear, but with a kind of weary, cosmic boredom, as if they were a stain on a carpet she would now be forced to clean.

"You are far from your master's leash, vermin," she said, her voice the sound of winter frost.

The lead Redcap brandished its sickle, a gesture that was more bluster than bravery. "The key is ours! The Unseelie Court commands—"

"Your court has no authority here," she interrupted. She took a single step forward, and the temperature dropped. A visible mist curled from the ground around her feet. She didn't raise her hands or chant any words. She simply looked at them, and the air grew heavy, thick with an ancient, final cold.

The Redcap with the sickle let out a choked gurgle. It dropped its weapon with a clatter. A tracery of grey frost spread across its skin, its movements becoming stiff and brittle. It opened its mouth to scream, but only a puff of white vapour escaped. In the space of three heartbeats, it turned from a living creature into a statue of grey, frozen dust. Then, with a sound like cracking ice, it crumbled into a pile of ash and a single, blood-red cap.

The other two shrieked in terror, turning to flee. Morana made a subtle, dismissive gesture with one pale hand. The shadows beneath the ancient yew trees seemed to deepen, to coalesce and leap towards them. The Redcaps were swallowed by the darkness, their screams abruptly cut off.

Silence.

The only sounds were the rain on the gravestones and the frantic, ragged rasp of my own breathing. I was still on the ground, staring at the pile of dust that had been a living creature moments before.

She walked towards me, her heels making no sound on the wet grass. She stopped a few feet away, looking down at me with those unnerving, assessing eyes. The chilling aura of power receded, but the coldness remained in her gaze.

"You," I managed to choke out, my voice barely a whisper. "You were on my tour."

"A necessary observation," she said, her voice devoid of inflection. "Get up. You're bleeding."

I staggered to my feet, clutching my arm. The world was tilting on its axis. "What... what were those things? What did you do to them?"

"They were Redcaps," she stated simply. "And I unmade them. It is what I do."

"Who are you?" I demanded, fear and confusion making my voice sharp.

She tilted her head, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes. "My name is Morana. And I am the reason you are still alive."

"Why?" I asked, the question feeling impossibly small in the face of what I had just witnessed. "Why would you help me?"

A faint, mirthless smile touched her lips, a gesture that held no warmth at all. It was the most terrifying thing I had seen all night.

"Do not mistake necessity for kindness, Dan MacLean," she said, her voice as cold and clear as a shard of ice. "My task is to maintain the balance. You are a key, as the creature said. A fulcrum upon which worlds now pivot. Your death would shatter that balance catastrophically."

She met my gaze, and I felt the full, crushing weight of her ancient existence. "I am not here to be your guardian angel. I am here to ensure a vital piece of cosmic machinery does not break. Your survival is not a gift. It is an imperative."