Mythology Abroad Read Free

especially anxious to see the standing stones at Callanish. It’s supposed to be Scotland’s answer to Stonehenge—you know, really magical.”
    No response. “The Hebrides are so far distant from everything, that they haven’t been spoiled by development yet. The syllabus said there are five dig sites currently under investigation, though we won’t know which one we work on until we get there. I’ve got lots of books with me about the area, and the local legends. Of course, all of them are about half read. But I expect to have them all finished by the time I go home. We travel to the islands by ferryboat, you know, same as when we leave for Ireland. No more flying.”
    Holl, made more comfortable by food, and the fact that night had fallen, obscuring the view from 37,000 feet up over open water, shook his head wryly. If he couldn’t trust Keith Doyle, whom could he trust? Besides, he needed the boy’s help. “You’ve worn me out, widdy. I’ll confess. I’ve been through a trauma the likes of which I never want to repeat in my lifetime. It’s well that you’ve provided an opportunity for me to remove myself from the situation for a while. I just asked the Master for permission to marry his daughter, and you can imagine what that was like.”
    “Holy cow!” exclaimed Keith, sympathetically regarding Holl. “You’ve still got all your hide, though. I take it he said yes? Congratulations! When’s the wedding?”
    “ Maura still has yet to be asked, foolish one. But that’s not all we discussed, hence my departure with you to discover our original home.” Holl sighed. More and more in the recent past, he and the Master had butted heads over issues, and Holl had come in second each time. Experience and logic won over youthful energy and good intentions over and over again. “There’s the welfare of the other Folk to be considered. Did you know there hasn’t been a wedding since we came to Midwestern, more than four decades gone?”
    “Really? Wow! So you’ll be the first. Great. When are you going to ask her? Can I come to the wedding?”
    “ If. If I can. There’s something I need to find before I do.”
    “In Ireland? What? The Ring of Kerry? A four-leaf clover?” Keith laughed.
    Holl glowered. “Your interminable questions, Keith Doyle! I almost wish I’d not told you. We’ve always had the custom that a wedding couple wears white bellflowers. No one has married since we came to Midwestern. We’ll be the first in a string of decades. It sounds squashy and sentimental when I think about it, but there you are. But no white bellflowers survive among our plants. My mother’s sister was in charge of propagating of all the seeds our folk would need, but that one slipped by, whether dying off infertile or simply being left behind in the old place, she can’t say, it’s been that long. Many of the kernels and seeds she’s preserved have never been grown, since the bottom of the library building is no fit place for them. And there’s been no need for the flower in all this time, so it wasn’t missed.”
    “That vital to the process, eh?” Keith asked.
    “We’ve never done without it. They’re imbued with a charm of joining, among a host of other useful natural properties, good for healing wounds or curing the tongue-tied.”
    “Yes,” Keith nodded solemnly. “I can see where you’d want to be holding one of those before you propose.”
    Holl ignored the jibe. “Of course, this is all before my time. I’ve not witnessed a wedding myself. But I have a feeling that many of my generation have only been waiting to pick white bellflowers to ask their loved ones to marry.”
    “And the Master made it one of the conditions of his approval, didn’t he?” Keith asked shrewdly, and was rewarded by an expression of summing respect on his companion’s face. “Well, you did say it was for the welfare of everyone else, too. What do they look like? There’s a lot of different kinds of