Worldbuilding Blogfest: Excerpt!

This is Part 5 of Sharon Bayliss' Worldbuilding Blogfest. 
For the sake of this blogfest, we'll follow the Forgotten Gods series for the first two books, which are set in Scotland and England. The third book (tentatively, out next winter) catches up with the British holdings in the Americas. The series is an 'Alien Space Bats' style alternate history/historical fantasy, so in many ways, it's our world as it was... except that the Book of Invasions (and the Ulster Cycle, etc) is an accurate account of the early history of the islands rather than a compendium of Celtic myth. 
The following is taken from Book Two of the series, The Devil and the Excise-Man . One of the viewpoint characters, Max Thorley, is a Treasury and Excise worker in London who has recently been diagnosed as insane after reporting his sightings of extraordinary non-human creatures in the streets of London. Help has just arrived in the form of a new doctor, who offers an unexpected diagnosis.
(Click through for the excerpt).



Once they were settled, Max sent for tea. The well-worn routine — accompanied by the knowledge that his brother had left at least one set of nice china alone — was deeply comforting. “Now that we are both more comfortable, could you at last explain what precisely is wrong with me?” Dr. Campbell paused again, his brow furrowed, as though struggling for words. “The Scottish analogues of what you southerners call Faeries are very different from the English conception of the word. Let us say that the Jacobites’ new allies are beings not like your Faeries. Do you follow?”“Since your time is running short, let us say for now that I do.”“Now, for all that I have said before, the stories concerning these Scottish Faeries are stories of our history. Your…fairy tales… are teaching lessons to children: do not stray from home at night, do not accept gifts from strange men, and so forth. Ours are stories about the oldest inhabitants of these the British Isles, predating even Agricola’s Caledonii and their kin.“Now of course the notion of these men being ultimately magical in nature should to shock rational men. I am a physician, a man of reason and natural philosophy. To me, the more fantastical nature of these creatures is simply some kind of natural force we cannot yet understand. But their ‘magic’ – I think that is the best word in your language–is very real. Our armies have seen it, I have seen it, and now you too have seen it.”“But you were speaking of the new rebel regiments. I have never been near the lines of battle in this war, and I have seen no magic soldiers.”“Indeed. But the creatures you have seen are of a kind with those soldiers.” “More Faeries, you mean?”“As you would understand it.” Dr. Campbell looked so earnest that Max almost wanted to believe him.“And are these also people that were here before the Greeks began to write things down? They seem very…not people like.”Dr. Campbell smiled slightly. “No. They are nothing like people.”“Assuming that I believe all this, and I am not saying that I do, why is it that I can see them but others cannot? I remember stories of Faeries being able to turn themselves invisible, but only a sorcerer or witch of some kind should be able to see through such a glamour?”“A good Scottish word at last! Or something close to one. But I am glad for how quickly you grasped my next point. Yes, they are hiding themselves from human eyes, but you sell your own quality for too little. You do have the ability to see through their magic. It is your birthright. You were born with an…an extra vision. The Second Sight, we call it. One that lets your eyes pierce through the illusions of the world around us and see things for what they are. Its simplest application lets you see what magic would make unseen.”“So I was born with a magic of my own?”“Not like the magic of these Faeries, no. But I suppose if we are going to keep using that word, it ought to apply to the Sight as well. Not that I would ever describe it as such.”Max felt his frustration rising. “And that makes me what then, some sort of witch? I have made no bargains with foul powers, and yet I am to be cursed with vile magics all the same?”“Why do you to think your Sight an evil thing? It is a part of you, neither good nor evil in itself but only in how it is used. You do not curse yourself for being born with hands or a tongue.”“I don’t think that the Lord has quite the same thing to say on the use of tongues as he does on magic. All men are born with hands, but what infernal creature would have to claim my soul for me to have this Sight of which you speak?”“Infernal creature? No. Are we not told that some men are given ‘the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits…But all these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit.’”“First Corinthians?”“You know it then?” “I always thought it was more of a metaphor. But yes, ‘the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.’” “Forgive me, but I did think you such a scholar of the Holy Bible.”Max folded his arms defensively. “I had a good teacher. A teacher who would admonish me to never accept such a simple answer to such a deep theological quandary.”“Perhaps not, but you would at least admit that it leaves the possibility that you are only doing God’s work in using your Sight.” “If I believed in such a thing, which I have yet to admit that I do. But I have no evidence that you are telling anything other than a Scotch children’s story. Besides, how is it that you know so much about this Sight of mine?” “I thought that that should be obvious, Mr. Thorley. I know so much about it because I have it too.”Max’s frustration, which he had been holding back since Dr. Campbell started in on his nonsense, boiled over. “Of course you do,” he snapped. “I am sure all you Scotch go about seeing visions of Faeries when you are not turning into wolves or stealing the souls of lost Englishmen. You will have to do better than that, doctor.”