The expression at present was somewhere between these two extremes, but shifted suddenly toward the latter as his attention focused on the open doors behind her, and the terrace beyond.

She glanced over her shoulder, startled. Someone was there; she saw the edge of his—or her—shadow, but the person who threw it was keeping out of sight. Whoever it was began to whistle, a tentative, breathy sound.

For an instant, everything was normal. Then the world shifted. The intruder was whistling “Yellow Submarine.”

All the blood rushed from her head, and she swayed, grabbing the edge of an occasional table to keep from falling. Dimly, she sensed Ian rising like a cat from his stool, seizing one of her palette knives, and sliding noiselessly out of the room into the hallway.

Her hands had gone cold and numb; so had her lips. She tried to whistle a phrase in reply, but nothing but a little air emerged. Straightening up, she took hold of herself, and sang the last few words instead. She could barely manage the tune, but there was no doubt of the words.

Dead silence from the terrace; the whistling had stopped.

“Who are you?” she said clearly. “Come in.”

The shadow lengthened slowly, showing a head like a lion’s, light shining through the curls, glowing on the terrace stones. The head itself poked cautiously into sight around the corner of the door. It was an Indian, she saw, with astonishment, though his dress was mostly European—and ragged—bar a wampum necklet. He was lean and dirty, with close-set eyes, which were fixed on her with eagerness and something like avidity.

“You alone, man?” he asked, in a hoarse whisper. “Thought I heard voices.”

“You can see I am. Who on earth are you?”

“Ah … Wendigo. Wendigo Donner. Your name’s Fraser, right?” He had edged all the way into the room now, though still glancing warily from side to side.

“My maiden name, yes. Are you—” She stopped, not sure how to ask.

“Yeah,” he said softly, looking her up and down in a casual way that no man of the eighteenth century would have employed to a lady. “So are you, aren’t you? You’re her daughter, you have to be.” He spoke with a certain intensity, moving closer.

She didn’t think he meant her harm; he was just very interested. Ian didn’t wait to see, though; there was a brief darkening of the light from the door, and then he had Donner from behind, the Indian’s squawk of alarm choked off by the arm across his throat, the point of the palette knife jabbing him under the ear.

“Who are ye, arsebite, and what d’ye want?” Ian demanded, tightening the arm across Donner’s throat. The Indian’s eyes bulged, and he made small mewling noises.

“How do you expect him to answer you, if you’re choking him?” This appeal to reason caused Ian to relax his grip, albeit reluctantly. Donner coughed, rubbing his throat ostentatiously, and shot Ian a resentful look.

“No need for that, man, I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ to her.” Donner’s eyes went from her to Ian and back. He jerked his head toward Ian. “Is he … ?”

“No, but he knows. Sit down. You met my mother when she—when she was kidnapped, didn’t you?”

Ian’s feathery brows shot up at this, and he took a firmer grip on the palette knife, which was flexible but had a definite point.

“Yeah.” Donner lowered himself gingerly onto the stool, keeping a wary eye on Ian. “Man, they nearly got me. Your mother, she told me her old man was gnarly and I didn’t want to be there when he showed up, but I didn’t believe her. Almost, I didn’t. But when I heard those drums, man, I bugged out, and a damn good thing I did, too.” He swallowed, looking pale. “I went back, in the morning. Jeez, man.”

Ian said something under his breath, in what Brianna thought was Mohawk. It sounded unfriendly in the extreme, and Donner evidently discerned enough of the meaning to make him scoot his stool a little farther away, hunching his shoulders.

“Hey, man, I didn’t do nothin’ to her, okay?” He looked pleadingly at Brianna. “I didn’t! I was gonna help her get away—ask her, she’ll tell you! Only Fraser and his guys showed up before I could. Christ, why would I hurt her? She’s the first one I found back here—I needed her!”

“The first one?” Ian said, frowning. “The first—”

“The first … traveler, he means,” Brianna said. Her heart was beating fast. “What did you need her for?”

“To tell me how to get—back.” He swallowed again, his hand going to the wampum ornament around his neck. “You—did you come through, or were you born here? I’m figuring you came through,” he added, not waiting for an answer. “They don’t grow ’em as big as you now. Little bitty girls. Me, I like a big woman.” He smiled, in what he plainly intended to be an ingratiating manner.

“I came,” Brianna said shortly. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Trying to get close enough to talk to your mother.” He glanced uneasily over his shoulder; there were slaves in the kitchen garden, their voices audible. “I hid out with the Cherokee for a while, then I figured to come down and talk to her at Fraser’s Ridge when it was safe, but the old lady there told me you were all down here. Heck of a long way to walk,” he added, looking vaguely resentful.

“But then that big black dude ran me off twice, when I tried to get in before. Guess I didn’t meet the dress code.” His face flickered, not quite managing a smile.

“I been sneaking around for the last three days, trying to catch a glimpse of her, find her alone outside. But I saw her talking to you, out on the terrace, and heard you call her Mama. Seeing how big you are, I figured you must be … well, I figured if you didn’t pick up on the song, no harm done, huh?”

“So ye want to go back where ye came from, do ye?” Ian asked. Plainly he thought this was an excellent idea.

“Oh, yeah,” Donner said fervently. “Oh, yeah!”

“Where did you come through?” Brianna asked. The shock of his appearance was fading, subsumed by curiosity. “In Scotland?”

“No, is that where you did it?” he asked eagerly. Scarcely waiting for her nod, he went on. “Your mother said she came and then went back and came again. Can you-all go back and forth, like, you know, a revolving door?”

Brianna shook her head violently, shuddering in recollection.

“God, no. It’s horrible, and it’s so dangerous, even with a gemstone.”

“Gemstone?” He pounced on that. “You gotta have a gemstone to do it?”

“Not absolutely, but it seems to be some protection. And it may be that there’s some way to use gemstones to—to steer, sort of, but we don’t really know about that.” She hesitated, wanting to ask more questions, but wanting still more to fetch Claire. “Ian—could you go get Mama? I think she’s in the kitchen garden with Phaedre.”

Her cousin gave the visitor a flat, narrow look, and shook his head.

“I’ll not leave ye alone wi’ this fellow. You go; I’ll watch him.”

She would have argued, but long experience with Scottish males had taught her to recognize intractable stubbornness when she saw it. Besides, Donner’s eyes were fixed on her in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable—he was looking at her hand, she realized, at the cabochon ruby in her ring. She was reasonably sure she could fight him off, if necessary, but still …

“I’ll be right back,” she said, hastily stabbing a neglected brush into the pot of turps. “Don’t go anywhere!”



I WAS SHOCKED, but less so than I might have been. I had felt that Donner was alive. Hoped he was, in spite of everything. Still, seeing him face to face, sitting in Jocasta’s morning room, struck me dumb. He was talking when I came in, but stopped when he saw me. He didn’t stand up, naturally, nor yet offer any observations on my survival; just nodded at me, and resumed what he’d been saying.

“To stop whitey. Save our lands, save our people.”

“But you came to the wrong time,” Brianna pointed out. “You were too late.”