“I sometimes wonder how any of us came to be where we are, Sassenach. Don’t you?”

“I used to,” I said. “But after a time, there didn’t seem to be any possibility of an answer, so I stopped.”

He looked down at me, diverted.

“Have ye, then?” He put out a hand and tucked back a lock of windblown hair. “Perhaps I shouldna ask it, then, but I will. Do ye mind, Sassenach? That ye are here, I mean. Do ye ever wish ye were—back?”

I shook my head.

“No, not ever.”

And that was true. But I woke sometimes in the dead of night, thinking, Is now the dream? Would I wake again to the thick warm smell of central heating and Frank’s Old Spice? And when I fell asleep again to the scent of woodsmoke and the musk of Jamie’s skin, would feel a faint, surprised regret.

If he saw the thought on my face, he gave no sign of it, but bent and kissed me gently on the forehead. He took my arm, and we walked a little way into the wood, away from the house and its clearing below.

“Sometimes I smell the pines,” he said, taking a deep, slow breath of the pungent air. “And I think for an instant I am in Scotland. But then I come to myself and see; there is no kindly bracken here, nor great barren mountains—not the wildness that I kent, but only wilderness that I do not.”

I thought I heard nostalgia in his voice, but not sorrow. He’d asked, though; so would I.

“And do you ever wish to be … back?”

“Oh, aye,” he said, surprising me—and then laughed at the look on my face. “But not enough not to wish more to be here, Sassenach.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the tiny graveyard, with its small collection of cairns and crosses, with here and there a larger boulder marking a particular grave.

“Did ye ken, Sassenach, that some folk believe the last person to lie in a graveyard becomes its guardian? He must stand on guard until the next person dies and comes to take his place—only then can he rest.”

“I suppose our mysterious Ephraim might be rather surprised to find himself in such a position, when here he’d lain down under a tree all alone,” I said, smiling a little. “But I do wonder: what is the guardian of a graveyard guarding—and from whom?”

He laughed at that.

“Oh … vandals, maybe; desecraters. Or charmers.”

“Charmers?” I was surprised at that; I’d thought the word “charmer” synonymous with “healer.”

“There are charms that call for bones, Sassenach,” he said. “Or the ashes of a burnt body. Or soil from a grave.” He spoke lightly enough, but with no sense of jesting. “Aye, even the dead may need defending.”

“And who better to do it than a resident ghost?” I said. “Quite.”

We climbed up through a stand of quivering aspen, whose light dappled us with green and silver, and I paused to scrape a blob of the crimson sap from a paper-white trunk. How odd, I thought, wondering why the sight of it gave me pause—and then remembered, and turned sharply to look again at the graveyard.

Not a memory, but a dream—or a vision. A man, battered and broken, rising to his feet amid a stand of aspen, rising for what he knew was the last time, his last fight, baring shattered teeth stained with blood that was the color of the aspens’ sap. His face was painted black for death—and I knew that there were silver fillings in his teeth.

But the granite boulder stood silent and peaceful, drifted all about with yellow pine needles, marking the rest of the man who had once called himself Otter-Tooth.

The moment passed, and vanished. We walked out of the aspens, and into another clearing, this one higher than the rise the graveyard stood on.

I was surprised to see that someone had been cutting timber here, and clearing the ground. A sizable stack of felled logs lay to one side, and nearby lay a tangle of uprooted stumps, though several more, still rooted in the ground, poked through the heavy growth of wood sorrel and bluet.

“Look, Sassenach.” Jamie turned me with a hand on my elbow.

“Oh. Oh, my.”

The ground rose high enough here that we could look out over a stunning vista. The trees fell away below us, and we could see beyond our mountain, and beyond the next, and the next, into a blue distance, hazed with the breath of the mountains, clouds rising from their hollows.

“D’ye like it?” The note of proprietorial pride in his voice was palpable.

“Of course I like it. What—?” I turned, gesturing at the logs, the stumps.

“The next house will stand here, Sassenach,” he said simply.

“The next house? What, are we building another?”

“Well, I dinna ken will it be us, or maybe our children—or grandchildren,” he added, mouth curling a little. “But I thought, should anything happen—and I dinna think anything will, mind, but if it should—well, I should be happier to have made a start. Just in case.”

I stared at him for a moment, trying to make sense of this. “Should anything happen,” I said slowly, and turned to look to the east, where the shape of our house was just visible among the trees, its chimney smoke a white plume among the soft green of the chestnuts and firs. “Should it really … burn down, you mean.” Just putting the idea into words made my stomach curl up into a ball.

Then I looked at him again, and saw that the notion scared him, too. But Jamie-like, he had simply set about to take what action he could, against the day of disaster.

“D’ye like it?” he repeated, blue eyes intent. “The site, I mean. If not, I can choose another.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, feeling tears prickle at the backs of my eyes. “Just beautiful, Jamie.”



HOT AFTER THE CLIMB, we sat down in the shade of a giant hemlock, to admire our future view. And, with the silence broken concerning the dire possibility of the future, found we could discuss it.

“It’s not so much the idea of us dying,” I said. “Or not entirely. It’s that ‘no surviving children’ that gives me the whim-whams.”

“Well, I take your point, Sassenach. Though I’m no in favor of us dying, either, and I mean to see we don’t,” he assured me. “Think, though. It might not mean they’re dead. They might only … go.”

I took a deep breath, trying to accept that supposition without panic.

“Go. Go back, you mean. Roger and Bree—and Jemmy, I suppose. We’re assuming he can—can travel through the stones.”

He nodded soberly, arms clasped about his knees.

“After what he did to that opal? Aye, I think we must assume he can.” I nodded, recalling what he’d done to the opal: held it, complaining of it growing hot in his hand—until it exploded, shattering into hundreds of needle-sharp fragments. Yes, I thought we must assume he could time-travel, too. But what if Brianna had another child? It was plain to me that she and Roger wanted another—or at least that Roger did, and she was willing.

The thought of losing them was acutely painful, but I supposed the possibility had to be faced.

“Which leaves a choice, I suppose,” I said, trying to be brave and objective. “If we’re dead, they’d go, because without us, they’ve no real reason to be here. But if we’re not dead—will they go anyway? Will we send them away, I mean? Because of the war. It won’t be safe.”

“No,” he said softly. His head was bent, stray auburn hairs lifting from his crown, from the cowlicks he had bequeathed both to Bree and to Jemmy.

“I dinna ken,” he said at last, and lifted his head, looking out into the distance of land and sky. “No one does, Sassenach. We must just meet what comes as we can.”

He turned and laid his hand over mine, with a smile that had as much of pain in it as joy.

“We’ve ghosts enough between us, Sassenach. If the evils of the past canna hinder us—neither then shall any fears of the future. We must just put things behind us and get on. Aye?”

I laid a light hand on his chest, not in invitation, but only because I wanted the feel of him. His skin was cool from sweating, but he had helped dig the grave; the heat of his labor glowed in the muscle beneath.