“You can go through, pregnant. We know that much, because I did it, with you. But honey—you can’t take a baby through that…that…you can’t,” I ended, helpless. “You know what it’s like.” It had been three years since I came through the stones, but I recalled the experience vividly.
Her eyes went black as the little blood remaining in her face drained away.
“You can’t take a child through,” I repeated, trying to get myself under control, think logically. “It would be like jumping off Niagara Falls with the baby in your arms. You’ll have to go back before it’s born, or—” I broke off, making calculations.
“It’s almost November. Ships won’t make the passage between late November and March. And you can’t wait till March—that would mean making a two-month trip across the Atlantic, six or seven months pregnant. If you didn’t deliver on the ship—which would likely kill you or the baby or both—you’d still have to ride thirty miles to the circle, and then make the passage, find your way to help on the other side…Brianna, you can’t do it! You have to go now, as soon as we can manage.”
“And if I do go now—how will I make sure I end up in the right time?”
She spoke quietly, but her fingers were pleating the fabric of her skirt.
“You—I think—well, I did,” I said, my initial panic beginning to subside into rational thought.
“You had Daddy at the other end.” She glanced up at me sharply. “Whether you wanted to go to him or not, you had strong feelings for him—he would have pulled you. Or me. But he isn’t there anymore.” Her face tightened, then relaxed.
“Roger knew—knows—how,” she corrected herself. “Geillis Duncan’s book said you could use gems to travel—for protection and navigation.”
“But you and Roger are both only guessing!” I argued. “And so was bloody Geilie Duncan! You might not need either gemstones or a strong attachment. In the old fairy tales, when people go inside a fairy’s dun and then return, it’s always two hundred years. If that’s the usual pattern, then—”
“Would you risk finding out it’s not? And it’s not—Geilie Duncan went far-ther than two hundred years.”
It occurred to me, a little belatedly, that she had thought all this out herself. Nothing I was saying came as any surprise. And that meant she had also reached her own conclusion—which did not involve taking ship back to Scotland.
I rubbed a hand between my brows, making an effort to match her calmness. The mention of Geillis had called to mind another memory—though one I had tried to forget.
“There’s another way,” I said, fighting for calm. “Another passage, I mean. It’s on Haiti—they call it Hispaniola now. In the jungle, there are standing stones on a hill, but the crack, the passage, is underneath, in a cave.”
The forest air was cool, but it wasn’t the shadows that made my skin ripple into gooseflesh. I rubbed my forearms, trying to erase the chill. I would willingly have erased all memory of the cave of Abandawe as well—I’d tried—but it wasn’t a place easily forgotten.
“You’ve been there?” She leaned forward, intent.
“Yes. It’s a horrible place. But the Indies are a good deal closer than Scotland is, and ships sail between Charleston and Jamaica nearly all year.” I took a deep breath, feeling a little better. “It wouldn’t be easy to go through the jungle—but it would give you a little longer—long enough for us to find Roger.” If he could still be found, I thought, but didn’t say so. That particular fear could be dealt with later.
One of the chestnut leaves spiraled down onto Brianna’s lap, vivid yellow against the soft brown homespun, and she picked it off, smoothing the waxy surface absently with her thumb. She looked at me, blue eyes intent.
“Does this place work like the other one?”
“I don’t know how any of them work! It sounded different, a bell sound instead of a buzzing noise. But it was a passage, all right.”
“You’ve been there,” she said slowly, looking at me under her brows.
“Why? Did you want to go back? After you’d found—him?” There was still a slight hesitation in her voice; she couldn’t quite bring herself to refer to Jamie as “my father.”
“No. It was to do with Geillis Duncan. She found it.”
Brianna’s eyes sprang wide.
“She’s here?”
“No. She’s dead.”
I took a deep breath, feeling the remembered shock and tingle of an ax blow run up my arm. Sometimes I thought of her, of Geillis, when I was alone in the forest. Sometimes I thought I heard her voice behind me, and turned around swiftly, but saw no more than the hemlock branches, soughing in the wind. But now and then I felt her eyes on me, green and bright as the springtime wood.
“Quite dead,” I said firmly, and changed the subject. “How did this happen, anyway?”
There wasn’t any pretence of not knowing what I was talking about. She gave me a straight look, one eyebrow raised.
“You’re the doctor. How many ways are there?”
I gave her back the look, with interest.
“Didn’t you even think of taking any precautions?”
She glowered, thick brows drawn down.
“I wasn’t planning to have sex here!”
I clutched my head, digging my fingers into my scalp in exasperation.
“You think people plan it? Good God, how many times did I come to that school of yours and give talks about—”
“All the time! Every year! My mother the sex encyclopedia! Do you have any idea how mortifying it is to have your own mother standing up in front of everybody, drawing pictures of penises?”
Her face went the color of the scarlet maples, flushed with the memory.
“I must not have done it all that well,” I said tartly, “since you seem not to have recognized one when you saw it.”
Her face jerked toward me, blood in her eye, but then relaxed when she saw that I was joking—or trying to.
“Right,” she said. “Well, they look different in 3-D.”
Taken unawares, I laughed. After a moment’s hesitation, she joined me, a hesitant giggle.
“You know what I mean. I gave you that prescription before I left.”
She looked down her long, straight nose at me.
“Yes, and I was never so shocked in my life! You thought I’d run right out and have sex with everybody in sight the minute you left?”
“You’re implying that it was only my presence stopping you?” The corner of her wide mouth twitched.
“Well, not only that,” she conceded. “But you had something to do with it, you and Daddy. I mean, I—I wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint you.” The twitch had turned to a quiver in an instant, and I hugged her hard, her smooth bright hair against my cheek.
“You couldn’t, baby,” I murmured, rocking her slightly. “We’d never be disappointed in you, never.”
I felt both tension and worry ebb as I held her. Finally, she took a deep breath and let go of me.
“Maybe not you or Daddy,” she said. “But what about—?” She tilted her head toward the now invisible house.