THE SKY WAS A FLAT, LEADEN COLOR, threatening rain, and the wind gusted through the palmettos, rattling the leaves like sabers. Down in the depths of the tidal forest, the four stones loomed beside the creek. “I am the wife of the laird of Balnain,” Brianna whispered, next to me. “The faeries have stolen me over again.” She was white to the lips, Amanda clutched close to her breast. We had made our farewells—we had been saying farewell, I thought, since the day I pressed the stethoscope to Mandy’s heart. But Brianna turned and flung herself—baby and all—at Jamie, who pressed her so tight against his heart, I thought one of them must break. Then she was flying at me, a cloud of cloak and loosened hair, and her face was cold against mine, her tears and mine mingling on my skin. “I love you, Mama! I love you!” she said in desperation, then turned and, without looking back, began to walk the pattern Donner had described, quietly chanting under her breath. A circle right, between two stones, a circle left, and back through the center—and then to the left of the largest stone. I had been expecting it; when she began to walk the pattern, I had run away from the stones, stopping at what I thought a safe distance. It wasn’t. The sound of them—a roar, this time, instead of a shriek—thundered through me, stopping my breath and nearly my heart. Pain froze in a band round my chest and I dropped to my knees, swaying and helpless. They were gone. I could see Jamie and Roger running to check—terrified of finding bodies, at once desolate and elated to find none. I couldn’t see well—my vision swam, flickering in and out—but didn’t need to. I knew they were gone, from the hole in my heart. “TWO DOWN,” Roger whispered. His voice was no more than a faint rasp, and he cleared his throat, hard. “Jeremiah.” He looked down at Jem, who blinked and sniffed, and drew himself up tall at the sound of his formal name. “Ye ken what we’re about now, aye?” Jemmy nodded, though he flicked a scared glance toward the towering stone where his mother and his baby sister had just vanished. He swallowed hard, and wiped the tears off his cheeks. “Well, then.” Roger reached out a hand and rested it gently on Jemmy’s head. “Know this, mo mac—I shall love ye all my life, and never forget ye. But this is a terrible thing we’re doing, and ye need not come with me. Ye can stay with your grandda and grannie Claire; it will be all right.” “Won’t I—won’t I see Mama again?” Jemmy’s eyes were huge, and he couldn’t keep from looking at the stone. “I don’t know,” Roger said, and I could see the tears he was fighting himself, and hear them in his thickened voice. He didn’t know whether he would ever see Brianna again himself, or baby Mandy. “Probably . . . probably not.” Jamie looked down at Jem, who was clinging to his hand, looking back and forth between father and grandfather, confusion, fright, and longing in his face. “If one day, a bhailach,” Jamie said conversationally, “ye should meet a verra large mouse named Michael—ye’ll tell him your grandsire sends his regards.” He opened his hand, then, letting go, and nodded toward Roger. Jem stood staring for a moment, then dug in his feet and sprinted toward Roger, sand spurting from under his shoes. He leaped into his father’s arms, clutching him around the neck, and with a final glance backward, Roger turned and stepped behind the stone, and the inside of my head exploded in fire. Unimaginable time later, I came slowly back, coming down from the clouds in fragments, like hailstones. And found myself lying with my head in Jamie’s lap. And heard him saying softly, to himself or to me,
