Grace was damn close to crying, she loved this man so much. She reached up and ran her finger down the side of his worried face. “Nothing can ever separate us now, my love. You and I are going to grow old together.”

“Have I ever told you that I love you?” he asked, his entire body suddenly relaxing as he realized he believed her.

“Aye,” she said, mimicking his brogue, which was more pronounced these days. “Several times a day, without saying a word.”

“Are we getting married or not?” Ian asked in a shout of impatience. “The sun’s not waiting, people.”

They walked back to Father Daar hand in hand, and Grace repeated her vows to Grey. And this time he looked directly at her, his evergreen eyes fierce with possession, and said the words she had been waiting eight hundred years to hear.

Then he kissed her to seal their bond.

“It’s time,” she whispered to Grey before turning to Samuel. “Mary attended my wedding, and now it’s time to give her to TarStone.”

Samuel picked up the Oreo cookie tin and traded it to Michael MacBain for Robbie. With unsteady hands, Michael pried off the lid and held it out to each of the brothers, then to each MacKeage and Grace and Grey, and even Father Daar. In turn, each of them pulled a palm full of ash from the tin and waited until everyone carried a part of Mary in his or her hand.

Michael took Robbie back in his arms and smudged a bit of ash on his son’s fingers before he took his own handful. They turned in unison, lifted their hands over their heads, and opened their fingers.

The first gentle breeze of summer carried Mary into the meadow with whimsical playfulness, scattering her over the face of TarStone Mountain, taking her home.

Grace watched the ash slowly settle in the ebb of the breeze, now scattered over the meadow like wafted snowflakes. She turned to her brothers. Every one of them had tears in his eyes and a wide grin on his face.

“Happy birthday,” she told them.

“We’re not doing this for another sixty years,” Brian said, wiping at his face with his sleeve. He pointed at her. “You damn well better take good care of yourself, little sister. Because I’m not doing this again.”

She went up and hugged the huge, powerful oil-rig worker. “I promise,” she told him.

“Happy birthday,” he muttered, hugging her back so fiercely she squeaked.

“It’s time for the pancakes,” Timmy said, failing miserably at trying to sound cheerful.

“I brought party hats,” she told them all, smiling at their groans of dismay. “I found them in the attic last month. Mom never threw anything out.”

And that was when the Sutter family taught the MacKeages, Michael MacBain, and their nephew how to celebrate birthdays. They spent the morning eating strawberry pancakes and playing touch football.

The football match became more like a weaponless war of strong-bodied and even stronger-minded men. Not one of them headed down the mountain to continue the celebration with the people of Pine Creek without sporting at least one bruise and a torn piece of clothes. Timmy had a black eye, and Paul sprained his thumb. Morgan was limping, and Ian supported his back with his hands. Callum kept tonguing the cut on his lip until it was so swollen he couldn’t speak without slurring his words. Michael didn’t have one piece of clothing without a rip in it.

And Grey? Well, Superman had managed to dodge most of the tackles her brothers had tried to land on him, but he probably wouldn’t be swinging his sword for the next couple of weeks. Big boy Brian had stepped on Grey’s right hand, apologized, and then stepped on his shoulder.

Grace had laughed until tears came to her eyes. You don’t grow up in a house with six older brothers without having learned that good-natured violence is a way of life, especially when more testosterone than blood ran in their veins.

And Grace was very glad that some things never changed. That through timeless worlds without end, modern or ancient, men would forever be men.

Epilogue

Grey bent down and kissed his wife on the cheek, then quietly lifted his daughter from her sleeping arms.

With her cradled safely in the crook of his elbow, he stared in awe at the tiny six-and-a-half-pound bundle. Barely hour-old crystal-blue eyes stared back at him as he ran his finger gently over her wrinkled pink cheek.

Carefully holding the greatest treasure a man could wish for, Grey carried his daughter over to the crowd of anxious young ladies patiently waiting by the hearth. He sat down in the chair and laid this precious new addition to his family out on his knees for them to see.

“This is Winter,” he told them. “Your new sister.”

“She’s wrinkled,” eight-year-old Heather said, carefully pulling back the blankets to see better. “And her eyes are blue, not green like ours.”

“She has your mother’s eyes.”

“She’s small,” six-year-old Sarah said through her missing front teeth.

“She’s been living in a very small place the last nine months,” he explained.

“When can we play with her?” Sarah’s twin sister, Camry, asked. Camry had only one tooth missing as yet. The other one was barely hanging on, though, wiggling back and forth when she spoke.

Grey smiled at her expectant look. “Soon. Once she’s strong enough to sit up and crawl around.”

“Can she talk, Papa?” four-year-old Chelsea asked, pushing her sisters out of the way to see better.

“Not yet,” Grey told her with a sigh of relief for that small blessing. There was plenty of nonstop chatter echoing through the halls of Gu Bràth now. “But I’m sure all of you will be teaching her that trick soon enough.”

“Can she fwim?” Chelsea’s twin sister, Megan, wanted to know, proud of her own newly acquired skill.

Grey had been forced to build an indoor pool for his daughters, who complained every autumn when the cold weather arrived and rudely put an end to their swimming for another year.

“We’ll teach her in a couple of years,” he told Megan. “And then she can join the rest of you in the high pond when you hunt for Daar’s cane.”

Three-year-old Elizabeth touched Winter’s cheek and giggled when the infant turned to root at her finger.

Grey leaned back in his chair and watched as his daughters examined and welcomed their newest sister.

Seven girls in eight years. Two set of twins. And every blessed one of the precious, exhausting darlings had been born at Gu Bràth on Winter Solstice, in the same bed where all but Heather had been conceived. Grace had insisted on that trick, much to Grey’s dismay. He had argued mightily against it, but his petitions had fallen on deaf ears. They were MacKeages, she had reminded him throughout each pregnancy. They would be born on MacKeage soil.

And they had all learned to swim at an unusually young age, also thanks to his wife’s determination.

Every summer for the last eight years, they had spent several days camped out at the high mountain meadow, when it was covered in a mantle of blooming forget-me-nots, which shouldn’t be growing at all that far up the mountain. Grace insisted it was Mary’s doing, since the flowers only grew in that one place where her ashes had been spread.

So every summer Grey had made his growing family of females a camp amongst the forget-me-nots and had taken his daughters over to the high pond where they learned to swim, appreciate nature, and hunt for Daar’s magical cane.

That was another strange thing none of them dared comment on. That pond had never frozen over with ice since the day Grey had thrown the old priest’s cherrywood staff into it.

Winter stirred on his lap, awkwardly moving her head to see the many young eyes staring back at her.

Grey’s hands warmed with a vibrant energy, reminding him of the feel of Daar’s cane when he’d held it for that brief moment before he banished it forever—he hoped—to the depths of the pond.