“I’m … okay,” she managed, and with that assurance, Jem charged across the clearing, calling back, “I’ll get her, Mam!”

She gulped air and tried to shriek after him, but made only a wheezing croak. The sound of feet made her glance fearfully round, but it was only Lionel, who’d run to the edge of the circle, peering down the hillside. In the distance, she could hear car doors slamming. Doors. More than one …

She staggered to her feet; she’d fallen on the bag and bruised her ribs, but that didn’t matter. She limped toward the cleft stone, pausing only to scoop up Esmeralda by reflex. God, God, God … was the only thought in her head, an agony of unworded prayer.

And suddenly the prayer was answered. Both of them stood in front of her, swaying and white-faced. Mandy threw up; Jem sat down hard on his bottom and slumped there, wavering.

“Oh, God …” She ran to them, grabbed them hard against her in spite of the nastiness. Jem clung to her a moment, but then pushed himself away.

“Mam,” he said, and his voice was breathless with joy. “Mam, he’s there. We could feel him. We can find him—we gotta go, Mam!”

“You do.” It was Lionel back, breathless and scared, tugging at Brianna’s cloak, trying to straighten it for her. “They’re coming—three of them.”

“Yes, I—” But then realization struck her, and she turned to the children in panic. “Jem, Mandy … your stones—where are they?”

“Burned up,” Mandy said solemnly, and spat into the grass. “Puh-toody! Yuck.” She wiped her mouth.

“What do you mean—”

“Yeah, they are, Mam. See?” Jem turned out the pocket of his breeches, showing her the burnt spot and the smear of carbon black around it, smelling strongly of scorched wool.

Frantic, she fumbled at Mandy’s clothes, finding the same scorch mark on the side of her skirt, where the vaporized stone had burned through from her pocket.

“Did it burn you, honey?” she asked, running a hand down Mandy’s sturdy little thigh.

“Not much,” Mandy reassured her.

“Brianna! For God’s sake—I can’t—”

“I can’t!” she shouted, rounding on him, fists clenched. “The kids’ stones are gone! They can’t—they can’t go through without them!” She didn’t know for sure that this was true, but the thought of letting them try to go into that … that … without the protection of a stone shriveled her stomach, and she nearly wept with fright and exasperation.

“Stones,” he repeated, looking blank. “Jewels, do you mean? Gemstones?”

“Yes!”

He stood for an instant with his mouth open, then fell to his knees, yanking at his left hand, and the next instant was whacking his right hand feverishly against a rock that lay half sunk in the grass.

Bree stared at him helplessly for a moment, then ran to the edge of the circle, ducked round a stone, and stood flat against it in the shadow, looking out. By peering sideways, she could just see human forms, halfway up the hill and moving fast.

On the other side of the stone, Menzies gave a grunt of pain or frustration and smacked something hard against the rock, with a small cracking noise.

“Brianna!” he called, urgent, and she rushed back, afraid the children were trying to go through—but it was all right; they were standing in front of Lionel Menzies, who was stooping over Mandy, holding one of her hands.

“Curl up your fist, wee lassie,” he said, almost gently. “Aye, that’s it. And, Jem—here, put out your hand.” Brianna was close enough now to see that it was a small glittering thing he put in Jem’s palm—and that Mandy’s fist was curled around a large ring, rather battered, with a Masonic emblem carved into its onyx—and the twin of Jem’s small diamond winking beside it, an empty socket on the other side.

“Lionel,” she said, and he reached out and touched her cheek.

“Go now,” he said. “I can’t leave until ye go. Once you’re gone, though, I’ll run for it.”

She nodded jerkily, once, then stooped and took the children’s hands. “Jem—put that in your other pocket, okay?” She gulped air and turned toward the big cleft stone. The racket of it hammered at her blood and she could feel it pulling, trying to take her apart.

“Mandy,” she said, and could barely hear her own voice. “Let’s find Daddy. Don’t let go.”

It was only as the screaming began that she realized she’d not said “Thank you,” and then she thought no more.



THE BURYING GROUND

SHE LOVED LALLYBROCH in winter. The gorse and broom and heather didn’t seem to die so much as simply to fade back into the landscape, the purple heather fading to a soft brown shadow of itself and the broom to a cluster of dry sticks, their long flat pods rattling softly in the wind. Today the air was cold and still, and the soft gray smoke from the chimneys rose straight up to touch the lowering sky.

“Home, we’re home!” Mandy said, hopping up and down. “Goody, goody, goody! Can I have a Coke?”

“It isn’t home, goofy,” Jem said. Only the pink tip of his nose and a flicker of eyelash was visible in the gap between his woolly hat and the muffler round his neck. His breath wisped white. “It’s—then. They don’t have Cokes now. Besides,” he added logically, “it’s too cold to drink Coke. Your tummy would freeze.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind, honey,” Brianna said, and tightened her grasp on Mandy’s hand. They were standing at the crest of the hill behind the house, near the remains of the Iron Age fort. It had been a laborious haul up the hill, but she’d been reluctant to approach the house from the front, where they would have been visible for a good quarter mile, coming across open ground.

“Can you feel Daddy anywhere nearby?” she asked the children. She’d automatically looked for Roger’s old orange Morris in the drive as they’d crested the hill—and felt a ridiculous plunge of spirits at seeing neither car nor graveled drive. Jem shook his head; Mandy didn’t answer, distracted by a faint bleating from below.

“Iss sheep!” she said, delighted. “Let’s go see da sheep!”

“It’s not sheep,” Jem said, rather crossly. “It’s goats. They’re in the broch. Can we go down now, Mam? My nose is about to fall off.”

She was still hesitant, watching the house. Every muscle was straining, pulling toward it. Home. But it wasn’t her home, not now. Roger. “The strong, sweet, supple quality he has …”

Of course, she knew that he likely wasn’t here; he and Buck would be searching somewhere for Jerry MacKenzie. And what if they found him? she thought, with a little thump of something between excitement and fear.

The fear was what was stopping her racing down the hill to hammer on the door and meet whatever of her family happened to be home today. She’d spent the last few days on the road, and the hours on the final walk from where the carter had dropped them, trying to decide—and her mind was still as divided as ever.

“Come on,” she said to the kids. She couldn’t keep them standing out here in the cold while she made up her mind. “Let’s visit the goats first.”

The smell of goats struck her the moment she opened the door—pungent, warm, and familiar. Warm, above all; all three humans sighed in relief and pleasure as the animal heat rolled over them, and they smiled at the eager rush and outcry of mehhs that greeted their presence.

From the noise that echoed off the stone walls, there might have been fifty goats inside the broch—though Brianna counted only half a dozen nannies, flop-eared and dainty, four or five half-grown, round-bellied kids, and a single robust billy goat who lowered his horns and glowered at them, suspicious and yellow-eyed. All of them shared a rough pen that fenced off half the ground floor of the broch. She glanced up—but instead of the exposed rafters high above that she half-expected to see, there was the intact underside of another floor above.

The kids—her kids, that is, and she smiled at the thought—were already sticking wisps of hay through the fence and playing with the young goats, who were standing on their back legs to peer at the visitors.