A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [438]
She could still hear the voices murmuring in trees and water, but paid no attention to them. Whoever they were, they were no threat to her or hers—and not at odds with the presence that she felt so strongly nearby.
“I love you, Daddy,” she whispered, closing her eyes, and felt at peace.
Ian must be better, too, she thought, when she made her way at length back through the rocks to where he sat. Rollo had left him to investigate a promising hole at the foot of a tree, and she knew the dog wouldn’t have left Ian, had he considered his master to be in distress.
She was about to ask him whether their business here was complete, when he stood up, and she saw that it wasn’t.
“Why I brought ye here,” he said abruptly. “I wanted to know about that—” He nodded at the mammoth. “But I meant to ask ye a question. Advice, like.”
“Advice? Ian, I can’t give you any advice! How could I tell you what to do?”
“I think ye’re maybe the only one who can,” he said with a lopsided smile. “You’re my family, you’re a woman—and ye care for me. Yet ye ken more even than Uncle Jamie, perhaps, because of who—or what”—his mouth twisted a little—“ye are.”
“I don’t know more,” she said, and looked up at the bones in the rock. “Only—different things.”
“Aye,” he said, and took a deep breath.
“Brianna,” he said very softly. “We’re no wed—we never shall be.” He looked away for an instant, then back. “But if we had been marrit, I should have loved ye and cared for ye, so well as I could. I trust you, that ye’d have done the same by me. Am I right?”
“Oh, Ian.” Her throat was still thick, raspy with grief; the words came out in a whisper. She touched his face, cool-skinned and bony, and traced the line of tattooed dots with a thumb. “I love you now.”
“Aye, well,” he said still softly. “I ken that.” He lifted a hand and put it over her own, big and hard. He pressed her palm against his cheek for a moment, then his fingers closed over hers and he brought their linked hands down, but didn’t let go.
“So tell me,” he said, his eyes not leaving hers. “If ye love me, tell me what I shall do. Shall I go back?”
“Back,” she repeated, searching his face. “Back to the Mohawk, you mean?”
He nodded.
“Back to Emily. She loved me,” he said quietly. “I ken that. Did I do wrong, to let the old woman send me away? Ought I to go back, maybe fight for her, if I had to? Perhaps see if she would come away wi’ me, back to the Ridge.”
“Oh, Ian.” She felt the same sense of helplessness as before, though this time it came without the burden of her own grief. But who was she to tell him anything? How could she be responsible for making that decision for him—for saying to him, stay, or go?
His eyes stayed steady on her face, though, and it came over her—she was his family. And so the responsibility lay in her hands, whether she felt adequate to it or not.
Her chest felt tight, as though she might burst if she took a deep breath. She took it anyway.
“Stay,” she said.
He stood looking into her eyes for a long time, his own deep hazel, gold-flecked and serious.
“You could fight him—Ahk . . .” She fumbled for the syllables of the Mohawk name. “Sun Elk. But you can’t fight her. If she’s made up her mind that she doesn’t want to be with you anymore . . . Ian, you can’t change it.”
He blinked, dark lashes cutting off his gaze, and kept his eyes closed, whether in acknowledgement or denial of what she’d said, she didn’t know.
“But it’s more than that,” she said, her voice growing firmer. “It isn’t only her, or him. Is it?”
“No,” he said. His voice sounded distant, almost uncaring, but she knew it wasn’t that.
“It’s them,” she said more softly. “All the mothers. The grandmothers. The women. The—the children.” Clan and family and tribe and nation; custom, spirit, tradition—the strands that wrapped Works with