A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [94]
“Look, Sassenach.” Jamie turned me with a hand on my elbow.
“Oh. Oh, my.”
The ground rose high enough here that we could look out over a stunning vista. The trees fell away below us, and we could see beyond our mountain, and beyond the next, and the next, into a blue distance, hazed with the breath of the mountains, clouds rising from their hollows.
“D’ye like it?” The note of proprietorial pride in his voice was palpable.
“Of course I like it. What—?” I turned, gesturing at the logs, the stumps.
“The next house will stand here, Sassenach,” he said simply.
“The next house? What, are we building another?”
“Well, I dinna ken will it be us, or maybe our children—or grandchildren,” he added, mouth curling a little. “But I thought, should anything happen—and I dinna think anything will, mind, but if it should—well, I should be happier to have made a start. Just in case.”
I stared at him for a moment, trying to make sense of this. “Should anything happen,” I said slowly, and turned to look to the east, where the shape of our house was just visible among the trees, its chimney smoke a white plume among the soft green of the chestnuts and firs. “Should it really . . . burn down, you mean.” Just putting the idea into words made my stomach curl up into a ball.
Then I looked at him again, and saw that the notion scared him, too. But Jamie-like, he had simply set about to take what action he could, against the day of disaster.
“D’ye like it?” he repeated, blue eyes intent. “The site, I mean. If not, I can choose another.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, feeling tears prickle at the backs of my eyes. “Just beautiful, Jamie.”
HOT AFTER THE CLIMB, we sat down in the shade of a giant hemlock, to admire our future view. And, with the silence broken concerning the dire possibility of the future, found we could discuss it.
“It’s not so much the idea of us dying,” I said. “Or not entirely. It’s that ‘no surviving children’ that gives me the whim-whams.”
“Well, I take your point, Sassenach. Though I’m no in favor of us dying, either, and I mean to see we don’t,” he assured me. “Think, though. It might not mean they’re dead. They might only . . . go.”
I took a deep breath, trying to accept that supposition without panic.
“Go. Go back, you mean. Roger and Bree—and Jemmy, I suppose. We’re assuming he can—can travel through the stones.”
He nodded soberly, arms clasped about his knees.
“After what he did to that opal? Aye, I think we must assume he can.” I nodded, recalling what he’d done to the opal: held it, complaining of it growing hot in his hand—until it exploded, shattering into hundreds of needle-sharp fragments. Yes, I thought we must assume he could time-travel, too. But what if Brianna had another child? It was plain to me that she and Roger wanted another—or at least that Roger did, and she was willing.
The thought of losing them was acutely painful, but I supposed the possibility had to be faced.
“Which leaves a choice, I suppose,” I said, trying to be brave and objective. “If we’re dead, they’d go, because without us, they’ve no real reason to be here. But if we’re not dead—will they go anyway? Will we send them away, I mean? Because of the war. It won’t be safe.”
“No,” he said softly. His head was bent, stray auburn hairs lifting from his crown, from the cowlicks he had bequeathed both to Bree and to Jemmy.
“I dinna ken,” he said at last, and lifted his head, looking out into the distance of land and sky. “No one does, Sassenach. We must just meet what comes as we can.”
He turned and laid his hand over mine, with a smile that had as much of pain in it as joy.
“We’ve ghosts enough between us, Sassenach. If the evils of the past canna hinder us—neither then shall any fears of the future. We must just put things behind us and get on. Aye?”
I laid a light hand on his chest, not in invitation, but only because I wanted the feel of him.