Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [393]
“I expect so; but I didn’t know I knew, if that makes sense.” Looking at her now, it was plain to see; the faint pallor of her skin and tiny alterations in her color, the fleeting look of inwardness. I had noticed, but had put the changes down to unfamiliarity and strain—to the flurry of emotions over finding me, meeting Jamie, to worry over Lizzie’s sickness, worry over Roger.
That particular worry now took on a sudden new dimension.
“Oh, Jesus. Roger!”
She nodded, pale in the filtered yellow shade of the chestnut leaves overhead. She looked jaundiced, and no wonder.
“It’s been nearly two months. He should have been here—unless something happened.”
My mind was busy calculating.
“Two months, and now it’s nearly November.” The leaves under us lay thick and soft, yellow and brown, fresh-fallen from the hickory and chestnut trees. My heart dropped suddenly in my chest. “Bree—you’ve got to go back.”
“What?” Her head jerked up. “Go back where?”
“To the stones.” I waved a hand in agitation. “To Scotland, and right away!”
She stared at me, thick brows drawn down.
“Now? What for?”
I took a deep breath, feeling a dozen different emotions collide. Concern for Bree, fear for Roger, a terrible sorrow for Jamie, who would have to give her up again, so soon. And for myself.
“You can go through, pregnant. We know that much, because I did it, with you. But honey—you can’t take a baby through that … that … you can’t,” I ended, helpless. “You know what it’s like.” It had been three years since I came through the stones, but I recalled the experience vividly.
Her eyes went black as the little blood remaining in her face drained away.
“You can’t take a child through,” I repeated, trying to get myself under control, think logically. “It would be like jumping off Niagara Falls with the baby in your arms. You’ll have to go back before it’s born, or—” I broke off, making calculations.
“It’s almost November. Ships won’t make the passage between late November and March. And you can’t wait till March—that would mean making a two-month trip across the Atlantic, six or seven months pregnant. If you didn’t deliver on the ship—which would likely kill you or the baby or both—you’d still have to ride thirty miles to the circle, and then make the passage, find your way to help on the other side … Brianna, you can’t do it! You have to go now, as soon as we can manage.”
“And if I do go now—how will I make sure I end up in the right time?”
She spoke quietly, but her fingers were pleating the fabric of her skirt.
“You—I think—well, I did,” I said, my initial panic beginning to subside into rational thought.
“You had Daddy at the other end.” She glanced up at me sharply. “Whether you wanted to go to him or not, you had strong feelings for him—he would have pulled you. Or me. But he isn’t there anymore.” Her face tightened, then relaxed.
“Roger knew—knows—how,” she corrected herself. “Geillis Duncan’s book said you could use gems to travel—for protection and navigation.”
“But you and Roger are both only guessing!” I argued. “And so was bloody Geilie Duncan! You might not need either gemstones or a strong attachment. In the old fairy tales, when people go inside a fairy’s dun and then return, it’s always two hundred years. If that’s the usual pattern, then—”
“Would you risk finding out it’s not? And it’s not—Geilie Duncan went farther than two hundred years.”
It occurred to me, a little belatedly, that she had thought all this out herself. Nothing I was saying came as any surprise. And that meant she had also reached her own conclusion—which did not involve taking ship back to Scotland.
I rubbed a hand between my brows, making an effort to match her calmness. The mention of Geillis had called to mind another memory—though one I had tried to forget.
“There’s another way,” I said, fighting for calm. “Another passage, I mean. It’s on Haiti—they call it Hispaniola now. In the jungle, there are standing stones on a hill, but the crack, the passage, is underneath, in a cave.”
The forest air was cool, but it wasn’t the shadows