The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [674]
Otter-Tooth was cast into great gloom by this discovery, and spent several days in utmost despair. But then he pulled himself together, determining that there was nothing to be done but to go on. And so he had set out alone, though, with the gift of some food from the villagers—heading north.
“I’ve no idea what the man thought he was doing,” Jamie observed. “But I will say he shows courage. His friends are dead or gone, and he’s nothing with him, no notion where he is—and yet he goes on.”
“Yes—though in all honesty, I don’t suppose he could think of anything else to do,” I said. I touched the book again, gently, remembering the first few days after my own passage through the stones.
The difference, of course, was that this man had chosen to come through the stones on purpose. Exactly why he had done it—and how—was not revealed just yet.
Traveling alone through the wilderness, with nothing but this small book for company, Otter-Tooth had—he said—decided that he would occupy his mind with setting down an account of his journey, with its motives and intents.
“Perhaps I will not succeed in my attempt—our attempt. In fact, it seems likely at the moment that I will simply perish here in the wilderness. But if that is so, then the thought that some record of our noble endeavor remains will be some consolation—and it is all the memorial I can provide for those who were my brothers; my companions in this adventure.”
Jamie stopped and rubbed his eyes. The candle had burned far down; my own eyes were watering so much from yawning that I could scarcely see the page in the flickering light, and I felt light-headed from fatigue.
“Let’s stop,” I said, and laid my head on Jamie’s shoulder, taking comfort from its warm solidness. “I can’t stay awake any longer, I really can’t—and it doesn’t seem right to rush through his story. Besides”—I stopped, interrupted by a jaw-cracking yawn that left me swaying and blinking—“perhaps Bree and Roger should hear this, too.”
Jamie caught my yawn and gaped hugely, then shook his head violently, blinking like a large red owl shaken rudely out of its tree.
“Aye, ye’re right, Sassenach.” He closed the book, and laid it gently on the table by the bed.
I didn’t bother with any sort of bedtime toilette, merely removing my outer clothes, brushing my teeth, and crawling into bed in my shift. Adso, who had been snoozing happily on the pillow, was disgruntled at our appropriation of his space, but grumpily moved at Jamie’s insistence, making his way to the foot of the bed, where he collapsed on my feet like a large, furry rug.
After a few moments, though, he abandoned his pique, kneaded the bedclothes—and my feet—gently with his claws, and began to purr in a somnolent fashion.
I found his presence almost as soothing as Jamie’s soft, regular snoring. For the most part, I felt at home, secure in the place I had made for myself in this world, happy to be with Jamie, whatever the circumstances. But now and then, I saw suddenly and clearly the magnitude of the gulf I had crossed—the dizzying loss of the world I had been born to—and felt very much alone. And afraid.
Hearing this man’s words, his panic and desperation, had brought back to me the memory of all the terror and doubts of my journeys through the stones.
I cuddled close to my sleeping husband, warmed and anchored, and heard Otter-Tooth’s words, as though they were spoken in my inner ear—a cry of desolation that echoed through the barriers of time and language.
Toward the foot of that one page, the tiny Latin writing had grown increasingly hasty, some of the letters no more than dots of ink, the endings of words swallowed in a frantic spider’s dance. And then the last lines, done in English, the writer’s Latin dissolved in desperation.
Oh God, oh God. . . .
Where are they?
IT WAS AFTERNOON of the next day before we managed to collect Brianna, Roger, and