Outlander 03 - Voyager

surrounded by an impenetrable wall of bland ignorance, and no way to break through it. At the same time, I was aware of a current running among the women—a feeling of mutual warning; of wariness and secrecy. It might be only the natural reaction to the sudden appearance of a white stranger in their domain—or it might be something more.

I couldn’t take longer; Geilie would be coming back to look for me. I fumbled quickly in my pocket, and pulled out a silver florin, which I pressed into the girl’s hand.

“If you should see Ian, tell him that his uncle is here to find him.” Not waiting for an answer, I turned and hurried out of the kitchen.

I glanced down toward the sugar mill as I passed through the breezeway. The sugar press stood abandoned, the oxen grazing placidly in the long grass at the edge of the clearing. There was no sign of Jamie or the overseer; had he come back to the house?

I came through the French windows into the salon, and stopped short. Geilie sat in her wicker chair, Jamie’s coat across the arm, and the photographs of Brianna spread over her lap. She heard my step and looked up, one pale brow arched over an acid smile.

“What a pretty lassie, to be sure. What’s her name?”

“Brianna.” My lips felt stiff. I walked slowly toward her, fighting the urge to snatch the pictures from her hands and run.

“Looks a great deal like her father, doesn’t she? I thought she seemed familiar, that tall red-haired lass I saw that night on Craigh na Dun. He is her father, no?” She inclined her head toward the door where Jamie had vanished.

“Yes. Give them to me.” It made no difference; she had seen the pictures already. Still, I couldn’t stand to see her thick white fingers cupping Brianna’s face.

Her mouth twitched as though she meant to refuse, but she tapped them neatly into a square and handed them to me without demur. I held them against my chest for a moment, not knowing what to do with them, then thrust them back into the pocket of my skirt.

“Sit ye down, Claire. The coffee’s come.” She nodded toward the small table, and the chair alongside. Her eyes followed me as I moved to it, alive with calculation.

She gestured for me to pour the coffee for both of us, and took her own cup without words. We sipped silently for a few moments. The cup trembled in my hands, spilling hot liquid across my wrist. I put it down, wiping my hand on my skirt, wondering in some dim recess of my mind why I should be afraid.

“Twice,” she said suddenly. She looked at me with something akin to awe. “Sweet Christ Jesus, ye went through twice! Or no—three times, it must have been, for here ye are now.” She shook her head, marveling, never taking her bright green eyes from my face.

“How?” she asked. “How could ye do it so many times, and live?”

“I don’t know.” I saw the look of hard skepticism flash across her face, and answered it, defensively. “I don’t! I just—went.”

“Was it not the same for you?” The green eyes had narrowed into slits of concentration. “What was it like, there between? Did ye not feel the terror? And the noise, fit to split your skull and spill your brains?”

“Yes, it was like that.” I didn’t want to talk to about it; didn’t even like to think of the time-passage. I had blocked it deliberately from my mind, the roar of death and dissolution and the voices of chaos that urged me to join them.

“Did ye have blood to protect you, or stones? I wouldna think ye’d the nerve for blood—but maybe I’m wrong. For surely ye’re stronger than I thought, to have done it three times, and lived through it.”

“Blood?” I shook my head, confused. “No. Nothing. I told you—I…went. That’s all.” Then I remembered the night she had gone through the stones in 1968; the blaze of fire on Craigh na Dun, and the twisted, blackened shape in the center of that fire. “Greg Edgars,” I said. The name of her first husband. “You didn’t just kill him because he found you and tried to stop you, did you? He was—”

“The blood, aye.” She was watching me, intent. “I didna think it could be done at all, the crossing—not without the blood.” She sounded faintly amazed. “The auld ones—they always used the blood. That and the fire. They built great wicker cages, filled wi’ their captives, and set them alight in the circles. I thought that was how they opened the passage.”

My hands and my lips felt cold, and I picked up the cup to warm them. Where in the name of God was Jamie?

“And ye didna use stones, either?”

I shook my head. “What stones?”

She looked at me for a moment, debating whether to tell me. Her little pink tongue flicked over her lip, and then she nodded, deciding. With a small grunt, she heaved herself up from the chair and went toward the great hearth at the far end of the room, beckoning me to follow.

She knelt, with surprising grace for one of her figure, and pressed a greenish stone set into the mantelpiece, a foot or so above the hearth. It moved slightly, and there was a soft click! as one of the hearth slates rose smoothly out of its mortared setting.

“Spring mechanism,” Geilie explained, lifting the slate carefully and setting it aside. “A Danish fellow named Leiven from St. Croix made it for me.”

She reached into the cavity beneath and drew out a wooden box, about a foot long. There were pale brown stains on the smooth wood, and it looked swollen and split, as though it had been immersed in seawater at some time. I bit my lip hard at its appearance, and hoped my face didn’t give anything away. If I had had any doubts about Ian being here, they had vanished—for here, unless I was very much mistaken, was the silkies’ treasure. Fortunately, Geilie wasn’t looking at me, but at the box.

“I learned about the stones from an Indian—not a red Indian, a Hindoo from Calcutta,” she explained. “He came to me, looking for thornapple, and he told me about how to make medicines from the gemstones.”

I looked over my shoulder for Jamie, but there was no sign of him. Where the hell was he? Had he found Ian,