A Distant Magic

by Mary Jo Putney

  "Perhaps my African friend in Marseilles, Moses, will know how to find a priest who can work time magic," Jean suggested. "A shaman came from Africa to France just to teach him. So Moses may be able to find someone."

  "You have more optimism than I." Adia shrugged. "If there is one thing I have learned, it's that one must make the best of what life brings."

  Adia had learned her wisdom in a hard school. Jean wished there were more grounds for hope. Changing the subject, she asked, "How long were we gone?"

  "About eight months. It's 1754 now."

  Nikolai's brow furrowed as he calculated. "That's about the length of time we spent traveling."

  "So we moved forward as much in time as if we'd stayed here?" Jean asked. "That makes a certain amount of sense."

  Adia set the cat on the floor and got to her feet. With a smile that looked genuine, she said, "I must announce that you have returned, so we can celebrate your success!"

  Everyone on Santola poured into the village to welcome Nikolai home. Down by the harbor, wood was stacked for a bonfire and the island women began preparing a sumptuous feast. Jean knew she would be welcomed lovingly when she returned to Britain, but that would be restrained compared to this exuberant gathering.

  She didn't have a chance to talk to Nikolai privately until the feasting had ended and dancing had begun. The sun was nearing the horizon when she sat next to him on a crude bench and leaned back against the wall. Drumming filled the sky and made her vibrate with happiness. As she watched Adia dance with Tano, she looked up at Nikolai and said dreamily, "This island is amazingly beautiful. A good place to live."

  He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a very private smile. "I hear tell that Scotland is beautiful, too. I thought we might divide our time between here and Britain. And the high seas, of course."

  She stared at him, not sure she'd heard right. "I was prepared to be like Ruth and go whither thou goest, which would be Santola and the sea. You really won't mind having a home in Britain?"

  He pulled her closer, resting his cheek against her hair. "You love your family and friends, and it would be wicked of me to deprive you of them. And them of you." He hesitated. "And if we should have children, they deserve to know their family."

  She hugged him, blinking back tears as she thought of how alone Nikolai had been for much of his life. "My family is now yours, my dear pirate. Even you and my brother will like each other once the two of you are done tossing your horns and pawing the turf like bulls."

  He laughed. "Is that what you think we'll do?"

  "Without question," she said promptly. "But Gwynne and I won't allow you to actually bare steel."

  "I believe that I am turning into a domesticated husband," he remarked. "The victory is yours, my love."

  "Victory is mutual in a good marriage, and I will settle for nothing less." She slid her arm around his waist, wondering how long they must wait before they could retire to their quarters. Slanting a glance up at him, she said, "You used the words 'my love'?"

  He looked uncharacteristically awkward. "It is easier to be indirect than to come out and say 'I love you.' Such a very large thing to reveal. Yet...true. You are my heart, my dearest witch."

  She swallowed hard. "I couldn't have said this before we became lovers because I was so afraid that your strength would overwhelm me, yet now I know that we are both better and stronger together than apart. I love you, Nikolai. I think I have through many lifetimes with you, with more to come."

  "Many lifetimes together? What a very wonderful idea." He bent and kissed her.

  She responded with every fiber of her being, knowing this moment was their true marriage, more than the ceremony they'd had in 1807, more than the ceremony they would have again soon.

  He gave a sudden chuckle. "In all these lives, will we be antagonists before we become lovers?"

  "No doubt," she murmured. "I'm trying to remember when I fell in love with you this time."

  "When I kidnapped you, of course." His dark eyes danced as he kissed her again. She didn't think she had ever been so happy in her life. Tonight they would make love, and perhaps she would tell her body that it was time for a child….

  Reluctantly he ended the kiss, though he kept her within the circle of his arm. "We have much work to do in this era, so we shall never grow bored. The first foundations of abolition are being laid now, and we can contribute to that. For example, we must arrange for Adia's story to be published at the right time, when anti-abolition sentiment is rising."

  She nodded. "I should also write a message to our friends in 1807 to let them know that we made it back safely. A firm of solicitors can hold it until then."

  He grinned. "You may be alive yourself in 1807. We built such careful partitions between our current selves and the future that it's impossible to say. Perhaps we were both there in London and longing to come to the wedding, but we had to stay away to keep from adding to the confusion about our time-tossed lives."

  She groaned. "I will never understand the repercussions of travel through time!"

  "There is no need to understand. What matters is that we managed to do what was necessary, and even to return home safely."

  "Perhaps it is part of our mission to come back because of work that we will do in normal time," she said mischievously.

  It was Nikolai's turn to groan. "You're right, only the ancestors understand time travel." He drew his brows together. "I didn't realize until now, but I felt the ancestors' presence throughout our travels. Especially my grandmother. Now that feeling is gone. The ancestors have left us."

  She looked inside herself, and realized that a thread of wild magic so gossamer she hadn't realized it was there was now gone. "I'll be glad for the privacy. But...I shall also miss them. It was a great privilege to become a thread in their tapestry of fate."

  She felt rather than saw Nikolai's nod. Then he spoke, his voice different. "There's a strange ship coming into the harbor." He set her to one side and stood, every line of his body taut. "Not one of ours. That has never happened before."

  She scrambled to her feet, as wary as he. "I thought it was impossible for regular ships to find their way here."

  "Indeed it is. So who is on that ship?" Nikolai headed down to the harbor with long strides, Jean moving swiftly to keep up.

  There was a flurry of activity as mothers took their children home and men armed themselves. The two-masted vessel flew a white flag that suggested peaceful intentions, but one could never be sure. The crowd watched in silence as the ship drifted to a halt by the longest pier.

  As mooring ropes were cast over the side, Jean studied the vessel, thinking there was something familiar about the people she saw on deck. Surely…She broke and ran out onto the pier. "Moses! Jemmy! Breeda!"

  Moses laughed and leaped down onto the pier, as dapper as when he was in his office in Marseilles. Gripping her shoulders and studying her with mage vision, he said, "You led us a merry dance, my girl. We used every form of magic we could think of to locate you, and I was beginning to think we never would. For the longest time, it was like you had vanished into thin air. Then suddenly, we knew where to find you. What happened? You seem to be flourishing."

  "I am, and I did vanish into thin air. But now I'm back and done with adventures. At least for a while." A moment later Jemmy and Breeda were within hugging distance. Incandescent with happiness, Jean asked, "Where is Lily? Is she ill?"

  "Not at all," Moses said, his white teeth flashing in the darkness. "But she didn't want to leave the baby. If you hadn't disappeared, you would be godmother to our son. Your maid Annie refused to leave Marseilles as long as you were missing. She would be here, too, but she married a Frenchman and is with child and couldn't face a sea voyage."

  Nikolai had joined them, so Jean said, "I want you all to meet my husband, but first—Moses, you said that your teacher, Sekou, told you about African time magic. Do you have any of that particular talent?"

  Startled, he said,
"A little, and Sekou was most insistent that I learn to use it to the best of my ability even though I will never be one of the great time shamans. Why do you ask?"

  "Because that ability is needed to send a friend home. There are several mages here on the island, but none of us has the time magic gift. Do you think you could perform a time ritual if we supplied you with enough raw magic?"

  Moses sucked in his breath. "I…I don't know. Perhaps. I can't guarantee it, since I've never led the ritual myself." After a long pause, he said, "I wonder if Sekou was so insistent because he knew that I would need time magic someday?"

  "The training you received might have been part of a great plan by the ancestors, because even without guarantees, you're Adia's best hope." Jean took his arm and led him to Adia. "We must talk."

  It was hard to wait for even three days, but Adia forced herself to do that. She had made friends on Santola, and when she left, it would be for good. Leaving Louise and her children was wrenching—Louise was like the sister Adia had left behind in Africa, and her children were like nieces and nephews.

  Saying good-bye to Tano was hard in a different way. When she called on him to say farewell, he inclined his head and wished her joy with sad, quiet eyes.

  As she walked away, she knew that he would find another wife, but he would not forget Adia. As she would not forget him. A heart had room for many kinds of love.

  Jean Macrae promised to take care of Bruiser. The fickle feline was already doting on the Scotswoman.

  Guided by Moses, Adia and the other African priests had constructed a bead that contained threads from the garment she had worn on her journey through time. They had invested it with as much time magic as Moses could summon.

  Along with the bead, Adia held the pathfinder stone that she and the wise woman had created so many years and miles ago in the Carolinas. She had carried it ever since. Some of the patterns in blood had worn off, but no matter. The stone's energy was a connection between Daniel and her.

  When the ritual was performed, every man, woman, and child on the island who had power participated. As Moses invoked the four winds, Adia called fire and prayed with every spark of power she possessed that the ritual would work. The familiar vortex formed, and Santola dissolved around her. With her last breath, Adia called her thanks to all who were helping to send her home.

  Her second journey through time seemed endless. Awareness splintered into pain and terror as she fell endlessly, suffocating with the fear that she would be trapped forever in chaos. The time-magicked bead burned away. The pathfinder stone merely burned. She clutched it with all her strength, praying that if anything could lead her through other worlds to her true love, it was this stone.

  Then the pieces of her soul reassembled, and she found herself lying on a hard surface, dizzy and disoriented. The darkness was absolute. She flexed her hands, and the pathfinder stone fell from her palm, its heat extinguished. Abruptly her mind cleared, and she realized with rushing joy that she was in the bedroom of her own small house.

  As her eyes adjusted, she saw Daniel's long form sprawled on the bed. A warm, indulgent voice sounded in her mind. Did you think we would abandon you before the end of your journey, child?

  Adia sensed that her grandmother would never speak to her so clearly again, and that was a bittersweet note in the heart of her happiness. Perhaps it made her joy even more profound. Clumsy with excitement, she stood and quietly undressed. Then she slipped into the bed beside Daniel wearing only her skin.

  Her fatigue vanished in the desire to hold her husband flesh to flesh. She wrapped her arms around him, intoxicated by his dearly remembered scent and feel. Her hands slid around his ribs to the roughness of the scars inflicted after his first attempt to escape slavery. Her beloved, her husband, her Daniel. She breathed softly in his ear, whispering his name before tasting the salt of his skin.

  His arms enfolded her sleepily as he murmured, "Dream woman, you are so like Adia…." His large hand slid down her naked back to cupher buttocks.

  Desire scorched through her. "Not a dream." She nipped his ear, wanting to draw his blood and soul into herself.

  He came awake with lightning speed. "Adia! Dear God, it's really you!"

  "It is, indeed." She laughed with jubilation, glorying in his instant response to her presence. As she called a handful of fire to illuminate his strong, familiar face, she exclaimed, "And, oh, my beloved, do I have tales to tell!"

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  There is a lot about abolition that I was never taught in school. One of the biggest surprises was how the British offered freedom to American slaves during the Revolution. And how, much to their credit, they evacuated as many former slaves as possible to spare them from the slave catchers after the war ended.

  Abolition contains amazing stories. Though I've taken some liberties, many of the incidents involving historical characters are real. Thomas Clarkson did discover his life's work while pondering beside the road as he traveled from Cambridge to London after winning the prestigious Latin essay prize, though he didn't need two passersby to persuade him.

  Clarkson was also attacked by slave ship sailors on a pier in Liverpool during a gale, but it was his own strength and quickness that enabled him to fight his way free. In an era when few people could swim, he might easily have been drowned by the sailors, which would have made the history of the abolition movement very different.

  Accounts were published by former slaves such as Olaudah Equiano (who had the slave name of Gustavus Vasa), and these helped Englishmen understand the nature of slavery. The story of an individual is always more powerful than abstract arguments.

  As Clarkson was a brilliant and dedicated organizer, William Wilberforce was the much loved and respected politician who worked tirelessly to pass antislavery legislation, as well as other vital reforms. He was indeed struck down by illness just before the 1788 session of Parliament, where he had planned to introduce an anti–slave trade bill. Though he was sent to Bath to recover, I invented his collapse during a reception for supporters of abolition. He and his Evangelical friends, known as the Saints or the Clapham sect, spearheaded many wide- ranging social reforms.

  Elizabeth Heyrick was a passionate, radical abolitionist whose belief that emancipation should take place now had a great effect on the mainstream abolitionist movement, especially in the 1820s. Women were generally more radical than men when it came to abolition, and all- female abolition groups were very influential.

  It was pure invention on my part to place Elizabeth Heyrick in the House of Commons during the 1791 vote on Wilberforce's bill to end the slave trade, but the national sugar boycott did spring to life after the bill lost. Hundreds of thousands of people throughout Britain stopped buying sugar, though the word "boycott" didn't even come into the language until 1880.

  Many of the tools of the modern social movement were first used by the abolitionists: protest groups, direct-mail advertising, logos and medallions, and boycotts. A small number of people set out to change the world, and succeeded.

  However, while many abolitionists believed that banning the trade would swiftly bring about the end of chattel slavery by cutting off the supply of slaves, they were wrong. West Indies slaveholders might have treated slaves a little better because replacements were harder to come by, but slave traders still risked the British naval blockades and slaves still suffered and died. More than twenty-five years passed before Parliament passed an emancipation bill in 1833.

  Emancipation became possible after the first of the nineteenth- century British political reform bills was passed in 1832, greatly increasing the number of men who could vote. There was still a very long way to go before there would be universal suffrage, but this first reform bill changed the makeup of Parliament enough to pass the emancipation act.

  The conservative political establishment hated giving up power— doesn't everyone?—but there was increasing unrest in the general population, and political reform was preferable to revolution. P
lus, bloody slave rebellions in the West Indies made it clear that slaves were willing to fight and die for their freedom—and that they fought very, very well.

  The slave lobby, seeing that defeat was inevitable, campaigned successfully to get compensation for their "loss of property." No money was voted to compensate the slaves.

  For those who wish to learn more about this amazing piece of history, I recommend Adam Hochschild's wonderful Bury the Chains. A nominee for the National Book Award in nonfiction, Bury the Chains has the clarity and page-turning excitement of a novel as he describes the people and politics who worked together to end one of mankind's greatest cruelties.

  Simon Schama's Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution covers somewhat similar material to Hochschild's book, but from a more American perspective.

  Other books of possible interest: Epic Journeys of Freedom by Cassandra Pybus tells the stories of slaves who escaped to freedom all over the world after the American Revolution. Staying Power by Peter Fryer is a history of blacks in Britain.

  The world is an imperfect place, but through the courage and conviction of many people, it has become a lot better.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy, MARY JO PUTNEY can still quote Robert Heinlein with no encouragement whatsoever. A graduate of Syracuse University with degrees in eighteenth-century literature and industrial design, she followed a peripatetic path to success as a writer. Now a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author, Putney has been a nine-time finalist in the Romance Writers of America RITA contests and has won two RITAs for her historical novels. Her books have been listed five times by the American Library Association among the top five romances of the year. The chance, with the Guardians series, to combine fantasy with her love of history and romance is an example of real-life magic in action. Visit the author's website at www.mjputney.com or www.maryjoputney.com.