“Yes, I am.”
He kissed her again, then straightened with a laugh. “Then come on, Mrs. Gregor,” he said, taking her hand. “It’s time to go meet our future.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The new road leading down beside the meadow could have been in Boston during rush hour, it became so clogged with vehicles. Then, getting everyone across Bear Brook without anyone drowning was a feat worthy of an engineer. Robbie ended up having to carry Daar through the deep snow, as the old priest had refused to stay at Gù Brath and miss all the excitement. There were less than five minutes remaining to the solstice by the time everyone was standing at the base of the cliff, though they could have been in church they were so quiet. Even the late-December weather was cooperating; the low-hanging sun was shining a weak but brilliant red, not a whisper of wind was blowing, and the air felt like Indian summer in October.
Tom suddenly appeared, walking up from the meadow and silently moving to stand at the base of the cliff in front of everyone. At least Winter was pretty sure it was Tom. The man had Tom’s expressive eyes and features, but he was cleaned up quite nicely and dressed in a ceremonial robe and headdress like nothing Winter had ever seen before. The long robe was modern if not futuristic looking, while still possessing ancient Celtic detail. Across the front of his…cassock, for lack of a better word, was a large depiction of a tree of life embroidered in what looked like spun gold threads. The tree wasn’t any species Winter recognized, but looked to be a combination of both a majestic oak and a mighty eastern white pine.
Tom raised his hands and cleared his throat, though it wasn’t really necessary since everyone was curiously silent. “I wish to thank you all for coming here today, to witness Winter and Matt pledging themselves to each other,” Tom said, his soft voice carrying over the crowd.
Winter opened her mouth, but quickly closed it again when Matt squeezed her hand.
“Laird Greylen and Grace,” Tom said, inclining his head toward them. “You’ve given the world a remarkable group of girls, and I wish to personally thank you for that.” His eyes twinkled. “I am also thankful you didn’t stop at only six daughters, as I am especially endeared to your seventh.”
This time when Winter tried to speak up, Matt wrapped his arm around her and squeezed.
“And Pendaär,” Tom addressed next, looking at the frail priest standing beside Robbie. “You served your calling well and can finally find peace in the knowledge that you are the very reason we’re here today. Enjoy your retirement, old man, and bask in the sun on your mountain for a good long while yet.”
“MacBain,” Tom said with a chuckle when Robbie groaned at the prospect of Daar’s longevity. “I wish to thank you for taking such special care with my grandmother these last twenty-five years, by being both Winter’s guardian and friend.”
It was a good thing Matt had his arm around her, so he could catch Winter when her knees suddenly buckled, just as a collective gasp rose through the crowd.
“Yeah,” Tom said, walking up to Matt and Winter. He reached out and touched Winter’s jacket, just over her belly, and smiled. “That’s my mama you’ve got growing in there.”
“But—”
Tom cocked his head. “Did you never consider that if your husband and Robbie and Pendaär can so readily travel back and forth in time, that someone from the future might not also do the same one day?”
“But…you…you’re our grandson? But you’re old!” she blurted, only to wince and shake her head. “I mean, I can’t picture having a grandson older than I am. It…it’s—”
“It’s magic,” Tom whispered, his twinkling eyes lifting to Matt. “In about forty years you’re going to take me on my first supersonic ride, and get me hooked on flying at the age of eight.” He moved his gaze to include Winter. “I’m not your daughter’s first child, you see. I’m her third. I have an older sister and brother, and a younger brother as well.”
“Are they…are they drùidhs?” Winter whispered. “Any of them? A-are you?”
Tom smiled. “We all have our special gifts,” was all he said. “Which you will discover…in time.”
“But—”
He touched his finger to her chin. “Patience, Grams. What’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning if you already know what’s going to happen? The real magic is living each day as it comes, the joy being the anticipation of what’s around the corner.”
He nodded toward Matt but continued looking at Winter. “Take your husband, for instance. He had no way of knowing if what he put into motion all those centuries ago would get the results he wanted or not. Hell, he couldn’t even predict your response to him, but that didn’t stop him from trying.”
He looked at Matt. “If you had known you’d be standing here today, deeply in love with your wife, would you have proceeded with your desperately conceived plan?”
“At the time, being who I was and how I felt about the world in general?” Matt asked even-toned. He shook his head. “No. I would have done anything to avoid engaging my heart.”
Tom nodded and looked back at Winter. “And that is why I’m not answering one question about what happens from this moment on, no matter how hard you work your considerable charm.”
“But you just told me I’m having a daughter,” Winter pointed out with a smug smile.
Tom smiled even more smugly. “For your firstborn,” he said with a shrug. “After that, well, don’t you just wonder how many there’ll be, and what they’ll be?”
He laughed at her glare, but it was Daar who spoke next. “Are ye getting on with marrying them or not?” he asked. “Ye have two minutes to the solstice, and Winter can’t be pregnant and not married proper. It’s blasphemous.”
“It’s ancient thinking, Father,” Winter said, turning her glare on Daar. “And we are married. We got married in Las Vegas.” Winter suddenly snapped her gaze to Tom, squinting up at his laughing eyes. “You! You’re the Mad Hatter who married us,” she yelped, pointing at him, only to narrow her eyes again. “Our witnesses. Who were they?”
“My brothers and sister.”
“Our grandchildren?” Winter squeaked, clutching her jacket over her chest. “Th-they witnessed our marriage?”
Tom broke into laughter and shook his head. “You looked like you expected them to steal all your money and clothes,” he said with a lingering chuckle.
Winter spun toward her also-amused husband. “Will you please quit laughing. This is not funny. I still don’t know if we’re drùidhs or not.”
“Do you want to be a drùidh?” Tom calmly asked.
Winter spun back to face him. “We both have to be wizards. There’s still…stuff we have to do.”
“Ah, I see,” Tom said, turning and walking to the cliff. He stopped beside the solid wall of granite, turned back and waved them forward. “Then come be drùidhs. Open the entrance to the cave and see where your power truly lies.”
Winter looked up at Matt in uncertainty, but Matt was staring at Tom. Her husband suddenly took her hand and led her to the cliff. “How do we open it?” he asked, holding Winter against his side as they faced the cliff.
“Just ask it to open,” Tom said with a negligent wave of his hand. “Gently,” he added, giving Winter a wink.
Matt reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his fountain pen, and Winter quickly pulled out her sketch pencil.
Tom covered Matt’s hand with his own. “You don’t need it,” he said, turning his wrist to see his watch. “As of two minutes ago, your sword lost its ability to conduct energy.”
“No!” Winter cried, clutching her pencil. “Not yet. We need just a few more hours.”
“Ask the cave to appear,” Tom said calmly.
Matt reached out and placed his and Winter’s hands on the rough cliff, and Winter immediately felt the tingling warmth of a powerful energy pulsing through the granite. She pictured the old entrance to the cave, how it twisted to keep out the weather, and how the interior h
ad felt warm and safe and welcoming.
Several gasps came from behind them, and Winter opened her eyes to find herself standing in front of a taller, wider entrance to an even larger cave. The interior walls glowed with several softly swirling colors this time, and the cave appeared to be four or five times its original size. It was also spotless, not one sign of the singed supplies they’d left behind.
And sitting directly in the center of the cathedral-like room was a larger-than-life-sized granite bear curled around a sleeping woman made of wood that was an exact replica of the tiny figurine the crow had carried to Gù Brath. Without even stopping to think, Winter walked right up to the statue and touched it, only to have her mind’s eye become washed in blinding light.
“She’s made of pinewood,” Matt said from beside Winter, taking hold of her hand so she wouldn’t touch it again.
“H-how did he do that?” she whispered. “How did he get the woman so snug inside the bear’s embrace? I don’t see any seams in the granite, but he couldn’t possibly have fit the woman in there without cutting the rock.”
“It’s one of my gifts,” Tom said from the other side of the statue. He looked at Matt. “You recognize the white pine.”
“You’re the one who cut the top off.”
Tom inclined his head.
“And the root. You stole the tap root last night. Why?”
Tom walked around to stand beside them and pointed at the woman nestled inside the bear. “Do you see that faint image of her heart?” he asked. “Right under the bear’s paw? See how he’s protecting both the woman and their shared heart? The heart is made from your original tap root, Cùram, from your oak tree. And the woman is carved from the top of Winter’s pine.”
Tom then touched the tree of life emblem on his chest before he pointed up at the ceiling. “You’ll find a new species of tree growing on the top of the cliff, and by the time I’m born, it will have scattered its seed to the protected valleys of Bear Mountain.”
“But why?” Winter asked.
“Because Providence hopes you’ll both succeed. But just as you finally realized this morning when you were sitting with your dead pine, Winter, it takes a combination of strengths to do that. So a new tree of life has been created from your two trees, as a reminder to all of us.”
Winter blinked at the strange-looking tree on Tom’s chest. She looked up at her husband to find his expression unreadable, and then glanced back toward the entrance to see what Pendaär and the others thought of all this. “The entrance is gone!”
“Just temporarily,” Tom assured her. “We only need witnesses for your wedding, not for the decision you have to make now.”
“And that would be?” Matt asked, stiffening.
Winter slid her hand into his and also looked at Tom.
“You appear to think you still must choose which you want more, maintaining your marriage and having babies, or remaining drùidhs so you can keep your promise to Kenzie,” Tom said to both of them, but directing his words to Matt.
“No!” Winter cried, stepping between her husband and Tom. “That’s not fair to make him choose between me and his brother. It’s too cruel.”
“Then you choose for him,” Tom suggested.
“No!” Matt growled, pulling Winter back beside him.
“Then maybe I’ll choose,” Tom offered with a chuckle, “since I seem to have a vested interest here.”
“We each get to choose our own destiny!” Winter cried. She narrowed her eyes and pointed at Tom. “If you’re here, then that means we obviously chose marriage over being drùidhs.”
“Not necessarily, as that is but one of the risks we take when we indulge in time travel.” Tom waved his hand to encompass the cave. “This could all be nothing more than a dream. You could wake up and I would simply not exist. It is only the acts of the present that determine the future.” Tom smiled warmly at her. “So which would you choose, Winter?” he asked softly. “Your future with your husband and children or your calling to help Matt keep his promise to Kenzie?”
“I choose both!” she snapped, balling her hands into fists.
Tom nodded, then looked at Matt and grinned. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? And you, if you had to choose, which would it be, Cùram de Gairn, your marriage, or your calling?”
Matt said nothing.
Winter couldn’t decide if she should smack Tom or her silent husband. “That is not the way this is going to work,” she hissed at Tom as she turned to face Matt. “Think, Matt. As long as there is life, there is always hope. So dig deep and remember how you felt when you ran away from home and went after your dream of becoming a warrior. You thought you had found what you’d been searching for, but when it wasn’t all you hoped it would be, you picked up and went back home. And when that didn’t turn out very well, you picked up again and went looking for Kenzie.”
“And what happened then?” Tom asked. “When you found your brother, only he was dying?”
“I got angry,” Matt said.
“Yes,” Winter agreed, clutching his hand. “And lost hope.”
Matt looked at her, his eyes dark with pain. “I didn’t lose it then, lass. I lost it when Kenzie asked me to end his life.”
“Then how did you get this far?” Tom asked. “If you had no hope for the future, how come you came after Winter?”
Matt looked at Tom, seemingly startled. “I took a gamble she could help me. MacKeage’s daughter was my best chance to keep my promise to Kenzie.”
Tom smiled and looked at Winter. “There really is no such thing as hopelessness, you know. Hope is an integral part of our collective energy, and it can never be lost because it’s not…it isn’t of this material world. It’s only human perception that becomes blind to hope’s existence.” He smiled at Matt. “Winter can’t keep a promise you made, and you can’t keep it yourself as long as you remain blind to any part of the energy that makes us all who we are. If you want to hold onto your powers so you can help Kenzie, and if you want to hold onto Winter, then just open yourself to the full spectrum and realize that you can have both.”
“He can?” Winter asked in surprise. She snorted and shook her head. “I was just being sarcastic.”
“You were being your spoiled rotten self,” Tom said with a laugh, looking back at Matt. “Anything is possible as long as you remain open to all the energy. Winter figured she’d choose being a drùidh, and then she planned to damn well figure out how to save Kenzie,” he said, smiling when she gasped at his insight. “That’s not blind faith, Matt, that’s wide-eyed faith. Not only must you trust the universe, but you must also trust yourself.”
Winter squeezed her husband’s hand again, but Matt continued staring at Tom.
Tom smiled. “The choice is still yours to make, Matt. But it’s not really between Winter and your calling, is it? It’s between you and yourself.” He looked over at the statue, then back at Matt. “We have entered a new millennium with this winter’s solstice, so what’s your hope for the next thousand years? That maybe like Winter here, you believe you can have it all? Can you see your calling as a blending of each color of the spectrum, including hope, just like that couple in the statue? Open your inner eyes wide, Matheson Gregor, and the future will be whatever you make it.”
Matt stood stiff and silent for what seemed like forever to Winter, and she was just about to really smack him when he suddenly took her hand and led her over to the statue. Together they reached out and placed their hands on the bear’s paw covering the woman’s heart; time stopped, the cave filled with a full spectrum of swirling colors, and the sound of a single beating heart echoed throughout the chamber and strongly resonated through every cell in Winter’s body.
She squinted past the blinding light and saw the bear and woman’s shared heart gently pulsing in time with hers and Matt’s. And then Winter would swear she saw the smiling pinewood woman wiggle deeper into the bear’s embrace with a sigh of contentment.
“So,” Tom said,
rubbing his hands together. “Are we having a wedding or not? Everyone must be freezing out there.”
“What about Kenzie?” Winter asked, turning away from the statue but still holding Matt’s hand.
“He’s likely standing at the back of the crowd,” Tom said, smiling at her surprise. “It’s twenty minutes past the solstice. You don’t think he’d miss his brother’s wedding, do you?”
“But we have to make him stay a man,” Winter said.
“He will,” Tom assured her, walking over to where the cave entrance should be.
“How?” Matt asked.
“United, you both possess the power to grant Kenzie’s wish,” Tom assured them, turning and inclining his head. “But please, allow me the honor as my wedding present to you both.” His bright blue eyes twinkled. “And maybe also as a little something for my great-aunt Megan, I’m thinking.”
Winter still couldn’t comprehend that she was talking to her seventy-something grandson on her twenty-fifth birthday.
“Ah, if I might make a suggestion?” Tom said, waving his hand at the cave. “Have you ever considered making this cliff part of your new home? You could incorporate a lovely log and stone structure into this cliff, so that the cave becomes…oh, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Your bedroom, maybe?”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Winter asked, smiling smugly. “Surely you ran through the halls of our as-yet-to-be-built house as a kid.”
“And I explored every inch of Bear Mountain,” Tom said with a laugh. “And sailed Pine Lake and slept in the lakeshore cottage you’re staying in now.” His eyes twinkled again. “Do me a favor and don’t fix up the old camp on the point, okay? I kind of like it just the way it is.”
Winter clutched Matt’s hand. “Y-you’re leaving us tonight, aren’t you? You’re going back. I—I mean ahead to your time.”
Tom nodded and smiled sadly. “I must. I’ve served my purpose here. You two need to realize your own future now.”
“But when will we see you again?” Winter asked.
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