The Fits o' the Season Page 6

Boulder, Colorado, November 2001

  It takes him a couple weeks to wrap up the loose ends.

  The Ring of Omicron, it seems, has vanished. The day after the warehouse slaughter, there are no trawlers to be seen on the Mall. No more appear in the days that follow.

  The shop on Walnut Street has been closed. He talks to one of the employees, a college woman; he wonders if she’s the one called Lucy. She tells him that when she showed up for work on the first of the month, she found a sign on the door. “Out of Business,” the sign said. No other news, no other word. No phone call. No last paycheck.

  It’s his fault, and he asks her if she needs money. She looks at him as if he’s suggested they spend time doing something obscene, and hurries away.

  He goes up to the Hill and discovers the house on Pleasant Street vacant, a sign from some real estate agency in the yard. The neighbors have no clue what happened. They simply woke up one morning to find the place deserted.

  The Ring has vanished, or gone far underground, where he can’t follow.

  “This isn’t over,” Fisher had said.

  He keeps an eye on the headlines. There’s no account of a mass murder at a warehouse on Valmont. Police are not seeking suspects, calling anyone in for questioning. Just as well, since he believes if they were he would turn himself in, his sword hilt-first over his arm. But the massacre might never have happened at all.

  He remembers the van pulling around the side of the building as he fled the scene. Someone came. Someone saw. Someone, like as not, knows him for the one responsible. And for reasons of their own, they have cleaned up the mess he left and are keeping silent.

  It makes him very uncomfortable. He waits for the bullet, for the knife in the dark.

  Not that those would do much damage.

  It takes a few days for the magical community to notice the change. When they do, the relief is palpable, sweeping in like a tide that washes the beach clean. But, although he’s spoken with many and everyone knew he was asking for information, no one seems to grasp his real involvement. A few who see him look at him with veiled questions in their eyes. He lets them wonder.

  He visits Eddie.

  “You all right, MacDuff?” the reader asks.

  “I’ll do,” he says.

  “Shop on Walnut’s closed,” Eddie remarks after a time.

  “Aye,” he replies. “I saw that.”

  The reader reaches into his coat for his deck, unwraps it and pulls a card at random. It’s the Knight of Swords. He puts it back.

  “So, you going after your lady soon?”

  “Aye,” he says. “I expect I am.”

  “Think you’ll be back?”

  He shrugs. “I dinna ken. Someday, perhaps.”

  “We’ll miss you around here,” the reader tells him. “Both of you. You’re leaving some big shoes to fill.”

  He glances at his new boots, at his old boots on Eddie’s feet. They cleaned up better than he expected. He grins.

  “Aye. I expect so.”

  They clasp wrists, clasp hands.

  “Stay cool, MacDuff,” Eddie says.

  “I’ll do my best,” he replies, and leaves.

  It takes him two days to get up the nerve to make the phone call. She told him not to call again, and he respects Her wishes without question. But he needs to go to Her, and he doesn’t wish to start on the wrong foot by showing up unexpected. He supposes he has the right. The house deed is in his name as well as Hers, a fact that never ceases to strike him as some kind of perverse joke. All the same, it would be a mistake.

  Finally, on a Saturday morning in the middle of November, he picks up the phone. Gets the machine. Prays this will not be a horrible repeat of the last time. Prays it won’t be something worse.

  “Caitlin,” he says after the beep. “It’s me. Timber. I know ye told me not to call again, and I’m sorry. But I miss ye so much. I’d like to see ye. I’ll not ask any questions or make any demands. I give ye my word. Please tell me I can come to ye.”

  He hangs up. The phone rings almost at once; his hand is still on the receiver. It’s Her. One word.

  “Come.”

  He’s on the road in under an hour, pushing his battered truck up into the mountains, through passes where snow has already fallen. Down the other side. Through Glenwood, with its steaming springs, and past Carbondale. Halfway to Aspen, pedal to the floor, and then a sharp right onto a state highway leading into more mountains, through another pass. In the golden light of afternoon, he descends, following the twists and turns of the road past a toy town of peak-roofed houses, past a reservoir, and into the valley beyond. “Now Entering Cottonwood County,” a sign tells him. Coal mines scattering black dust to the highway’s verge. Bare orchards, fallow fields, hillsides terraced with vines.

  He misses the first entrance to the town, the one that would have taken him straight to the house. It still confuses him that towns should have entrances, like buildings. He picks up the second entrance, past the High School. Crosses the river, crosses the railroad tracks. Slows the truck and rolls through downtown, all three blocks of it. Buildings like something from a movie set standing cheek by jowl, brick and stucco, stone and brightly-painted wood. It’s a fine day, and people are out; every space along the wide street boasts a car, a truck, a van. Still, after Boulder, it seems underpopulated, a ghost town.

  At the third street, he hangs a left, his heart beating very fast; he’s getting close. In under a mile, he recrosses the railroad tracks, follows the road as it curves to the left. Stops the truck before a row of tall poplars, bare except for a few scraps of withered yellow. He gets out, walks under an arbor and through the front gate. At the end of the walk, he pauses, stares up at the house. Her house.

  Their house. Although She paid for it with money Her grandmother left Her, She’s always insisted it’s theirs, even to having his name on the deed. He’s known it since the deal went through six months ago, and he’s been here before, several times. He’s worked on the place. Still, in this moment it hits him as it never has before. He’s a property owner. It wreaks havoc with his self-definition.

  It’s an old place, perhaps a hundred years for the original structure, added to over the intervening years with no discernible plan. Two thousand square feet in all, perhaps a little more. Weathered clapboard siding of no appreciable color rises to an almost-new roof of white metal. A window in a high gable looks out over the covered front porch.

  He finds himself thinking that the window is too small and will need to be replaced.

  She’s there. He could go up to the front door and walk inside.

  Instead, he walks around to the north side, where a driveway leads past the house to a carport in back. He could have pulled the truck in there, rather than leave it in the street. But it seemed too much presumption, too soon.

  Behind the carport, someone poured a concrete slab once, perhaps intending to build a shed or something like it. Beyond that, a field of tall, dry grass slopes down to a wire fence with a pine wood on its other side. The place sits on five acres, he remembers. It seems like more space than any two people could need.

  He heads right, behind the house. An old apple tree dozes at the corner, a black shape in its branches.

  About time you got here, MacDuff, McGuyver informs him.

  She didna want me here, he tells the cat.

  They don’t speak in words, not precisely. Impressions, images, emotions convey meaning, passed from one mind to the next, tinted with body language. Cats are an eloquent species, though, and McGuyver is unusually articulate, even for a cat.

  McGuyver jumps down from his perch in the tree, winds around his legs.

  She doesn’t want a great many things that are good for her, these days.

  And how is Herself?

  The cat sits, winding his tail about his forepaws, and blinks. Once. Twice.

  She is not Herself.

  He sighs and brushes his hair back from his face. He already knew it. But
hearing it makes it worse.

  Where is She?

  In the kitchen, the cat tells him. Go.

  The walk leads between the house and the sleeping garden; he follows it to the back porch, goes in. The kitchen door stands open a crack, doubtless for the cat’s convenience. He opens it further, making no sound. He steps over the threshold.

  In the moment before She notices, he sees everything.

  She’s standing at the chopping block, slicing onions; on the stove behind Her, something sizzles in a cast iron kettle. She’s wearing jeans and a turquoise top with three-quarter length sleeves, and socks striped in purple and blue. Because Her feet get cold, he knows, and She hates wearing shoes. Her gorgeous hair is loose down Her back.

  But She’s pale and drawn. Not with a sickness of the body, he recognizes. With one of the soul. She’s drawn a curtain over Her light, as She drew them across the windows back in Boulder. Her fire is banked. He can feel the strength of will it takes for Her to keep it so. All that strength turned inward. Bent on hiding Her from Herself.

  It breaks his heart all over again.

  And the silence. If things were as they should be, She’d be singing. At the very least, She’d have music playing. But there’s nothing. Just the chunk of the cleaver on the block, the crunch of the onions, the hiss of whatever’s in the pot. Like being stuck in a nightmare from which She cannot wake.

  Then She looks up, and sees him, and Her smile is the sun rising. A shaft of light breaking free of clouds.

  “Timber.”

  The cleaver falls from Her hand, and She’s in his arms, and, ah gods, the feel of Her. Her hair beneath his hand, Her breasts pressing against his chest, Her hands on his back.

  “Gods, lass,” he says. “I’ve missed ye so. Dinna do that to me, ever again.”

  “Timber,” She says again, and his name on Her lips is an invocation, summoning him out of the dark. “I thought, I thought…”

  And he doesn’t care, not anymore. Not for explanations, not for anything. The sight of Her open mouth inflames him. He wants only to taste Her. So he does, and Her sweetness fills him.

  She urges Her body closer, tangling Her hands in his hair.

  “It’s so long,” she murmurs when they part.

  “D’ye not like it?”

  She doesn’t answer, only takes his face in Her hands to kiss him again. He’s hot all over; he shrugs off his coat and it falls in a puddle on the floor behind him. Then he’s touching Her, Her strong back, Her perfect waist. Under Her shirt, Her skin, so warm, so smooth. He cups Her ass in both hands, pulling Her against him, wanting Her to feel how hard he is for Her.

  “I need ye,” he whispers. It’s never been truer. He feels as though he might burst.

  “I’m making chili,” She says. “The meat will burn.”

  Another man, with another woman, might be put off. But he knows Her by now, Her way of stating obvious things that don’t mean aye or no, but only what She says.

  “Turn it off,” he tells Her.

  She does, and there’s more kissing and more fondling and more exploration of flesh. And it’s almost like the first time, when they wanted each other so keenly that neither one of them could see straight, and they trashed Her shop, only here there’s no furniture to get in the way. Her breasts, Her lips, Her hands on him, his hands on Her. They trail clothes to the living room, and that’s as far as they make it before neither one of them can stand it any longer, and they come together on the floor.

  When they join, it’s so sweet, he groans and comes almost at once, which he wouldn’t have preferred, but he can’t hold back, not this time. She grinds Her hips against him, clasping him so hard it’s as if She wants to pull him all the way inside, and She comes too. She cries out, Her eyes squeezed tight shut, Her head thrown back, that same expression of shocked pleasure on Her face that She always gets. He collapses on Her, boneless, burying his face in the exquisite hollow of Her neck, and he feels Her fingers drift over his back, down to his ass, the way they always do.

  “Never again,” he murmurs into Her skin. “Dinna do that to me ever again.”

  “No,” She agrees, stroking him. “I won’t.”

  And he’s Home.

  But She’s not all right. It’s in Her scent, in Her sweat, in the way She moves, in the way She breathes. It’s a taste, some spice he misses from the feast that is Her.

  He gave his word he would not ask, and he doesn’t. But sometimes, sometimes he slips. He hasn’t yet learned to avoid the hazards that bar the road to Her. Something he says touches on their old life, on magic, and She closes off, shunts him aside. Her eyes cloud. Her shoulders tense. No one else would be able to tell, he thinks. To him it’s like a slap, like training a dog with a rolled up newspaper. Don’t do this. Don’t go there.

  He gave his word, and so he will not ask. But he wishes with all his heart that She would tell him.

  She doesn’t. Nor does She ask him anything about Boulder, about the Ring, about what happened there. Why he stayed away so long, and why he’s come to Her now. And that’s all right, because he’d rather not tell Her. It’s another secret about his life that he’d just as soon take to his grave.

  Still, Her disinterest pains him. It’s one more thing wrong, because She’s always been so curious. She’s never been able to keep from digging for answers.

  The only time She seems Herself is when they make love. Then, the curtains around Her soul fall away. She’s naked to him, and Her light shines the way it should.

  He makes love to Her a great deal.

  They talk about what to do, where to go from here. She wants to stay in Gordarosa. And although he knows it’s at least in part because in Gordarosa She’s not known for a witch and magic is easier to avoid, he agrees. Because it’s what She wants.

  She’s taken a part-time job at an art gallery. It suits Her ill, working for someone else. Sitting by someone else’s counter, ringing up someone else’s sales. Talking to people about things that mean nothing. Still, three times a week, She plasters on a smile and goes.

  He puts out word, talks to a man who knows a man who knows another who’s heard of him, and lands a job on a custom home project on one of the hills outside town. One of the mesas. He dusts off the word and puts it back into daily use. In LA, on the streets, he picked up a bit of Spanish. It begins to return to him.

  His days start early, as they have always done. And though he knows She likes to sleep late, for a week or two She gets up with him, to keep him company, fix his breakfast. It’s a shock, the first time. She does it badly, and She rarely does anything badly. Her temper is short and She burns the eggs, and that makes Her temper worse.

  He realizes that She’s doing it because it’s what She thinks other women do. Ordinary women. Her attempts to be Mundane make him want to laugh. Or cry. After a while, he tells Her that he appreciates the thought, but he’d rather make his own breakfast and have Her sane.

  She gives him an odd look at that, as if the notion of Her being sane has some peculiar significance. But She leaves off, and they’re both happier. For a time.

  She decides to sell the place in Boulder. She has no intention of ever living there again, She says. She’s finished with running a shop, and it’s no good simply to leave everything there, gathering dust. He’s not so sure it’s a good idea, but it’s Her place, and he has no say, not really. So he doesn’t argue. She makes most of the arrangements over the phone, but they still have to go back and pack up. She left almost everything behind, and, for that matter, so did he.

  So, one weekend halfway through December, they go. It’s not a good time.

  They get in late on Friday, and go straight to bed. He sleeps right away; he’s been up since five and spent the day hauling lumber around in the cold because the unskilled labor didn’t show up. In the middle of the night, he wakes, and She’s not there.

  For a disorienting moment, he wonders if She’s ever been there. Perhaps he never went to Gordarosa at a
ll, and the last few weeks have been part of his dream. Then he comes to a little more, and remembers the truth. So, perhaps She’s gone for a pee and will be back soon.

  But She doesn’t come back, and without Her, he can’t seem to settle. She’s having trouble sleeping. That’s happened sometimes before, when She was worrying over a problem. Now She lies awake almost every night. He knows it for another sign of a soul in distress, and it disturbs him deeply. But She never tells him Her trouble. And he’s promised not to ask.

  After a while, he gets up, pads down the stair. A single, shaded lamp helps him find Her in what was once Her showroom, sitting on the floor, surrounded by what was once Her life. Looking lost.

  He crouches beside Her. “What is it, lass?”

  “All this stuff.” Her eyes flicker over the dusty shelves with something like fear. “I don’t know if I can deal with it. Maybe I should just put it all out on the curb.”

  The easiest thing to do, of course, would be to open the shop for a week or two and have a massive sale. She’d do well out of it; Christmas is close. He knows better than to propose it.

  “We’ll work on it together,” he says. And won’t that be a treat, packing up the detritus of a magical life, and being unable to speak of it. But She’s brought him peace, and he’ll do whatever it takes to bring some to Her. “D’ye have any ideas for it?”

  She shrugs. “Take it home and put it in the attic, I guess. I hadn’t got that far.”

  They sit for a while.

  “Come back to bed,” he says. “This will all still be here in the morning.”

  “I don’t think I can sleep yet. You go on.”

  “Shall I make ye some tea?” Please let me do something, he pleads in his mind. Let me comfort you. Let me help you out of this darkness you’ve chosen.

  “No, thanks,” she says. “I’ll be up in a bit.”

  He catches himself before he can brush his hair out of his eyes. She knows it signals frustration, helplessness, discomfort. And he’s feeling all those things, aye, but he doesn’t want to put them on Her. So he just nods and goes back to bed, leaving Her alone. Sometime later, he wakes again, and She’s there, lying with Her back to him. He curls his body around Hers; She sighs and nestles against him. It’s the only ease She’ll take, and he wishes it could be more.

  In the morning, he suggests they go out to breakfast. He says they’ll need the fuel for the job ahead, but really he wants to get Her outside, into the air. Into the light. She’ll have nothing of it. She says they have too much work to do, and the holiday crowds will make everything downtown twice as busy as usual. He knows She doesn’t want to walk the places they once walked, go the places they once went, because of the memories. She doesn’t want to risk running into anyone She knows from before. This half-shape, this alien Mundane, couldn’t stand up to Her friend Sage. Likely enough, it couldn’t even stand up to Zee. She couldn’t stand up to him for long, had he not given his word not to pry. Half the reason She fled before was to escape his prying, he thinks, and he will not risk Her fleeing again. She’s far enough away as it is.

  He goes out for supplies. While he’s at it, he swings by Liquor Mart for empty boxes; they’ll need them.

  Later, he’s down in the kitchen wrapping dishes in newspaper and stowing them away. He’s thinking about Her darkness, about Her choice. He knows darkness well, no one better. But he never chose it. He simply faced what came to him. And he can’t understand why anyone would choose to go such a place, especially not Her. He knows She hasn’t told him everything about Her life, just as he hasn’t told Her everything about his. Two years isn’t enough time for everything, and besides, some things are better not shared. But surely fear isn’t one of them. In the past, She’s made him face his fears, and he’s had the good of it.

  What she’s doing to Herself is a horror. It’s like Stonefeather cutting out his Shadow, an abomination. She, at least, hasn’t tried to remove the half of Her soul She’d prefer, now, not to acknowledge. But shutting it out, pretending it doesn’t exist, is very nearly as bad.

  If only She’d let him help Her! He’s trained for just this; She knows it. That She refuses his skill is almost more than he can bear.

  “Timber?” She calls to him from the second floor. “Can you come up here a minute?”

  She sounds almost panicked. He runs up the stairs, down the hall, dodging half-packed boxes of clothes, of artwork. She’s standing in an open door at the end, the door to the room reserved for magic and for Journeys. Her face is pale.

  “What d’ye need?” he asks.

  “This room,” She says. “I can’t do this room. I’m sorry; I just can’t. Can you do it, please?”

  He leans in the door, glances over Her shoulder. It’s all Her stuff in there; he brought his own things with him when he left the first time. His drums. His shaman’s kit. His sword. Because they’re important. Because they’re part of him, not to be left behind. Not as She wishes to leave this part of Her behind, trash for someone else to pick up when She’s gone.

  His hand clenches on the door frame; suddenly, he’s furious with Her.

  “No,” he tells her. He doesn’t remember ever before having refused Her anything at all. But there’s a limit to everything. “No, I canna do that for ye. I told ye I’d help with the shop, and I will. But these things are yours, Caitlin. Yours to deal with, one way or another. If ye dinna want them nae more, throw them away. But ye’ve made a choice and ye must face the consequences. No one else can do it for ye. Not me, not anyone.”

  He turns his back on Her and goes downstairs to his own task. In a little while, She comes down.

  “Do we have any rock salt?” She asks.

  He pretends not to notice She’s been crying.

  “Out back, I think,” he says. “There was some left last winter.”

  She goes out the door, returns clutching the half-full bag, and goes back upstairs without saying anything more. His heart is full of pain at Her pain, and at speaking harshly to Her when all he wants is Her happiness. But he can’t swallow the surge of grim satisfaction he feels at the knowledge that She’s chosen to pack up Her magical things. To keep them, not throw them out like garbage.

  There’s still hope.

  Packing the magic room—the Workroom, She calls it—is the worst of it for Her. It takes Her a long time, and he can hear Her crashing about up there, going in and out. Sometimes he can hear Her sobbing. He hates Her grief, but he relishes it, too, because it’s a sign that Her soul isn’t giving up without a struggle. Try as She might to deny it, the magic is part of Her. Still, he has to steel himself not to go to Her when the sound of Her weeping drifts down the stairs. He tells himself all healing begins in pain, in feeling what there is to feel. It doesn’t help much.

  After the Workroom, She seems calmer. Not even the Tarot room gives Her as much trouble, and he isn’t sure whether or not that’s a good thing. They work late into the night, go to bed too tired for love, and get up to work more. Sunday afternoon, they’ve done all they can do. They load up the truck with as much as they can and head back to Gordarosa. Caitlin says She’ll arrange for movers to bring the rest.

  For him, the worst part is the hope. He keeps waiting for Her to realize She’s made a horrible mistake, watching for some sign that She’s changed Her mind. But day succeeds day, and there’s nothing. She goes on pretending to Her Mundane life, as if there’s never been more to Her. As if the bright, magical woman he loved never existed.

  It grieves him. It infuriates him. He spends long hours in the field behind the house with his sword, going through the forms over and over again, trying to work things through. He only gets more and more upset. More and more confused.

  It’s withdrawal, MacDuff, McGuyver tells him. You’re an addict, and she’s your drug of choice. Now the quality has fallen off and you can’t get your fix. It makes you twitchy.

  They’re in the kitchen one morning in January. He’s just finished working out before g
oing up to the job, and he’s making coffee.

  That’s a cynical way to look at it, he says.

  McGuyver plops himself down on the rug in front of the sink, lifts a leg, and begins washing his ass.

  It’s the truth. You should think less about what you need from her and more about what she needs from you.

  He rummages in the fridge for some eggs, breaks them into a pan.

  Aye? And what’s that?

  The cat jumps up onto the counter to inspect the coffee maker.

  She’s put away half her soul, MacDuff. You’re the other half. She can’t live without you, now.

  He stirs up his eggs, brooding.

  Perhaps it would be better to let Her go, then.

  McGuyver swats his arm.

  Do you believe that?

  “No,” he says aloud. “I dinna.”

  Good, the cat replies. Feed me.

  In February, the place in Boulder sells for an exorbitant amount of money, and they go out to celebrate. After dinner, they visit a bar downtown, the Long Wall. It’s not much of a place, but they have a pool table, and he fancies a game. The bar offers a decent Scotch, a blend, not a single malt, but respectable all the same. He and Caitlin each have a double, and then he’s winning at pool and feeling fine, so he has another, and a beer to wash it down. And that turns out to be not such a good idea, for his mood takes a turn, and before he quite knows what’s come over him, he’s scratched an easy shot. The miner he’s playing makes an asinine joke about not knowing how to handle a cue and trounces him, which hasn’t happened in a while. He’s down fifty bucks and wants a rematch, but the miner tells him to leave men’s games to real men. There’s a red haze in his eyes and the next thing he knows, the bouncer is telling him to take it outside.

  All the while, it’s like he’s standing outside himself, watching the bad shit go down. Like he’s not in control. It’s the place, he knows. The place is rotten, and he should take the bouncer’s advice and get the hell out of there. Get some air, get some space. But instead, he orders another whisky. Part of him hopes the bartender won’t give it to him, because if he doesn’t have a drink perhaps he can get away. But the bartender pours the drink, and he orders one for Caitlin, too, and takes it over to the table where She’s sitting, staring out into the street.

  “I don’t want another,” She says. “Timber, I think we should go home. I don’t like this place.”

  It’s no more than he’s been thinking, but hearing Her say it riles him, and he snarls at Her without thinking.

  “I got ye a drink, aye? Drink it.”

  Her eyes flash, and he knows inside that it’s a bad thing, because She doesn’t get angry much and when She does, She likes to work through things on Her own. But it’s also good to see the spark of life in Her.

  “You’re in a foul mood,” She says. “I had no idea losing at pool threatened your manhood so much.”

  “I dinna feel any threat tae my manhood.” He slams his drink and, since She’s not showing any interest in the one he bought Her, reaches for it, too.

  “I don’t think you should have any more.”

  She snatches at the glass, and he grabs Her wrist to stop Her, feeling the little bones grate against one another.

  “You’re hurting me,” She says, very quietly, and he lets up a bit, but doesn’t let go. Their eyes lock, and, very deliberately, he picks up Her drink and downs it.

  “What’s got into you?” She asks.

  “Not so long ago, ye’d know as well as I,” he says. And, ignoring the anguish that crosses Her face, he says, “But ye canna be bothered with such things nae more, can ye?”

  She’s gone, closed to him like a steel door.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Let go of me.”

  “Ye ken right well what I’m talking about,” he counters. “Where’s your magic, Caitlin? Where’s your Sight? Tell me what’s got intae me. If you’re no afraid.”

  “You promised,” She hisses, from anger, or the pain where he’s latched on to Her wrist, he neither knows nor cares. “No questions. No demands. I took you for a man of your word.”

  “Aye, well, perhaps that was a mistake.”

  “Maybe we’re the mistake.” Despite his hand on Her wrist, She tries to rise. He jerks Her back.

  “Dinna walk out on me. Walk out on yourself, if ye must, but not on me.”

  “You have no idea…” She begins.

  “Aye, you’re right!” he snaps. “I’ve no idea, because ye wilna tell me anything! Every time I come close tae ye, ye run away! Ye ran from me in Boulder, and you’re running still.”

  “I’m not running!”

  “Aye, ye are! I’ve seen running; I ken well the shape of it. Lie tae yourself, if ye must. Ye canna lie tae me.”

  She says nothing.

  “And ye wilna let me help ye.” That’s the core of it, the root of his misery and rage. Something, somewhere, tastes it and finds it sweet. “If anything threatens my manhood, it’s that.”

  “I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help,” She spits.

  “You’re a daft fool, then,” he tells Her. “Ye’ve a sickness in your soul, and that’s my business. Dinna destroy yourself out of pride.”

  “Pride!” She sounds outraged.

  “Aye, pride! Ye canna see your way, and you’re too proud to ask for a light from one who may.”

  “I don’t have to listen to this.” She wrenches her wrist from his grasp.

  “I dinna have tae stay and watch ye murder the woman I love, either,” he says.

  “Then don’t!” She’s up from the table and out the door.

  Swearing, he lurches to his feet and rushes after Her. It’s snowing, and icy needles strike his face, clearing his head. She’s left the truck behind; he spots Her turning the corner, hair streaming behind Her, head into the wind.

  “Caitlin!” he shouts. “Dinna be an idiot. Come back and get in the truck.”

  “No!” She sobs without turning around.

  Her pace quickens as She rounds the corner. He chases Her down, boots slipping a little in the fresh snow. By the time he catches Her, She’s almost to the alley. He grabs her shoulder, whips Her around. She struggles.

  And he’s on fire. All at once, he wants nothing more than to fuck Her. Fuck away Her resistance, fuck away Her denial, even though punishing Her with his body would be rape. For one instant, he actually considers pushing Her up against the wall of the bar and taking Her, right there. Then he jerks control of himself away from whatever has him in its grasp, and lets Her go. He takes a step back, raising his hands in surrender.

  She looks at him as if he’s become vile to Her. Then She slips away and disappears into the snow. Into the dark.

  He goes back to the truck and sits awhile, giving himself time to cool off, giving Her time to get home. When he finally arrives back at the house, She’s already gone to bed and the door is shut. He could go in; there’s no lock. It’s not a good idea. He takes off his boots and stretches out on the sofa downstairs.

  Things not going well, MacDuff? McGuyver remarks from the top of the bookshelf.

  “Shut your gob, cat,” he says.

  He doesn’t like what he’s becoming, what She’s becoming. What they’re becoming. The unspoken things between them, like a minefield. A false step could blow them both to bits. And although he gave an oath to be there for Her, to give Her his life, he no longer knows if he can.

  He’s still lying there, staring at nothing, when She comes downstairs. She hesitates at the foot of the steps, silver in the moonlight spilling through the window. She’s wearing a flannel nightgown and Her hair is down Her back. She looks like a child.

  “Timber? Are you awake?” She whispers.

  He thinks about not answering. But he can’t do that. Not to Her. Not to himself.

  “Aye, I am.”

  “I’m sorry,” She says. “For tonight.”

  “Ye’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he rep
lies, although he believes She does.

  “May I come over there?”

  “Aye.”

  She pads across the room, kneels beside the sofa. She looks so lonely. He wants to touch Her, stroke Her hair. But he remembers the way she looked at him, back on the street outside the bar, and so he doesn’t.

  “I know you don’t like what I’ve decided,” She says after a time. “But it’s the best thing for me. You have to trust me.”

  He thinks he has to do no such thing. But he doesn’t say so. He says,

  “It would help if ye’d tell me about it.”

  “Someday, maybe,” She says. “Not now.”

  Aye, he thinks, because now you’re not quite settled in your own mind. And if you put it out in the open, you’ll see how foolish you’re being, and your own good sense will tell you that the best thing is to stop indulging your fear and get on with life. I won’t have to say a thing.

  “I thought,” She begins, and stops. Starts again. “When I left Boulder, I thought I could do without you. I can’t. I can do without everything else. Not without you.”

  Told you, McGuyver puts in from the end of the sofa. He sounds smug.

  Shut up.

  “So, please. Please don’t give up on me. It’s hard right now, but it will get better. I just need more time.”

  He sighs. “All right. I’ll try.”

  “Will you come upstairs? I’m cold.”

  He goes with Her, and they go to bed. He gives Her the comfort of his body because that’s all She’ll allow him to give. He doesn’t know if it’s enough. And for the first time with Her, he isn’t certain he cares.

  He goes to see Scáthach. He should have done it long since; when you claim a goddess for a teacher, it’s best not to ignore her. But first he was finishing up the Boulder business, and then he was too glad to be back with Caitlin to go, and then he didn’t want to Journey because the sound of the drum might disturb Caitlin’s peace. Now it’s past time. And perhaps he thinks Caitlin’s peace could use a little disturbing.

  The Workroom in the new house is a dismal place. Unfinished, half-painted, the way She left it when She made up her mind to renounce the magical life. He remembers finding the house on a weekend excursion over a year ago, and how delighted She was with the place. How She talked of making it a retreat when the cares of Boulder became too much, and of making it a home in time. And of course there had to be a Workroom, then. She’d chosen it out particularly, loving it at first sight. Loving the shape of it, the way the ceiling sloped down to the eaves. The strange little nook behind the stairwell.

  But now She refuses to set foot in it, and it languishes like an abandoned pet. Missing Her presence, Her touch. Not understanding what it did wrong.

  It’s cluttered, full of boxes and furniture from the old place, with the rug from the old Workroom rolled up in a corner like a bundle that hides a corpse. He’s made a niche for himself behind the place where the altar should go, arranged the scraps of his calling, of his skill, on a couple of bookshelves. He crams himself in among them; there’s scarcely room for him to stretch out his legs. Uncomfortable, as everything has become uncomfortable.

  He had thought, once he found Her, that he would never feel this discomfort again. This sense that he’s too big for his surroundings, that he does not fit. The last time he felt this badly, he went back on the junk. He doesn’t believe he wants to do that now, not really. That consoles him, a bit.

  Likely, now, he couldn’t get a needle through his Battle Blessed skin even if he did want to.

  The drum takes him to the other Skye, to the standing stone. The goddess is waiting for him.

  “Fiodh,” she says, her Gaelic soothing to his ears. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it. “I did tell you, you would have cause not to be glad.”

  He wonders if she’s mocking him. But her gaze shows only compassion.

  “I didn’t understand,” he replies, his own Gaelic returning in an instant, as though he’s never spoken anything else.

  “It’s the nature of foresight, not to be understood before time.”

  “What use is it, then?”

  He meant it for sarcasm. She takes him seriously.

  “It’s a sign along the road. And, like any sign, it can only warn of the dangers. You have to experience them for yourself.”

  His shoulders slump. “I don’t know how much more experience I can take,” he confesses. It costs him. Admitting failure always costs him.

  The goddess arches an eyebrow. “So soon? I thought you stronger, Fiodh.”

  “Aye, well. Perhaps you were mistaken about me.” He remembers saying almost the same words to Caitlin, the night in the bar, and his heart twists. He doesn’t like it, the idea that both these red-haired women could have misjudged him so. That perhaps everyone has misjudged him, put their trust where it didn’t belong. But he’s tired of living up to impossible standards.

  “Are you asking to be released from your oath?” Scáthach inquires.

  “Could you do that?” It appeals to him, although he wishes it didn’t.

  “I could. There would be a price.”

  “What?”

  “Death.”

  It doesn’t surprise him. “Whose?”

  “Yours. Hers.” The goddess shrugs; he can’t tell whether or not it matters to her. “More.”

  The idea of his own death doesn’t disturb him. It hasn’t disturbed him for a long while. Caitlin’s though… For a second he allows himself to wonder if it might not be better for Her, than the half-life She’s chosen. But no. He has no right to decide for Her.

  And then, “more.” More deaths on his head. He can’t accept that, either. He already has too many deaths to his credit.

  “I didn’t think it would be so hard,” he says.

  “An oath is meaningless when keeping it is easy,” Scáthach replies.

  “Och.” His mouth fills with bitterness; he has to spit it out. “Spare me your cant. I’ve need of counsel, not proverbs.”

  “And proverbs can’t counsel?” She raises one corner of her mouth, teasing.

  He glares at her. Cursed Otherworldly beings. They never give straight answers. He should have known better than to hope for one.

  “You vowed to give your life to her without holding back,” the goddess remarks. “You’ve been holding back, Fiodh MacDuibh.”

  The reproof makes him stiffen; he can’t help it.

  “I have not!” he insists. “I’d give Her anything, everything. But She throws it back in my face. It’s of no worth to Her.”

  Scáthach gazes at him for a long minute. “You will have to offer more.”

  “More,” he snorts. “It’s always more with you people. I have no more.”

  She keeps on looking at him, expression bland. When he turns his face aside, she sighs.

  “Will you have my advice, Fiodh?” she asks. “Then here it is. Grow.”

  “Grow?” He blinks. “That’s it? That’s all?”

  “All?” she repeats, and laughs that deep, true laugh of hers. “Isn’t it enough?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to clarify,” he says. He doesn’t expect she will. Some lessons can’t be taught. Some you have to learn for yourself.

  “Become more than you are. And stop seeing her as less than she is.”

  Become more than you are. He scowls; he’s heard it before. Teachers never get tired of it; they care nothing for a man’s limits. But the other puzzles him.

  “Stop seeing Her as less…?”

  “You might try it,” Scáthach tells him.

  Then he’s back in the Workroom, drum and beater falling from lax fingers. And, although the goddess’s advice doesn’t seem much advice at all, he feels calmer than he has in a long, long while.

  As February slips toward March and the days lengthen, he mulls it over. Becoming more.

  It angers him, at first. As if he isn’t big enough, as if he doesn’t take up enough space as he is! B
ut teachers have no interest in boundaries, except to urge you to stretch them. More and more and more, until you no longer know where and what you are.

  He wonders if it’s a problem, knowing where and what he is. In the Otherworld, being too certain of your position can hold you back. There, you set your own limits and if you never look outside them, you never discover what lies beyond the frontier of self.

  Come to think of it, battle is like that, too.

  In his mind, he hears Scáthach laughing.

  Put a sock in it, ye old hag, he mutters to himself, and reflects again.

  So what does he know of himself? Or, more to the point, what does he believe of himself? For beliefs can be changed. They can become other than what they are. They can grow.

  Start with the basics. He’s big, aye. Big of body. Big of soul, perhaps. For some reason, that notion troubles him, and he lays it aside for the time.

  He’s a healer. Which She will not accept, his mind whispers, and he hushes it; those doubts will not serve him. He’s a warrior. He’s always been a fighter; he’s already become more in that respect. A craftsman. A scholar of a sort, although he would not have chosen it, and it’s not the first thing that comes to mind. He’s a musician. A tree-speaker. One who converses with animals. One who respects life, all life, sentient or not.

  This is getting him nowhere.

  He’s a lover. More to the point, he’s Her lover. He hasn’t been doing so well at it of late, but it’s still true.

  He thinks of what it means, to be a lover, to love. To devote oneself without condition, without holding back. Aye, he has been holding back; he sees it now. Out of pain, out of fear, out of sheer bewilderment at the change in Her.

  The cat told him, Think less of what you need from her and more of what she needs from you.

  What does She need from him? Strength; he has that in abundance. Physical strength, at least. What of the rest? He’s always believed Her to be stronger. In Her emotions, in Her spirit. In Her soul.

  She has carried him, he realizes. She has never needed him to carry Her. To support Her, as She needs him to now. She needs him to accept Her.

  Can he do that? He did accept the woman She was. He loved the woman She was without reservation. But he doesn’t know if he loves the woman She is.

  Stop thinking of her as less than she is, McGuyver reminds him.

  She is less than She is, he retorts. Ye said it yourself. She’s not Herself.

  They’re in the back yard. It’s the first Saturday in March, and in the garden, the daffodils are already blooming. The tulips are thrusting green spears of leaves up from the soil, and the peonies are showing leafy fronds. He’s building a bench for a corner of the flowerbed, putting just enough attention to the task to keep from cutting his fingers off with the circular saw. He’s pretty sure that could still happen, if he lets his mind wander too much.

  The cat jumps up on the sawhorse he’s using to prop up the boards for cutting.

  “Och, keep your big nose away from the blade, ye twit,” he says, brushing the furry face aside. But McGuyver ignores him.

  She’s less than she was, the cat replies, licking a paw. But she still is who she is.

  From the house, where the windows are open to catch the first warmth of spring, comes the sound of singing. Her singing. He’s missed it, in the past months. It tells him She’s come to better terms with Her choice for Her life; She can risk drawing back the curtains around Her soul. Risk letting out a bit of light.

  If only he could come to terms.

  He puts down the saw, goes into the house. Finds Her in the dining room. She’s got a wicker box of fabric open beside Her, and She’s sorting through bright scraps, testing them out together. Piecing a quilt, perhaps. She’s spoken of wanting to try that. The sun from the window makes Her hair glow like flame.

  She is who she is.

  This, also, is who She is. The creativity that has nothing at all to do with magic. The way She always has some project in hand. The way She makes things where nothing was before.

  “Have I told ye lately that you’re beautiful?” he asks.

  She looks up, startled, a little wary. It troubles him that She should mistrust him. That night at the bar was not so long ago.

  “Not recently, no,” She says.

  In the past, he’s said it to so many women. Women of a night, or of a week. It’s been true of all of them. But never so true as of this woman sitting before him. Of Her. And he can’t recall the last time he told Her, or how it slipped his mind.

  “You’re beautiful,” he says.

  “Did you come in here just to tell me that?” She asks.

  “Aye,” he replies. “I did.”

  She smiles and a flush rises to Her cheeks. And something opens in him. He begins to see who She is, not simply who She was.

  Independent. Sunday, He watches Her hauling stones from one side of the property to the other, making a border for the garden. She struggles with some of them; they’re too heavy for Her, but She keeps at it with the same dogged determination She puts into everything.

  He lays his own work aside. Runs downtown, finds the Farm Supply open because, even in this town full of churches, farmers know no weekends. He buys Her a wheelbarrow. When he gets back to the house with it, She’s wrestling with a rock nearly the size of Her chest. Her face is sweaty and Her hair is coming down. He takes the rock from Her and plops it down in the wheelbarrow’s bed. She looks surprised for a moment, as if She has never considered such things as wheelbarrows existed. Then Her stunning smile breaks free.

  “Thank you,” She says.

  “You’re welcome,” he tells Her, and goes back to building the bench, his heart lighter than it has been.

  Resourceful. Monday evening, She’s back in the dining room, playing with fabric, Her face creased in thought. In Her hands, bits and pieces other people might throw away become other, become more than they were.

  “What are ye making?” he asks.

  She shakes her head, preoccupied. “I don’t know yet. I thought a quilt, but I’ve never done it before.”

  Brave. She has no fear of a challenge, no fear of the unknown.

  “It’s missing something, though,” She says. “I don’t know what.”

  He goes upstairs and hunts up a couple old flannels with the elbows ripped out of the sleeves. They’re soft with washing, but the colors are still bright. After a moment’s reflection, he adds his one good thing, a blue silk blend he bought for a memorial service in Boulder, soon after they first met.

  “Will these help?” he asks.

  She hesitates at the silk. “Timber, this is almost new. I’m just going to cut it up.”

  “I want ye to have it.”

  Again, She rewards him with Her smile. It seems to come more easily.

  “Then it’s perfect.”

  She’s funny. She introduces him to the Marx Brothers, and they laugh until they fall off the sofa, tears streaming from their eyes. For days after, the mention of a hard-boiled egg or an apple dumpling can send either of them into convulsions.

  Her wit is merciless. She tells him tales of Her life before they met and brutally mimics strange vagrants, rich socialites, horrible bosses. She makes even dreadful experiences seem like something from a farce.

  “Gods, woman, how can ye laugh about that?” he asks after She relates the time She beat off a stalker in New York who cornered her by a phone booth. She was so mad, She says, that She threw the man into a wall and knocked him out. “Ye might have been hurt. Killed, even.”

  “He looked really pitiful with his dick hanging out,” She informs him with a shrug. “And everyone in the subway station applauded.”

  “You’re terrible,” he tells Her, unable to keep his lip from twitching, unable to keep the admiration from his voice.

  Beautiful. She’s astride him, Her hair falling free over her shoulders, Her skin ivory and rose in candlelight. Abandoned, committed to pleasing Herself, to pleas
ing both of them. Her face goes slack and Her eyes roll up when She comes, gasping in astonishment, and the sight of Her pushes him over the edge, so that he spills over, groaning. She collapses on him, spent, loose-limbed with completion, and the heat of Her, the silk of Her flesh, is everything he’s ever wanted.

  “I love you,” he says.

  She opens one eye. “It’s the afterglow. You’ll get over it.”

  “No,” he says. “I wilna.”

  He loves Her. And he always will. Her decision means nothing to him. The shock of it threw him into fear and regret, but those were his. His to indulge or to put behind him. They do not diminish Her or what She means to him. Not at all.

  He has grown. Become more.

  Toward the middle of March, he makes a choice.

  He calls Spruce to run it by her. After several minutes’ worth of laying into him because he’s been out of touch so long, she says,

  “It’s about time, you huge shite.”

  “Ye think I should, then?” It won’t make any difference; he’s made up his mind. But after everything he’s put her through, his sister deserves a chance to give her opinion.

  “Do I really need to dignify that with a response?” she sniffs. “Of course, Timber. Of course you should.”

  “Dinna tell anyone,” he warns her.

  “Oh, I think I’ll allow you the pleasure of breaking it to Mom on your own.”

  He cringes at that. But even the thought of his mother can’t change him. Not now.

  He remembers that once before he told Her that he had made a choice and nothing could change him. His love for Her then was nothing to his love for Her now.

  On Ostara, the first day of spring, or the middle of it, depending on your persuasion, he takes the day off work. Caitlin asks him why, and he shrugs.

  “I’d like to spend the holiday with ye, aye? I’ve a mind to take ye somewhere.”

  “Oh? Where?” She asks, but he just smiles.

  “Get your boots on.”

  “Far be it from me to pry when you’re being mysterious,” She mutters, going to the closet. “Will I need a coat?”

  He drinks Her in. The shape of Her hips in her low-cut jeans. The shape of Her body in the purple shirt with the deep V neck that shows a hint of breast. The shape of Her. The shape that fills him. He can’t imagine life without Her. He can’t believe he ever considered it.

  “You’re fine as ye are,” he says. He’s never said anything so true.

  They get into the truck, and he drives them to Scotch Flats, which strikes him as amusing and appropriate. There’s an ancient volcano chimney, a pillar of red rock rising up out of the BLM lands. They’ve joked about it, calling it “The Phallus,” or, in coarser moments, simply, “The Dick.”

  “You’re taking me to The Dick on Ostara?” She glances at him sidelong. “I hope you brought a blanket. The ground’s probably wet up there.”

  He pulls the truck into the lot at the base of the trail head. “It’ll be dry enough for what I have in mind.”

  She looks skeptical. She knows him very well but not, he thinks, well enough to guess.

  “Aren’t you a holiday early? Beltane is more the time for this kind of thing.”

  “I can’t wait until Beltane,” he tells Her, and that makes Her laugh.

  “If waiting’s so hard,” another sideways glance in the direction of his crotch, “we could have stayed in bed.”

  “Outside is better.”

  He takes Her hand, and they walk up the trail. The air is a bit cool. Not too bad, though, and the sun is strong. Winter was harsh, but spring is making up for lost time. Wildflowers already dot the hillside: mariposa tulip and Indian paintbrush and sego lily in white and red and gold. He leads Her under the shadow of the rock, and sits Her down on a stone under a clump of aspens just coming into bud.

  “Timber, what are you up to? This rock is cold. And sharp. It hurts my butt,” She protests.

  He goes to one knee in front of Her, and takes Her by the hand. And She goes very still, and very quiet.

  “Caitlin,” he says. “I love ye more than my life. I ken that things haven’t always been easy between us these past months. Still, I’m wondering.” He reaches into his watch pocket. “I’m wondering if ye’d do me the very great honor of being my wife.”

  He shows her the ring. It’s a narrow silver band of Hebridean open work with tiny diamond chips set in the spaces between the knots. It was his grandmother’s, and it’s a good thing she didn’t pass on until he was in college, or likely he’d have sold it to buy drugs.

  You’re an addict, McGuyver says in his mind. And she’s your drug of choice.

  Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps not. He no longer cares.

  She gapes at him.

  “What?”

  “I’m asking ye to marry me,” he tells Her.

  Her hand goes to Her lips. She can’t seem to catch Her breath.

  “You know,” She says after a time. “You know how I am. Now.”

  “Caitlin Ross, I’d rather have ye without magic than any other woman with all the magic in the world,” he says. His whole heart is in the words. Nothing held back. “Please say yes.”

  “Yes,” She whispers, tears streaming down Her face. “Oh, yes.”

  He slides the ring on Her finger. It fits as if made for Her. He takes Her face in his hands, kisses Her. Tastes Her sweetness. All that She is. And, for a while, time stops.

  When they walk back down to the truck, the sun is high. The shadows have lifted, and behind them the aspen trees are green, green, green.

  Afterword

  Timber began as a joke.

  My husband and I were talking about the weird names that people adopt, or are given by parents of a certain generation or disposition. Names like “Moonchild,” and “Song” and “Leaf” and “Cloud.”

  “Tree,” said my husband. “Lumber.”

  “Timber,” I said.

  I remember we laughed.

  Not long after, my then-band played at a performer’s showcase at a local festival. The Paonia Mountain Harvest Festival is now in its twelfth year, and is really well-organized and fun, with lots of cool activities as well as music. But that was its first year, and, like anything of the sort in its first year, it had some glitches. My husband and I were bitching about it afterward, on the way up to the corner store. I invented an obnoxious festival organizer, whom I then gruesomely murdered. For anyone who wants to know where writers get their ideas, this is how. We exercise our right to fantasize on paper.

  This conversation went on to become the first incarnation of the first part of She Moved through the Fair, and Caitlin Ross was born. And so was her husband, Timber MacDuff.

  I knew very little about either of them at the time, except that they were musicians. Timber had been born in Scotland and his family had emigrated when he was nine. But that’s all I knew. I didn’t even know either of them had any magical capabilities.

  That story didn’t go anywhere for a long time, probably because I didn’t know about the magic. In the first incarnation of SMttF, in fact, Vic Huston got his head bashed in with a microphone stand.

  Maybe a year later, the radio station downtown purchased a building that had a reputation of being haunted. The building had housed a string of bars, all of which had closed after bad luck, which got attributed to the hauntings. And there had, in fact, been a murder in the street outside the last one.

  I thought the radio station would do much better to blow up the building than to try and convert it to new premises. And so The Unquiet Grave came into being, and Caitlin and Timber reappeared to deal with the problem. And they must have, because the radio station is doing very well in its new location.

  By that point, I knew Caitlin pretty well. But Timber remained something of a mystery. I discovered that he was a drummer and a shaman, and that he could pick a lock and identify human bones. He could be charming, and he had a violent side. I didn’t learn a whole lot else.

>   I finished TUQG and went back to SMttF, and the elusive Mr. MacDuff gained more prominence. He liked sex a good deal, and was rather good at it. He had a degree in Cultural Anthropology—okay, that explained the bones. He could talk to trees and animals. I had actually learned of this talent when I started playing with an idea that would become The Parting Glass, the story of Caitlin and Timber’s first meeting. He had a past that he didn’t talk about much.

  I was perhaps about halfway through SMttF when, one day, I said to my husband,

  “I think Timber has some kind of battle magic.”

  “Interesting idea,” my husband said.

  That’s how I discovered the whole thing about Timber being Battle Blessed, a gift which he had from the warrior goddess, Scáthach, after Caitlin renounced magic and left him to clean up a mess.

  Well and good. It made sense, but I still didn’t know the details.

  I got close to the end of SMttF. I realized that for two books in a row, Timber had been instrumental in rescuing Caitlin from some difficulty. I didn’t want Caitlin to become the kind of female protagonist who gets rescued all the time, and I determined that in the next book she’d rescue Timber.

  The next morning, I woke up with the entire plot of A Maid in Bedlam in my head. All of it at once. And I knew that a great part of it would involve Timber confronting and accepting his past.

  I still didn’t know the details of that past, however. I did know he’d run away from home and lived on the streets as a teenager, although I had no idea why. I imagined him coming from a large, boisterous, loving family. He maintained ties with them. He hadn’t left from abuse, as Caitlin had. Still, he didn’t quite fit in. Something refused to let him fit in. I didn’t know what.

  The thing was, Timber didn’t talk to me, not directly. I spend a lot of time with my characters. I listen to their stories in their own words. But I only saw Timber through other characters’ eyes, mostly Caitlin’s. And he hadn’t told her everything, not in eight years.

  I didn’t discover Timber had been a heroin addict until Caitlin saw it in the mirror room. It horrified me every bit as much as it did her. I couldn’t get it through my head. I wondered if, as an author, I had inserted it for gratuitous shock value. I tried to get rid of it. I couldn’t. It was true.

  After I finished A Maid in Bedlam, I stopped writing for a while. My characters were on holiday; I had very little idea what happened next. It took me two years, the increasing popularity of e books, and some prodding from several friends who had read the manuscripts before I was able to go back to it.

  I started with finishing The Parting Glass, which I had left at the beginning of Chapter Five for a couple of years. In all that time, I knew what happened. I just hadn’t been able to get into it. Like I said, my characters were on holiday. I couldn’t talk to them.

  Then they came back, and away we went.

  The main problem of The Parting Glass, as those who have read it will already know, is the disappearance of a Native American medicine man. I already knew Tiber had studied Native American shamanism; I’d known that almost since he first appeared. But that’s not my personal forte so, in order not to sound like a complete ass, I did some research. Part of the research was reading Black Elk Speaks. And as I read it, a lot of details about Timber MacDuff fell into place. I’d known all along that people who become shamans often suffer a serious childhood illness along with a power vision. I’d assumed it had happened to Timber. But it had never really come to the front of my mind until I read Black Elk’s account of his own power vision, and how, afterward, he’d felt alienated from his family and his people. And I understood, finally, why Timber had done the things he had done.

  In case you’re curious, I still do not know the details of Timber’s power vision. I’m hoping he’ll tell me about it at some point.

  Because he’s talking to me now. It started in the middle of The Parting Glass. As I relate in the author’s note to that book, one morning I woke up way too early with his voice in my head. I went to my desk and wrote out his account of his experience of the morning after the first Summer Solstice he spent with Caitlin Ross. He talks fast, once he gets going; it took a couple hours.

  A few weeks later, he woke me up again, this time with the account of how he fell off the wagon and, as a result, took up the practice of broadsword, which you will find in this volume.

  And now that he’s started talking, the bastard won’t shut up.

  These stories do more than fill in holes in the continuity of Caitlin and Timber. They fill in holes in Timber’s personality and in his life. I think he’s a fascinating character, and I enjoy listening to him. I hope you will, too.

  Katherine Lampe, October 2012

  About the Author

  Katherine Lampe lives in Colorado with her husband and four cats. She is currently working on the fifth and sixth books in the Caitlin Ross series, and she favors a man with a really big sword. The cats keep their opinions to themselves.

  A Final Word

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