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“But they’re only figments of my imagination,” she argued, looking from her papa to her mama, then to Robbie, her hands lifted beseechingly. “I drew them for whimsy.”
“They’re not your imagination, Winter,” Daar said. “They’re as real as the flesh-and-blood animals ye draw. Ye paint what ye see, and ye see the full spectrum of energy.”
“I don’t want to be a wizard,” she whispered, looking down at the floor, no longer able to face any of them. “I only want to paint.”
“Then that’s all ye have to do,” her papa said gently. “Ye have the right to deny yer calling.”
She looked up at her papa in surprise, her gaze then darting to her mother. Grace nodded.
Winter looked at Robbie, and he also nodded and smiled. “Aye,” Robbie said. “Ye have the choice of accepting or denying yer gift.”
“Did you have a choice?”
“Aye. I could have renounced my calling when I learned about it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I chose to honor my destiny, Winter, because despite the enormous responsibility that comes with being a guardian, there’s also the satisfaction of protecting my loved ones.” He crossed his arms again and gazed deeply into her eyes. “But being a guardian and being a drùidh are not the same. My decision to follow my calling should not influence yours. You must walk yer own path, Winter.”
“I don’t want to turn out like Daar,” she whispered to no one in particular.
“I beg yer pardon,” Daar said, straightening his shoulders and smoothing down the front of his cassock. “I served my calling well for nearly two mille
Winter gave him an apologetic frown. “No offense, Father, but you bungle your spells more often than you succeed.”
He picked a piece of lint off his sleeve. “Only in this last century,” he muttered, looking up with a scowl. “Before that, I was a powerful force to be reckoned with.” He stepped closer, holding his hands cupped together in front of him. “Ye can have that same power, lass. All ye have to do is decide ye want it, and ye can hold the knowledge of the universe in yer hands.”
“To what end?” she asked. “So I can interfere in everyone’s lives? Uproot people from their natural time and send them hurtling into another century?” She suddenly gasped, shooting her gaze to her parents. “I’m going to live for centuries,” she whispered in horror. “I’m going to outlive everyone!”
“Aye, there is that,” Daar said with a sigh, drawing her attention. “But ye get used to it,” he added with a negligent shrug. “Ye learn to adjust, because ye know ye’re serving the greater good.”
“I’m going to turn into a cranky old goat just like you.”
He gri
Winter stood frowning at Daar when another thought suddenly struck her. She looked at her papa. “What were you talking about earlier? Something about Cùram, and that I’m supposed to find him.” Winter felt the blood drain from her face as the realization set in. “I heard you saying you expect me to destroy Cùram. But Robbie told us he’s a powerful wizard. I can’t fight a wizard.”
“It’s up to you, Winter,” her papa said. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t feel up to.
And if you did choose to accept your gift, you wouldn’t be alone, baby girl. You’d have us guarding your back.”
Winter blinked at him, then slowly looked at everyone else. “No offense, people, but a bumbling old drùidh, a warrior, a rocket scientist, and a guardian are not exactly a match for this Cùram guy, if he truly is that powerful. And I can’t even light a candle without using three or four matches.”
Robbie chuckled. “We also have Mary,” he reminded her. “And Daar has made ye a staff of your own.”
Daar rushed to the hearth and took down a thin, smooth, five-foot-long stick from the mantel.
Winter decided her mama was right, it did look puny.
The old priest walked over and held it out to her. “It’s made from a branch of my white pine,”
he said, his voice laced with quiet reverence. “It’s weak yet, but it will grow strong as ye develop yer energy.”
Winter tucked her hands behind her back. “I don’t want it,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want your magic.”
Daar gave her a fierce scowl that should have fried her on the spot, then turned his scowl on her papa. “Make her take it, MacKeage. Tell her what happens if she doesn’t.”
Winter looked at her papa in alarm. “What happens? What’s the big secret you’ve all been keeping for the last two weeks?”
Her papa looked at the stick the old priest was still holding toward her and shook his head, his gaze locked on Daar. “It’s not really free will then, is it old man, if I tell her the fate of mankind rests on her shoulders,” Grey said, his voice sounding so defeated that Winter’s insides knotted in fear.
“The fate of mankind?” she whispered, looking at her mother. “Mama, tell me what he’s talking about.”
Grace walked up and put her arms around Winter, giving her a fierce hug. “Daar’s pine tree is dying,” she said into Winter’s hair. “And its death is going to cause a chain reaction that will eventually kill all the trees of life. And when they die, the world dies with them.”
Winter pulled back only enough to look into her mother’s deeply troubled eyes. “Just because someone cut off the top of the pine?” she asked. “Killing just one of the trees of life will make the others die?” She looked past her mama’s shoulder to Robbie and frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense.
Surely a tree of life isn’t that vulnerable. That means even an i
“Nay, the trees aren’t that vulnerable,” Robbie said with a shake of his head. “A saw would dull at the first slide of its blade into the trunk of one. But Daar’s pine was dying before the top was cut. It had grown weak trying to balance the energies. Something has disturbed the continuum, Winter, and having its energy drained is what made the pine vulnerable.”
“It was already dying before someone cut it?” she whispered, stepping out of her mama’s embrace and turning to Daar. “So the problem isn’t that someone cut your pine, but that…this Cùram wizard you’ve been talking about has upset the continuum.”
“Aye,” her papa said before Daar could respond. “We believe Cùram is here, and that he’s come to destroy mankind.”
“But why?”
“We don’t know why,” Grace said. “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out for the last two weeks.”
“So did Cùram cut the top off the pine?” Winter asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so,” Daar said with a sigh, finally lowering his hands holding the tiny staff. “That’s another mystery we’ve been trying to solve. We don’t know who cut it, or what that someone did with the top. The storm that night wiped out any signs we might have been able to follow.”
Winter stared in silence at the staff Daar was now leaning on like a cane, then looked at her papa. “S-so you want me to take up my calling to be a drùidh so I can find Cùram and stop him? And if I don’t, mankind will die?”
Her papa said nothing, merely nodded. Winter looked at her mama, only to find tears welling in Grace’s eyes as she neither nodded nor shook her head. Winter then looked at Robbie, but finding his expression completely unreadable, she turned her attention to Daar.
“If I do this…if I choose to honor the destiny you claim is mine, and destroy Cùram and save the pine, can I…can I then go back to being just me? Can I renounce my calling after?”
“Nay,” Daar said, breaking eye contact to look at the floor. “Ye have the free will to choose, but once ye do, there’s no turning back.” He looked at her. “If ye choose to take up yer power, ye can’t suddenly decide ye don’t want it anymore. Once knowledge is gained, ye can’t simply forget what ye’ve learned.”