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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 fu
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 had 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.