The Highlander's Touch

Page 98

“I am of the Tuatha de Danaan. We see all. So what shall it be, human? Shall I send you home to die with your mother? Is she so important? Shall you leave this lord who loves you?”
“I need time to think,” Lisa protested faintly.
“You summoned me now.”
“I didn’t really think it would work. I have not prepared my wish—”
“If thou needed time to think, thou should not have disturbed me.” The Fairy Queen’s face grew thunderous. A breeze kicked up around the shian, tossing leaves into the air. Lisa was startled, turning around, absorbing the suddenly charged night. Charged by the Fairy Queen’s displeasure.
“We are Scotland,” the Queen stated, observing the disturbance. “The land once wept when we wept, and spring came when we danced. Now the seasons roll consistently, and aside from the fool’s pranks, this soil is mostly tame.”
“Because you are consistently detached, remote,” Lisa said, before thinking. “Has time done that to you?”
The Fairy Queen blinked. Just a blink, but it said, Tread not here, mortal, in a forbidding glance that promised wrath Lisa never wanted to experience.
Lisa recovered quickly from her fumble. “I meant, will my mother be alive if I return?”
“For a time.”
Lisa squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t really believed that the Fairy Queen would appear and grant her wish. But now here stood a being that could, and apparently was offering to return her to her mother.
How could she choose? To stay in Scotland and watch her body grow old and fall apart while her beloved never aged, or to return to her time and watch her mother die?
Neither choice was unanimously appealing.
“I don’t suppose you could bring my mother here? Maybe make her well?” Lisa suggested hopefully. “Perhaps you could make me immortal?”
“Two choices, human. Stay or go. I am not feeling generous, nor am I inclined to rearrange on a grand scale. It requires much will. A wish is a stone, and my granting is the toss into a loch. There are ripples. Shall I read your heart and find your true choice? You mortals think living is a war: Heart or mind? Silly child, guilt is not mind. Duty is not heart. Hear with that which your race claims we no longer possess. Shall I read your desire?”
Lisa’s hand flew instinctively to her breast as if she could shield her heart from this creature. “No, I will choose, if you’ll just give me a few moments.”
“I weary of waiting. Would you like to see her?” The fairy unfurled a slim white hand toward the reflecting pool, and it grew glassy and still. Within the water, like a silvery portal, her mother’s bedroom took shape. It was dawn in the twenty-first century and Catherine was awake, a rosary clasped between her gnarled hands. Lisa cried out when she saw her, for illness had taken so much of her life that it was hard to believe she still breathed. She was praying aloud. She was alive!
During the past few weeks—convinced she would never see her again—Lisa had nearly laid her to rest in her heart, but her mother still lived and breathed and was missing her desperately, worried sick.
Lisa shook her head bitterly, confounded by her choices. The vision of her mother was a fatal blow. Catherine was alive in the twenty-first century, and after all these months she must certainly have given up Lisa for dead. But Lisa had the chance to go back and hold her hand, and reassure her that her only child was well. To hold her hand while she died. To comfort and love, and keep her from dying alone.
Emotions overwhelmed her, and dimly she felt Circenn panicking somewhere out in the night—reading her feelings. Firmly, she shut him out.
Lisa glanced again at the pool and suffered a killing vision of herself in Catherine; weakened by life, faded, a brittle wisp of desire to live, gazing up at Circenn, who would be untouched by time.
Circenn had given her love. Catherine had given her love. Circenn would live forever. Lisa knew how Catherine’s death was destroying her, breaking her heart. When she died, Circenn would be subjected to such pain. If she stayed what would she have? To grow old while Circenn never aged, to die while the magnificent warrior stood by her bed, holding her hand, his heart breaking. He, who had lost so many loved ones over five hundred years. Wouldn’t it be kinder to go now than to make him suffer her death in ten or thirty or fifty years? She knew intimately the pain of losing someone so deeply loved.
Her head hurt and the back of her throat burned with the effort of suppressing tears.
Lisa turned in a slow circle, taking a long look at Castle Brodie, the enchanted night, the beauty that was the Scottish Highlands. I love you with all my heart, Circenn, she willed into the night. But I fear I am a coward and have little stamina. The years would destroy me.