Goddess Child

by Parda, March 2001

CHAPTER 1

For Sara Heather MacLeod, age nine (almost ten! She and her twin brother, Colin, had less than two months to go before their birthday), the day of their Uncle Duncan's wedding in New Zealand started out boring, but it didn't stay that way very long.

Mom and Aunt Cass had gone running together in the morning, like they usually did, but Dad hadn't, and he always went running, every single day. "And how was the bachelor party last night, Connor?" Mom asked before breakfast in the huge and sunny dining room of the old homestead that Uncle Dunc had bought two years before, but Dad didn't answer; he just sipped at his coffee with his eyes half-closed. John (Sara and Colin's older brother, who was almost twenty-three) and Uncle Dunc hadn't even gotten out of bed yet, and it was almost nine o'clock. Mr. Davis (who was staying in the little cottage in the side yard, but then he wasn't part of the family, just one of Uncle Dunc's friends) hadn't shown up yet, either.

When Aunt Rachel and Aunt Cass brought out the sausages and omelets from the kitchen, Dad went to find a room with "no sunshine and less noise," so at breakfast it was just the moms and aunts and kids: Sara and Colin and their soon-to-be cousins, Paula (nine and a half) and Tommy (almost eight). After the food was eaten, Mom and Aunt Rachel and Aunt Cass and soon-to-be Aunt Susan sat around the table talking and drinking their "second cup of coffee," which usually meant at least three refills. John and Uncle Dunc and Mr. Davis emerged one by one, but none of them wanted breakfast. After a little while, the women drove into town to get their hair done, and the men just lay around the house with all the curtains drawn.

The grown-ups were being hopelessly dull, and Paula and Tommy and Colin decided to watch Episode III of Star Wars. Sara had seen it before, lots of times. So had the others, but they didn't seem to mind watching Anakin get zapped in the Clone Wars yet again. Sara was seriously bored. She got her new book, Half-Magic, and went to Paula's bedroom (because Sara was staying with Paula, just like Colin was staying with Tommy), but it was too stuffy inside, so Sara took a pillow and went to lie on her stomach on the second-floor big verandah that was right over the first-floor big verandah. She opened her book with a sigh of contentment.

Sara looked up from chapter fourteen when a car door slammed. Aunt Cass and Mom were walking along the stone path to the front door of the house, finally back from their trip to the hairdressers. Aunt Rachel had said she wanted to see the weaving store and the gardens in town, and soon-to-be Aunt Susan was probably still getting her hair done, because she was the bride, after all.

Mom looked gorgeous, with her hair shining golden, all pinned up into little curls. Aunt Cass looked gorgeous, too. Her goldeny-reddish-brown curls were bigger, probably because her hair was longer. Sara wanted hair that color, or all-golden hair like Mom's, but Sara's hair was plain old brown. Colin said it was the color of mud, but his hair was the exact same color, so there. At least their hair wasn't bright orange and spiky, like Claire's. Sara's other friend, Keiko, had perfectly straight black hair, but she was Japanese, like her dad and mom, Mr. and Mrs. Osato, who were the teachers at the karate dojo back home in the Highlands.

Mr. Davis's voice called out from underneath the veranda, where he was probably in the hammock. He spent a lot of time in the hammock. "I like your hair that way," he said as Mom and Aunt Cass came up the veranda stairs. Mom smiled and waved, but Aunt Cass stopped walking and then very deliberately removed every single pin in her hair. The pins clattered when they hit the wooden stairs. She reached up with both hands and pulled down all the careful curls, then tossed her head to shake her hair loose.

Sara frowned in disappointment. Aunt Cass had looked so elegant with her hair up, like the statue of the Greek goddess Aphrodite Sara had seen in the museum in New York.

Mr. Davis didn't seem disappointed. "It looks good that way, too," he said, and Sara tilted her head a little as she examined the effect. Aunt Cass looked kind of wild now, because the curls were still there, only all messy. It was pretty, though. But then Aunt Cass started braiding her hair tight at the back of her head, and Mom made a funny choked sound. Sara didn't like Aunt Cass's hair that way at all. It made her ears stick out.

"I suppose if I tell you I like your hair long, you'd get a pair of scissors," Mr. Davis said, and he didn't sound happy now. "And if I tell you I like your hair short, you'd shave your head."

Aunt Cass finished the braid and flipped it over her shoulder so that it hung down her back. "I don't live my life to make you happy, Methos," she told him, cold and stern. "Not anymore."

Sara tried to remember Mr. Davis's first name. Benjamin, wasn't it? Perhaps Methos was his middle name. It sounded weird, almost Greek. And why had Aunt Cass tried to make Mr. Davis happy? When?

Mr. Davis came out from the veranda, so that Sara could see the back of his head and his shoulders. The collar of his green shirt was a little crooked on the right side, and his hair was kind of mud-brown, too, a light-colored mud with a little bit of sand. It was good to know she wasn't the only mud-hair person in the world.

"Fine," Mr. Davis told Aunt Cass, really sarcastic, even more sarcastic than Dad could be. Or perhaps Mr. Davis was just angry. "I don't want you to," Mr. Davis continued. "Not any more, and not ever again." He walked right up to Aunt Cass where she was standing on the stairs, but she didn't move back from him at all. They stood there glaring, like they were about to hit each other, until he said, more softly now, "I just think it's a damn shame that you live your life making yourself miserable."

Aunt Cass didn't say anything, but after a minute she turned around real fast and walked away, out to the back of the house. Sara thought about going after her, but Mr. Davis and Mom were starting to talk again, and Sara wanted to hear what they had to say.

Mr. Davis disappeared under the veranda, probably back to the hammock, and Mom went under the veranda too. Sara crawled silently to the railing that went around her veranda, so she could lean over the edge a little and hear their voices better. She still couldn't see anything, though; the eaves were in her way. She leaned over a little bit more, then pulled back and shoved her hand in her mouth to keep from giggling, because she really *was* eavesdropping now.

"Cassandra's not usually like that," Mom said, coming to Aunt Cass's defense, and it was true. Sara hadn't ever seen Aunt Cass so ... prickly. "Not anymore."

"I just bring out the worst in her, mm?" Mr. Davis replied.

"Yes, I'd say you do," Mom told him. "Just the sight of you brings up bad memories for her."

Sara lifted her eyebrows in surprise. Aunt Cass had told Sara about the bad memories, but Sara had thought that all the people who had hurt Aunt Cass were dead or far away. Yet here was Mr. Davis, right beneath Sara's feet, and Aunt Cass sure didn't seem to like him.

Mr. Davis muttered something which Sara couldn't hear, then said, "No matter what I say, she gets angry."

"She's still in therapy, Methos," Mom said.

Sara knew about that, too. She'd asked Aunt Cass about it two years ago, when Dad had said Sara couldn't go stay with Aunt Cass until the therapy was all done.

"A therapist is a special kind of doctor, who helps you heal your feelings, instead of healing your body," Aunt Cass explained as she and Sara curried Hwin in the stables. Aunt Cass brushed Hwin's shoulder a couple of times before she went on. "Some bad things happened to me a long time ago, and I was ... very angry with the people who had hurt me. But sometimes, I was so angry that I got angry with people who hadn't hurt me at all."

"You mean like when I get mad at my teacher and I yell at Colin instead, just because he's there, and I'm not supposed to yell at my teacher, but I can yell at my brother?"

"Yes," Aunt Cass agreed. "Just like that. Before you were born, I got angry with your father and yelled at him. I even hit him a couple of times."

"You did?" Sara asked, stopping with the currycomb in her hand to look at Aunt Cass in amazement and new respect. Sara had never seen anybody dare to hit Dad. Even when Mom got mad, she just yelled or got really quiet and stern.

"I did," Aunt Cass said, really quiet and stern. Then she smiled again, the warm smile Sara was used to seeing, only not happy now. "Anyway, I used to lose my temper a lot, and your father doesn't want me to lose my temper around you. It's not you, Sara," Aunt Cass said, with that same sad smile, and she went back to brushing. "It's me."

"What happened to the people who hurt you?"

"Gone. Long ago. It's over." She tossed her hair back from her face, and then she and Sara both laughed when Hwin tossed her head the same way and added a loud horsey, "Pppbbbbb." Sara and Aunt Cass finished brushing Hwin, and then brushed the light brown horsehair off their clothes as best they could and put away the currycombs.

"How long will you be in therapy?" Sara asked as they were walking back to the house, holding hands. Aunt Cass squeezed her hand one-two-three, and Sara squeezed back one-two, one-two, their own special game.

"Not too much longer, I think. A few years."

"A few years?" Sara repeated, shocked. "That's a long time!"

Aunt Cass started laughing. "Not for me, little one. Not for me."

And now it had been a few years, and Aunt Cass *still* wasn't done, even though she said she only went once in a while now, perhaps two or three times a year. Even so, it sounded worse than having to get through years and years and years of school. Sara didn't ever want to have to do therapy. Aunt Cass said she even had homework!

"Cassandra almost didn't come to the wedding because she knew you would be here," Mom said from the veranda below.

Sara nodded, finally understanding why Aunt Cass hadn't seemed very excited about the wedding, even with her gorgeous new dress. Mom and Aunt Cass had gone shopping in Paris last month, and they would both look like movie stars at the wedding tonight. Sara had a new dress, too, made of burgundy and black velvet, very grown-up. She was even going to wear pantyhose, and Mom was going to loan her a gold necklace. Colin had a new suit and tie, which he didn't care about at all. Sara wouldn't have cared about a new tie, either. Boys' clothes were boring, even the dress-up ones.

"Still in therapy?" Mr. Davis-Methos repeated. "After ten years?" He hmphed. "And she was only with me for one."

"You weren't the only one, Methos," Mom told him sharply. "Just the first."

"And the last left alive," he murmured.

"Yes," Mom agreed. "The only one left to be a focus for her anger. I think, eventually, she'll stop overreacting to you; she just needs more time." There was a creak and a squeak from below, as if one of them had stood up; then Mom added, "And time is something you Immortals have plenty of."

And just what, Sara wondered, did Mom mean by that? Sara heard Mom's footsteps go in the house, and Sara quietly scootched off the veranda and down the skinny staircase at the back of the house to find Aunt Cass. Outside, a big grassy field sloped away from the house, down to the stream at the bottom of the hill, and a row of tall dark pines stood like a wall between the house and the road. The flower garden was still all mud and tiny sprouts with paper nametags taped to sticks, and the skinny little leaves on the branches of the huge totara tree down near the stream were light green. Paula said the tree was a special golden totara, and it turned bright yellow in the autumn, even though it looked kind of like an evergreen. Back home in the Highlands, it was already autumn, but here in New Zealand it was spring. Sara knew why that happened, but it was still weird to see.

Aunt Cass was near the totara tree, of course, because Aunt Cass liked trees. She was leaning with her forehead and both hands against the tree trunk, and her back was to the house. Her hair was loose again, but still messy, kind of like the tree bark, which was also reddish-brown and ruffly. Sara headed across the grass, but she stopped when Aunt Cass jerked her head up and looked at her with white wild eyes, her face set into a desperate frozen fierceness that Sara had never seen before and never wanted to see again.

Sara swallowed hard and backed away, but Aunt Cass shook herself and tossed her long mane of hair and called to Sara, smiling. Sara stopped again, but she didn't go any closer, because that smile wasn't real. "It's all right, Sara," Aunt Cass said, coming away from the tree, still with that pasted-on smile. "I'm all right."

Sara shook her head slowly. "Don't lie," she said, half-pleading and half-demanding. "You said you'd never lie to me."

Then Aunt Cass stopped, completely, with one foot in the air and her mouth a little open, like she'd been caught in a tractor beam or frozen by a magic spell, and the smile disappeared. "No lies," she agreed finally, and she went back to the totara and sat down, staring at the ground. After a minute, Sara joined her, but she didn't sit too close.

"Your father told me the same thing once," Aunt Cass said, scratching in the dirt with a twig. "No more lies."

"You lied to my dad?" Sara said in surprise.

"Oh, yes," Aunt Cass admitted. "A lot."

Sara had tried it only once. Colin had tried it twice, but he could be kind of stupid sometimes. "Dad doesn't like that," Sara said.

Aunt Cass broke the twig in half, and then in half again. "I know."

"So, why did you?"

Aunt Cass tried fitting the edges of the twigs back together, mashing the frayed parts flat and twisting them around. "When I started, it seemed the easiest way. But it just got harder, later on."

"Yeah," Sara agreed, remembering when she was eight and she had agreed to be Keiko's first-best-friend. Except Claire was still really Sara's first-best-friend. Then Keiko and Claire started being friends, and Sara was afraid that Keiko and Claire would talk to each other about who their first-best-friends were. So then, Sara had told both Keiko and Claire that she was still their best-friend, only not either first or second. But it had all ended up with Keiko and Claire being first-best-friends with each other, and for a while Sara didn't have any first-best-friends left at all. Sara picked up a twig of her own and started drawing short straight lines in the dirt. "It gets complicated."

"Mmm-mm," Aunt Cass agreed, finally looking at Sara with a little smile. Sara felt better now, because this was the Aunt Cass she recognized, and this smile was real, even if it was more sad than happy. "And sometimes," Aunt Cass went on, "I told myself it wasn't really lying, it was just pretending."

"But everybody pretends."

"Yes. But it's still lying. And it's even worse, because you're lying to yourself." Aunt Cass dropped the broken twig pieces on the ground and wiped her hands off on her trousers, leaving pale green smears on the beige cloth. "The scary part of that is, after you've been pretending for a long time, you don't know what you really want, and you can't even remember who you really are."

Sara thought about that as she pushed the four little twig pieces around with the end of her longer twig. What should she have said when Claire had showed her the horrendously ugly plastic doll she'd gotten for her birthday and asked Sara if it wasn't just beautiful and didn't she want to play with it? Sara had pretended to have fun dressing and undressing the doll and brushing the doll's hair, because she had wanted to be nice and not hurt Claire's feelings, but it had been really boring. Sara had wasted an entire afternoon and she had left Claire's house feeling angry and cranky, and she hadn't been at all nice to Claire the next day at school.

Perhaps next time, she would just tell Claire she didn't feel like playing with dolls. Sara stopped pushing the twigs around aimlessly and instead set two of them together. Then she waited for Aunt Cass to take her turn. Aunt Cass laid a longer twig next to the two little ones, and together they silently built a pattern, a circle this time, simple and complete. Aunt Cass set the last twig and sat back on her heels.

Sara added a nut in the center, a final touch, then looked up at Aunt Cass. "When did you try to make Mr. Davis happy?"

"Listening in?" Aunt Cass asked, but it wasn't a question, and she wasn't angry. "A long time ago." She had laid her hands flat on the tops of her thighs, and her fingers weren't moving at all. She shrugged. "I thought I loved him."

"He was your boyfriend?" Sara asked, surprised again.

Aunt Cass opened her mouth and shut it then finally said, "You could call it that." She stood abruptly, her foot knocking the circle of twigs awry. "I need to go running now, Sara. We can talk more later."

Sara stood and started to answer, but Aunt Cass was already walking away. She paused to yank her shoes off and toss them aside; then she starting running barefoot, across the yard and down the road, running as fast as she could go. Sara waited until Aunt Cass was out of sight. Then Sara ran back to the house, wishing she could run back in time as well.

"How old are you, Aunt Cass?" Sara had asked the year before last, when they had been out riding horses in the long summer twilight of the Highlands.

"Sometimes, Sara, I feel positively ancient," Aunt Cass had answered cheerfully. "And sometimes, I feel very young - even as young as you. Race you back to the barn!" she had challenged suddenly and taken off.

Sara had immediately urged Hwin into the race, a race that left both Aunt Cass and Sara laughing and breathless, and both their horses well-spent. They had talked as they unsaddled their horses and watered them, but Sara had forgotten to ask her question again.

"I will never lie to you," Aunt Cass had promised Sara years ago, and until today Aunt Cass had always kept that promise, but sometimes she changed the subject, and sometimes she didn't answer at all.

Sara needed answers now. She knocked on the door to her parents' bedroom, and Mom called, "Come in!" so Sara stepped inside. Mom was reading on the high quilt-covered bed, her legs stretched out before her, a pillow propped up behind her back. The dress she was going to wear for the wedding was hanging on the closet door, and the breeze from the open windows fluttered the blue silk, making ripples and sometimes big waves.

"Come on up," Mom invited, with a pat beside her on the bed, but Sara shook her head and stayed standing, her finger idly tracing the flowers carved into the wooden drawer of the washstand. Her hand stopped at the end of a stem, then turned around and went back the other way.

"How old were you when you got married?" Sara asked.

"Thirty-two."

"And how old is Aunt Susan?"

"Thirty-three, I think, and this is her second marriage. Your Aunt Rachel was twenty-two, and my mom was twenty-four. Are you planning your own wedding, Sara?"

Sara ignored the question and started to pleat the edge of the pillowcase into a fan. "Has Aunt Cass ever been married?"

Mom took off her reading glasses and shut the book. "Yes, a while ago, but her husband died. I thought she'd told you that?"

She had, but ... "Aunt Cass was really young when she got married, right?" Sara asked, because she'd known Aunt Cass all her life, and Aunt Cass hadn't been married within the last ten years, and if Mr. Methos-Davis had been her boyfriend, then when ...?

"You could say that," her mother agreed, but that wasn't really an answer, not any more now than when Aunt Cass had said it outside.

"How old is Mr. Davis?"

Her mother opened her mouth then shut it and shrugged. "I don't know. He looks to be about the same age as your Uncle Duncan, doesn't he?"

Sara couldn't really answer that. All grown-ups looked like grown-ups, unless they were really old like Aunt Rachel or Paula and Tommy's grandparents, with white hair and wrinkles. But perhaps not everybody got white hair and wrinkles. Immortal meant never-dying, Sara knew that, just like the Greek gods and goddesses, and those Immortals hadn't aged. Perhaps this kind of Immortal didn't age, either. And perhaps Aunt Cass and this Mr. Methos guy weren't the only Immortals Sara knew.

Sara didn't want to ask how old Uncle Dunc was, and she really didn't want to ask about Dad. She nodded and started to leave, but stopped at the door when her mother called her name, sounding worried. "Just curious, Mom," Sara explained with a not-lying lie. "Paula and I were talking about how old we would be when we got married." Her mother nodded, and they gave each other little relieved smiles, both of them keeping private things they didn't want to share.

And that wasn't lying, not really, was it?

Downstairs, the other kids were still watching Star Wars in the living room, and Uncle Dunc and John were in the dining room talking about sheep. Sara found her dad reading in the long narrow room everybody called the library, even though it was really just a hallway with books along one wall and windows along the other, and two chairs stuck at one end. Mr. Methos was there, too, with his feet propped up on a stool and a paperback in his hands, as if nothing had happened between him and Aunt Cass at all.

Both men looked up and smiled when she came in the room, but Sara smiled back only at Dad. She stopped when the bookshelves did, and there she stood her ground, about a meter away from Mr. Methos. She wasn't worried about keeping things private now, because Sara knew that Dad knew all about Aunt Cass, and Sara wanted some answers, and she didn't want to hear any more lies. "Are you one of the men who hurt Aunt Cass?" she asked him right out.

Mr. Methos smiled, or he tried to smile. His lips curved up and his eyes crinkled, but it was more because they were tightened in pain, than because he was happy or amused. Just like Aunt Cass's smile. "And why do you ask that?" he said.

"She doesn't like you," Sara said, not wanting to admit that she'd been listening in on them earlier this afternoon, and besides, Aunt Cass really didn't like Mr. Methos, and so Sara still hadn't told a lie.

"She doesn't know me," Mr. Methos told Sara, and now his smile was sad.

"Nobody knows you," Dad said suddenly from the big recliner chair, and when Sara turned to look at him, he beckoned to her. She went to him immediately, and he pulled her into his arms and then onto his lap. Sara relaxed against his chest, with his arms tight around her and his chin almost touching her hair. Her feet were all the way on the floor, and she realized suddenly that she hadn't sat on her dad's lap for ages. The last time she remembered, her toes had just barely reached the ground.

From the safety of her father's arms, Sara kept watching Mr. Methos, but he didn't answer her question, and after a moment he stood and left the room. Sara waited until she heard the slamming of the front screen door before she twisted around to look up at her dad. "Is he, Dad?"

"What?" he asked, and she could hear the rumble of his voice against her ear and down through to her toes.

"One of the men who hurt Aunt Cass?"

He lifted her up a little and put her farther out on his knees, so she could look right into his eyes. "Yes," he told her, serious and intent. "He is."

"Then why is he here?" Mr. Methos had been here for over a week, before Sara's family had arrived, and Sara had seen him and Uncle Dunc playing ping-pong outside in the yard a couple of times, having a really good time. Even Dad seemed to like Mr. Methos; Sara had heard them laughing in the kitchen yesterday, when they had been planning the party for Uncle Dunc. Sara had liked Mr. Methos, too. She had thought he was neat, teaching them how to do flips and helping Tommy do somersaults. But now ... "Why is he Uncle Dunc's friend?"

Dad gave half a grumble and half a sigh. "It was a long time ago, Sara. He told Cassandra he was sorry, and he says he's changed."

"How long ago?" Sara asked, needing to know. "Fifteen years? Twenty?"

Dad shrugged a little, his shoulders and his eyebrows all moving quickly up and then down. "I'm not sure exactly."

Sara knew Dad would never let her get away with that kind of not-lying lie, and Sara wasn't going to let him get away with it, either, not now. "More than twenty?" He didn't answer, so Sara persisted. "Or more than a hundred?

"Sara - - "

"More than a thousand?"

He shook his head and started to look away, and Sara asked him right out, "How old are you, Daddy?" She waited, hardly daring to breathe. Then he did look at her, but he didn't say anything at all, and his eyes were suddenly very sad, and very, very old.

Sara stared at her father for a horribly long time, an aching second of terribleness, because neither of them could hide anything anymore. She slid off his knees and started for the door, angrily blinking back unwanted tears, but he caught her by the arm. "Let me go!" she said fiercely and hit him hard with her other hand, but he ignored both her words and her blow, and he gently pulled her onto his lap, murmuring her name over and over again as he rocked her in his arms, those arms that had felt so safe and so right, just a little while ago.

But they still were, weren't they? And he was still her father, and he loved her and she loved him, and that was the truth, and that was what mattered most of all. Sara hiccuped and sniffled and burrowed her face into his shoulder with her eyes closed, wishing she could go back in time and be his little girl, when she could sit in his lap all the way. She didn't fit anymore.

"Oh, Sara," her daddy said again, very softly, and he tried to brush her hair away from her cheek, but it was all wet and sticky with tears, and so he lifted it strand by strand and tucked it behind her ear. His hand started stroking her head, little feather touches at the crown. "Your mother and I were going to tell you, you and Colin both, when you were older," he said, and his voice was deep and rumbly against her ear and down into her toes, just like it had been before. "Did Cassandra say something?"

"No," Sara said, thinking back to the conversations she and Aunt Cass had had. "She's always been really careful. I was upstairs on the veranda where nobody could see me, and I overheard Mom and him talking."

"Like mother, like daughter," Dad said with a sigh, which didn't make any sense, but then he added, "Go on," so Sara did.

"Mom called Mr. Methos an Immortal," Sara explained, and she lifted her head in surprise when her dad's chest started shaking and he laughed aloud.

"Mr. Methos," Dad repeated, still chuckling, and he and Sara shared a grin, just like always.

Just like before. But - - "How old are you, Daddy?" Sara asked again, and when he finally answered her, nothing was like it had been before. "Four hundred eighty-eight?" she repeated slowly, trying to do the subtraction in her head. It was two thousand and six now, so six take away eight was really sixteen minus eight and that was eight, too, and then add the one, so that meant it was nine from zero, which was really a ten, so that left one, and then four from zero was ... except it was supposed to be five from zero, wasn't it? Or perhaps ... Wait, shouldn't it have been eight from the zero earlier?

Sara swallowed hard and blinked back more tears, because she wasn't even sure how to subtract anymore, and she'd learned that a whole year ago, and now here she was almost ten years old and she couldn't even do basic arithmetic anymore and she hated being stupid and -

"I was born in 1518," Dad told her suddenly, and Sara nodded in limp relief and closed her eyes. But that didn't help very much, because knights in armor and ladies-in-waiting paraded through her mind.

"Who was the king then?" she asked, concentrating on the feel of the scratchy pattern of Dad's shirt against the dampness of her cheek. "James IV?"

"James V," Dad corrected. "He took the throne five years before I was born. Henry VIII was King of England."

"Oh." Sara kept her eyes closed, now seeing white swans adrift on a moat, while the beheaded ghost of Anne Boleyn floated in and out of the castle windows. Then an even scarier thought came into her head. "Mommy isn't ... isn't like- -?"

"No," he broke in.

"And John?"

"No," Dad said again, quick and definite again, and then he answered the question that Sara hadn't even wanted to think of, because either way it was answered, she lost. But- - "And not you," Dad said. "Not Colin, and not your Aunt Rachel." Sara nodded, testing that out slowly, like your tongue tested out a new filling after the dentist was finally done. It felt weird at first, but you got used to it, and then it was normal and you forgot it was even there. "So, only you and Uncle Dunc ...?" Sara asked, probing a little more and opening her eyes.

"Right."

"How old is he?

"About seventy-five years younger than I am."

Well, Sara had always known her dad was older than her uncle. But- - "Is he really your brother?"

"We were both born of the clan MacLeod," Dad explained, and that was all he needed to say. Sara had grown up in the Highlands. She knew what that meant now, and she knew what it used to mean way back when.

"And Aunt Cass?" Sara asked next.

Dad cleared his throat and shrugged again, and Sara lifted her head to look at him "I'm not sure," he told her, except this time it wasn't a lie. "But then, neither is she. Over three thousand."

Sara opened her mouth to say "oh" again, but nothing came out. Positively ancient, Aunt Cass had said, and that was really and truly not a lie.

"And 'Mr. Methos' is about five thousand," Dad said next.

"Like the pyramids?" she asked, her voice squeaking higher, and suddenly she didn't believe any of this could possibly be true.

"More like the Sphinx," Dad replied dryly.

"You don't like him, either," Sara stated.

"He's likeable, but I don't trust him," her father said. "And neither should you." Sara nodded, knowing that already. Dad glanced at his watch and said, "It's almost time to start getting ready for the wedding. Are you OK now?"

"Sure," Sara said, and she was only pretending a little.

But Dad knew. He pulled her to him, and his arms were safe and strong. "We'll talk more later; I promise. But don't tell Colin, not today. There's too much going on. Tomorrow, OK?"

"OK, Dad," she said, because tomorrow wasn't that far away.

She kissed his cheek before she slid off his lap, and he smiled at her with his eyes all crinkly at the edges, the way she remembered from for-always and for-ever, and he took her hands in his own. "Hey, Princess," he named her, and he hadn't called her that for a while, but then he lifted her hands and kissed them, just like from the stories of olden days, and he'd never done that before at all. "I love you, Sara."

"I love you, too, Daddy," she said, and it was fiercely and forever true.

Continued in Chapter 2