Rose didn't move. She felt sick to her stomach and the sun hurt her
eyes, though she continued to stare, something not quite shock, not
quite relief, but at a forgotten face, a familiar face. One that
brought comfort and painful memories. The horse had been Rose's first
corruption, the first moment of terror, the first dance with death. The
second had been the discovery of her father's mistress a year later.
Her father's deadly accident had been the third.
"I'll help you up," MacLeod held out his hand. Rose took it.
"Has this happened to you before?" Mac brought her back to his room at the hospital where he drove his ambulance to and from everyday. He half expected Rose to talk about Titanic. He assumed her first death had happened there. But she looked like she had aged some beyond seventeen–and he had a feeling Rose was trickier than everyone else had presumed.
Rose looked at the floor, then at MacLeod. "Yes, a month ago. I was a student at the University of Naples...my fiancé and I did excavation work at the Pompeii site...there were men, probably stealing artifacts...there's a big market for them...umm, we saw them, they saw us and they shot us." Rose looked out the window distantly. She had told the story enough times to the Neapolitan police, it had become almost second nature. Tell us how the man you loved was murdered, pretty thing. "So...I'm here. He's not." She looked right at MacLeod on the chair and put her leg unladylike on the bed post, propped her arm up on the night stand and made herself comfy. "Why do I know when you're coming?"
Like her adoptive father, she was direct.
"We can sense when one another is coming."
"Who's 'we'?"
Duncan sat down next to her on the bed and moved her leg over, forcing her to sit up. "You can't die..." he began.
"So I noticed."
"Neither can I and there are a lot of us. We're immortals. We can only die if someone cuts off our heads. We're part of a very big game. You're in for a different life now than any life you may have planned and I can train you to survive in that life."
Rose laughed, not her phony falsetto laugh she gave out at parties. She really laughed at him. Duncan grabbed her hard and suddenly by the arm. "You think this is a joke."
"I think you're crazy," she said, still laughing but now bitter. Five years ago, she was a well brought up girl, daughter of a rich man and a refined woman. Now she was like some jaded cowboy. "Can I leave now? I have a wrecked plane to answer for."
"Then you go out there and see what happens to you."
Rose leaned in. "You'd be surprised what I can walk out on." She got up and grabbed her jacket.
"You'd think you really were your parents' child, Rose." Duncan didn't want to hurt the young woman but she would have to learn quickly, and with the Game and the War, he didn't have time to play around. If her arrogance was going to get her killed, Duncan was determined to make it wait a while, until she was on her own, aware of who she was.
"What am I your kid or something?"
Your kid She had developed a rather biting tone. If he could teach her to fight, she'd be a force to be reckoned with.
"No, immortals don't have parents and we can't have children."
"Everyone has parents."
"Not us."
"Alright, fine," she put her hand on her hips, "how would one expect public people like my parents hide the fact that they just picked up some baby without my mother ever being with child? Where do I come from?"
Where do I come from? It wasn't the powerful plea Duncan had given to his father those three hundred years ago. Rose was challenging him.
"Unless you're too important, I can tell you a story?"
"Will I believe it?"
"It's your head," Mac shrugged.
Summer 1894 Near Glenfinnan, Scotland
Ruth DeWitt Bukater looked out her window at the little. Her husband, Nathaniel, had insisted on traveling through the Scottish Highlands and then getting lost. There was no one with them, he thought it would be romantic if they were alone. They were supposed to be welcomed at Castle Something-or-other, days ago but they were stuck in this stupid inn. And scandal! Ruth traveling while she was with child. They found out in London and had originally agreed to stay there until the child was born, but Nate wanted her to be with him as he went marching around uncivilized places.
Ruth was young and pretty, barely twenty-one, and had only just begun to show. She was embarrassed to go out in public in her maternal state, even preferring to confine herself to her tiny room, while Nate took hikes, leaving her alone and pregnant on their romantic vacation.
It was August and Ruth wasn't due until November. Nate had been gone all day when he said he'd be back for lunch–he'd missed it, and these being the days where they were still in love, she went out looking for him.
She hadn't gotten two blocks until she felt a distinct pain. Ruth, realizing she going into labor prematurely, covered her mouth her little hand, failing to repress a sob. "Nate!" she cried weakly.
She hobbled back into the inn, walking back an endless two blocks, holding her stomach instinctively and fearing the next contraction. She burst into the inn and shouted, and she had never done a thing like it before.
"I need a doctor!" she cried. "Now! I'm giving birth!" Too soon! she thought mournfully. Despite her upbringing, her perfect refinement, she was now a mother in every right except for child in her stomach making it into her arms. Manners were obsolete, the child came first, she would not let the servants raise her, she would not be her mother. She would love her baby. But for right now someone needed to save them.
Help arrived before Nate. Nate was no where to be found, though the village had turned out to hunt for him. An unmarried nurse, Elizabeth MacLeod and her mother, Fiona, a mid-wife were in Ruth's room within minutes of the proprietors getting her to the bed.
"It's too early!" she sobbed. "She's not due until November!"
"I've delivered many an early arrival, some of them are men and women now," said the round, gray-haired, Mrs. MacLeod in a sweet Scottish brogue. Some Ruth thought and winced, her legs open to two strangers.
"If we work together now, we can give you the best chance you'll have," said the younger Miss MacLeod more matter-of-factly.
"I want my husband," Ruth bit her lip, trying not to cry.
Nate came rushing in an hour later; he'd lost track of time. Husbands were not supposed to be present during birth, but Ruth demanded he stay.
An hour after that, the baby was nearly ready to be born. Elizabeth and Fiona exchanged glances as the young woman screamed and sobbed and her husband held her and kissed her head. Barely three hours of labor–and for a first baby. This wasn't a birth–it was a miscarriage. Minutes later Ruth's final screams were followed by the birth of a boy. The room was left silent. The boy did not pick up where Ruth's cries left off. He was dead.
There's no time for us There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams, yet slips away from us
Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever?
Oh ooo oh
There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us
Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever?
Ooh
Who dares to love forever,
Oh oo woh, when love must die?
Ruth did not leave her room for nearly a week after they buried the baby, which she named William.
"Why a name? Why William?" Nate had asked.
"Every boy should have a name, especially those boys who never got to have anything else," he looked at her, she had been angry with him for going to Scotland, but she had still loved him before the birth. His parents had never really loved him, he had decided years ago. But no one loved him like Ruth, they could give the love they never had, to each other, to their children.
Now she stared at him without emotion, not even contempt. She had not cried since the birth, the death.
"If I can't give him life, I can give him a name. So somebody knows he was here," with that she let out a sob and fell into his arms. She cursed and wretched for minutes, he was glad just to feel her feeling something, even pain.
"Why did this happen, Nate?"
"I don't know, my love, I don't know."
Now Ruth refused to leave the Glenfinnan and convinced Nate not to write their parents–nor anyone else–about their dead son. For the first time in her life, she started wandering by herself, leaving Nate behind to brood this time. He was a painful reminder of the baby they could not save.
On a bright day, August 24, Ruth had noted, Ruth had gotten herself lost. She didn't bother to panic, what was she worried about? Besides, if she died, she wouldn't have to face to scandal of the dead baby or think about William.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and a bit warm for Scotland, why not starve out here? It would be a lovely last day on earth. Somewhere on the hills, which Ruth had never seen the likes of in Philadelphia for certain, she came upon a decrepit stone house, that had been abandoned for centuries. Sitting on the stone wall, she heard a baby cry.
It was if she had just been shot. The blood drained from her body and she felt as if someone had pulled her knees out.
"I'm finally going crazy," she said aloud.
But after minutes of hugging herself waiting for it to go away, the distant baby did not stop crying. Ruth found herself running the hills tripping over her own feet, tearing her yellow promenade dress as the wind blew it this way and that, until she found the baby, a naked girl writhing on a grave powerfully kicking her legs, as if in protest. The baby girl screamed, demanding to be heard.
Ruth leaned over and gently picked up the furious babe. She was so small, a new born–but clean as if she had been taken care of. There was no around but Ruth. The only other human being was the one under the grave marked "MacLeod." The girl came from nowhere, she was nobody's.
Ruth held the girl to her breast and looked into her eyes; she looked back. The girl from nowhere, the girl was nobody looked into Ruth own eyes, demanding to be seen, begging to be loved.
They were the perfect pair, other than the wonderful coincidence of the girl's uncanny red hair, almost matching Ruth's, but the girl was a child without a mother, and Ruth, a mother without a child.
The girl stopped crying and curled her little baby body into Ruth's breast and Ruth wrapped her protective arms tighter, pressing the rosy-cheeked baby to her own cheek. At once, Ruth ran back to the abandoned house, sat down, and placed the girl in her lap and removed her hat from her head and put the girl in it.
Ruth removed her dress, stripping down to nothing but her corset and petticoat, she took a hairpin and used it to rip apart her dress. She took the naked babe and wrapped her in the biggest piece of the sunny dress. Ruth sat against the wall, in the shade to protect the girl, and sang to her, a tradition she would continue for several years after.
"O Bonny Portmore, you shine where stand and the more I think on you, the more I think long. If I had you now as I had once before, all the lords in old England would not purchase Portmore..."
"Ruth!" she heard in the distance. Ruth cocked her head up, alert. And then another desperate "Ruth!"
She rose with the girl in her arms and walked toward the voice, remembering she was in love with it. She did not answer back, she had no words to explain, just the baby girl. But as soon as Nate saw her familiar figure, he ran as fast as his legs would carry him and stopped short in his rush to embrace her.
Nate looked at the baby, then at his wife, barely noticing that she was in her underwear.
"I found her out here, she was alone. There's no one for her..."
"What if someone claims her," Nate looked at the sleeping girl.
"No one will, Nate, I know it. This is right."
Nate gazed at the girl, she was beautiful and helpless, even he ached for her. She was also the perfect lie. She had Ruth's hair. As the thought "the perfect lie" formed in Nate's head, the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at Nate. That was the moment of the first understanding, she was to be loved as his own.
He put his forehead to Ruth's, first brushing a loose curl behind her ear, then touching his new daughter's cheek. The daughter murmured a baby murmur, yawned and put her fist in her little mouth.
"She can be ours," she whispered, "I'm already in love with her."
"No, I think we're hers," he smiled.
"I love you, Nate."
"I love you, Ruth."
It was August 24, 1894, a strange and wonderful day in Glenfinnan as an American family was born in the Scottish Highlands. Into the world was born a great and pure love that was, for a moment, untouchable.
The bliss, and the peace, and the innocence was to end. It grew over a dark secret, that would lead to death, and betrayal, years of darkness and suffering, a mother's plea for healing, a daughter's long and painful quest for vengeance.
"I'll help you up," MacLeod held out his hand. Rose took it.
"Has this happened to you before?" Mac brought her back to his room at the hospital where he drove his ambulance to and from everyday. He half expected Rose to talk about Titanic. He assumed her first death had happened there. But she looked like she had aged some beyond seventeen–and he had a feeling Rose was trickier than everyone else had presumed.
Rose looked at the floor, then at MacLeod. "Yes, a month ago. I was a student at the University of Naples...my fiancé and I did excavation work at the Pompeii site...there were men, probably stealing artifacts...there's a big market for them...umm, we saw them, they saw us and they shot us." Rose looked out the window distantly. She had told the story enough times to the Neapolitan police, it had become almost second nature. Tell us how the man you loved was murdered, pretty thing. "So...I'm here. He's not." She looked right at MacLeod on the chair and put her leg unladylike on the bed post, propped her arm up on the night stand and made herself comfy. "Why do I know when you're coming?"
Like her adoptive father, she was direct.
"We can sense when one another is coming."
"Who's 'we'?"
Duncan sat down next to her on the bed and moved her leg over, forcing her to sit up. "You can't die..." he began.
"So I noticed."
"Neither can I and there are a lot of us. We're immortals. We can only die if someone cuts off our heads. We're part of a very big game. You're in for a different life now than any life you may have planned and I can train you to survive in that life."
Rose laughed, not her phony falsetto laugh she gave out at parties. She really laughed at him. Duncan grabbed her hard and suddenly by the arm. "You think this is a joke."
"I think you're crazy," she said, still laughing but now bitter. Five years ago, she was a well brought up girl, daughter of a rich man and a refined woman. Now she was like some jaded cowboy. "Can I leave now? I have a wrecked plane to answer for."
"Then you go out there and see what happens to you."
Rose leaned in. "You'd be surprised what I can walk out on." She got up and grabbed her jacket.
"You'd think you really were your parents' child, Rose." Duncan didn't want to hurt the young woman but she would have to learn quickly, and with the Game and the War, he didn't have time to play around. If her arrogance was going to get her killed, Duncan was determined to make it wait a while, until she was on her own, aware of who she was.
"What am I your kid or something?"
Your kid She had developed a rather biting tone. If he could teach her to fight, she'd be a force to be reckoned with.
"No, immortals don't have parents and we can't have children."
"Everyone has parents."
"Not us."
"Alright, fine," she put her hand on her hips, "how would one expect public people like my parents hide the fact that they just picked up some baby without my mother ever being with child? Where do I come from?"
Where do I come from? It wasn't the powerful plea Duncan had given to his father those three hundred years ago. Rose was challenging him.
"Unless you're too important, I can tell you a story?"
"Will I believe it?"
"It's your head," Mac shrugged.
Summer 1894 Near Glenfinnan, Scotland
Ruth DeWitt Bukater looked out her window at the little. Her husband, Nathaniel, had insisted on traveling through the Scottish Highlands and then getting lost. There was no one with them, he thought it would be romantic if they were alone. They were supposed to be welcomed at Castle Something-or-other, days ago but they were stuck in this stupid inn. And scandal! Ruth traveling while she was with child. They found out in London and had originally agreed to stay there until the child was born, but Nate wanted her to be with him as he went marching around uncivilized places.
Ruth was young and pretty, barely twenty-one, and had only just begun to show. She was embarrassed to go out in public in her maternal state, even preferring to confine herself to her tiny room, while Nate took hikes, leaving her alone and pregnant on their romantic vacation.
It was August and Ruth wasn't due until November. Nate had been gone all day when he said he'd be back for lunch–he'd missed it, and these being the days where they were still in love, she went out looking for him.
She hadn't gotten two blocks until she felt a distinct pain. Ruth, realizing she going into labor prematurely, covered her mouth her little hand, failing to repress a sob. "Nate!" she cried weakly.
She hobbled back into the inn, walking back an endless two blocks, holding her stomach instinctively and fearing the next contraction. She burst into the inn and shouted, and she had never done a thing like it before.
"I need a doctor!" she cried. "Now! I'm giving birth!" Too soon! she thought mournfully. Despite her upbringing, her perfect refinement, she was now a mother in every right except for child in her stomach making it into her arms. Manners were obsolete, the child came first, she would not let the servants raise her, she would not be her mother. She would love her baby. But for right now someone needed to save them.
Help arrived before Nate. Nate was no where to be found, though the village had turned out to hunt for him. An unmarried nurse, Elizabeth MacLeod and her mother, Fiona, a mid-wife were in Ruth's room within minutes of the proprietors getting her to the bed.
"It's too early!" she sobbed. "She's not due until November!"
"I've delivered many an early arrival, some of them are men and women now," said the round, gray-haired, Mrs. MacLeod in a sweet Scottish brogue. Some Ruth thought and winced, her legs open to two strangers.
"If we work together now, we can give you the best chance you'll have," said the younger Miss MacLeod more matter-of-factly.
"I want my husband," Ruth bit her lip, trying not to cry.
Nate came rushing in an hour later; he'd lost track of time. Husbands were not supposed to be present during birth, but Ruth demanded he stay.
An hour after that, the baby was nearly ready to be born. Elizabeth and Fiona exchanged glances as the young woman screamed and sobbed and her husband held her and kissed her head. Barely three hours of labor–and for a first baby. This wasn't a birth–it was a miscarriage. Minutes later Ruth's final screams were followed by the birth of a boy. The room was left silent. The boy did not pick up where Ruth's cries left off. He was dead.
There's no time for us There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams, yet slips away from us
Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever?
Oh ooo oh
There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us
Who wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever?
Ooh
Who dares to love forever,
Oh oo woh, when love must die?
Ruth did not leave her room for nearly a week after they buried the baby, which she named William.
"Why a name? Why William?" Nate had asked.
"Every boy should have a name, especially those boys who never got to have anything else," he looked at her, she had been angry with him for going to Scotland, but she had still loved him before the birth. His parents had never really loved him, he had decided years ago. But no one loved him like Ruth, they could give the love they never had, to each other, to their children.
Now she stared at him without emotion, not even contempt. She had not cried since the birth, the death.
"If I can't give him life, I can give him a name. So somebody knows he was here," with that she let out a sob and fell into his arms. She cursed and wretched for minutes, he was glad just to feel her feeling something, even pain.
"Why did this happen, Nate?"
"I don't know, my love, I don't know."
Now Ruth refused to leave the Glenfinnan and convinced Nate not to write their parents–nor anyone else–about their dead son. For the first time in her life, she started wandering by herself, leaving Nate behind to brood this time. He was a painful reminder of the baby they could not save.
On a bright day, August 24, Ruth had noted, Ruth had gotten herself lost. She didn't bother to panic, what was she worried about? Besides, if she died, she wouldn't have to face to scandal of the dead baby or think about William.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and a bit warm for Scotland, why not starve out here? It would be a lovely last day on earth. Somewhere on the hills, which Ruth had never seen the likes of in Philadelphia for certain, she came upon a decrepit stone house, that had been abandoned for centuries. Sitting on the stone wall, she heard a baby cry.
It was if she had just been shot. The blood drained from her body and she felt as if someone had pulled her knees out.
"I'm finally going crazy," she said aloud.
But after minutes of hugging herself waiting for it to go away, the distant baby did not stop crying. Ruth found herself running the hills tripping over her own feet, tearing her yellow promenade dress as the wind blew it this way and that, until she found the baby, a naked girl writhing on a grave powerfully kicking her legs, as if in protest. The baby girl screamed, demanding to be heard.
Ruth leaned over and gently picked up the furious babe. She was so small, a new born–but clean as if she had been taken care of. There was no around but Ruth. The only other human being was the one under the grave marked "MacLeod." The girl came from nowhere, she was nobody's.
Ruth held the girl to her breast and looked into her eyes; she looked back. The girl from nowhere, the girl was nobody looked into Ruth own eyes, demanding to be seen, begging to be loved.
They were the perfect pair, other than the wonderful coincidence of the girl's uncanny red hair, almost matching Ruth's, but the girl was a child without a mother, and Ruth, a mother without a child.
The girl stopped crying and curled her little baby body into Ruth's breast and Ruth wrapped her protective arms tighter, pressing the rosy-cheeked baby to her own cheek. At once, Ruth ran back to the abandoned house, sat down, and placed the girl in her lap and removed her hat from her head and put the girl in it.
Ruth removed her dress, stripping down to nothing but her corset and petticoat, she took a hairpin and used it to rip apart her dress. She took the naked babe and wrapped her in the biggest piece of the sunny dress. Ruth sat against the wall, in the shade to protect the girl, and sang to her, a tradition she would continue for several years after.
"O Bonny Portmore, you shine where stand and the more I think on you, the more I think long. If I had you now as I had once before, all the lords in old England would not purchase Portmore..."
"Ruth!" she heard in the distance. Ruth cocked her head up, alert. And then another desperate "Ruth!"
She rose with the girl in her arms and walked toward the voice, remembering she was in love with it. She did not answer back, she had no words to explain, just the baby girl. But as soon as Nate saw her familiar figure, he ran as fast as his legs would carry him and stopped short in his rush to embrace her.
Nate looked at the baby, then at his wife, barely noticing that she was in her underwear.
"I found her out here, she was alone. There's no one for her..."
"What if someone claims her," Nate looked at the sleeping girl.
"No one will, Nate, I know it. This is right."
Nate gazed at the girl, she was beautiful and helpless, even he ached for her. She was also the perfect lie. She had Ruth's hair. As the thought "the perfect lie" formed in Nate's head, the baby opened her eyes and looked directly at Nate. That was the moment of the first understanding, she was to be loved as his own.
He put his forehead to Ruth's, first brushing a loose curl behind her ear, then touching his new daughter's cheek. The daughter murmured a baby murmur, yawned and put her fist in her little mouth.
"She can be ours," she whispered, "I'm already in love with her."
"No, I think we're hers," he smiled.
"I love you, Nate."
"I love you, Ruth."
It was August 24, 1894, a strange and wonderful day in Glenfinnan as an American family was born in the Scottish Highlands. Into the world was born a great and pure love that was, for a moment, untouchable.
The bliss, and the peace, and the innocence was to end. It grew over a dark secret, that would lead to death, and betrayal, years of darkness and suffering, a mother's plea for healing, a daughter's long and painful quest for vengeance.