Hello again! It's been a while, hasn't it? I have excuses ranging far and wide, from papers to university applications to an extremely inconvenient autoimmune flare-up. Coupled with a healthy dose of writer's block (I love Walter and Una, but goodness they're a pain sometimes), I've had a month's absence from writing - but inspiration struck, and this chapter was written in a little under two days. Yes, I'm quite satisfied. So please enjoy this humble offering of a chapter, and pray that we don't have to wait so long for the next one.


2 May, 1915

Normally, Walter enjoyed church. He liked the sights, sounds and smells around him - the way the light filtered through the stained glass of the windows, Reverend Meredith's sermons, and the smell of beeswax and lemon from the candles and the polish on the pews. He loved feeling at peace, the feeling that came from being close to God. Of all the Ingleside children, Walter had always been the most devout - had even considered attending seminary for some time.

But today, instead of the tinted light, the candles and the sermon, Walter heard the wailing of bagpipes and dying men, smelled the sulfur of the guns, and saw nothing but blood. So much blood. The thought of so much of it being spilled - turning the soil red - sickened him. He tried to concentrate on the sermon, to let it infuse his spirit as it usually did, but his mind only wandered further into the battlefields of France.

Lord, he prayed, help me here. I need some measure of peace if I'm ever to make it out of here with my sanity intact.

His eyes roamed around the sanctuary, looking for something to grab onto as an anchor. Several rows ahead of him and across the center aisle, he caught sight of the grey-blue hat and dress of Una, next to the more eye-catching attire of Faith. As though sensing his eyes on her, Una turned slightly, meeting his grey eyes with her blue ones. She gave him a small smile before quickly turning back towards the front to watch her father.

And so it remained for the rest of the sermon. Walter's eyes remained fixed on Miss Meredith, instead of her father. The question that had been gnawing at him all week reared its head again. What had he said to cause her to go running off like that? He could, he supposed, ask her after church - but why on Earth would he do that?


Una felt a tap on her shoulder and whirled around to find herself looking up into Walter's twinkling eyes. Oh, good Heavens. She willed her heart out of her throat and into its normal place, and prayed that her cheeks weren't as red as the heat in them told her they were. After all, she'd run off on him earlier that week - what must he think of her?

What Walter was thinking was how lovely she looked, before banishing that thought to the recesses of his mind. Temporarily struck dumb - something that seemed to be happening more often when he was in her presence - he watched Faith and the twins over Una's shoulder, until he realized that they were all looking at him. Turning back to Una's upturned, expectant face, he cleared his throat slightly.

"I...I was going to ask if I could walk you home…" And right there, Walter Cuthbert Blythe, schoolmaster and poet, had managed to sound like another Cuthbert of his mother's tales.

The expectant look on Una's face turned stiff. "I think I can find my way next door." She nodded to the Manse, which was truly less than a stone's throw away.

"Rainbow Valley, then?" he asked, feeling the bite of disappointment when she shook her head.

"I have to help Mother Rosemary with dinner," she explained, the relief she felt that he was still willing to speak to her mingling with her disappointment. "Tomorrow?" she offered, trying to end the conversation quickly. The minister's daughter talking with a young man after church - gossip would fly.

"Very well, then," he agreed. "Shall I come collect you?"

A small smile cracked the marble of her face. "Only if you want to carry the picnic basket." At his nod, it broadened, fueled mostly by relief. "How does eleven-thirty sound?"

"See you then."


The following morning found Una packing a hamper in the Manse kitchen. Humming slightly to herself to cover the butterflies in her stomach, she added a few cookies to the sandwiches that already lay in the basket.

"You're in an awfully good mood," Faith noted as she entered the kitchen. "Would it have anything to do with the basket you're packing?"

"I'm meeting Walter at half past eleven." Thank heavens that came out so easily, thought Una. "Hand me the tea, please?"

The bottle of tea, along with two teacups and their accompanying saucers, found its way into the basket. Una straightened up, and pulled her apron over her head to hang on the nail outside the kitchen door.

There - time enough to find a cardigan and replace her slippers with proper shoes. But Faith was still looking at her - no, through her, as though seeing something or someone a million miles away.

"Faith?"

Nothing.

"Faith."

Faith's eyes blinked once, twice. She shook her head, seeming to clear some internal cobweb or other. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I was just thinking."

Una took her sister's hands in hers. "He'll be all right, Faith."

A haunted look crossed Faith's face. "I haven't heard from him in almost three weeks. Jem's not the most prolific writer, I know, but this is a record even for him."

"We'd know, Faith," Una wrapped her arms around her sister. "We'd know. There are telegrams, and letters - and Dog Monday most of all." Pulling back, she looked hard into Faith's eyes, blue meeting brown. "Any day now, a big fat letter detailing everything that's happened in the last few weeks, full of apologies for not replying to what I'm fairly certain are daily letters, will arrive, and all will be well. Understand?"

Faith sniffed, giving a small nod. Una gave her a small backward push into one of the kitchen chairs, handing her a cup with some of the leftover tea. "Drink that - I'll see if I can hunt down some bread and butter."

At this, Faith gave a watery smile. "Una, Una. Always our mother."

Una, never one to roll her eyes, had to suppress one now. "No, that's Mother Rosemary. You just can't take care of yourselves properly. Here," she handed Faith a piece of bread slathered in butter and drizzled with a spoonful of honey. "See if that doesn't make you feel better."

With each bite of bread, Una could see the spunk returning to her sister. Privately, she wondered when Faith had last eaten.

Returning spunk unfortunately meant returning inquisitiveness. "So you're going walking with Walter Blythe?"

Una knew that tone. It was the one that meant Faith wouldn't give up on her line of questioning unless something distracted her - fast.

The prayed-for distraction came in the form of three sharp raps on the kitchen door, which opened to reveal Walter, a small basket on his arm, and little Bruce.

"Good morning, Una - I hear I'm to play pack mule today," Walter said as he stepped into the kitchen. "I was told to bring these along and to contribute something to our picnic." He let her take a peek inside the basket. Plum puffs, Mrs. Blythe's own recipe. Catching sight of Faith, he nodded to her. "Hello, Faith."

Una well remembered a time when the very sight of her sister had been enough to turn Walter Blythe's ears a bright pink. Today, however, he treated her as he would anyone else. His gaze hopped from Faith, to the picnic hamper, and back to Una. "Shall we get going, then?"

Looking down at her slippered feet, Una sighed. "Give me a moment - I seem to be running behind this morning. And don't touch those cookies, Bruce!" she added over her shoulder as she left the kitchen. "There are more in the tin in the pantry. Make sure he only has one, Faith."

After hunting down a pair of shoes appropriate for going walking, Una picked her cardigan and a wide-brimmed hat off of the coat stand, folding the tartan picnic blanket over her arm as she returned to the kitchen.

"There," she announced to no one in particular. "Off we go, then."


As they pushed their way through the ferns and into Rainbow Valley, Una took stock of the openness she felt after the compression of the small pathway in the forest. Turning to Walter, she said so, and he nodded in agreement.

"There's an American architect who works with that principle - compression leading into a larger space making the open space feel larger and lighter - I don't remember his name, but he's quite well known in the States.* Well," he shrugged, "the name will come to me sooner or later, I suppose."

After conferring, they decided to have their picnic underneath a large maple. Walter spread out the blanket, and Una set out the food, settling herself with her back to the trunk and removing her hat with a grateful sigh.

"Why do you always wear those large hats?" Walter asked, nodding to the straw hat with the eight-inch-long pearl hatpin skewered through the crown.

"You do realize that the only other fashionable point of reference is Faith, don't you?" Una asked, helping herself to one of Mrs. Blythe's plum puffs. "Firstly, you have to realize that Faith wears small hats for the shock value - I think she'd even cut her hair if she could get away with it," she mused before getting back to the topic at hand. "My skin, the approximate shade of parchment, does not do well when exposed to sun. I would rather be unfashionable than go through life with a perpetual sunburn. The hat may not be the latest style from Paris, but it's certainly practical. And I am nothing if not practical."


Two hours later, they had concluded their picnic and were walking down the road into Glen St. Mary. Walter looked up at the sky, where alternating ribs of cloud and sky gleamed like fish scales.

"Mackerel sky,

Mackerel sky.

Never long wet -"

"Never long dry -"** finished Una, feeling a raindrop on her hand. "We'd best hurry if we don't want to be caught out in it."

Walter gave the sky a hard look. "We might just make it."

About halfway, however, his fears were realized wen one drop became two, then four, and then with a quick pattering, turned into vertical streams of water.

The pair found themselves taking shelter under a tree by the side of the road. The tree, however, did not offer much by way of shelter, and Walter was soon considering other accommodations.

"There was a barn not too far back on the road," he offered. "Think we can make a run for it?"

Una gave him a look from beneath the quickly softening brim of her straw hat. "How far back, exactly?"

"One and a half bends?"

Una shoved back her ruined hat. A lot of good it would do her, anyhow. Unfolding the picnic blanket, she handed him one corner. "Very well, then. I assume run like mad, and the say wool repels water."

"On three"

She nodded.

"One...two...three!"

And off they went, each holding a corner of the blanket over them, Una's other hand holding up her skirts higher than was proper, Walter's clutching the basket, which bumped against his leg as they scrambled back up the road. Two bends later (not one and a half, Una noted), they skidded into the hay barn. Sinking onto a bale, Una let Walter hang up the blanket while she contents of the basket.

"The teacups held up reasonably well," she announced. "Only one of them lost a handle, and that can be reattached. The leftover plum puffs are barely damp, well bundled in their napkin. I'd say we haven't done too badly."

"At least we're dry," Walter squinted into the rain, "unlike whatever poor souls might be out there."

Una nodded, thinking of the fishermen who were out on their boats. Likely a little rain wouldn't faze them, but she said a prayer for them anyways. While her mind was on a biblical track, Una found herself looking out at the rain. A chuckle bubbled out of her, causing Walter to raise an eyebrow.

"I was just thinking," she smiled, "if it keeps up raining this way, do you think we'll have to build an Ark?"

"Well," Walter looked at the two cats twining themselves around his ankles, "we've already got a pair of cats. I can be Noah, and you can be Emzara."

Hold a minute. Wasn't Emzara...Noah's wife? ***She opened her mouth to ask him, but he had already turned away, and was looking out the door at the rain. Surely he hadn't meant it that way - and she wasn't even entirely certain if Emzara had been Noah's wife, after all. She would just have to check her Bible at home.

"Plum puff?" she held one out to him.

"Thank you," he took it. "All that running made me hungry, after all." A puckish look that was generally only found on Jem's face crossed his.

"Well, savor it. It's got to last you forty days, after all." Una leaned back against the hay and gave one of the cats a scratch behind the ears.

Shortly afterwards, the rain let up. The roar of the rain on the roof became a gentle patter that slowly subsided. Una joined Walter at the door, basket and blanket in hand.

"No doves," Walter shrugged, "but there is a rainbow."

They looked at the arc of colors across the sky until it disappeared from view. Then Una handed him the picnic basket, keeping the blanket. Stepping out into the tentative sun, she smiled at the sparkling world. "Never long wet, indeed. Come along, Noah."


Later, in her room at the Manse, Una balanced a large tome on her lap, borrowed from her father's study. Running her finger through the book of Jubilees, she came to a halt at a familiar name. Her heart, treacherous organ that it was, rose into her throat.

Emzara was Noah's wife.


*This architect, as you may have already figured out, is Frank Lloyd Wright.

**English saying

***Book of Jubilees - see A/N

This chapter's title is taken from the song "Homeward Bound" (Lyrics by Howard Johnson and Coleman Goetz, music by George W. Meyer, 1917)

Now, before you come rushing at me with your Bibles, pointing out that there is no book of Jubilees in yours: I know. The book of Jubilees is considered to be one of the pseudepigrapha by the Protestant and Catholic churches. In other words, if the author was misattributed, a perfectly authentic text might fall under this category. I will not try to argue for or against the book of Jubilees' authenticity, but suffice it to say that any pastor worth his theological salt would likely have a copy of the pseudepigrapha floating around. And John Meredith does.

Also, if you're wondering why the date at the top has magically changed: after some conferring with kslchen, it was determined that although coming home at the end of April is ridiculously early for anyone, LMM was rather loose with her timeframes. This gives us an extra month for things to happen between Walter and Una (one which I'm thankful for, even though falling in love on the spot is a trademark of LMM's characters. Ahem...Gilbert?) I'll go back and change the rest of the dates later, but for the time being, let this explanation suffice.

Love,

Anne