BLESS THE CHILD

Akademie der Sankte Hildegard, Austrian Alps: 30 October 2042

"When did you first feel like a grown-up, Mom?" Alea asked as she and Sara were strapping on their protective gear in the stone-walled anteroom of the karate dojo at the ancient castle that had become the St. Hildegard Academy fifteen years ago, another of the Phinyx Foundation's boarding schools for girls.

"At my Uncle Duncan's wedding," Sara immediately replied, while she sat on the wooden bench and carefully adjusted the shin guard over the tender spot just beneath her left kneecap. After the most recent (and probably final) adolescent growth spurt, Alea was as tall as Sara was. Sara had forgotten Alea's increased reach during Sensei Roxanne's class last week.

"But you were only ten," Alea, an ever-so-ancient fifteen-and-a-half, objected, and she pulled her long black curls into an unruly ponytail.

"Nine," Sara corrected, but on that day of autumn springtime in New Zealand, the bridge from her childhood to her adulthood had been built and crossed. Oh, she had gone back to her childhood almost immediately, and then straddled that gap for a few years, but soon enough childhood became a land of the mists for her, glimpsed most clearly in dreams and memories, best brought back in the echoes of her own children's laughter.

She'd grown up fast, once she'd found out the people she loved were immortals.

"What happened at your Uncle Duncan's wedding, Mom?" Alea asked as they finished dressing and tied their belts over their gi. "To make you feel grown-up?"

Sara waved her hand vaguely in the air, unwilling to lie, unable to tell the truth. Alea didn't know about immortals, and hopefully she never would. She would never call her grandfather "Grandpa"; he was "Cousin Mike" to her, and Alea knew Duncan only as a family friend, not as Sara's uncle.

"Oh, seeing all the families together, from the very young to the very old," Sara told Alea, and it wasn't really a lie, not all the way. "It made me realize that my parents had been young once: been babies, children, teenagers, that they'd been lovers when they were married, that they'd had a life all their own. And then it hit me: One day, they'd be gone."

"I'd wish I'd known them," Alea said quietly. "Your mom and dad."

"I wish that, too," Sara said. "You look just like your grandmother, you know," Sara said to her daughter, and it was more true with every year. The same high cheekbones, the same beauty and grace. The eyes were lighter, though, startlingly blue against dusky skin, like a husky with white-blue eyes. Sara smiled as she reached out a tender hand to smooth back an errant curl. "Except for the hair and the skin."

"Oh, I know. I get that—," and Alea tossed her head and tightened her ponytail again, "—from my dad."

"You certainly do," Sara said, remembering the first time she'd seen Daniel, his eyes alight and his black hair streaming behind him as he'd leapt and plucked a baseball from the air, and then thrown the runner out at second base. Did he and Will still play catch? Or was it all football now?

"Uncle Colin says Grandma's hair was pure gold," Alea said, and it had been, before the silver strands crept in, before the dyes had faded it to ash blonde, before Mom had finally let it go completely and gloriously white. Alea added complacently, "Then he said mine was shimmering black silk, like ocean waves under moonlight."

Sara smiled at that. "He always was a poet at heart." And a romantic, but that wasn't surprising. She'd been one, too, before Daniel had gone.

"Ready?" Alea asked, and she grinned as she picked up her bo, the long wooden staff still sheathed in black cloth.

"I don't know," Sara said warily, even as she smiled and reached for her own weapon. "You seem a little too eager to me."

"I learned some new moves this weekend."

"Uh-oh," Sara said, as she and Alea walked to the arched doorway and bowed before entering the dojo, the old castle's banquet hall now put to different use. Dust-filled beams of sunlight crossed from the row of lancet windows high overhead to the swords and sai hanging on the long, side wall. Their bright metal gleamed against the white stone blocks. Sara and Alea bowed before the portraits of the founders on the front wall, then took the covers off their bo and laid the cloth strips on the bench near the door. In the center of the room they faced each other and bowed once more.

"Sister Laina and I have been taking special lessons with Sensei Mike," Alea explained, assuming the ready position, her bo held confidently in her young hands.

Sara stifled a groan. Sensei Mike (listed as Michael Connor Audren on his most recent "birth" certificate and known as Connor MacLeod to a select few, just as Cassandra had adopted the name Laina Garrison) had offered to teach Sara those new moves when he'd first arrived in Austria ten months ago. Sara hadn't had time, busy as she was with the Phinyx Finance Council, finding and buying a Chapter House for the South America school, the opening of ten new shelters in the U.S. for the dispossessed and starving thousands there, preparing for her initiation ceremony into the Inner Circle. She hadn't made time, either. She didn't need another sensei.

Connor had obviously made the time to find other students, two students who just happened to be Sara's daughter and Sara's long-time friend. What a coincidence. And what was he up to?

"We should stretch first, to warm up," Sara reminded her too-eager teenager, which was of course true, but Sara also wanted to postpone the punishment Alea was about to deal out. What Connor wanted to deal out (and Sara thought of him as Connor now, not Dad, not for years), well, Sara would take care of that—and of him—in her own way, and in her own time.

"Oh, right," Alea agreed, and as they started the arm circles she said, "I'm glad you could come today, Mom. I know things have been busy since the last food riots, and all the travel you have to do, and with—"

"I'm glad you asked," Sara cut in, but she should have said, "I'm glad you kept asking," because Alea had been asking for a sparring session with "just the two of us" for weeks. "Let's do this every Thursday," Sara suggested, in a sudden desperate urge to keep at least one of her children close.

"Sure!" Alea said, with a happy smile.

Yes, she should have done this weeks ago. "Sunday dinner together, too?" Sara suggested.

Alea stopped with her arms straight over her head. "Like before?"

"Like before," Sara agreed, but with only two of them now, not four. "Alea...," she began, then forced herself to go on. "I'm sorry. Since your dad left, and when Will decided to go, too ... I haven't been much of a mother to you—"

"You're a great mom," Alea interrupted fiercely. "I don't care what Dad said."

Sara blinked back sudden tears, and then Alea was right there, hugging her instead of asking to be hugged. They stood there for a long, quiet moment, heads on each other's shoulders, arms holding tight. "I'm sorry," Sara finally said again.

"For what?" Alea said. "Having a job? Just because you traveled sometimes didn't mean he could—"

"Alea."

"He was a jerk."

Sara couldn't argue with that. But it wasn't so simple. "He was lonely."

"He had me and Will. And you weren't gone that much."

She'd been gone enough. Enough so that both her husband and her son had chosen another woman over her. "What did you expect?" Daniel had said when seven-year-old Will announced he wanted to go with his dad and Miss Juliette from the school. "They see each other every day."

"And you see her every night," Sara had snapped back.

He'd simply looked at her across the dining table. "What did you expect?"

She'd expected her husband to be faithful. She'd expected him to wait for her, the way her father had waited for her mother. She'd expected her marriage to last.

But it hadn't. She'd ignored or missed all the mundane warning signs, and those psychic dreams she'd been so pleased with — so proud of – had stopped nine years ago, when she'd been pregnant with Will, and they'd never come back. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd tried to listen to the heartbeat of a tree.

So now she was a normal, middle-aged divorced woman with graying hair, like thousands of others around the world. But she had a good job, Sara reminded herself. And great friends and a place to live and enough to eat, and a teen-aged daughter who thought she was a great mom. She was lucky. "Your father and I both made mistakes," Sara said, trying very hard to be fair, and to follow her own mother's example in letting go of the man she loved.

"His mistake was a lot worse than yours," Alea muttered.

Sara couldn't argue with that, either. But she didn't want to talk about it now. "Sweetheart, can we just—"

"I'm sorry, Mom," Alea said quickly. "Let's finish stretching." When they were done, Alea suggested, "A kata? Bo sho-dan?"

Sara nodded and moved to stand by Alea's side. "Yoi," Alea intoned, and they slid into the sequence of moves—step and slide, turn and strike, bare feet squeaking occasionally on the scuffed wooden floor, each bo tracing a deadly figure-eight in the air as it shifted from hand to hand, and then striking out again, at the head, at the groin, at the knee. Then step and slide again, turn the other way, with the bo twirling in the air, and on to the next set of moves.

Sara and Alea ended up side by side, precisely where they had started, the bo held vertically in their right hands. "Good one," Alea said after they had grounded their staffs. "At least I didn't get turned around that time."

"The bo kata are hard to keep straight for me, too," Sara said, and she tightened the knot on her belt.

"Sensei Mike seems to know all the kata," Alea commented, fixing her ponytail yet again. "In lots of different styles, too. Of course, he practices all the time."

"Yes, he does," Sara agreed, keeping her tone casual, because Alea didn't know about the endless fighting among immortals, about the beheadings and the quickenings and the Game, not yet, hopefully never. "I'm going to stretch some more, Alea," Sara told her daughter, and Sara set down her bo and began to stretch, first one side, then the other.

Alea started stretching, too, but she didn't stop talking, which wasn't a surprise. "Of course, when Sensei Mike and Sister Laina finally get together, I bet he won't spend his free time in the dojo." A grin spread across her face. "He'll be in bed with her."

Sara straightened immediately. "Alea!"

"What?" she protested, one arm curved over her head as she bent to the right. "You can't miss the way they look at each other. I think they'd be a sweet couple, and so does everybody else in my class." She straightened and bent the other way. "Well, except for Lise, but that's only because she was hoping Sensei Mike would like her. Most of us did—I know I did," she added, completely unaware that she was speaking of her own grandfather.

"Alea!" Sara said again.

"What?" Alea protested again. "I've liked Cousin Mike for years, ever since that summer when I was eight and we met him at Great Aunt Rachel's house in New York. He was so nice to her, and he would always buy me and Will doughnuts after he took us to the park, or cotton candy at the zoo. And in our trips to England he taught us how to fish and follow rabbit tracks in the grass. And he was great to pillow-fight with."

"Yes, he was," Sara said, remembering both Alea's childhood and her own.

"I miss Great Aunt Rachel," Alea added suddenly.

"So do I," Sara agreed, this time remembering late-night talks and card games and spicy stories of days long ago. "But she was a hundred years old, Alea. She had a good life."

"Yeah, that is old," Alea said and continued in blithe self-absorption, "Anyway, when Cousin Mike moved here in January, he said when we weren't in the dojo I was old enough now to call him just plain Mike, only I don't because it feels weird—but when I asked him to go dancing, he said he was way too old for me."

"He is," Sara broke in immediately, wishing she'd been there to have seen Connor's face and wanting to smack him for not telling her right away.

Alea shrugged. "It was just dancing. But Lise is nineteen, and she's been all over him for weeks, even though Cousin Mike never says more than 'Hi' to her. But he's got more than 'Hi' for Sister Laina, and she's got a lot more than that for him. We're taking bets on how long it will be until they finally go to bed."

They already had, in 1592, four hundred and fifty years ago. Sara didn't say anything as she watched Alea bend to touch her toes, going all the way down until her palms were flat on the floor. Her hair flipped forward and lay in a pool of black silk ribbons over her hands. Sara's own hair was just barely to her shoulders now, the brown laced through with white and gray, not dyed, never once dyed. Sara gave a quick puff of air upward to get her bangs away from her eyes. She needed a haircut again; perhaps on Tuesday she would have time to walk into town.

"I'm betting on three weeks," Alea announced, as she stood and tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. "Sister Laina hasn't had a lover in ages, has she? Sister Haneul said she never saw Sister Laina with anyone serious during their four years in London, and we know she hasn't been with anyone since she was transferred here last year."

"No," Sara agreed, deciding that three decades qualified as "ages." Sara had been a teenager when Cassandra had taken up with Maureen. That hadn't lasted very long, and there'd been no one since then. And no one for centuries before Maureen, either, except one night with Duncan. Definitely ages.

"So, why not?" Alea asked, and why not, indeed. "She seems happier when he's around."

And Cassandra was happy; Sara knew that. Everybody knew that. Cassandra had always been vivacious and energetic, busy and focused on the work—she shone with steady purpose. Now she glowed, and her quiet smiles had become laughter. Connor made her happy, and she made him happy, too, happier than he'd been since Mom had died, over fifteen years ago. It wasn't as obvious with him, but Sara could tell. Two weeks was a more likely bet. Or perhaps one. They'd waited centuries.

Sara didn't begrudge them that. She loved them both, and she knew they suited each other in ways no one else could. Mom had known that, too. "It's going to happen, Sara," Mom had told her on the day after Connor's 500th birthday, after the party that Cassandra had not been invited to. "They're both immortal," Mom had gone on, her eyes bright blue in contrast to the pure white of her hair, "and they know each other so well ... they love each other. Someday, you and I—and Rachel and Colin and John— won't be here, and your dad doesn't do well when he's alone. Cassandra will take care of him when we can't."

"But, Mom," Sara had begun in confusion, "doesn't that bother you? I mean, you haven't even spoken to Cassandra in years."

"I know," Mom had admitted, looking away. "I was blaming her, for my getting old. But it's not her fault I'm mortal, and she's immortal, and it's not your dad's fault, either. It's just ... what they are. What we are."

Sara knew that, better now at forty-five than she had at twenty-two, or at Uncle Duncan's wedding at the age of nine, but it still wasn't fair, not to any of them.

Mom had gone on, "I wrote to Cassandra last night—my New Year's resolution—to tell her I didn't hate her, not anymore. I like to think that Heather and Brenda wouldn't hate me for loving Connor, now that they're gone. They would want Connor to be happy." Mom had taken a deep breath and said firmly, "And so do I. Love shouldn't be selfish, Sara. Sometimes it has to let go."

Sara knew that. She believed it. She'd learned it with Daniel last year—not that he'd given her much choice—and recently both her children had been teaching her to let go again. But love didn't have to disappear, and it should never just walk away.

Sara picked up her bo and turned to her daughter. "I'm ready. Are you?"

It took her about ninety seconds to realize she wasn't ready after all. "Damn it," Sara swore, as Alea got inside her guard yet again and caught her on the elbow. Sara shook her arm, trying to get her fingers to stop tingling. "Do that again, only not so hard and not so fast."

Alea showed her the maneuver, slowly, and then Sara tried it out on her, over and over, faster each time. "Good!" Alea said finally. "Now here's a counter for it."

Sara had just finished figuring out the countermove when a familiar rasping voice sounded from the doorway: "Ready to try that with me?"

"Sensei Mike!" Alea exclaimed in delight, and Sara let out an irritated sigh before she turned. Connor was bowing at the doorway, his black belt stark against the immaculate whiteness of his gi, his wrapped bo in his hand. His golden-brown beard was clipped short in the current fashion, and his shoulder-length hair, a little darker, was bound in a neat braid at the nape of his neck. Cassandra liked long hair.

He bowed to the portraits, then walked over to them. Alea and Sara bowed first, the courtesy required from lower belts to higher belts, and Connor definitely outranked them both, if only in the dojo. Connor bowed in return, just as politely, then waited for Sara to respond to his suggestion. Alea was waiting, too. "Sure," Sara said, blowing her bangs up out of her eyes, because she wasn't about to back down, not from him, not in front of Alea. "That way Sensei Mike can see how good a teacher you are, Alea."

"And how good a student you are!" Alea put in. "It's not all up to me."

Sara didn't answer that. Connor knew exactly what kind of student she was. He was already sliding his bo out of its black canvas sheath, and when he faced Sara in the center of the floor, his narrowed gray eyes held even more eagerness than Alea's had earlier today. "Not going to stretch?" Sara asked, not averse to a delay.

"Already did," he answered. "In the anteroom."

Of course he had. He'd probably told Alea to let him know when Sara was going to be in the dojo. He might even have been listening to them the entire time. In fact, he'd probably put Alea up to asking Sara to spar with her, week after week after week. Sara bowed to him, he bowed to her; then she smiled at him and attacked.

Which had been, Sara reflected a few minutes later as she sank to the floor in pain, hugging her throbbing arm to her side, extremely stupid of her. Not that she needed hindsight to figure that out, or any magical kind of foresight, either. She knew Connor went to the dojo every day. She knew Connor had over five hundred years of experience in fighting for his life. She knew she couldn't hurt him, not permanently, and she'd known when she'd escalated the sparring match by smacking him a good one that she'd been begging for trouble, because Connor never backed down from that kind of challenge, especially not from a student. No karate teacher would. He'd blinked once in pain and surprise at her strike, then his eyes had lit up and he had half-smiled, that dangerous smile she'd seen only rarely but could never forget.

"Think you're ready, eh?" he'd said, and then proceeded to demonstrate to her exactly how unready and outclassed she really was. And of course, Connor knew exactly what her weak spots were. He'd had enough time to learn.

"You could use more practice," Connor observed from a few feet away, his bo still in his hands. "Some more lessons."

But not from him. He was still her father, but she wasn't a child anymore, and she was not going to be his student.

"You two were really going fast!" Alea exclaimed, getting up from where she'd been kneeling on the floor. "I didn't even see that last move."

Neither had Sara. She got to her feet and picked up her bo from the floor with her left hand, afraid that her right hand might not close all the way. She bowed to Connor, as was required, holding the position for a maddening two seconds before he bowed back.

"You had all the right moves, Mom," Alea reassured her. "Didn't she, Sensei Mike?"

"Yes, she did," he acknowledged, sounding pleased, almost proud, but Sara wasn't going to be bought off with that. She made her way stiffly over to the bench and picked up the cover for her bo.

"Are you hurt?" Alea asked, now sounding concerned.

"I'll be fine," Sara said, and she knew she would be, in a little while. Connor hadn't hit her hard enough to cause permanent damage. He'd known exactly what he was doing. She debated trying to slide her bo into its narrow cloth sheath and decided against it. She needed both hands for that. "Just some bruises."

"Oh, well, everybody gets those in training," Alea said in dismissal. "They only last a week or two, long enough for the lessons to sink in, that's what Sensei Roxanne always says."

Sara swung around to look Connor in the eye. "Then you'd better learn fast, hadn't you, Sensei 'Mike'?" she asked him, and with the sheath draped over her shoulder and her bo in her left hand, Sara bowed her way from the room.

She knew his weak spots, too.

Cassandra, dressed in neatly pressed white gi and black belt, was waiting in the changing room when Sara emerged from the showers. "You spying on me, too?" Sara asked, toweling herself dry. Her right hand worked now, but a few other spots would be sore for days to come. Connor's bruises had no doubt healed before Sara had left the dojo.

"No," Cassandra answered with studied patience. "Alea and I had a lesson with Connor at two. I didn't realize you were joining us today."

"Neither did I," Sara answered sourly.

"Neither did Connor."

"Oh, please," Sara said in disgust as she dropped the towel on the bench. "He put Alea up to it weeks ago."

"Your father," Cassandra stated evenly, "is not that devious."

"No?"

"No. Not with the people he loves."

"Because of what you did to him, no doubt." Sara pulled her tunic over her head and took her time about poking her head through the neck-hole.

Cassandra was still waiting for her, still patient, still calm. "No doubt."

Sara finished dressing without a word—underwear (she'd forgotten her bra in her haste to put something on, but what the hell), leggings, belt and dagger (ornamental, but still wickedly sharp), boots, cloak—then ran her fingers through her still-damp hair, grabbed her bag, and headed out the door. Cassandra pulled on her own cloak and followed her down the stairs to the inner courtyard. From the open lancet windows above them came the distant clack of wood striking wood, Connor teaching Alea some more new moves, no doubt.

"He loves you, Caorran," Cassandra said, calling Sara by her sisterhood name, as she had since Sara had started working for Phinyx twenty-some years ago. They walked past the picturesque and fully functional stone-encircled well. Three junior students ran by, late for class probably, their dark blue cloaks and scarves of canary yellow and midnight black flapping behind them in the brisk autumn air. They dodged the gray-clad Guardian as she strode directly to the gatehouse. Guardians never merely walked.

"He's driving me crazy," Sara responded, not slowing down at all.

Cassandra smiled. "Your mother used to say that a lot."

Sara stopped dead, and Cassandra stopped too, her auburn braid of hair swinging slowly, its tip just grazing the back of her knees. Connor liked long hair.

"My mother," Sara stated, "was his wife. I am his daughter, and he never lets me forget that." She started walking again, aiming for the narrow staircase in the round tower. "I know I'm less than a tenth of his age, but I am not a child."

"What do you want from him, Caorran?" Cassandra asked, walking with her again. "He came here because you told him you wanted to see him, yet you never seem to have time for him. You haven't spoken to him in days."

"He's here because of you," Sara said dismissively, yanking open the heavy wooden door and striding through.

Again, Cassandra followed. "He's here because of you," Cassandra said. "You and Alea. Just as he went to the Highlands when Colin was alone. Just as he went traveling with Duncan after Susan died. Just as he moved in with Rachel. His family is everything to him. If you and Alea left here, he'd follow."

Sara paused with her hand on the stair railing, carved by long-ago masons directly into the stone. "How's it feel to be last?"

Cassandra's lips thinned, then curved into a wry smile. "Familiar." Sara turned to go, but Cassandra wasn't finished. "The next time you decide to fight with him, Caorran, don't try it in the dojo."

"Yeah," Sara agreed ruefully, shaking out her arm again and feeling the tingle. "Too much pain."

"For both of you."

Sara snorted in disbelief. "I can't hurt him."

"Oh, yes, you can. And you have."

Sara didn't believe that either. She didn't want to. She shrugged and turned to walk up the stairs, but Cassandra called out, "Sara!" a snap of command from the whip of the Voice, and at the sound of her birth name, Sara froze. Literally. One foot was in the air and one hand was clutching the railing, and she could not move.

From behind her, Cassandra's voice was pleasant, even friendly. "The next time that you decide to unleash your anger with Connor and with Daniel—and with yourself—take it for a walk or take it running, Caorran, but don't take it out on me. I won't be so patient again."

Cassandra left her then, and it was nearly ten seconds before Sara shuddered herself free. Her fingernails were white with the effort of holding the railing, and her legs trembled with fatigue. The rest of her was trembling with rage ... and, she had to admit, fear.

"Wonderful, Sara," she muttered to herself as she started the climb to her room. "Just fracking wonderful."

"What the hell is her problem?" Connor demanded as soon as Cassandra had shut the door to his office. He'd been pacing between desk and window and liquor cabinet for the last ten minutes, waiting for her to arrive.

Cassandra seated herself in one of the chairs at the small conference table and arranged her dark blue skirt about her before answering. "Her husband left her."

"And I came straight away." He had arrived at the school two weeks after Daniel had moved out, introducing himself as Michael Audren, newly hired instructor in martial arts. After a week or two, everyone called him Sensei Mike. Except for Sara. She wouldn't call him Mike, she never called him Connor, and she hadn't called him Dad in ten years. She hardly spoke to him at all.

"Her son left her," Cassandra said next.

"I know," Connor said shortly. Breaking up a marriage was bad enough, and cheating on your wife was inexcusable, but to take away a child, especially to move so far away… Connor had thought Daniel a better man. He tossed back most of the whisky in his glass before saying, "Alea's still here."

Cassandra gave her small "hmm" of noncommittal assent. Then she met his eyes. "Her father left her."

Connor stopped pacing and slammed the glass down. "I'm right here!"

"Sensei Mike is here," Cassandra contradicted. "Her father left her eight years ago, when Connor MacLeod died on a ship in the Timor Sea."

Duncan had been the one to suggest that "pirate attack," and it had been an excellent idea. They'd both needed to disappear, and escaping the paper and computer trails grew harder every year. A burial at sea left no trace. "Sara knows why," Connor said.

"Yes," Cassandra agreed.

"She understood it was necessary."

"Yes."

"Then what the hell is her problem?" Connor said again, frustrated beyond measure. Cassandra was looking at the grain of wood in the table and avoiding his gaze. Which, he knew damn well, meant she had something to say. "What do you know?" he demanded.

"I could guess," Cassandra admitted. "But I might be wrong. And she needs to find out for herself—and admit it to herself—before she can tell you."

Connor snorted. "She won't like that."

"Which is why she's getting professional help."

"She signed up for therapy?" he asked in surprise.

"No. Her contract specifies counseling after a certain number of complaints by students, coworkers, or supervisors. Her first appointment is at four this afternoon."

And Sara's coworkers included Cassandra and himself. "Sara won't like that," Connor said.

Cassandra shrugged. "As she has often said to me: Like is not the same as need."

That was certainly true. Connor turned to look out the window at the bleak mountains, bare rock bleached by the sun. Below, the river sparkled in the sunshine, flowing in a gentle curve around the great rock that the castle stood upon. Cassandra joined him, near but not close, and said softly. "She loves you, Connor. Never doubt that. Just give her time."

Time was the one gift he could always bestow.

It took six weeks. On a Friday afternoon, two days before the winter solstice, Connor found a message waiting in his office, voice only, no vid. "Shall we go see the winter sunrise?" said his daughter's voice, and Connor immediately sent "yes."

It was still dark when they met at the gate, too dark to see each other's eyes. As soon as they stepped from the shelter of the walls, the bitter wind clawed its way beneath their clothes. Sara went first, and Connor followed her lead, though he'd followed the route the day before. They walked silently, down the steep path from the castle gate to the valley, across the main street of the village, and through a winter-dead field.

Then they started to climb. Ignoring the meandering road, they went up the side of the hill, scrambling on all fours and holding onto tree roots in places, switchbacking when necessary, and scattering pebbles that rolled treacherously under their feet and skittered their way down.

Finally they reached the top, where great crumpled folds of rock lay in parallel lines, like claw marks from an enormous beast of old. They picked a spot out of the wind, facing southeast, with rock at their back and a magnificent view of the castle and the river far below. Across the valley, the jagged peaks of real mountains (three times the height of the hill they'd just climbed) marched southward. Connor and Sara stood silently, waiting for the sun.

It came, as it always came, after a long, slow lightening of the sky that opened the world to you in a soft twilight of shadow and mauve, so that the bright glare of the sun between two black peaks came with the sharpness of a pinprick, a lance of light into your brain. And you welcomed it, as you welcomed the coming of winter, year after year after year, because it meant you were still alive.

Sara reached for his hand, as she'd done the first time he'd taken her to see the winter sunrise at the solstice stones above Loch Shiel, a few days before she turned fourteen. For a brief moment in the soft predawn light, she'd looked that young again, with the faint lines about her eyes smudged smooth and the gray and brown in her hair all gone to a single shade.

But the dawn had broken, and the bright light was etching its shadows, showing all valleys and all the mountains, and all the colors and all the lines.

"Good morning, Princess," he said, as he'd said that day thirty-two years ago, and her eyes filled with tears. He pulled her to him, unresisting, and they sank down upon the frost-seared grass, with Sara sitting on his lap and her head on his shoulder, like she'd done when she was little, and he held her while she cried.

"Sara," Connor said softly after a time, rocking back and forth. "Shhh, Sara. Shhh."

"I'm sorry, Daddy," she said when her tears had shifted to sniffles, her voice muffled against his arm, and Connor's eyes stung with unshed tears.

"It's ok," he said, knowing it would be soon. And sure enough, after a bit Sara sat up and rubbed her face with her palms then shifted her weight off his legs, but stayed close to him, shoulders touching and hands intertwined.

He waited, but she said nothing, so finally he asked, "What went wrong?"

She blew out a gust of air and shook her head, but she answered. "Daniel thought I was having an affair. So, he decided that justified him having one, too."

Connor nodded, but that answer just created more questions. Sara wasn't talking, so it fell to him to be the chatty one. "Where you?"

"What?"

"Having an affair?

"Of course not! I would never…" She shook her head in irritation. "Besides, I didn't have time."

"Ah." There was another answer.

"What?"

"You were pretty busy, Sara. And you traveled a lot." He'd mentioned that to her a few years ago, but she'd assured him all was fine, and that she and Daniel liked having "get re-acquainted honeymoons." So Connor had backed off, following the policy Alex and he had agreed upon, of trusting their children to handle their own lives.

"I wasn't gone as much as Mom was," Sara said defensively. "And she was busy too. You never had an affair." Her eyes narrowed. "Did you?"

He echoed her earlier answer: "Of course not." He'd waited centuries to have a family; he would never jeopardize that. "Your mother and I had problems sometimes, but not that." Even if he had thought for a gut-wrenching twelve hours that Alex had been meeting a lover in a hotel, only to find out she'd been seeing a therapist there instead. But there had been other things wrong between them; he hadn't jumped to that conclusion without reason. And Daniel probably hadn't, either. "Why did Daniel think you were having an affair, Sara?"

"Because I was lying to him." She shrugged. "He knew I was hiding something. He just guessed wrong about what."

Connor didn't feel like guessing. "What were you hiding?"

She looked up at him sidelong with a brief, wry smile, then said simply, "You."

Connor blinked once, thinking that over, then let out a slow hiss of air as he finally understood. "Shit."

Sara almost laughed, even as she wiped away another tear. "Funny, huh? My husband thought I was having an affair with my dad."

Not funny at all. "Didn't he ask?"

"Oh yeah, he asked. Lots of questions. 'Who is this fellow Mike that the kids keep talking about? I didn't know Rachel had a great-nephew; who are his parents? How old is he? How come he's always gone when I visit?' And other questions, too." Sara let out another gusty sigh. "And every time he asked about Mike—about you—I lied. After a while, he stopped asking."

Sara had never had a talent for lying. "God, Sara, I'm sorry," Connor said. "If I'd realized, I would have told him. The secret's not worth your marriage. John's wife knows, and that's worked out all right." So far.

"I didn't realize it," Sara said. "Not at first. When I figured it out, I did think about telling him or asking you to tell him, but by then, he'd already made up his mind to go. So there was no point." She scrambled to her feet, clapped her hands together a few times, then wrapped her arms around herself. The sun was up, but it was still cold. "At least you won't have to worry about it with Colin," Sara said, sounding deliberately—and falsely—upbeat. "Oona won't wonder about those fishing trips you two take every year."

Unless she saw the movie Brokeback Mountain. Damn. He'd call Colin later today and warn him. Connor got to his feet, shaking his head in irritation. He should have foreseen this. "Sara, I…"

"The divorce wasn't your fault," she said swiftly, turning to look at him. "Daniel and I had other problems." She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "He told me all about them."

Connor couldn't fix things, but maybe he could help. "After someone makes a decision, they come up with their reasons—some of them true, some of them not."

"Yeah, that's what the counselor, Melisande, said, too." Sara's gaze went back to the mountains, still faintly tinged with the pink of dawn. "But a lot of Daniel's reasons were true. So maybe it just happened sooner than it would have anyway." Sara shook her head, shrugged, and looked at him again with a determined smile. "So, that's that." She reached out to him, and he took her hands in his. "I'm glad you're here, Dad. Truly. I've missed you."

"I've missed you, too, Princess," he told her, and it would have been a great cue for a hug and a grand finale, but Sara was biting her lip, which was not a good sign. It looked like they weren't done yet. "What?" Connor asked.

"It's not your fault," she began, which meant she'd been blaming him for it anyway. "I don't… Melisande said I should tell you, but it's really…"

He nodded encouragingly and gave Sara's hands a gentle squeeze, and finally, she began: "You remember when I called you and told you Daniel was leaving, and you said you'd come here if I wanted, and I said yes?"

"Yes."

"I wasn't expecting you to get a job here."

"Neither was I. Cassandra said the school needed a new martial arts instructor."

"We did, but…" Sara took a deep breath and plunged in. "Right after Daniel found out that you—that is, Cousin Mike, my 'lover'—was moving here, he asked Will and Alea to go with him."

Connor swore, low and vehemently, as much at himself as at Daniel, but it made sense now. Connor had been pleased that his grandchildren liked him so much, but Daniel believed that 'Mike' had stolen Daniel's wife, and Daniel wasn't about to let Mike steal the kids, too. Shit.

"So that's the other reason you were angry at me," Connor said.

"Yeah," Sara admitted, kicking at a small pebble on the ground. "It was stupid, I know. You didn't do anything wrong. I just…"

"You'd already lost your husband because of me," Connor summed up for her. "And then you lost your son." Sara's eyes brimmed over with tears and her face crumpled even as she nodded, and Connor pulled her to him right away, and once again he held her as she cried. "I'm so sorry, Sara," he said, when she seemed to be done.

"I'm sorry, too." She pulled back so she could look at him and managed a shaky smile. "I love you, Dad," she said then added her childhood pledge: "For-ever, and for always."

"I love you, too, Princess." That didn't fix things, but it sure as hell helped a lot. "For-ever, and for always."

They walked back together, hand in hand.

When they reached the lower courtyard of the school, Cassandra waved to them from the top of the crenellated tower, her long hair lifted by the chill breeze. Behind her on the roof lines, the long arms of windmills turned. Sara kissed her father on the cheek then watched him take the stone stairs built into the wall two at a time, climbing up to where Cassandra waited. She smiled at something he said, waved at Sara again, and then he held a door open for Cassandra as they entered into the ancient castle of stone.

Sara went to find Alea, who was finishing breakfast in the brick-arched refectory on the ground floor. Sara stood at the doorway for a moment, just looking. Alea was reading, as usual, and an apparently forgotten cup was being held motionless in the air. Following the current fashion among some of the girls, she was wearing her red and gold scarf draped over the top of her head and covering her ears, so that it looked like a mantilla, or the wimple of a nun. Her long hair was braided in single queue down her back, and she was playing with the tip of the braid with her right hand. Alea had liked to do that ever since she was two.

Sara smiled, remembering, then went over to the table. "Hi, Mom!" her daughter said cheerfully and shoved her dishes out of the way. "I'm almost packed for our trip to Bruges this afternoon; how about you?"

"All packed," Sara said, sitting down at the long wooden table. "It'll be good to see Will for Christmas." She had to admit, Daniel had been good about visitation. "Who has the betting sheet on Sister Laina and Sensei Mike?"

"Uh—," Alea stuttered in surprise then weakly asked, "Why?"

"Because I'm going to pick a date for them to go to bed together," Sara said, sipping from her tea.

Alea opened her mouth and shut it, then said, "I'll go get it. Don't watch, OK? The other girls would be nervous." Sara obediently scanned the morning news in her phone until Alea returned. "It's five euros a square," she said as reached for a napkin, slipped a paper in it, then handed the napkin to Sara.

Sara put the napkin in her lap before unfolding the much-creased paper in her lap then glancing down. Alea's initials were in the square for January fifteenth. All of the squares in December were already taken, and half of January and a few in February were gone, too.

"We started picking dates in October, and the purse is nearly four hundred now," Alea said. "Christmas, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and Twelfth Night went early. People like holidays."

Sara nodded, but she hadn't been interested in any of those dates, even if her father's birthday was New Year's Day. Oh, Dad and Cassandra might get together then, or earlier, and maybe even get started, but Sara was sure that something would happen between them to cause a delay. A few days at least; they were both stubborn, and neither of them liked to admit they were wrong.

Like father, like daughter, Sara thought wryly, taking a pen from the pocket of her coat. Sara picked a square. and wrote the initials SHMc, once again using her full birth name: Sara Heather MacLeod.

Continued in "Two of Hearts", with a visit by Amanda