Lachlan and Maeve were picking their way through the woods when Maeve stopped to rest. It had been a long night of travel, and she was weary from the pace of the journey.

When they had drunk their share of water from the skin, Lachlan sat next to Maeve and said, “I am sorry we had to leave Cate behind.”

“You need not apologize any more, Lachlan. We were right to. The grove’s decision to fight instead of flee means that now, more than ever, we must know the information she can retrieve from Jessie.”

“Had you hoped for fleeing to be their response?”

Maeve shook her head. “Not at all. We are a proud people, Lachlan, and fight is something we do quite well. I am only surprised at how lopsided the vote was.”

“We have much to hate about the Romans.”

“Hate is such a dark word.”

“So is death.”

Maeve looked at him and saw the same sorrow she felt. “Lachlan, are you ever afraid?”

Lachlan opened the skin once more and drew a deep draught. “I stopped feeling fear when my mother died. I made a promise that I would never allow fear to control any part of my world. Fear did not stop her and it will not stop me.”

“But she died in the pursuit of truth. Where truth is, there is no room for fear.”

Lachlan nodded. “I like to believe she found what she was looking for. Can I do less than that?”

No one could remember when, exactly, the portal had been discovered, but many marked its existence occurring when the old deities, the Tuatha De Danaan, went to the Underworld for the final time. They caused such a tear in the opening of this world that it could not quite close, and lest someone attempt to follow them, they created a portal that would send any quester across time, unbidden, and completely out of control, so as to never disturb the Tuatha again.

Finding the portal was one thing; knowing what to do with it, how to harness its potential was another task all together; a task that had begun long since anyone could remember, carried forth by Lachlan’s mother and her apprentices, and now, by Lachlan himself, though he had vowed never to set foot into the portal himself, he was the overseer of the Sacred Place, and it was his decision who would go. Maeve knew why he pushed so hard; partly because of what they knew was coming, and partly because of the loss of his mother so many years ago.

When he was younger and not as wise as he was now, he had boasted that he would be the one to enter the portal and learn its secrets. When his mother died, and he went charging into the forest after her, Birch had barely managed to stop him and tell him his mother’s last wish:

“Promise never to allow my son to follow me,” she had said to Birch just before going through. “He does not have what is needed to be a successful quester.” Those were the last words ever spoken by the great Druid priestess.

Birch had kept his promise, and Lachlan had searched for the right individual who had what his mother possessed. He’d found Quinn, who had yet to come back. Maeve had found Cate, and in time, they had feverishly trained her.

And now, time was running out.

• • •

“When was the last time you bought or smoked?” Dr. Dunbar asked. He wore those goofy black-rimmed glasses that were back in style and they sat upon a bulbous nose that was pink at the end.

Jessie counted back on her fingers. “Five months ago.”

Dr. Dunbar looked up from his file. His face registered disbelief. No surprise there. He cleared his throat and ran a hand through jet black hair that looked as if he had cut it himself. “Then why are you here now?”

“I jumped bail on another psych visit.”

“Because?”

“Because I don’t need therapy and I had better things to do.”

“Such as?”

Gee . . . like traveling through time. “Meeting new people. Of course, my folks don’t approve of my new friends, even though one of them is seventy-something.”

“Really? Why do you suppose that is?”

“Honestly? Because Tanner wears a studded leather jacket, which makes him a stoner in their judgmental Christian eyes, and Ceara wears gypsy clothes and reads palms and tarot cards for a living.” Jessie shrugged. “I suppose being hell-bound disturbs them a bit.”

“You don’t agree with your parents’ religion?”

“I don’t believe in being so goddamned judgmental, no. Ceara is one of the most fascinating people I have ever met. So what if she reads tarot cards for a living?”

“And what does that make her in your parents’ eyes?”

“A cuckoo. Look, Dr. Dunbar, I’m here because I’m a victim of my parents’ misconceptions and erroneous prejudgments of people they do not know. I haven’t smoked weed in five months because I am through with that phase of my life. It’s a go-nowhere, do-nothing place that is a draino. The only problem I’m having is finding someone who will believe me.”

And so the session went. When it ended, Dr. Dunbar said, “I know it’s hard to believe at times like these, Jessie, but your parents really are on your side.”

“Oh really? Is that why they believed an eleven-year-old stoner over me?” Jessie held her hand up. “Rhetorical. I already know the answer.” How long would she would have to play these games with her parents and these shrinks? After all, time was of the essence, and she had so little of it to waste.

“Let me ask you this, Doctor: if someone you loved was in danger and you knew it was within your power to save them, would you let anyone stand in your way?” Before he could answer, Jessie held up her hand to stop him. “No questions, no shrink response. Just give me your honest person-to-person answer.”

Dr. Dunbar set his chin on his hands. “I doubt that I would, no.”

Jessie nodded. “Thank you for that.”

“Is someone you love in danger?”

The question grabbed hold of Jessie’s heart and she realized what she had said when she posed the question. Someone was in danger, and yes—yes, she loved them both.

She leaned forward on his desk, her brow furrowed. “Okay, since I’m here, let’s make the most of this, shall we? I want to talk about self-love.”

Dr. Dunbar removed his elbows from the desk and leaned back. “That’s a good place to start.”

Smiling, Jessie nodded. “Yes it is.”

Watching Maeve and Lachlan walk away was one of the hardest things Cate had ever done. For the last nine years, she and Maeve had been inseparable, and though most people believed their relationship was one-sided, Cate knew better. Maeve had come for her, yes; for her and no one else, and once she had found her, she had never let her go.

Until now.

Now, when the time of reckoning was so near, Cate understood why she needed to stay behind, but that hadn’t made it any easier to let Maeve go. Even though she was with Lachlan, he was a man of peace, with very little warrior within him. He could not wield a sword like she could; he did not have it in him to kill another man, and that worried her.

Still, after the vote, Lachlan and Maeve left for the hills, leaving Birch in charge of the necessary ceremonies and rituals. Birch was a good man, a strong priest, and a loyal friend. He would make sure all that was needed was met, and that their people were properly protected by the Goddess.

“Watch over them,” Cate murmured as she turned and started for the portal.

“Cate McEwen!” Birch called out to her.

Cate turned. “Sir?”

“Before you go, I’d like a word or two with you if you don’t mind.”

Cate walked over to Birch. In the last year, his hair and beard had turned completely white, but his blue eyes sparkled from beneath his furry white eyebrows. “Did you know that I’d give anything to be going with you?”

Cate nodded. Birch had been in love with Lachlan’s mother many, many moons ago, and though he had lost her, he had never stopped loving her and had been a chaste man since her death. “I do, Birch.”

“We need what Maeve and Lachlan are sending you for, that much I do know, lass, but we also need you to return. We canna keep losing our folks to that thing.”

Cate put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “You won’t lose me, Birch, I’ll be back.”

“Well, I do not rightly know what transpires in that portal of yours, but I do know there are dangers involved—deadly ones. You must be ever-vigilant, ever-cautious and ever-mindful that you are never the one in control. Do not forget, not even for a second, that the Tuatha created the portal. They control it, and they will do whatever they please with those arrogant enough to enter it.”

Cate nodded. She had always known how afraid Birch was of the portal, but he had never deigned to speak of it until now. What did he know that he wasn’t sharing with her?

“I shall be very careful, Birch. I have no desire to leave this life sooner than I ought.”

“Good. Then think with a clear head, do not push the goddesses to act, and, most importantly, know your limitations. It was Lachlan’s mother’s greatest mistake not knowing her own weaknesses. Do not follow suit.”

“I won’t. I swear.”

Birch leaned upon his walking staff, a gnarled old oak branch with Ogham carved on one side. “Tell me then, what weakness of yours could bring harm to you?”

Cate inhaled deeply. She knew the answer to that question as easily as her own name, but how could she put it into words? “You know the answer to that, as surely as you knew why you did not follow her into the void.”

“I did not follow because she bade me not to. She was not a woman a man wished to anger.”

“You stayed to care for her son, which you have done well. She risked all she had to find answers to save those she loved. I can do no less. The Goddess has chosen me and I will not shirk my duty out of fear.”

“Then the answer to my question would be what?”

Birch never, ever let you escape without naming a thing. “Love, Birch. My greatest weakness is love. Love sends me into a place that could take me away forever.”

“And what, do you suppose brings you back?”

“That same love.”

“Then it is both your greatest weakness and your greatest strength.”

Cate thought about this before nodding. “It is a double-edged sword, yes.”

“Good. Perhaps that is why the gods have chosen you. When one understands both sides of a sharp sword, one is less likely to be killed by it. Go now, and Godspeed. I shall guard the entrance as I once did so many years ago, but Cate McEwen, you must swear to return. I do not think my heart could stand to lose another to that accursed portal.”

Cate stood on tiptoe and kissed the old man’s cheek. “I promise.”

With that promise on her lips Cate entered a world that had changed since her last visit. The murky mist that typically enveloped her was gone, replaced by something more ominous. Something had happened to Jessie since their last visit.

Stepping back out of the portal, Cate shook her head and tried to collect her thoughts. What was happening to Jessie? Was she in some kind of danger? As Cate stepped further away from the portal, she watched it shimmer like a liquid mirror until it congealed again and ceased its movement. Her head hurt. This was new.

Had Birch known? Why was Jessie so hard to reach? Why did everything feel so closed up and dungeon-like? What was happening on the other side of time?

Cate sat next to the portal and considered going back and trying again. Perhaps . . . if she could go when Jessie was asleep . . . perhaps they could manage another conversation. She had not ever considered the possibility of something happening to Jessie.

Cate rose and she began pacing. She realized with complete clarity what was happening to her, and it was slightly alarming: Cate McEwen cared about the life of Jessie Ferguson. If Jessie was in trouble and needed help . . . then Cate was going to give it.

And it appeared she was just in time to do so.

They heard the hooves pounding long before they saw them. Too late, Lachlan and Maeve tried to make it back into the embrace of the forest, but they were cut off by a squad of Roman sentries patrolling the marshes.

“Should we split up?” Maeve yelled at Lachlan as they ran through the woods. Branches lashed at their faces, but did little to slow them down.

“I’ll not leave you to face them alone,” Lachlan shouted back.

“Then stop running.”

“What?”

“We cannot outrun them, Lachlan. It would be better to turn and face them.”

Lachlan immediately stopped, and turned to take Maeve’s hand. Together, they stood waiting for the sentry commander to ride up to them. It felt as if the forest itself were waiting to see the outcome.

“Shall I weave a mist?”

Lachlan shook his head. “If they know what we are, they will surely kill us.”

“They may do so any way.”

“I do not want you to risk it, Maeve. We must act like we are not what we are.”

A guard astride an enormous silver beast brought his steed to a stop and glared down at them. “Only Druids could run through a forest this dense without stumbling or falling. Who be you?”

Lachlan and Maeve said nothing.

“Speak!” he commanded in an awkward, unfamiliar Latin tongue.

“We may, indeed, be as you say,” Maeve answered, “But we’ll not discuss this with an underling.”

The guard glared at Lachlan as if Maeve had not even spoken. “What kind of man allows a woman to speak for him?”

“It would depend on how wise the woman was,” came Maeve’s retort. To Lachlan’s surprise, she spoke the Roman’s language. Was there no end to the things this woman could do?

The other seven sentries behind him chuckled at this. The commander motioned to one of the men, who hopped off his horse and tied Maeve’s and Lachlan’s hands behind their backs, and slipped a noose around Lachlan’s neck.

“If you are very powerful Druids, you should be able to escape ties such as those that bind you now. If not, then it appears your powers are waning even as we speak.” The commander jerked his horse’s reins away. “You are now the prisoners of the Governor. Your very lives, whether they be Druid ones or not, are in his hands, so you ought to pray to your cannibalistic gods for mercy.”

Lachlan and Maeve looked at each other as they began walking behind the sentry on the white horse. “Maeve . . .”

“Shh, Lachlan.”

“I . . . do not know how to get us out of this,” he said in Gaelic.

Maeve glanced over at him. His face was scratched from the rope, and his neck was already burned from it being too tight. “It is all right, Lachlan. You may not know what to do, but I do. Be patient. And for once in your life, let me do the talking.”

“But—”

“Lachlan?”

“Yes, Maeve?”

“Be still. We shall not be harmed.”

After reporting back to her parents that she had stayed for the entire session with Dr. Dunbar, Jessie asked them, once again, to trust her. She wanted Daniel to be able to come home and be with them, but they waved this off. They felt she was just too volatile and unstable to be around him. It broke Jessie’s heart to know she was the cause of her little brother being uprooted from their new home.

Exhausted, Jessie barely had time to say goodnight before falling into a deep sleep. Again, her dreams came to her strangely disjointed. She saw Ceara looking out the window of her boat as if searching for her, and the Roman soldiers were back, only this time Jessie watched seven or eight of them making their way through the forest on horseback.

Next, she saw herself as Cate, reaching into the portal and then stepping away, as if there was something scary in there. She did this over and over again, as if confused about whether to come or go. Then, a statue of Julius Caesar came to life and picked up a Merlin-esque creature, crushing it in his hand. These were the dreams that poked at Jessie’s subconscious, challenging her to choose the memories from the fictions. In her dream, she did not know what to do, until . . .

The next scene took her breath away. She saw Maeve standing defiantly before a large Roman soldier, a commander of some sort. Suddenly, this dream took on a quality unlike any of the others. There was a texture to it, a nearly tangible feel to it that let her know this was not a dream, but a memory. She was sure of it, but she could not figure out how it could be a memory when Cate wasn’t there. This was Maeve’s memory, wasn’t it? Was that possible? Could it be that this was Cate’s memory of a tale told her by Maeve?

“Oh, my God! Maeve!” Jessie could hear herself, but she couldn’t be heard in the memory. Of course she couldn’t. She didn’t exist in this memory. She was just an onlooker now, watching the cataclysm of events unfold before her. What she saw chilled the marrow of her bones.

The soldier turned to Lachlan and asked him if Maeve was his woman. They stood in the middle of a large circle of soldiers next to a bonfire, and Lachlan’s bare back was sweating from the heat. He looked at Maeve for an answer, for the right response, and he heard her answer in his head.

“She is not.”

The commander walked toward Maeve, studying her like one might when purchasing a horse. “Would you like her to be?” His accent was thick and he struggled with their native tongue, but Lachlan knew exactly what was being said.

This time, Lachlan stared straight ahead. These were the “civilized” people who pitted man against man for amusement in large arenas, who used little boys as one might a common prostitute, and who allowed corrupt politicians to lead them around by the nose. Forcing Lachlan to rape Maeve for their evening entertainment was certainly not beneath the likes of them, and Lachlan knew it.

Lachlan chose his next words carefully. “We do not force our women to submit to us as you do, Commander. We prefer they come to us of their own accord.”

“Oh, do you now? Is that why they are allowed to divorce you as well, dishonoring you and disgracing your family name?” The commander stood in front of Lachlan, inches away from his face, yet Lachlan did not flinch.

“There is no dishonor in divorce, Commander. Only the truth, and we are not afraid of the truth.”

“Then isn’t it true that you’d like to bed her? Look at her. She is a beautiful specimen for your kind.” The soldier grabbed Lachlan’s face and forced him to turn and look at her. “Look at her. Is she not becoming?”

Lachlan ripped his face out of the soldier’s grasp and glared hard into his eyes. “She is, indeed, but it is not true that I wish to be with her.”

“You do not find her stunning? Are you not that kind of man?” the commander glanced over at his men, who laughed too loudly. “We have plenty of men like you back in Rome. Perhaps you prefer the company of someone—younger.”

“I prefer no man’s company to that.”

“No man, yes, but what of a woman?” Before Lachlan could answer, the commander wheeled around and ripped off her dress down to her waist.

“Maeve!” Jessie sat up in bed, trembling and sweating. Frantically looking around, she was surprised she wasn’t in Wales staring at Roman soldiers who were humiliating Maeve and Lachlan. Jessie’s heart was racing so fast, she had to take a few deep breaths to calm herself. How could everything feel so real? Jessie shuddered as she recalled the dream that wasn’t a dream. She knew that from its distinctive character, its rhythm and pace. It had the feel of Cate’s other memories, but how could that be? Cate hadn’t been there.

Or had she?

Jessie lay back down and pulled the covers up to her neck. She felt vulnerable and afraid for her friends. Occasional goose bumps popped out on her arms as she recalled her dream. Was Cate trying to tell her something? What in the world was going on?

Closing her eyes once again, Jessie inhaled deeply and willed the dreams to come.

And come they did.

The next dream was definitely not a memory, and Jessie was sure of it. She was back in the forest when she called out to a befuddled Cate who was quickly making her way across the grove. Cate did not pause, but kept moving rapidly through the undergrowth.

“Cate!” Jessie yelled, sprinting through the grove. She knew where she was going this time; she was running for the stones she and Cate had sat on. How she knew where they were, she did not stop to question. She just knew. And she hoped to find Cate sitting there waiting for her. Maybe there was even a fire still burning, and—“Cate!” Jessie called louder, pushing herself harder. When, at last, she came to the sitting stones, no one was there.

“But I’m here,” Jessie said aloud. “And the last time I was here, Cate was asleep and I had come through the portal and entered her dream.” She sat down and shook her head. This was her dream and maybe Cate would appear in it.

“Cate!” Jessie yelled. “Cate McEwen!” She stood, yelled once more and then sat again, not even pausing to wonder how she knew Cate’s last name. She knew things. It was enough now to know she knew them. And she knew that if she waited long enough, Cate would show.

She didn’t have to wait long. Out of the mist hurried Cate, head covered by her robe, staff in hand, light blue mist whirling about her. The air crackled with energy all about her.

She had changed.

“Oh, Cate,” Jessie was on her feet in an instant, her arms encircling the smaller woman. She did not have time to think about the fact that she was hugging herself. “Maeve’s in trouble, Cate. Awful, horrible trouble.”

Cate lowered her hood, revealing a perplexed expression. “Trouble? Why she and Lachlan left just this—”

“They have been captured by Romans—and they—”

“They what?” Cate’s voice was thin and tense.

Jessie felt tears roll down her cheeks. “They’re trying to force Lachlan to—to—”

Cate stepped away from Jessie as if Jessie were diseased. “How can this be? Moreover, how is it you would know this? They left this morning, and there were no sentries near the highlands, no one has seen any Roman soldiers.”

Jessie wiped her eyes and shrugged. “I don’t know. It—it couldn’t have just been a dream, could it?”

Cate stepped forward and took Jessie’s hand. “Did it feel like a dream?”

She shook her head. “It felt like a memory, but if you weren’t there, how can that be? Oh, God, this is all so confusing.”

Cate studied Jessie a second before asking, “What was Maeve wearing in your dream?”

“Wearing? Well—it was the first time I saw her not in her robe. She was wearing a green dress with a crème-colored bl—”

Cate’s eyes widened and she dropped her staff to take Jessie by the shoulders. “Lachlan! What was he wearing?”

“A blue peasant shirt with—”

“It is a memory, Jessie. That’s precisely what they were both wearing when they left. Where are they? Think! Where did you see them?”

Jessie swallowed hard and tried to focus on the contents of her dream-memory. Her heart pounded so hard, she could feel it in her temples. “They were in the woods just south of the swampy mist area. Maeve and Lachlan had taken a path outside of the forest in order to avoid the marshes.” Jessie paused, blinked twice, and inhaled. It was a freaky thing to know the terminology of a place she had never visited or even known about. “The sentries came from the east. There were seven, no eight of them. They took them back to their camp.”

“Which is where?” Cate gripped Jessie’s shoulders tighter.

“I’m not sure.”

“Be sure!”

Jessie closed her eyes, allowing her mind to paint the whole picture. Her grandmother had always said it was hard to see the picture if you’re standing in the frame, and she had been in the frame in her dream trying to see all that which she hadn’t really looked at was difficult. “By—wait a minute—it’s coming.” Jessie frowned, her eyes still closed. “By Finnegan’s Farm. They’re in the foothills behind the stables of a place called Finnegan’s.”

Cate hugged Jessie. “Good girl! I knew you could do it.” Cate bent down and picked up her staff and quickly started back toward the mist. “If I hurry, I can prevent the worst from happening.” Cate stopped just before the mist and turned back around. “Did you see an ending to this memory?”

Jessie shook her head. “I did not.”

“Good. Then perhaps it ends well. Thank you, Jessie. Thank you for possibly saving our soul mate.” With that, Cate vanished into the mist.

Cate and a dozen other Druids rode all through the night, pushing their steeds harder than a soldier might because of their particular relationship with the animals and the animal world. They would cover twice as much distance with less superior horses than any Roman could, and Cate was determined to do so. None of the others questioned Cate’s drive of the horses, and each one, to a man, stood solidly behind her decision to leave the safety of the woods in order to save their friends.

The fingers of fear kept curling around Cate’s neck, but she refused to feel them or to even acknowledge their existence. Instead, she thought about Jessie’s words and what she had said the soldiers would attempt to do to Lachlan and Maeve.

She knew how far it was to Finnegan’s, and, unless the soldiers had hoisted Maeve and Lachlan upon a horse, they were walking to the farm and not riding. This would give Cate the extra time she needed; time to formulate some kind of plan that would enable all of them to leave without harm. Now, she needed to think like her brother had taught her to—like a warrior. She needed her fighter’s mind now, and though Maeve had done her best to tame the beast in Cate, what Maeve had not known, what she might never know, was that Cate had seen a part of herself in the past, and she had been a true hunter, a man who was capable of staring a lion in the face and not be afraid.

She was staring at a den of lions now, and she was determined not to be afraid.

As the day broke, Cate could see Finnegan’s Farm in the distance. Through the morning’s mist, the smoking chimney could barely be seen. It was at that very moment that Cate knew what she was going to do.

When she went to get the keys to the numberless room, they were gone. So were her parents, and though Jessie tore all through the house looking for the keys, she couldn’t find them.

“Damn them!” she cursed, pounding her fist on the wall. “They’ll ruin everything!” She needed to get to the seam as soon as possible. She had to know if Maeve was all right. She had even taken a nap, hoping Cate would come through, but there was nothing. The answer about Maeve’s safety would only come when Jessie stepped through the portal and back into Cate’s world.

Cate’s world.

Since being restricted, all Jessie had wanted to do was return to Cate’s world and learn more about her life. She hungered for knowledge about the Celts, the Roman invasion of England, a life and time she knew so very little about except in the deepest recesses of her soul memory. Yes, she had had flashes here and there of swords, of thatched-roof houses, of peasants in fields, but those were like the single bright burst of a camera flash that blinded you for a mere second and then was gone. She understood that the more she knew, the more help she would be, but that knowledge just ate at her now, since she had no way of accessing it.

After searching again and again for the keys, Jessie closed her eyes before dinner, falling asleep almost instantly. Her first few dreams were mere snapshots—stills as it were, of a battlefield filled with corpses and wounded horses. On and on the pictures continued until a huge red-haired woman rode a chariot over the peak of a mountain to survey the death and destruction before her. Her green eyes narrowed suddenly as she glared at Jessie from her chariot. Raising her spear, the woman yelled one single word that echoed throughout Jessie’s soul.

“Boudicca!”

Lachlan stared deeply into Maeve’s eyes as if willing her to hear his thoughts. He could hardly believe how calm and unafraid she was. The fate glaring harshly at her was every woman’s greatest nightmare, and yet, here stood Maeve, poised, self-confident, proud. He should have been prepared for her next words, but he wasn’t, and when she spoke them to him in her soft, yet cutting voice, he nearly recoiled.

“Do as they wish,” she said in their native tongue. “It is merely a body, Lachlan.”

Lachlan stepped back, away from the slash of the harsh words, only to feel the tip of a sword in his back urging him forward. “No, Maeve,” he said in ancient Gaelic. “I would rather die than harm you.”

“Oh look,” the commander said, bemused. “They’re barking those ugly sounds they call language. Well then, Druid priestess, when he thrusts his magic wand into you, I want to hear your pleasure as well as your pain in the only civilized tongue. Do you understand?”

Maeve turned from an anguished Lachlan toward the commander. “Civilized men do not pervert their souls with the likes of this entertainment.”

The commander sneered at her. “Get on with it, priestess, or your man will feel the bite of a sword before he can feel the bite of your womanness.”

Lachlan’s eyes pleaded with her. “I—can—not.”

Maeve stepped up to him and slapped his face. This brought a resounding cheer from the soldiers. As they filled the air with their roaring sounds, Maeve gritted her teeth and said, “Catie needs more time, Lachlan. Please, do as they command. We will live through this if you do as I say.”

Lachlan’s sorrow was replaced by surprise. “Cate? Oh, Maeve, she is so far away. Too far that even she cannot help us now.”

Maeve’s hand suddenly reached out and grabbed his neck. This, too, was well-received by the soldiers as they beat their swords against their shields. “Then, do as I command.”

“Maeve—” Lachlan murmured. “I beg you.”

She grabbed his face and pulled him to her. “Listen,” she hissed in an even more ancient language only Druids spoke. “Can’t you hear?” She whispered loud enough to be heard over the shouting men. “Listen carefully. Listen with your nature spirit.”

All Lachlan could hear was the sound of metal on metal and the blood rushing through his body.

“She’s out there,” she said, violently pushing him away, as if he disgusted her. The soldiers booed and hissed as Lachlan stumbled backward, nearly falling into the fire. Again, the sword prodded him forward. With a look of utter helplessness, he took an aggressive step toward Maeve, who nodded. “Trust me,” she mouthed. “You’ll not do me any harm.”

“Maeve, do not be a fool,” he said, digging his fingers into her shoulders. “It is not Cate. You delude yourself.” For years, he had dreamt of being with Maeve, but this—this was nothing like his dreams. This was a nightmare. To force Maeve into accepting something from him that should be freely given and equally received was more than he could bear, and a small part of him knew it would irrevocably change their relationship if they were to live through this.

“You are a good man, my friend. This charade is almost over.” Once again, she slapped him, sending him reeling backward.

“I’ll not allow this one to touch me, Commander. Perhaps you would rather in his stead.”

Before Lachlan could do anything more, a low rumble could be heard and the ground began to shake. The soldiers paused their metallic banging long enough to hear the first hooves of the approaching stampede. Glancing about, they immediately formed a blockade against the onslaught of whatever was coming.

Out of the lifting mist charged one hundred rampaging cows and bulls, knocking soldiers to the ground and crushing them beneath their hooves. This way and that, the cows charged, crushing shields and breaking dropped swords. In the center of the maelstrom, Maeve and Lachlan stood erect calmly watching as the soldiers, one-by-one, fell to the onrush of cattle that seemed to have no end. The Commander made a dash for his horse, stepping over his fallen soldiers, but when he reached the hitching post, all the horses were gone. Turning, he glared at Lachlan and Maeve, who went unharmed among the huge beasts as they rushed by them.

“Why do they not kill you?” he cried, shaking his sword at the two of them.

Lachlan stood tall. “We are Druids. Nature harms us not.”

“We shall beat your kind event—” His final word was lost as the next dozen bulls knocked him over, and trampled him with their sharp hooves.

When the dust settled and the cattle had completely destroyed the makeshift camp, only Lachlan and Maeve stood alive among the eight corpses littering the woods. “She is here,” Maeve whispered, smiling softly at Lachlan.

“Maeve, she is nearly a day’s walk from here.”

Maeve ignored him and started in the direction the cattle had come. “You’re wrong. She’s here. I know it.”

And out of the mist she came, riding a small dappled mare that was breathing hard and sweating profusely. Sitting next to her on a tall amber-colored horse was Sean Finnegan who beamed broadly at the damage his beasts had done.

“Maeve!” Jumping off her horse, Cate ran to Maeve and embraced her so hard they nearly toppled over.

“Oh, Catie, I knew you’d come.”

“Are you all right? Did they hurt you?” Cate looked at Maeve’s torn dress and then pulled Maeve to her before she could respond. She wept, out of fear, out of a sense of relief, out of all the emotions that had been swimming inside her since she spoke with Jessie. She could not find any words, any at all, to express how she felt, so she just cried.

Finally, when Maeve could no longer breathe, she gently pulled away and brushed the tears from her face. “It’s all right, now, Catie. We’re all right.”

Nodding, Cate tried to compose herself. “I—it—Jessie—”

Maeve nodded slowly. “Ah, I see.”

“In a dream, one of my memories of this awful event forced its way to her. She told me what was happening, so we grabbed what horses we could and rode all night.”

Lachlan walked over and patted Cate on the back. “And thank the Goddess you did. That was very brave of you to come through the forest at night, Cate McEwen. You continue to surprise me. Thank you for reaching us in time.”

Cate blushed. Lachlan handed out very few compliments, so when he did, it was cherished. “You’re welcome, Lachlan, but it wasn’t me. Well, it wasn’t me acting alone. I had help. Without Jessie—”

Lachlan stared at her. “Jessie?”

Cate nodded. “She warned me. She saw this memory.”

“But how could she have a memory of something you were not a part of?”

Maeve smiled knowingly. “It was not her memory. It was mine. Do not forget, Lachlan, that Cate and I are soul mates. I will tell Catie what happened to us here and thus, it will become part of her memory. It was that ‘memory’ Jessie saw.”

Lachlan shuddered. “And thank the goddesses she did.”

Maeve quickly repaired her torn dress as best she could and glanced up to ask, “Were you able to get any of the information we need?”

Cate shook her head. “We were more concerned with saving you both from these Romans butchers.” With a look of disdain, Cate glared at the crushed and bloody bodies on the ground. “We had no other choice but to tend to this first.”

“It was a good choice, Cate,” Lachlan said. Then, he turned to Sean and shook his hand. “Well met, Sean. If any of your animals are missing or injured, we will gladly pay you for them. Thank you, my friend.”

Sean sat straighter in his saddle. “The bloody Romans will want to feast on the meat of my cows, but not if they are loose and run free. I had planned on letting them go when I heard the soldiers were near, but this was a far better use for them.”

“We appreciate your sacrifice.”

“It was my pleasure watching these pigs get trampled by cows. Thank me not.”

“How on earth did the two of you manage to stampede so many cattle?”

“I am not alone, Lachlan.” On that note, twelve other Druids appeared as if by magic from various parts of the forest. “We herded them here with help from Sean. Once they were gathered, we prayed and I led a protection ritual. I knew you would be safe from harm.”

“You performed a ceremony?” Lachlan asked.

Cate nodded. “I had to. It was my duty to protect you. I asked the Goddess Boann of the sacred white cow to protect you.”

Lachlan turned to Maeve. “But how did you know she was here?”

“I found Cate all the way from Gaul. It was nothing to know she was near. It is how we are. It is how we shall always be.”

Lachlan shook his head. “There is more.”

“Indeed. Do you think, of all Cate’s memories housed within Jessie’s soul, that it was pure coincidence that this memory pushed its way through?” Maeve asked.

Lachlan’s face registered surprise. “You did it?”

Maeve smiled. “Cate’s soul is connected to mine, whether she is in the future and I’m in her past. Jessie was able to access that memory because I supplied it for her.”

“You were able to send a memory? How can that be?”

Maeve nodded. “Forget not my powers, Lachlan. You have only seen what little I have chosen to show you.”

Lachlan bowed his head. “Indeed, madam. I shan’t forget again.” He bowed low, not merely for a show of respect, but to let Maeve know whatever nearly transpired between them did not lessen his deep respect and admiration for her. She returned the bow to him to repair any damage their experience might have wrought.

“Are we to head back to the grove?” one of the Druids asked Lachlan.

“Not until we have spoken to the Chieftain. He awaits our decision.”

Maeve raised an eyebrow at him. “What about Catie?”

“She is here now. We shall not send her back. If she and Jessie are as connected as you believe them to be, perhaps it is best if we return her to the Otherworld or to her own Dreamworld where they may reconnect.”

The Druids prayed together, performed a short ceremony to thank the goddesses for bringing them all here safely, and, finally, headed off to the highlands, for what could very well be the last time.

Jessie woke up exactly at six in the morning. Sadly, it had been a dreamless night, and she figured it was because Cate was doing what she could to save Lachlan and Maeve. Not knowing what had happened to Maeve and Lachlan was driving her nuts. As hard as she tried to access her soul’s memory within her, she could not. Jessie decided that that was one of the first things she was going to learn when she got her life back. She was going to learn how to remember. She knew Ceara could help her learn how to hear her past when it whispered to her. It was there. It was only a matter of being able to retrieve it.

She had just finished breakfast when the doorbell rang. To her surprise, it was Tanner.

“Hey. I brought some samples of my work for your Dad to look at. Mind if I drop them off?”

Jessie opened the door, glad for the company. “Come on in. What have you been up to?”

“I’ve been trying to straighten out that mess Chris got us into by spreading those damn rumors. What a little asshole.” Tanner sat on one of the sofas in the parlor and set his work on the coffee table. “Heard you’re restricted. That totally sucks.”

Jessie nodded. “You have no idea.”

“What do you do all day? Work?”

“I’ve had plenty of thinking time.”

“About what?”

Jessie studied him a moment, weighing whether or not she could or should trust him. “Have you ever just known that doing something in particular would change your life? That you were stepping onto a path you knew was right?”

Tanner shook his head. “Nope. Well, maybe. This may sound weird, but I kinda have that feeling about you.”

Jessie sat up. “Really?”

“Yeah. I’ve never really hung around someone who had their act together like you do. Your folks are whacked if they think you’re a screw up. Whacked and way off base.”

Jessie didn’t know what to say. No one had ever really believed in her before, and now, suddenly, it seemed as if everyone around her was beginning to. It felt good. No, it felt great. “Thanks.”

“You’re good people, Jess. You deserve a better break than the one you got when you came here.”

Jessie grinned broadly. “Thank you, Tanner. I’m glad you think so because you’re good people, too. You just have to believe that no matter what anybody else says.”

“Who I believe, is Ceara, and she said you might need some help getting out of here in order to—how did she put it? Get the job done? Does that sound about right?”

Hope filled Jessie’s chest. “You’re here to bust me out?”

He nodded. “I’m here to help you do whatever it is that has Ceara’s panties in a wad. She’s been like a panther in a cage pacing back and forth. The least I can do is see if I can help you guys. You need a ride somewhere, I’ve got wheels.”

“But my parents would kill me if they knew I left.”

“Ceara told me to tell you to let her worry about them. You game to get out of here or not?”

Grabbing her jacket, Jessie raced for the door. “Let’s go.”

Cate felt the quiet desperation in the air as they made their way to the Chieftain. She felt it from the trees, from the animals and from the birds taking flight. The air was filled with bad energy; like the kind one feels just before lightning strikes or the earth trembles. The world knew what was coming and it was sad for it.

“Can you feel it?” Cate whispered when her horse sidled up to Maeve’s.

“Aye. It is thick and pervasive. There is so very little time. The land is preparing to drink in the blood that will be spilt from here to the coast.”

“They mean to take the whole of the island.”

Maeve nodded. “The Romans have always believed in conquests and expansion. We are merely another bauble for Rome’s collection.”

“What of Eire? Shall they conquer that as well?”

Maeve shook her head. “I have seen nothing of a Roman invasion of the islands to the west, but that does not mean it is not so. And you? Have you seen anything?”

Cate shook her head. “Nothing of the sort. Rome does not land on the emerald isle during our lifetime.”

“Let us hope that is a long life, my love.”

Cate nodded. “Would that we could see that as well. You know, I will never understand how a culture so rich with artisans and philosophers could so crudely demean those they conquer. They do not understand our way of life.”

“Nor do they wish to. To them, we are the barbarians, uncultured, unworthy to lead ourselves.”

“But Maeve, so much of what they do is unnatural.”

“Indeed.”

“Can it truly be that they will be the ones to dominate the world?”

Maeve reached over and patted Cate’s leg. “Perhaps you can have that answer tonight.”

“Tonight? I cannot make it back to Fennel this eve.”

“Nor shall you try. Lachlan and I shall put you in another deep sleep. From there, you must reach Jessie and learn what the Romans are going to do. Perhaps then, you can discover what becomes of such a people.”

“It has never occurred to me to ask.”

“Because you are a kind and gentle soul. You would never use Jessie or her information for personal gain. It is the reason the Goddess has given you the ability to go and return from the portal. You are more than worthy.”

Cate had to look away. Maeve could not be more wrong. Oh yes, preventing the Druid population from being annihilated was the original reason for sending her through, but saving Maeve’s life was her primary concern. It was for personal gain, and there was no way around that. Perhaps Blodwin might know. Maybe the Goddess was well-aware of her true intentions and was allowing her to proceed anyway.

They rode for quite awhile without speaking, and Cate sat astride her mount wondering about Jessie and the life she was leading so incredibly far away. Was she happy? Did she have goals and desires? Was she loved? There were so many things Cate wanted to know about the young woman she would become, yet there was so little time to devote to those matters.

She was beginning to understand the inner workings of the sight, and how the portals contributed to the strength of it. She was experiencing the eternality of the soul and seeing firsthand that it does not die, but learns its lessons and moves on to another life in another time. What lesson, Cate mused, could she learn in this life that would help her soul have a better, happier life in the next world? The Silures believed in the transmigration of souls to such a degree that it enabled them to live life more fully than so many of the other peoples the Romans had conquered. Silurian warriors, like most of the Celts, were not afraid to die, not afraid to whoop and holler and go berserk during battle because they understood that death, like life, was only temporary. This, ultimately, was what the Roman emperors had always been most afraid of. How can you rule a people who despise you if they do not, in fact, fear you as well? Roman domination resulted because people feared them, feared their slavery, their destructiveness. But the Celts felt no such fear of the Romans or anyone else. They were a proud and fearless society that felt pity for the Roman people who allowed the elite to rule them with such an iron fist. It would not be so easy to wrestle from the Celtic people their homes, their religion, their way of life.

That was going to be a very difficult fight, Cate knew. She needed no sight to know that thousands from both sides would give their lives in battle. Thus far, no one had been able to stop Rome, but that didn’t keep the Druids from doing everything in their power to keep their people’s culture intact. They would do everything they could to preserve the memory, traditions and rituals of a people too proud to surrender and too brave to quit.

Otherwise, what good were the Druids to their people?

Closing her eyes, Cate sighed. How odd that the fate of her kind rested on the shoulders of a young woman two thousand years away. How much odder was it, still, that Cate believed in her.

When Jessie got to the car, she was surprised and delighted to find Ceara sitting in the passenger seat.

“I have been worried half to death,” Ceara said, taking out a handkerchief and wiping her eyes. “When I hadn’t heard anything—”

“We don’t have the Internet here, and the phone lines are sporadic at best. I can’t get to the place—” Jessie said, cutting her eyes over to Tanner. She didn’t want to sound like a complete loon in front of him.

“Tanner can be trusted, my dear. He is well-aware of what we’re about.”

Tanner slowed as they came to a light. “I’m just the driver today, Jess, but if you ever needed anything else—”

Jessie’s mouth was hanging open. “Wait. You two are friends?”

Ceara chuckled. “Good friends, actually, though, to make Tanner’s life easier, we don’t generally let it get around. He has it tough enough as it is, and I—well—you know what the folks say about me.”

“People have told me about your parents asking around. Your dad thinks I’m some kind of hoodlum.”

“They came here to start fresh and they don’t feel as if I have because of some of the choices I’ve made. The truth is, I don’t think they’d be happy if I hung out with nuns.” Jessie glanced out the window. “Where are we going, anyway?”

Tanner shook his head and tossed a quick glance over to Ceara. “Ceara wants to go to the U of O and talk to her professor friend and I have to drop something off for my dad.”

“What about my parents?”

“They’ve gone to pick up your brother. Do not worry about them. What we have to do is far more important. Don’t you worry, though. The Goddess is with us.”

An hour and a half later, they pulled up to a large brick building in the center of town.

“I’ll be back in about an hour,” Tanner said, pulling into a parking space. As Jessie and Ceara got out, Tanner grabbed Jessie’s wrist and gently pulled her back into the car. “I just wanted you to know—for your own peace of mind—that I haven’t done drugs in over a year. I’m clean and I plan on staying that way.”

Jessie reached up and laid her palm on his cheek. It was bristly and rough from his unshaven face, and she realized, for the first time, what a man he really was. “Tanner, that doesn’t matter to me.”

“It does to me, Jess. I’d hate to think that being friends with me would cause you so much pain. I just wanted you to know. I guess—”

“That you’re worth it?” Without stopping to think about it, Jessie leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek. “I think you’re wonderful. Thank you for being my friend.”

A deep blush rose to his temples. “Hell, Jess, that’s easy.”

“The mutual admiration society needs to come to a close, kids. We have things to do.” Ceara squinted at a group of young women playing hackey-sack in the quad. “Professor Rosenbaum is just the man to help us find out what we need to know as quickly as possible.”

“You called him for help?” Jessie started through the parking lot.

“Of course, dear. After all, it’s been a few days since you’ve made contact with Cate.”

“Um—not quite.” Jessie explained about her memory and how Cate had managed to get into her dream. The entire time she spoke, Ceara stood there, wide-eyed, nodding slowly, as if in a trance. “But I don’t know what happened before Cate got in. She said something about having a hard time reaching me because I was in a dark and evil place. Does that make any sense to you?”

Ceara nodded. “Ofttimes, when the body is imprisoned or constrained, the soul’s power is somewhat diminished. It is one of the phenomena of the concentration camps that psychologists spent years researching. They wanted to know why some people who appeared physically stronger than others died long before the physically weaker survivors. They have always searched for a way to measure one’s emotional strength. Of course, there is no known way to gauge the strength of the human spirit, but it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that once your spirit quits, your body is soon to follow regardless of how strong it is.”

“What you’re saying is that Cate could feel my spirit being broken?”

“Not broken. You’re too strong for that. But she may have known you were not okay. Your parents’ lack of trust has created a prison within you. I imagine that’s what Cate means. We must be moving, my dear. Professor Rosenbaum is a busy man.”

“What does he do?”

“His field is ancient civilizations. I asked him to abbreviate his normal lecture about what transpired in England and Wales in sixty-one AD. I want you just to sit there and listen until he is finished and then you can ask questions.”

“Gotcha.”

“He is doing this as a favor to me, so please pay close attention. He abhors dull-witted people and simpletons who cannot focus.”

“I’m all over it.”

“Good. I have pulled tons off the Internet that should be able to fill in any information you miss today, but you need a crash course since time is of the essence.”

Jessie nodded and inhaled the musky scent of the building. It was a familiar scent from somewhere in her past, and she smiled to herself, knowing it was a memory she had just experienced. She didn’t know from what era or what part of the world, but it was familiar nonetheless. The aroma of old leather books beckoned her like a magnet drawing metal slivers; it was a force she could not ignore.

“When we’re done here, Ceara, would you mind if we dropped by the admissions office?”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind, but whatever for?”

Jessie looked around at the dark oak doors and the bookshelves filled with knowledge she had never cared to know, and said, “Because I belong here. I’m going to apply.”

Ceara clapped her hands together. “What a wonderful idea! What will you major in, my dear?”

Jessie grinned as Professor Rosenbaum’s office door opened. “What else? History.”

The Silures’ Chieftain was a large block of a man with big barrel arms and logs for legs. His reddish hair met a beard that was beginning to streak with gray. On his left thigh he sported a scar the length of Cate’s forearm, and his right bicep looked as if a large animal had taken a bite out of it. He was, it was rumored, a warrior who had cheated death nearly a dozen times, and by the looks of his body, Cate believed it.

Sitting in front of a fire and a makeshift camp, the Chieftain beckoned them to come forward. “I understand you had a bit of trouble along the way. I am pleased to see you are well.”

Lachlan nodded. “Fortunately for me, sir, the women were more than capable of felling the eight soldiers who had captured us.”

The Chieftain laughed at this. “I do so love tales of Celtic female warriors destroying the enemy. Are these they?” The large man peered through the dark at Cate and Maeve. “Maeve, is that you? Come forward, lass. Are you the tigress who saved our head priest?”

Maeve shook her head. “Cate McEwen is the one who saved us, sir.”

“McEwen, ah yes, your father was a great man cut down in the prime of his life. You have your father’s fighting skills then. I honor thee.” The Chieftain bowed low to Cate. “You must be very brave, little one.”

Cate bowed her head and backed away to allow Lachlan and Maeve to conduct this matter. “I am merely one of us trying to save as many lives as we can.”

“Indeed. What say you, Lachlan?” The Chieftain motioned his man to retrieve three goblets of wine and waited for Lachlan and Maeve to have a sip before answering.

“The Silures’ Druids have chosen to stand fast and fight.”

The Chieftain smiled briefly. “I expected as much. Do you believe it best to fight here in the highlands or further west? There are stories that the Romans are moving northwest. I do not want to move on hearsay. What do you see?”

“Death, mighty one. There is no escape from it, only a lessening of the damage done.”

“And what will my Druids do during this devastation?”

Lachlan shrugged. “We await your command.”

The Chieftain stroked his great beard. “The Iceni and Ordovices are also planning to rebel, but they are far too slow in rallying their people. If you fight here with us, then our might is more concentrated, but if I send you off to the Isle of Mona, we can split their forces and weaken their numbers, as they shall surely come after you.”

Lachlan looked at Maeve, who shrugged. This was when they needed Jessie’s information the most. “If that is what you believe best.”

Looking at Maeve, the Chieftain asked, “Think you we ought to send warriors to Mona to fight alongside our priests and priestesses?”

“I cannot say. My only sight reveals blood and death, misery and ruin. Whether we are on Mona or here with you, our people will suffer horrible losses.”

“Aye. My reports indicate that the Governor’s soldiers double daily. I would think you might be safer here with me and my men.”

Maeve glanced over to Cate, who spoke very softly. “We might have different answers for you in the morn.”

The Chieftain stared into the fire. For a long time he sat motionless, just looking into the flames. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft yet cold. “Then my men will continue to prepare. We will be ready no matter where the Romans attack.”

“We have not much time,” Maeve added. “At all. Suetonius Paulinus’s men will be here shortly.”

He nodded. “I shall await your instructions regarding your people and the Isle of Mona and will send a message to the Ordovices to hold off on any attack until they hear from us. I will await your wisdom on the matter, Maeve, until it becomes too dangerous not to act. I trust in your guidance for you have never led me astray. Let us hope and pray that we continue in that manner.”

When the Chieftain left them, the three of them sat at the fire thinking their own thoughts, searching any unthought-of options, and when one of them finally spoke, it was Cate’s quiet voice they heard over the crackling fire.

“I am ready. Tonight. Now.”

Maeve touched her shoulder lightly. “Are you sure?”

“Jessie fully understands our dire need. Wherever she was, I am sure she is no longer in its grasp. She, too is a fighter. We must do this Maeve, tonight. This may be our final opportunity.”

Maeve took Cate’s hand in hers. “There is so little time left.”

“I know.”

“Then we shall proceed.” Maeve motioned to Lachlan to rise.

“And if nothing happens? If Jessie cannot be of help to us?” Lachlan asked.

“Then we will have stepped through into another world in vain.”

“Suetonius Paulinus wanted to subdue the mutinous spirit of the Britons, so he resolved to attack them and drive them to the Isle of Mona, called Anglesey today.” Dr. Rosenbaum was in the middle of his lecture to two rapt listeners. True to Ceara’s instructions, Jessie had asked no questions nor interrupted his flow of speech, relying, instead, on her limited note-taking experience and her newly awakened mind.

“He ordered a number of flat-bottomed boats, new in that time period, to be constructed so that he could send men across with their horses. He knew how familiar the Celts were with their woods, and without horses he would never catch them. Many of those boats arrived with infantry as well. It seems to us like overkill, but Paulinus wasn’t kidding around. He was trying to earn his own bragging rights, and to do so, he needed a high body count, especially of the Druids that even Julius Caesar had failed to eradicate.

“On the shore, the Britons were prepared to meet their attackers. Tacitus writes a subjective piece about women pulling out their own hair and acting insane, but his point of view, like so many other Roman entries, is biased. Clearly, the women fought alongside the men as well, and were equally as prepared to die, but the hair pulling and screaming were Tacitus’ paint- by-numbers rendition of the scene. Anyway, when the Romans finally arrived, the Druids called forth their gods and goddesses, and initially, this so scared the Roman soldiers that they failed to act. It wasn’t until one of the leaders struck down a Druid that the soldiers realized they could, in fact, be killed. That’s when—”

Jessie’s sharp intake of breath made the professor stop. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. It’s just such a waste of life, that’s all. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Human life meant nothing to the Romans if that life wasn’t of taxpaying Roman citizenship.” The professor pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his long nose. He was a short, bald man with a graying tincture surrounding his head like a halo. Like a throwback to the Sixties, he wore a brown tweed smoking jacket with patches on the elbows and buttoned at the waist. The faint scent of pipe tobacco lingered in the air.

“Tacitus goes on to say that the island and the oak groves they so cherished perished in the very flames the Druids had set themselves. Much of Mona was destroyed by fires that burned out of control, and though Tacitus would like to blame the Druids for starting fires, many historians today believe that the Romans sent flaming arrows into the woods to prevent the Druids from fleeing there. They were too afraid to give chase, but not to fire flaming arrows. Anyway, the island was eventually conquered and the army was garrisoned there in order to kill any uprisings and destroy any future Druidic activity. Paulinus concentrated his attack in South Wales and Snowdonia, where he managed to drive the Druid population further into the mountains of Scotland and across the water to Ireland. Druidry survived there and in the Welsh mountains for decades, but did not make a revival until the Middle Ages when the stories of King Arthur and Merlin abounded.” Here, the professor stopped and looked at them both for questions. “Is that what you were wanting to know, Ceara?”

Ceara nodded and lightly touched a tense Jessie. “It is very good, thank you.”

“Questions, Jessie?”

Jessie looked up from her notes. She took a deep breath. It felt like she hadn’t been breathing. “So the Silures were not completely destroyed?”

“Can anything be completely destroyed? Remember, ninety-five percent of our information about the Druids comes from Roman sources, so it’s not likely to be one hundred percent accurate. In history, we tend to give historical data an eighty to twenty ratio of correctness. Given how little information there is on this particular subject, one would have to lower that to an easy seventy to thirty.”

“What do you think, Professor? What has all your research shown you about the Silures?”

Professor Rosenbaum took off his glasses, leaving two red indentations on either side of his nose. “I believe the Britons had the means and the manpower to fend off the Roman invasion, but since they were so factioned off into tribes and clans, they did not have the central leadership needed to push back tens of thousands of Roman soldiers Paulinus sent into the forests.”

“But you think some survived.”

The professor looked down at Jessie and nodded. “Oh, of course. There are tales, mind you, not historical data, proclaiming how they were driven deep into their beloved woods, where they managed to remain for centuries, hiding in burrows and underground caverns. They continued their illegal practices under cloak of darkness. Up until the myth of Merlin, Druidry remained an underground operation, so to speak.”

“So these tales say some did escape,” Jessie said insistently.

“Yes, but there is little evidence supporting it. Documentation of the Druids is as elusive as a unicorn, I’m afraid, and so much of what we know about them is pure conjecture.”

Jessie inhaled deeply in prelude to her final question. “How many died on Mona?”

The professor shrugged. “Thousands. The Druids had been sent to Mona because they’d been given faulty information from one of the other tribes. I do not believe the Silures would have left their people on Mona had they known Paulinus was going to put both man and horse on boats. That was a new strategy even to the Romans, but it paid off. Going to Mona was a huge and costly mistake for the Silures.”

Jessie swallowed hard, feeling almost claustrophobic in his cramped office.

“I hope this hasn’t been too confusing. It is difficult to cram a college quarter’s worth of information into a half hour. Is there anything else I can answer for you?”

Jessie rose and nodded. “One last thing. Let’s say you could step back in time and you were on the island. What would be the best way to get as many people as you could off of it before the Romans came to shore?”

The professor cast a curious look to Ceara before replying. “The only way to save yourself during that particular attack would be by boat, of course. Without a boat, you’d be pinned by the Roman soldiers. If, of course, you survived the fiery forests, there would still be no place to go unless you had the foresight to station boats on the opposite side of where they attacked.”

Jessie nodded. “Thanks. And thank you so much for your time. I was mostly interested in the possibility of escape.”

As Jessie and Ceara turned to go, the professor opened the door for them. “Oh, and one last thing in case you’re interested. If you were to escape the island, you could have gone to the east side of the island, because the Romans launched their attack from the southwestern part of the country and did not even bother surrounding the isle. If that helps any.”

Jessie smiled. “It does. Thank you.”

“I do hope I’ve been of some help. It’s not every day someone is interested in what happened to another people from history. Even my students find it boring at times.”

As Jessie stepped out of his office, she turned to him one final time. “Can I ask you a personal question, Professor?”

Dr. Rosenbaum put his glasses back on. “You can try.”

“Do you believe the Druids had powers outside our scope of our comprehension?”

Professor Rosenbaum looked over at Ceara, shook his head, and smiled. “What I wouldn’t give to have her for a student.” To Jessie, he answered, “I’ll deny saying this, Jessie, but I believe the Druids, along with the Native Americans and the Aborigines, were the only individuals capable of keeping mankind from destroying the planet and himself along with it. You can call it a craft, voodoo, magic, or miracles if you want, but those cultures had something we lost a long time ago.”

“Do you think we can ever get that back? Is it possible we can find it again?”

Professor Rosenbaum shook his head. “Not unless we could turn the clocks back, Jessie. I’m afraid our time on this planet is going to be rather limited.”

With that, Jessie and Ceara hustled down the hall feeling the hands of time slowly wrapping around their necks.

When Tanner dropped Jessie and Ceara off at Ceara’s shop, he handed Jessie another business card. “In case you lost the last one. I’m always just a phone call away.”

Taking the card, Jessie smiled at him. “Thanks for everything. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Be my friend, Jess. Good friends are hard to come by in this world. I’d be mighty pleased to be one of yours.”

“Done.”

“I better get going and get the car back to my dad.”

Jessie waved to Tanner as he drove away, feeling like she had really made a good friend.

“He is.” Came Ceara’s soft voice from the doorway. “He’s one of the best. You could do far worse than have a friend like Tanner Dodds on your side.”

“Been there already, Ceara.”

“Yes, I believe you have. Come on, girl, we have work to do.”

Once in the shop, Ceara left Jessie to read more Internet historical pieces to fill in any gaps from their history lesson, while Ceara returned to the boat to pick up the rest of her printouts.

Sitting at the table where Ceara did her tarot readings, Jessie laid her head down on the table and tried to absorb all the information. She wondered if Cate had any desire to know what had happened to the once powerful Roman Empire. Wouldn’t she be surprised to learn that Latin was a long dead language and that Rome was now only the capital of a single European nation? Would Cate want to know? Would she even care? Jessie’s head felt thick and she needed a nap.

Rubbing her burning eyes, she sighed loudly. So much had happened since Cate’s time. Would Cate want to know about the plague, or that man could fly? Would she just fall over backward to learn that man had actually walked on the moon they so valued? Would any of that knowledge change Cate’s life or make it better? Would knowing that man could teleport his molecules as a means of travel ten thousand years from now do anything to improve the quality of her own life?

She didn’t think so. Sometimes, people were so transfixed on the future that the moment slipped quietly away without ever being noticed. She didn’t want to live her life like that. She wanted to experience all life had to offer in this moment, whether it was good or bad, pretty or ugly, light or dark. She wanted to live now.

And suddenly, Jessie understood that that was all Cate wanted, too. She wanted Maeve and Lachlan to live through their now together. Nothing else really mattered. All this time, Jessie had only thought about saving Maeve and helping the Druids to live beyond sixty-one AD, but she had never even considered the possibility that Cate might not live through the massacre on Mona.

Jumping to her feet, Jessie paced back and forth across the room. The idea of Cate dying was like a bone caught in her throat. While failure wasn’t an option, death was even less of one. She knew Cate would eventually die, but to die because Jessie couldn’t come up with a few important facts, well, that was more than she could bear.

“Maybe she doesn’t die for a long, long time,” Jessie said aloud. As she paced, Ceara returned bearing file folders filled with computer printouts.

“Ceara, what if Cate dies at Mona?”

“What?”

Pulling Ceara into the shop, Jessie took the files from her and set them on the table. “I’ve never even considered that she could die at the hands of Paulinus’s men.”

Ceara sat in her chair and motioned for Jessie to sit in the chair next to her. “First of all, Cate is already dead. Secondly, death is always a possibility and something you can always count on. I thought you understood that.”

“I always thought that Cate would live a long time. It never dawned on me that she might not make it—that we might be too late.”

Ceara looked out over the top of her glasses. “The odds are not in her favor, my dear. You heard Dr. Rosenbaum.”

“But if Cate dies—”

“Then you will never know what happens to Maeve and Lachlan. That’s what’s really bothering you, isn’t it. The possible disconnect from the one being you know is your soul mate.” Ceara tapped her chin as she thought. “Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless your souls meet in another life beyond that one and the soul you tap into remembers what happened to Maeve. Remember, you have Cate’s soul inside you. It is always within your grasp to retrieve memories; and not just hers, either, but all of them. Those before Maeve and after. You just don’t know how quite yet. But don’t you worry. That’s what I’m here for. There is so much for you to learn about the portal, the soul, your lives. You have been handed a great privilege and an even greater responsibility; you must learn as much as you can in your life about how it works and what it all means.”

“And you’re going to help me do that?”

“Indeed. There is much to know, but you must be patient.”

“I’m trying, but all I can think about is saving Maeve.”

Ceara sighed and shook her head. “No, all Cate wants to do is save Maeve, but you, you have a far greater purpose. You, my friend, must save the Druids. Do not forget that.”

Jessie held her head in her hands. “But we already know the outcome, don’t we? The professor has it all right there on his desk. I can’t change the past.”

Ceara waved the words away like she was swatting a fly. “Oh Jessie, there is so much about time you still do not understand. Their future has not happened yet. This is what you must understand. In our past, we know the Romans drove the Druids into the hills, but do we know why? Why did they go to Mona? Do we have any account about how they escaped their attackers on Mona?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t sound like it.”

Ceara nodded. “All the records we have of the historical events, and we still do not know how they managed to escape the well-trained Roman army? Don’t you find that odd?”

Jessie tilted her head in question. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Well, think about it. The Druids escaped. We know that. They managed to flee and stay hidden for the next eight hundred years. We know that as well. How do you think they knew where to go, where to hide, where to run to escape an army that nearly owned the world at one point? How did they know?”

Jessie stared hard into those light-blue eyes, feeling not only illumination at last, but a familiarity as well. “Because of me.”

A smile lit up Ceara’s face. “Yes. Because of you. There was no one to write about it because who knew about it then? Who would believe it? To explain you would be to uncover information about a portal that had been hidden all those years. To uncover you as their source of information would be opening themselves up to disaster. The portal and all its knowledge is not for the common man, my dear. It is for the likes of you.”

Jessie sat back and shook her head. “Wait a minute. I play a role in the turn of events of an entire culture?”

“I know it’s difficult to comprehend, especially when we live in a time when most don’t believe one person can make a difference. You save them from complete annihilation, allowing them to live in relative peace for nearly a millennium. Maybe they were regrouping, maybe something else happened in history, but we know one thing for certain: something saved the Druids on that island, and that something could very well be you.”

Jessie’s head started pounding. “But what if I did nothing? What if I just sat here for the next week and let them die. How could history explain that?”

Ceara grinned. “Because you are not the only time traveler in existence, are you?”

Jessie’s face fell. She remembered strange names mentioned before . . . was it Angus and . . . Quinn? “Quinn has yet to return to the portal. They think he’s dead.”

“But he could be alive. Anything is possible when you’re dealing with time. You ought to know that by now.”

Jessie nodded, a tiny ray of light shining into her numbed mind. “So, I tell them about Mona, and they . . .”

“They fight the good fight. You will not change the past, Jessie. You will become part of it. Do you understand now?”

Before Jessie could respond, Tanner burst through the door. “Her parents have left and were last seen on one twenty-eight. The coast is clear to get her back to the Pit.”

Jessie looked at Tanner as if he were nuts. He, in turn, winked at her and reached to help Ceara up. “I’d say you have a good three hours before they return.”

Jessie rose and helped Ceara gather all the files. “Do you have spies watching the house?”

Tanner laughed. “Nothing as mundane as that. One of my hobbies is fiddling with electronic surveillance gadgets. Once they left the house, it triggered one of my ladybug devices and I hopped in the car and followed them until they got to the freeway. Now, you gonna stand here yakking or are you going to the Pit to finish whatever it is you started?”

Jessie looked at Ceara, who smiled. “Well, my dear? Is it time to be off to see the wizard?”

Jessie nodded. “Absolutely.”

As Jessie and Ceara approached the wall where the numberless door materialized, Jessie took the keys out of her pocket and looked at Ceara as the door slowly materialized.

“Oh—my,” Ceara uttered. “It’s been—it’s so—how very odd.”

Jessie turned to Ceara. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Ceara shook her head. “No, Jessie. This is a journey for the young.”

“But Ceara—”

“No.”

Jessie’s forehead furrowed as she gazed at the old woman. Never before had she heard her sound so harsh. “Ceara? What is it? Are you afraid of the seam?”

“It is nothing. Now stop all this nonsense and get going. You are wasting valuable time. Remember everything the professor told you, and do not leave until Cate has picked your brains clean. If you do not know, say so. Don’t guess. Don’t make anything up.”

Jessie nodded. “I could really use you in there.”

Ceara waved her off. “Go now.”

Jessie hesitated a moment before hugging her. It felt like she might not ever return. “Thank you, Ceara, for all you’ve done.” Jessie opened the door, stepped in, and closed it. Once again she found herself in Cate’s world, where mist hung in the air and clung to the trees, and where she knew, if she walked just past this clearing, Cate would be waiting.

And she was.

“Jessie!” Cate cried, jumping to her feet and running over to her. Emotions overwhelming them both, they drew each other into a tight embrace. “I am so very happy to see you!”

Jessie pulled away, nodding. “Me, too. Did you save Maeve from the soldiers?”

“Just barely. She sends you her gratitude and appreciation from the bottom of her heart, as do I.”

“And Lachlan?”

“He is well, also, though I believe the very nature of what the Romans were wanting him to do has upset him quite a bit. He does so respect Maeve.”

“Where are they now?”

“He and Maeve are watching me as we speak.”

“This is your dream then.” It was a statement of fact. The feelings of a dream state were far different from those of actually being inside Cate. Jessie was becoming more familiar with the tastes and textures of a true quester.

Cate nodded. “I am too far from the portal so they induced me into a very deep slumber to enable you to reach me. I take it this means you have extricated yourself from that dark place you were in?”

“Hell, yes. I’m fine now. I’ve retrieved the information you need, but I’m afraid it doesn’t look good.”

Cate motioned for Jessie to sit down on the stone next to her, which she did. “We are prepared for the inevitable, Jessie, so please, go ahead. I am not afraid.”

Jessie ran her hands through her hair, and inhaled a deep, painful breath. “Paulinus has amassed troops in excess of sixty thousand. He is turning his attention to the Silures and plans to push you off the coast toward the Isle of Mona, where there will be little place to run.”

Cate stared down at her folded hands. “What—what happens on the Isle of Mona?”

Jessie felt older than her years and younger than her soul. It was the question she knew was coming but didn’t want to answer. Taking a deep breath, she very quietly said, “The Druids . . . are defeated.”

Cate did not look at her, but stared into the fire before them. “Defeated or destroyed?”

“Nearly destroyed. Some of you survive, but not many. Those who do, end up in Ireland and the Scottish Highland.” Jessie paused as Cate looked confused. “It’s the island west of Britain and . . . what do you call the area up north?”

“Alba. We escape to Alba?”

Jessie nodded. “Apparently, the Romans never got that far north nor to the islands in the west.”

Cate inhaled a long, sharp breath. “Eire. The island is called Eire.”

“Well, those of you who make it there remain in hiding for over a thousand years. But it’s Mona that’s going to be the Druid burial ground. If you can stay away from there, you three could live through this.”

“The Chieftain has already sent word that the Isle was the safest haven for our people. He has sent most of his strongest Druids there believing the Romans would not attempt an assault upon the water. They do not like the water very much. Are you certain the Romans attack Mona?”

Jessie ran her hands through her hair once more. “Paulinus has flat-bottomed boats built to be able to hold his horses. Your Chieftain was given faulty information, most likely from someone who is supplying Paulinus with information.”

“Flat . . . bottomed . . . boats . . .”

“Yes. He didn’t want your people to be able to run into the woods, so he made sure they have horses to run you down. If your people are moving from the coast to Mona, they’ll be killed there.”

“But most are Druids.”

“Exactly. Paulinus isn’t out to destroy the Silures. He’s out to destroy the Druids because your people rely on them so much for leadership. Destroy you and your people will fall in line.”

“And our Chieftain has stranded them now upon that very isle.” Cate held her head in her hands. “This cannot be. In trying to preserve us, he has sent us to our doom.”

Jessie looked at Cate’s profile. She appeared so small and fragile that she made Jessie’s heart hurt. “The Silurian leaders had no idea how deep Paulinus’s campaign against you was. It is not your Chieftain’s fault.”

“Is there anything that can be done?”

“Other than keeping Maeve away from Mona?”

Cate sighed and fought back tears. “When I tell her what you have just told me, the Isle of Mona will be exactly where she will want to head. She will want to save as many of us as she can. It is how she is, and I would expect no less from her.”

“And Lachlan?”

“He goes where Maeve goes.”

“Where are you now?”

“Nearly two days’ ride from the coast.”

“Then you still have time to have the Chieftain stop sending Druids to Mona.”

“Jessie, it is possible that the Chieftain may not even believe my report.”

“Why not?”

“I am supposed to tell the greatest warrior of the Silurian people that there are sixty thousand soldiers preparing to run us all through, and that those sent to a sanctuary will be run down like wild boars by men on horses? He will be disgraced. Disgraced men do not often act in the best interest of their people.”

“Then forget him. You take Maeve and Lachlan to Mona if you must. If you’re going to save lives, it will only be from there. That’s what the historical information reports.”

Cate looked up at her for the first time. “What historical information?”

“Your people’s written history, what little there was of it, will be largely destroyed by the new religion called Christianity. The Catholics will do everything they can to eradicate your people’s philosophies from history.”

For a long time Cate said nothing, she just stared at Jessie. “I have so many questions, but I am afraid my heart would break in the knowing.”

Jessie sighed. “I apologize I don’t have more for you, but there isn’t much. Believe it or not, the first mention of Druids that we can find comes from Julius Caesar.”

Cate held up her hand signaling Jessie to stop. “Please. I can bear it not. I wish I would be able to hear it, but it is too hard to think that my people have nearly been forgotten, remembered only by a man who reviled us. It is as if all the work we have done has been for naught.”

“But that’s not true. The Druids who do survive Mona keep your religion alive. It is during a time now called the Dark Ages that Druids make a comeback and actually have kings consulting them.”

Cate’s dark expression brightened. “For truth?”

Jessie nodded; glad she could offer some, any positive news to Cate. “For truth. A guy named Merlin comes along, and there are great tales told about his powers and his love of a king called Arthur.”

“Then why are the times considered dark?”

“Well, I don’t know much about history, a fact I intend to rectify, but Christianity and religious fervor took over for rational thought and people stopped learning.”

“Stopped learning? How can that be so?”

“You’d be amazed. Like I said, I don’t really know much about history, or I could tell you more. I just know your people and the Druids make a big comeback.”

“It does my heart good to know that we are not entirely extinguished by the blood-thirsty Roman army.”

“The Roman Empire will extend quite a ways, Cate, and for hundreds of years longer. They do not get their comeuppance until the fifth century.”

Cate once again held up her hand. “No more. Maeve tells me that too much information from you will cloud my true vision—but—it is good to know they do not go unpunished.”

“Let’s just say they lost it all except for a country now known as Italy.”

“No!”

“Yep.”

“Oh—my.” Cate leaned forward and gazed into the fire. There was so much she wanted to know, so many things she wanted to ask, but there just wasn’t time, and she needed to heed Maeve’s words because—

“Because I would be disappointed in you if you did not.”

Both Cate and Jessie wheeled around toward the mist, where the third voice had come from. Out of the fog that swirled around her head walked a tall, auburn-haired woman wearing the same robe Cate most often wore.

Jessie immediately knew who it was. “Maeve.”

Maeve glided across the surface of Cate’s Dreamworld to where they now stood.

“You’ve come,” Cate whispered greeting Maeve. “It has been a very long time since you visited my dream self.”

Maeve lightly brushed Cate’s cheek before turning to Jessie and greeting her. “It would be rude of me not to come and thank the woman who helped save my life. Hello, Jessie.”

Jessie walked up to Maeve and, oddly enough, bowed. “It feels like I have known you forever.”

Maeve smiled and repeated her gesture on Jessie’s cheek. “You have.”

Cate agreed. “You just did not know it.”

Jessie looked up at Maeve, amazed at how tall she was, at how beautiful and regal she was. “How—”

“How is it that I am here in Catie’s Dreamworld?” Maeve smiled. “You need more information about the nature of the creatures we are. There are many other worlds one can visit if one knows how. Normally, I would never presume to come uninvited, as it is a very invasive act, but under the circumstances, I knew Catie wouldn’t mind.”

Cate shook her head. “I learned long ago, Maeve, that you come and go where and when you please.”

Maeve’s eyes softened as she looked at Cate. “Indeed.” To Jessie, Maeve said, “If, as I suspect, your world no longer honors the true soul of the earth, then the very fact that you listened to the warning regarding myself and Lachlan says a great deal about the power of the craft residing within you.”

“The craft? You mean . . . Druidry?”

Maeve nodded. “Even if the last Druid were destroyed, Druidry will exist forever because we are in the souls of the trees, of the animals, of the ground and the sky. While we may not roam the earth, the earth carries us within her. We may perish in this life, but the soul of a Druid goes on into others. It is a marvelous thing, really.”

“And I have powers?”

“Do you think it is a coincidence that you were the person chosen to unlock the secrets of the portal?”

Jessie shook her head. “I no longer believe in coincidences, Maeve. I know better.”

Maeve smiled as a teacher would at a student who finally fully understands the answer to a problem. “Yes, you do. Do you now understand why you could never embrace your family’s religion?”

Jessie’s eyebrows shot up. “How did you know?”

Maeve held up a hand to silence her. “There is a place in your heart that is closed off from their belief system for a reason. At the time, you believed that you were making a conscious choice, but it was so much more than that. Your spirit, that of you and Cate, and countless other individuals before and after her, has deep Celtic roots . . . Celtic and Druidic, for our people have existed far longer than the great historians have thought. Your spirit, Jessie, will never accept the idea of one God commanding all, because it knows better. You never made a conscious choice not to follow their path—your soul made it for you long before you were even born.”

So much of her own life was beginning to make sense to Jessie now. The Celtic crosses she always looked at, the Celtic violins and music she listened to when no one was looking; her new attention to nature, were all part of who she was, now and eternally.

“So, Cate’s spirit still strives to be heard even two thousand years away.”

Maeve nodded. “Catie is to become a very powerful Druid in her life, and not even death will be able to diminish her powers. You see, Jessie, it will fall upon Cate’s shoulders to keep our memory alive. I came to Britannia to teach her how to do that, and how to become one of the greatest priestesses of her time. Catie will be talked about long after her corporeal form has vanished.”

“That’s a heavy burden and a gift wrapped in one package.”

Maeve grinned slightly. “Is it?”

Staring at Cate, Jessie realized how intertwined their destinies were.

“Knowledge, Jessie, must always pre-empt action.” Maeve’s gray eyes were so mesmerizing, Jessie wondered if one could be hypnotized in a dream. “There is much for you to know . . . much more for you to learn in order to remember the vast amount of knowledge within you. But you must be patient, for some of those lessons will take years. You must be open to all sorts of people, all different kinds of ideas, no matter how foreign or unfamiliar to you, because you may never know if the people you meet are questers seeking knowledge you possess.”

Jessie nodded almost mechanically. “In California, I probably never would have given Madam Ceara a chance. I mean she—”

Maeve and Cate both looked so stricken, so pale, that Jessie stopped in mid-sentence. “What?”

“Who did you just say?” Maeve’s eyes changed from gray to a bright blue in such a flash, Jessie wasn’t sure she saw what she thought she saw. “What was that name? That name you just said.”

“Madam Ceara? She’s the woman who has been helping me understand all of this.” Jessie glanced over at Cate, whose mouth hung open and whose eyes were wide with surprise.

Maeve turned to Cate and they locked eyes, sharing words that need not be spoken. “Pray to the Goddess. Can it be? She—she made it.”

Cate murmured, “Unbelievable. We thought—”

“We obviously thought incorrectly. Something must have happened.”

Jessie rose and jammed her hands on her hips. “What are you two talking about? Who made what? What happened?”

Maeve rose and stood closer to the fire. For a moment, Jessie thought she might be praying. When at last Maeve turned, tears brimmed in her eyes. “Of all the news you have brought to us this day, Jessie, that news will stun Lachlan the most.”

“What news?”

Maeve looked down at Cate before turning her now gray eyes back to Jessie. “The news that his mother is alive and living in the twenty-first century.”

Jessie’s hand went up to her mouth as all of the innuendo, dropped sentences, and mysterious lines uttered by Ceara came at her all at once. Could it be? Could the woman she had trusted with her greatest secret truly have come from this age? “You don’t mean—”

Maeve nodded. “Your Madam Ceara is Lachlan’s mother.”

When she came out of the room, she had no idea how much time had passed, nor did she care. All she could think about was talking to Ceara.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Jessie asked the second she saw Ceara sitting on a small stepping stool outside the supply room. “How could you have kept something like that from me?”

Ceara rose and took Jessie by the arm. “It’s been hours. We must be off.”

“How could you not tell me?”

“We can talk about it at the beach house. A friend of mine is off visiting her mother and I am house-sitting. Let’s go there and talk. According to Tanner, your parents are still out of town, so you’re safe for the time being. Tanner will let us know when they’re on the way back.”

“Tanner again? Who’s he? Merlin?”

Ceara grinned softly. “Not quite, but I advise you never to underestimate him or his abilities.”

“Abilities?” Jessie groaned. “Do I want to hear this?”

“Hush yourself, my dear. Hurry along now.”

Jessie managed to keep quiet during the ride to the beach house owned by Ceara’s friend. It was a high-ceiling palatial estate overlooking the ocean. Jessie surveyed the home and marveled at how beautiful it was. The great room overlooked the coast and had a cathedral ceiling giving the room an open-air feel.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Actually, Ceara, I’d like some answers first.”

Ceara took off three of her colorful wraps and stood with her back to Jessie looking out the expansive window at the water crashing on the rocks below. It was quite a few beats before she spoke. “I wondered how long it would take her to figure it out.”

“She didn’t figure anything out. I mentioned your name, and she and Cate nearly fell over from surprise.”

“What did they say?”

“What else? That you are—were—are—Lachlan’s mother.” Jessie stared at her. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

Ceara imperceptibly nodded. “Aye. Lachlan is my son.”

Jessie blew out a loud breath. “How could you have gone all this time holding that kind of a secret? Didn’t you trust me at all?”

Ceara watched the waves and sighed. “It wasn’t about trusting you, my dear. You want a simple answer, and there isn’t one.”

“Sure there is. You were once a powerful Druid priestess who went through the portal and didn’t return. How’s that for a start?”

Ceara shook her head. “You call that simple?”

“But something happened, didn’t it? What happened, Ceara? What went wrong that trapped you here? You are trapped here, aren’t you?”

Ceara did not take her eyes off the ocean, and when it became clear to Jessie that she wasn’t going to answer, Jessie continued. “You were in the portal when something happened, and somehow you found yourself stranded in this time. Is that it?”

Ceara bowed her head. Suddenly, she looked very old and frail. “I wasn’t just trapped outside of my own time, my dear.” Ceara slowly turned to face Jessie. “I found myself trapped in the body of a crazy, drunken, homeless woman.”

Jessie slowly reached out and put her hand on Ceara’s shoulder. “And that’s why you were so adamant about not going with me.”

Ceara nodded. “There was no there to go to in sixty-one AD, unless I had already been reborn, and I could not take the chance that I hadn’t been yet.” Ceara’s voice was barely above a whisper. “I no longer lived. I do not know what happened the last time I entered the Forbidden Forest, but I ceased to exist there. My body did not make it. Instead—I was here, in an insane woman’s body, trapped in a time I could not fathom in a shell I could not stand.”

“But—you’re not a crazy, homeless person.”

Sighing loudly, Ceara shook her head. “Not anymore, but I was for a long time. Edith, that’s whose body I have been in all these years, was the town entertainer. She was not entirely crazy, but insane enough to be unemployable. She lived on the streets, ate out of dumpsters, and found herself beaten and raped enough for two dozen lifetimes.”

Jessie’s hands rose impulsively to her mouth. “Oh. How awful.”

“Her existence was joyless, her life void of meaning.”

“What changed that? What happened?”

“I happened. I did what a Druid priestess should never ever do. I possessed her body.”

Jessie swallowed hard. “Possessed? I didn’t know that was really possible.”

“You didn’t think time slipping was possible, either.”

“True.”

“It was so easy, Jessie, so very easy. She fought me not at all, preferring a quieter, more peaceful and far less painful existence deep in our soul.”

“She went away willingly?”

Ceara nodded. “Yes, I played the role of Goddess that day, and sent her deep within the bosom of our being so that I could take her body over and live out my life here in sober peace.”

“It didn’t frighten you?”

Ceara shook her head. “Not at all. I was just another voice she kept hearing, and, in the end, she nearly begged me to stop her pain. She was considering drinking herself to death, and, quite frankly, I had just died in one world, I wasn’t ready to do so again so soon after.”

Jessie inhaled a deep breath. “So, you took over her body and have been forced to live it all in this time.”

“Yes. I wish to apologize. I have been wanting to tell you, but so much has happened and we’ve been working so hard to free you, to free Maeve, to keep everyone alive so we can do what needs to be done, that my own issues seem so insignificant. You have no idea how incredibly happy you made me the day you told me Lachlan lived. I have done nothing but sit and wonder daily at his fate since the day I became trapped.”

“Why wouldn’t Lachlan have been alive? Wasn’t he just a little boy when you left?”

Ceara nodded. “I had no idea how much time had gone by. Lachlan could have been just six, or he could have been sixty when you returned.”

“Right. You didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“Precisely.”

“He’s a very handsome man.”

“So was his father.” Ceara let out another deep breath. “Leaving that world and coming to this one was so hard. I was so lonely for such a very long time, and there was much I did not know or understand. Even accessing Edith’s memories was difficult because she was nearly pickled when I was first trapped. Eventually, when she sobered up, I made the decision to live, and accessed as many of her memories as I could. Eventually, I learned how to live in this time, acting as if I belonged here and understand your ways, but it wasn’t easy. It has never been easy.”

Jessie patted her shoulder. “I can’t even imagine.”

“I’m afraid no one can. Still, time slipping was a choice I made. It was not foisted upon me. We all must learn to live with the consequences of our decisions even if that means two thousand years into the future.”

“What did you do after you took over?”

“Sobered up, which, I must say, was one of the ugliest experiences I’ve ever had. Nauseating, really. Then I went out and got a job. It became apparent early on that money had replaced religious values in this time, so I worked as a maid during the week and a tarot reader on the weekends. The maid job enabled me to get off the street, and the tarot reading allowed me to keep my Druid skills in order.”

“Do you still have your powers?”

Ceara finally looked away from the ocean at Jessie. “You mean my sorcery? My witchcraft? My pagan ways? Yes. But I learned long ago that while this society no longer burns, tortures, or drowns heretics, they have found other ways to ostracize and condemn those who are different from the norm.”

“So, you only use them to do your readings.”

Ceara nodded. “This is not a society that casts a favorable eye on the craft.”

“How did you go from maid to entrepreneur?”

“When I realized that money is the true God here, I had two wealthy women as clients who became much wealthier when I told them it would be in their best interest to divorce their philandering husbands. Two divorces later, they rewarded me by buying me my shop outright with some of the money from their lucrative divorce settlements. Then, I gave them a bit of stock information, which netted both of them nearly a million dollars apiece. They bought the boat as a write-off and gave it to me as a thank you. Once on my feet, I stopped abusing my gifts, but until then, I needed to use everything at my disposal to clean up poor Edith’s life.”

“Yeah, sounds like she had pretty much dug herself a hole.” She could well understand—she’d nearly dug a similar hole herself.

“Not her. This wretched society. Her doctors had overprescribed medication that was addictive. Her life soon became one drug after another until she had no money, no means for support and no place to run to. She eventually turned to alcohol to ease her troubles, and by that time, her life was lost. It was so sad, really. She never had a chance.”

“Until you.”

“Don’t confuse the two, Jessie. I am still in her body, which, thank the Goddess, she relinquished without a fight.”

“But still, you never told me. If you didn’t want me to tell Lachlan, I wouldn’t have.”

“I did not want him knowing, Jessie because I was sure the boy would have come through the portal to see for himself. We were quite close when he was a lad.”

“Why can’t he? What would be wrong with that?”

“As strong as Lachlan believes he is, he is not a quester. I was a far stronger Druid than he will ever be, yet the portal closed on me, leaving my body defenseless. It was then I knew one simply did not step across time because the portal existed. The portal can only be entered by someone incredibly powerful and invited. I came unbidden, and was stranded here. You—well, my dear, the truth is, you were beckoned and you answered the call. You have the strength to do that which Lachlan can only dream of.”

Jessie stared deep into Ceara’s blue eyes. They were blue much like Lachlan’s, but then, how could that be? This was not the body that bore him. How weird to think that Edith was in there somewhere, listening, watching Ceara control their destiny.

Destiny.

Is this what destiny truly was? To be called upon and to answer? To heed the sound of an inner voice that said, Come, do this thing and reach your highest potential. Was it her destiny now to go through time helping others?

“I have waited what feels like eternity for one such as you. I knew the second I saw you, but I needed you to remember. I could not force you, nor could I supply you with all of the answers. I needed to see that you were strong—that you were chosen. So many individuals came and went at the inn, that I began to doubt if it would happen in my lifetime.”

“And then I bumbled along.”

Ceara grinned. “You did not bumble into anything. You and your parents were called. If you truly look back on all of the steps that led your family here, you’d see for yourself that this path, this journey you are now on started long before you came to Oregon.” Ceara headed for the kitchen. “All this chatter has parched me. I think I’ll make us some tea. Come.”

As Jessie followed, she thought back to the events that brought her family here from San Francisco. Hadn’t her father received a brochure or letter or something alluding to having his own business in Oregon for a quarter of the cost of having one in California? At first, her parents discussed that they’d do it once Daniel was grown, but suddenly, her parents were e-mailing someone about the inn, and the next thing they knew, they were in Oregon.

But hadn’t they kept saying they were coming here for a fresh start? They’d always made it sound as if they had done it for her and Daniel, but she couldn’t help but wonder if her father hadn’t known on a subconscious level the real reason behind their journey.

“But why didn’t you tell me? I mean, after all this got started, I would have understood.”

“You were already so overloaded with information.” The kettle whistled and Ceara dropped two tea bags into the mugs. “There were more important things to worry about. You had the fate of an entire civilization on your shoulders. I couldn’t add to that. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t, especially once I realized that one of those lives was my son’s.”

Jessie stared through the kitchen window at the cliffs below. “That secret must have eaten you up inside, Ceara.”

“It could have, but when there’s a greater good, we must follow our conscience and do the right thing. There never was a right time to tell you, so I took that as the Goddess’s way of telling me to keep my mouth shut.”

Looking back at her, Jessie nodded. “I can’t believe you got stuck in this century. How horrible.”

“You have no idea. This is a sad, sad time. A time that will make the Dark Ages appear happier and brighter. They had the plague, you have AIDS, cancer and even consumption has not been eradicated.”

“Consumption?”

“Tuberculosis. The Dark Ages were filled with religious zealots who wanted to take care of your soul, this age has religious zealots who want to take your money from you. In the Dark Ages, heretics burned; here, anyone who is not a true believer is going to burn in Hell. My dear, a thousand years from now, this age will be called something far worse than what the present historians might call the Age of Technology. Historians a thousand years from now will see this age as the spiritual and moral wasteland it is and name it accordingly.”

“It must have been really hard at first.”

“Very, very hard. But remember: I chose to come here.”

“Why here and now?”

Pouring the hot water over the tea bags, Ceara continued. “The portal was nothing we used frivolously, mind you, and few of us even knew it existed. But in fifty-two AD, the Romans came after the Silures as a people, and defeated us. I came here in fifty AD hoping to find a way to keep them from destroying our people entirely. I never made it back in time to help. In the end, we were forced to surrender and had to allow the Roman militia to occupy our home, bed our women and change our culture.”

“What prevented you from returning?”

Ceara shook her head. “I don’t know what truly happened, only that I dreamt one night of a Roman soldier, afraid for his life, and scared of the near lifeless Druid before him. He struck my body down with one slash of his blade. I awoke, in a sweat, crying, sobbing actually, because I knew I could never return.”

“Did you try?”

Ceara handed Jessie a steaming mug. “What do you suppose would happen to a soul who steps through the portal and there is no host to receive it?”

Jessie shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Neither do I, but it can’t be good.”

“So you never tried.”

“And I never will. I know that I no longer exist in sixty-one AD, and I have no desire to return to a decaying corpse.”

“So you came to save the Silures, but Rome did not destroy them.”

“There were many more questers than just I, just as there are more portals to more times. Still, in fifty-seven AD Emperor Nero passed a law prohibiting the practice of our craft. Many of us were persecuted in an attempt to frighten the people away from the belief. I was chosen by our priest to come through because I was a very powerful and wise priestess, and the best choice at the time.”

“But you left only nine years ago.”

Ceara grinned softly. “Time is not linear, remember? When you’re in the portal ten minutes, it’s quite possible that ten years could go by.”

Jessie remembered the second time she came out of the portal, and a wall she thought Daniel had already painted hadn’t been as yet. She’d figured she’d made a mistake. Now she knew the truth.

Ceara walked over to the couch near the large plate-glass window and sat down. “It was almost good enough knowing that he lived to manhood.”

Jessie joined Ceara on the couch and balanced her mug on her thigh. “I wish I had more to tell you about him, but he remains pretty much a mystery to Cate.”

Ceara nodded, sipping her tea. “That was always his way. I’m not surprised. Even as a little boy, he was always within himself. How did your conversation with them end?”

“You mean in the Dreamworld?”

Ceara nodded and patted Jessie’s thigh. “You’re going to make a splendid Druid.”

Leaning back with her tea in her hand, Jessie grinned and finished the story.

• • •

“She’s what?” Jessie felt like someone had kicked her in the stomach. “She’s Lachlan’s mother?”

Cate stared at Maeve, who did not take those haunting eyes off Jessie.

“Apparently she has not told you. What do you know of this Ceara woman, Jessie?”

Jessie told Maeve everything she knew about Ceara; from the first moment they met to her refusal to enter the portal. When she was done, Maeve finally looked away, leaving Jessie feeling slightly dizzy.

“It is she,” Maeve whispered, sitting on one of the rocks. The bonfire leapt and crackled. “No wonder you have had such an easier time of it, Catie. You two have the help of a woman who was once one of the greatest healers on the island. People came from as far as Gaul to be healed by Ceara.”

“She’s a healer?”

Maeve nodded and motioned for Cate and Jessie to sit. “Not just a healer, but a very powerful priestess who loved those in her village so much, she would let none other than herself pass through the portal. Lachlan, I’ve heard, howled for days after her death, and all of Fennel mourned her loss and saw it as an ill omen that they ought to leave the portal be.”

“Will you tell him?” Cate asked, reaching for Maeve’s hand.

Maeve stared into the fire and sighed. “I do not know that it is my business to tell him. Perhaps, Jessie, when the great battle is over and life begins anew, you can return one last time and let Catie know what Ceara would like done. It is, after all, her decision.”

Jessie’s eyebrows knitted together. “One more time? You make it sound as if this is the last time I’ll see you.”

Maeve glanced over at Cate before replying. “Slipping through the thin fabric of time, as Ceara has shown, is truly very dangerous. We were not meant to leave our realm in search of a better future or more interesting past. The portal is a tool—and as with all tools, it could also be used as a weapon to be used against tyrants, against injustices, against those who would persecute and deny a people the right to exist. When the war is over, Catie must go on with her studies. She will live out her life in this realm, for better or worse, until her last breath sends her elsewhere. She has a life to live and that does not include risking it traveling to other ages.” Maeve paused and turned back to Jessie. “And you, you have a life to live in your time. There is so much for you to learn, for you to do, for you to be. You cannot, you will not spend it going in and out of time, risking what Ceara risked, taking your present life for granted. You must swear that when this is done, you will return to your life and forget the portal exists unless called again.”

“Forget? How can I forget something as huge as this?”

Maeve smiled softly and took Jessie’s hand so the three of them created a circle. “Perhaps forget is the wrong term. Ignore would be better. Jessie, you have done so well, but you must live. You must return to a life and learn the lessons Ceara can teach you. Do you understand?”

Jessie felt her eyes well up with tears. They were her friends and yet—she had to let them go? Never to see them again? It didn’t seem fair.

“Have you made plans for getting off the island?”

Maeve nodded. “Even as we speak, we are moving boats to the east side of the isle as you suggested. We may not save everyone, but with your help, we will save many more than without it.”

“I just wish I could know how it all turns out.”

“You have the ability to access Cate’s memories, as well as all of those who have come after. If you learn how to hear those voices, there is nothing you won’t be able to do or know. You have Ceara. What you will not have is a good life in your time if you are not present in it. I am asking you to be present in your own life and let Cate be present in hers.”

“I—understand, but—”

“Your life will forever be changed by this experience with us, as will ours, but you must be wise now beyond your years and stay in your time.”

Jessie had no idea what to say. Was this how her destiny began or how it ended? Was her purpose over so soon?

“No, Jessie, your purpose has only just begun, but it is not to linger in the Dreamworld with Cate. Your destiny, the path you are on, is just the beginning of your life. Your mind is now open, your body young, and your spirit forever changed. Do not be sad at this passing. Instead, rejoice that we have shared and that you now know Catie is within you.”

“But how will I ever know if you survived Mona?”

“You may never know. Perhaps it is better that way. You carry within your breast the heart of a warrior, the spirit of a Druid and the mind of a bard. Call on them when you need them. For if you reach down deep enough, you will touch Catie’s light and she will always show you the way.” Reaching up, Maeve touched Jessie’s cheek with her palm. It was hot; Jessie felt the heat all over her. “And remember, no matter where you go, you will find me, or I, as I did in our time, will find you.”

“You mean—”

Maeve grinned and nodded. “I am out there, Jessie. We just have not met yet.” With that, Maeve touched her shoulder before standing at the edge of the mist. “We will meet again, Jessie Ferguson. This, I promise you.” Turning, Maeve disappeared into the mist. For a long time, both women stared at the misty opening as it slowly closed around her.

“Will I know?” Jessie asked softly.

Cate nodded. “I did. The moment I saw her, something happened within me. I knew.”

“Immediately?”

Cate shook her head. “In a heartbeat or two, but you’ll know. We’ll know. I’ll help you know.”

Sighing, Jessie walked over to Cate and hugged her tightly. “You’ve become a good friend to me. I’m not very good at goodbyes and I wish this wasn’t one.”

“You have done a great thing, Jessie. Tomorrow, we will head to Mona to see how many lives we can save. I will do my best to make you proud.”

Jessie nodded. “And Maeve? Will you be able to save her?”

“I shall or I will die trying.”

As Jessie stepped away, she could barely believe the hollow emptiness inside; the pain of a goodbye far more excruciating than when she left San Francisco. “Then I guess I have to just walk away believing the two of you die a very old age. It’s the only way I can leave and live my life without wondering every day if you made it—if you’re safe and happy.”

Cate nodded, but then her face changed, like one who just got a great idea. “Do you know where Mona is in your time?”

Jessie nodded. “It’s called Anglesey now.”

“Close your eyes.”

Jessie did and immediately saw a stone structure much like Stonehenge.

“See it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see a very large, white rock about the size of two horses off to the side of the henge beneath a large oak tree?”

Jessie nodded.

“Open your eyes.”

When she did, Cate was removing the ankh from around her neck. “If we live through this, both of us, then I will bury this ankh an arm’s length beneath that rock on the western side. I do not know if it will be there two thousand years from now, but if it is, then you will know.”

Jessie realized, for the first time, that Cate had made the assumption that Jessie was in England or Wales, and it was no wonder. In Cate’s time, there was no America. Columbus and the New World were a good fourteen hundred years away.

“I’ll find it.”

“Thank you, Jessie, for answering my call. I promise I will live my life befitting one who has shown such courage. You are a wonderful person, and I am proud to know that you are who I become so far into the future.”

“I’ll miss you, Cate.” Jessie shook her head and wiped her eyes. “More than you will ever know. You, my little priestess friend, are the very best of me.” With that, Jessie found herself back in the inn.

• • •

“Oh, my dear,” Ceara said, patting Jessie’s thigh. “That must have been very difficult for you.”

“Like someone had ripped my heart out and squashed it into the ground.” Jessie turned to fully face her friend. “But you know how that feels, don’t you?”

Ceara nodded. “And then some.”

For a long, silent passing, as the sun set, and dusk sprinkled new colors on the horizon, Jessie and Ceara sat sipping their tea, both feeling a unique sense of loss that happens when you’re beyond the point of no return.

“Do you think the ankh could still be there after all these years?”

Ceara’s face lit up. “I have a great picture book of Wales. Why don’t I go get it and we can see if the stones still stand?”

Jessie’s exuberance matched Ceara’s. “Would you? God, if I could know that they made it, it wouldn’t hurt so much having to say goodbye. I can’t stand the thought of not knowing, of wondering if I made a difference at all.”

“Of course you made a difference. You mustn’t ever believe otherwise.”

Jessie sighed loudly. “I guess it’s done then. I mean, there’s nothing else we can do, right?”

Ceara patted Jessie’s shoulder. “What will you do now?”

“Go home and face the music, I guess.”

“Do you think they’ll keep distrusting you?”

Jessie shrugged. “You know what they say about actions speaking louder than words? Well, I’m going to show them how much I’ve changed by going to the university and doing everything I’m supposed to do.”

“That’s a great idea. Your parents truly do only want what’s best for you.”

Jessie sipped her tea. “I do know that. The truth is, I have been sneaking around. They’re suspicious for a reason and I can’t really blame them for being paranoid.”

“Good for you. Accountability is going to be important in your life. You’ll be asked to do a lot more than what you did this time.”

“What do you mean? I thought this was it for me.”

Ceara grinned. “You are a quester, Jessie Ferguson. That means others are likely to call on you in similar situations. You may never see Cate or Maeve again, but that doesn’t mean your days of serving are over.”

Jessie perked right up. “Really? You mean this isn’t the end?”

Chuckling, Ceara patted her shoulder. “My dear, this is just the beginning.”

Getting to the Isle of Mona took less time than they thought because the Chieftain had given them his swifter horses, and because Druid magic was, after all, magic. Once they were back in Fennel, they collected all the remaining Druids and headed desperately for the coast.

“He ought to have followed us,” Lachlan argued. He had done everything but beg the Chieftain to turn his troops toward the coast, but the Chieftain had other plans. He did not wish to fight on the water, choosing, instead, to come at the Romans from behind.

“I do not think he believed the whole notion of flat-bottom boats,” Cate said.

Maeve nodded. “Just the thought of a boat having a flat bottom was too foreign to him, but he is surely not to blame. It is as strange to him as the idea of man in flight.”

“In all the years, we have never led him astray. He should have believed us. He should have faith.” Lachlan shook his head angrily and pounded his fist into his palm.

“It is his job to do what he thinks best for our people, Lachlan. You must respect his position.”

“That he would let us go to Mona to fend for ourselves while he does what? Wait to battle? The battle is to be on Mona! He believed us not, or he would be acting along with us. Does he truly believe we can push the Romans out of Britannia? According to Cate, we are to suffer huge losses, and yet, he does not follow? The Chieftain is a dolt.”

“Lachlan!”

“Spare me your platitudes, Maeve. The man is short-sighted and he’s led us straight into a trap.”

“He may be short-sighted, but we are not. If anyone can save those sent to Mona, it is we. Stop your fretting. It does us no good.”

They rode a few more hours before finally reaching the coast. Lachlan went to the small fishing villages of Ness to see about arranging a boat to the Isle of Mona. No longer wearing his Druidic robe, he had difficulty convincing the fishermen he was who he said he was. The people were justifiably suspicious of everyone claiming to be a Druid since the practice had been outlawed four years ago.

When he returned, he told Cate and Maeve they could cross in the morning, and would be able to leave their horses in the stables overnight.

“Have they seen any boats at all?” Maeve asked.

Lachlan shook his head. “Nothing. I did ask him about flat-bottom boats and he laughed outright. Apparently, he does not believe they would float.” Lachlan cut his eyes to Cate, as if beginning to doubt the possibility of flat-bottom boats.

“Our job, Lachlan,” Maeve lectured, “is not to doubt the information we have received, but to put it into action. If Catie says the Romans are going to walk across the water with camels on their backs, then our job would be to stop them before they got there.”

Lachlan sighed. “I apologize, Maeve. Twelve hours in the saddle has made me somewhat irritable.”

“We shall bed here tonight under the stars and leave for Mona at first light. Maybe then your intolerance will diffuse a bit.”

It didn’t take Cate longer than four deep breaths before she fell fast asleep. She dreamt of many things—of deer running through the forest mist, of digging beneath a large round rock, of an eagle soaring, and something—something that ripped her from her sleep.

As she stood looking into the hills, at the eagle, at the deer, at the thing coming directly at her, Cate’s breath caught in her throat. A large red and gray chariot pulled by two broad-chested mares rode out of the sunset at such a speed it was all too quickly upon her. Driving the chariot with the reins in one hand and a spear in the other was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with long flaming locks trailing behind her. She held the spear high above her head and let out a huge war cry before slowing down long enough to stare into Cate’s face. The woman grinned conspiratorially, slapped the reins against the horses, and took off—but not before looking over her shoulder at Cate and yelling one word that reverberated through the air.

“Boudicca!”

Jessie slept better than she had in many nights. The large four-poster bed engulfed her like the feather comforter lying at the end of the bed. When she finally woke from a dreamless sleep, it was twelve hours later.

Slowly rolling out of the big bed, Jessie started downstairs and was met by the delicious aroma of bacon frying and coffee dripping. “Ceara?”

When there was no answer, Jessie poked her head into the kitchen and was surprised to find Tanner standing at the stove. Jessie immediately tried to straighten up her hair, but she knew it was to no avail. She had bed head and there was no turning back.

“Hey,” Tanner said, flipping the bacon over. It was the first time she’d seen him without his black leather jacket and she was somewhat surprised by how fit he was.

“Hey yourself. How’d you get in here?”

“Ceara called me this morning and asked if I’d make you breakfast. She was worried you weren’t eating.”

Jessie looked over at the stove. There were scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and coffee, all of which smelled divine. “Coffee would be great.”

Tanner poured the coffee into one of the whale mugs and handed it to her.

“Where did you learn how to cook?”

Tanner poured himself a cup. “I was a short-order cook at Denny’s on Main Street for a summer. It sucked, but I learned a thing or two.”

Jessie wrapped her hands around the mug and watched Tanner finish cooking. “Are you always so nice?”

Tanner laughed. “Hardly. I just know what it’s like to be in distress—to feel so out of whack you don’t know which way is up. A little kindness is often enough to get your balance.”

“Well, I appreciate it. I’m afraid I owe you big time.”

“Nah. Call it celestial payback. Ceara helped me when I was at my lowest point. She came out of nowhere, yanked me to my feet, dusted my ass off and helped me get my act together. She believed in me, and sometimes, that’s all any of us need to get back on track.”

“What was wrong? I mean . . . was it drugs?”

Tanner turned the gas off and dished up two plates of food. “It was everything. The drugs were just a symptom.” Taking both plates into the dining room, Tanner set them both on the table that already had fresh flowers in a glass vase and table settings for two.

“Did you bring the flowers, too?”

Tanner nodded. “Madame loves fresh flowers. She believes they still have a certain energy that changes the ambiance of every room.”

Jessie yawned and stretched. “I never would have guessed you and Ceara were so close.”

Tanner sat down opposite her and took a bite of bacon. “No one would. She knew I’d have no friends if people thought I hung out with the town looney, so it’s not like we broadcast it.” Tanner held his hand up. “And before you get all self-righteous on me, it was her plan, not mine.”

Jessie tasted a forkful and nodded. “It’s good.”

“Thanks.”

“But if it wasn’t the drugs, what was it that took you to such a dark place?”

Tanner moved his hash browns around his plate before looking up and exhaling loudly. “Madame says you can be trusted. With anything.”

“I can.”

“She assured me you would never betray my trust.”

Jessie set her fork down. This was something very important he wanted her to know. “On my word of honor, Tanner, whatever you tell me stays with me.”

He grinned sheepishly. “It first started when I was about six. I thought it was fun to pick up on people’s feelings, to know their state of mind or emotional state before they even spoke it. But as I got older, I could not control it, and the emotions I was receiving became overwhelming, nearly driving me insane. What was fun at the beginning quickly became a curse.”

“What is it?”

Inhaling deeply, Tanner looked out to the ocean for a moment before turning his eyes to Jessie’s. “I am an empath.”

“A what?”

“An empath. It is the emotional equivalent of a mind reader, only I get vibrations from people and these vibrations translate in my mind as emotional energy.”

“You mean, you can tell how people feel?”

Tanner nodded. “Yes.”

“Wow.”

“But the problem was, the older I got, the less control I had. I was going crazy hearing everyone’s vibrations. The only thing that blocked them out was dope. So, at the age of ten, I was smoking dope as a means of escaping the power I’d been born with.”

Jessie leaned back, speechless.

Tanner shrugged. “I know. It’s sorta hard to believe, but you know how it is. Any supernatural or preternatural abilities are either magic tricks or outright frauds. We may not kill people with extra senses, or burn them as witches, but we do everything we can to break their spirit.”

Jessie could only stare at him. She thought she was different. “So, you smoked dope to escape these vibrations.”

Tanner nodded and finished his bacon. “When I was fourteen, I ran, literally ran into Madam. I’d just stolen a watch from the store to sell so I could buy more dope, and I ran right into her. Knocked her down. She grabbed me and gazed right in my eyes with a look I swear to God, went right through me. And all she said was, “I can help you. You don’t need to do this anymore. When you are ready to understand what it is that is happening to you, come see me.”

“And you did.”

“Well, it was a week when I couldn’t get any dope and emotions were, like, overloading my circuits. She took me in and taught me how to build psychic walls to keep the vibrations out unless I chose to hear them.”

“She taught you how to use your senses?”

“Yeah. That’s when my whole world opened up. She taught me that we’re all mammals, you know? And mammals in the animal kingdom rely on senses we call instincts, the deer that suddenly raises its head because it feels a hunter nearby. A male animal of nearly any species knows when it’s the right time to mate. Jessie, we’re just mammals who wear clothes and who pay bills. We claim to be the smartest animals on the planet, but we choose to ignore the other senses that would truly enhance our lives.”

Jessie remembered her conversation with Ceara about women’s intuition. So much of what she and Tanner said made perfect sense.

“We can’t escape the scientific fact that we are mammals, but we do everything in our power to deny ourselves the unproven scientific issue of natural instinct.”

“What do you mean, unproven?”

“No one can prove instincts in animals. We call it that, but we could just as easily call it extrasensory perception. Whatever we call it, it’s just science guessing at the strange and wonderful phenomena animals use to communicate with each other. Look at all the work we do trying to understand dolphin-speak. It bothers us that we don’t know how they talk to each other. We’re wasting all this time and money studying their clicks and whistles, when they probably communicate via telepathy of some sort.”

“Are there many like you?”

Tanner shrugged. “I don’t really know. Madame says there are plenty of psychics who are really clairvoyant. The problem is, there are three times as many phonies who just want to make a buck, thereby invalidating those who truly have the sight.”

The sight. Jessie shuddered at the term, hearing Maeve’s voice in her head. “Are you?”

“Clairvoyant? Hell no. I’m just an empath.” Tanner chuckled. “Anything more than that, and I’d have to slit my wrists.” He finished his breakfast and set his fork down. “Speaking of which, you better call your folks.”

Jessie groaned. “They’re at the inn, aren’t they?”

Tanner shook his head. “Actually, no. They never came back or I would have woken you up. They must have decided to go after your little brother after all.”

Jessie lightly touched his wrist. “Thank you. You’re a really good friend, Tanner, and your secret is safe with me.”

Tanner grinned. “Good. And your secret, Jessie, is still a secret. Whatever it is.”

Nodding, Jessie stared out at the waves below. Her secret: a life she’d never lived but was drawn to; a love she’d never experienced but deeply felt, and a crisis she’d known nothing of but had the power to change her world, those were her secrets.

Those secrets gnawed at her now, after seeing Ceara’s beautiful photo books of Wales, of Mona, and of the large monoliths Cate had placed into Jessie’s head that were, as of the publication of the book, still standing.

Still standing . . . after all these years.

The questions were, had Cate, Maeve and Lachlan lived through the disaster at Mona? If they did, where did they go after that? Would Cate have made it to the huge gray monolith standing watch over the hallowed grounds in Wales? If so, was it possible that she would ever make it to Wales to find out?

She could only wonder.

There were thousands of Druids on the Isle of Mona; so many, Cate could not believe it. There were others as well, but the vast majority were Silures and Druids, with a few dozen Iceni Druids tossed in for good measure. A handful of island warriors were scattered here and there, but most of them were awaiting word from the Chieftain.

When Cate’s boat landed on the east side of the islands, dozens of Druids were there to greet them. “They look glad to see us,” Cate said, pulling the three boats they had towed up to the shore.

“We bring news, and any news is better than guessing,” Lachlan said, surveying the crowd and helping her with the thick ropes attached to the empty boats. “But where are the other boats? How can we get them off without boats?”

“Perhaps they are on the other side,” Maeve offered, feeling the first pangs of worry.

As they disembarked, an old man carrying an oaken staff approached them. “Greetings my brethren and sisters. I am Doald, high priest of the Druids of the Isle. Have you come bearing news or are you, too, seeking sanctuary on this, our beautiful homeland?”

Sanctuary, Cate thought, shaking her head. They were in the direct line of the Roman attack, yet believed themselves to be safely ensconced on the island. “This island is—”

“Greeting, Doald,” Maeve interrupted. “Is there a private place where we might talk?”

When Doald saw Maeve’s gray eyes, he nearly fell prostrate upon the ground. “You are she, from Gaul. I—I had no idea it was you. It is most certainly a great pleasure to have you here on our island. The others will fill with joy and hope upon seeing that you have come. My humble abode is just across the river. Come.”

They followed Doald for a bit until they came to a small village nestled next to the river at the opening of a great oak forest. Maeve understood why the Chieftain thought this a safe place to be; the woods offered protection while the river enabled quick escape to the ocean. It had its merits, if the Roman Army did, in fact, come by boat. While Maeve was informing Doald of the Roman battle plan, she was also considering the possibility that Eire would be the safest place to send these Druids, since Jessie had mentioned that the Romans had never been able to attack that island. But, would they be welcome, and for how long? Maeve sighed. They would send many to Alba, where clans were still strong and the Romans had yet to conquer them at all.

If only there was time.

There was not. Paulinus’s fleets could be seen making their way along the coast. Dozens and dozens of flat-bottomed boats swimming ever closer to Mona. Following Doald’s instructions, the Druids did not panic. Instead, they followed Maeve, Lachlan and Doald to the other side of the island in order to send as many as they could to Eire and Alba. There were not many boats, not nearly enough to save even a fraction of the people who either lived here or had come here for sanctuary, but they did their best. Maeve requested a boat or two be left behind should anyone survive the attack and need to get off quickly.

Those left behind to fight—men, women and children—collected spears, swords, daggers and even rocks and lined the shores with these weapons to use in defense. Others built fires all around the island, doing rituals, praying, preparing traps, and making means to attack the Romans from the spiritual realm.

They spent the entire day and into the evening readying the island. Every now and then, someone would climb down from the highest cliff to announce the closeness of the Roman fleet. As darkness finally fell over the island, the Druids and their loved ones gathered around the big bonfires sharing tales, myths, legends and prayers. This was not a morose sharing, for these people believed they would be together again. Doald, himself, shared a tale or two, even eliciting laughter from those who shared his bonfire. It was a remarkable end for a remarkable people who knew in their hearts their time in this life would soon be over. Proud, merry and brave, even as the specter of death hovered over them, they stayed together deep into the night, relishing every precious moment.

Except for Cate.

She felt saddened that for all her powers and her travels through the portal, she hadn’t been able to do more. These people were a special breed, misunderstood and even feared by the mightiest beings on the planet, who sought to destroy those it did not understand. If a people did not speak that ugly Latin tongue, then they were an enemy of the arrogant Roman Senate, who, all too often, turned its sword upon its own. What kind of people were these Romans who could so easily take the lives of some of its greatest heroes?

Who were they that they could come so close to destroying the beautiful people gathered around these fires?

Closing her eyes, Cate leaned against a tree far from the light of the bonfire, and rested. She just needed a little nap—a moment’s respite.

It was a sleep that would change history.

After Tanner left, Jessie spent the rest of the morning flipping through the numerous books Ceara had left for her. She had known nothing about the British Isles; she hadn’t even known that Ireland was an island. God, how had she managed to pass any grade in school with such limited knowledge? How could she not know how beautifully green England was? If it weren’t for Princess Diana, she’d know nothing about England or its people. It was a wondrous place filled with monoliths, burial grounds and myths that blurred folklore and reality.

The more she looked at it, the more familiar it became, and though she had studied hundreds of pictures, she kept coming back to the big white stone where Cate was to have left the ankh.

“Someday, Cate,” Jessie whispered, tracing the rock with her finger, “I’ll go there. I’ll not rest again until I know for sure.”

She opened one of the newer history books and idly leafed through it until she came across a picture that made her blood run cold. It was a painting of a woman in a chariot with a lion’s mane flowing behind her as she urged her steeds onward into battle. One look at the caption, and Jessie knew. It was the woman from her dream.

It was Boudicca.

“Who in the hell are you?” Jessie whispered, leaning over to turn on the lamp. “Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni.” She knew the Iceni. They were the group that lived to the east of the Silures.

Reading on, Jessie felt her muscles begin to tighten and her stomach fold in on itself.

Boudicca became Queen of the Iceni after her husband, Prasutagus, was murdered and her two daughters raped by soldiers of the Roman Army. She raised an army of close to 100,000 and, upon the advice of her administrators, attacked the Roman Army as it was in the midst of its final and complete destruction of the Druids and Silurians.

Jessie stared at the word advice. Someone had told Boudicca when to attack, causing Suetonius Paulinus to withdraw from Mona and Wales before he could complete what he had come there for. That was why she’d seen Boudicca in her dream. It was the Queen’s intervention that saved the Silurians, not just knowing that the Isle of Mona was going to be attacked.

“Shit.” Jessie spat, running for the phone and calling Ceara’s shop. “Ceara?”

“Jess? Are you all right?”

“I have to go back.”

“Oh, my dear, I thought Maeve had made it clear—”

“They still don’t have all the information they need. I’ve had—I don’t know what you’d call it, but I think I’ve had a vision of some sort.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Can you meet me at the Pit in ten minutes?”

“Let me close up shop and I’m on my way.”

When Jessie got to the top of Morning Glory, Ceara was already waiting for her behind one of the tall cedars.

“What is going on, my dear?”

“Boudicca.”

Ceara’s face fell. “Oh—my.”

Jessie nodded. “I think she’s the one who ultimately saves the remaining Druids and Silurians by entering the fray early and forcing Paulinus to turn his troops away from Wales and toward the Iceni. I read about it in one of your books. The book said someone advised her to attack sooner than she’d wanted to.”

Ceara nodded slowly. “You believe you might be the one who advises her?”

Jessie nodded. “She changed her plans at the last minute.”

Ceara’s eyes narrowed as they walked toward the house. “What do you have in mind?”

“What if Boudicca isn’t advised to start her attack early? The reports say she was advised. If Boudicca isn’t warned, if I do nothing, is it possible that everyone on Mona could be killed?”

Ceara sighed. “If there is no event in history, there can be no memory of it.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you do what is not recorded by anyone, if no one sees it or hears of it, if it just happens, there will be an effect that no one will truly know why it occurred.”

“Like why she attacked early. All it says is advised.”

“You keep forgetting that you are not merely changing history, but you are becoming a part of it. She will attack early because you advise her to do so. Is that what you’re asking?”

Jessie nodded. “Yes, I am. And if the history books can’t say why or who advised her . . .”

“It is because they do not know.”

Jessie grinned. “I get it now. It’s like that Buddhist line If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to see it, does it make a sound?”

Ceara nodded. “Precisely. If you are going in to advise Boudicca, I suggest we get going before your parents return.” She started for the house. “Just keep in mind you might not be welcome, nor might you be in time.”

“I still have to try.”

Ceara reached out and touched Jessie’s shoulder. “You are not understanding me, my dear. It is quite possible that Cate is already dead.”

Jessie felt like Ceara had punched her.

“You must consider all the consequences of going back Jessie, because if you go and Cate is—dead, wounded, not able to receive you—there are any number of things that could happen to you, and none of them good.”

Jessie nodded, but her mind was made up. She would not be afraid. She would not let fear control her. “This is my destiny, Ceara. It’s not just that. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do more.”

“For Maeve?”

Jessie nodded again. “She’d go back for me.” Jessie started up the stairs and reached into her pocket for the key. “I won’t be back until I am certain Cate hears me.”

“Jessie—”

Turning to her, Jessie nodded. “I can think of worse fates than being trapped in the first century.”

Ceara nodded. “Indeed. Please be careful, my dear. Who knows what could happen? I shall be here waiting, hoping, praying that you are not too late.”

“See you soon, Ceara. And thank you. Thank you for everything.” Slipping the key into the lock, Jessie was not the least bit prepared for what she was about to encounter.

All along the shores, Druids cast prayers, spells and spears at a befuddled and fearful Roman Army as it slowly, methodically, disembarked from the many, many, flat-bottomed boats arriving like waves upon the shore. The Roman soldiers, who had heard plenty of myths and legends about these strange people, were staring statues, afraid of the mythical might of the Druids of lore.

Silurian men and women alike screamed and ran back and forth along the shore, hurling curses against the soldiers, who were surprised by the preparedness of the Druids of Mona. They had been told not to heed the magic of the priests, but no one had told them the Druids would be standing on the shore waiting for them, unafraid, unfettered by the fear of death. The Romans had believed what Caesar had written about them; that they were aged and weak, slightly off-center and without bloodlust.

It was disconcerting to see none of that was true. Horses stamped on the ground, officers yelled and bullied the men to move forward, but it was to no avail. The Romans were clearly afraid. Even their horses seemed unsure as to what to do.

Suddenly, a Druid spear flew through the air striking a mounted Roman square in the chest, knocking him off his horse, impaling him to the ground. That act, that singular aggressive move seemed to chase the fear and trepidation from the soldiers. Instantly, they began responding to their commanders’ orders.

In that moment, Cate knew all was lost. The Roman soldiers, swords swinging, arrows flying, began cutting down the first line of Druidic defense. Blood was everywhere as the soldiers compensated for their earlier hesitation by killing everything and everybody in sight. Old women and young children alike felt the bite of Roman metal swung by massively muscular arms. Horses trampled the dead beneath their feet as they pursued the retreating Druids.

Some soldiers died beside their feared and hated prey, but it became clear to everyone that Paulinus’s order had been not to capture, but to destroy them. There would be no surrender, no prisoners and no survivors. These soldiers were a death squad sent to clean up the island of Mona and eradicate the leaders of a people too proud to bow to the Roman Senate.

The Chieftain, in his limited wisdom, had trapped his own priests on an island that was quickly turning into a burial site.

“Maeve,” Cate whispered, watching the death and destruction from a hill by the river.

“I know, Catie. We cannot fight them or even hope to hold them off much longer.”

“Flight?”

Maeve nodded. “If we wish to live another day. Thank the Goddess we were able to ship many away.”

“The boats cannot make it back in time.”

“I know.”

“We must retreat into the woods. The Romans are afraid of our woods.”

Maeve agreed. “The Druids from Mona wish to fight to defend their home, even unto death. Collect as many others as you can. Get them to build up the fires and tell them to escape into the groves. They ought to go in as far as they can.”

“But the fires—Jessie said—”

“I know what Jessie said, my love, but without the cover of fire, we shall die much sooner.”

“What of you? What are you going to do?”

“I am a Druid priestess, Catie. It is my job to call forth the spirits of the Otherworld to ask their assistance in this, our darkest hour.”

“I will not leave you.”

Maeve barely grinned. “Of course you won’t. Come back here once you have sent word.”

“Must I be the one to go?”

Maeve reached out and touched Cate’s cheek. “Fear not. I shall be safe, as will you. Go quickly and return as fast.”

“Have you seen it? Our safety? You know the outcome of this?”

“I know that you and I have much to do in this life yet. Go now, and be swift afoot.”

Cate nodded and left, wishing she did not have to leave Maeve alone at all. This was not how she thought it would go. Something was terribly wrong. Had she misunderstood Jessie, or was Jessie’s message too late? In trying to save Maeve, had Cate, in fact, damned them all? Those questions died on her lips because after she told their leaders of the retreat plan, she saw the one image before her she had gone across time to prevent: Roman soldiers were quickly bearing down on Maeve, who was so deep within herself and the Otherworld, she was not aware of the great threat approaching her.

“Maeve!” Cate cried out, plucking a dagger from the neck of a dead Druid, raised it high in the air and without another thought plunged it between the soldier’s shoulders preventing him from swinging his sword in an attempt to cleave Maeve’s head from her body.

“Maeve!”

This time, Maeve opened her eyes in time to see the flat end of a sword hit Cate on the side of the head, sending her to the ground like a dropped rock. In an instant, everything went black for Cate, and she did not see Maeve rise from her kneeling position, remove the dagger from between the dead soldier’s shoulders, and ram it into the armpit of the soldier who had struck Cate.

All Cate saw was blackness. All she heard was a familiar voice trying to bring her to life.

“Cate? Wake up. It’s me. You’ve got to wake up or we’re going to die.”

“Jessie?” Cate asked, feeling woozy, but able to get to her feet. “Oh. We’re in the Dreamworld, aren’t we?”

Jessie started toward the mist and pulled Cate through it.

“Am I dead, then?” Cate asked when Jessie did not answer her.

“Well, if you are, so am I, and since I have no idea what dead feels like, I think we ought to just assume we’re both still alive.”

Cate shook her head, as if trying to gather her wits. “But—what are you doing here?”

Jessie helped Cate sit on the same stone she always sat on. Kneeling in front of her, Jessie held Cate’s hands. “I haven’t given you the most important piece to this puzzle. I came back because without it, you’ll all die on Mona. There is one who can save you if you can reach her in time.”

“Her?”

Jessie nodded. “Queen Boudicca.”

“Boudicca of the Iceni? Why would she help us?”

“She has nearly one hundred thousand warriors ready to attack the flank of the Roman Army. If you can get word to her that Paulinus’s men are on Mona, she’ll know it would be a good time for her to strike. Paulinus will have to pull his men off Mona in order to face the greater threat of the Queen and her army.”

“How does that save us?”

“It will keep Paulinus from destroying you outright. He will be forced to withdraw to face Boudicca, and when he does, you and the others can escape to Iona and Snowdonia, where your people will be safe.”

Cate’s eyes lit up with hope. “Then we must reach her at all cost.”

Jessie nodded. “In the history books, she is advised by someone to attack Paulinus just as he invades Wales. That someone, my little Druid priestess, is you. You absolutely must get off this island and find your way to Boudicca.”

Cate inhaled deeply and shook her head. “Queen of the Iceni will have no audience with the likes of a Silurian priestess.”

“She will if you tell her that you know she has a scar the shape of an X over the inner right thigh she received in a battle earlier this year.”

Cate stared at Jessie.

“It’s in the books, Cate, that she carried many battle scars on her body. If you prove yourself to be a powerful enough priestess, she might grant you an audience.”

Cate nodded. “I am a powerful priestess, Jessie. But what about Maeve? I will not leave her.”

“Maeve must lead the remaining Druids to safety until Boudicca does her part. We have to leave her th—”

“No.”

“Cate, you must. Now is the time to do the right thing. You have to see the Iceni Queen, and Maeve must lead the people to safety. It is the only way.”

“Lachlan can lead,” Cate said stubbornly.

Jessie shook her head. “No, he can’t. Lachlan is doing what he does best, and that’s heal people. He can heal those with minor injuries and let Maeve take to the woods. Surely, in the woods, we are at an advantage.”

Cate thought about this and ever so imperceptibly nodded. “’Tis true.”

“Then you just have to suck it up and go.”

Cate cocked her head. “Suck. It. Up?”

“Be tough. Come on, Cate. For every minute you sit here, more die. You take a boat, get the hell off the island, grab a Roman horse and ride until you can’t ride any more. Trust me on this. Boudicca can save you.”

Cate looked into Jessie’s face and nodded. “It will be done as you say.”

Jessie sighed loudly. “Good. Be strong, and Cate—”

“I know. Suck. It. Up.”

Jessie nodded. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Rising, Cate inhaled deeply, straightened her spine, and looked like a woman getting ready for war. Taking Jessie’s hands in hers, Cate leaned her forehead against hers. “You’re a great woman, Jessie. Goodbye one last time. Perhaps, some day in the future, we shall be lucky enough to meet in our dreams.”

“I hope so, Cate. Good luck, and Godspeed.”

In that moment, Jessie found herself back in the bedroom, surrounded by dust and cobwebs with Ceara waiting for her out in the hall.

“Thank goodness,” Ceara said. “Were you in time?”

Jessie felt so sick to her stomach that she sat on the hall floor. She had never imagined so much death and destruction as she was remembering now. “That was—awful. It was a bloodbath, Ceara.”

“What of Cate and Maeve?”

Jessie sighed loudly. “I’ve done all I can for them.”

“Then—”

Jessie nodded. “They were still alive. Barely. Cate got knocked in the head and so there we were, trying to figure out what to do from her dream world. She didn’t want to leave Maeve, but I think I convinced her that was best.”

“But there was still time?”

Jessie shrugged. “Too close to call. Cate is going to have to bust a gut to get there, and even then, she has to convince Boudicca to see her.”

“Not great odds. Boudicca was not known for her patience or kindness.”

“I think Cate can do it. It’s what she’s been trained for.”

Ceara turned for the stairs. “Ah, the hopefulness of youth. I hope you’re right, my dear. For all of their sakes.”

“Where we going?”

Ceara stopped on the third step of the backstairs and turned to Jessie. “I am going to work to make money and pay my bills, as mundane as that is, and you—well, you need to figure out what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. This life.”

Jessie nodded. It was time to face the music and—well—do the right thing. “I need to talk to my folks, huh?”

Ceara nodded. “Our lives are here now, Jess, no matter how much we may both want them back there. Let your parents know who you are even as you go about finding out who that is. If you remember nothing else from this experience, remember that wisdom comes where you find it. And, somewhere in the future, your soul may very well need the wisdom you’re gathering in this life.”

Nodding, Jessie hugged Ceara and helped her down the steps. “Thank you so much. My life has changed so much because you are in it.”

“Oh, my dear, there will be many more people who will change your life if you just let them.”

“Like Tanner?”

“Perhaps.”

“He told me.”

“Did he now?”

“Do you always take in those society would just as soon straitjacket and toss in hell?”

Ceara’s light blue eyes sparkled. “Nah. Only the good ones, and you, my dear, are most assuredly that.”

When Ceara left, Jessie inhaled deeply, walked over to the front porch stairs, and sat on the top stair to wait for her parents. Jumbled emotions zinged about her heart as she tried to settle into the notion that she would never see Cate or Maeve again unless she, too, learned the craft. That was on her list of top ten things to do, the first of which was to get straight with her parents.

When they arrived, Reena charged up the stairs and hugged Jessie tightly even as she sniffed her hair.

“You’re choking me, Mom.”

Releasing her, Reena stepped back to allow Daniel through.

“Hey there, sport!” Jessie threw her arms around him and hugged him as tightly as Reena had hugged her. “Miss me?”

He laughed as he pulled away. “Like bad gas!”

Releasing him, Jessie shook her head as she studied him. “You okay?”

He nodded. “I just wanted to come home. Auntie’s got really boring without ghosts and fishing and—you.” Daniel turned to Rick, who waited at the bottom of the stairs. “There’s something Mom and Dad need to tell you.”

“Can I have some tea first? And then, can we all sit down and discuss where to go from here?”

Rick and Reena looked at each other as if to ask What happened to our daughter?

“Uh—sure, honey,” Rick said, going to the kitchen to start the water.

Sitting next to Jessie on the top stair, Reena and Daniel replayed Daniel’s version of Chris and the marijuana story.

“We were wrong, Jess. Totally wrong. I guess that Chris kid really is bad news. Daniel was adamant that we clear everything up with you the second we got home.”

When she finished, Jessie mussed up Daniel’s hair. “Thanks for finally getting that out in the open.”

Reena put her arm around her shoulder. “We should have asked Daniel when you said. We never really gave you the chance to explain and we’re really sorry. We jumped to conclusions based on your past behavior.”

Jessie nodded. “It’s not like my past behavior didn’t merit present suspicion, Mom. Maybe we’re all a little to blame.”

“Jessie promised me two things, Mom: one, she wasn’t doing drugs, and two, she wouldn’t leave me here alone. She kept both promises.”

“Circumstantial evidence is hard to ignore but I haven’t smoked dope once in Oregon, and I’m not hanging out with bad influences. Regardless of what you think of Tanner, he’s not the one you have to trust. I am. Give me the chance to be trustworthy. Others have.”

Reena nodded. “We are so very sorry we doubted you.”

Rick returned to the porch and handed Jessie a cup of tea before kissing the top of her head. “We haven’t really given you much of a chance to start over, have we? I guess we thought you’d eventually try to go home—”

“Dad, this is my home. That’s what you weren’t hearing. I love it here.”

Rick and Reena stared at their daughter.

“Look, I know I was a pain in the ass about moving here, but I’ve fallen in love with this crusty old place. It has lots of character, and I’m even beginning to like the inn. I’d like to show you how serious I am about changing, I want to strike a deal with you.”

“A deal?”

“What kind of a deal?”

“I want to cash in some of the bonds Grandma left me so I can go to Wales.”

“You want to go see the humpback whales? They’re right here on the coast.”

Jessie shook her head. “To Wales. The country in Great Britain. I’d like to go for two weeks before school starts.”

Reena leaned forward, spilling some of her tea. “School? School starts September sixth. That’s in less than two weeks.”

“High school starts then. I’m talking about college. I’ve applied to the University of Oregon, and since I’ve taken so many honors courses, I’m only three credits shy of my diploma. I can take those cre—”

“You’ve what?” her parents said simultaneously. They looked dumbfounded.

“I want to go to college. I’ve grown up a lot since we got here, and if you’d just give me a chance, you’d see that I am not the girl who left California. I want to attend the university. I applied.”

Rick looked at Reena, who was speechless. “Is this a joke? Is there a punch line?” He shook his head in exasperation. “Have I been in a coma?”

“Look at her, Dad,” Daniel suggested. “Really look at her. You don’t even see her anymore.”

Rick stared at his son, then at Jessie, then back to Daniel. “Apparently, Jess isn’t the only one who’s grown up.”

Jessie winked at Daniel. “You’re my hero, but I still have to pay my dues. I’ll even finish out rehab if it’ll make you guys feel better, but I really want to go to Wales.”

“And then you’re going to go to college?” Rick asked. Reena just sat there with her mouth agape.

“Ceara’s sparked my interest in history. I want to learn more. I’ve spoken with a professor, I got an application, and then I met with an advisor. I can late-register if you’ll let me go.”

Reena shook her head. “Let you go? Honey, of course we’ll let you go.”

“Then it’s a deal?”

Rick answered for his stunned wife. “You really will finish out at the rehab center?”

Jessie nodded. “Part of being grown up is doing the right thing. If it will make you see how I really mean to stay straight, I’ll go. Once I finish, it’s done and in the past. I can move forward with my life, drug-free, debt-free, obligation-free. That’s what I want. I want the clean slate we came here for.”

Reena started crying silently and threw her arms around her daughter’s neck. “Oh Jess—”

“Will you let me go to Wales if I can get Ceara to come with me?”

“Of course it’s a yes.”

Hugging her mother, Jessie closed her eyes and thought about Cate trying to convince the Iceni guards to allow her an audience with Boudicca. What happened, how it all turned out, would remain a mystery until she could get herself to Wales. More than once she’d stood with the key to the room in her hand, tempting herself to enter, begging for a sign that told her it was safe to go.

But it wasn’t. She knew as much.

Instead, she and Ceara had concocted a plan that would take them to the only place on the planet that held the answer: Wales.

“What happened?” Reena asked. “I mean, really. What happened to change you so much?”

“Life, Mom. Life happened.”

And life kept happening.

Two weeks later, Ceara and Jessie were on a tourist boat to the Isle of Anglesey. Rick and Reena had been so thrilled Jessie wanted to go to college they’d decided not to press her into finishing out her rehab stint, and instead paid her for the work she’d been doing at the inn.

In Wales, Ceara had cried for happiness, sadness, for memories of a time that had no resemblance to her own. It took her a day just to ride the rollercoaster of emotions that went with a homecoming such as this. When she was finally over the emotional tilt of it all, she changed into her tour guide hat and explained all of the landmarks and history she knew by heart. If it were possible, she was even more animated than ever, and she and Jessie grew closer than either had ever imagined.

Together, they had traveled to where the village of Fennel had once stood. Now, of course, it was a growing urban area. Still, seeing the land through Ceara’s eyes was uplifting and exciting. Jessie had never had a better time, and had been frequented by a number of Cate’s memories within her. Every night, Jessie had gone to bed hoping that Cate would visit her in the Dreamworld. She went to sleep longing for any vision that would tell her they’d made it out safely. Every morning, Jessie was disappointed not to have seen her. She so wanted to know that Cate had made it.

Through it all, it was this trip to the Isle that Jessie had waited for, and as the boat neared shore, her heart beat faster. She remembered Cate’s fear when they first came to Mona; how everyone on the island was preparing for a most devastating attack. She remembered the pain, the anguish, the overall desperation of the Druids, as the Romans poured off the boats and onto the shores. She remembered, just as everyone had asked, and many memories continued to flow into her; yet the one she most wished to see wasn’t one of them.

After freshening up in their hotel room on the Isle, Ceara ordered a taxi, and soon they were on their way to the Standing Stones. Jessie had tried to prepare herself for the distinct possibility that they had not made it out, or that Cate had forgotten to bury the ankh. There were more reasons why the ankh wouldn’t be there than why it would. It was such a long shot, and yet, long shots were something Jessie was only now beginning to believe in.

“Nervous?” Ceara asked, patting Jessie’s leg. “If it is not there—”

“A part of me just knows they survived. I feel it in my bones.”

“Or soul.”

Jessie grinned. “Yeah. There, too.”

“You’ve not been able to access anything that would let you know they made it?”

Jessie shook her head. “Not a damn thing, and it’s not for lack of trying. I can’t find her no matter how hard I look.”

“That happens sometimes, my dear. Memories aren’t always accessible or available just because we want them to be.”

“I wish they were. I need to know.”

When they finally reached the Standing Stones, it was nearly dusk, but Jessie could easily distinguish the rock Cate had pointed out to her. After two thousand years, there it stood, just like the image in Jessie’s mind. “That’s the one.”

“You sure?”

Jessie nodded. “I’ve memorized every single feature of it. I could see it blindfolded.” Taking out her backpack, Jessie waited for Ceara to pay the cab. Then they walked across the length of two football fields to the Standing Stones.

When they came into view, Jessie stopped. “I can’t believe they’re still standing. After all these years—it’s unreal.”

Ceara sighed and brushed a tear away. “Some things just don’t change.” She reached out a trembling hand and touched the stone. “My God, it feels alive, like it contains all the memories of the ages.” She knelt down and began a chant in a language Jessie had never heard.

When she finished, Jessie pulled a folded military shovel from her backpack and unfolded it. “You keep watch. She said it was an arm’s length, so it’ll take awhile.”

Jessie dug for almost an hour, each shovelful weighing heavily on her heart. Just before darkness set in, she struck something solid. Dropping to their hands and knees, they both used their bare hands.

“What? What is it?” Ceara asked, tossing handfuls of dirt to the side of the hole.

“It feels like a box.” Jessie strained to pull the small box from the hole. “Ceara, it’s here! Something’s here!”

“You’re not fooling with an old woman’s ticker, are you?”

Jessie shook her head. “It’s made of some kind of metal. Thank God, she had the foresight to use metal.” Slowly pulling the box out, Jessie held it up for Ceara to see.

It was a small metal box, no more than four inches to a side, and nondescript except for the latch holding it closed. “She did it,” Jessie whispered, lightly touching the box. “My God, she did it.”

“If you don’t open that box in the next five seconds, my heart is going to burst.”

With trembling hands, Jessie lifted the latch. Inside, lay the ankh Cate had shown her in the Dreamworld. Gently cradling it in her palm, she started crying. “They made it. They really made it.”

Ceara stared down into Jessie’s hand. “It is beautiful.”

“We did it, Ceara.”

“You did it, my dear.” When Ceara reached out to touch the ankh, she, too, started crying.

“Wait. There’s more,” Jessie said, as she pulled out a necklace in the shape of a Celtic knot.

A small yelp escaped from Ceara’s mouth. “That’s—that’s—”

Jessie gently took Ceara’s palm and placed the knot inside it. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

“It’s the necklace I gave to Lachlan not long before I left.” Ceara stroked the necklace softly, tears falling from her cheeks.

“They must have told him.”

Ceara held the necklace to her chest and wept. “Oh, Jessie, he made it. My son made it. You saved his life.”

“I had lots of help, Ceara.”

For a long time, both women quietly cried, until finally they stopped long enough to take one last look inside the box. There was one more item. Someone had written a letter on a piece of vellum and wrapped it carefully in leather. Jessie’s hands trembled as she carefully untied the leather strap and opened the leather piece to reveal the vellum.

“She wrote a letter.” Jessie stared down at the parchment. “But the language is unfamiliar to me.”

Ceara adjusted her glasses as she stared at the letter. “Not to me.” She smiled softly. “It’s written in my native tongue.” Looking over Jessie’s shoulder, Ceara inhaled deeply and read the letter aloud.

Jessie and Ceara—

We all made it off Mona, thanks to Boudicca’s precious sacrifice. We are traveling to Eire where it will be somewhat safer to live out our lives as who we are. There are not words enough to thank you for all you have done for our people and us. Yes, Lachlan knows, and has included his own note. Know that you are always in our thoughts, and Jessie, I am a better person for having known you. You will not hear from me again, so please do not seek me out. You must live in your time and I must live in mine, but no matter where we are or what we do, we shall forever be one. Blessed be.

Cate

My dearest mother—

Ceara had to stop reading. The address was simply more than she could bear. “My son,” she said to Jessie as she wiped her eyes. “He—called me mother. You have no idea how I longed to hear from him just one more time.” Wiping her eyes, Ceara read on.

Remember this? You gave it to me with these words: “Grow up with the intention of changing the world. Everyone has within them the power to make a difference. Go, and make a difference in the world.” I shall, mother, as you will see from where you now live. I can be happy now, knowing you still live, and always will inside my heart. I will do you proud.

Your loving son,

Lachlan

Jessie put her arm around Ceara and hugged her. “What a wonderful gift.”

“Indeed. It fills my heart more than I ever thought this old heart could take. But there’s one more note, my dear. To you.”

Jessie—

Remember . . . I am still out there, looking for you, as I have since the dawn of humankind. Close no doors, for you shall never know which one I may be behind. Ours is a love time cannot conquer . . . You will know the moment you see me. Trust that. Trust yourself.

I am now, and shall always be yours.

Maeve

Ceara stepped away from Jessie, who was smiling through tear-filled eyes. “Oh, my dear, there could be nothing more precious than the gifts in this box.”

Taking Ceara’s hand, Jessie held it long into the dark of night as they sat together recalling a love so strong it had traveled across time to touch their hearts and change their lives forever.