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If I were a horse, I’d let him ride me anywhere.
Like so many, I had heard, appalled, the reports that trickled out of postwar Germany; the stories of deportations and mass murder, of concentration camps and burnings. And like so many others had done, and would do, for years to come, I had asked myself, “How could the people have let it happen? They must have known, must have seen the trucks, the coming and going, the fences and smoke. How could they stand by and do nothing?” Well, now I knew.
To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct.
His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said.
With my life hanging in the balance, and my future entirely dependent on the eloquence of this skinny little man, I should have hung rapt on his every word. Instead, I found myself yawning appallingly, unable to cover my gaping mouth, and shifting from foot to aching foot, wishing fervently that they would burn me at once and end this torture.
“I thanked God for the pain, because it meant I was still alive.”
“Do you really believe me, Jamie?” He sighed, and smiled ruefully down at me. “Aye, I believe ye, Sassenach. But it would ha’ been a good deal easier if you’d only been a witch.”
“Ye werena the first lass I kissed,” he said softly. “But I swear you’ll be the last.” And he bent his head to my upturned face.
“It’s … difficult to explain. It’s … it’s like … I think it’s as though everyone has a small place inside themselves, maybe, a private bit that they keep to themselves. It’s like a little fortress, where the most private part of you lives—maybe it’s your soul, maybe just that bit that makes you yourself and not anyone else.”
“Who in God’s name is John Wayne?”
knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.”
“Sometimes our best actions result in things that are most regrettable. And yet you could not have acted otherwise.
Hot and slippery as our skins were, we drifted over each other with barely a sensation of touching or pressure, but his presence within me was solid and intimate, a fixed point in a watery world, like an umbilical cord in the random driftings of the womb.
