Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2)

by Diana Gabaldon

The sky was gray with cloud from horizon to horizon, and everything beneath its bowl seemed muted, with only the whisper of the moor plants speaking in the voices of the men who fed them.

When you hold a child to your breast to nurse, the curve of the little head echoes exactly the curve of the breast it suckles, as though this new person truly mirrors the flesh from which it sprang. Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger’s touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.

But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says “I am,” and forms the core of personality. In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And “I am” grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.

“I want to protect ye, Sassenach—spread myself over ye like a cloak and shield you and the child wi’ my body.” His voice was soft and husky, with a slight catch in it. “I would do anything for ye … and yet … there’s nothing I can do. It doesna matter how strong I am, or how willing; I canna go with you where ye must go … nor even help ye at all. And to think of the things that might happen, and me helpless to stop them … aye, I’m afraid, Sassenach. “And yet”—he turned me toward him, hand closing gently over one breast—“yet when I think of you wi’ my child at your breast … then I feel as though I’ve gone hollow as a soap bubble, and perhaps I shall burst with joy.”