An Echo in the Bone (Outlander, #7)

by Diana Gabaldon

“I suppose I have a little time, then. Nayawenne …” I hadn’t spoken her name aloud in several years, and found an odd comfort in the speaking, as though it had conjured her. “She told me that I’d come into my full power when my hair turned white.”

“There’s something there that listens,” he’d told Brianna once, quite casually. “Ye see such pools in the Highlands; they’re called saints’ pools—folk say the saint lives by the pool and listens to their prayers.”

Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Ian raised a brow, looked from me to Jamie, and shook his head. “Nay wonder ye’re sae fond of her, Uncle. She must be a rare comfort to ye.” “Well,” Jamie said, his eyes fixed on his work, “she keeps takin’ me in—so I suppose she must be home.”

“Aye, I know.” He moved beside me and put an arm round my shoulders, pulling my head to his chest, while he gently wiped my face. “But ye couldna weep for the bairns. Or the house. Or your wee garden. Or the poor dead lass and her bairn. But if ye weep for your cheetie, ye know ye can stop.” “How do you know that?” My voice was thick, but the band round my chest was not quite so tight. He made a small, rueful sound. “Because I canna weep for those things, either, Sassenach. And I havena got a cat.” I sniffled, wiped my face one last time, and blew my

Lord, he’d said. Let me be enough. That prayer had lodged in my heart like an arrow when I’d heard it and thought he asked for help in doing what had to be done. But that wasn’t what he’d meant at all—and the realization of what he had meant split my heart in two. I took his face between my hands, and wished so much that I had his own gift, the ability to say what lay in my heart, in such a way that he would know. But I hadn’t. “Jamie,” I said at last. “Oh, Jamie. You’re … everything. Always.” An hour later, we left the Ridge.

“I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding, my dear,” he said. “It’s a secretary we’re needing at Pitlochry.” “Perhaps you do,” she said, giving in to the cloth-clenching urge. “But the advertisement I replied to was for plant inspector, and that’s the position I’m applying for.” “But … my dear …” He was shaking his head, clearly appalled. “You’re a woman!” “I am,” she said, and any of a hundred men who’d known her father would have picked up the ring of steel in her voice and given in on the spot. Mr. Campbell unfortunately hadn’t known Jamie Fraser—but was about to be enlightened. “Would you care to explain to me exactly which aspects of plant inspection require a penis?” His eyes bulged and he turned the shade of a turkey’s wattles in courting season.

“Men hate things to change,” her mother had once casually told her. “Unless it’s their idea, of course. But you can make them think it is their idea, sometimes.”

“You haven’t any hesitation about this?” I said to Jamie. “I mean—after all, he is a dog.” He gave me an eye and a moody shrug. “Aye, well. I’ve known battles fought for worse reasons. And since this time yesterday, I’ve committed piracy, mutiny, and murder. I may as well add treason and make a day of it.” “Besides, Auntie,” Ian said reprovingly, “he’s a good dog.”

I put two fingers on my chest and waited for the pulsing in my fingertips to equalize with the pulsing of my heart. Slowly, almost dreaming, I began to pass through my body, from crown to toes, feeling my way through the long quiet passages of veins, the deep violet color of the sky just before night. Nearby I saw the brightness of arteries, wide and fierce with crimson life. Entered into the chambers of my heart and felt enclosed, the thick walls moving in a solid, comforting, unending, uninterrupted rhythm. No, no damage, not to the heart nor to its valves. I felt my digestive tract, tightly knotted up under my diaphragm for hours, relax and settle with a grateful gurgle, and a sense of well-being flowed down like warm honey through limbs and spine.

“When a man dies, it’s only him,” he said. “And one is much like another. Aye, a family needs a man, to feed them, protect them. But any decent man can do it. A woman …” His lips moved against my fingertips, a faint smile. “A woman takes life with her when she goes. A woman is … infinite possibility.”

The last thing I saw before sleep took me was Young Ian’s face across the fire, rapt at hearing of the Scotland that had vanished just as he himself was born.

Jamie looked mildly startled and glanced at me; I lifted one shoulder an inch. “Ah, well,” he said, switching his attention back to my visitor. “I’ve heard it said that a man’s reach must exceed his grasp—or what’s a heaven for?”

“My apologies, Mrs. Fraser! What can you think of a man who bursts into your presence, rudely demanding medicaments and failing even to introduce himself properly?” He took the small package of shredded bark from my hand, retaining the hand itself, and bowed low over it, gently kissing my knuckles. “Major General Benedict Arnold. Your servant, ma’am.”

“I was mentally prepared to run into George Washington or Benjamin Franklin in person at some point,” I said. “Even John Adams. But I didn’t really expect him … and I liked him,” I added ruefully.

I took a sheet of paper, pristine and creamy, placed it just so, and dipped my quill, excitement thrumming in my fingers. I closed my eyes in reflex, then opened them again. Where ought I to begin? Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. The line from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland drifted through my mind, and I smiled. Good advice, I supposed—but only if you happened to know where the beginning was, and I didn’t quite.

I wondered what sort of man—or woman, perhaps?—had lain here, leaving no more than an echo of their bones, so much more fragile than the enduring rocks that sheltered them.

So surely they had found time, she and Ian, to say what had to be said between them, in the months since they knew. What would he say to Claire in such circumstances? he wondered suddenly. Probably what he had said to her, in parting. “I love you. I’ll see you again.” He didn’t see any way of improving on the sentiment, after all.

“Where d’ye think he is now?” Jenny said suddenly. “Ian, I mean.” He glanced at the house, then at the new grave waiting, but of course that wasn’t Ian anymore. He was panicked for a moment, his earlier emptiness returning—but then it came to him, and, without surprise, he knew what it was Ian had said to him. “On your right, man.” On his right. Guarding his weak side. “He’s just here,” he said to Jenny, nodding to the spot between them. “Where he belongs.”

“I love you,” he said softly, and took her by the shoulders, holding her together long enough to say the rest. “I’ll bring him back. Believe me, Bree—I’ll see you again. In this world.”

Perhaps it was imagination; perhaps she really could hear the stones up there: a weird buzzing song that lived in her bones, a memory that would live there forever.

I was waiting for things to make sense. Nothing did. I had lived in John Grey’s house, with its gracious stair and crystal chandelier, its Turkey rugs and fine china, for nearly a month, and yet I woke each day with no idea where I was, reaching across an empty bed for Jamie.

I could not believe he was dead. Could not. I shut my eyes at night and heard him breathing slow and soft in the night beside me. Felt his eyes on me, humorous, lusting, annoyed, alight with love. Turned half a dozen times a day, imagining I heard his step behind me. Opened my mouth to say something to him—and more than once really had spoken to him, realizing only when I heard the words dwindle on the empty air that he was not there. Each realization crushed me anew. And yet none reconciled me to his loss.

There was another knock at the door, and John frowned at it. “Not now,” he said. “Come back later.” “Well, I would,” said a polite voice in a Scottish accent. “But there’s some urgency, ken?” The door opened, and Jamie stepped in, closing it behind him. He saw me, stood stock-still for an instant, and then I was in his arms, the overwhelming warmth and size of him blotting out in an instant everything around me.

William’s face had hardened and matured, losing all trace of childish softness, and from both ends of the short hall, deep blue Fraser cat-eyes stared out of the bold, solid bones of the MacKenzies. And Willie was old enough to shave on a daily basis; he knew what he looked like. Willie’s mouth worked, soundless with shock. He looked wildly at me, back at Jamie, back at me—and saw the truth in my face. “Who are you?” he said hoarsely, wheeling on Jamie. I saw Jamie draw himself slowly upright, ignoring the noise below. “James Fraser,” he said. His eyes were fixed on William with a burning intensity, as though to absorb every vestige of a sight he would not see again. “Ye kent me once as Alex MacKenzie. At Helwater.”

“The world is turning upside down,” he blurted. “And you are the only constant thing. The only thing I—that binds me to the earth.”