Morrigan's Cross
Page 72

“Why?”
“Because.”
“Do you plan to take this machine into battle?”
“Not with you at the wheel. Practicalities, Hoyt. I’m the only one who can drive during the day. If something happens to me—”
“Don’t. Don’t tempt the gods.” His hand closed over hers.
“We have to factor it. We’re here, and where we are is remote. We need transportation. And, well, driving gives all of us a kind of independence, as well as another skill. We should be prepared for anything.”
“We could get more horses.”
The wistfulness in his voice had her giving him a bolstering pat on the shoulder. “You’re doing fine. Maybe you could try going just a little bit faster.”
He shot forward, spitting gravel from the tires. Glenna sucked in a breath and shouted: “Brake! Brake! Brake!”
More gravel flew when the van came to an abrupt halt.
“Here’s a new word for your vocabulary,” she said pleasantly. “Whiplash.”
“You said to go faster. This is go.” He gestured toward the gas pedal.
“Yeah. Well. Okay.” She drew in a fresh breath. “There’s the snail, and there’s the rabbit. Let’s try to find the animal in between. A dog, say. A nice, healthy golden retriever.”
“Dogs chase rabbits,” he pointed out, and made her laugh. “That’s good. You’ve been sad. I’ve missed your smile.”
“I’ll give you a big, toothy one if we come through this lesson in one piece. We’re going to take a big leap, go out on the road.” She reached up and closed her hand briefly over the crystal she’d hung from the rearview. “Let’s hope this works.”
He did better than she’d expected, which meant no one was maimed or otherwise injured. Her heart got a serious workout from leaping into her throat, then dropping hard into her belly, but they stayed on the road—for the most part.
She liked watching him calculate the turns, his brows knit, his eyes intense, his long fingers gripping the wheel as though it were a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea.
Hedgerows closed them in, green tunnels dotted with bloodred drops of fuchsia, then the world would open up into rolling fields, and the dots were white sheep or lazy spotted cows.
The city girl in her was enchanted. Another time, she thought, another world, and she could have found a great deal to love about this place. The play of light and shadows on the green, the patchwork of fields, the sudden sparkle of water, the rise and tumble of rocks that formed ancient ruins.
It was good, she decided, to look beyond the house in the forest, to look and love the world they were fighting to save.
When he slowed, she glanced over. “You have to keep up your speed. It can be as dangerous to go too slow as too fast. Which applies, now that I think about it, to pretty much anything.”
“I want to stop.”
“You need to pull over to the shoulder—the side of the road. Put the signal on, like I showed you, and ease over.” She checked the road herself. The shoulder was narrow, but there was no traffic. “Put it in park. That’s all the way up. Good. So—What?” she said when he pushed his door open.
She pulled off her seat belt, grabbed the keys—and her camera as an afterthought—then hurried after him. But he was already halfway across a field, moving quickly toward what was left of an old stone tower.
“If you wanted to stretch your legs or empty your bladder, you just had to say so,” she began, huffing a bit as she caught up to him.
The wind danced through her hair, blowing it back from her face. As she touched his arm, she felt the muscles there gone rigid. “What is it?”
“I know this place. People lived here. There were children. The oldest of my sisters married their second son. His name is Fearghus. They farmed this land. They... they walked this land. Lived.”
He moved inside to what she saw now must have been a small keep. The roof was gone, as was one of the walls. The floor was grass and starry white flowers, the dung of sheep.
And the wind blew through, like ghosts chanting.
“They had a daughter, a pretty thing. Our families hoped we would... ”
He laid his hand against a wall, left it there. “Just stone now,” he said quietly. “Gone to ruin.”
“But still here. Hoyt. Still here, a part of it. And you, remembering them. What we’re doing, what we have to do, won’t it mean they had the very best chance to live a long, full life? To farm the land and walk it. To live.”
“They came to my brother’s wake.” He dropped his hand. “I don’t know how to feel.”
“I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. Every day of it. Hoyt.” She laid her hands on his arms, waiting for his eyes to meet hers. “Part of it stands, what was yours. It stands in what’s mine. I think that matters. I think we need to find the hope in that. The strength in it. Do you want some time here? I can go back, wait for you in the van.”
“No. Every time I falter, or think I can’t bear what’s been asked of me, you’re there.” He bent, plucked one of the little white flowers. “These grew in my time.” He twirled it once, then tucked it into her hair. “So, we’ll carry hope.”
“Yes, we will. Here.” She lifted her camera. “It’s a place that cries for pictures. And the light’s gorgeous.”
She moved off to choose her angles. She’d make him a present of one, she decided. Something of her to take with him. And she’d make a copy of the same shot for her loft.
Imagine him studying the photo while she studied hers. Each of them remembering standing there on a summer afternoon with wildflowers waving in a carpet of grass.
But the idea of it hurt more than it warmed.
So she turned the camera on him. “Just look at me,” she told him. “You don’t have to smile. In fact—” She clicked the shutter. “Nice, very nice.”
Inspired, she lowered the camera. “I’m going to set it up on timer, take one of us together. She looked around for something to set the camera on, wished she’d thought to bring a tripod.
“Well, I’ll have to mix a little something in.” She framed him in. Man and stone and field. “Air be still and heed my will. Solid now beneath my hand, steady as rock upon the land. Hold here what I ask of thee. As I will, so mote it be.”