“You . . . you certainly found yours.”
“Both. Did we not both lust until we were mad with it? Did we not lust under the moon of the vernal equinox? It was then that I hear the land and water and air.”
“So use your gift. Be what your people need.”
“But the land and the water, they were not sick in my time. They are sick now. I think my destiny is here, with you and your time.” His words came out of the dark, hesitant. “The land and water need protection.”
She wanted nothing more than for him to stay, whether he loved her or not, whether he was constant or not, difficult or not. But what did she contribute? “You may be right.”
The silence hung between them.
“Lucy?” His voice had gotten even more tentative.
She cleared her throat and tried to sound brisk. “It sounds to me like your powers come from a connection with something the Greeks called Gaia. They thought the world was a living being. Not like a god or goddess, more like a person. It breathes and thinks and plans.”
“Ja. That is how it is to me.”
He wasn’t touching her. That was good. If he touched her, she might break into tiny shards like the glass in the lab.
The silence stretched.
“If we aren’t going to use the machine, I . . . I guess we should go.” Go where? Do what? She shoved herself up.
He grabbed for her hand. “Lucy,” he said, his voice raw. “I hear what you say not. Know this. I cannot do this thing without you. You think you are not enough, Lucy, like I did. I know not who told you this. My brother spoke from his grave to me. But it is not true. We are enough.”
“You are . . . wonderful,” she managed, though he had hold of her wrist and that thing was happening where jolts shot to her loins. “Magic, even. But what do I bring?”
“You jest with me.” His brows drew together like they did in those first days when he was in pain.
“I’m not jesting. You need help with the language for about another week. I know you’re disappointed that a sword is not the weapon of choice here, but you’ll be a charter member of the NRA in no time. You’ve got all the money you need, assuming the boat is still anchored off Pescadero Point. I . . . I’ll just be a drag on you.”
He got enough of that speech to get the drift. “You drive carts. You sail. You killed a man. You saved the machine, Lucy. You are brave and strong. You are so beautiful a man’s eyes are sore. And you have mildness in your heart for man and dog. How is this not enough? At first, when I come here, I yearn for a time when I do not need you. Is this the way to be a man, to need a woman for everything? But I need you, Lucy. And now that feels right and true. How can I use what the gods give me when I know nothing of this world? You will know how to use what I am. Together we are wonderful. Without you, I can do nothing. The world is lost.”
“Great. I’m the practical one.”
“Ja. You feel when things are sooth like me. The earth calls to you, too. No scalds will sing our story each by each. We are only enough together, Lucy. My destiny. Your destiny also.”
He was saying that his story was her story. But he offered a business partnership that came with a haze of marvelous sex. Valhalla, where sex and feasting and drinking were supposed to be enough to satisfy you. Did they?
And he was wrong about her being the strong one. That was just the problem. Jake, too, had believed she was a person she was not.
Yet, she would never have believed she could find the courage to go back in time to look for a different kind of life or that she could lie to the police or pull stitches out of a Viking’s flesh or kill Casey. Maybe she was that person Jake and Galen thought her.
“Faugh,” Galen said into the dark and her considering silence. “You demand yet more from me. You would tear out a man’s heart to see it beat? Then hear this. You. You are my fate, as much as the gift. I will wed you, Lucy, if you would have a warrior with no weapon of value, a man who has no time, one who needs you. I am little enough to protect you. But I will give my life trying. You want equal partners. I will try. This I vow. Can you ask more, woman?”
The disgust in his voice was so . . . Galen. And the declaration was Galen, too. He did not make it lightly. He made it with the power of his heart, and the honor in his soul. No woman could want more.
She had gone back to find a time where magic was still possible. Who said that magic wasn’t possible in this time? Galen thought cars and elevators and zippers were magic. Maybe they were. Maybe we missed the magic that happened all around us every day. Maybe the real magic was the work you had to do to make yourself into the person who could push and shove the world forward. No easy answers. No eating all you want to lose weight. Galen had a gift that could only be called magic, and it was not like to be an easy answer for him. His way in this time would be hard. But she couldn’t deny her world could use a man who heard what was right for the earth. And maybe there was another kind of magic at work here, the magic a man and woman made between them. Lord, that wasn’t any kind of an easy answer. But she had felt the rightness. She could understand him, as perhaps no other woman could.
“I cannot ask more.”
She felt him holding his breath. What was he waiting for? Ahhh. She had not matched his vow. “I will love you, Galen Valgarssen, until the day I die. Don’t you dare break my heart.”
He took her into his arms in a crushing embrace. His scent engulfed her. She would know that scent until the day she died as well. Her heart beat against his, not in unison but in delightful counterpoint. It seemed right and true.
“If I wound your heart, I wound my own,” he breathed into her hair.
They stayed like that, feeling the rightness wash over them. Lucy listened to their hearts and felt another presence there. She squeezed her eyes shut. A woman couldn’t know she was pregnant after only two days. Or maybe she was different from other women now. . . .
“Come,” he said after a moment. “Know you the way out of this darkness? We must go for dog and boat before I can fulfill my vow.”
“There is a passage.” The Chronicle article better be right, or they were going to die a slow death. But she didn’t believe that. “Help me feel for the door.” She scrambled to her feet and put her hands out in front of her. Taking cautious steps, she felt her way around the girders that now supported the Rotunda floor. He went in the opposite direction. They made their way toward each other around the outside wall. She was the one who found the passage. An empty space turned out to be a long corridor.
“Door,” Galen grunted as they reached the end of the corridor. A bar crossed the door to open it. Pray it wasn’t locked or they’d starve here. The bar did nothing. Uh-oh. Maybe there was a bolt lock that worked by hand from the inside. She felt around. What she found was a large button about chest height, like the kind on the inside of walk-in freezers to prevent people from getting locked in. She pressed it in relief.
The door swung open. Lucy sucked in fresh air. Work lights glowed from somewhere. The exhibits of the Exploratorium loomed in the shadows. Now she saw her way. She turned and pushed the door shut on the time machine. The lock clicked into place. A large sign plastered across the door said: Danger. No admittance. Unsafe conditions. Excellent.
Now they’d find a night watchman, plead that they’d gotten locked in after hours, and get him to let them out.
“Lucy,” Galen said, putting a hand on her arm. “In one thing you must submit to me.”
She raised her brows. He was glowering, an expression she found strangely comforting. “So much for equal partners. What is it?”
“I want no condom on my weapon when I swive you.”
She tried to make her mouth serious. “It will mean making a lytling.” It already had.