And say what? I’m sorry for crying all over ye, but I’m a wizard and I don’t want to be one.Nay, she couldn’t go to Tom; he saw too much with his sharp blue eyes, read her too well.
Matt’s camp. She could go to Bear Mountain and stay in the cozy little den Matt had made. He was in Utah for several more days, and surely she’d have her emotions under control by the time he got back. Aye, she just needed to be alone for a while, just long enough to figure out what she was going to do.
“Come, Gesader,” Winter said, taking up Snowball’s reins to head toward Bear Mountain. But the old horse didn’t budge, even when she clicked her tongue and dug her heels into his sides. “Get going, you accursed beast,” she growled.
She was answered by another growl coming from the direction of the pine. She looked over to see Gesader, standing now, the hackles on his back raised in anger. “What is it you want?” she shouted.
“Why have ye brought me here?”
Gesader turned with the puny staff still in his mouth, leapt over the pile of leaves, and dropped the stick against the trunk of the pine. A deep, resonating sound—like that of a tuning fork—started the tree humming in shuddering puffs, sounding as if it were gasping for breath.
Winter blinked in amazement. She slid off Snowball and walked toward the pine, unable to look away from the pulsing trunk. Stepping through the thick pile of leaves, she slowly reached out and touched it.
She gasped, pulling her hand away at the realization that it was alive, that she had felt its weak spark of life struggling to surface. Without questioning why, driven by some unfathomable yet urgent need, Winter stepped up to the tree, wrapped her arms around it, and lay her cheek against the cold, rough bark.
A rainbow of colors immediately swirled through the air. Her arms and fingers tingled and her ears roared at the sound of pitch moving along the trunk’s veins. With her chest pressed into the rough bark, Winter felt the pine’s energy slowly shifting…until it finally matched the steady rhythm of her own pounding heart.
A calmness settled over Winter, both the internal and external storms receding, the swirling colors slowly fading away until only the purity of white remained. A loud cawcame from above, and Winter looked up to see a plump black crow perched on one of the pine’s remaining branches over her head.
Winter’s knees buckled and she slid to the ground. She sat curled at the base of the tree, hugging the trunk as tightly as she could, feeling TarStone’s vast store of energy moving through her. In her mind’s eye she saw roots stretching deep into fissures that spidered through the mountain’s granite.
The trunk she was hugging expanded and receded with billowing breaths as the vital energy flowed up from the mountain and into the tree.
The crow gave another high-pitched caw,and Winter looked up to see it lift off the branch and flap skyward. It caught the wind and soared over the swaying treetops of the forest, disappearing into the dark, churning storm clouds.
Winter slowly straightened away from the pine, blinking in confusion. What had just happened?
Had she actually become one with Daar’s pine? Could she really have felt its pulse as strongly as she felt her own?
Yes, that’s exactly what had happened, and Winter finally understood the true scope of her gift, as well as the very real threat Cùram de Gairn posed. For even though she knew the pine would live for months yet, she had also seen its eventual death—arriving on the chill wind of utter hopelessness.
Chapter Fifteen
T he clouds had thickenedand lowered by the time Winter crossed Bear Brook and entered the high meadow, the wind blowing at gale force and a wet snow falling with blinding intensity. Though she was wet to the skin and miserably cold, the closer Winter got to Matt’s cozy little cave the calmer she became. Despite all her questions and confusion, she was confident she could figure out a way to lure Cùram into the open for Robbie.
But what was she going to do about Matt while she dealt with the magic? How could she keep such a powerful secret from him? She couldn’t say when it had happened exactly, but Winter now accepted the fact that she loved Matheson Gregor with every fiber of her being. Until she had pictured herself having to live without him, she hadn’t realized just how deeply he had become entrenched in her heart. As she rode across the meadow through the driving snow, Winter vowed that she would not allow Providence or the magic or some angry drùidhto mess with that love.
Gesader disappeared into the woods that separated the meadow from the cliff, having to twist his head to fit the long pinewood stick through the trees. Winter had deliberately left the staff at Daar’s tree, but as soon as she’d found a stump and mounted Snowball, Gesader had taken up the lead again, once again carrying the blasted thing in his mouth.
Winter had no idea how the big cat knew its importance, but he did seem determined the staff remain with them. She’d often wondered if the tiny cub Robbie had brought her from eight hundred years ago was something more than he seemed. Even though panthers were not indigenous to Scotland, he had been living in the cave Robbie said had held Cùram’s tree of life. But other than being unusually well-adapted to living with humans, Gesader had shown no signs of being anything other than a typical, semiwild leopard.
He’d never spoken to Winter the way Robbie’s snowy owl spoke to him, nor did Gesader appear to possess any magic, much less act the part of a familiar. He was simply Winter’s cherished pet and steadfast companion. Yet he’d brought her to the dying pine, somehow knowing she needed to feel its waning energy in order to realize the seriousness of the situation.
And the crow she’d seen sitting on the branch above her. What had that been about? Tom certainly loved crows; he’d told Winter they were the harbinger of renewal and transformation, to be revered as spirits who helped restore order to the heavens.
Had the crow she’d seen today symbolized some sort of transformation? Had he been there to encourage her to fight for humanity’s future?
Following Gesader, Winter guided Snowball through the narrow band of trees as she contemplated the meaning of the crow. They stopped at the granite cliff that rose thirty feet above the meadow. She slid from the saddle, nearly falling to the ground when her numbed legs buckled under her weight.
“I have to get us dried off,” she said to her wet, snow-covered pets. “Or Matt is going to find three frozen blocks of ice when he gets home.”
Gesader disappeared into the narrow opening of the cave, then quickly returned empty-mouthed. Winter undid Snowball’s cinch and pulled the heavy saddle off, groaning when its weight nearly buckled her knees again. She let it fall to the ground and dragged it to the cave, dropping it just inside the entrance. She rummaged around in her saddlebag until she found a flashlight, then trailed its beam around the interior of the cave, stopping when she spotted the pile of blankets.
“Bless you, Rose, for being such a good saleslady,” she said, taking one of the blankets.
Winter had helped Matt shop for his camping equipment, but Rose was the one who had insisted he needed extra blankets, a lantern, and a jug for carrying water from the nearby spring Tom had shown them. Rose had also sold Matt ten pairs of wool socks, several pairs of long johns, and a tarp to hang over the entrance of the cave in bad weather.
Winter noticed Matt hadn’t bothered to hang the tarp, likely because the twisted entrance didn’
t allow rain or snow to reach very far inside. That way he could build his fire close to the entrance so the smoke wouldn’t fill the cave.
It wasn’t a very big cave, maybe twenty feet deep and about fifteen feet wide, but it was more than tall enough for Matt to stand upright. All in all, Winter had thought it an appropriate den for the son of a bear, which is exactly what she’d told Matt when she’d helped him settle in last week. She smiled as she carried the blanket outside, remembering how her comment had gotten her a very passionate kiss.