In the Bee-Loud Glade, Ch 3
It was Buck Mackenzie who finally summoned the courage to address the proverbial elephant in the room. Breakfast, to that point, had been spent in a collective, stunned silence, punctuated only by the occasional clink of spoons.
“Aye, well. S’pose I’ll be the one to ask, then, shall I?” he offered abruptly. All eyes around the campfire moved in unison from his face to mine, and I nodded, humming earnest approval around a mouthful of parritch.
Much like his father before him, he wasn’t one to mince words. “What… are ye, exactly?”
I managed, with no small effort, to move the glob of paste to the back of my mouth and swallow. “How do you mean?”
Buck’s blue eyes darted about in search of aid. Finding none, he expounded with a bit more reluctance, “Beggin’ yer pardon, mistress, but t’isnae a mere mortal can raise a man from the dead.”
“Nor walk through solid stone,” Jamie warned, his glare lethal, “yet here ye are.”
Even as Buck raised a palm in concession, Young Ian chimed in to his left. “He’s right, Uncle. We’ve a fair number of time travelers among us, and none of them can do what Auntie did.”
I took a moment to study the faces of each of the three men sitting with us before meeting my husband’s gaze. An entire conversation passed unspoken between us as we tried to decide who should speak and what we should share. Jamie was afraid, and that fear made him want to keep his cards close to his chest until we had more answers. While I understood his reservations, I also recognized that we might never know more — and our loved ones deserved honesty, particularly if we were asking for their help.
He didn’t like it, but he dropped his gaze to his parritch nonetheless, two fingers tapping restlessly on the side of the bowl.
“I’m not sure if there is a name for a person with my… ability,” I began slowly and carefully, shifting my focus back to Ian. “But you’re right that it’s something separate from the time travel, or… well, at least it’s not necessarily part of the trait. I’ve only ever known one other person who could do this, and I’m not even sure if he was a traveler.”
All three sets of eyebrows raised at that, though it was Roger who clarified this time: “You’ve known someone else who could raise the dead?”
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