Goddess Child is an interlude between my stories Hope Triumphant I: Healer and Hope Triumphant II: Sister.

SYNOPSIS: Sara MacLeod attends her Uncle Duncan's wedding, at which Amanda dances the tango, Connor and Methos toss Duncan in the pool, and Cassandra makes a promise she has every intention of keeping.
 

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CHAPTER 1

Mom and Aunt Cass had gone running together in the morning, like they usually did, but Dad hadn't, and he always went running, every single day.  "And how was the bachelor party last night, Connor?" Mom asked before breakfast in the huge and sunny dining room of the old homestead that Uncle Dunc had bought two years before, but Dad didn't answer; he just sipped at his coffee with his eyes half-closed.  John (Sara and Colin's older brother, who was almost twenty-three) and Uncle Dunc hadn't even gotten out of bed yet, and it was almost nine o'clock.  Mr. Davis (who was staying in the little cottage in the side yard, but then he wasn't part of the family, just one of Uncle Dunc's friends) hadn't shown up yet, either.

When Aunt Rachel and Aunt Cass brought out the sausages and omelettes from the kitchen, Dad went to find a room with "no sunshine and less noise," so at breakfast it was just the moms and aunts and kids: Sara and Colin and their soon-to-be cousins, Paula (nine and a half) and Tommy (almost eight).  After the food was eaten, Mom and Aunt Rachel and Aunt Cass and soon-to-be Aunt Susan sat around the table talking and drinking their "second cup of coffee," which usually meant at least three refills.  John and Uncle Dunc and Mr. Davis emerged one by one, but none of them wanted breakfast.  After a little while, the women drove into town to get their hair done, and the men just lay around the house with all the curtains drawn.

The grown-ups were being hopelessly dull, and Paula and Tommy and Colin decided to watch Episode III of Star Wars.  Sara had seen it before, lots of times.  So had the others, but they didn't seem to mind watching Anakin get zapped in the Clone Wars yet again.  Sara was seriously bored.  She got her new book *Half-Magic* and went to Paula's bedroom (because Sara was staying with Paula, just like Colin was staying with Tommy), but it was too stuffy inside, so Sara took a pillow and went to lie on her stomach on the second-floor big verandah that was right over the first-floor big verandah.  She opened her book with a sigh of contentment.

Sara looked up from chapter fourteen when a car door slammed.  Aunt Cass and Mom were walking along the stone path to the front door of the house, finally back from their trip to the hairdressers.  Aunt Rachel had said she wanted to see the weaving store and the gardens in town, and soon-to-be Aunt Susan was probably still getting her hair done, because she was the bride, after all.

Mom looked gorgeous, with her hair shining golden, all pinned up into little curls.  Aunt Cass looked gorgeous, too.  Her goldeny-reddish-brown curls were bigger, probably because her hair was longer.  Sara wanted hair that color, or all-golden hair like Mom's, but Sara's hair was plain old brown.  Colin said it was the color of mud, but his hair was the exact same color, so there.  At least their hair wasn't bright orange and spiky, like Claire's.  Sara's other friend, Keiko, had perfectly straight black hair, but she was Japanese, like her dad and mom, Mr. and Mrs. Osato, who were the teachers at the karate dojo back home in the Highlands.

Mr. Davis's voice called out from underneath the verandah, where he was probably in the hammock.  He spent a lot of time in the hammock.  "I like your hair that way," he said as Mom and Aunt Cass came up the verandah stairs.  Mom smiled and waved, but Aunt Cass stopped walking and then very deliberately removed every single pin in her hair.  The pins clattered when they hit the wooden stairs.  She reached up with both hands and pulled down all the careful curls, then tossed her head to shake her hair loose.

Sara frowned in disappointment.  Aunt Cass had looked so elegant with her hair up, like the statue of the Greek goddess Aphrodite Sara had seen in the museum in New York.

Mr. Davis didn't seem disappointed.  "It looks good that way, too," he said, and Sara tilted her head a little as she examined the effect.  Aunt Cass looked kind of wild now, because the curls were still there, only all messy.  It was pretty, though.  But then Aunt Cass started braiding her hair tight at the back of her head, and Mom made a funny choked sound.  Sara didn't like Aunt Cass's hair that way at all.  It made her ears stick out.

"I suppose if I tell you I like your hair long, you'd get a pair of scissors," Mr. Davis said, and he didn't sound happy now.  "And if I tell you I like your hair short, you'd shave your head."

Aunt Cass finished the braid and flipped it over her shoulder so that it hung down her back.  "I don't live my life to make you happy, Methos," she told him, cold and stern.  "Not anymore."

Sara tried to remember Mr. Davis's first name.  Benjamin, wasn't it?  Perhaps Methos was his middle name.  It sounded weird, almost Greek.  And why had Aunt Cass tried to make Mr. Davis happy?  When?

Mr. Davis came out from the verandah, so that Sara could see the back of his head and his shoulders.  The collar of his green shirt was a little crooked on the right side, and his hair was kind of mud-brown, too, a light-colored mud with a little bit of sand.  It was good to know she wasn't the only mud-hair person in the world.

"Fine," Mr. Davis told Aunt Cass, really sarcastic, even more sarcastic than Dad could be.  Or perhaps Mr. Davis was just angry.  "I don't want you to," Mr. Davis continued.  "Not any more, and not ever again."  He walked right up to Aunt Cass where she was standing on the stairs, but she didn't move back from him at all.  They stood there glaring, like they were about to hit each other, until he said, more softly now, "I just think it's a damn shame that you live your life making yourself miserable."

Aunt Cass didn't say anything, but after a minute she turned around real fast and walked away, out to the back of the house.  Sara thought about going after her, but Mr. Davis and Mom were starting to talk again, and Sara wanted to hear what they had to say.

Mr. Davis disappeared under the verandah, probably back to the hammock, and Mom went under the verandah too.  Sara crawled silently to the railing that went around her verandah, so she could lean over the edge a little and hear their voices better.  She still couldn't see anything, though; the eaves were in her way.  She leaned over a little bit more, then pulled back and shoved her hand in her mouth to keep from giggling, because she really *was* eavesdropping now.

"Cassandra's not usually like that," Mom said, coming to Aunt Cass's defense, and it was true.  Sara hadn't ever seen Aunt Cass so ... prickly.  "Not anymore."

"I just bring out the worst in her, mm?" Mr. Davis replied.

"Yes, I'd say you do," Mom told him.  "Just the sight of you brings up bad memories for her."

Sara lifted her eyebrows in surprise.  Aunt Cass had told Sara about the bad memories, but Sara had thought that all the people who had hurt Aunt Cass were dead or far away.  Yet here was Mr. Davis, right beneath Sara's feet, and Aunt Cass sure didn't seem to like him.

Mr. Davis muttered something which Sara couldn't hear, then said, "No matter what I say, she gets angry."

"She's still in therapy, Methos," Mom said.

Sara knew about that, too.  She'd asked Aunt Cass about it two years ago, when Dad had said Sara couldn't go stay with Aunt Cass until the therapy was all done.
 

=====

"A therapist is a special kind of doctor, who helps you heal your feelings, instead of healing your body," Aunt Cass explained as she and Sara curried Hwin in the stables.  Aunt Cass brushed Hwin's shoulder a couple of times before she went on.  "Some bad things happened to me a long time ago, and I was ... very angry with the people who had hurt me.  But sometimes, I was so angry that I got angry with people who hadn't hurt me at all."

"You mean like when I get mad at my teacher and I yell at Colin instead, just because he's there, and I'm not supposed to yell at my teacher, but I can yell at my brother?"

"Yes," Aunt Cass agreed.  "Just like that.  Before you were born, I got angry with your father and yelled at him.  I even hit him a couple of times."

"You did?" Sara asked, stopping with the currycomb in her hand to look at Aunt Cass in amazement and new respect.  Sara had never seen anybody dare to hit Dad.  Even when Mom got mad, she just yelled or got really quiet and stern.

"I did," Aunt Cass said, really quiet and stern.  Then she smiled again, the warm smile Sara was used to seeing, only not happy now.  "Anyway, I used to lose my temper a lot, and your father doesn't want me to lose my temper around you.  It's not you, Sara," Aunt Cass said, with that same sad smile, and she went back to brushing.  "It's me."

"What happened to the people who hurt you?"

"Gone.  Long ago.  It's over."  She tossed her hair back from her face, and then she and Sara both laughed when Hwin tossed her head the same way and added a loud horsey, "Pppbbbbb."  Sara and Aunt Cass finished brushing Hwin, and then brushed the light brown horsehair off their clothes as best they could and put away the currycombs.

"How long will you be in therapy?" Sara asked as they were walking back to the house, holding hands.  Aunt Cass squeezed her hand one-two-three, and Sara squeezed back one-two, one-two, their own special game.

"Not too much longer, I think.  A few years."

"A few years?" Sara repeated, shocked.  "That's a long time!"

Aunt Cass started laughing.  "Not for me, little one.  Not for me."

=====
 

And now it had been a few years, and Aunt Cass *still* wasn't done, even though she said she only went once in a while now, perhaps two or three times a year.  Even so, it sounded worse than having to get through years and years and years of school.  Sara didn't ever want to have to do therapy.  Aunt Cass said she even had homework!

"Cassandra almost didn't come to the wedding because she knew you would be here," Mom said from the verandah below.

Sara nodded, finally understanding why Aunt Cass hadn't seemed very excited about the wedding, even with her gorgeous new dress.  Mom and Aunt Cass had gone shopping in Paris last month, and they would both look like movie stars at the wedding tonight.  Sara had a new dress, too, made of burgundy and black velvet, very grown-up.  She was even going to wear pantyhose, and Mom was going to loan her a gold necklace.  Colin had a new suit and tie, which he didn't care about at all.  Sara wouldn't have cared about a new tie, either.  Boys' clothes were boring, even the dress-up ones.

"Still in therapy?" Mr. Davis-Methos repeated.  "After ten years?"  He hmphed.  "And she was only with me for one."

"You weren't the only one, Methos," Mom told him sharply.  "Just the first."

"And the last left alive," he murmured.

"Yes," Mom agreed.  "The only one left to be a focus for her anger.  I think, eventually, she'll stop overreacting to you; she just needs more time."  There was a creak and a squeak from below, as if one of them had stood up; then Mom added, "And time is something you Immortals have plenty of."

And just what, Sara wondered, did Mom mean by that?  Sara heard Mom's footsteps go in the house, and Sara quietly scootched off the verandah and down the skinny staircase at the back of the house to find Aunt Cass.  Outside, a big grassy field sloped away from the house, down to the stream at the bottom of the hill, and a row of tall dark pines stood like a wall between the house and the road.  The flower garden was still all mud and tiny sprouts with paper nametags taped to sticks, and the skinny little leaves on the branches of the huge totara tree down near the stream were light green.  Paula said the tree was a special golden totara, and it turned bright yellow in the autumn, even though it looked kind of like an evergreen.  Back home in the Highlands, it was already autumn, but here in New Zealand it was spring.  Sara knew why that happened, but it was still weird to see.

Aunt Cass was near the totara tree, of course, because Aunt Cass liked trees.  She was leaning with her forehead and both hands against the tree trunk, and her back was to the house.  Her hair was loose again, but still messy, kind of like the tree bark, which was also reddish-brown and ruffly.  Sara headed across the grass, but she stopped when Aunt Cass jerked her head up and looked at her with white wild eyes, her face set into a desperate frozen fierceness that Sara had never seen before and never wanted to see again.

Sara swallowed hard and backed away, but Aunt Cass shook herself and tossed her long mane of hair and called to Sara, smiling.  Sara stopped again, but she didn't go any closer, because that smile wasn't real.  "It's all right, Sara," Aunt Cass said, coming away from the tree, still with that pasted-on smile.  "I'm all right."

Sara shook her head slowly.  "Don't lie," she said, half-pleading and half-demanding.  "You said you'd never lie to me."

Then Aunt Cass stopped, completely, with one foot in the air and her mouth a little open, like she'd been caught in a tractor beam or frozen by a magic spell, and the smile disappeared.  "No lies," she agreed finally, and she went back to the totara and sat down, staring at the ground.  After a minute, Sara joined her, but she didn't sit too close.

"Your father told me the same thing once," Aunt Cass said, scratching in the dirt with a twig.  "No more lies."

"You lied to my dad?" Sara said in surprise.

"Oh, yes," Aunt Cass admitted.  "A lot."

Sara had tried it only once.  Colin had tried it twice, but he could be kind of stupid sometimes.  "Dad doesn't like that," Sara said.

Aunt Cass broke the twig in half, and then in half again.  "I know."

"So, why did you?"

Aunt Cass tried fitting the edges of the twigs back together, mashing the frayed parts flat and twisting them around.  "When I started, it seemed the easiest way.  But it just got harder, later on."

"Yeah," Sara agreed, remembering when she was eight and she had agreed to be Keiko's first-best-friend.  Except Claire was still really Sara's first-best-friend.  Then Keiko and Claire started being friends, and Sara was afraid that Keiko and Claire would talk to each other about who *their* first-best-friends were.  So then, Sara had told both Keiko and Claire that she was still their best-friend, only not either first or second.  But it had all ended up with Keiko and Claire being first-best-friends with each other, and for a while Sara didn't have any first-best-friends left at all.  Sara picked up a twig of her own and started drawing short straight lines in the dirt.  "It gets complicated."

"Mmm-mm," Aunt Cass agreed, finally looking at Sara with a little smile.  Sara felt better now, because this was the Aunt Cass she recognized, and this smile was real, even if it was more sad than happy.  "And sometimes," Aunt Cass went on, "I told myself it wasn't really lying, it was just pretending."

"But everybody pretends."

"Yes.  But it's still lying.  And it's even worse, because you're lying to yourself."  Aunt Cass dropped the broken twig pieces on the ground and wiped her hands off on her trousers, leaving pale green smears on the beige cloth.  "The scary part of that is, after you've been pretending for a long time, you don't know what you really want, and you can't even remember who you really are."

Sara thought about that as she pushed the four little twig pieces around with the end of her longer twig.  What should she have said when Claire had showed her the horrendously ugly plastic doll she'd gotten for her birthday and asked Sara if it wasn't just beautiful and didn't she want to play with it?  Sara had pretended to have fun dressing and undressing the doll and brushing the doll's hair, because she had wanted to be nice and not hurt Claire's feelings, but it had been really boring.  Sara had wasted an entire afternoon and she had left Claire's house feeling angry and cranky, and she hadn't been at all nice to Claire the next day at school.

Perhaps next time, she would just tell Claire she didn't feel like playing with dolls.  Sara stopped pushing the twigs around aimlessly and instead set two of them together.  Then she waited for Aunt Cass to take her turn.  Aunt Cass laid a longer twig next to the two little ones, and together they silently built a pattern, a circle this time, simple and complete.  Aunt Cass set the last twig and sat back on her heels.

Sara added a nut in the center, a final touch, then looked up at Aunt Cass.  "When did you try to make Mr. Davis happy?"

"Listening in?" Aunt Cass asked, but it wasn't a question, and she wasn't angry.  "A long time ago."  She had laid her hands flat on the tops of her thighs, and her fingers weren't moving at all.  She shrugged.  "I thought I loved him."

"He was your boyfriend?" Sara asked, surprised again.

Aunt Cass opened her mouth and shut it then finally said, "You could call it that."  She stood abruptly, her foot knocking the circle of twigs awry.  "I need to go running now, Sara.  We can talk more later."

Sara stood and started to answer, but Aunt Cass was already walking away.  She paused to yank her shoes off and toss them aside; then she starting running barefoot, across the yard and down the road, running as fast as she could go.  Sara waited until Aunt Cass was out of sight.  Then Sara ran back to the house, wishing she could run back in time as well.

~~~~~

"How old are you, Aunt Cass?" Sara had asked the year before last, when they had been out riding horses in the long summer twilight of the Highlands.

"Sometimes, Sara, I feel positively ancient," Aunt Cass had answered cheerfully.  "And sometimes, I feel very young--even as young as you.  Race you back to the barn!" she had challenged suddenly and taken off.

Sara had immediately urged Hwin into the race, a race that left both Aunt Cass and Sara laughing and breathless, and both their horses well-spent.  They had talked as they unsaddled their horses and watered them, but Sara had forgotten to ask her question again.

"I will never lie to you," Aunt Cass had promised Sara years ago, and until today Aunt Cass had always kept that promise, but sometimes she changed the subject, and sometimes she didn't answer at all.

Sara needed answers now.  She knocked on the door to her parents' bedroom, and Mom called, "Come in!" so Sara stepped inside.  Mom was reading on the high quilt-covered bed, her legs stretched out before her, a pillow propped up behind her back.  The dress she was going to wear for the wedding was hanging on the closet door, and the breeze from the open windows fluttered the blue silk, making ripples and sometimes big waves.

"Come on up," Mom invited, with a pat beside her on the bed, but Sara shook her head and stayed standing, her finger idly tracing the flowers carved into the wooden drawer of the washstand.  Her hand stopped at the end of a stem, then turned around and went back the other way.

"How old were you when you got married?" Sara asked.

"Thirty-two."

"And how old is Aunt Susan?"

"Thirty-three, I think, and this is her second marriage.  Your Aunt Rachel was twenty-two, and my mom was twenty-four.  Are you planning your own wedding, Sara?"

Sara ignored the question and started to pleat the edge of the pillowcase into a fan.  "Has Aunt Cass ever been married?"

Mom took off her reading glasses and shut the book.  "Yes, a while ago, but her husband died.  I thought she'd told you that?"

She had, but ... "Aunt Cass was really young when she got married, right?" Sara asked, because she'd known Aunt Cass all her life, and Aunt Cass hadn't been married within the last ten years, and if Mr. Methos-Davis had been her boyfriend, then when ...?

"You could say that," her mother agreed, but that wasn't really an answer, not any more now than when Aunt Cass had said it outside.

"How old is Mr. Davis?"

Her mother opened her mouth then shut it and shrugged.  "I don't know.  He looks to be about the same age as your Uncle Duncan, doesn't he?"

Sara couldn't really answer that.  All grown-ups looked like grown-ups, unless they were really old like Aunt Rachel or Paula and Tommy's grandparents, with white hair and wrinkles.  But perhaps not everybody got white hair and wrinkles.  Immortal meant never-dying, Sara knew that, just like the Greek gods and goddesses, and those Immortals hadn't aged.  Perhaps this kind of Immortal didn't age, either.  And perhaps Aunt Cass and this Mr. Methos guy weren't the only Immortals Sara knew.

Sara didn't want to ask how old Uncle Dunc was, and she really didn't want to ask about Dad.  She nodded and started to leave, but stopped at the door when her mother called her name, sounding worried.  "Just curious, Mom," Sara explained with a not-lying lie.  "Paula and I were talking about how old we would be when we got married."  Her mother nodded, and they gave each other little relieved smiles, both of them keeping private things they didn't want to share.

And that wasn't lying, not really, was it?

~~~~~

Downstairs, the other kids were still watching Star Wars in the living room, and Uncle Dunc and John were in the dining room talking about sheep.  Sara found her dad reading in the long narrow room everybody called the library, even though it was really just a hallway with books along one wall and windows along the other, and two chairs stuck at one end.  Mr. Methos was there, too, with his feet propped up on a stool and a paperback in his hands, as if nothing had happened between him and Aunt Cass at all.

Both men looked up and smiled when she came in the room, but Sara smiled back only at Dad.  She stopped when the bookshelves did, and there she stood her ground, about a meter away from Mr. Methos.  She wasn't worried about keeping things private now, because Sara knew that Dad knew all about Aunt Cass, and Sara wanted some answers, and she didn't want to hear any more lies.  "Are you one of the men who hurt Aunt Cass?" she asked him right out.

Mr. Methos smiled, or he tried to smile.  His lips curved up and his eyes crinkled, but it was more because they were tightened in pain, than because he was happy or amused.  Just like Aunt Cass's smile.  "And why do you ask that?" he said.

"She doesn't like you," Sara said, not wanting to admit that she'd been listening in on them earlier this afternoon, and besides, Aunt Cass really *didn't* like Mr. Methos, and so Sara still hadn't told a lie.

"She doesn't know me," Mr. Methos told Sara, and now his smile was sad.

"Nobody knows you," Dad said suddenly from the big recliner chair, and when Sara turned to look at him, he beckoned to her.  She went to him immediately, and he pulled her into his arms and then onto his lap.  Sara relaxed against his chest, with his arms tight around her and his chin almost touching her hair.  Her feet were all the way on the floor, and she realized suddenly that she hadn't sat on her dad's lap for ages.  The last time she remembered, her toes had just barely reached the ground.

From the safety of her father's arms, Sara kept watching Mr. Methos, but he didn't answer her question, and after a moment he stood and left the room.  Sara waited until she heard the slamming of the front screen door before she twisted around to look up at her dad.  "Is he, Dad?"

"What?" he asked, and she could hear the rumble of his voice against her ear and down through to her toes.

"One of the men who hurt Aunt Cass?"

He lifted her up a little and put her farther out on his knees, so she could look right into his eyes.  "Yes," he told her, serious and intent.  "He is."

"Then why is he here?"  Mr. Methos had been here for over a week, before Sara's family had arrived, and Sara had seen him and Uncle Dunc playing ping-pong outside in the yard a couple of times, having a really good time.  Even Dad seemed to like Mr. Methos; Sara had heard them laughing in the kitchen yesterday, when they had been planning the party for Uncle Dunc.  Sara had liked Mr. Methos, too.  She had thought he was neat, teaching them how to do flips and helping Tommy do somersaults.  But now ...  "Why is he Uncle Dunc's friend?"

Dad gave half a grumble and half a sigh.  "It was a long time ago, Sara.  He told Cassandra he was sorry, and he says he's changed."

"How long ago?" Sara asked, needing to know.  "Fifteen years?  Twenty?"

Dad shrugged a little, his shoulders and his eyebrows all moving quickly up and then down.  "I'm not sure exactly."

Sara knew Dad would never let her get away with that kind of not-lying lie, and Sara wasn't going to let him get away with it, either, not now.  "More than twenty?"  He didn't answer, so Sara persisted.  "Or more than a hundred?

"Sara--"

"More than a thousand?"

He shook his head and started to look away, and Sara asked him right out, "How old are you, Daddy?"  She waited, hardly daring to breathe.  Then he did look at her, but he didn't say anything at all, and his eyes were suddenly very sad, and very, very old.

Sara stared at her father for a horribly long time, an aching second of terribleness, because neither of them could hide anything anymore.  She slid off his knees and started for the door, angrily blinking back unwanted tears, but he caught her by the arm.  "Let me go!" she said fiercely and hit him hard with her other hand, but he ignored both her words and her blow, and he gently pulled her onto his lap, murmuring her name over and over again as he rocked her in his arms, those arms that had felt so safe and so right, just a little while ago.

But they still were, weren't they?  And he was still her father, and he loved her and she loved him, and that was the truth, and that was what mattered most of all.  Sara hiccuped and sniffled and burrowed her face into his shoulder with her eyes closed, wishing she could go back in time and be his little girl, when she could sit in his lap all the way.  She didn't fit anymore.

"Oh, Sara," her daddy said again, very softly, and he tried to brush her hair away from her cheek, but it was all wet and sticky with tears, and so he lifted it strand by strand and tucked it behind her ear.  His hand started stroking her head, little feather touches at the crown.  "Your mother and I were going to tell you, you and Colin both, when you were older," he said, and his voice was deep and rumbly against her ear and down into her toes, just like it had been before.  "Did Cassandra say something?"

"No," Sara said, thinking back to the conversations she and Aunt Cass had had.  "She's always been really careful.  I was upstairs on the verandah where nobody could see me, and I overheard Mom and him talking."

"Like mother, like daughter," Dad said with a sigh, which didn't make any sense, but then he added, "Go on," so Sara did.

"Mom called Mr. Methos an Immortal," Sara explained, and she lifted her head in surprise when her dad's chest started shaking and he laughed aloud.

"Mr. Methos," Dad repeated, still chuckling, and he and Sara shared a grin, just like always.

Just like before.  But-- "How old are you, Daddy?" Sara asked again, and when he finally answered her, nothing was like it had been before.  "Four hundred eighty-eight?" she repeated slowly, trying to do the subtraction in her head.  It was two thousand and six now, so six take away eight was really sixteen minus eight and that was eight, too, and then add the one, so that meant it was nine from zero, which was really a ten, so that left one, and then four from zero was ... except it was supposed to be five from zero, wasn't it? Or perhaps ... Wait, shouldn't it have been eight from the zero earlier?

Sara swallowed hard and blinked back more tears, because she wasn't even sure how to subtract anymore, and she'd learned that a whole year ago, and now here she was almost ten years old and she couldn't even do basic arithmetic anymore and she hated being stupid and--

"I was born in 1518," Dad told her suddenly, and Sara nodded in limp relief and closed her eyes.  But that didn't help very much, because knights in armor and ladies-in-waiting paraded through her mind.

"Who was the king then?" she asked, concentrating on the feel of the scratchy pattern of Dad's shirt against the dampness of her cheek.  "James IV?"

"James V," Dad corrected.  "He took the throne five years before I was born.  Henry VIII was King of England."

"Oh."  Sara kept her eyes closed, now seeing white swans adrift on a moat, while the beheaded ghost of Anne Boleyn floated in and out of the castle windows.  Then an even scarier thought came into her head.  "Mommy isn't ... isn't like--?"

"No," he broke in.

"And John?"

"No," Dad said again, quick and definite again, and then he answered the question that Sara hadn't even wanted to think of, because either way it was answered, she lost.  But-- "And not you," Dad said.  "Not Colin, and not your Aunt Rachel."  Sara nodded, testing that out slowly, like your tongue tested out a new filling after the dentist was finally done.  It felt weird at first, but you got used to it, and then it was normal and you forgot it was even there.  "So, only you and Uncle Dunc ...?" Sara asked, probing a little more and opening her eyes.

"Right."

"How old is he?

"About seventy-five years younger than I am."

Well, Sara had always known her dad was older than her uncle.  But-- "Is he really your brother?"

"We were both born of the clan MacLeod," Dad explained, and that was all he needed to say.  Sara had grown up in the Highlands.  She knew what that meant now, and she knew what it used to mean way back when.

"And Aunt Cass?" Sara asked next.

Dad cleared his throat and shrugged again, and Sara lifted her head to look at him  "I'm not sure," he told her, except this time it wasn't a lie.  "But then, neither is she.  Over three thousand."

Sara opened her mouth to say "oh" again, but nothing came out.  Positively ancient, Aunt Cass had said, and that was really and truly not a lie.

"And 'Mr. Methos' is about five thousand," Dad said next.

"Like the pyramids?" she asked, her voice squeaking higher, and suddenly she didn't believe any of this could possibly be true.

"More like the Sphinx," Dad replied dryly.

"You don't like him, either," Sara stated.

"He's likeable, but I don't trust him," her father said.  "And neither should you."  Sara nodded, knowing that already.  Dad glanced at his watch and said, "It's almost time to start getting ready for the wedding.  Are you OK now?"

"Sure," Sara said, and she was only pretending a little.

But Dad knew.  He pulled her to him, and his arms were safe and strong.  "We'll talk more later; I promise.  But don't tell Colin, not today.  There's too much going on.  Tomorrow, OK?"

"OK, Dad," she said, because tomorrow wasn't that far away.

She kissed his cheek before she slid off his lap, and he smiled at her with his eyes all crinkly at the edges, the way she remembered from for-always and for-ever, and he took her hands in his own.  "Hey, Princess," he named her, and he hadn't called her that for a while, but then he lifted her hands and kissed them, just like from the stories of olden days, and he'd never done that before at all.  "I love you, Sara."

"I love you, too, Daddy," she said, and it was fiercely and forever true.
 
 

They stood around in the garden waiting for the wedding to start, but just Mom and Colin and Aunt Cass and Sara, since John was one of the ushers and was busy handing out programs, and Dad was the best man and was off with Uncle Dunc near the trees.  Aunt Rachel was already sitting down in the very front row, because she didn't like to stand up for very long after her knee replacement surgery two months ago.

Mr. Methos was waiting, too, all dressed up in a thin-striped suit of gray with shiny black shoes, standing next to a gray stone statue that didn't look like anything, as far as Sara could tell.  Parts were smooth and parts were rough, and one side had something that looked like a pair of really droopy breasts carved on it.  The top looked like a shrunken head, all squooshed out to one side.  Sara liked statues of real people better.

"Are you here for the bride or groom?" a lady in a big pink hat asked Mr. Methos.

Sara distinctly heard Aunt Cass murmur, "Oh, groom, definitely," but Mr. Methos didn't seem to hear.

"Groom," Mr. Methos told the lady in the hat.  "We've known each other for years."

Lots and lots of years, Sara thought.  Lots and lots and lots.  Then some drumming started, soft and low, and people started finding places to sit.  John came over and escorted Mom to the seat next to Aunt Rachel, and Sara and Colin trailed behind.  Sara was proud of her big brother; he looked so tall and grown-up, especially with his new mustache, which was thick and dark and a little curly, just like his hair.  Sara hardly ever got to see John anymore, not since he'd left Scotland for graduate school in Colorado last year, and she missed him--a lot.  She'd been hoping to show him the new katas she'd learned, perhaps go for a hike in Orari Gorge (Uncle Dunc had taken all the kids there four days ago, and they'd had a great time) or even go kayaking on the Rangitata River, because Sara had never been kayaking, and John had learned how when he'd lived with Uncle Duncan five years ago.  But yesterday John's plane had been late, and then he'd taken a nap because of jet-lag, and last night he'd been busy with the rehearsal and the bachelor party, and this morning he'd wasted time sleeping again, and now there was the wedding.  Maybe tomorrow would be better.

Sara squirmed around in her seat to watch everybody else as they sat down.  Mr. Methos took a chair in the row behind them, but all the way on the other side, at the edge instead of the middle aisle. The lady with the pink hat sat down on the bride's side.  Aunt Cass came next, looking absolutely gorgeous in a slinky shimmery green gown.  She had left her hair hanging long and free, all the way down her back.  The curls were still there, making quite a glorious profusion, as Claire liked to say.

Aunt Cass walked right to the row where Mr. Methos was sitting, and Sara held her breath, wondering what those two would do.  Mom was watching, too.  But Mr. Methos only gave Aunt Cass a little nod of his head, and Aunt Cass only nodded back and sat down four chairs away from him.  Then they stared straight ahead, ignoring each other completely.

Sara sat back, relieved--and disappointed.  Mom let out a little sigh and adjusted the folds of her skirt.  Colin hadn't even noticed--not that there had been anything *to* notice.  He was sitting on the other side of Mom, staring at the ocean and moodily flipping the end of his tie up and down.  Sara brushed at the black velvet part of her skirt, making little patterns by rubbing the fabric the wrong way, and wondering how long it would be until they got to eat.

A pretty black-haired woman in a strapless red dress even slinkier than Aunt Cass's dress was the last to come in, and she took the chair right in front of Mr. Methos, giving him a little tap on the shoulder before she sat down.  Then the music finally started and the wedding got underway.  It was a lot like the other three weddings Sara had been to, except outside instead of inside, and Uncle Dunc was definitely the most handsome groom she'd ever seen.  Dad looked really good, too, in a sharp black tuxedo.  Aunt Susan's dress was white, of course, all lace and satin, with a long train that trailed behind her on the long white carpet that had been laid on the stone walkway between the grassy lawns.  Her curls were bright copper-red, pinned up under a veil with white roses in her hair.  She was the prettiest bride Sara had ever seen, too.  Aunt Cass and Mr. Methos seemed kind of bored by it all, but then they'd probably been to hundreds of weddings.  Thousands.

Perhaps they'd even been married to each other once.

Mom sniffled a little bit when Uncle Dunc and Aunt Susan were exchanging their vows and rings.  Dad smiled at Mom from his place at the front, and Colin rolled his eyes at Sara, and she rolled her eyes back at him, understanding him completely.  All that stuff about loving forever until death did them part, and worshipping the other person "with my body" sounded pretty silly.  But Aunt Cass was looking at Mr. Methos and he was looking back at her, and neither one of them seemed angry now.  They even seemed a little sad.  Mr. Methos was the first to look away.  He picked up the program and started reading it, even though it was pretty obvious what was going to happen next.

The wedding didn't take too much longer, but then they had to take pictures, first with the groom's family and then with the bride's.  Then all the ushers, all the bridesmaids, all the men, all the women, all the parents, all the children, some of the children, some of the parents, only the bride, only the groom, the bride and the groom together, the bride and the groom with their friends ... it went on and on and on.

"When are we going to eat?" Colin asked loudly, and everybody laughed, but nobody answered.  Sara wandered away from the garden and sat on some stone steps that led down to a sunken garden that probably would have roses in the summertime, but right now only had spiky branches with thorns.  She wrapped her arms around her legs and put her head down on her knees, not caring if she messed up her hair.  Besides, they'd taken her picture a couple of times today, and nobody cared if she was in any more.  Paula got to be in them, since she was the flower girl, but nobody needed Sara.  Colin came over and flopped down beside her, yanking on his tie.  "I'm starving," he announced to the world, even though nobody was around.  Everybody else was still taking pictures or had already left for the reception at the country club, where there was food.

"You're always starving," Sara answered shortly.

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked, and then he sat up with little furrowed lines of worry across his nose.  "You OK, Sara?"

"Just starving," she told him, because she couldn't tell him anything else, not yet, even though she wanted to.  Tomorrow, Dad had said.  She rolled her eyes at Colin, so he rolled his and they grinned.

"Climb a tree?" he suggested, but Sara shook her head and pointed to her dress.  "Geez," Colin said in sympathetic disgust, and he flopped back down again.  Sara lay down beside him, their arms just barely touching, and they stared up at the puffy white clouds in the sky.  "Same as in Scotland," he observed.

"Well, of course.  What did you expect?"

"I don't know.  The stars and the seasons are different down here; I thought the weather might be different, too.  Everything else is."

"Yeah," Sara agreed.  Everything was.

~~~~~

They ate, finally.  A few minutes after Colin found Sara, Mom rescued them and took them to a tea room.  "Shouldn't we be at the reception for dinner?" Sara asked.

"They won't be eating yet," she told them, reading the menu.  "Not until the bride and groom show up."

"Geez," Colin said in disgust, and he ordered a meat pie and a cream cake, with extra whipped cream.  Sara ordered the same, but with chips, too.  Mom had a cup of tea.

Once they had eaten, Sara felt better, and the reception at the country club turned out to be fun.  There were no other kids there, except two babies and one toddler who was tugging on the hand of a white-bearded man with a cane, so the four cousins (all-the-way cousins now) ran races up and down the great long ramps that went from the gardens to the indoor pool.  Sara kicked off her shoes and ripped big holes in the feet of her new pantyhose, but she didn't care.  Only grown-ups had to wear pantyhose.  Paula and she peeled their pantyhose all the way off and threw them away.  Then they beat the boys in every single race.  Tommy didn't like that, but Colin punched him lightly on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry about it, Tommy; they're both older than you.  And remember, one day you'll be taller than they are."

"And faster!" Tommy agreed, and he stuck out his tongue, and then the four of them were off and running again.  Sara was glad Uncle Dunc had picked a wife who had kids the right age and who weren't hopelessly boring.  He'd picked a nice wife, too.  Aunt Susan laughed a lot and had played Twister and crazy-eights with them during this last week, and Uncle Dunc said she liked to ride horses and knew how to ski.  So did her kids.

Dinner wasn't even served until nearly seven-thirty, and by then all of them were hungry again, so that was good--except for the olives on the salad.  Sara hated olives.  She gave all of hers to Colin, and he gave all of his anchovies to her.  Then there was the cutting of the cake, and the tossing of the garter and the bouquet.  Sara and Paula had to watch the bouquet-tossing part, because their moms had said they weren't old enough to try to catch it yet.  Paula didn't like that, but Sara didn't care.  She had decided she would never get married.

Aunt Cass wasn't trying to catch the bouquet, either.  She and Mr. Methos were watching from the inside balcony on the second floor.  Sara could see that they were talking, but she couldn't hear any of the words.  They didn't seem mad, but they weren't smiling, either.  When the dancing started again, Mr. Methos came down the stairs and Aunt Cass went outside to the gardens.  Sara followed her.

"There you are!" Aunt Cass said, smiling as she came down off her toes from a full-body stretch.  The cool night breeze ruffled the glorious curls of her hair and swirled her dress around her ankles and wrists, flaring the tiny pleats.  Sara could smell the crisp green growing smell from the flower beds nearby, and the closer warmer scent of lavender from Aunt Cass's perfume.  "Do you want to talk now?" Aunt Cass offered.  "It was so busy this afternoon, getting ready, and we didn't see each other."

Sara hadn't wanted to see Aunt Cass, not then.  She'd needed time to think.  So she had stayed in the bathroom as much as she could, and she had gone upstairs when she heard Aunt Cass come down, and she gone downstairs when she had heard Aunt Cass come up.  Sara had stayed away from Colin, too, because it was too hard to see him and not to tell.

"I didn't want to talk to you then," Sara told her, not lying and not pretending, not with Aunt Cass, because that was only fair.  Aunt Cass nodded, her face calm, but her eyes were quiet, even a little hurt, so Sara hurriedly explained, "I wasn't ready."

Aunt Cass nodded again, more satisfied this time, and now her eyes looked proud.  "Thank you for letting me know."  Aunt Cass started walking, and Sara went along.  "I know it was--I know *I* was frightening to you, Sara," Aunt Cass said.  She ducked under a low-hanging branch from one of the trees that lined the path on either side and made a tunnel of branches overhead.  "That was the anger in me that your father didn't want you to see."  She added wryly, and honestly, "Some of the anger.  It used to be worse."

"Because of the men who hurt you?  Like Mr. Davis?" Sara asked, and when Aunt Cass nodded, Sara suddenly remembered something else she'd overheard, long ago.  "Was one of those mean people named Roland?"

Aunt Cass stopped walking then sat down on a nearby wooden bench, looking just like Sara's teacher, Mrs. MacCormick, did when she thought somebody was cheating on a spelling test.  "And where did you hear that name?" Aunt Cass said, her hands lying flat on top of her thighs.

"When I was little, about four, after Dad spanked me because I rode my tricycle too far out on the driveway."   Sara had never forgotten that day.

=====

After Daddy had spanked her, Sara went and hid under the bush in the garden, and she stayed there for a long time, crying, until Mommy finally came and held her tight and asked her why.  Sara told her, between gulps and sobs, and when Sara wasn't crying anymore, Mommy went in the house.

Sara followed, because she wasn't ready to be alone.  Mommy went into the study where Daddy was and shut the door, so Sara huddled on the floor in the dusty corner behind the door.  She leaned her head against the wall and squatted on her feet instead of sitting down, because her bottom still hurt.

"Sara told me you spanked her today," Mommy said, her voice a little muffled through the wall.

"Oh, yeah," Daddy answered.  "She knows she's not supposed to take her tricycle that close to the road.  I've told her that before, and I'm tired of telling her things over and over again."

Sara blinked really hard, but the tears came hot and prickly, rolling down against her nose and dripping onto her knees.  Mommy said next, "She said she told you she was sorry, and you kept spanking her."

Sara sniffled and wiped away her tears.  She had cried earlier, too, while she was telling Daddy that she hadn't meant to go too far on her tricycle, but she'd just gotten going fast down the hill, and it was a mistake, and she was sorry, and she wouldn't do it again, but Daddy hadn't listened.  His face had been all closed and scary, and when she'd tried to run away, he'd grabbed her and told her to stand still because she couldn't get away with things by running away from things, and then he had hit her again.  And when she had tried to hit Daddy to make him let go, he had smacked her even harder and told her she wasn't allowed to hit back, and that was Just Not Fair.  She and Colin weren't allowed to hit each other.  Perhaps the rules were different for big people.

But did that mean she could hit little kids when they were doing something they shouldn't?  She was bigger than they were, and she knew more than they did.

Daddy said to Mommy, "Sara needs to understand how dangerous that is, Alex.  She could have been killed."

But she did understand!  She'd just gone too far, for a little while, because of the hill.  She would have turned around if she'd realized.

"Yes, you're right," Mommy agreed.  "That is dangerous.  Do you think maybe Sara is too young to have a tricycle?"

Sara held her breath, hoping they wouldn't take her tricycle away.  She loved her tricycle, with its shiny silver handlebars and bright red paint and sparkly ribbons she had woven through the spokes.  Colin's tricycle was bright blue, and they had races on the driveway everyday.

"Yeah," Daddy said, and Sara didn't bother to wipe away her tears anymore, just let them splash.  A spanking *and* losing her tricycle?  That was Just Not Fair, either.  "I'll talk to her," Daddy said, and Sara froze right where she was, hoping he wouldn't come looking for her.  She didn't want to talk to Daddy, not now, not ever.  He was mean.

"Maybe you should have thought of talking to her before you hit her," Mommy suggested, real quiet and stern.

"Jesus, Alex!" Daddy swore, and Sara curled herself into a little ball, because now she had made Daddy get angry with Mommy, too.  But Daddy wouldn't hit Mommy when he was mad.  Would he?  Jamie from the playgroup said his daddy hit his mommy all the time, and both his mommy and his daddy spanked him.  Did big people hit each other, too?

"I didn't 'hit' her.  It was just a spanking, maybe five or six swats on the backside," Daddy said, his voice cold and scary now, just the way it had been earlier in the garage.  "Don't make such a big deal out of it."

"It felt like hitting to Sara, and it was a big deal to her."

"I wanted it to be a big deal to her," Daddy said.  "She needs to learn."

"Yes, she does need to learn," Mommy agreed again, "but is that the best way to teach her?"

"Worked on me," Daddy said, and even though Sara couldn't see him, she knew he was shrugging one shoulder and lifting one eyebrow.

"Do you do everything the way you did when you were young, Connor?" Mommy asked, and Sara knew without seeing that both of Mommy's eyebrows were lifted.  Daddy didn't answer the question, and Mommy said, "You were worried about Sara, weren't you?"

"Damn right I was worried about her!" Daddy said, swearing again.

"And you were angry with her for scaring you that way."

"Yeah.  A little," Daddy agreed, and Sara was surprised, because Daddy had said he *wasn't* angry after he was all done, and he had never ever said he was scared.  She hadn't known her daddy *could* get scared.

After he was done spanking her, Daddy had kissed her and hugged her, and he looked just like he usually did when he kissed her goodnight or good morning, with his eyes kind of crinkly on the edges and his mouth smiling, and he had said it was all over now and they wouldn't talk about it anymore, and that he wasn't angry and he loved her very much and she was still his special little girl.  Sara had nodded, glad to have her real daddy back again, but she hadn't understood how you could hit somebody when you weren't angry.

"Did you tell Sara why you were angry with her?" Mommy asked, and Sara tried to figure all of this out.  Since Daddy said that he *had* been angry with her, did that mean she was allowed to be angry with him, too?

A tiny spider in the corner behind the door started spinning out a line of spider-silk for its web, and Sara watched, glad not to have to think so hard anymore.  Perhaps it was the same kind of spider Robert the Bruce had watched in the cave.  It was too small to be a spider like Charlotte from *Charlotte's Web,* because Charlotte had been as big as a gum drop.

"I nearly ran over John once," Daddy said to Mommy.  "I almost killed him, Alex.  We don't get second chances with the kids."

"No, we don't."  Mommy went on, "Sara told me that after you had finished, you took her in your arms and told her that you loved her."

Sara had wanted to believe Daddy when he told her that, even though her bottom had still hurt and her arm was still sore where Daddy had grabbed her.  But she hadn't loved Daddy then, and she hadn't wanted him to hold her.  She had wanted to hit him.  But she couldn't hit him, and she couldn't hate her own daddy, because then she really would be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad girl, and then not even Mommy would love her.  Colin and John wouldn't love her, either, and neither would Aunt Cass or Mr. and Mrs. MacNabb.  No one would love her, and she would be all alone.  So, she had let Daddy hold her and she had cried in his arms, because even a mean daddy was better than no daddy at all.

Sara watched the spider start a new thread.  Robert the Bruce had decided to try again, and perhaps if Sara tried again and tried really hard, and if she did everything Daddy told her to, then he wouldn't have to hit her anymore, and then she wouldn't ever get angry with him, and so *that* would be good.

Daddy was quiet again, like he usually was, and Sara leaned up close against the wall, trying to hear, because Mommy was talking really softly, quiet and stern.  "Twenty years from now, when Sara has a black eye or a broken arm, someone will ask her why she's staying with a man who abuses her.  She will say it's because she knows that she shouldn't have made him angry, and it's her fault if he hits her, and she knows she's not allowed to fight back.  And besides, after he's done hitting her, he takes her in his arms and tells her that he loves her.  And she'll believe him, because that's exactly what her father said to her when she was a little girl."

"Alex--," Daddy said, in his growling kind of voice, but Mommy kept right on going.

"And that's exactly what Roland said to Cassandra."

Nobody said anything, until after a little bit Mommy asked Daddy, "Would you hit one of the horses to teach it how to obey?"

Sara was horrified, because you never, ever hit a horse.  It made them mean-tempered and vicious; that's what Daddy and Mr. MacNabb always said.

"No," Daddy said finally.

"Then don't hit our children," Mommy told him.  "Ever."

=====
 

And Dad hadn't ever hit Sara or Colin again.  Teachers and Mom and Mr. and Mrs. MacNabb usually went on and on and on with boring talks, and sometimes John yelled at them, or sometimes Colin and Sara yelled at each other, but Dad never yelled and his talks were always short.  Real short.  Sometimes he didn't say anything at all.  Perhaps long boring talks weren't so bad.

But any kind of talking wasn't as bad as getting hit.  "That's when I heard the name Roland," Sara told Aunt Cass, who was still waiting on the bench.  "So I wondered if he was one of the mean people who hurt you."

"Yes," Aunt Cass said finally.  "He was.  But he's dead now."

Her voice was utterly quiet, and Sara shivered, even though it wasn't cold.  "Did you kill him?" Sara dared to ask.

"No," Aunt Cass said, short and clipped but not really angry.  "Someone else killed him."

"Who?"

Aunt Cass shook her head.  "That's not my story to tell, Sara."

Dad might have been the one to kill Roland, because Dad and Aunt Cass were friends, and Dad had told Sara and Colin that he'd killed people when he was in an army, a long time ago.  A *really* long time ago, Sara realized now.  She'd ask him about that tomorrow, and about Roland, too.  "Did you kill some of the people who hurt you?" Sara persisted.

"Yes," Aunt Cass answered, her eyes glowing green.  They looked just like Catkin's eyes, when Sara's cat had caught that little mouse that wiggled and struggled in his jaws, before he finally killed it and chewed its head off.  "And after Roland," Aunt Cass said, "I decided I wasn't going to let anybody hurt me--or other people--that way again."

"In church they say we're not supposed to kill."

"Yes," Aunt Cass agreed.  "And that's a good rule.  But if someone were going to hurt you or Colin, do you think your parents would stand there and watch?  Or would they try to stop the person?"

"Stop them," Sara answered, without having to think about it at all.  "But killing them ..."  She stopped, wondering about good guys and bad guys, about Luke Skywalker killing all those soldiers of the Empire when he blew up the Deathstar, and how everybody cheered, and about William Wallace killing the English because the English were killing the Scots, and about Dad and Uncle Dunc being soldiers in a war.  "Killing seems different," Sara said finally.

"You're right.  It is different, and it's never an easy decision to make.  But sometimes, mean people won't stop being mean."

"Can't we put them in jail?"

"We could, and we usually do.  But jails don't always work forever, and sometimes mean people escape from jail and hurt--or kill--more nice people.  Or they come after you, or the people you love, again and again and again."

"That's what Roland did, isn't it?" Sara asked, because Aunt Cass's eyes had gone away, remembering.

Aunt Cass blinked a few times then nodded, looking sad.  "When he started, I didn't think I should kill anyone, and by the end, I was too afraid even to try."  Her eyes weren't far away now; they were back to being cat-eyes, a cat stalking her prey.  "I'm not afraid anymore.  Sometimes, Sara, nice people have to stop--or even kill--mean people, to protect those who can't protect themselves.  While you're young, your father and your mother and John will protect you, and so will I, but when you're older, you'll need to know how to protect yourself, and to protect your own children."

"I'm already learning, with karate," Sara said proudly, because Mr. Sensei Osato had said she could test for her brown belt in the spring.

"Good," Aunt Cass said, and it was.  Aunt Cass got up from the bench, ready to start walking again.

Sara didn't move.  "I wasn't staying away from you this afternoon because you looked so angry," Sara explained, and then added the rest of the truth.  "Well, not only that.  Dad told me what you are."  Aunt Cass turned around.  "And what he is," Sara finished, looking up at Aunt Cass's face, both hidden and revealed by the shifting shadows of the leaves.  "And Uncle Duncan.  And Methos."

"Ah," Aunt Cass said, and she sat right back down.  This time she patted the space beside her, and Sara sat nearby.  "Well," Aunt Cass began, taking a deep breath, "any questions?"

Hundreds.  Thousands.  Sara didn't know where to begin.  She picked up a dead leaf and started bending it back and forth.  "How does it work?" she finally asked, when the leaf crumbled in her hand.  "How does it begin?"

"We don't know," Aunt Cass told her, but then she told Sara other things: how there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Immortals all over the world; how they didn't know they were going to be Immortal until it happened; how they didn't know who their parents were; how they could never have children.

Sara had known that about Dad for a long time; Mom had told her and Colin ages ago, but a lot of men couldn't help start babies, and Sara hadn't thought about it anymore.  John was adopted, and she and Colin had been started by a sperm-donor, but even so their father was still Connor MacLeod.  "Then you can't be my aunt," Sara said to Cassandra, but then Sara had always known that, too.

"Just a friend of the family," Cassandra agreed.

"And 'Aunt' Rachel ...?"

"More like sister Rachel," Cassandra answered.  "Your father found her when she was a little girl, back during World War II.  He took care of her while she was growing up."

"Aunt Rachel?" Sara repeated dubiously, trying to picture Aunt Rachel as a little girl, with her hair in pigtails and chocolate smeared on her face, or sitting on Dad's lap and having him read her a story.  "But ... she's so old."  Old, with white hair and wrinkles and spots on her hands, with shaky legs and bad eyes and teeth that couldn't eat corn on the cob anymore, old the way Mom would be, someday.  And Sara, too.  Old the way all people got old.

Cassandra's lips tightened, and she sounded almost angry.  "No, Sara.  She isn't."

All people except Immortals.  "Not old compared to you," Sara said, and she knew she sounded angry, too.

"Yes," Cassandra said quietly then when Sara stood up to leave, Cassandra added, "We didn't ask for it, Sara, and we can't change it.  Immortals don't have a choice."

"Neither do I."

"Nobody does," Cassandra replied.  "And that's the only part of life that's ever going to be fair."

"Well, it doesn't sound fair to me," Sara told her, and she left Cassandra sitting there, in the darkness under the tree.  Sara went back to the fountain.  The round electric lights on the bottom of the pool wavered and shifted and looked all blurry, but that was just because of the water moving over them, Sara was sure.  And the dampness on her cheeks was from the spray of the fountain, when the water splashed against the wall.  She was almost ten, and ten was way too old to cry.

Cassandra appeared, walking along the path.  Her gown swirled and shifted about her, and it looked a little blurry, too.  Sara quickly wiped her face with the side of her fist, then sniffled and cleared her throat so the words could come out.  "I'm sorry," Sara muttered sullenly when Cassandra was still a few steps away, but she wasn't sorry, not really, and Cassandra knew it.

"You don't have to lie to me, Sara," Cassandra said, watching from afar. "I know you're angry.  Angry with me, with Duncan, with your mother," she said, her voice rippling softly, just like the waves in the water, and Sara felt some of her anger draining away.  It was too logical and obvious to be mad about, somehow.  "And you're angry with your father, too," Cassandra finished.

"You lied to me," Sara accused, the anger flooding back, because all of what Cassandra said was true.  "All of you lied."

"Yes," Cassandra admitted.  "We hid it from you.  We lied."

Sara hadn't expected to win so easily.  "But--"

"You're still very young, Sara, and it's a hard secret to keep.  You'll have to keep it the rest of your life.  From everyone."

"John knows, doesn't he?"

"Yes, and so does Rachel.  And Duncan told Susan, but not Paula or Tommy."

Sara turned away from Cassandra and stared at the water again.  All of them had lied to her.  Everybody in her family had lied, except for Colin, and now she was lying to him.  Even after he knew, she was going to have lie to everybody, for years, for the rest of her life--until she died.  "When did you find out?" Sara asked.  "Who told you?"

"No one told me," Cassandra answered, sitting on the concrete edge of the fountain and trailing her fingertips in the water, back and forth and to and fro.  "I died, and then I came back.  That's what happened to your father and to Duncan, too.  We had no idea what we were, or what it would be like."

"What is it like?" Sara asked.  "To be immortal?"  To never grow up, to never get old ... it would be like Peter Pan, or being an elf or a wizard, to have all the time in the world to go places and see things and ...

Cassandra's hand stopped moving.  "Lonely."  She stood and shook the droplets of water from her fingers.  "Very, very lonely."

"But--"

"There's no one left from my family, Sara, not for thousands of years," Cassandra explained.  "Most of the friends I've ever had are gone, and we have to hide what we are, almost all of the time."

Even going places and seeing things wasn't that much fun, not when you had to do it by yourself all of the time.  "I'm sorry," Sara said, and she was this time, sorry for Cassandra and for Dad and Uncle Duncan, and sorry even for Methos.

Cassandra smiled a little and reached out to touch Sara's cheek.  The fingertips were cool and wet, but gentle.  "As you said, Sara, life's not fair."  She sighed, but it was the ending kind of sigh that comes out quiet and little through the nose, instead of the exasperated sigh that comes out all gusty and noisy through the mouth.  "But no matter what, we keep trying."  She smiled then, a real smile.  "And sometimes, it's not so lonely, and sometimes, we have fun.  Right?"

"Right!" Sara agreed, and they started walking again, side by side.  After a minute Sara reached out and took Cassandra's hand, so she wouldn't have to be so lonely, at least for a while.  Cassandra squeezed her hand one-two-three, and Sara squeezed it back one-two, one-two, the way they always used to do, and so that was good.  As they walked through the tunnel of trees, Sara remembered what she'd been wondering about all afternoon.  "When were you with Methos?"

Cassandra made a little clicking sound with her teeth before she answered.  "Right after I became Immortal.  I lived with him for about a year."

"Did you get married to him?"

Some more of those little clicking sounds, and then each word came out short and sharp, like it was being bitten in two.  "I wasn't his wife, Sara.  I was his slave."

"Oh."  Sara walked on, trying to imagine that, remembering the videos of Spartacus and Ben Hur.  Did Cassandra have to wear chains?  Did Methos have a whip?  Or was it more like in the Arabian Nights, when Ali Baba's slave-girl liked the family who owned her, and ended up being freed?  Sara finally gave up imagining and asked, "What was it like?"

There were almost out of the trees before Cassandra answered.  "At first, it was horrible."

"That's when he hurt you?"

Cassandra let out a slow and careful breath before she answered.  "Yes.  If  I didn't do what he said or what he wanted.  When I started doing what he wanted, he stopped hurting me.  It wasn't so bad after that, and I even began to tell myself it was good."

"Pretending," Sara guessed.

"Pretending," Cassandra agreed.  "Lying to myself, until I didn't even remember who I was, or what he was.  Then one day, I realized everything in my life was a lie, and so I ran away."

"Did Methos chase you?"

"No.  He let me go."  Cassandra gave Sara's hand another squeeze, then let go to open the door.  "It was a long time ago, Sara.  It's over now."

And *that* was good.  But ... "Then, why did you get so mad at him?  About your hair?"

Cassandra let go of the door, and it swung shut with a whooshing sound, the same kind of sound she was making as she sighed.  "When I was his slave ..."  She sighed again.  "It was my job to take care of him: bring him food, mend his clothes, clean his tent, that sort of thing.  At first, I did only what I had to do, just what I could get away with and no more."

"You mean like when I'm supposed to clean my room all the way, and I shove everything under my bed?"

"Exactly," Cassandra agreed with another real smile, but then the smile went away.  "I also had to follow all of his orders.  He would tell me what I could eat, when I could sleep, where I could go, who I could talk to, which clothes to wear ... every day."

Sara frowned.  "I wouldn't want anybody telling me what to do all the time."

"Neither did I, at first.  But later, I wanted to please him.  I wanted to make him happy.  I started fixing his favorite foods, embroidering his clothes, doing things for him before he even had to ask.  I would comb and braid my hair and try all sorts of different styles, hoping that when he came back to his tent, he would tell me, 'I like your hair that way,' because then I knew that I had pleased him, and that was all I lived for."

"Isn't that what people do for each other when they're in love?" Sara asked, because she knew Mom dressed in clothes that Dad liked, and Dad cooked Mom's favorite dinners a lot.

"Yes," Cassandra agreed.  "Only Methos never did that sort of thing for me.  So," she continued briskly, "when he told me he liked my hair, I thought he was deliberately reminding me that I had been his slave, and that I had loved him, and that he had never loved me."

"So you got angry."

"So I got angry."  She reached for the door again, but stood there with her hand on the handle, not moving.  "When you saw me at the tree, I wasn't even that angry at him anymore; I was angry at myself, because I had thought I could ... manage better now.  He was just trying to be polite.  I'm sure he doesn't remember how much time I used to spend on my hair, just for him.  In fact, he probably never even noticed."

"Well ... but, do you like him?" Sara asked, because she was really confused.  "You sat next to him at the wedding, and you were talking to him tonight."

"He's been nice to me, and I'm trying--very hard--to be nice to him.  I need to move on, and I want to move on.  But I don't trust him," she said, just as Dad had done, and she added more quietly, almost to herself, "I can't."

Cassandra opened the door for the second time, but Sara had one more question to ask.  "Was Roland an Immortal, too?"

"Yes," Cassandra said, and she walked past Sara and through the open door.  Sara stood there until the slowly closing door touched her shoulder, and then she followed Cassandra into the building and down the hallway.

Sara and Cassandra paused at the door of the enormous dining room and watched the dancing.  Uncle Duncan was with Aunt Susan, Mom was with Dad, and Methos was with the slinky woman in red.  Even Colin and Tommy and Paula were on the dance floor, over in a corner, the three of them dancing around and bouncing up and down.  John was dancing with a tall blonde girl in a short black velvet dress with a hot pink satin shoulder-wrappie thing that went across her front and down one arm.  The pink thingie didn't cover very much of her front, though, and Sara wondered if she was wearing a bra.  John seemed to be curious about that, too.

"How about a wash-up?" Cassandra suggested, and Sara suddenly realized that her face was dry and sticky with old tears, and her hands were dirty, so she went with Cassandra down the hall.  The first part of the huge washroom didn't have even one sink; it was all white marble and gleaming mirrors, with china vases of flowers in the corners and some sofas to sit on.  The wash-up part was through a huge set of double doors, and that was all white marble and gleaming brass.  Even the toilet paper holders were shiny.

Sara was washing her face when Cassandra suddenly straightened and faced those double doors, her hands at her sides, her eyes very alert.  "What?" Sara asked.

"An Immortal's coming," Cassandra said, and all of a sudden Sara realized where and why she'd seen that look before.  Dad did that, right before Uncle Duncan or Cassandra came into a room.  Sara had always thought he just had really good ears.

Then the doors opened, and there was the woman in red, framed like a picture in the doorway, one hand on her hip and the other hand languid and graceful at her side.  Her lips were as red as her dress.  Sara had seen that pose before, in an old video with Mae West.  All Miss Slinky needed was a cigarette holder or a fan.  "Well," Miss Slinky drawled.  "We meet at last.  Cassandra, isn't it?"

"Yes," Cassandra said, smiling all open and friendly.  "And you must be Amanda."

Miss Slinky-Amanda smiled, too, but only with her teeth.  "Must I?"

"Only if you want to be."

Amanda blinked a little at that, and so did Sara.  Cassandra didn't sound friendly now.  She sounded prickly, like she had been with Methos.  Amanda came into the washroom, and the doors swooshed shut behind her as she said, "Duncan tells me you're an old friend of the family."

"Yes," Cassandra agreed.  "Very old.  And Connor tells me the same about you."

Amanda turned to look in the mirror and fluff with her hair.  "Duncan and I go way back," she purred.  She locked eyes with Cassandra in the mirror.  "And I've known Connor even longer."

"But not so long as I," Cassandra answered, and now her smile was cool and knowing, even smug, just like Claire when she had all the spelling answers right in school, and Sara was still sitting there and trying to remember whether the "i" came before the "e" or the other way around.

"I've known him my whole life," Sara pointed out, because it was *her* father they were talking about, after all.

Amanda flicked a glance at her, like she was surprised Sara knew how to talk.  "But not all of *his* life," Amanda said, purring again, and Sara wanted to pull all Miss Slinky's whiskers off and rub her fur the wrong way, from the top of her snarky little head to the end of her pointy little tail.

"I've known Connor all his life," Cassandra broke in, laying her hand gently on Sara's shoulder and giving a friendly squeeze, and Sara settled down a little, but not all the way.  "From the day he was born.  Duncan, too."

"Really," Miss Slinky said, drawling again and smiling with her shiny white teeth.  "And now here you are at Duncan's wedding, standing in the bathroom with Connor's little daughter.  How nice for you."

"Yes, it is."  Cassandra gave Sara another comforting squeeze, then washed her hands and dried them on a towel, never taking her gaze away from that Amanda-woman.  "Connor and Duncan have finally found women to love, to have families with.  I'm sure all their friends are happy for them."

Amanda blinked a little again at that, then disappeared into one of the stalls, locking the door with a decided click.  Cassandra and Sara left the washroom right away.  "Have you really known my dad since the day he was born?" Sara asked when they were in the hallway, walking past enormous ferns in pots and little tiny tables that nobody ever used.

"Not exactly."

"But *she* doesn't know that."

"No."

Sara grinned.  "Good."

Cassandra grinned back then explained, "Your father and I met when he was about twenty-three."

John was nearly twenty-three.  Sara tried to imagine Dad acting like John: going to school, worrying about car payments and term papers, calling girls on the phone.  Except there hadn't been any phones or cars back then.  No term papers, either.  There had definitely been girls, though.  How many girlfriends had Dad had?  How many other wives?

How many other kids?

Cassandra was still talking, and Sara stored those questions away for later.  "Your father was found by a friend of mine on the day he was born," Cassandra said.  "But I didn't realize that until he and I talked about it seventy-five years later."

"That's the year Uncle Duncan was born?" Sara asked, and when Cassandra nodded, Sara asked, "So, who found him?"

"Your father.  They've always been very close, and I think that's part of the reason why."

"What about that Amanda person?  When did she meet them?"

"I don't know," Cassandra answered.  "But definitely after I did."

"But why does Uncle Duncan like *her*?" Sara asked, because that woman was horrible.

"Oh, she's not that bad, Sara."

"She's snotty."

Cassandra laughed but said only, "Immortals get that way sometimes, especially when we first meet."

"Like cats?" Sara asked.  Once, she had taken Catkin over to Keiko's house, so that Keiko's cat, Mia, and Catkin could play together, but Catkin and Mia had only snarled and hissed with their fur all bottle-brushy, and then Catkin had run away and hidden inside his carrying case and wouldn't come out at all.

"Like cats," Cassandra agreed, still smiling.  "Amanda was only defending her territory."

And Cassandra had done it right back.  Except ... "What territory?" Sara asked, remembering nature shows about alligators and lions and wolves.  "You're not hunting."

Cassandra clicked her teeth again.  "Creatures are always hunting, Sara, hunting for food or money, hunting for a mate, hunting for a safe place to live, a safe place to raise a family.  We compete with those who are most like us, because they want the same things we do.  Amanda's nicer to Duncan and your father than she was to me, I can assure you, because she and I have more in common.  In fact, a lot of women are nicer to men than they are to each other."

"That's stupid," Sara said, because she had seen Claire's older sisters fighting with each other over boys and then crying with each other when the boys left.  The boys came and went, the sisters stayed.  "Girlfriends are important."

"Remember that, Sara," Cassandra said, serious now, and they paused at the door to the ballroom.  "Hold onto that for the rest of your life, and hold onto them."

"I will," Sara promised, just like she and Keiko and Claire had promised each other that they'd be best-friends for always.  Forever-friends, Claire called it.

"I bet Amanda doesn't have any girlfriends," Sara observed, because Amanda was a lot like that obnoxious Annie at school, who always fluffled and flounced herself and acted like she knew everything, and Annie didn't have any friends.

"You may be right," Cassandra agreed, looking very thoughtful.  "She needs one."

She wasn't likely to get one, as snarky as she was.  Sara and Cassandra made their way between people's feet and chairs to the table where Mom and Dad were sitting and holding hands.  Sara sat next to Dad, and Cassandra took the chair next to Mom, but Sara only got to sit there for a minute, because Colin came rushing by.  "Come on!" he said and grabbed her hand.  "I've been looking for you.  Let's dance."  Sara took a quick gulp of ginger beer (which was a lot like root beer, only not so sweet), but she sneezed when it went up her nose.  Then Colin started laughing and Sara had to laugh, too, and that only made it worse.

"Stop it!" she said and smacked him, so he did.  "Bye!" she called to Mom and Dad and Cassandra, and then she and Colin ran dodging between the tables to go dance with Paula and Tommy in the corner.  The music went fast for a while, which was fun.  Then it started going slow, so they went over and nibbled on what was left of the cake, which was tasty.  Mom and Dad and Cassandra were still sitting at the table, talking all serious and sometimes looking over at her.

Sara went to their table, and all of the grown-ups smiled at her, like they hadn't been talking about her at all.  "Aren't you going to dance?" she asked, and Dad gave her one of his special crinkly-eyed half-smiles; then he stood and turned to Mom and offered her his hand.

"My lady," he said with a short bow, smiling at Mom in a totally different way, and Sara suddenly realized that he wasn't just pretending to have old-fashioned manners.  They were real.  Mom and Dad went off to the dance floor, where the music had started going even slower.

Sara sat down next to Cassandra.  "Aren't you going to dance tonight?" she asked, because Cassandra hadn't danced once.

Cassandra reached for her glass of wine.  "I don't have a partner, Sara."

"So?"

Cassandra's hand stopped in mid-air, and she set the glass back down.  "You're right," she said and pushed back her chair.  "Let's go."

They started a circle dance in the corner, with Colin and Tommy and Paula.  Cassandra showed them some dance steps to do, all holding hands, first slow and then faster when the music speeded up.  Uncle Duncan came over and joined them and taught them some more.  Then a different dance started, a jitter-bugging kind, and he bowed to Cassandra, just like Dad had bowed to Mom.  Cassandra curtsied back, and Uncle Duncan led Cassandra to the middle of the floor.  "Let's get a drink," Sara said to Colin, and they hurried back to their table.  John was sitting next to Dad now, and Methos and Amanda were at a table nearby.  Sara sat down and sipped at her ginger beer again, being careful not to get it up her nose.

"They dance good," Colin said, and it was true.  Uncle Duncan twirled Cassandra then dipped her really low.  He lifted her up, and Cassandra whirled off and came back for more.  People had backed up to give them room.

"I didn't know she could dance like that," Mom said, as Cassandra twirled and dipped and swayed.

"Neither did I," Dad said, and he was busy watching, too.  So was John.

Methos reached across his table for a nut, never once looking away from the dance floor.  "I did," he announced, and he popped the nut into his mouth and chewed, still watching.  Amanda's long red nails were going tappety-tappety-tap on the arm of her chair.

When the dance was over, some people started clapping, and Cassandra stood there smiling, blushing a little and holding Uncle Duncan's hand.  "Oh, no," Sara groaned, and Colin looked around.

"What's wrong?"

"Her."

Miss Snarky was stalking Uncle Duncan, her hips wiggling and her bosoms jiggling as she slinked her way across the floor, the high heels of her red sandals going tappety-tappety-tap.  She must have talked to the band, because they were already playing a tango.  Sara recognized the music from the ballroom dancing competitions on the telly.  "Don't let her," Sara breathed, but Cassandra was smiling as she let go of Uncle Duncan's hand and gave Amanda half a bow.  Uncle Duncan wasn't smiling, though.  He looked over to the head table, where his brand-new wife was sitting and watching the show.

"Go on!" Aunt Susan called with a smile and a wave of her hand.  She and Uncle Duncan had already danced together a bunch of times, and she'd danced with a lot of the men and Uncle Duncan had danced with a lot of the women, but Sara certainly wouldn't have let *her* new husband dance with Miss Snarky--ever.  But Aunt Susan didn't seem bothered.  Uncle Duncan raised his eyebrows as he smiled back at her; then he blew out all the air in his lungs and took a deep breath before he offered Miss Snarky his hand.  He said something between his teeth when Miss Snarky oh-so-gracefully laid her hand in his, and Sara turned to Colin for help.

"What'd he say?" she asked, because Colin's friend Michael was a little deaf, and he and Colin practiced lip-reading all the time, but that was more because they wanted to pretend to be spies than because Michael needed to anymore.  He'd gotten hearing aids two years ago.

"I don't know.  There wasn't enough there.  The first word might have been 'leap' or 'keep' or 'team' or anything like that."

"Probably 'Keep it clean,'" Dad said, and Mom bit her lip like she was trying not to laugh.  Cassandra came over to their table and sat down.

Then the music got going, and Uncle Duncan and Amanda took the floor.  "Wow," John breathed, halfway through, and Sara had to agree.  Miss Snarky really knew how to dance.  When this dance was over, everybody clapped and some people stood up, even Cassandra, and there were whistles and shouts for more.  But Uncle Duncan led Amanda back to her table and kissed her on the cheek, and then he went to sit next to Aunt Susan.  He kissed his wife on the lips.

"You were wonderful!" Cassandra said to Amanda, and she actually sounded like she meant it.

"Thank you," Amanda said, seeming very pleased with herself, even if not with anybody else.  But she sat down in a chair near Cassandra, and neither of them was acting prickly now.

"Another drink, anyone?" Dad asked, and Mom nodded as Sara and Colin both held up their empty glasses in a silent plea.  John and Cassandra and Amanda all shook their heads no.  "Two ginger beers and a Tom Collins, coming up," Dad said and went to the bar.  Methos followed him.

"Don't your feet hurt in those shoes?" Sara asked Amanda, honestly curious, but Amanda gave her a snotty superior smile.

"White tennis shoes didn't go with my dress," Amanda said archly, and Mom snickered.  Cassandra laughed aloud.  They were still smiling when Dad got back with the drinks, and then all three women looked at each other and started laughing again.

What was funny about white tennis shoes? Sara wondered, but then Dad motioned John away from the table with a jerk of his head, and people started shouting, "A kiss!  A kiss!" and banging their spoons on their glasses and making a really loud noise.  Aunt Susan leaned over and kissed Uncle Duncan, and the whistling and clapping got louder and louder as the kiss went on and on.

Finally they stopped, but Methos hopped up onto a chair and waved his hand at the crowd.  "Friends!" he called.

"Romans, countrymen," Cassandra murmured, just loud enough for Sara to hear, but Methos was talking again, so Sara turned back to him.

"Friends!" he repeated, and the people quieted down.  "There is a fine, old Scottish tradition on a wedding day, a tradition which we should follow, I think, on this auspicious occasion.  It is customary, the best man tells me, for the groom ..."  He bowed toward Uncle Duncan, who stood and bowed back before Methos went on, "... to bathe."

"No!" Uncle Duncan said, but Methos didn't even look at him.

"Assisted, if need be," Methos said loudly, "by his friends."

John and Dad came at Uncle Duncan from either side, both of them grinning, and Uncle Duncan shouted "No!" again as Aunt Susan moved away.  The other ushers joined in the scuffle, and soon enough Uncle Duncan was being carried to the pool, kicking and shouting but laughing, with everybody following, and then Uncle Duncan was heaved with a "one and a two and a three!" into the deep end of the pool.

Uncle Duncan popped to the surface, sputtering and pushing his hair away from his eyes.  He climbed out and started stalking Methos.  Methos laughed as he backed away.  "It was Connor's idea!" he protested to Uncle Duncan, who was dripping wet and squelching water from his shoes at every step.

"So is this," Dad said, stalking Methos from the other side, while John came at him from behind.

"Bastard," Methos said to Dad, just before Dad and Uncle Duncan grabbed him.  Methos made an even bigger splash than Uncle Duncan had.  When he climbed out, though, he and Uncle Duncan looked at each other and nodded, and then Dad started backing away.  They got him in the end, when John gave them a hand, but then it was John's turn to go for a dunk in the pool.

The women were all standing in a little knot near the doors, watching.  Mrs. Fenwick, Paula and Tommy's grandmother, shook her head and sighed.  "I guess boys will be boys."

"It's good to see them play," Aunt Rachel said.  "I like seeing them act so young."

"No matter how old they are," Mom added, and Aunt Susan's head jerked up.  They looked at each other, Mom with one eyebrow higher, Aunt Susan with her lips a little tighter, her eyes a little scared.  Then Mom gave Aunt Susan a hug, and Aunt Susan smiled before she walked over to the side of the pool, where the four men were still splashing and dunking each other.  "Time to go!" she called, and Uncle Duncan swam to the edge and pulled himself out.  Mom and Aunt Rachel were standing side by side, watching Dad and John swim, and Sara went to her mother and stood nearby on her other side.  Mom's arm came around to pull her closer, and Sara snuggled in.

The bride and the groom finally left, to a chorus of good-byes and a shower of birdseed, and after a little while, the party seemed very much smaller and quieter, with just the families and a few others still sitting around by the pool.  The waiters were cleaning up the dining room, and the band wasn't playing anymore.  Aunt Rachel took a yawning Colin back to the homestead.  Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick took Paula and Tommy with them back to their house, now that Aunt Susan and Uncle Duncan were off on their honeymoon.

The white-bearded man with the cane nodded good-bye to Methos and Dad, and then left with a hugely pregnant woman who had a sleeping toddler in her arms and a really cool silver anklet that twinkled as she walked.  Well, more like waddled.

Sara didn't ever want to be pregnant and waddling, but she decided she did want an anklet.  Mom might get her one for her birthday.  Dad probably wouldn't argue about that, even though he said Sara was *still* too young to get her ears pierced, and he absolutely refused to let her *ever* get a tattoo.  She'd work on him.

"Want to go back, sweetheart?" Dad asked, but Sara shook her head.  She was tired, just like Colin, but she didn't want this day to end.  She curled up on a chair and listened while the talk flowed like water around her, and the lights shimmered into rainbows on the window panes, when she squinted her eyes.

"It was a nice wedding," piped up the blonde girl in the black velvet and pink satin.  She was sitting right next to John, her arm almost touching his.

"Yes, it was, Phoebe," Mom agreed.  Amanda reached for her drink.  "We've been waiting a long time for Duncan to get married," Mom added.  "I'm glad he's found someone at last."

"So am I," Methos declared.

After a moment, even Amanda gave a nod.  "It's good to see Duncan finally settling down and taking on some responsibilities," she said and heaved a dramatic sigh  "Sometimes I thought he'd never grow up."

"I thought his name was Mark," Phoebe said.  "Why do all of you call him Duncan?"

"He had an uncle named Mark, so the family called him Duncan when he was younger," Mom explained, as she'd explained a bunch of times already this week, and it was only kind of a lie.  Sara wondered if Dad had ever changed his name.  Question Number Six to be asked tomorrow.

"Where are they spending their wedding night?" John asked, and Dad looked very grim indeed as he poured himself another drink.  They had both taken off their jackets and the little black ties that went with the tuxedos.  Dad's white shirt was damp, and it was clinging to his arms and the top of his chest.  His hair was a mess, sticking every which way, and he had taken off his wet shoes and socks.  He looked a lot more normal now.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be here," Dad said darkly.  "Not after what Duncan did to me on mine.  And he damn well knows it."

"Now, Connor," Mom said, reaching out to take his hand.  "It wasn't all Duncan's fault; you know that."

"He made it worse," Dad growled.  When John opened his mouth to say something, Dad gave him a seriously stern look, and John snapped his mouth shut right away, even though Amanda was watching him like a cat watches a bird, all a-quiver with curiosity and hunger.  Question Number Seven for tomorrow.

"You did dunk him in the pool tonight," Mom said.

"Three times," Methos pointed out as he picked up his drink.  His pale gray shirt was darker gray in places, but he wasn't dripping water with every move anymore.  "And when you think of what we did to his car ..."

"It's not enough," Dad said, shaking his head.  "And he already dunked me back, so it doesn't count as revenge."

"I think you look very good wet," Mom said to Dad, and suddenly he was on his feet and moving toward her, a gleam in his eye.  "Connor, wait!" Mom cried, raising her hands to stop him.  "This dress is dry-clean only."

Dad kept right on coming, grinning his most dangerous grin; Sara recognized it from their pillow fights.  "So take the dress off," Dad said, his voice all growly and low.  "Now."

Mom opened her mouth to argue then suddenly started smiling.  She reached behind her and unzipped the dress, then stepped out of it and laid it over the back of the green plastic chair.  Sara's mouth dropped open in shock, but really, Mom's underwear covered more than her bikini.  Even so ...

Dad rushed at Mom, and she started to run, laughing, but of course he grabbed her before she got very far.  He tossed her in the pool then dove in after her.  Mom was waiting for him; she splashed him when he came up for air, and he dunked her, and she dunked him, and then they started kissing.  Sara rolled her eyes and looked away.  She'd seen them do that kissing stuff before.

"Going to join in the fun?" Amanda asked Cassandra and Phoebe.  Sara didn't think they'd have much of a choice.  John and Methos were already looking at each other with evil glints in their eyes.

"My dress can't get wet, either," Cassandra answered, but she was watching the guys.  John was on the right side, Methos on the left.  They stood, pushing back their chairs.

"So be like Alex," Amanda suggested, smiling at John and kicking off her sandals.  "Take it off."

"I'm not wearing anything under it."

Amanda smiled lazily, this time at Methos.  "Neither am I."  She stood, gave one quick tug to pull her strapless gown down and off, then ran--completely naked--between the guys and made a perfect dive into the deep end of the pool.

John stood there staring, his mouth hanging open and his eyes all googly, like he'd never seen a naked woman before, and Sara knew that wasn't true.  Methos didn't waste any time, though; he went right in after Amanda, another perfect dive.

John looked at Cassandra, who shot him one completely serious look and said, "No," so John shrugged and started going after Phoebe, which was probably what she'd been waiting for all along.  She squealed and giggled and pretended to run away, but John caught her near the door.

"Come along, Sara," Cassandra commanded.  "Time for us to go home."

"I want to see John throw her into the pool."

Cassandra glanced toward the door.  "I don't think that's likely," she said dryly, and when Sara looked back, John and Phoebe were kissing, and neither of them was moving at all.  Amanda and Methos were kissing, too, and Dad and Mom were in the shadows at the far end of the pool.

Sara fell asleep in the quiet warmth of the car during the long drive back to the homestead.  When they arrived, Cassandra saw her upstairs, made her brush her teeth and change her clothes, then tucked her into bed.  Sara had the room to herself, now that Paula was gone.  Colin wouldn't be sharing with Tommy anymore, either.  Sara was going to miss her new cousins, but she was glad to have the privacy.  She needed it, especially after today.

"Sleep well, little one," Cassandra said softly and kissed her on the forehead then got up to leave the room.

"Um, Cassandra?" Sara said, because she couldn't just call her "Cass," the way Mom did, and Sara couldn't call her "Aunt" anymore.  Cassandra stopped in the doorway, her hair a glowing halo from the light in the hall, like a fiery angel standing guard.  Sara suddenly didn't know what to say, but she knew she didn't want Cassandra to leave.  "Have you had a lot of different names?" Sara asked, grabbing at the first thing that came to mind, and just as she'd hoped, Cassandra came back and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Many, many names.  Some I chose, some were given.  The name Cassandra was given to me by the Lady of the Temple of Artemis, before the fall of Troy."

"Wow," Sara said in awe.  That sounded really cool.  "Isn't it weird, getting called by a new name?"

"At first, but you get used to it.  You mother changed her name from Johnson to MacLeod when she got married.  Nuns and monks change their names when they take vows."

"But Mom still uses Dr. Johnson for work.  Just like you use Sandra Grant at the girls' school where you teach music."

"Exactly.  Different names for different times or different places.  Your Uncle Duncan is Mark Johnson in New Zealand.  Your father's used, oh, half-a-dozen names, I think.  And you and Colin have two names, remember?"

"Oh, yes!"  Sara would never forget.  "You told me, on my seventh birthday, when we went walking in the snow at our house in the Highlands, and then we listened to the tree."
 

=====

"Why are you calling me Karen?" Sara asked Aunt Cass as they walked next to the snow-covered fence of the horse pasture in front of the house.

Aunt Cass smiled, that special smile that made her green eyes seem to glow, just like Catkin's eyes.  Catkin was half-grown now and still playful, only not quite so cute as he had been in the summer when his tail had been only as long as Sara's little finger, and he had still been all fluffy and his eyes had been dark blue.  Now his coat was sleek, all yellow and orange and gold, (just like his mother, Phoenix, who was Aunt Cass's cat), and his eyes glowed bright green.  Colin's cat was named Callie because she was a calico, orange and white and black, but her eyes were just as green as Catkin's.

"Not Karen, little one, but Caorran." Aunt Cass said the word careful and slow, so that Sara could hear the ripply sound to the R.  "It's a Gaelic word," Aunt Cass told her.  "It means rowan berry, and it's the special name I gave to you when you were born."

Sara and Colin were learning Gaelic in school, and their dad swore in Gaelic sometimes, and their housekeeper, Mrs. MacNabb, sang Gaelic songs while she swept the floor or washed the dishes, but Sara hadn't learned that word yet.  "You've never called me that before," Sara said.

"You're seven today," Aunt Cass said, as if that explained it all, and it did.  Seven was a special number.  They kept walking through the snow until they got to the flat rock halfway along the pasture fence.  Sara climbed up on the rock and kicked off all the snow on top of it, then jumped down, making a huge phwuff when she landed, her red boots bright against the snow.  "Did you give my brother Colin a special name, too?" Sara asked.

"Yes," Aunt Cass said, climbing up on the rock and then jumping down, too.  Her phwuff was bigger than Sara's had been because her feet were bigger, but Aunt Cass's boots were plain boring black.  Her coat wasn't black, though; it was all swirly purple and green and blue, like a peacock's tail, and her fingernails were painted purple, too.

Sara wanted to paint her fingernails purple, but Dad had told her that six was definitely too young, and that even seven was still too young.  Sara climbed on the rock again, then stood there, wiggling her toes inside her boots and wishing she were older.  "What's Colin's name?"

Aunt Cass shook her head.  "It's a secret for him, just like yours is a secret for you.  I'm going to talk to him later today, and then he can tell you, if he wants to."

Colin would tell her his name if she told him hers, because they were twins and they shared everything (except black jelly beans, because Colin hated black jelly beans, so Sara got to eat them all).  But Sara wasn't sure she wanted to share her special name, at least not just yet.

"Did you give John a special name, too?" Sara asked.  John was twenty, a real grown-up, and he could do what he wanted.  He even had his own car.  He was due home from the university in Edinburgh before dinnertime today, and Sara couldn't wait to see her older brother again.  He was great to wrestle with.  Sara jumped and made another phwuff.

"No," Aunt Cass said.  "I didn't know him when he was little, only you and Colin.  I met John and your mother when she was carrying you."  Her eyes went a little away, like Dad's did sometimes, but then Aunt Cass smiled again and sat down on the rock.  "I remember the day you were born, and I remember the day I gave you your name," Aunt Cass said with her special story-telling voice, and Sara wiggled in happy excitement, because she loved hearing stories, especially stories about her.

"You and Colin were born two days before Christmas--"

"In the middle of the night!" Sara interrupted, because she knew this part of the story very well.  "Mom says she didn't get any sleep at all, and Dad always says that was only practice for later on."

"Yes, he does," Aunt Cass agreed and then continued, "And when you were nine days old--"

"Just like peas porridge hot and peas porridge cold."

"--on New Year's Day--"

"Dad's birthday."

Aunt Cass stopped talking and just sat there with her hands folded in her lap.  Sara decided it would be wise to stop trying to help.  "And on New Year's Day," Aunt Cass said again, "your parents had a naming party, just for you two.  I carried you over to the Christmas tree, and I whispered the name 'Caorran' into your ear, so that you were the only one to hear."  Aunt Cass leaned forward, like she was telling a secret, and her voice got soft, too.  "And do you know what happened then?"

"What?" Sara asked, imagining all kinds of special things, like stars appearing in the sky, or flights of eagles overhead.  Or perhaps the lights on the Christmas tree had blazed.

"You sneezed."

"I didn't!" she protested but giggled anyway.

"You did.  Then I kissed you on the forehead, and your father came to hold you.  You were so small that he could hold you in the crook of one arm, from his elbow to his hand."

Sara didn't ever remember being that tiny, but she'd seen pictures of herself--a wrinkly face and a little bit of dark hair, all wrapped up in a blanket.  The only good thing was that Colin looked just as funny as she did.  "Dad and Mom picked our real names: Sara Heather and Colin Duncan, right?  Colin after Dad's dad and Duncan after Uncle Duncan, and Sara after a lady in Mom's family, and Heather after a lady from Dad's, both from a long time ago?"  Paintings of the old-time Sara and the old-time Heather hung in the Mom and Dad's office downstairs, along with a painting of man who looked a lot like Dad, but who was wearing a plaid and had long braided hair and fluffy boots.  Dad said the man in the picture was a MacLeod, just like him, which was why they looked alike, and that Heather was a MacLeod, too, part of the clan.  Clans were like really complicated families, with cousins and uncles and aunts all over the place.

Sara liked to go and sit in Dad's big twirly leather chair and look at the paintings sometimes, while she imagined living in times long ago, when people had horses and wore feathers in their hats all the time.

"Yes, your parents picked your names," Aunt Cass said.

"Then why did you give us names, too?" Sara asked, and Aunt Cass "hmmed" to herself and looked away.  Then she looked straight back to Sara, right into her eyes, and Sara stood up straighter, because this was going to be important; she could tell.

"You and Colin each have a godmother and a godfather, yes?" Aunt Cass asked.

"Yes, Aunt Rachel and Mr. Osato for me, and Uncle Dunc and Mrs. Osato for Colin."

"The day after you and Colin were born, your parents decided to ask me to be ... another kind of godmother to you both."

"A fairy godmother," Sara breathed, because Aunt Cass knew all kind of special magicky things, and that meant Sara and Colin were special, too, with special magicky names.  Nobody else Sara knew had a fairy godmother, not even Claire, who had two brothers and three sisters and a mom and a dad and five uncles and four aunts and three grandparents still living, plus a great-grandmother.  And a dog and three cats and a goldfish.  Plus sheep and chickens, of course, but those didn't count.

No wonder Aunt Cass always brought them both birthday presents *and* Christmas presents, not like some people who figured one was enough, since their birthday was on the twenty-third of December.  Sara and Colin had always thought that was Just Not Fair.  And Aunt Cass *always* had time to play or answer questions or read books (even over and over and over again), not like Mom and Dad, who were busy a lot with work and cleaning and horses and grown-up stuff.

"Yes," Aunt Cass agreed, smiling.  "Fairy godmother is a good name."

"What name do you use?"

"I call on the Goddess more than the God, so I think of myself as your goddess mother, and you ..." Aunt Cass leaned forward and kissed Sara on the forehead, just like Glinda the Good Witch of the North had kissed Dorothy in *The Wizard of Oz.* "... you are my goddess child."

Sara nodded happily, because goddess child sounded specialer than ... well, fairy godchild, she guessed it would have to be.  That sounded kind of silly.  Goddess child was much better.  "And Colin, too, of course."

"Of course!" Aunt Cass agreed.  She stood and brushed the snow from her coat, and since the rock was empty, Sara climbed on it again, balancing with her arms outstretched.  "Jump now!" Aunt Cass said after a minute.  "I want a turn."  So Sara jumped and then Aunt Cass jumped, and then they both squeezed on the rock by standing on one foot each, and then they jumped together.

"Come," Aunt Cass said, taking Sara's blue-mittened hand in her green-gloved hand.  "This way."  They walked across the white field, alongside the pasture fence, and down to a little grove of trees, all glittering with ice.  "This is a rowan tree," Aunt Cass said, reaching up to touch the branches with her fingertips.  She pulled the branch lower so that Sara could see the cluster of tiny bright-red balls.

"Caorran," Sara said, rippling the R sound in the word as she reached for berries.  They broke off at her touch and scattered, little red drops on the snow.  "I'm sorry," Sara exclaimed and reached out to the tree, patting one of the skinny tree trunks that grew all together in a clump.  The trunks were bare.  No ice stuck to the straight up-and-down parts, only to the branches and berries.  Aunt Cass reached out, too, with her glove pulled off, and then she closed her eyes, standing there with her bare hand on the tree.  Sara watched for a minute, then she pulled her mitten off with her teeth, the crusty snow squeaking between her teeth and tasting kind of flat and stale, the fuzzy yarn tickling her tongue.  She stuck her mitten in her coat pocket and put her hand on a trunk, too.

The gray bark felt cold under her hand, all smooth except where the little black stripes felt bumpy.  Aunt Cass still had her eyes closed, so Sara closed her eyes, and instead of looking, she listened.  The wind whispered around them, of course; there was always wind here in the Highlands, and the branches of the tree rattled against each other.  But Sara heard nothing except for the wind and her own breathing.  Her brother John (who was going to be a rock scientist and had to study lots of other stuff before he could get to the fun part about studying rocks) had told her that snow made things quiet, because all the sound went into the snow and couldn't get out, and it was really quiet today, on the side of the hill away from her house, with the wind whispering cold and silky and the branches whispering back all dry and rustly, and the slow humming in her ears that started in her fingers and went up her arm and right into her heart.

Except it wasn't her heart, because that went thump-b'thump-b'thump pretty fast, and this was slower and longer, more like the who-ooosh-thump who-ooosh-thump of the big ocean waves that curled over onto the beach and crashed on the rocks, then drained away, leaving tiny little holes in the sand.

Sara opened her eyes.  Aunt Cass had opened her eyes, too.  "What's that noise?" Sara asked.

Aunt Cass tilted her head a little, the way she often did before she answered a question, and her eyes were very bright and interested.  "What noise?"

Aunt Cass did that a lot, too, answering questions with more questions.  Sara said impatiently, "The whoosh-thump noise.  Kind of slow and long, like waves.  You know."

"Yes," Aunt Cass said, smiling now.  "I do.  But not many others know.  That's the tree's heartbeat."

"Trees don't have hearts," Sara objected, for they had learned about roots and branches and leaves in school this year.  She took her hand from the tree and curled her fingers together, then stuck her hand in her pocket, trying to get it warm.

Aunt Cass ran her hand up and down the tree trunk, slowly and carefully, as if she were petting her cat, Phoenix.  "Not like us, no.  But trees are alive, and sap is like blood, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"So, they have heartbeats."  Aunt Cass turned from the tree and looked right at Sara.  "You heard it.  You know."

And Sara did know, because after all, this was her tree, her rowan tree, and she was named after a rowan berry.  Of course she knew.  She bent to pick up the berries from the ground, five of them still stuck on the little twig.  "Can I keep it?"

"Yes.  The tree gave it to you, for your birthday.  But don't eat the berries; they'll make you sick."

Sara nodded and flicked little pieces of ice off the berries, then sucked the slivers of ice from her freezing-cold bare fingers.  The ice slivers melted right away.  "You said not many others hear the tree's heartbeat," Sara said as she pulled out her mitten and put the berries carefully in her pocket.  "Why not?"

"They don't listen," Aunt Cass said, and Sara knew that, too.  People hardly ever listened.  She put on her blue mitten and Aunt Cass put on her green glove, and then Aunt Cass knelt in front of her, so that Sara didn't have to look up to see her, and said, "It takes a special person to listen quietly enough to hear a tree."

Sara liked being special.

~~~~~

That night, after John came home and they had the birthday party and opened their presents and blew out the candles on the birthday cake (two birthday cakes, chocolate with coconut frosting for her, and lemon with cream cheese frosting for Colin), Sara and Colin got to stay up as late as they wanted.  It had already been way past their bedtime when Mom had told them to go brush their teeth and get ready for bed, and they were both really tired, but they didn't want to waste this chance to stay up, so they lay on the floor in their bedroom and built spaceships out of their new LEGOs.  Besides, staying up tonight was good practice for Christmas Eve, and that was tomorrow.

"Did Aunt Cass talk to you today?" Sara asked her brother as she searched for the glowy red circle buttons she needed to make an exhaust port on the back of the engine.

"Yeah," Colin answered, snapping two long skinny pieces on his ship for skids.  "We went for a walk after lunch."  He blew his bangs up and away from his eyes and grinned.  "She told me my special name was Gallan.  It means branch in Gaelic."

"My name's Caorran," Sara answered immediately, ashamed to have even thought of keeping her name from her twin, even for a little while.  "It's Gaelic, too, and it means rowan berry."  She hopped up and went to her nightstand, where she had put the little branch with the five berries on it, and handed it to Colin.  "This must be for both of us.  Should we take the berries off, so you can have the branch?"

Colin turned it over in his hands, carefully.  "Let's leave it together.  Twins, you know."  They grinned at each other, enjoying sharing this gift from the rowan tree, enjoying their secret names, and enjoying knowing each other's secret, because secrets were more fun when at least one other person knew, and she and Colin shared everything.  Now when they got to those words in Gaelic class in school, she and Colin could look at each other and smile.

"Let's put it in the treasure place," Colin said, so they went over to the little door that opened into the half wall, under where the ceiling started to slant.  Mom stored boxes of summer clothes in there, but one of the boards on the floor was loose, and Colin and Sara hid their treasures beneath it.  Sara pulled the board out of the way, and Colin laid the branch in one of the enormous clam shells they had found on the beach at Breezy Point last summer, when they had visited Aunt Rachel in New York City and driven across the bridge to Brooklyn for the day.  "There," Colin said in satisfaction, and Sara set the board back in place, and then they both went back to lying on the floor and building with LEGOs.

"Did you go to see the rowan tree in the pasture?" Sara asked, going up on one elbow to reach across and get a glowy red piece, then settling back down to lie on her stomach.  She hummed a song and drummed her feet against the bottom drawer of their dresser, and Colin kept time with her by tapping his toes on the floor.

"Uh-huh," Colin asked, his head down as he pieced together a wing.

"What did the heartbeat sound like for you?"

"What heartbeat?" Colin asked, stopping his feet and looking up with a scowl, and Sara knew he was confused, because his nose had two little lines across it, and his eyebrows were closer together, and his light blue eyes seemed darker than normal.

"The tree's heartbeat," Sara answered, suddenly confused as well.  "Didn't you listen to the tree?"

The lines across his nose got deeper.  "How do you listen to a tree?"

"You put your hand on the trunk, and you close your eyes, and you just ... listen.  That's all."

Colin shook his head.  "I touched the tree, but I didn't hear anything."  He sat up suddenly, crunching some LEGOs underneath him, his eyes worried now.  "Do you think that means I'm a muggle?  That I can never do magic?"

"Of course not!" Sara answered immediately, horrified at the thought.  "We're twins, so we have to be the same, right?"  Didn't they?  Sara hurried on.  "We'll try it again, later.  Perhaps in the spring, when the tree is more awake."

~~~~~

But Colin didn't hear the heartbeat in the springtime, or in the summer, or in the fall.  Aunt Cass said not to worry, that everyone had different talents and different ways of listening.  "Your father can't hear trees," she told them as they stood by the rowan tree, "but he can hear the deer, when they're running in the hills."

"Perhaps you're more like Dad," Sara said to Colin, trying to cheer him up, but Colin still looked glum.

"I've never heard the deer yet," he pointed out, digging in the dirt with the toe of his sneaker.  "Not even when we go hiking and I'm looking right at one.  I think I'm just a muggle."

Aunt Cass knelt in front of him and looked right into his eyes.  "You're young, Colin, but your gift will come, in time.  You are special, too."

Colin finally nodded and even grinned a little, and so *that* was good.  But not quite good enough, because both Sara and Colin knew that they would never share everything again, no matter how much they wanted to, or how hard they tried.

=====
 

It had been over two years since then, and Colin still didn't have a special gift.  Sara didn't think that was fair.  "What's Colin's special gift going to be?" she asked Cassandra, and Sara sat up all the way in her bed.  "How much longer does he have to wait?"

Cassandra smiled and sighed, all at the same time.  "Nine--or even ten--is still very young, Sara.  Magic flowers in its own time, and first, the roots must grow.  Give it time.  Give yourselves time, too."

"Is listening to trees really magic?" Sara asked in excitement, bouncing a little on the bed.  "Is it something witches do?"

"Witches?" Cassandra repeated, but she didn't sound angry or surprised.  "And what do you know about witches?"

"Well, Dad says you're one," Sara said, then added quickly, because Aunt Cass wasn't smiling anymore, "And Mom says so, too."

"Do they?" Cassandra said slowly, and then she really did smile, so that it was like the sun coming out suddenly from behind a solid gray bank of clouds where it had been hiding for *days* and *days* and your clothes were all damp and your wellies never dried, and you hated your mackintosh, and you were going to scream at the sight and the sound of more rain, and you didn't even want to stomp in puddles anymore, and then the sun came out, all bright and glowing and warm, and you knew the rain was all over, at least for a little while.  It would always rain again in the Highlands.

"Yes, Sara," Cassandra said, still smiling.  "I am a witch."

"Does that ... I mean ... can I be one, too?  Since I can hear a tree?"

Cassandra reached out and touched Sara's cheek, her fingers gentle, as always, and warm now.  "We'll see, Caorran.  We'll see."

Sara bounced up and down on the bed, higher this time.  "Will you teach me?"

"If you need teaching, yes, I will.  I promised your parents that, three years ago.  Colin, too, if need be."  Cassandra leaned over and kissed her on the forehead again.  "And now goodnight, Sara.  It's after midnight, time for sleep."  Cassandra left the room and quietly shut the door.

Sara lay back on the bed, watching the moon.  Half a moon tonight, still above the treetops, slowly moving down, shining through the window.  The bed covers were bright mountains and silver-shadowed valleys.  "Immortal," she whispered, thinking of what she had learned today, but her left hand was holding moonlight, and her right hand remembered the thrumming of the heartbeat of a tree.

Sara snuggled into the blankets and closed her eyes.  She would never be immortal, but she could still learn to be a witch.

And so *that* was good.
-
 
 

And he was.  "Hey, Princess," Dad said, with a surprised smile, and he kissed the top of her head before he took the cup from her hands.  "Thank you, and good morning."  He padded to the kitchen, his bare feet making no sound on the wooden floor.  Sara walked by his side, looking up.  He hadn't shaved yet or combed his hair, and he looked all rumply and scruffly, in his faded blue jeans and an untucked T-shirt with the logo of a long-ago NYC marathon on the back.  Sara liked him better this way than in the tuxedo of last night; he looked more real.

"Should I go get Colin, Dad?" she asked, as soon as Dad sat down in the chair she'd been using, and she bounced from foot to foot with impatience.

Dad sighed, a slow letting-out of breath; then he smiled and shook his head.  "Can't wait, huh?" he asked, and Sara just looked at him.  She'd been waiting.  "Yeah," Dad said finally, and his smile had completely gone away.  "Go get Colin."

But she stayed where she was, half on one foot and half on another, because he sounded and looked as grim and as flattened as she did, right before a big spelling test at school.  "Dad?"

"Go," he told her, now only serious instead of sad, and she went.

Colin was awake and reading in bed, as usual, and Sara yanked his covers off.  "Hurry up.  Dad wants you downstairs."

"Why?" Colin asked, those two little worry lines showing up across his nose.

"You're not in trouble!  He just wants to talk to you--to us.  About something important.  Hurry!"

Colin checked the number of the page he was on, then closed his book and put it under his pillow.  Then he stretched and yawned, showing all his teeth.  Sara rolled her eyes in impatience, only to get thwacked on the side of the head with a pillow.  "Hey!" she protested.

"My blankets," he announced and placed the pillow back on the bed.

"You're a lazy slug," she accused.  "Sleeping so late.  You deserve it."

"You're a mucus-spawn," he said back, peeling off his pajamas.

"Pond scum," Sara answered, hoping to win this round of the on-going and ever-lasting contest of truly disgusting names.  Swear-words were against the rules, because they were too easy.

Colin grabbed a T-shirt from a drawer and stuck his arms through the sleeves.  "Flea on the hind leg of a camel."  He stuck his tongue out at her right before his head disappeared from view.  Sara smacked him in the stomach with a pillow while his head was still tangled in the shirt, and then Colin threw his dirty sock and caught her right in the face.

"Oh, gross!"  Sara collapsed on the bed, pretending to be dying for air.  "Your feet are disgusting."

"Those weren't my feet; that was my sock," Colin said, pickily logical as always.  He pulled his jeans up and snapped them, then extended one leg.  "My feet are fine.  Want to smell them?"

"Oh, ick, no, you half-digested worm casting!"  Sara batted his foot away from her face, and he shifted his stance to his other foot with a roundhouse kick that stopped just in front of her nose.

"How's this one?" he asked.  Sara grabbed his foot and lifted, and he started hopping around, trying to keep his balance.  "Let me go, Sara," he finally protested.

"Sure," she said and gave his foot a final shove up and away, and he went ka-thumping to the floor.

"Rutabaga rind," he called her, but she grabbed his hand and helped him up anyway, only to have him shove her back onto the bed.

Sara was running out of ideas.  "Pumpkin guts," she finally came up with, and got to her feet, ready to wrestle some more.

"Dad's waiting," Colin reminded her as he tied the laces of his shoes over bare feet, and Sara dropped the fighting stance, grabbed his hand, and pulled him out the door.

"Come on," she said.  "It's important!"  They went running down the stairs.

In the kitchen, Dad and Aunt Rachel were sitting at the table and drinking coffee, and more sounds of life could be heard overhead--footsteps on creaky floors, water rumbling though old pipes.  Colin and Sara stood in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot and waiting--again--but Dad didn't seem to be in any hurry.  He added more milk to his coffee and stirred.

Aunt Rachel smiled at them and turned to Dad.  "Why don't you take them outside to talk, Connor?"  Dad nodded, but he still didn't move.  Aunt Rachel leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.  "Go on," she said, sounding exactly like Mom did when she told Sara and Colin to do something they really didn't want to do, but now Aunt Rachel was smiling at Dad.  Dad smiled back with the snort and the shake of the head that meant he was surrendering.  He pushed his coffee away and stood, and then he kissed the top of Aunt Rachel's head before he headed out the door.

Sara and Colin followed Dad out to the back yard, to the same big tree Cassandra had gone to yesterday afternoon, and they sat down underneath it.  There, while the dew on the grass glittered in the early morning sunshine and a bird cheeped from one of the dark pine trees nearby, Dad told Colin about immortality.

Colin didn't say anything, but the two lines across his nose turned into three, and his eyes had that puzzled confused look he got whenever he did long division--only worse.  Sara reached for his hand, and he held onto it as they sat side by side and listened as Dad talked about being nearly five hundred years old, about his wives Heather and Brenda, about Duncan and Cassandra, and about living for year after year after year.

"Heather was your wife?" Sara asked in surprise.

"My first wife," Dad said, nodding.

"Oh."  Dad had told her that the lady with blonde curly hair in the painting in his office was a MacLeod, but Sara had always thought Heather had been his great-great-great-great-grandmother or something.  And the painting of the man in the plaid ... "That's you!  In the picture."

"Yeah," Dad admitted, with half a grin.  "I told you he was a MacLeod."

"Where did the pictures come from?" Colin wanted to know.  "Are they old?"

Dad shook his head.  "Cassandra painted the ones of Heather and me, right before you were born."

"Cassandra knew Heather?" Sara blurted out.

"They met.  Cassandra visited us for a few days."

"When you were twenty-three," Sara said softly, remembering Cassandra's words from the night before.

Dad nodded and went on.  "I bought the portrait of Sara in England, about a hundred and fifty years ago, at an estate sale."

Which was *way* before he'd ever met Mom.  "Why?" Sara asked.  "Who was she?"

"My girlfriend, right before the French Revolution."

"Wow," Colin breathed.  "You really are old.  But ... Colin was your dad's name, right?"

"Right.  He died over four and a half centuries ago."

"Wow," Colin said again.  "And my middle name is after Uncle Dunc," he said, sounding satisfied and pleased.

Sara wasn't satisfied.  "What happened to Sara?" she asked, because that was *her* name, and she wanted to know.

"She married somebody else and had children.  We think your mom might be one of her descendants, because one branch of your mom's family came from the same part of England that Sara lived in, and Sara and your mom look a lot alike.  And so will you," Dad told Sara with a smile, and Sara blinked in surprise.  She'd never thought she'd look anything like Mom, who was so beautiful and tall, with golden hair and sapphire eyes.

"Only Sara had brown hair and brown eyes, and your eyes are kind of bluey-green," Colin pointed out.

Sara frowned, because bluey sounded too much like gluey, and besides, it was weird hearing a Sara being talked about when the Sara wasn't her.  Sara asked her other questions, and Dad answered them all, except about what Uncle Duncan had done at Mom and Dad's wedding.  "Later," Dad said, and Sara slumped down with a frustrated sigh.  Maybe John would tell.

Then Dad stopped talking.  He and Colin and Sara just sat there, all of them silent.  Usually that wasn't anything strange, but this time Dad was watching Colin, Sara was watching Dad watch Colin, and Colin was watching the end of the twig that he was carefully poking in and out of the holes for his shoelaces, up one side and down the other, then across to the other shoe to go down and then up, in a complicated pattern that Sara didn't understand.  Finally, Colin looked up enough to ask, "Are you really immortal, like the Greek gods?"

"Not quite," Dad said, one corner of his mouth tugging up.  "We're human.  We can't turn people into trees or pull the sun across the sky with a chariot."

"So no making earthquakes, like Poseidon," Colin said, and Dad nodded.

"And no throwing lightning bolts, like Zeus," Sara put in.  "No making the grass grow like Ceres."

"Ceres is Roman," Colin corrected her.  "You mean Demeter."

Sara wrinkled her nose and glared at him, because she'd said what she'd meant.  And who cared, anyway?  Ceres and Demeter had the same job.

But Dad was already answering.  "No earthquakes, no grass," he agreed.  "But after we die the first time, we don't age, and if we're hurt, we heal right away."

"With little blue fires," Sara said slowly.  "Like that time you cut yourself shaving, when you caught me before I fell."

Colin turned to stare at her, and Dad gave her a funny look as he shook his head.  "I didn't think you'd remember; you were so little."

Sara remembered.

====

The green tile floor was cold under her tiptoes, but she still couldn't see the top of the counter.  She was too short.  Daddy lifted her up and set her next to the sink, and she sat there, dabbling in the water and giggling when it splashed up onto her face, and giggling harder when Daddy made monster faces at her through his beard of foamy white soap.  Then Daddy started scraping away the white soap with the long sharp razor that she knew she wasn't supposed to touch, so Sara stood up to draw a picture in the steam on the mirror.  But the counter was all wet and slippery, and she fell, going backwards.  Daddy said something quick and sharp as he grabbed her, and Sara started to cry because he was squeezing her arm too hard and she was half upside down and she'd hit her head on the mirror.  Then she saw the blood dripping into the sink, big red drops splashing in the water, and she cried even more.

"Ssh, now," Daddy said softly, holding her tight.  "Ssh."  Sara held on tight, too, with her arms wrapped around his neck.  When she looked up, she saw the blood was coming from him, not from her, from a clean spot on his cheek where the soap had all been scraped away.  No soap was left, but the skin was open in a long red slice, and little blue fires were dancing on his cheek.  Sara forgot to cry.  She reached out to touch one of the fairy flames, but they were gone.  The long open slice was gone, too.  Sara touched him, and his skin was smooth, except where it was still bristly.  She rubbed her fingers back and forth from the scratchy to the smooth.  "Time to finish shaving, Princess," Daddy said and kissed her on the head, then set her gently on the floor and wiped his face off with a towel.  Sara waited, watching, until Daddy had scraped away all the bristles, wiped off his razor, and rinsed out the sink.  He dropped the bloody towel in the trash.

"Breakfast?" he said, bending down to smile at her, and Sara wrapped her arms around his neck again and smiled in return, and she giggled as he bounced her on the way downstairs.

=====

"You were barely two years old," Dad said, still shaking his head.

"You never told me," Colin accused.

"We didn't have enough words then," she tried to explain.  "And later ... it was like a dream."  Colin still wasn't happy.  "I forgot," she added miserably.  "Until now."

After a second, Colin nodded and went back to Dad.  "Can you heal from everything?" Colin asked, because he was just like the Elephant Child, full of 'satiable curtiosity about everything under the sun.  "Like Prometheus getting his liver ripped out by the vulture every day?"

Dad made a horrible face and shuddered, and both Sara and Colin had to laugh at the expression he made, like a turtle eating a sour strawberry.  "God, the value of a classical education," Dad muttered, but he was smiling now.

"Well, do you?" Colin persisted.  "Heal from everything?"

"Pretty much.  We can't regrow things if they get cut off all the way, though, like hands."

"Oh."

"Or heads."  Dad went serious again.  "That's the only way we can die: beheading."

This time Sara made a horrible face and shuddered, but nobody laughed.  "Ugh.  But that doesn't happen very often, right?  Nowadays, anyway," she added, because lots of people had been beheaded during the French Revolution, and some kings and queens had been beheaded, too.

"Unless there's a car crash or something," Colin pointed out.

"Right," Dad agreed.

"So, you're not *really* immortal," Colin concluded.  "You can die."  Dad's eyebrows zoomed up and down as he nodded and shrugged, all at the same time.  "Can I see?" Colin asked, into his data-gathering stage.  "The blue fires?"

Dad's mouth was tight and now his eyebrows were pulled together, but he nodded and took out a folding-knife from his pocket, just like he'd known he would need one all along.  He probably had.  Sara and Colin both leaned closer to watch as Dad drew the knife along his palm, and both of them stopped breathing when blue fire danced over red blood.  When the tiny sparks stopped, Colin reached out with one finger to wipe away the blood and look for the wound that wasn't there.  Sara didn't want to touch it, not this time.

"Did it hurt?" Colin asked, looking up from his crouch into Dad's face.  "Can you feel pain?"

"Oh, yeah," Dad answered immediately and with feeling, and both Sara and Colin settled back a little with sighs of relief.  Dad wasn't completely strange.  He was still a human being.  He just lived a long time, that was all.

Colin seemed to be out of questions, and Sara didn't know what to say.  Dad was back to watching Colin, and Colin was back to poking his shoelaces into holes, so Sara went back to watching the two of them.  Neither one was showing anything on their faces, which meant both of them were worried.  Then Colin stood up.  "Colin," Sara began.

"I need to think," he said over his shoulder as he walked away.

"Leave him be," Dad said, but Sara scrambled to her feet and followed her twin.

She walked next to Colin, their sneakers squeaking on the wet grass.  Neither of them said anything, which was normal, but they weren't comfortable with each other, which was weird.  When they got to the pine trees, Sara stopped walking and asked, "Are you angry with me?  For not telling you?"  Colin shrugged and shook his head "no," but Sara knew that wasn't true.  "Dad told me not to tell," she tried to explain.

"I know," Colin said, shrugging again.  "It's just ... this is worse than learning about Santa Claus."

"Yeah," Sara agreed.  John had told them three years ago, when she and Colin had finally dared each other to go ask somebody.  Christmas hadn't been the same since.  And now, nothing would be the same.  "You don't seem very surprised," Sara commented, kind of disappointed.

"I'm not," he said, and Sara stomped her foot in fury.  "I mean, I am," Colin explained in a hurry, because she was ready to haul off and smack him, and he knew it.  "But ... I'm kind of not.  A lot of other things make sense now.  Little things that didn't fit before."

"Like what?" she demanded.

"Like ... when was Dad in the army?  How old was he when he married Brenda?  Why doesn't he ever talk about when he was a kid going to school?  Why do the grown-ups stop talking sometimes when we come in?  When did he--and Cassandra and Uncle Dunc--learn all those languages and all the other things they know?  Those things."

"Oh," Sara said, feeling kind of stupid, the way she usually did whenever she and Colin did puzzles together.  Colin would stare at a puzzle and not move a finger, while Sara would try piece after piece after piece every which way and get some of them in.  Then Colin would pick up a piece and put it Plop! right where it ought to be, and then he'd do it again with about ten or fifteen more, and all of a sudden a whole chunk of the puzzle was done and you could see the picture of it, clear as day.

"It's actually kind of a relief to know, finally," Colin said, and Sara had to agree.

"Plus, you and I can talk about it," she pointed out.

"Yup, that's good," Colin agreed but then shook his head.  "Poor John."

"Oh, yeah," Sara murmured, suddenly realizing how awful that must have been for their older brother.  "At least he had Aunt Rachel--and Mom."

"Yeah, but ... it's not the same," Colin said, and of course, it wasn't.  Moms (or step-moms, even cool ones) and aunts (even fun ones who let you eat lots of cookies and stay up late and not make your bed) couldn't be the same as another kid.  "How'd you find out?" Colin asked.

"Yesterday I overheard Mom talking to Methos--that's Mr. Davis's other name.  She called him an Immortal, so I started wondering, and then I asked Dad how old he was."  Colin nodded and started walking again, still thinking, as always.  They walked to the end of the row of pines, and Sara said, not turning around, "Dad's still under the tree.  I think he's worried."

"Why?" Colin asked.

"Why?" Sara repeated, stomping her foot again and wondering how her twin could be so smart and so stupid, all at the same time.  "He wants to know how you feel about him, of course."

"Oh.  I'll go talk to him," Colin said, and this time Sara let him go.

As soon as Colin and Dad were done, with a hug from Colin and a pat on the back and a hair-ruffling from Dad (no tears for them), they went back inside the kitchen, Colin on Dad's right side, Sara on his left, the three of them holding hands.  Aunt Rachel was waiting for them, patient and calm and comfortable as always.  As they came inside, she got up from her chair.  "There," she said to Dad and gave him a hug.  "Not so bad, was it?"

Dad shrugged with half a smile, and ruffled Colin and Sara's hair.  "Nah, they're good kids."

"Yes, they are," Aunt Rachel agreed, and Sara and Colin exchanged half-proud and half-embarrassed smiles.  "I think Alex is done with her shower," Aunt Rachel commented, and Dad refilled his cup and poured a new cup of coffee, then took both cups upstairs.  Aunt Rachel sat back down at the table and offered, "Do you two want to hear my tale?"

Of course they did.  Sara and Colin sat right down and listened eagerly to every word.  "I've known your father for over sixty years," Aunt Rachel finished, "and I think the happiest I've ever seen him is when you two were born."

"Oh," Colin said with the blank shyness he used to hide embarrassed pride, and Sara felt the same.  "But what about John was little?" she asked, because it didn't seem fair somehow, to have Dad all to themselves.  Except they hadn't, had they?  Over the centuries, Dad had had lots of girlfriends, lots of Immortal students and teachers and friends, three wives, and other kids.  Sara swallowed a cold and slimy lump of jealousy, and sternly told herself to share.  "And what about you?"

"He loves John," Aunt Rachel said serenely.  "And he loves me.  He always will.  But John came to him soon after Brenda died, so Connor was still grieving for her.  And I was older.  There's something special about a newborn baby, when you hold it in your arms ... so tiny, so sweet."  She blinked, and Sara thought for a moment that she had seen tears in Aunt Rachel's dark brown eyes.  But Aunt Rachel smiled cheerfully as she leaned over and patted their hands, saying teasingly, "You'll understand, when you get married and have children of your own someday."

Sara and Colin rolled their eyes at each other.  They hated it when grown-ups talked about that.  Aunt Rachel chuckled, because she knew, and she gave them both a final little pat.  "How did Mom find out?" Colin asked.

"Why don't you go ask her?" Aunt Rachel suggested, and so they did just that.

"I had to do some digging," Mom told them, as Colin and Sara lolled about on their parents' bed, just like they did every Sunday morning, except this time Dad wasn't there to wrestle with or smack with pillows.  He was in the bathroom shaving.

"I spent a couple of weeks doing research, and then I tracked your dad all the way to Scotland and looked for him for almost a week," Mom said as she sat cross-legged on the bed and brushed her hair.  "But even after I found him, he wouldn't talk to me."

"But you stayed anyway, for five days, until he did talk to you," Colin said, because they had heard part of this story before, only not the real reasons why.

"Yes," Mom said, smiling a triumphant smile.  "I out-stubborned him."

Sara smiled back, because she could out-stubborn Dad, too.  Well, once in a while anyway.  She was getting better, and she was going to keep practicing.  Mom's smile softened, and the tiny fan-lines at the edges of her eyes softened, too, but they were still there.  They would always be there, and they would only get deeper.  Then more wrinkles would come, and the white hair, and then ...

Sara blinked and looked away.  Mom didn't have any white hair.  She was only forty-three.  It was just the light shining on it funny, that was all.  Sara stared at the quilt and followed the sewing lines with her finger while Mom told them more stories from twelve years ago--about coming back to New York and meeting John and Aunt Rachel, and deciding to get married, just like that.

"And you were married in August, with Uncle Duncan as best man and John as the ring-bearer," Sara finished, because they had heard this part of the story before.  They had seen the pictures, too.

"That's right," Mom agreed, and Colin and Sara looked at each other and nodded, satisfied--for now, anyway.

"How old was John when he found out?" Sara wanted to know, but Mom said the same thing Aunt Rachel had:  "Why don't you go ask him?"

"Thanks, Mom!" they called as they slid off the bed and ran down the hall.  They banged on the door to the bedroom that John was using.  John still hadn't gotten out of bed, even though it was nearly ten o'clock in the morning.  "Lazy slug," Colin said, and Sara added, "Slothful spineless spinach," as they waited for John to yell "Come in!"

"I found out when I was about ten and a half," John told them, yawning and rubbing his hand across the black stubble on his chin.  Sara and Colin perched on one of the twin beds: Sara balancing on the foot rail, Colin on the head rail.  John sat up in his bed and stretched his arms behind his back.  "Dad and Alex were probably going to wait until next year to tell you."

Sara nodded.  "That's what Dad said.  Aunt Rachel found out when she was really little."

"But not all of it," John said.  "Not for a while.  And besides, Dad couldn't hide it when he got shot right in front of her.  He had to tell her something."

"It's a kind of magic," Sara repeated slowly, and the three of them looked at each other with careful smiles that didn't have anything funny in them at all.

"How did you find out?" Colin asked.  "Did you see Dad get shot?"

"No."  John rubbed at his hair and made it go every which way.  "I met another Immortal named Kane.  He told me some of it, and later Dad explained."  John swung his legs over the side of the bed.  "I'm going to take a shower.  We'll talk more in a little bit, OK?  You can come back while I'm packing."

"Packing?" Sara said in dismay.  "But ... we didn't even get to see you!"

"Not this whole weekend!" Colin joined in.

"Hey," John said, sounding surprised.  "It got really busy; I'm sorry.  I didn't realize ..."  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.  "Look.  I'll be back home for Christmas.  We'll have two weeks then."  He smiled at them, his eyebrows up and his voice hopeful, so Sara and Colin nodded, but they were still biting their lips in disappointment.  John reached over with both hands and messed up their hair.  "I miss you two; you know that," he told them, and Sara was glad to hear it, because she hadn't been too sure.  John's e-mails to them were short, and he always sounded really busy with a lot of things and like he was having a lot of fun--except for the studying part.

"You do?" Colin asked, and he didn't sound too sure, either.

"Sure I do," John said, standing up and shoving both of them backward onto the bed.  "Who else can I wrestle with?"  Sara and Colin didn't need to plan their attack; they'd done this before.  She tackled John on the right side, Colin on the left.  They almost had John down to the ground when he started tickling them, and that was Just Not Fair, because John was hardly ticklish at all.  They were both shrieking and giggling and trying to breathe when John dumped Colin on one bed and Sara on the other, and then quickly left the room and went down the hall.  By the time Colin grabbed the doorknob to the bathroom, John had locked the door.

"Ambush him on the way out?" Sara suggested, but Colin shook his head.

"Let's get some breakfast.  I'm starving."

"You're always starving," Sara said, but she was starving, too, so they went to the kitchen, and she poured her second bowl of cereal for the day.

"Don't spoil your appetites," Mom warned as she added flour to the pancake batter.

"Me?" Colin said with a grin, and he kept right on pouring.  Sara had taken only a little, because Aunt Rachel was frying bacon at the stove, and Sara loved bacon and pancakes.

Because the kitchen was busy, they went into the dining room to eat, but Dad was setting out silverware and the table was full.  "Nine plates?" Sara asked, because there were only seven people left in the house now: Mom and Dad, Aunt Rachel and Cassandra, John and Colin and herself.

"Amanda and Methos are coming over," Dad explained, and Sara wrinkled her nose.  She didn't want to see Miss Snarky today.  Sara and Colin ended up going out to the verandah to eat.  They held their bowls in their laps and propped their feet up on the railing.  Sara liked to drown her cereal pieces in the milk with the back of her spoon and watch them pop to the surface again, but Colin liked to put a cereal piece in the bowl of his spoon and lower it slowly, watching the floodwaters (well, floodmilk, actually) spill over the edges until they carried the cereal piece away.

Sara told her twin everything she'd learned from Cassandra and about Amanda while they ate.  It was good not to have to lie anymore.  They were down to chasing the last few pieces of cereal left in their bowls when Colin said, "You said Cassandra told you Roland was an Immortal."

"Right," Sara agreed, pushing her last cereal piece to the bottom of the bowl and holding it there with her spoon.  "So?"

"And he's dead."

Sara moved her spoon to the side and waited, but nothing popped up.  The cereal was too mushy now.  "Dad told us Immortals can die if their heads get cut off, like in a car accident or something, remember?"

"Yeah," Colin said slowly, "but ... didn't Cassandra say somebody killed Roland?"

Sara knew Colin was going somewhere with this, but nothing popped to the surface of her brain. It felt mushy, too, and she didn't want to think anymore today.  "So?"

"So," Colin said, who seemed to have a lot more thinking left in him, "I think somebody cut his head off--with a sword."

Dad had a sword.  He had a lot of swords.  "You don't think Dad would--"  Sara couldn't say it, but she couldn't help but imagine the scene from the book when Anne Boleyn laid her head down on the chopping block.  Then the sword swung down.  Bright drops of red flew through the air as her head bounced on the ground.  They said her lips had moved even after the executioner had picked up her head by the hair, as if she'd been trying to talk.  Sara shuddered.  "No."

Colin turned to Sara, his eyes bright and determined.  "Why else do Uncle Duncan and Dad practice swords whenever they're together?"

"Because they're Immortal, stupid!" Sara told him, sitting up so fast that the milk sloshed over the side of the bowl and dripped on her legs.  "That's what they grew up with.  Everybody used swords back then.  They just like it, the way Aunt Rachel likes Bing Crosby music, and Mom likes the Beatles.  That's all."

Colin sat up, too, but he was more careful and his milk didn't spill.  "OK, but how about Cassandra?  She practices swords almost every weekend with Dad, and you know she doesn't like it."

Sara opened her mouth, but it wasn't working any better than her brain.  She couldn't think of anything to say.  Colin was right.  She sank back into her chair and crushed every piece of cereal she could find with her spoon, until a pasty brown sludge floated on top of her milk.  A cereal-killer was on the loose.

Colin slumped back, too.  "Geez," Colin said, now sounding just as gloomy as Sara felt.  "This is way worse than finding out about Santa Claus."

"Way worse," Sara agreed.  Santa Claus wasn't real.  Immortals were.

They sat there, both of them staring at the milk in their bowls, until Colin set his bowl on the floor.  "Look," he began, serious and stubborn, the way he got when he was trying to fold an origami piece and the instructions in the book were terrible, like they usually were.  "We've always known Dad was a soldier, right?"

"Right."

"So if--if!--he ever did cut somebody's head off, it would only be killing the bad guys, right?  Like in a war, or like the police."

"Right," Sara agreed, feeling better.  "Dad would never let anybody hurt us, or Mom or Aunt Rachel or John, no matter what."

"No matter what," Colin repeated firmly.  "Same with Uncle Duncan and Cassandra, even if she doesn't like to fight.  They're the good guys."

"Absolutely," Sara said, but even as she said it, she was wondering about Methos and Amanda and the thousands of other Immortals in the world.  Did all of them have swords, too?  And did the bad Immortals try to kill the good Immortals, like in a war?  "Do you think there's more Dad didn't tell us?" she asked Colin.

"Probably," he said, like it didn't matter at all.  "But he will, when we ask.  You know that."

Sara did.  And Mom and Aunt Rachel and Cassandra and John would help them, too.  And so that was good.  "Let's ask him after breakfast," she suggested, and Colin nodded.

"Hey, look!" Colin said suddenly, and Sara looked to see Amanda and Cassandra walking up the road, side by side.  Both of them were in running clothes: Cassandra in a T-shirt and shorts while Amanda wore a black bra-thing and skin-tight purple leggings.  They were laughing; Sara could hear it from the verandah.

"I'm going to go help with breakfast," Sara said abruptly, and she picked up Colin's bowl along with her own and went into the house and down the hall.

~~~~~

Everybody sat down to eat in the dining room when Methos and Amanda showed up about fifteen minutes later.  Methos was in jeans and a shirt, just like Dad and John and Cassandra and Mom, but Amanda had changed her running clothes for a tight red shirt and a short black skirt with high-heeled sandals.  Her hair was sleeked back, all smooth and shiny black, and her make-up wasn't even a tiny bit smudged.  Sara redid her ponytail and sat up straighter in her chair.

None of the grown-ups seemed all that interested in food, just like after the bachelor party, even though there was bacon and pancakes and syrup and pineapple and kiwifruit (and they were kiwifruit, not kiwi, because, as Paula had firmly informed Sara, a kiwi was a bird).  Sara and Colin got to eat all the bacon they wanted, and nobody told them to stop.

"When are you going back to Scotland, Dad?" John asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the machine on the huge oak sideboard against the wall.

"We're leaving here on Tuesday, but we're going to stop in Okinawa for a few days to visit Sensei Kisei and see his dojo before we go back home," Dad answered, buttering a piece of toast.  "Your flight leaves from Christchurch this afternoon, right?"

John grimaced as he pulled out a chair and sat between Dad and Aunt Rachel at the long, wooden table.  "Yeah, I got to get back to school.  It's a long way to Colorado, and I've already missed four days."

"What are you studying?" Amanda cooed, leaning across the table, smiling all sexy-sweet and making googly eyes.

John got all googly back, and Sara rolled her eyes and sighed, wondering how her older brother could be so stupid.  Sara was never going to be stupid over a guy.  Never.  Methos didn't seem to care what Amanda was doing, even though he'd been kissing Amanda last night, and somehow Amanda had shown up here at the homestead this morning.  He was just lounging in the cushioned chair in the corner of the dining room, near the windows, sipping at a tall glass of orange juice with his eyes closed.  Cassandra was as far away from him as she could be, at the very end of the table, with Mom on one side and Sara on the other.  Colin was next to Mom, too, but he also had to sit next to Amanda, poor kid.

"I'm working on my master's degree in geology," John said to Amanda, and he leaned towards her, forgetting all about his coffee, which was on the edge of the table and just about ready to spill.

"Geology as in gems?" Amanda asked, and suddenly her smile seemed real.  Aunt Rachel quietly reached over and moved John's coffee cup to a safer place.

"More like as in oil," John answered, and Amanda's smiled flickered away, like a candle going out.  Sara followed Dad's moods by his eyebrows and his snorts, and her mom's mood by her voice, Aunt Rachel too, but Amanda was mostly teeth and eyes.  Cassandra was hands.  Uncle Duncan used his whole body, and so did John.  Sara knew Colin without even looking, but Methos ... Sara hadn't figured Methos out yet.

"When's your flight to Scotland, Cassandra?" Aunt Rachel asked.

"I'm going to Hong Kong from here," Cassandra answered.

"Don't you need to get back to work?"

"No, I'm on leave for the entire fall term," Cassandra said.  "I hadn't taken any time off in years, and the headmistress told me not to hurry back.  I found another music teacher to teach my classes for me."

"After I finish a little business deal in Australia," Amanda said cheerfully, "Cassandra and I are going to tour the Mediterranean together."

"Oh," Mom said blankly, and Sara knew that Mom and she weren't the only ones surprised.  Dad was watching Cassandra, and Methos had opened his eyes.

"We're going to give each other history lessons," Cassandra said, and she was cheerful, too.

"Rebecca and I talked about going back to see some of the places where she used to live, but we only went once."  Amanda's smile shivered a little, turning real again, but sad now.  "We always thought we'd have time, someday."

"Who's Rebecca?" Colin asked her, and Sara wanted to know, too.  All the grown-ups kind of looked at each other and then ending up looking at Dad.  He nodded to Amanda, more with his eyebrows than his head, and Amanda turned to Colin and did the same thing to him that she'd just done to John, except with an icky-sweet smile and only a little of the googly eyes.  Sara hated it when grown-ups did that to "sweet, precious, little children."  At least Amanda hadn't tried one of those smiles on her.  Perhaps she only used them on guys.  But Colin wouldn't get all googly, Sara knew.  Not for a couple of more years, anyway, she realized darkly.

"Rebecca was an old friend of mine," Amanda began.

"Old means immortal, right?" Colin interrupted, and at that word, rustles and little sighs skittered around the table, as all the grown-ups shifted in their chairs or rearranged their coffee cups or looked at each other again.  Only Dad stayed still, like a rock in a field of grass with the wind blowing cold.  Amanda made one short quick nod to Colin, and he asked, "How old was she?"

"About three thousand."

Just like Cassandra.  "Why can't you go back to the Mediterranean with Rebecca?" Sara asked.

"She died, about ten years ago."

"Oh," Colin and Sara said together, and then again Colin asked what Sara really wanted to know.  "Did somebody chop off her head?"

More rustles and sighs went whipping around the table.  Aunt Rachel shut her eyes and Cassandra clicked her teeth together.  Mom stared at Dad while Dad glared at John.  Methos was smiling to himself, but Amanda's eyes were as hard and brown as wrinkled little olive pits as she stared down at Colin.  "Well," she said to Dad, moving her glare to him, "he obviously inherited your tact."

John shrugged helplessly and said, "I didn't tell them, Dad," even as Colin protested, the hurt and confusion loud in his voice, "I was only curious.  I didn't mean ..."

"It's all right," Mom told Colin with a quick hug and a longer-lasting smile.

"Colin figured it out," Sara put in, because Dad was still glaring at John, and Sara knew how scary that could be.  Everybody turned to look at her, and now she got to shrug.  "Cassandra told us that somebody killed Roland, and Dad told us Immortals can't die unless their heads get cut off, and Dad and Uncle Duncan and even Cassandra practice with swords all the time."  Sara shrugged again.  "What else are they good for?"

"What else, indeed?" Methos asked from his corner, but nobody answered.  Dad nodded to John and gave Colin a smile.  Aunt Rachel got up from the table and put bread in the toaster.

"Rebecca was beheaded by a man named Luther," Amanda told Colin, and each word came out p-ching, p-ching, p-ching, like the little steel balls in the pinball machine in the playroom at home.  "And a few weeks later, Duncan beheaded him."

"Oh," Colin said simply, his 'satiable curtiosity satisfied--for now.  He went back to eating his bacon, crunching away.

Sara had another question.  "Did you know Rebecca?" she asked Cassandra.

"We met in Greece about twenty-five hundred years ago," she said.  Dad and Mom and Amanda nodded, as though they'd heard that part of the story before, but John and Aunt Rachel and Methos were all ears.  So were Colin and Sara.

"It wasn't called Greece then, was it?" Colin asked.

"No," Dad said.  "No country then, just city-states."

"And Rebecca was called Xanthia of Melitus," Amanda said and went back to being cheerful.  "Oh, the stories she told!"

Methos sat up, bright-eyed and curious, reminding Sara of Colin, and Sara didn't like that at all.  Methos said to Cassandra, "And you were ...?"

She hesitated then looked him right in the eye.  "Cassia of Potidaea."

Methos lifted his eyebrows.  "Quite the pair, you two."

"We could have been," Cassandra said, sounding wistful.  "She wanted to be friends, but I didn't let myself trust her.  I didn't trust anyone, not then."

Methos didn't say anything to that, and the room was silent, except for Dad munching on his toast as he glanced back and forth between Amanda and Cassandra with a frown on his face.  "What?" Amanda demanded, with a snarky snarl and narrowed eyes.

Dad gave her an even snarkier look in return, but Mom spoke up, saying what was probably on both their minds.  Mom did that a lot, since usually Dad didn't say anything at all.  "I think we're just ... surprised that you and Cassandra are getting along so well--and so soon."

"Who, us?" Amanda said, fluttering her hands and batting her eyelashes.  Sara had never seen anybody bat her eyelashes before, not in real life, but Amanda knew how.  "Why, I'm always easy to get along with, and Cassandra can be very charming."

"Yes," Dad said, staring over Sara's head to look straight at Cassandra, his eyes cold and hard and serious, even scarier than when he had been glaring at John.  "She can be.  Enchanting even."

"Oh yes, Cassandra told me," Amanda said, picking up her coffee cup.

Dad blinked.  "You did?" he said to Cassandra.

"I did," Cassandra replied, leaning back in her chair and smiling, a slow and lazy smile that Sara had never ever seen before.  Then Cassandra batted her eyelashes, but only once, like a cat blinking in the sunshine, or like a witch weaving a spell, and Sara nodded to herself in sudden understanding, because what good was a witch who couldn't be enchanting when she wanted to be?

"Of course, Rebecca had told me ages ago," Amanda continued, waving one hand.  "So it wasn't really a surprise."

"She did?" Methos said, surprised in his turn, and Amanda smiled at him, just as slow and lazy as Cassandra.  Methos said, almost huffily, "She never told me."

"No," Amanda purred.  "She wouldn't have."  Amanda and Cassandra smiled at each other, still slow, only not lazy now.

"Was Rebecca a witch, too?" Sara asked, and everybody looked at Amanda, but Amanda was looking down at the table.  "How about you?" Sara asked her.  "Are you a witch?"

"I've been called one," she said and smoothed back her hair with one hand.

"I bet," Dad said, and Methos strangled a laugh into a cough when Amanda glared his way.

Cassandra sat up, prickly again.  "Whenever a woman knows something men don't, they call her a witch."

Dad gave her another hard stare.  "Not just women.  I've been accused of witchcraft."

"And so have I," Methos put in.

"Because you're immortal," Cassandra replied, tossing back her hair.  "Because of what you are, not because of what you know."

"Not always, Cassandra," Methos said, and he and Cassandra locked eyes until Cassandra gave him a single short nod.

"Not always," she agreed.  "But more often than not."  This time Methos gave her a nod. She turned to Sara and answered her question.   "Rebecca wasn't a witch, but she had great knowledge.  She remembered things long-forgotten, the old ways now destroyed."

"Things older than Immortals," Amanda said softly.  "And greater."  Amanda looked at Methos again, but this time he was staring at his toes and slouching down in his chair.

"Don't worry, Connor," Cassandra said, cheerful again.  "Amanda and I won't get into any trouble."

"Nothing we can't handle, that is," Amanda corrected, and now the two women shared wickedly happy grins.

Methos piped up from his corner with: "That's what I'm afraid of," and Dad muttered under his breath, "So am I."

That wasn't what Sara was afraid of.

~~~~~

"How can you go with *her*?" Sara demanded right after brunch while Cassandra sorted out her clothes in the little bedroom on the third floor.  Sara kicked again at the dresser of battered pine.

"Sara," Cassandra said, hanging her shirt back in the closet and sitting on the edge of the narrow bed.  "You go on vacations sometimes; I want to take one, too.  And you said it yourself: girlfriends are important."

"I guess immortal girlfriends are different, aren't they?" Sara muttered, and she turned to leave the room.

Cassandra rose and stood in front of the door, blocking her escape.  "Every friend is different, Sara.  Each and every one.  You know that."

Sara did.  Both Keiko and Claire were her first-best-friends, and Sara wouldn't want to have to choose between them, because they were fun for different things.  "But ..."  Sara went over to the window and played with the ruffles on the green curtains as she looked down at the little cottage in the side yard below.  "She'll never get old."

"No," came Cassandra's voice from behind her.

"And neither will you."

"No."

Sara turned around.  "But I will, and so will Mom.  And she'll still be around."

Cassandra nodded and sat back down on the edge of the bed.  "And so will your father and Duncan and I."

While Mom and Aunt Rachel and John and Colin--and Sara herself--would get older and older until ...  "Sometimes it seems like Aunt Rachel acts like she's Dad's mom," Sara ventured, hoping she was wrong, but Cassandra nodded and agreed.  Sara looked out the window again, this time at the bluish snow-covered mountains far away.  "I don't want to be older than my dad."

"Someday you'll look older, Sara, but you will never *be* older.  And you don't have to act older, either.  Rachel likes to mother people; that's just how she is.  But your father will always want to be a father to you."

Sara nodded, biting down on her lip but still feeling better, because that was always and forever true.  "How many families have you had?" she asked, turning around again.

Cassandra laid her hands on her lap and intertwined her fingers, her thumbs just barely touching at the top--an old memory then, but not a bad one.  For those, she laid her fingers flat.  "Four husbands, over two hundred children."

Sara opened her mouth only to shut it again.  She hadn't dreamed it would be so many.  "You can't even remember all their names, can you?"

"Oh, Sara," Cassandra said, and she came over to kneel on the floor and take Sara's hands in her own.  "Every night," Cassandra said, as they looked into each other's eyes, "before I go to sleep, I remember all the people I have loved.  I say their names, and I remember.  Every night, Sara.  Every single night."

"Oh."

"I started doing that when I was about your father's age, because you're right; I was forgetting, and I didn't want to lose them."  Her hands tightened, and Sara squeezed back, one-two, one-two, and they smiled at each other as Cassandra said, "And I don't want to lose you--ever."

"But I am going to die," Sara said, half-testing, half-certain.

"Yes, Sara," Cassandra agreed, not pretending or lying at all.  "You are going to die.  Someday."  Sara blinked back tears, and Cassandra did, too.  "But not for a long time yet," Cassandra told her, smiling now.  "I promise.  Colin, too."

"How can you know?" Sara protested, because people died in car accidents and plane crashes and things, even kids.

"I'm a witch, remember?" Cassandra said with a slow enchanting smile.  "I dream of the future."

"Will I?" Sara asked, seizing on that again.

"Ah."  Cassandra rose to her feet and let go of Sara's hands.  "That, I don't know yet.  I don't see everything.  But you and Colin ..."  She nodded to herself as she looked Sara up and down.  "There's something there.  When you're older, perhaps in a few years."

Sara bounced a little on her toes, excited and pleased.  "I do want to get older," she explained, trying to make up for her earlier bad mood.  "I just don't want to get old."  Cassandra nodded, but she wasn't smiling anymore.

"How many heads have you cut off?" Sara asked, needing to know.

Cassandra made that little clicking sound between her teeth again and sat down on her bed.  "Seven," she answered flatly.

"Why?"

"They were trying to cut off mine."

"Oh."  Sara thought about that for a minute, but none of it made any sense.  "But ... why?"

Cassandra looked out to the window and shook her head, then faced Sara once again.  "Your father showed you the blue sparks of healing.  When one Immortal cuts off another Immortal's head, all those sparks come together to make lightning, and the lightning goes into the living Immortal."

"Like Zeus," Sara said softly.  Dad hadn't denied that one.

"The power of the gods," Cassandra agreed.  "It's like ... fireworks inside of you, such energy, such power ... All that they are, goes into you."  She shrugged.  "Some Immortals like that feeling."

"And you don't," Sara ventured.

Cassandra shook her head.  "It makes me ... ill.  I hear their voices in my mind, for years.  I don't want that, so I don't take heads."

"You hear their voices?  Like they're still alive?"

"They are alive."  Cassandra wasn't staring off and away, the way she did sometimes; she was staring inside herself.  But her eyes were empty, as if no one were there.  "When we take their heads, we eat their souls."

~~~~~

"It's like a war, isn't it, Dad?" Colin asked that afternoon as Sara and he sat cross-legged on the grass in the back yard, watching as Dad polished his sword.

"It is war," Dad answered, holding the blade up to the light, so that the bright spring sunshine glinted sharply off the steel.  "A war to end all wars."  He sat straight-backed and tall on the patio chair, his bare feet planted firmly on the stone paving, his bare chest still gleaming a little with sweat from the sword kata he had just performed.  Sara had always loved to watch Dad do those, so graceful, so controlled, but now that she knew what they were for ...

"Cassandra said she didn't believe in the Prize," Sara said.  "She said--"

"Cassandra," Dad interrupted, and he punctuated the name with a sudden slice of his sword, so that it went whooshing through the air, "does not know everything."

"But what proof do you have that the Prize is real?" Colin asked.

"The same proof she has that it isn't," Dad said.  "None."

"But, if she is right," Sara said, "then the killing is for nothing."

"And if I'm right, then the killing is for everything."  Dad shook his head and settled down to honing the edge with long sweeping strokes with one of the stones from the sharpening kit on the table.  The muscles in his arms rippled along with the sound.  "Other Immortals want the Prize.  I won't just quit and let them win."  He turned the blade over and started on the other side, a harsh scraping so soft it whispered in the ears.  Finally, he stopped and held the blade upright again.  "I don't have a choice."

"But--"

Dad set the sharpening stone back in its box with a thunk, interrupting Sara again.  "It's people like me, who do fight, that make the world safe for people like her, who won't fight."

"But--," Sara began, then hastily swallowed the word when Dad's eyes narrowed and his eyebrows drew ominously close together.  "I mean," Sara continued, "Cassandra will fight--sometimes, anyway.  She told me that she'd killed some of the men who hurt her, and she said she wasn't afraid to kill anymore, if she had to."

Dad turned slowly to look at Sara, and his voice was quiet and still.  "Did she now?"

"She did," Sara stated.  "Last night."

Dad's eyebrows went up this time, and a soft puff of air came out of his nose: the snort of pleased surprise.  He reached for the uchiko ball and started patting down the blade.

"Did you kill Roland, Dad?" Sara asked, because she had forgotten question number four this morning.

"No."  Pat, pat, pat went the ball near the handle.  "Duncan did, about six months before you two were born.  Cassandra asked him to."

That made sense.  "Cassandra said she doesn't like killing Immortals," Sara explained to Colin.  "She said it makes her hear voices, like she's going crazy."

"Best she doesn't then," Dad said.  "She's got enough problems already."

"She's getting better!" Sara said, coming immediately to Cassandra's defense.

The uchiko ball let out tiny puffs of dust as it moved along the blade.  "You're right, Sara," Dad agreed finally.  "She is."

Sara and Colin exchanged glances and nodded, and he took the lead.  "Did Amanda ask Uncle Duncan to kill Luther?" Colin asked.

Dad's mouth twitched on one side.  "I think Duncan volunteered that time."

"How many heads has Uncle Duncan taken?" Colin asked, gathering data again.  Dad shrugged, but Colin, the Elephant Child, persisted.  "How many heads have you taken, Dad?"

Dad set the uchiko ball in the box, and then he laid his sword on the table.  He slid off the chair and joined them on the grass, sitting with his feet crossed and his knees up, braced against the crooks of his arms.  His left hand held his right wrist, and he stared across the yard, looking at nothing, or perhaps at the trees or the clouds.  "Around two hundred," he finally told them.  "Duncan's probably about the same."

"Oh," Colin said quietly.

Sara blinked and stared at the grass in the triangle space between her crossed legs.  She hadn't thought it would be so many.  Cassandra had taken only seven, and she was way older than Dad.  "Were they ... I mean ... they were all bad people, right?" Sara asked.

"It's a war, Sara," Dad repeated.  "Sometimes ..."  He sighed.  "Some Immortals like to hunt for heads.  If they try to kill me, I kill them."

Sara nodded.  That was fair.  Killing people was allowed if they were trying to kill you.

"Do you ever hunt?" Colin asked.

Dad sighed again, but only a little.  "If they're hurting mortals, yes, sometimes.  Duncan does, too.  The police don't know how to stop Immortals, not forever.  We do."

"So, you're like Immortal police," Colin said with satisfaction, and Sara liked that idea, too.  Dad would protect them, from anything.  "Special secret agents," Colin continued, "like James Bond, except with swords instead of fancy gadgets and exploding pens from Q."

"No exploding pens," Dad agreed, almost smiling.  "No rocket cars."

"Did Kane hurt people?" Sara asked, because John hadn't wanted to talk about Kane when she and Colin had helped John pack.  John wouldn't talk about Mom and Dad's wedding, either, no matter how much Sara had wheedled.  Maybe Mom or Aunt Rachel would tell, because Sara didn't want to wait until Dad was ready.  John had talked only about school and hiking and kayaking and about what they wanted for their birthday, but not about Kane.

Dad nodded, not smiling anymore, his jaw muscles flexing and unflexing with little tiny quivers.

"You killed him," Colin guessed, his voice hushed.  "Didn't you?"

"Yes."

And that was it, no humming, no hawing, no pause, no explanation, just a straight out Yes.  Dad had killed a bad guy.  Lots of them.  Of course, Sara had known that before, because he'd told her he'd been a soldier, but she hadn't realized *how.* "Isn't it messy?" Sara asked.  "Chopping somebody's head off with a sword?"  Blood spurting everywhere, the head bouncing, hair all chopped off , eyes open and staring, the lips still trying to talk ...

"Yes," Dad said again, in just the same flat-out way.

Sara wrinkled her nose in disgust, but Colin didn't seem to mind.  "It's just like battles between knights!" he exclaimed.  "Like William Wallace fighting the English, or like the Crusades."

"It's ... war," Dad said, one more time, as if that explained it all.  Sara shuddered again, and Dad saw.  "Sara," he began, looking only at her, "when I was born, nobody used guns.  Fighting meant a contest between warriors who depended on their strength and skill.  With guns and rockets and bombs, anybody can kill from a distance, but death from those is messy, too."  He shook his head.  "Modern weapons make it easy, *too* easy.  Now, people can kill and risk nothing.  They feel nothing, because it seems so far away.  It's like a video game."

"What do you feel when you kill?" Sara asked, because she needed to know.

Dad let air out slowly through his nose and looked up to the sky, staring over Sara and Colin's heads.  "Mostly ... relief that I'm still alive.  Tired.  Glad, that other people will be safe now.  Sad, too, sometimes."  He looked at Sara and Colin again.  "Killing isn't easy.  It changes you.  And you pay for it, every day."

"Do you remember their names?  Do you know who they were?"

Dad slowly turned his head to look just at her, and this time, she shrank away, because his eyes were horribly old.  "I know who they *are,* Sara," he reminded her gently.  "When we take their heads, we take their Quickenings."

<We eat their souls.>

"Do you hear their voices?" she asked, her voice sounding small and funny in her ears.

"No," Dad said with a quick shake of his head.  "Cassandra 'hears' things more than most people," he said, and Sara and Colin nodded, because they already knew that.  Cassandra was a witch.

"I don't hear them, but they're still with me," Dad said, staring at nothing again.  "Always."

Sara didn't like seeing him so quiet, so ... alone.  And no matter how many Quickenings were "with him," he certainly couldn't be friends with them.  Those were the bad guys.  Sara definitely wouldn't want those kind of people inside of her.  She shivered and decided she would never again want to be an Immortal.  Yuck.  She glanced over at Colin, who looked just as repulsed as she did.

And poor Dad, who had to live like that for centuries, whether he wanted to or not, to protect Aunt Rachel and Mom and John and Colin and her, and all the other people in the world, in case a bad guy ever started to get the Prize.  Sara hadn't ever realized before just how much Dad loved them, to keep them safe that way, and Sara loved him back just as hard.

She crawled over to him and burrowed her head up under his arm, snuggling close against his side.  She wrapped her arms around Dad's waist, and she wasn't surprised to find Colin's arms there, too, coming from the other side.  Dad let out the air in his lungs in a whoosh as he lowered his knees, making room for them on his lap, and his arms tightened around them, pulling them in.  Sara found Colin's right hand with her left, and then she closed her eyes and sighed, listening to Dad's heartbeat, slow and steady underneath warm, bare skin.

It was a good place to be.

~~~~~

"Did you know, Mom?" Sara asked.  She and Colin had found Mom in the library after they had finished talking to Dad.  "All about the Game and everything, before you got married?"

"Oh, yes," Mom said, setting her book on the arm of her chair.  "Your dad told me right away, while we were still in Scotland.  He wanted me to realize what it meant to marry an Immortal."

"What does it mean?"

"Worrying sometimes, that he might not come home.  But it's the same for families of soldiers or police officers or firefighters.  My mother worried about my father when he was in Vietnam.  Sometimes it means not asking questions, and it always means keeping secrets very well."  She added a warning glance, and Sara and Colin nodded right away.  They knew that.  "But families of people in some government jobs have to not ask questions and keep secrets, too," Mom went on.

"Like spies?" Colin asked, all eager and excited.

"Yes, like spies," Mom answered with a smile.  "But mostly ... marrying your father meant marrying the man I loved.  And still do, very much."

Sara nodded in satisfaction, because that was very good.  She loved her father, too, no matter what he was, or what he had to do.

~~~~~

Just before dinner, Sara waited by the door for Cassandra.  She came downstairs with her suitcase in her hand, dressed in blue slacks and a peacock-colored shirt.  Her hair was still all curls.  "I wish you didn't have to go so soon," Sara said.

"Oh, Sara." Cassandra gave her a hug, warm and lavender scented.  "I'll miss you, too, but after I go to Hong Kong, I'm meeting my friend Elena in Barcelona so we can go on a cruise.  She'll be waiting for me."

And then the trip with Amanda.  "But what about Phoenix?" Sara asked.  "Who's taking care of your cat?"  Sara missed her own cat a lot, and she wasn't going to get to see Catkin for another whole week, but at least Catkin and Callie were safe at home with Mrs. MacNabb.

"Marianna, the same person who's teaching my music classes," Cassandra reassured Sara.  "She's staying in my flat, and so Phoenix is still at her home."

"You'll be back for Christmas, right?" Sara asked.  "And the New Year's Eve party in Edinburgh?  Like always?"

"Like always.  And I'll be back before your birthday."

"It's just ..."  Sara kicked at the floor and shrugged, trying to explain herself some more.  "Everything's changing."

"Everything always does," Cassandra said, and Sara supposed that was true.

"When I'm a grown-up," Sara asked, because she had to ask, "will you and I be friends, like you and Mom are friends now?"

"I hope so, Sara.  That's what I'm waiting for."

"Me?" Sara asked, her voice squeaking in surprise.  "You're waiting for me?"

"Yes, Caorran," Cassandra said, using her special name with that special ripply sound to the R.  "You.  Who else do you know who can hear the heartbeat of a tree?"

No one.  No one in the world.

"We won't say goodbye," Cassandra said.  "Just au revoir, because you and I are going to spend a lot of time together.  I promise."

Sara nodded, pleased, because *that* was good, and it was going to be even better.  She was sure.
 
 

Alex and Connor's wedding (and what Duncan did to deserve revenge) is in my upcoming story All the Fun, due out in summer of 2001.
 
 

Dedicated to:
Irene and her spirited stubbornness and firm sense of self.
Ryan and his 'satiable curtiosity

Thanks to:
Listen-r, for wading through revision after revision after revision
Robin, who listened to me whine about this story and still didn't tell me to shut up, then gave me essential story-structuring advice right at the end.
Vi, for her excellent advice on logistics and logic.
Bridget, for encouraging me to keep going when I was ready to quit.
MacNair, for liking the story
Faye, for the guided tour of New Zealand
Tamyris, for the quick and thorough beta-read.