Linda Kay Silva - Across Time 01, page 18
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“Go on.”
Jessie told her all about their conversation, and Ceara stopped her only a few times for clarification. When Jessie began describing Lachlan, Ceara’s eyes grew wide and she held her hands up. “Are you certain she said Lachlan?”
Jessie nodded. “Are you okay? You don’t look so hot.”
Ceara nodded slowly and motioned for Jessie to continue, the color completely gone from her cheeks. “I’m—fine. Please—continue.” “Cate saw what horrific thing might happen to Maeve and the others, so she and Lachlan decided Cate would go through, although I don’t know why he made her go and not himself. Cate made it sound like he was the bomb.”
“They need him to lead the people. If the Romans are going to attack, they need their chief Druid to assemble everyone together and devise a plan.”
Jessie watched the flame lick the bottom on the teakettle. “Anyway, my job is to find out as much as I can about Druids and Romans, England and all that history I never paid much attention to. If they have a general idea of what happened—”
“They can work around that, yes. It’s a brilliant notion, really.” Ceara nodded as she watched the steam rise from the mouth of the teapot. “Fortunately, my dear, you have friends who are well-connected. I have studied a bit about the Celts and their society, and I should be a great deal of help to you. Add my Internet connection on the boat, and we will provide you with more than enough reading material.” Ceara checked her watch when the kettle blew. “I do have several appointments this afternoon. Can you meet me at my boat tonight around eight?”
“You bet.”
Ceara smiled and patted Jessie’s hand. “Don’t panic my dear, or go off half-cocked. There’s a method to compiling the evidence we need to help. At least now you know what is required of you. Now, we have a direction in which to travel.”
Jessie couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Cate. “It’s as weird as it is incredible.”
“What is? Soul travel?”
“That, too, but I was thinking about them. Cate’s so connected to her. It makes me feel—”
Ceara leaned closer to Jessie and looked intently at her. “Are you telling me you can feel Cate’s feelings for this Maeve?”
Nodding, Jessie was surprised by her own answer. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“Oh—my. That must be something then.”
“Is it a problem?”
Ceara stared out the window and sighed loudly. “Love should never be a problem, dear girl, but what you’re feeling between them goes far beyond our meager definition of love.”
Jessie barely nodded and felt as if she were hardly there at all. Deep inside her, she experienced that life-giving kind of love they held for each other. She felt it as if she had someone in this time that she loved with just as much intensity and power. It was real, it was potent, and it filled Jessie with an unexpected joy.
Ceara cupped Jessie’s chin in the palm of her hand. “What you’re feeling is your soul mate.”
“My—soul mate? You mean—Maeve?”
Ceara nodded. “Yes. Has it not occurred to you yet that she or he is out there now?”
Jessie had to sit down for this one. “I never—I never thought of it. I mean, for the last couple of years, I felt like I was missing something— like there was a puzzle out there with a missing piece and I was it.” “And now?”
Inhaling deeply, Jessie said very softly, “Now, I don’t feel that way at all. Ever since I went through I’ve felt more at peace, more whole than I ever have. Is that—”
“Because of Maeve? It very well could be. It could also be because you are finally on the right path. When we are where we’re supposed to be, life just becomes so much easier.”
“Well, all this history and time travel isn’t really easy, Ceara. It’s damn scary and super confusing.”
“And yet?”
Jessie looked up at her and grinned. “I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
Ceara nodded and pulled out two mugs. “Good for you.”
“You know, as weird as it is to find myself constantly thinking about Maeve, there’s something about Cate that’s irresistibly adorable. She is just filled with goodness.”
“And love?”
“Oh yes.”
“If you can feel Cate’s emotions for Maeve, then she is a far stronger priestess than I ever thought existed.”
“Then you think we can do this? Can we really help them?” Nodding, Ceara poured the steaming water into two small teacups. “Can, my dear, and will.”
“And then, she just disappeared, as one would expect one to leave a dream.”
Maeve brushed a stray hair from Cate’s face. “You have done well. I am so proud of you.”
Cate started to smile, but was prevented by a huge yawn and stretch. “It was so very weird.”
Maeve tilted her face. “Weird?” She said it as if it were a foreign word.
Cate yawned again and nodded. “Yes. Strange. Odd. To stand there and speak to the person who will have your soul in two thousand years defies logic. It is … an odd experience mere words just can’t convey.” Lachlan rose and strode over to the door. He stood there staring at Cate for a moment before speaking. “I, too, am proud of you, Cate. You have done well on your quest.”
“It is easier since Jessie is also a quester.”
This caught Lachlan by surprise. “A quester? Are you certain?”
“As certain as I can be about anything in the twenty-first century, yes. She has my soul, after all; the soul of a quester cannot stay silent long, Lachlan.”
“What does she know of us?”
Cate shook her head. “As to history, she knows virtually nothing, but she is willing to learn—to find out.”
Lachlan nodded. “Excellent. I must go. The Chieftain needs to see me this morning. I will see you both in the grove this eve.”
Cate watched Lachlan leave, wondering if he had ever experienced any joy in his life. She could not remember the last time she saw him laugh.
“How do you feel?” Maeve asked, helping Cate off the bed.
“Fine.” Cate straightened her robe when she stood. “Do you know the strangest thing? I was thinking about your question the other day; the one about Jessie. I like her. I truly do like her.”
“Of course you do. Why do you think so many of us like you?” Maeve stroked Cate’s cheek with the back of her hand. “She is not so very different from you, is she?”
“She is young, but willful. I was clear with her about what to do and she understands our need and the urgency of our request. Without complications, I believe Jessie will do what must be done.”
Just then, the door swung open and Lachlan rushed back in. “Governor Paulinus’s men are on the move and marching this way. It is said they are leaving Londinium in the morning and will be coming south.”
Maeve quickly moved to his side. “What must we do?”
“Pack only what you can carry, hide anything that would show you are a Druid, and spread word we will be meeting in the grove within the hour to discuss what the Chieftain wants to do.”
“So. It has begun.”
Cate joined them at the door. “How long do we have?”
Lachlan rubbed his face. “Days. Perhaps less than a week. Not long. Paulinus has set his sights on bringing the island to its knees.” Lachlan looked down at Cate. “Let us hope she moves quickly, else we may be the last of our people.”
“How could you?”
Jessie locked eyes with her mother, but refused to respond.
“Dr. Uhl said you were combative and rude. Rude, Jess. You just can’t seem to get out of your own way, can you?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“Don’t get fresh mouth with me, young lady. I’ve had enough of your antics. If we didn’t feel that sending you back to San Francisco was a reward instead of a punishment, you’d be packing your bags right now.”
“But we don’t want to foist our problem on someone else,” Rick added, entering the parlor. He sat next to Reena and held her hand.
“Is that what I’ve been reduced to? A problem?” Leaning back, Jessie swallowed the anger rising in her throat.
“Don’t act the victim here. You left your appointment early, you were disrespectful, and now, you have earned a restriction.”
Jessie shot forward. “Are you kidding me? I’m seventeen. Who puts a seventeen-year-old on restriction?”
“Maybe if you started acting more mature and less rebellious, we wouldn’t have to.”
“Look, Jess, we have a lot of work to get done here. Every day that goes by without guests is a day we get deeper and deeper in debt. We can’t afford to be chasing after you and worrying that your— activities—are casting a gray cloud over the inn.”
“And you think putting me in lockdown is the answer?” Jessie crossed her arms and shook her head sadly. “Then bring Daniel home. It’s not fair that you’ve sent him to the hinterlands because of your dark and, if I might add, erroneous suspicions about me. I’ll stay home, but I want him to come home.”
Rick chuffed and shook his head. “This is not a negotiation, Jessie. Daniel will come home when we feel it is best.”
Jessie rose. “Fine. Anything else?”
“Yes. Finish painting room five. Your mother and I have some errands to run and I want it to be done by the time we get back.” When Rick and Reena finally drove down Morning Glory, Jessie was already ten minutes late to meet Ceara at her boat. Time was already taking on a new meaning now that she had a destiny to fulfill. Destiny.
What an interesting word, she thought. People her age didn’t usually think about destiny or purpose. We just go through life expecting tomorrow to be there like a gift waiting to be unwrapped. With little planning or preparation until our senior year, and then BLAM, everyone expects us to know what we want to be for the rest of our lives. Even then, most people still don’t really know what their purpose is. What’s worse, they don’t even care until it’s too late, and then they’re stuck doing something they never saw themselves doing when they were younger.
But she cared. She cared very much. The more time passed, the deeper her feelings were for a woman she would never meet. And those emotions were becoming stranger now, because they were no longer Cate’s emotions, nor were the visions Cate’s alone. They were her own now, borne of an ancient spirit that had raised its head and whispered to her to remember the ancient ways.
And to remember her love.
How perfectly natural it felt that it was the love of another woman that touched her so deeply. She’d never been attracted to girls, herself, but she’d had a lesbian friend her sophomore year who was one of the coolest kids she’d ever met. Unlike Jessie, the girl didn’t do drugs, so their friendship was short-lived. Still, she had always wondered what it would feel like to love a girl. It was something she and Wendy had talked about one super-stoned moment.
Jessie had tried her best to love guys, to plug that void she’d felt her whole life, but love in high school was a pseudonym for sex, and she’d had her fill of that. After the first six guys, she had wondered what all the fuss was about. It was no big deal, and in the end, she decided it was more of a hassle than it was worth.
But now … now that she could feel what love truly felt like, she could understand how sex with someone she really loved might be more meaningful. That kind of love was eternal and binding, and yes—void-filling. It had already managed to soothe that hollow feeling that had been such an intrinsic part of her being. Jessie heard, and she was remembering. It wasn’t a coincidence her parents had dragged her to Oregon and the Money Pit. It was her destiny, and it was now her job, her responsibility to keep Maeve from harm and to protect a way of life.
Jessie thought back to when she saw Cate stab that soldier in the back. When had that happened? Was that before Cate and Lachlan’s vision, or after?
Desperate to know more, Jessie had waited for her parents to leave and immediately ran down the backstairs and into the night. “Restriction, my ass,” she muttered, careful to avoid the motion-sensor lights on the porch. Destiny would not be slowed down by parental restrictions. The clock was ticking.
Five minutes later, Jessie stood on the deck of the boat, out of breath from running the entire way.
“Come in, come in, my dear,” Ceara said from her cabin below.
Jessie ducked as she entered the cabin and was surprised to find several large books strewn about the table, and a laptop plugged in on the counter.
“There is a great deal for you to know before you go back there, Jessie.”
Jessie nodded. “I know. I don’t think I have ever felt this stupid. Why didn’t I ever pay attention?”
Ceara batted the question away. “Believe me when I say this, Jessie Ferguson. What you were, you shall never be again. Who you are now, and who you are going to be, was never fully your own decision. Trust that you have already begun to change. You must learn to understand these changes. Without understanding, you will be lost.”
Jessie nodded. “I have been lost, Ceara. Here—now, is the first time I’ve felt—found.”
“Good. Your eagerness to complete your quest will make the learning easier. Come. Sit.”
Jessie sat at the table and stared down at the open book. It was an encyclopedia of ancient religions, and it smelled as old as God, himself.
“First, you must remember what they are, because what they believe is vital to your understanding of what it is they need to know. Without knowing them, you can only guess at how to help them.”
Jessie shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why can’t I just open a history book and see what happened and then tell them that?”
Ceara sat across from Jessie and as she pulled the encyclopedia to her a Celtic cross fell from the folds of her silk scarves and swayed about an inch above the table like a pendulum. Jessie didn’t remember ever seeing it before. “You cannot read a single history book and then run to tell them what happened.”
“Why not?”
“First off, there is always more than one account of a historical incident. Actually, there are always several different accounts of any one single event.”
Jessie frowned, thinking back to a time when she and Wendy had seen a man run out of a mini-mart. He had just robbed the store, they both saw him, and yet, their “eyewitness” accounts of his appearance were vastly different.
“Many historians claim there were six million Jews killed during the Holocaust in Europe, while other historians dispute that by saying there were not even six million Jews in the whole of Europe. If you only read the latter account, you would be accepting a revisionist’s point of view. To get the facts, you will have to research, and research well. You will have to consider the subjectivity of the author, how much research he or she did, etcetera, etcetera.”
Jessie sighed. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I would have just gone forward and maybe even given them incorrect information.” Ceara nodded. “Without knowing precisely what they are up against, you could inadvertently send them all prematurely to their graves. Life, my dear, isn’t just good and evil. It is layered and textured, and if you do not understand each layer, you cannot make the right decision as to what to tell them.”
Jessie nodded slowly. She was just now beginning to see the scope of her involvement.
“So, we shall start at the beginning with a crash course in Druids and Druidry. Ask any questions you may have, but pay close attention.” “Can’t I just tap into Cate for all of this?”
“Normally, you might be able to, if you were experienced at astral projection or other phenomena, but after two thousand years, think about how many other lives your soul has lived. It would be like going into a haystack and expecting to retrieve hay straws that were cut in August of nineteen sixty-one. It cannot reasonably be done, especially by an untrained individual. You must re-learn what your soul knows … in essence, you must remember, and in remembering, you will find yourself wondering, how do I know this?”
Jessie nodded. “Soul memory.”
Ceara nodded. “Yes. When one wonders why they are afraid of bridges, you will know it is because of something the soul remembers but can’t quite bring to light. So, we suffer with our phobias, our neuroses, even our love of things, and yet, we do not know why they exist for us.”
“How sad. No wonder Cate thinks we, in our time, are so disconnected from ourselves. We are.”
Ceara rose and opened the small window above the sink. “Once the Romans embraced Christianity, and it spread, it all but destroyed other ways of thought in the western world. As you will see, when the one God replaced the many, the world never recovered. Religions were forced to go underground, to hide, to live in fear of being tortured into false confessions and equally false conversions. As you’ll see, the Romans accomplished a great deal on their move toward world domination.”
“What finally brought them down?”
Ceara chuckled beneath her breath. “Barbarians, if you can believe it. Barbarians and Romans themselves brought down the great Roman power. But that’s another tale. Right now, you must understand who you were, what motivated you to become a Druid and to find yourself in the future.”
“But I know what motivated me. Maeve.”
Ceara cocked her head in question for a mere second, before a slight smile pushed her lips up. “Yes. You anam cara, for whom we would do anything. There is but one connection that neither man nor time can sever, and that is when two souls commit to each other for all of time. If, of all the soul memories you remember, Cate’s feelings about Maeve come through the strongest, then it is clear that saving Maeve is why she came through.”
Jessie nodded and rose. Pacing across the small cabin, she jammed her hands in her pockets. “Okay, about this soul mate thing. It’s clear they’re lovers and all—but I’m not gay.”
Ceara shrugged. “The soul is genderless, my dear. In this life, Maeve could be your brother, a friend you haven’t met, one of your parents, or anyone you have already come across but were too young to understand what you were feeling.”
