When he asked after his Uncle Magnus, Adelia only answered that he was in the far field where they would all end up some day.
“Yes we will,” he said, with a feeling of only slightly tarnished happiness. “All of us.”
He asked next how their stores had held up, for he could see it had been another hard winter for them there on the land. Libbie answered, saying they had lost much, and that it had been terrible indeed not knowing whether he would return or not, but that he was there now and they could bid farewell to strife.
The others they did not say anything, but waited for him to answer. “Well, it is spring soon, and as long as there is a single mule left to us we’ll rebuild it all even greater than before.”
“It has been an awful winter,” Libbie said again, pressing close to him. “But we did not despair too much.”
“I knew you would come,” Rose said, not able to constrain herself anymore, as Lucky only played around his feet.
“Aye. I wanted to be here sooner,” he said, then looked again to her to whom he first pledged his love and to whom it belonged.
He had not yet surveyed all his lands but knew there would be much to be attended to as soon as the weather allowed him. As for his leg, it would be more difficult but not impossible — or even so hard as other springs had been out there — and he knew that as long as he did not fall into self-sorrow he would be able to face it. That was the way life was with them out there, and he knew he could either accept his rightful challenge or else let the wilderness reclaim everything. Though that was not an option for him or any of them at Stonehouses that morning, because the maidens of that country, as has long been told, were famous as wives, and the men of that land were all worthy, if sometimes fallible, husbands.
What kept them all pushing up against that wilderness year after year, other than an oxlike fortitude of the heart, he could not say. It was not fear of annihilation, or even any longer that there was no other place for them. He knew by then there were many others, but for Stonehouses there was only one such place in all America.
He did not know whether he could be bold in his time of leading it, as Jasper Merian had been, or shrewd as Magnus Merian, but he would take his challenge as it was given him, because it was his now and he had no fear of that. They would begin rebuilding as soon as the weather gave way and he had mourned his father who had died.
“See how peaceful it looks,” he said to Rose and Lucky, looking outside the window at the snow still falling down in the valley, feeling that the world was fixed again and knowable. “If we keep faith in what it is and who we are, it will never demand of us more than we can bear.” It is what he had always been told, and he saw now he had no choice but to believe that, because he had wandered through the world and knew that morning, as all his battles began to recede into memory, that these were his blessings and what he had fought for, and they were glorious. And this was the only home he had, and it was the only one he would ever have and the only one he ever wanted. It was morning then in the world, and it was the morning of his life. In his own country.
The girls stood there with him looking out the window, across the hills, on the other side of the lake, and Libbie came and touched a hand to his shoulder, as Adelia went out to prepare breakfast. They were together again as was always meant to be.
Beneath the surface of the lake Old Lowe, if that be his true name, wailed with grief in his den and began working anew at his chains, but he was fastened tight to the bottom on the lake bed. In time he would stop all protestation — knowing he had been vanquished again in fair contest.
He would rest then, near silent, almost a hundred years.