“And that’s exactly why women have never been allowed to be drùidhs,”he shot back with a glare before walking toward the wood cookstove. He spun around to face her again, his complexion red with anger. “Women are weak. Ye spin fairy tales of sweetness and compassion and everyone loving each other. Ye don’t have the strength of heart to fight the dark side of human nature, thinking that just by falling in love with a blackguard ye can suddenly turn him into a saint.”
“Then why was I born?” she quietly asked. “If women don’t have the fortitude to be drùidhs,why did you expend so much effort to get my father and mother together so I would be born?”
He frowned, his jaw tensing as he looked down at his hands.
“Because Providence realized having only male drùidhswasn’t working,” Winter answered for him. “The energy is shifting to include females, because it’s our very sweetness and compassion that was lacking. My child isn’t going to mean the end of mankind, Father,” she softly informed him. “It’s going to be our salvation. I know you were brought up in a time when marriages were practical rather than emotional, but whether you can learn to accept it as fact or not, love always was and always will be the most powerful energy in the universe. That’s why Providence has gotten itself a female drùidh,so I can fix the mess you men have made,” she said with a crooked grin. “And just as soon as you teach me to control the energy, that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
He didn’t smile back, but scowled instead. “How do ye know all this?” he growled.
“A little bird told me,” she said, laughing when his scowl deepened. “A crow, actually, came to me in a dream and explained that I have the ability to put the continuum back on track.” She frowned.
“Except he didn’t explain howI was supposed to do it. He only said that I would figure it out by the winter solstice.”
“A crow,” Daar said. “In a dream ye had. And on this alone you’ve risked everything?”
“You still haven’t told me why I was born,” Winter said instead of answering him.
Daar’s face reddened, not with anger but with chagrin. “I was told to make yer birth happen.”
“Who told you?”
His face darkened even more, and he dropped his gaze to her feet. “I was told it in a dream,”
he said, lifting his chin defensively. “I only saw a shadow surrounded by brilliant colors. It told me to get Greylen born and then get him married off to some woman in the twenty-first century.” His shoulders slumped and he walked to the table and sat down in a chair, hanging his head as he spoke to the floor. “I did what I was asked, though I never understood why. I was only told that the energy was shifting from the summer solstice to the winter. I was operating blind.”
“Not blind,” Winter said, going to Daar and kneeling in front of him so he could see her smile.
“You knew my parents were ordained to have seven daughters, and that the energy was shifting even while you didn’t want to admit it. You didn’t like that the upset Cùram had caused centuries earlier had started a chain reaction that only a female could fix.” She touched his bearded cheek, then stood and pulled her sketch pencil from her jacket pocket. “I seem to be having a wee bit of trouble with my power, and I need you to teach me how to control it.”
He turned to face her. “Control it?” he asked in surprise. “That’s not something anyone can teach ye.”
He stepped toward her, his face paling. “Where’s the staff I made ye?”
She held up the pencil. “It’s right here.”
Daar rushed over and took the pencil from her, examining it as if it were a bug in his hand. He looked at her. “Ye turned yer pinewood staff into a pencil? Why?”
“I didn’t. Matt did. It’s easier to carry that way.” She smiled crookedly. “Do you really expect me to walk around with a cane, Father? I’m twenty-four years old, and I don’t limp.” She took the pencil away from him. “This is easier. It fits in my pocket.”
“Ye mustn’t let Cùram touch your staff!”
“He’s been trying to help me control the magic, but I burned all his clothes, his blankets, and his supplies.”
Daar eyed her suspiciously. “Maybe he’s only pretending to be helpful, but is really sabotaging ye.”
“Nay,” Winter said. “He needs my help to keep a promise he made over eight hundred years ago. But to do that, I have to be able to summon the energy.”
“What promise?” Daar asked, still skeptical.
Winter shook her head. “I can’t say without breaking my marriage vows.”
Daar harrumphed and turned away from her. “Does yer papa know who ye married?”
“Yes, and so does Robbie.”
Daar snapped his gaze to her. “MacBain knows Gregor is Cùram de Gairn? And he did nothing? Nor did Greylen?”
“Robbie and Papa trust me,” she said. “And they realize they must work with Matt now, to find out who cut our pine.”
Daar’s eyes widened in surprise. “Work with him?” he repeated. He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. MacBain would never willingly work with de Gairn any more than I would.”
“We all have the same goal, Father,” Winter said with a sigh, tucking the pencil in her pants pocket. “And a common cause will force even enemies to cooperate with each other. Which is why you will also help, by teaching me how to control the energy.”
He had nothing to say to that, though he did look like she’d just asked him to swallow a sour pickle, which Winter guessed was exactly how he felt.
“Matt is not the threat, Father,” she said into the silence. “Whoever cut our pine is the true danger, and if we don’t find out who he is and why he’s here before he does any more damage, it might be too late for all of us. Please, won’t you help me?”
“It became too late for me to help ye when ye married de Gairn,” he whispered, seemingly unable to get past that fact. “He’s the one who put this whole mess into motion.”
“But it’s fixable,” Winter snapped with waning patience. “I can make everything all right on this winter solstice, but only if I have command of my power. And that’s not going to happen without your help.” She stepped closer and set her hand on his slumped shoulder. “Ye have to trust the universe to know what it’s doing, Father. Passing down your knowledge to me is not playing into Matt’s hands, it’s fulfilling a promise that was put into motion a thousand years ago.”
Daar reached up and scrubbed his face with both hands. He walked over to the door, opened it, and looked out over Pine Lake. “I did feel another entity in the air before I lost my power,” he admitted as he stared out at the vista. “I thought it was de Gairn trying to confuse me.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Are ye sure Cùram had nothing to do with the pine being cut?”
“Yes, Father. He’s as worried about it as we are.”
“Can ye feel this strange energy?” he asked, looking back at the lake. “Still? It’s still here?”
“Yes.” She frowned at his back. “But instead of being strange, if feels…familiar some how.”
She shook her head when he spun toward her in surprise. “I know it’s not Matt’s or mine, but it seems to be…” She shrugged, tossing her hands up and letting them fall to her sides.
Daar stared at her for what seemed like forever, then suddenly sighed and stepped out onto the porch. “Come, then,” he said as he turned toward the stairs. “Show me the problem you’re having with yer staff.”
Winter ran out onto the porch and down the stairs to where Daar was standing in the middle of the clearing. “Every time I ask for something as simple as a fire to light,” she told him, pulling her pencil from her pocket, “everything but the twigs starts bursting into flames.”
Daar scurried to the side when she pulled out her pencil, positioning himself slightly behind her.
“There,” he said, pointing at a large boulder at the far end of the clearing. “Instead of asking for fire, see what happens when ye ask that rock to turn into a pebble.”