“Aye,” Roger said. “We couldn’t have an open light in the hold, of course, so the only time we had light was when they opened the hatch cover. Which they did whenever the weather was fine,” he added, with an attempt at fairness.

“That doesna sound sae bad,” Jamie said. “Ye dinna even notice cheese mites, if ye’re hungry. And raw neeps are very filling …”

Bree made a small noise of amusement; I didn’t. He was teasing, but not joking. I recognized the vivid memory of long years of near-starvation in the Highlands after Culloden, and something not far from it in Ardsmuir Prison.

“How long were you at sea?” I asked.

“Seven weeks, four days, and thirteen and a half hours,” Brianna said. “It was a pretty quick trip, thank God.”

“Aye, it was,” Roger agreed. “The last storm hit us near the coast, though, and we had to come ashore at Savannah. I didn’t think I’d get this lot onto another boat”—he waved casually at his wife and children—“but then we asked just how far it was, and faced with the prospect of walking five hundred miles … we found another boat.”

This one was a fishing boat. “An open boat, thank God,” Bree said fervently. “We slept on deck.”

“So ye came to the stones at last, then,” Jamie said. “How was it?”

“We almost didn’t make it,” Roger said quietly. He looked at the children, asleep on the settle. Mandy had fallen over and was sprawled on her face, limp as Esmeralda. “It was Mandy who got us through—and you,” he added, raising his eyes to Jamie with a slight smile.

“Me?”

“You wrote a book,” Bree said softly, looking at him. “A Grandfather’s Tales. And you thought to put a copy in the box with your letters.”

Jamie’s face changed and he looked down at the floor, suddenly abashed.

“Ye … read it?” he asked, and cleared his throat.

“We did.” Roger’s voice was soft. “Over and over.”

“And over,” Bree added, eyes warm with the memory. “Mandy could recite some of her favorite stories word for word.”

“Aye, well …” Jamie rubbed his nose. “But what has that to do wi’ …”

“She found you,” Roger said. “In the stones. We all were thinking as hard as we could, about you and Claire and the Ridge and—and everything we recalled, I suppose. Too much, maybe—too many different things.”

“I can’t begin to describe it,” Bree said, and of course she couldn’t—but the shadow of it lay on her face. “We—couldn’t get out. We stepped through and we were … it’s kind of like exploding, Da,” she said, trying. “But so slowly you can … sort of feel yourself coming apart. When we did it before—it was like that, but it was over pretty fast. This time … it didn’t stop.”

I felt the memory of it, at her words, and everything inside me lurched as though I’d been thrown off a cliff. Bree had gone pale, but she swallowed and went on.