That woke him up.

“I do.”

“Well. If you move a chunk of mass into a different time period, do you maybe have to balance that by removing a different chunk?”

He stared at her, and she looked back, still holding his hand, but no longer massaging it. Her eyes were steady, expectant.

“You’re saying that if someone comes through a—a portal—someone else from that time has to die, to keep the balance right?”

“Not exactly.” She resumed her massage, slower now. “Because even if they die, their mass is still there. I’m sort of thinking that maybe that’s what keeps them from passing through, though; they’re headed for a time that … that doesn’t have room for them, in terms of mass?”

“And … they can’t go through and that kills them?” There seemed something illogical in this, but his brain was in no condition to say what.

“Not that, exactly, either.” Brianna lifted her head, listening, but whatever she’d heard, the sound wasn’t repeated, and she went on, bending her head to peer into his palm. “Man, you have huge blisters. I hope they heal up by the ordination—everybody will be shaking your hand afterward. But think about it: most of the bodies in Geillis’s news clippings were unidentified, and mostly wearing odd clothes.”

He stared at her for a moment, then took his hand from hers and flexed it gingerly.

“So you think they came from somewhere—sometime—else, and got through the stones—but then died?”

“Or,” she said delicately, “they came from this time, but they knew where they were going. Or where they thought they were going, because plainly they didn’t make it there. So, you know …”

“How did they find out that they maybe could go?” he finished for her. He glanced down at her notebook. “Maybe more people read Pig Latin than you think.”

128

Surrender

Fraser’s Ridge

June 21, 1780

ROGER WAS SEATED IN the family privy, not from bodily necessity but from an urgent need for five minutes of solitude. He could, he supposed, have gone into the woods or taken momentary refuge in the root cellar or the springhouse, but the house and all its surroundings were boiling with humanity, and he needed just these few minutes to be by himself. Not—not by any means—alone, but not with people.

Davy Caldwell had arrived last night, with the Reverends Peterson (from Savannah) and Thomas (from Charles Town). The house was as prepared as half a dozen determined women could make it; the church had been cleaned and aired and filled with so many flowers that half of Claire’s bees were zooming in and out of the windows like tiny crop dusters. The scents of barbecued pork, vinegar and mustard slaw, and fried onions drifted through the cracks in the walls, making his stomach twitch in anticipation. He closed his eyes and listened.