Page 140 of Time's Fool

“Love is many things,” Gillian pointed out.

“Yes,” the tree agreed, and showed her a cascade of images: a mother holding her newborn babe with mingled wonder and joy on her face; men going off to war and their wives passionately kissing them goodbye; and a small boy playing with a dog, and laughing as it enthusiastically licked his face.

But then the images changed, to show the other side of the coin: the woman, older and pale, screaming in a bloody bed; the men who had left home to protect their families lying in a field as crows picked their bones; the dog attacking a man to save the boy, and being knifed for its trouble.

“I already know love is pain!” Gillian said angrily, wanting to turn away from the gruesome images, yet having no way to do so.

“It can be,” the voice agreed. “But there are not two sides to this coin, but many.”

The images returned, and they were different once more. Gillian saw a screaming infant taken from the dying mother, who held it for a moment before she passed; saw the communities that the men had died to defend surviving and growing strong; saw the boy running downhill to his parents, his guardian having spilled its blood to buy him time to escape.

“Is this supposed to teach me something?” Gillian asked.

“No. To remind you.”

And abruptly, the old images were replaced by new ones. Or no, Gillian thought, realization spilling through her. Not new.

She had seen them a thousand times in her dreams.

“No!” she screamed, watching her husband fall, as clearly as she had done the first time.

His face was a rictus of pain as his legs collapsed beneath him, his final curse having taken everything he had. She saw herself running up to him, the horror and pain she had felt then returning to her now. She couldn’t see this again!

“Yes, that is where you always end it,” the voice said. “But there was more to the story, was there not?”

The scene changed again, to show her and her coven getting away; her bathing her baby daughter, kissing one of the tiny feet and smiling through her tears; her laughing with Kit at the Tower as he tossed a nut to one of the monkeys, only to have it swing over and grab the whole bag.

“And yet still the story is incomplete,” the voice said, and the scene switched to the prison, where she and her daughter had almost died, before being rescued by a curly haired vampire who barely knew how to be one.

She saw herself take the hand of the Great Mother she had met there, who had been disguised as an ordinary witch. Saw the old woman immolate herself, using the last of her strength to burn a hole through the floor and allow everyone a fighting chance to escape. Saw the triskelion tattoo, which had slowly etched itself onto her arm as she risked her life again and again to get her people out of there.

“Many love their coven,” the voice said. “But far fewer would die for it. But a Mother must love it enough to sacrifice herself, and a Great Mother . . .

“Must be willing to sacrifice others, to the good of all.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Gillian whispered.

“I think you know.”

The scene in front of her eyes changed again, to show her the Great Mothers of her people, standing in a circle on the edge of the cliffs, their unbound hair blowing in the great gale they were summoning. Some were young, so much so that it was hard to believe that they led a coven; likely replacements for those who had fallen in the war. Others were old and bent, with hair as white and thin as the foam on the waves crashing below. Yet together . . .

She had never felt such power.

“But they will not use it to save themselves,” the voice said. “They will soon make a great sacrifice, and they know it. Their time is almost at an end.

“But before it is, the spell will be loosed. The last thing they see will be it shooting off like an arrow at the enemy menacing their lands. They are giving everything they have for this realm, for their people, for the ones they have shepherded all these years . . .”

“Whilst I have been looking for my husband,” Gillian choked.

“It is difficult,” the voice said, and it was full of compassion. “To lose a loved one so young; it is harder to think that his death was meaningless. But it wasn’t, for it preserved your life, brought you here. And gave you, the last Great Mother remaining . . .

“A choice.”

* * *

Kit knew immediately that something was wrong.

He burst into the little glade and stopped, the smell of burning wood confusing his nose. But it wasn’t the fact that half of the forest seemed to be on fire that was worrying him. But rather the woman, as solid as he was, who was standing there.

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