"Actually, Ceara, I'd like some answers first."

Ceara took off three of her colorful wraps and stood with her back to Jessie looking out the expansive window at the water crashing on the rocks below. It was quite a few beats before she spoke. "I wondered how long it would take her to figure it out."

"She didn't figure anything out. I mentioned your name, and she and Cate nearly fell over from surprise."

"What did they say?"

"What else? That you are-were-are-Lachlan's mother." Jessie stared at her. "It's true, isn't it?"

Ceara imperceptibly nodded. "Aye. Lachlan is my son."

Jessie blew out a loud breath. "How could you have gone all this time holding that kind of a secret? Didn't you trust me at all?"

Ceara watched the waves and sighed. "It wasn't about trusting you, my dear. You want a simple answer, and there isn't one."

"Sure there is. You were once a powerful Druid priestess who went through the portal and didn't return. How's that for a start?"

Ceara shook her head. "You call that simple?"

"But something happened, didn't it? What happened, Ceara? What *

224 *225.

went wrong that trapped you here? You are trapped here, aren't you?"

Ceara did not take her eyes off the ocean, and when it became clear to Jessie that she wasn't going to answer, Jessie continued. "You were in the portal when something happened, and somehow you found yourself stranded in this time. Is that it?"

Ceara bowed her head. Suddenly, she looked very old and frail. "I wasn't just trapped outside of my own time, my dear." Ceara slowly turned to face Jessie. "I found myself trapped in the body of a crazy, drunken, homeless woman."

Jessie slowly reached out and put her hand on Ceara's shoulder.

"And that's why you were so adamant about not going with me."

Ceara nodded. "There was no there to go to in sixty-one AD, unless I had already been reborn, and I could not take the chance that I hadn't been yet." Ceara's voice was barely above a whisper. "I no longer lived.

I do not know what happened the last time I entered the Forbidden Forest, but I ceased to exist there. My body did not make it. Instead-I was here, in an insane woman's body, trapped in a time I could not fathom in a sh.e.l.l I could not stand."

"But-you're not a crazy, homeless person."

Sighing loudly, Ceara shook her head. "Not anymore, but I was for a long time. Edith, that's whose body I have been in all these years, was the town entertainer. She was not entirely crazy, but insane enough to be unemployable. She lived on the streets, ate out of dumpsters, and found herself beaten and raped enough for two dozen lifetimes."

Jessie's hands rose impulsively to her mouth. "Oh. How awful."

"Her existence was joyless, her life void of meaning."

"What changed that? What happened?"

"I happened. I did what a Druid priestess should never ever do. I possessed her body."

Jessie swallowed hard. "Possessed? I didn't know that was really possible."

"You didn't think time slipping was possible, either."

"True."

"It was so easy, Jessie, so very easy. She fought me not at all, preferring a quieter, more peaceful and far less painful existence deep *

226 *227.

in our soul."

"She went away willingly?"

Ceara nodded. "Yes, I played the role of G.o.ddess that day, and sent her deep within the bosom of our being so that I could take her body over and live out my life here in sober peace."

"It didn't frighten you?"

Ceara shook her head. "Not at all. I was just another voice she kept hearing, and, in the end, she nearly begged me to stop her pain. She was considering drinking herself to death, and, quite frankly, I had just died in one world, I wasn't ready to do so again so soon after."

Jessie inhaled a deep breath. "So, you took over her body and have been forced to live it all in this time."

"Yes. I wish to apologize. I have been wanting to tell you, but so much has happened and we've been working so hard to free you, to free Maeve, to keep everyone alive so we can do what needs to be done, that my own issues seem so insignificant. You have no idea how incredibly happy you made me the day you told me Lachlan lived. I have done nothing but sit and wonder daily at his fate since the day I became trapped."

"Why wouldn't Lachlan have been alive? Wasn't he just a little boy when you left?"

Ceara nodded. "I had no idea how much time had gone by.

Lachlan could have been just six, or he could have been sixty when you returned."

"Right. You didn't want to get your hopes up."

"Precisely."

"He's a very handsome man."

"So was his father." Ceara let out another deep breath. "Leaving that world and coming to this one was so hard. I was so lonely for such a very long time, and there was much I did not know or understand.

Even accessing Edith's memories was difficult because she was nearly pickled when I was first trapped. Eventually, when she sobered up, I made the decision to live, and accessed as many of her memories as I could. Eventually, I learned how to live in this time, acting as if I belonged here and understand your ways, but it wasn't easy. It has never *

226 *227.

been easy."

Jessie patted her shoulder. "I can't even imagine."

"I'm afraid no one can. Still, time slipping was a choice I made.

It was not foisted upon me. We all must learn to live with the consequences of our decisions even if that means two thousand years into the future."

"What did you do after you took over?"

"Sobered up, which, I must say, was one of the ugliest experiences I've ever had. Nauseating, really. Then I went out and got a job. It became apparent early on that money had replaced religious values in this time, so I worked as a maid during the week and a tarot reader on the weekends. The maid job enabled me to get off the street, and the tarot reading allowed me to keep my Druid skills in order."

"Do you still have your powers?"

Ceara finally looked away from the ocean at Jessie. "You mean my sorcery? My witchcraft? My pagan ways? Yes. But I learned long ago that while this society no longer burns, tortures, or drowns heretics, they have found other ways to ostracize and condemn those who are different from the norm."

"So, you only use them to do your readings."

Ceara nodded. "This is not a society that casts a favorable eye on the craft."

"How did you go from maid to entrepreneur?"

"When I realized that money is the true G.o.d here, I had two wealthy women as clients who became much wealthier when I told them it would be in their best interest to divorce their philandering husbands. Two divorces later, they rewarded me by buying me my shop outright with some of the money from their lucrative divorce settlements. Then, I gave them a bit of stock information, which netted both of them nearly a million dollars apiece. They bought the boat as a write-off and gave it to me as a thank you. Once on my feet, I stopped abusing my gifts, but until then, I needed to use everything at my disposal to clean up poor Edith's life."

"Yeah, sounds like she had pretty much dug herself a hole." She could well understand-she'd nearly dug a similar hole herself.

228 *229.

"Not her. This wretched society. Her doctors had overprescribed medication that was addictive. Her life soon became one drug after another until she had no money, no means for support and no place to run to. She eventually turned to alcohol to ease her troubles, and by that time, her life was lost. It was so sad, really. She never had a chance."

"Until you."

"Don't confuse the two, Jessie. I am still in her body, which, thank the G.o.ddess, she relinquished without a fight."

"But still, you never told me. If you didn't want me to tell Lachlan, I wouldn't have."

"I did not want him knowing, Jessie because I was sure the boy would have come through the portal to see for himself. We were quite close when he was a lad."

"Why can't he? What would be wrong with that?"

"As strong as Lachlan believes he is, he is not a quester. I was a far stronger Druid than he will ever be, yet the portal closed on me, leaving my body defenseless. It was then I knew one simply did not step across time because the portal existed. The portal can only be entered by someone incredibly powerful and invited. I came unbidden, and was stranded here. You-well, my dear, the truth is, you were beckoned and you answered the call. You have the strength to do that which Lachlan can only dream of."

Jessie stared deep into Ceara's blue eyes. They were blue much like Lachlan's, but then, how could that be? This was not the body that bore him. How weird to think that Edith was in there somewhere, listening, watching Ceara control their destiny.

Destiny.

Is this what destiny truly was? To be called upon and to answer?

To heed the sound of an inner voice that said, Come, do this thing and reach your highest potential. Was it her destiny now to go through time helping others?

"I have waited what feels like eternity for one such as you. I knew the second I saw you, but I needed you to remember. I could not force you, nor could I supply you with all of the answers. I needed to see *

228 *229.

that you were strong-that you were chosen. So many individuals came and went at the inn, that I began to doubt if it would happen in my lifetime."

"And then I b.u.mbled along."

Ceara grinned. "You did not b.u.mble into anything. You and your parents were called. If you truly look back on all of the steps that led your family here, you'd see for yourself that this path, this journey you are now on started long before you came to Oregon." Ceara headed for the kitchen. "All this chatter has parched me. I think I'll make us some tea. Come."

As Jessie followed, she thought back to the events that brought her family here from San Francisco. Hadn't her father received a brochure or letter or something alluding to having his own business in Oregon for a quarter of the cost of having one in California? At first, her parents discussed that they'd do it once Daniel was grown, but suddenly, her parents were e-mailing someone about the inn, and the next thing they knew, they were in Oregon.

But hadn't they kept saying they were coming here for a fresh start?

They'd always made it sound as if they had done it for her and Daniel, but she couldn't help but wonder if her father hadn't known on a subconscious level the real reason behind their journey.

"But why didn't you tell me? I mean, after all this got started, I would have understood."

"You were already so overloaded with information." The kettle whistled and Ceara dropped two tea bags into the mugs. "There were more important things to worry about. You had the fate of an entire civilization on your shoulders. I couldn't add to that. I couldn't and I wouldn't, especially once I realized that one of those lives was my son's."

Jessie stared through the kitchen window at the cliffs below. "That secret must have eaten you up inside, Ceara."

"It could have, but when there's a greater good, we must follow our conscience and do the right thing. There never was a right time to tell you, so I took that as the G.o.ddess's way of telling me to keep my mouth shut."

230 *231.

Looking back at her, Jessie nodded. "I can't believe you got stuck in this century. How horrible."

"You have no idea. This is a sad, sad time. A time that will make the Dark Ages appear happier and brighter. They had the plague, you have AIDS, cancer and even consumption has not been eradicated."

"Consumption?"

"Tuberculosis. The Dark Ages were filled with religious zealots who wanted to take care of your soul, this age has religious zealots who want to take your money from you. In the Dark Ages, heretics burned; here, anyone who is not a true believer is going to burn in h.e.l.l. My dear, a thousand years from now, this age will be called something far worse than what the present historians might call the Age of Technology.

Historians a thousand years from now will see this age as the spiritual and moral wasteland it is and name it accordingly."

"It must have been really hard at first."

"Very, very hard. But remember: I chose to come here."

"Why here and now?"

Pouring the hot water over the tea bags, Ceara continued. "The portal was nothing we used frivolously, mind you, and few of us even knew it existed. But in fifty-two AD, the Romans came after the Silures as a people, and defeated us. I came here in fifty AD hoping to find a way to keep them from destroying our people entirely. I never made it back in time to help. In the end, we were forced to surrender and had to allow the Roman militia to occupy our home, bed our women and change our culture."

"What prevented you from returning?"

Ceara shook her head. "I don't know what truly happened, only that I dreamt one night of a Roman soldier, afraid for his life, and scared of the near lifeless Druid before him. He struck my body down with one slash of his blade. I awoke, in a sweat, crying, sobbing actually, because I knew I could never return."

"Did you try?"

Ceara handed Jessie a steaming mug. "What do you suppose would happen to a soul who steps through the portal and there is no host to receive it?"