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"Oh," he said "No I hadna htened his arm around me and bent his head to mine

"I dinna ken about that If it should be--"

"It won’t"

A breath of laughter stirred my hair

"Ye sound verra sure of it, Sassenach"

"The future can be changed; I do it all the time"

"Oh, aye?"

I rolled away a bit, to look at him

"I do Look at Mairi MacNeill If I hadn’t been there last week, she would have died, and her tith her But I was there, and they didn’t"

I put a hand behindthe reflection of the fla beams

"I do wonder--there are lots I can’t save, but some I do If someone lives because of me, and later has children, and they have children, and so onwell, by the time you reach my time, say, there are probably thirty or forty people in the world ouldn’t otherwise have been there, h their lives--don’t you think that’s changing the future?" For the first tile-handedly contributing to the population explosion of the twentieth century

"Aye," he said slowly He picked upfinger

"Aye, but it’s their future ye change, Sassenach, and perhaps you’re ently on the fingers One knuckle popped,in the hearth "Physicians have saved a good many folk over the years, surely"

"Of course they do And not just physicians, either" I sat up, iument "But it doesn’t er at hius? Ian? And here they are, both going about the world doing things and procreating and what-not You changed the future for them, didn’t you?"

"Aye, wellperhaps I couldna do otherwise, though, could I?"

That simple state the flicker of light on the white-plastered wall At last he stirred beside ain

"I dinna say it for pity," he said "But ye kennow and then my bones ache a bit" He didn’t look at ht, so the shadow of the crooked fingers ht I knew the limits of the body--and its miracles I’d seen him sit down at the end of a day’s labor, exhaustion written in every line of his body Seen hiainst the protests of flesh and bone when he rose on coldto bet that he had not lived a day since Culloden without pain, the physical da And I would also be willing to bet that he had never mentioned it to anyone Until now

"I know that," I said softly, and touched the hand The twisting scar that runneled his leg The sacy of a bullet

"But not with you," he said, and covered my hand where it lay on his arm "D’ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arhed and laid h pressed his, the softness of my flesh a mold to his harder for ood hand It ild and bushy, freed froles, and he s down each lock between his fingers

"Your hair’s like a great stor half-asleep "All dark and light together No two hairs are the saers bore strands of pure white, of silver and blond, dark streaks, nearly sable, and several bits still of ers went under the mass of hair, and I felt his hand cup the base ofmy head like a chalice

"I saw my mother in her coffin," he said at last His thumb touched my ear, dren the curve of helix and lobule, and I shivered at his touch

"The women had plaited her hair, to be seemly, but h, he was verra quiet He would have his last sight of her as she was to hirief, they said, he should let well alone, be still He didna trouble to say more to them, but went to the coffin himself He undid her plaits and he spread out her hair in his two hands across the pillow They were afraid to stop him"

He paused, his thumb stilled

"I was there, keepin’ quiet in the corner When they all went out to meet the priest, I crept up close I hadna seen a dead person before"

I let e of his forear, kissed my forehead, and slid in the clip that fell out of ain Her coffin had been closed

"Was it--her?"

"No," he said softly His eyes were half-lidded as he looked into the fire "Not quite The face had the look of her, but no more Like as if someone had set out to carve her from birch wood But her hair--that was still alive That was stillher"