A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows: An Outlander Novella by Diana Gabaldon Read Free Book Online Page A

thought about POW camps, and those camps in Poland, the ones he’d been meant to photograph. Were they as bleak as this? Stupid thing to think of, really.
    But he’d got to pass the time ’til morning one way or another, and there were lots of things he’d rather not think about just now. Like what would happen once morning came. He didn’t think breakfast in bed was going to be part of it.
    The wind was rising. Whining past the corners of the cow byre with a keening noise that set his teeth on edge. He still had his silk scarf; it had slipped down inside his shirt when the bandits in the mile-castle had attacked him. He fished it out now and wrapped it round his neck, for comfort, if not warmth.
    He’d brought Dolly breakfast in bed now and then. She woke up slow and sleepy, and he loved the way she scooped her tangled curly black hair off her face, peering out slit-eyed, like a small, sweet mole blinking in the light. He’d sit her up and put the tray on the table beside her, and then he’d shuck his own clothes and crawl in bed, too, cuddling close to her soft, warm skin. Sometimes sliding down in the bed, and her pretending not to notice, sipping tea or putting marmite on her toast while he burrowed under the covers and found his way up through the cottony layers of sheets and nightie. He loved the smell of her, always, but especially when he’d made love to her the night before, and she bore the strong, musky scent of him between her legs.
    He shifted a little, roused by the memory, but the subsequent thought—that he might never see her again—quelled him at once.
    Still thinking of Dolly, though, he put his hand automatically to his pocket, and was alarmed to find no lump there. He slapped at his thigh, but failed to find the small, hard bulge of the sapphire. Could he have put it in the other pocket by mistake? He delved urgently, shoving both hands deep into his pockets. No stone—but there was something in his right-hand pocket. Something powdery, almost greasy … what the devil?
    He brought his fingers out, peering as closely at them as he could, but it was too dark to see more than a vague outline of his hand, let alone anything on it. He rubbed his fingers gingerly together; it felt something like the thick soot that builds up inside a chimney.
    ‘Jesus,’ he whispered, and put his fingers to his nose. There was a distinct smell of combustion. Not petrolish at all, but a scent of burning so intense he could taste it on the back of his tongue. Like something out of a volcano. What in the name of God Almighty could burn a rock and leave the man who carried it alive?
    The sort of thing he’d met among the standing stones, that was what.
    He’d been doing all right with the not feeling too afraid until now, but … he swallowed hard, and sat down again, quietly.
    ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ he whispered to the knees of his trousers. ‘I pray the Lord my soul to keep …’
    He did in fact sleep eventually, in spite of the cold, from simple exhaustion. He was dreaming about wee Roger, who for some reason was a grown man now, but still holding his tiny blue bear, minuscule in a broad-palmed grasp. His son was speaking to him in Gaelic, saying something urgent that he couldn’t understand, and he was growing frustrated, telling Roger over and over for Christ’s sake to speak English, couldn’t he?
    Then he heard another voice through the fog of sleep and realised that someone was in fact talking somewhere close by.
    He jerked awake, struggling to grasp what was being said and failing utterly. It took him several seconds to realise that whoever was speaking—there seemed to be two voices, hissing and muttering in argument—really was speaking in Gaelic.
    He had only a smattering of it himself; his mother had had it, but—he was moving before he could complete the thought, panicked at the notion that potential assistance might get away.
    ‘Hoy!’ he bellowed, scrambling—or trying to