Moonlight Warrior

by Janet Chapman

  Eve added a smile to her nod this time.

  His jaw slackened slightly, he frowned, then he started pacing again. “And about your mother’s near death,” he continued. “I’ve been thinking of how I can show ye that death isn’t the end of someone. So I’ve decided that this fall we’ll go back to Pine Creek, and ye can talk with Jack Stone.”

  “What can he tell me that you can’t?”

  “Stone is a North American shaman, and from what I’ve read on shamanism, he helps individuals have visions of what we can’t see. Now, about Maddy and William.”

  Eve jumped to her feet. It was one thing to sit through a lecture about herself, but she refused to sit through one about Maddy and William. She ran up to Kenzie, wrapped her arms around his waist, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his chin.

  “I’d really love to continue our little chat, but if you expect us to get married this evening, I have a lot to do.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose, then rested his forehead against hers. “I love you,” he said softly.

  “I love you, too.”

  “I wasn’t just saying it the first time so you’d feel better about marrying me,” he said. “I realized I loved you when I was running back to the house to get you out of the cellar, afraid the storm had harmed you.

  “And,” he continued in a rush when she tried to pull away. “I was a black panther when I came to this century. And Fiona really is my sister and a hawk, and she didn’t go look for Mabel because she knew William would.

  “And,” he continued when she started fidgeting. “I’d like to name our son Kyle, after Fiona’s son.”

  “Anything else?” Eve asked. “Because your son is pressing on my bladder, and if you don’t finish fast, it’s not going to be pretty.”

  He immediately let her go.

  Eve waited until she reached the bathroom before she started laughing. First thing tomorrow, she was going to e-mail the MacKeage women that she’d found another way to shorten a lecture.

  And so it was that on the plain-old-ordinary day of July thirty-first, Eve found herself standing in front of Father Daar in the dooryard of An Tèarmann, surrounded by a menagerie of farm animals and a red-tailed hawk, about to pledge her troth to the man of her dreams.

  Who also just happened to be a soul warrior.

  And though she thought it was a very noble profession he’d been called to, she wasn’t sure every soul was worth saving. Case in point: William Killkenny.

  He was standing on Kenzie’s right—no less imposing for being fully clothed—and was casting lecherous glances at Maddy, who was standing on Eve’s left.

  Utterly scandalized at being publicly kissed by a very naked man yesterday, Maddy had spent the day avoiding William. And this evening she was wearing pants so baggy it was a wonder they stayed up, and a blouse buttoned all the way up to her neck, even though it was eighty degrees and humid. Maddy thought William was disgustingly uncouth, obsessively full of himself, and only okay good looking, and she was obviously trying to discourage any further interest from him.

  As for Susan…well, she was still missing.

  And so was Hamish MacKeage.

  Mabel sat beside Father Daar, holding the wedding bands and the vows she and William had composed during one of his lessons.

  Eve couldn’t wait to hear them.

  When Father Daar started the ceremony in Gaelic, Eve interrupted. “Wait—is this actually legal?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Kenzie asked.

  She whispered in his ear, “You told me Daar is almost two thousand years old, so he likely isn’t licensed by the state of Maine to marry anyone.”

  “He’s presided over every MacKeage and MacBain wedding for the last forty years. I believe Grace got him a justice-of-the-peace license so her daughters would be legally wed.”

  “Okay. Sorry, Father,” she said, shooting the scowling priest a smile. “But could you marry us in English?”

  “It’s Gaelic or nothing, girl.”

  “Okay,” Eve said with a sigh.

  Several soft, pathetic barks came from the barn, and Kenzie sighed.

  “Oh, go get her,” Eve said. “I don’t know why you thought the seal pup would stay in there with Fiona out here.”

  Kenzie headed to the barn, and Fiona swooped off Daar’s shoulder and followed.

  “You realize that if Marine Fish and Wildlife finds out you’re keeping a seal pup without a permit, they’re going to fine you up the whazoo,” Maddy told Eve. “Why haven’t you taken her to the rehabilitation center?”

  William snorted. “Because that blasted pup doesn’t need rehabilitating. She’s all drama and tears.”

  Maddy leaned past Eve to glare at William. “How many more days is it before you head back to Ireland?”

  He shot her a smirk. “I’m purchasing the land surrounding what everyone in town now calls Dragon Cove,” he said, puffing up his large chest. “Want to come sit on the cliffs with me and watch for the dragon those kayakers claimed they saw? Our best chance of spotting it would be at night, under a full moon.”

  Maddy straightened so Eve was blocking their view of each other again. “No, thank you.”

  Kenzie came striding back with the seal pup in his arms.

  “I’ll take her,” Mabel said, helping him settle the young animal on her lap. Then she had to hold the vows out of its reach when it tried to eat them.

  Until a breeze suddenly blew them out of her hand.

  William gave chase and had to wrestle them away from the four baby goslings that had immediately pounced on them.

  Eve expected Kenzie to either start laughing or growling as he wondered if he was ever going to get a ring on her finger. But when she looked up at him, he was looking out to sea.

  He suddenly turned and faced forward. “Forget the vows, Killkenny. Proceed, Father. The short version, please.”

  Eve tried to glance back to see what he’d seen, but he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and held her facing the priest.

  Daar quickly started speaking in Gaelic, and after what seemed like only three sentences, he nodded at Kenzie. Kenzie kissed her full on the mouth, slid a wedding band on her finger, took his from Mabel, shoved it on his own hand, and then swiftly moved toward the house.

  “Get everyone inside and close the storm shutters,” he said.

  “Where’s your pen?” Eve asked.

  “In my pocket. And yours?”

  “In my bra. And your sword?”

  “On the island,” he called, running toward the ocean path as William fell in behind him.

  Eve walked up the porch stairs, stepped inside, and looked out at the approaching storm, seeing Fiona soaring after her brother. She flipped the switch that lowered the storm shutters over every window in the house, then shut the three-inch-thick steel-and-ballistic glass door and seated the bolts.

  Maddy came over to look out the door window, which was their only view outside now. “We need to call NOAA and asked them what in hell’s up with this bay. We keep getting these freak storms, but only in this one spot! It’s unnatural, I tell you.”

  “I prefer to think of them as supernatural. And you know what? I’m sort of getting used to them,” Eve said.

  She glanced at the wooden butter churn in the kitchen corner, poured the cream warming on the counter into the churn, sat down, and started rocking it back and forth. Then she stopped with a grin, slipped off her sandals, and started rocking again, watching her wedding band glitter in the last rays of sunlight.

  She was barefoot, pregnant, and churning butter, but she’d discovered she loved farming, and Eve decided all those generations of women hadn’t fought only for equality, they’d also fought for choice.

  And she chose to deeply and passionately love a very handsome, very brave soul warrior, who loved her so deeply and passionately that, together, they could weather any storm.

  Letter from Lake Watch

  Dear Reader,

  If you took a moment to
read my dedication at the front of this book, you might realize that my mother and Mabel had quite a bit in common and that, like Eve, I had a few lessons of my own to learn.

  My mother’s slow withdrawal from everyday life lasted nearly twelve years. It took my family—my father, my three brothers, my sister, and me—quite a long time to accept that our strong, anchoring matriarch’s decline wasn’t something that at first blush we could deny, then hope to reverse or even slow down. It wasn’t until several years passed that we collectively realized her downward spiral wouldn’t be stopped.

  And it was only then, when we finally accepted Mom just as she was, that the magic truly began.

  Ella was blissfully happy in her unawareness of what was happening to her, seemingly content just…being. She laughed a lot, and we laughed with her. She smiled graciously and nodded attentively at visitors—though she didn’t have a clue who anyone was—and sighed in relief when they left. She engaged in an ongoing battle of wills with my then toddler son, rushing to hide her precious bananas when she saw him heading across the lawn to her house. And since she had been born in Quebec, we all had to bone up on our French when she eventually regressed to her native language.

  Mom found such delight in birthday parties and Sunday family dinners that everyone’s birthday was celebrated at her house. My dad shortened the legs on one of our heirloom chairs to fit it with casters when Mom stopped walking, and she would sit at the head of the table and unabashedly eat enough ice cream and cake to make a lumberjack blush—and she never gained a pound! (Note to dieters: happiness seems to burn an inordinate amount of calories.)

  I believe it was on her seventy-eighth birthday that I asked Mom how old she was, and after a moment’s contemplation she declared she was thirty-one—even though I, her youngest child, was several years older. (Apparently happiness not only burns calories, it’s also the fountain of youth!)

  Having my parents living right next door for the last ten years of my mother’s life was a rewardingly intimate experience. It is my belief that we all come into this world to teach life lessons as well as to learn them, and I can attest that my mother continued teaching all of us many valuable lessons right up to and through her death. In fact, my most vivid memory of her funeral is that I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt so blessed to have been part of her life, and regretted nothing—not even her illness.

  My son the banana thief eventually moved into my parents’ house, and his son—Ella’s great-grandson—slept in her bedroom for the first three years of his life. And if you don’t quite believe in the magic, then I ask you: Why to this day does little Alex say oui when asked a question that should be answered with Yes? No one has ever spoken French to the boy, yet he continues to use the perfectly inflected oui of his grand-memère.

  What was it Kenzie wanted Eve to understand when they thought her mother had died? That Mabel was right now mingling with stardust, floating in those raindrops falling to Earth, and whispering in her tiny grandson’s developing ear how much he is loved. If only he could explain that Mabel wasn’t here because she was EVERYWHERE.

  So as Eve eventually did, it is my hope that as you travel down your own life path, you, too, will recognize the magic surrounding you. It is there in the first breath of life and in the last, in the intimacy of cradling a sleeping child or holding the hand of an ill or dying loved one, in the simple joy of waking each morning to discover what oft-disguised blessings the day will bring.

  Which is why, when asked, I recall one of my mother’s more endearing lessons, and say, “Oui, I believe in the magic.”

  Until later, from Lake Watch,