Prologue

Nuala, Belfast, Ireland, 1968

Four centuries had passed and yet I had not forgotten the smell of charred wood nor the searing heat of a fire bent on destruction. I opened my eyes and saw the leap of flame against shadow, gutted dwellings, the silhouette of a church steeple outlined against an orange sky—an entire world engulfed in fire.

Painful memories, long repressed, struggled for release. Deliberately I willed them back. I had not come through the shadowy portals of time to relive my past. I came for Meghann, poor lost child that she was, and Michael, too, but mostly Meghann. Michael knew who he was and what he must do. It was Meghann who needed my guidance to find her strength.

Gingerly, I stretched my arms and worked at placing one foot in front of the other. Every muscle ached with fatigue. How strange to feel my body again. I never realized how restricting human form could be, and how heavy, even for a small woman.

I didn’t know yet where to find her. That would come later, after my thoughts became hers and hers mine, after we had stepped into each other’s minds and traveled there, after she learned to face down the demons that kept her afraid.

She was still very young, and our journey together would be a long one. I admit that I was curious to know her. My own daughter had grown to womanhood without me. Like everyone, I assumed that I would live a long life, but it was not to be. Through Meghann, fate had given me another chance at mothering, it wasn’t until I first saw her that I understood why.

When she was grown she would be tall. Centuries and the mixing of bloodlines had muted her coloring. Her hair would not be as red nor her eyes as green as mine. But the bones of her cheeks, the shape of her nose and mouth, and the pure, poreless texture of her skin could only have come from me.

She would never replace Chiara, my daughter and Rory’s, our child of light and laughter. Meghann was herself, born into this world because of me, a distant ancestor, and that was close enough. From the moment I held out my arms in the burned-out rubble that was her home, and she ran into them, I loved her.