Mom pursed her lips but settled in the chair next to mine as if she was still alive. “He came to the church. It was 1670 and the city was new. When the church was built, I was sent there to help with things. People back then believed with an openness you don’t find today. When he announced who he was, people treated him like a god. I’d grown up in the church, as you know.” Mom’s parents had been killed, and she had been given to the nunnery to be raised. “God had been good to me, and Michael found in me a true believer. When he told me God had given me a purpose to bring into the world its next savior, I believed. I thought myself the next chosen Mary.”
“And what? I was immaculately conceived?”
She laughed bitterly. “No. And that’s where I should have seen through his deception. He convinced me that this time around it had to happen the old-fashioned way.” She glanced away. “It wasn’t a pleasant experience. Likely why he was the only man to ever have carnal knowledge of me. You know your dad wanted a child. But I couldn’t and knew he couldn’t either, if truth be told. But he loved you like his own.”
I smiled at that. “I shouldn’t have left him like that.” I referred to my dad, the man I’d known for nine years of my life, not the creature who’d killed my mother.
“You didn’t. You took a message back, one I wrote. It was a wonder how we found pen and ink from that time so he wouldn’t be suspicious.”
I wondered if she should have told me that but reckoned it had already happened. Time would repeat itself for me.
After a long pause, I asked, “What did Michael say he was?” She hadn’t mentioned that in her retelling of events.
Mom rolled her eyes. “He called himself an archangel.” She patted my hands.
A while later, I went back to my room, the one I’d abandoned what was technically some days ago because I’d wanted to see the sunset. How foolish I’d been and how much trouble it had wrought.
I glanced around and missed the comfort of my castle room. Here I had four walls covered in pictures I’d collected from magazines. A small white bed butted against the wall next to the window so I could gaze out at everything I was missing. I walked to my desk that matched the other furniture and sat down. I flipped open the laptop to check the date, as my phone was still at the castle. As I suspected, I’d come forward a year and a half from when Fabian had thrust me into Scotland.
Subconsciously, I’d been thinking way ahead of my conscious brain. If I’d arrived sooner, demons would have been hanging around the house. It appeared they had given up hope waiting for me in that time. Likely, they were waiting for me to reveal myself again. I’d be more careful this time around and follow all the rules.
While I waited for the day I could return to Duncan, I wrote letters to him for every day that passed. I saved each one on a thumb drive, as I couldn’t take a chance on his past self reading my current thoughts. Though I didn’t know if Duncan owned a computer. I hadn’t seen one.
It would be many months later when the first pains of childbirth arrived. Mom was a godsend. Though it was true that women had been giving birth long before modern medicine, I needed her strength and her midwife training from her years in a nunnery to help me through.
Sweat poured down my face as Mom encouraged me to push again. I longed for Duncan so I could wring his neck for doing this to me. But I gritted my teeth and pushed for what felt like hours. When relief hit, my son slipped into Mom’s arms. I reached out because though I could see and touch her, outsiders couldn’t. Yet he was cradled in her arms. It seemed my son had the same ability as me as he was nestled in her arms.
It wasn’t over yet. She coached me through the afterbirth with my son resting on my chest. When it was done, the cord was cut, and he was cleaned, I looked at my son and all his tiny little features. I recalled him from his future, my past, us playing swords and hide-and-go-seek as I let the tears of all I’d miss pour down my face.
“I will love you through the end of time,” I said.
A few days later, Mom still refused to leave me. She said she could wait until after I went on my journey. Only then would she know I wouldn’t be back. I didn’t know what I would do when the time came to be without her.