EPILOGUE

It was the soft popping of a fire in the grate that woke Jack. He was burrowed deep in the bedclothes, his body still warm and sluggish from lovemaking. With an effort, he unstuck his eyes and peered through darkness to the window that gave on to the widow's walk in the upstairs room of the house on Moonfleet Way, and the diamond-studded night sky beyond.

But when he stretched his legs, he realized he was alone in the bed. Turning to blink in the other direction, he saw Tory kneeling before the fireplace in her chemise, the long, dark mane of her hair scorched copper in the soft firelight.

"What are you doing, Rusty?" he murmured from the bed.

"Saying goodbye." Her voice was soft and wistful as she bent forward to stoke up the fire. "My mother used to tell me our people lit sacrificial fires so the smoke would carry their prayers up to the gods. And their thanks."

"The Mohawk gods?"

"All of them. My mother believed the gods of all people live together in the sky. She said the sky was a very big place."

"Your mother was a sensible woman."

"You would have liked her." Tory smiled over at him. "She would have adored you."

Jack threw on his shirt and came to kneel beside her in front of the fire. That's when he saw her logbook spread open on her knees. Her damp eyes sparkled in the firelight.

"Oh, Rusty, not your book," he breathed.

"It's not a true sacrifice if you don't send them something you love." She lifted the corner of the next sewn-in page from the front of the book, gently ripped it away from its stitches, and laid it across a little pile of ashes already smoldering on the grate.

"But it means so much to you."

"There is nothing in this book more important to me than your life, hombre," she told him. "Our life together. Here. Now." She sighed and shook her head, gazing down at the book, gently caressing the corner of another page. "I should have destroyed this long ago, before we ever left the islands, it's so dangerous. Suppose Crowder had got hold of it. Or Harding. But some part of me always felt that if I did that, I'd be breaking faith with our friends, all our old shipmates, everyone we ever cared for. I couldn't bear to betray them all."

She tore another page out of the binding and fed it to the flames.

"But there's more than our old crew in your book," said Jack. "You've put all your life into it, your family, your memories, everything you've ever been. All your dreams."
   
"I'll have new dreams. What's important about the past will always be here." She put her hand to her heart. "We'll never lose that, it will always be a part of who we are. But we've been given such a precious gift, Jack," she went on earnestly. "A future. Something we've never had before. We must trust ourselves to it. And be thankful."

Jack drew a pensive breath, then slipped his hand over hers, still resting on the open book. Tory smiled at him again. Then she tore out a few more of the book's original pages, covered with her own sprawling words, so that all that was left between the leather covers were the notes and playscripts she had written for the company. She set the book aside and placed the last pages of the log of the Blessed Providence on the grate. They smoldered for a long moment, tentative flames licking at them curiously, and Tory tried not to imagine the faces of all those she had loved and put in her book choking and gasping for their last breath of life. But as the hungry flames embraced the pages, and their edges began to blacken and curl, Tory saw a different image, not a death, but a kind of liberation — figures released at last, leaping off the pages, rising up on the dancing flames and curling smoke to freedom.

Jack wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and she let herself relax into his embrace.

"To the future," she murmured.

Jack gazed into the fire, its flames now blazing up in triumph.

"Shakespeare said it best —" he began.

"As usual," Tory teased him.

"Aye," Jack agreed. "In The Tempest. 'What's past is prologue.'"

Tory nodded, safe in his arms. All of life lay before them. Their play was just beginning.

THE END 

Top: Tarot, The Star, by bluefooted on DeviantArt. The Star of Hope has always been Tory’s card.

Above right: Attic fireplace, built ca. 1755, like the attic fireplace on Moonfleet Way