Free Like Chaff in the Wind by Anna Belfrage Page A

started to shrink, Magnus began to fade.
    “What year?” he called.
    “1661, Alex Graham.” She saw him nod and raise his hand in one last wave and then he was gone, swallowed into the receding point of light. “Bloody hell,” she muttered as she unclenched her hands from the railing. She rubbed at her face, drew in several steadying breaths and slid down to sit before her knees gave way.
    She started at the sight of the priest, standing a few metres downwind from her.
    “What was that?” Don Benito squeaked.
    “What?”
    “The man in the water, who was he?” Don Benito peered down into the water and crossed himself.
    “He’s my father.” She threw him a sidelong glance. Maybe this undercover priest could make sense of her story, because she sure couldn’t. “Or rather, he will be my father, when I’m born in 1976.”
    Don Benito looked as if his jaw had permanently dislocated itself from the rest of his face.
    “1976? Ay, Madre de Dios !”
    Alex leaned back against the railings, her face towards the stars. “May I tell you? Under the seal of confession?”
    “Yes, you may.” He sat down beside her. “That’s why you know they’ll dig a new channel for the Guadalquivir! And you know my city well, but as it will be three centuries from now.”
    “It won’t really change that much, not in the parts that exist today. It will still be a city that sleeps through the heat of the summer to wake at dusk, and the Madonnas will still be carried from their churches to the cathedral for their annual blessings.” He liked that, she could see, his face acquiring that dreamy look it always wore when he spoke of his beloved city. Alex pulled up her knees and tightened her arms round them. “It all began with a lightning storm. Suddenly, I was thrown out of my time and landed here.”
    Don Benito opened and closed his mouth several times, looking like a landed goldfish.
    “Lightning?” he managed to say.
    “I don’t know if it’s the lightning, not really. I think it’s crossroads – perfect intersections that occasionally open up a gap in time, funnels of bright colour and blinding light. Lightning or heat seems to help.”
    “Crossroads?” The priest looked at the sea and then back at her.
    “I know.” Alex made a face. “But this was different. More of a peep hole than a chasm.”
    “That’s why the storm frightened you so much.”
    “I can’t go back, I can’t leave Matthew behind, it would tear me to pieces.” She twisted at her wedding ring, counting the turns like she always did; one for every month she’d known Matthew.
    “But you must have left people when you came.” Don Benito’s voice was very gentle.
    “Yes, I did, but this is my place. I belong here – with him.”
    Over the coming hour, she told him everything; of how she’d met Matthew, of Luke and his cruel vindictive streak, and how this journey was a quest to find her man before it was too late. At his insistence, she told him of that earlier life, now so hazy she sometimes imagined it was all a dream. She told him of Magnus, of John and of Isaac. Isaac… She paused and looked at him.
    “Some years before all of this happened, I had a pretty bad experience, and all at the hands of a man called Ángel Muñoz de Hojeda.” She shivered at the name; a man who had started out as a wonderful and conscientious lover had morphed into quite the creative jailer.
    “What?” Don Benito breathed.
    “The day you came on board, I actually thought it was him, here, however impossible.” She bit at her lip. “You look just like him, or rather he looks just like you. The same eyes, the same facial structure, even the same mouth. Thank heavens you don’t use your first name.” She sneaked her audience of one a look. In the weak light of the stars and the waning moon, his eyes were black ink stains in a pale face.
    “What did he do to you, this future relative of mine?”
    What didn’t he do? Alex trembled, her brain taken over