Free Winds of Time by Sarah Woodbury

words over and over again. If I said them enough, I
could believe that she was in my arms. Anna couldn’t stop crying,
even when I took her face in my hands and kissed her eyes, trying
to get her to stop.
    “ It’s okay. It’s me. I’m
here.” I looked past Anna to David, who’d come to a halt five paces
away, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing either. “And
your brother too.” I held out one arm and he came into the circle
of it. I embraced both my children for the first time in a year and
a half.
    “ How did you get here?” Anna
said.
    I shook my head. “It’s a long story.”
David’s shoulder muffled my voice. “I can’t believe you’re here,
too. I didn’t let myself believe it might be possible.”
    We hugged and rocked until the tightness in
my chest loosened and I was able to relax my hold enough to look
into my children’s faces.
    “ You must have been through
a lot,” Anna said.
    “ Me?” I said, and laughed
through my tears. “What about you? Have you been here all this
time?”
    “ We have,” David said.
“Let’s get you home.” He put his arm around my shoulders and looked
at Anna over the top of my head. Over the
top of my head! When I’d last seen him,
we’d been same height.
    Anna held tight to my hand as David herded
us, along with a very bemused Aaron, back to where they’d left
their horses.
    “ You mentioned that you had
known the Prince many years ago,” Aaron said, “but I didn’t quite
catch that you’d given him a son.”
    “ I couldn’t tell you and I
didn’t want to lie,” I said, and left it at that.
    A few steps further on, a man waited—tall,
dark, and handsome, with the deep blue eyes of a Celt. Anna took
the man’s hand and pulled him towards me. “This is my husband, Mom,
Mathonwy ap Rhys Fychan.”
    “ I’m pleased to meet you,
Madam,” Math said, his Welsh formal.
    I stuck out my hand, as if meeting Anna’s
husband was a perfectly normal thing to do, but then ruined it.
“You’re married?” I blurted out the words before I could take them
back. My hand went to my head before Math could shake it. “How can
you be married?”
    Anna tightened her grip on Math’s other
hand. “I’m sorry you missed it, Mom, but, well ... you weren’t
here.”
    With that, I melted again. I started crying
and then Anna started crying, and we fell into each other’s arms.
Math kissed the top of Anna’s head and patted her on the shoulder.
“We’ll leave you a moment.” He and Aaron moved past us towards the
horses and out of earshot.
    Once again, Anna and I struggled to regain
our composure, wiping at our cheeks with the backs of our
hands.
    “ How long have you been back
here?” The control in David’s voice told me he was determined to
remain on an even keel. So like
Llywelyn.
    “ Since the beginning of
August,” I said. “I think.”
    “ How did you get back here?” Anna said, finally able to calm down
enough to marshal her thoughts.
    “ By plane,” I said. “Near
Hadrian’s Wall.”
    “ Hadrian’s Wall?” David
said. “And you made it here all by yourself?”
    “ I had help,” I said, “most
recently Aaron’s.”
    “ Hadrian’s Wall is a long
way from here,” Anna said.
    “ It is,” David said. “Father
is going to freak.”

Chapter Seven
     
     
    I froze, my hand on David’s shoulder, my
face like a frozen mask. “Father?” I wasn’t ready. I’d thought
about him every waking moment since I came back to the Middle Ages,
but I still wasn’t ready.
    “ He’s alive, Mom,” David
said. “And he’s here, at Rhuddlan Castle.”
    “ Oh, David.” I put the back
of my hand to my mouth. “I didn’t dare … I mean, I hardly dared to
even think that he might be, that I might be able to see him again.
So you think …” I stopped.
    “ Do I think he’ll want to
see you?” David said. “Yeah, I know he will.”
    “ But how did you ... how did
you find him? How did you know he was your father?”
    “ I