Outlander Novella [01] The Space Between by Diana Gabaldon

blinking.
    Not so much because of the expressions being hurled at her—she didn’t understand one word in ten—but because a voice in plain English had just said clearly,
“Tell him not to do it.”
    She felt hot and cold at the same time.
    “I … er … 
je suis
 … um … 
merci beaucoup, monsieur!
” she blurted, and, turning, ran, scrambling back between piles of paper narcissus bulbs and fragrant spikes of hyacinth, her shoes skidding on the slime of trodden leaves.
    “Soeur Gregory!”
Sister Mathilde loomed up so suddenly in front of her that she nearly ran into the massive nun. “What are you doing? Where is Sister Miséricorde?”
    “I … oh.” Joan swallowed, gathering her wits. “She’s—over there.” She spoke with relief, spotting Mercy’s small head in the forefront of a crowd by the meat-pie wagon. “I’ll get her!” she blurted, and walked hastily off before Sister Mathilde could say more.
    “Tell him not to do it.”
That’s what the voice had said about Charles Pépin. What was going on? she thought wildly. Was M. Pépin engaged in something awful with the man in the dove-gray coat?
    As though thought of the man had reminded the voice, it came again.
    “Tell him not to do it,”
the voice repeated in her head, with what seemed like particular urgency.
“Tell him he must not!”
    “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women …” Joan clutched at her rosary and gabbled the words, feeling the blood leave her face. There he was, the man in the dove-gray coat, looking curiously at her over a stall of Dutch tulips and sprays of yellow forsythia.
    She couldn’t feel the pavement under her feet but was moving toward him.
I have to
, she thought.
It doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m mad
.…
    “Don’t do it,” she blurted, coming face-to-face with the astonished gentleman. “You mustn’t do it!”
    And then she turned and ran, rosary in hand, apron and veil flapping like wings.
    * * *
    He couldn’t help thinking of the cathedral as an entity. An immense version of one of its own gargoyles, crouched over the city. In protection or threat?
    Notre Dame de Paris rose black above him, solid, obliterating the light of the stars, the beauty of the night. Very appropriate. He’d always thought that the church blocked one’s sight of God. Nonetheless, the sight of the monstrous stone creature made him shiver as he passed under its shadow, despite the warm cloak.
    Perhaps it was the cathedral’s stones themselves that gave him the sense of menace? He stopped, paused for a heartbeat, and then strode up to the church’s wall and pressed his palm flat against the cold limestone. There was no immediate sense of anything, just the cold roughness of the rock. Impulsively, he shut his eyes and tried to feel his way into the rock. At first, nothing. But he waited, pressing with his mind, a repeated question.
Are you there?
    He would have been terrified to receive an answer but was obscurely disappointed not to. Even so, when he finally opened his eyes and took his hands away, he saw a trace of blue light, the barest trace, glowing briefly between his knuckles. That frightened him, and he hurried away, hiding his hands beneath the shelter of the cloak.
    Surely not, he assured himself. He’d done that before, made the light happen when he held the jewels he used for travel and said the words over them—his own version of consecration, he supposed. He didn’t know if the words were necessary, but Mélisande had used them; he was afraid not to. And yet. He had felt
something
here. The sense of something heavy, inert. Nothing resembling thought, let alone speech, thank God. By reflex, he crossed himself, then shook his head, rattled and irritated.
    But something. Something immense and very old. Did God have the voice of a stone? He was further unsettled by the thought. The stones there in the chalk mine, the noise they made—was it after all God that