Third Solstice CALIBRE with cover by Harper

spirit journey, some people would call it. You brought her home.”
    “Okay. That’s what it feels like. But... how ?”
    “It’s something you can do. I realised that when we lost Tamsie, and I could take you into my visions with me, and you could travel with me and see everything I was seeing.”
    “I don’t think I could do it now. I can’t even feel our link, just... the outside of you. Your voice and your hands and the way you smell.”
    Lee caressed him, holding tight. “You’ve probably burned it out for now. Maybe even long term. Isn’t the outside of me enough?”
    Oh, yes. Warm and solidly muscled, rich with the knowledge of how Gideon loved to be touched. “Very much so.”
    “Sorry about the smell. I’ve been in this shirt all night.”
    Gideon shivered with laughter. Lee was drawing him powerfully forward into the one corner of the room that couldn’t be seen from the porthole in the door. “What are you up to? We can’t do this in here.”
    “Well, I can’t wait to do it anywhere else. And I put up the room-in-use sign.”
    “Oh, you did, did you?” Gideon pushed him back a little to look at him. Everything he wanted was right here. Soon he would start to think about his daughter again, his brother and his mum, his house and his life and what it meant not to be able to read Lee’s mind anymore. Just for this moment, he didn’t care. He could see all the lights of solstice in the green eyes raised to his. “Is it shut now—the gateway? Is everyone safe on this side?”
    “Everyone who should be.” Lee clasped his shoulders, caressing. “You can come off duty now. You can stand down.”
    “I think I need to. How do you do this, Lee? All the voices, all the visions... You must end up feeling as if you belong to the whole world.”
    “Sometimes. Until you close the doors. Then you make me feel as if I just belong to you.”
    Gideon smiled. Lee had done the same for him, and hung out a do-not-disturb sign. For the next five minutes—because that was all it would take—they would belong to one another, forsaking all others. And then they would take up their places, shoulder-to-shoulder, in their candle dance with the world, for as long as they both should live.
     
    ***
     
    Tamsyn had her party after all. Like many events in her short life so far, it was strange. Eleanor opened the festivities at eight AM, blowing into the side ward where Ma had been sent to recover, buttoned primly up to the chin and in a storming rage. Gideon and Lee stood aside as she buttonholed Zeke: ripped him off a fiery strip for keeping Ma’s illness a secret. The words our baby’s grandmother got bandied about until not only Zeke but most of the ward staff had become accustomed to the idea of the minister’s unplanned child. Then she pulled out of her handbag the musical plush ball she and Zeke had bought for Tamsyn, sat down hard on the edge of Ma Frayne’s bed and began to cry.
    Ma held her hand. The old lady was nicely dressed in day clothes, and other than the stitches in her brow, looked the picture of health. She had to submit to a day’s observation and more tests, then she could go home. It turned out she still had a lot to say on the subject of children and how they found their way into the world. Lee and Tamsyn sat in the corner looking on, a pair of worried referees.
    Amused by the family drama swirling around the bed, Gideon went to return a phone call from DI Lawrence. He took his first deep breaths of new-year air on the pavement outside the hospital. A few days would have to elapse before the dawns brightened, but the wheel had turned, palpable in the song of the blackbirds across the misty car park. Lawrence took a while picking up, and Gideon set off unconsciously towards the hidden music. “Morning, ma’am,” he said eventually. “How’s Penzance this morning?”
    “Slightly barbecued, but still there—mostly thanks to you, I gather.”
    “Not at all. I just helped the locals put