Uncle Jeb," we croaked in surprise. "You found us." "Well, now," he said, and his gruff voice brought back a hundred memories. "Well, now, here's a pickle.

You dont know how hard it was for me to take you and leave them alive.

It's an extraordinary thing to meet someone who you can bare your soul to and accept you for what you are. I've been waiting, for what seems like a very long time, to get beyond what I am. With Bella I feel like I can finally begin. So I'd like to propose a toast to my beautiful bride. No measure of time with you will be long enough. But let's start with forever.

How did people do this - swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had.

Some of the memories were not clear - -dim human memories, seen through weak eyes and heard through weak ears: the first time I'd seen his face... the way it felt when he'd held me in the meadow... the sound of his voice through the darkness of my faltering consciousness when he'd save me from James... his face as he waited under a canopy of flowers to marry me... every precious moment on the island... his cold hands touching our baby through my skin.

But never in the four hundred years now since I was born, have I ever seen anything to make me doubt whether God exists in some form or the other. Not even the reflection in the mirror.

The Seeker needed a nice long lifetime eating sunshine.