A Breath of Snow and Ashes

On October 25, 1774, Ian takes Brianna on a long walk. She’s surprised and annoyed to find it will be a three-day journey, a fact he doesn’t tell her until the first day is almost over.

They stop to sleep, and Brianna catches some fish. Ian tells her he thought of marrying her long ago, and she entertains the thought of him as a man, rather than just her younger cousin. Their journey has something to do with his Mohawk wife, Emily (her Mohawk name is unpronounceable by Brianna), but he won’t reveal more. He tells Brianna that his soul wanders at night, and he doesn’t feel right during the day, but he felt safe and at home with Emily. Brianna soothes him to sleep.

Either in a dream or recollection, Ian remembers a night sitting around the campfire with the Mohawk, drinking beer and telling stories. Emily’s Mohawk name means Works with Her Hands. Emily brings Ian a refill of beer and settles beside him, her pregnant belly full, urging him to tell a story from Scotland.

The next morning, Ian asks Brianna if she dreamed, as dreams are very important to the Mohawk. She did; she dreamed of birds singing, and toilet paper, which she explains to an incredulous Ian. He finally tells her his story. Emily’s sister, looking at the Sky, married Sun Elk, a man who originally planned to marry Emily. Ian knew Sun Elk still desired his wife. Sun Elk had an ominous dream about Rollo killing Ian, which he relished telling Ian.

Emily miscarried their first baby. In Mohawk tradition, miscarriages mean the man’s soul has done battle with the woman’s and lost. They did a ritual to help strengthen Ian’s soul and temper Emily’s. Then, Looking at the Sky was abducted by a rival tribe one day, and Emily miscarried again soon after. She lost trust in Ian and started noticing Sun Elk more. One day, an elder grandmother took Ian away from the village and bid him depart forever.

They reach their destination: a massive mammoth skeleton. Brianna tells him about wooly mammoths and the Ice Age. Ian was worried that the mammoth was a spirit. He admits his reason for bringing Brianna to this place: He feels tremendous guilt that his daughter was buried without being baptized. He gave up his Catholicism to worship Emily’s gods, and now he thinks his child’s soul is in limbo.

Brianna tells him his daughter is in heaven and asks her first father to watch over her soul. Ian asks whether he should return to the Mohawk and fight for Emily. It’s more than just Emily that draws him back, however, it’s all the mothers and children. Brianna tells him he can’t win Emily back if she doesn’t want him anymore. He agrees to stay with the colony.

Back at Fraser’s Ridge, Roger has clumsily killed a pig. Claire is making blood pudding from it. Roger is embarrassed that it took him so many tries to kill it, unlike Jamie who slaughters an animal with one stroke to the head. Claire advises Roger to learn the prayer Jamie always recites when sacrificing an animal for food. Jamie teaches him.

Ronnie Sinclair arrives with a letter simply for “the healer.” It is scratched with berry juice and says only: “YU CUM” and signed “Faydree.” Phaedre is the woman enslaved by Jocasta; she is likely forbidden to read or write, but Brianna admits to having taught her both. They all wonder why she would be summoning Claire. Brianna proposes that Phaedre is really summoning Jamie but addressed the letter to “the healer” to avoid suspicion, knowing that Jamie would accompany Claire to River Run.

Jamie and Claire go to River Run immediately. To their surprise, Jocasta reports that Phaedre has either been kidnapped or run away. Ulysses and Duncan are out looking for her. Claire wonders aloud if Phaedre had an affair with a white man and ran away for fear of being sold. Jocasta takes them to the carriage house, opening an old chest filled with portraits, including one of Hector Cameron, her former husband. Then, another portrait of a young Phaedre—it becomes immediately clear that Phaedre is the offspring of Jocasta’s former husband, and Phaedre would never be sold. Wondering whether Jocasta’s wrath at being betrayed by Hector perhaps extended to having Phaedre killed, Jamie and Claire speak to Duncan, and they find out that Duncan did have an affair with Phaedre.

Distilling whisky one night, Claire and Jamie come upon Joseph, who is drunk and weeping. Lizzie is pregnant by one of the Beardsley twins, and she doesn’t know which one, as she’s been with them both. Jamie punches Jo in the gut and summons both Beardsley brothers to his study. Claire speaks with Lizzie, learning that Lizzie had a malarial attack while she was alone, and the twins helped her through it by rubbing the gallberry balm on her skin. When the fever broke, out of gratitude and glee for having survived, she had sex with Jo. It kept happening and eventually Kezzie became her lover as well.

Jamie tells Lizzie she must choose which to wed, but she loves them both and refuses. He makes the twins draw straws, and Kezzie is chosen to wed Lizzie. They give the three a few moments of privacy to say goodbye (Jo must leave until after the baby is born). In those moments, Jo and Kezzie make identical burn marks on their thumbs, where previously only Jo was burned.

Brianna and Roger discuss when they should tell Jem that he, his parents, and his grandparents come from a different time because they’re time travelers. Brianna thinks he should be told soon, as she resents her parents for waiting until she was an adult to tell her the truth. Roger thinks they should wait until he’s at least old enough not to tell his friends. Brianna grieves the fact that she time traveled to find her parents, resulting in Roger’s hanging. He reassures her that it’s not her fault and he would have done the same thing in her position. Lizzie, Jo, and Kezzie arrive at their door in the middle of the night. They convince Roger to marry Lizzie to Jo, unaware that she’s already been married to Kezzie.

While they’re making molasses cookies together one day, Claire discovers lice in Jem’s hair. With Roger and Jamie’s help, they shave Jem’s head.

Fergus’s first newspaper has been printed; the family pores over it proudly.

As the skin of Jem’s head is revealed, so is a large mole above his ear. Brianna frets at the sight of it, exclaiming that he didn’t have it when he was born. Roger offhandedly says that he had one develop later on in life, too. Claire confirms that this sort of thing is hereditary, and Roger and Brianna’s eyes fill with tears, realizing that Roger is truly Jem’s father, not Bonnet. Roger picks up the razor and asks to be shaved, too, to match his son.