Clearly, she is not to be distracted. It's been this way since they were bairns, really - he's been bigger than her since about the age of twelve, but she's always had a way of cowing him with no more than a look, a tone of voice.

"Look, ye dunna have to worry about them," Jamie says. "They'll be in the same place ye left them." He casts about for a way to explain the situation so that she'll have some understanding - it's difficult, when his own mind still quite can't wrap around the concept.

"I've been here for months, Jenny," he finally says, understanding that the last she probably saw of him was yesterday, as far as she's concerned. "Time is strange here. We'll get ye back home to them, and they won't even know ye were gone."