by Raine Hughes
Her perfume was intensified by the blast of air coming out of the truck’s heater, hot air that circulated the scent of wind-blown forests straight off the towering snow-clad mountains that surrounded them. He always loved the smell of winter, even if he didn’t much appreciate the bitter cold that often accompanied it.
The weather was his greatest foe, especially since vision was restricted to the next mountain. A storm could blow in within minutes. He doubted Jasmine could counter Mother Nature.
They made the uneventful trip to Kamloops the first night. Noah breathed a sigh of relief at their good fortune. That proved to be short-lived, only, it wasn’t the ferry that gave him cause for concern. He had booked an entire motel for the crew, twenty-seven men. The men gave every appearance of having been rescued from tedium by one lone female.
His!
Jasmine was the center of attention, far too much attention. She had an easy, engaging manner. He should have known the men would be attracted to her. Of course, she was the most enticing woman on the premises. Even the desk clerk, young and pretty, didn’t hold a candle to Jasmine’s exotic beauty.
He watched her go from one table to the next in the motel restaurant, her hips swaying in that naturally provocative way of hers, her heart-shaped, jean-encased bottom gaining more than casual interest. He almost rushed over and commanded her to stop moving so enticingly. Hers was a natural movement she could no more stop than she could halt the wind. Or could she—stop the wind that is? He felt like a jerk for even thinking about demanding that she walk differently.
He scowled as she spoke to every one of the men, thanking them for volunteering for this most important mission. Yeah, they’d volunteered all right—for a hefty paycheck—once they’d gotten a look at the woman on his arm. When he’d called for help in tackling the difficult job of taking the lumbering steel and wood giant across six hundred miles of dangerous mountain terrain, on a trip marked as irresponsible and impossible, the sign-up sheets had filled quickly. He owed all these men to Jasmine’s presence.
He was relieved to finally usher her up to their room. However, he was dismayed to see that it was occupied by only one bed. He hadn’t counted on that. It was unlikely any other rooms were available, and he could just imagine what the men would think should he approach any of them to switch rooms.
“Ah, thank you, Noah,” Jasmine said, rushing over to the bed. “I will be toasty warm in your arms.” With that she stripped down to her fleecy underwear and climbed into bed, visibly shivering under the chilly sheets.
He wasn’t about to tell her he hadn’t arranged this for her benefit. Noah had no choice but to quickly shed his own outer wear and climb in beside her. She snuggled into the cradle of his body and promptly fell asleep. Her midriff wasn’t bare this time, filled in with the bright orange tee-shirt he’d bought her so long ago. His hand wanted to wander over her female-soft body but he contented himself with simply splaying it across her belly and holding her to his warmth. She felt so right, snuggled against him. A sense of peace stole over him and in no time he, too, fell asleep.
* * *
Next morning they were awake long before sunup. There was no time to lie about, which was just as well when a certain princess awakened in his arms, greeted him with a winsome smile, then proceeded to stretch and yawn her way to delectably tousled wakefulness. If only he could wake up to this every morning for the rest of his life!
“Lost most of the media people, I see.” Noah grinned without humor as they got underway after a hearty breakfast. He had focused on his food rather than Jasmine’s popularity this time, though it was hard. Jealousy had no place in God’s heart, which meant he must cast it away from himself, too. “We’re old news now. But, the remaining newspaper men and their camera sidekicks are waiting for disaster to liven up their news coverage.”
Jasmine shook her head. “There will be no disasters.”
Noah wished he could be as confident although he had to admit to wanting just a little glitch or two to keep up the news coverage. Unfortunately, problems would probably be of catastrophic proportion, rather than little nuisances.
“Tell me more about your mysterious lake. What have scientific studies revealed?”
He was glad to have his mind sidetracked. “They’ve done exhaustive research on the lake, both when it’s high and when it’s nearly dry. It doesn’t go completely dry, you’ll remember, but the water just seems to drain out of it over the course of a couple of months. All they’ve been able to determine is that the whirlpool comes from a fissure in the bottom of the lake. They put a special blue dye in the whirlpool and hoped it would be sucked down and detected at some other source, in a nearby lake at least. There never appeared to be any corresponding water level changes in any of them.
“They gave up on discovering the blue dye marker. Then three years after the last shot of dye was poured into the lake, someone reported a strange blue color appearing in their water well. No one could explain it at the time and the incident was forgotten. It was just by accident that the proper authorities learned about the incident but it was too late to test it. It had taken so long and reappeared so far away, three hundred miles, that some say it wasn’t the same dye, others declare that it had to have been.”
Jasmine appeared suitably impressed, asking, “Mystery Lake last disappeared when?”
“Last time it happened was back in the seventies. It was a good three years before the water level fully returned, which was the longest it has ever taken, usually being only months.” Noah took a deep breath and tried to be optimistic.
“It may never happen again in a lifetime. I just have to take that chance. Remember how we talked of this before? I believe tourists will still come. We might just not be able to actually set sail during that time.” He was interrupted by a call on the two-way radio.
“But, there’s a plus factor,” Noah continued after he had conversed with a crew member who’d heard a weather forecast. It was worrisome, so he concentrated on explaining Mystery Lake. “The natives claim the waters hold some sort of healing powers. They sold the stuff in drinking bottles for medicinal health purposes. The Health Department put a stop to that. Then they switched to larger bottles and advocated bathing in it.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Noah’s mind was assailed with the memory of Jasmine with bubbles up to her neck, her regal head tilted towards him, an impish grin on her face. His reaction to the image was instantaneous, just as it had been that first time. He shifted on the truck seat to ease things.
“Does it work?”
“Oh, yeah!” Instantly he knew he’d answered the wrong question! “Whether there are medicinal properties to be had from bathing in the waters of Mystery Lake is according to the believers,” he said to cover his error. “I figure if swimming in it doesn’t do anything, a few drops in the bathtub aren’t likely to make a difference either.”
He passed Jasmine a long look. “Recall that other theory? Never put much store in it, till you arrived. Could the so-called Djinni-of-the-Lake really orchestrate such disappearance and reappearance of an entire body of water?”
Jasmine shook her head. “Our magic is immediate. If the water were to disappear in an instant…” she shrugged and passed him a smirk.
Noah laughed. “If it were to, say, magically reappear in an instant, would it stay or would nature eventually break through the spell?”
“Too obvious, as you once told me about making your house larger?”
Jasmine’s reply didn’t exactly answer his query.
They had other things to think about as they were hit with a full-scale blizzard within a matter of minutes, clear visibility one moment, nil the next. They had to push on because there was no place to pull off the road and police had roads blocked off waiting their passage. Their journey slowed to a crawl as visibility deteriorated. Despite their best intentions, they were forced to stop when they came to a steep, winding grade. Down below was a bridge. The road clim
bing up the other side of the gorge was even steeper.
Noah scowled at his two-way radio when informed that the sanding truck that normally led the procession was sitting at a precarious angle, abandoned on the edge of the roadway where it had skidded out of control. The two men in it had scrambled out, fearing for their safety because of the sheer drop beside them.
“It’s too slippery to get it back on the road,” a voice urgently said over the crackle of static. “I ain’t drivin’ it and until conditions improve that flatbed is goin’ nowhere!”
Noah groaned and acknowledged the information. He thumped his clenched hand on the steering wheel in frustration. “This is the kind of thing I dreaded most. I don’t blame him for being scared. I’ll have to go drive that sander myself. We can’t just sit here.”
“But, Noah—”
“We’ll see what these guys want.” Noah cut her off as three men approached their truck on foot. Noah informed them of his decision to take control of the sander before they had a chance to voice their own concerns. Show no fear!
“There’s barely one inch of clearance on that bridge,” one man explained. “Any little slip of the wheels, any little miscalculation, and she’ll be jammed tight between the guardrails. It’d be tricky negotiating even on dry pavement. Now…” he shook his head and let the statement speak for itself.
“What next?” Noah muttered as he watched the two crew members retreat. A third man, a pencil-wielding reporter, followed them as soon as he’d written that tidbit of information down. “Well, we still have the attention of the news media!”
“Perhaps they will be wrong. I will check.”
It was a while before Noah realized what Jasmine had said. That’s when he discovered that she was no longer in the truck, apparently having exited by unorthodox means. His brain kick-started and he scrambled out. Visibility was still the distance of a truck hood. No one should be out in this and the temperature was rapidly falling. When he called out her name, his voice was thrown back into his face by the howling wind that sent stinging snow at him.
He stopped to ask the lead truckers if they’d seen Jasmine go past. Of course, she might have used her powers to do that, too, then they would have seen nothing.
“You bet!” one man said, a grin on his face. “That lady of yours is sure thoughtful, bringing us a pie and all. Could almost swear it was warm when she handed it in. Said she had one for every truck. You must have quite a store in the back of your pick-up. What else you got under the canopy?”
The men dug into another piece of pie as Noah stood speechless. “She’s something all right,” he finally managed to say and left before they could pursue questioning.
He headed on down the steep mountain incline since the men said Jasmine had disappeared into the swirling snow within a few feet of their truck. His heart was in his throat as he searched for her. She could so easily become lost. He couldn’t see the bridge. Everything was white around him. She could freeze to death in this. This was much, much colder than when he had originally discovered her frozen outside his door.
He fell twice and nearly walked off the road in the blinding whiteness. It was clearer at the bottom so that he finally saw her approach the near end of the bridge. Behind him he could just make out the faint outline of the big truck and its load as the intensity of the storm momentarily lessened.
Slipping and sliding, he tried to hurry down the treacherous slope, then he had the bridge railing to steady himself until he finally caught up to her. “Jasmine! You can’t do anything in this storm.”
“Oh, I am Eskimoy warm, Noah. See!” With a nod they were transferred beyond the bridge and halfway up the other side on the road.
With a yelp, he struggled to keep his footing by grabbing onto a nearby signpost. “This is treacherous, far worse than I imagined, and visibility is ebbing again. There’s really nothing to be accomplished by being out in this, Jasmine.”
“I am having no disaster with my magic, Noah. It is a wonderful time for a supernatural occurrence,” Jasmine said with a conspiratorial giggle.
Before Noah could envisage what she had in mind, she’d folded her arms and nodded. He swung his sights in the direction she was focused on, the action nearly resulting in a fall even as he held tight to the signpost. Movement riveted his attention. The flatbed and its load began skidding down the steep hill!
“Jasmine, no!” he shrieked. His voice lodged at the lump blocking his throat, nearly strangling him. Coughing, he watched in horror as the load careened down the hill, headed for sure disaster.
He next saw Jasmine down at the end of the bridge deck. He couldn’t even close his eyes as he waited for the carnage to happen.
Incredibly, the heavy load straightened out, zoomed unhindered across the narrow bridge and headed straight up the hill towards him. With a violent wrench, he jerked himself out of the stupor that had incapacitated him so he could step to the other side of the signpost. The staccato honk of the trucker’s horn jolted him out of his horror-stricken awe. He clung to the signpost with renewed purpose as the big load thundered past so close that he was nearly sucked into the vacuum surrounding the moving rig.
His breath came out in a whoosh as Jasmine reappeared, grinning and happily clapping her hands as she bounced about in front of him, her seal-skin mukluks holding the ice easily. “I did it, Noah. I did it!”
Noah cleared his throat and had to do it again before any sound came out. “How will I explain?” He sucked in a cold breath as the answer came to him. “I’ll have to say that the ferry’s weight must have sent the truck slithering down the incline, that the truck-tractor and load was… had to be over the crest of the hill to start with.”
Jasmine giggled and the tension of the last few minutes abated, leaving him weakened but elated. His grin probably looked as sick as he felt just thinking over what ifs. “If you can work your magic, I guess I can handle the explanations.”
He’d been coming up with reasons for the strange and unusual more often than he cared to. But that was just what life with a magical Djinni would always be like, and really, he was finding it easier to find plausible explanations based on truth rather than outright lies.
“You certainly keep me on my toes, Jasmine!” His life hadn’t been dull or boring since he’d met her.
In full view of the others now, since the snow had nearly quit, Jasmine couldn’t simply transport them back up the hill. He took her arm as they shuffled over the treacherous ice. “Heck, we, or at least I, can barely walk, let alone drive on this.”
Ahead he could see the men amassed at the brow of the incline. “No doubt they’re still exclaiming over the strange turn of events. Oh, and about those pies,” Noah added, “while they were most welcome by the crew, you better hope they’ve forgotten all about them. There’s no way they’ll think we carried them along just for such an occasion as this.”
“What other explanation can there be?”
Noah groaned. What indeed?
When they reached the rest of the men, they all began talking at once. Noah was able to instill his theory of the wild ride of the vessel down the hill, because, well, there was no other explanation.
Jasmine happily added, “The bridge measurements were miscalculated. There was plenty of clearance.” Showing a thumb and finger a palm-width apart, she made eye contact with the two engineers who had stated the lack of room. They cringed at the scant clearance but had the grace to shrug with an apology.
Or, with dismay.
Noah didn’t want to know the truth as he gave the thumbs-up to the video-wielding reporter. He grinned confidently into the lens and declared, “We’re not beat yet!” To the crew he said with vigor, “Let’s get that sanding truck back on the road and get on out of here!”
The delay put them behind schedule so that they were forced to continue on after dark. With himself handling the spotlight where needed, Jasmine was able to work her magic. They worked well as a team but he didn’t have time to consi
der the implications.
* * *
“Home at last.” The tension of the past week slowly eased out of Noah’s shoulders as the big trucks pulled out, headed back home. Crewmen waved vigorously as he glanced down at the woman beside him. “They’re waving at you, mostly,” he said with a tired grin. “You were a big hit with the men.”
“It was the pies,” Jasmine offered.
Noah guffawed. “One of your fabulous smiles is enough to take anyone’s mind off the business at hand, mine included. But, right now, nothing is going to distract me from sleeping for a week!” Jasmine raised her eyebrows at that statement. “Well, almost nothing,” he amended, slinging his arm around her shoulders.
They paused to look back down the steep hill to the lake when they reached the top. Below, the ferry looked to be a generous size as it sat only slightly askew on the ice of Mystery Lake. It would hold the crowds and the floating menagerie. They would have to build a pier and install moorings to hold the ferry safely in place as the ice melted. He’d hire deserving local workers anxious for work.
This summer would see the realization of his dream and he owed much of it to the woman beside him. Wrong! He owed the entire thing to her because the ferry could not have been transported without her magical intervention. That he was certain of. The expedition had been fraught with difficulties and Jasmine had handled them all without a hitch.
She would definitely be reinstated in Djinn society, which was what he wanted. Wasn’t it?
He was torn between wanting to ensure that Jasmine would be back in favor with her people and wanting her to fail just so she wouldn’t leave him. He hadn’t realized until this instant that a part of him had wanted her to fail. His perfidy left a bad taste in his mouth. He couldn’t shed the thought and that left him dealing with more guilt.
Noah abruptly altered his course, fleeing from his thoughts as he called over his shoulder, “I’ll check things out in the barn. You go ahead to the house.”