Kate went to the fridge and stuck her head in. I watched Trip cut his eyes over to Kate as she rummaged through the veggie drawer.
“It’s getting pretty scant in here,” Kate called and held up a wilted head of lettuce and a squishy looking cucumber.
“Dirk ordered dinner. Mama Ty is sending us takeout from Taky Tako,” Trip answered.
“Moo goo gai pan?” Kate’s eyebrows shot to the ceiling. It was her favorite.
“Of course,” Trip laughed.
Kate grabbed a juice bottle and shook it at me. I nodded and she tossed it to me, grabbed another, and we sat down across from Dirk and Trip.
“How is the research coming?” Dirk asked.
Kate wrinkled her nose. Trip couldn’t take his eyes off of her. I leaned over and gathered her under my arm. “Well , I can tell you what each of their college GPAs were, what they scored on their ACTs and MATs, I can even tell you their blood types, but we need some personal information and it just isn’t in the database.”
Kate snuggled into my shoulder and I pulled her tighter to me. Trip frowned and looked away. It was probably a good reminder for him that Kate was my girlfriend. I had the feeling I had given him too much liberty with her.
Don’t get me wrong. Kate was free to choose her own way, and I know she loved me eternally. I was just not sure Trip really understood our bond. I think he imagined his bond was equally strong with her.
We had given Kate freedom to come and go between us as her heart led her. We knew that would be essential to her survival and to getting us all safely out of the jumps as we engaged in quantum espionage to find the infiltrator in the Inner Circle. I didn’t want her feeling guilty for acting on emotions that were necessary.
I think there was a bit of arrogance in my decision, too. I knew Kate loved me and I underestimated how much Trip loved her and how that would affect her. I thought he and Tara had something pretty special, but so far Trip’s deference to Kate indicated that his feelings for Tara were less defined.
“...her mom is livid, of course!” Mel and Tara came around the corner with a breezy redhead named Kim Stevens carrying sacks of Chinese takeout. “But she isn’t even allowed to see her for another 3 weeks.”
“Yay!” Kate perked up. “Food!”
We spread the food out across the table and began to chopstick our way through the wide selection.
Kim had moved into our cabin at Heartwork Village to take Mel and Donnie’s place. She filled us in on our teammates and their progress toward acclimating to life as teenagers again.
“Catilyn and Navarro are still grieving their children,” she spoke softly. “They refuse to be separated, and frankly I didn’t have the heart to insist. I set them up in my room, and I took Caitlyn’s bunk with Eunavae in the girl’s dorm.”
“I know how they feel,” Donnie grumbled. Mel leaned into his shoulder.
“None of them took the news well that they had been erased from the memories of their descendants.”
My heart was heavy for my family of teammates. None of us would ever be the same. The 200 year jump changed us entirely. Only Kate and Trip escaped that fate. They hadn’t been near us when we jumped, so they stayed at the village. I couldn’t leave her behind, though. She was present as though she lived on my skin. I would close my eyes at night and picture her face, her gold flecked eyes, her hair as it spilled around her shoulders, and I would remember the scent of her. Every night for 2 centuries, I imagined my Kate. I began to tell the story hoping to purge myself of the overwhelming sensation that she was still with me. After decades, my stories became legend, a whole religion developed around the tale of Kate of a Thousand Years and the deity who held us.
We finally came home, but were adults suddenly constrained by teenage rules. Except for Trip and Kate who had not been on the jump with us, they actually were still teenagers. I couldn’t really count the thousand year Scriptorium as life experience. That was just pure bliss, with Kate and clouds. Trip and Kate were closer in real time age. I wondered if that was part of their continued attraction. Maybe I had just become too mature for Kate. I hoped that wasn’t the case.
The conversation drifted to Jewel City, our settlement in the 212 year jump, as it usually did. It was hard to stay in the present when it was such a small percentage of our total life experience.
“His hands were as big as dinner plates!” Mel exclaimed.
“Oh! They were not!” Tara moaned.
“Bran was enormous, you have to admit it, Tara!” I threw a fortune cookie at her.
She batted it away and laughed. “He was wonderful.” Tara blushed as she described her husband in the jump. He had died in a river accident after they had been married 30 years and had seven grown children.
“He was a good friend and a great leader. I still miss him.” I reached across the table and squeezed her hand.
My eyes grazed Trip’s face and it was strangely red and his eyes were fiery and intense as he stared across the table at my girlfriend. I glanced at Kate and she was simmering in some kind of physical communication with him, both of their faces flushed with unspoken attraction.
I cast my eyes down, embarrassed to have caught them in such a private moment. I pushed away from the table and noticed Trip moving his legs suddenly. Kate sat up.
“I’m gonna just go rest a bit before we get back to the computers.” I murmured and left the room quickly.
I turned the corner and entered the empty boy’s room and stood in front of the mirror. “Eye on the prize, Corey. Keep your eye on the prize,” I told myself. I was going to keep her alive no matter what the cost.
There was a tiny knock on the door and Kate pushed it open and let herself in. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it as she took in the sight of me. I watched her in the mirror and then turned around. I don’t know what she saw in my face, but she ran into my arms.
“Corey! What is wrong?” I sat down on the edge of my bed and she pressed herself against me and kissed my face tenderly. “What is this fearful look in your eyes? I don’t like it,” she said between kisses.
I gathered her into my arms and we stretched out on the bed. She never stopped kissing my face.
I tucked her under my chin and she wrapped her arms around me. My Kate! My heart would break it if I lost you to Trip after waiting for you for so long, but even worse, I would die if anything were to happen to you because I closed you away from him. These were my thoughts, but my words were different.
“Let’s get some rest.”
“I love you, Corey.”
“I know.” I lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. “I know,” I whispered and kissed her sweet lips, then cradled her to my chest and we slept.
I woke in the middle of the night. Kate stirred in her sleep, apparently having a nightmare. I glanced around the dark room and noted the others had come and found their beds, soft snores and some not so soft rumbled around the dorm room.
Kate squirmed breathing heavily and mumbling, the hall light reflected off of her pale and perfect skin and my heart swelled in my chest at her sweetness. Her brow crinkled and I kissed it. She calmed at my touch and I stroked her cheek until she sighed and snuggled into my chest. I closed my eyes and settled back down when she murmured.
“Trip will save me.”
My heart cracked into a million shards.
BRAN AND BOERNE
BY JACEN DUDGEON
(LIVELY BAR TUNE)
Two brothers from a nearby clan as different as can be,
One strong and good the other a hoodlum and worldly by those who would deem.
Boerne was a codger and lost in his cup near daily as some have been told.
While Bran had a quick mind, and eye for the hunt, and heart made of pure gold.
They carried on about their ways, daily dabbling done.
Bran was productive many good days while Boerne shirked his sunlight on rum.
Singing lie lie the merry ol’ day. Singing lie lie
the merry ol’ way.
When their father, the king, was old in his days and heard death rattlin’ a chain.
He called them together, both of them fellers, to choose the son who would reign.
The brothers came quickly to sit at his side and be with him, hearts sad and broken.
He spoke of their lives with pity and pride and gave them his last words spoken.
Bran you have been a model son, good to the core it would seem.
But Boerne you have frolicked and danced and cavorted and spent all your days in a dream.
Singing lie lie the merry ol’ day, singing lie lie the merry ol’ way.
So Bran became the king of the land, and justice was in his right hand.
But Boerne just went on about his shamed ways and became the scoff of the land.
So remember this, when a duty you shirk or when choosing where you’ll turn up.
A price will be paid for cavorting or work, like Bran in his castle and Boerne in his cup
Singing lie lie the merry ol’ day. Singing lie lie the merry ol’ way.
Singing lie lie the merry ol’ day. Singing lie lie the merry ol’ way.
WE SAT IN a large conference room at a table with high back leather chairs pulled up to an oval mahogany table with a marble inset down the center. The dark walls were covered with video projectors, enormous flat screens, and marker boards. Compads rested in front of each of us with black leather covers. Mama Ty sat at one end of the conference table tapping the holo keys of her compad, waiting for everyone to arrive. Dirk drummed his fingers at the opposite end. Kate took my right hand under the table, and Kim shifted in her chair on my left. Tara and Mel sat across from us with their heads together in a whispered conversation. Trip and Donnie hurried in to take their seats across from us.
Mama Ty started the meeting. “This is how it is going to work. We have placed the entire jumper population on infirmary leave. That means none of them are available for jumps, they will be listed as incapacitated for various reasons. They are removed from active status in the system. That way we can activate one extra jumper at a time to go with the task force.”
“Is that necessary? Can’t just the seven of us go?” Donnie asked.
“The first few jumps we could get away with that, but I am afraid we will alert the infiltrator if we jump only the same seven people. As it is, I am worried they will catch on. As long as we have a new jumper targeted each time, I think the rest of you will go unnoticed.”
“So, you are planning on putting a non-task force member with us each time as a target jumper,” Tara clarified.
“Yes, I think it will help you get to the issues more quickly if you don’t have to decide whose jump you are on each time.”
Everyone nodded in agreement. The hardest part of the jump was trying to decide who the target was and help them deal with their issues.
It took me 212 years to finally recognize my jump and even then it took my dying wife to clue me in. When I finally accepted the jump had failed, and we were never going home, I took a permanent position with the Darchori and married the chief’s daughter, Taylia. Beautiful Taylia.
Taylia’s skin as dark as Kate’s was pale, her body voluptuous as Kate’s was lithe. Taylia, outspoken and wise, had celebrated thirty five years before we married. We had spent three years as friends. I supported her through the grieving of her first husband, listened to her startling ideas, held her at night when she couldn’t sleep. She was a perfect wife, kind and respectful, tending to my every need, except one. Our first kiss was almost comical.
Nothing, no flutters, no emotion, no chemistry, like kissing the wall, we pulled away from one another and laughed. The marriage remained a good arrangement for both of us, though. She didn’t have the will to move past the love she had for her first husband, and evidently in that world, I didn’t have a heart or soul. Mine had stayed in our world, with Kate. Taylia became the chief of the tribe being married to the Cianti Todura, and I was able to keep the relentless pursuers away because she was my “wife.”
We would talk late into the night snuggling, holding hands. Her favorite story was about Kate of a Thousand Years. She said I truly came alive when I spoke of Kate. As she aged our relationship shifted, she became maternal, looking out for my needs and benefits. Later years she confessed that she had one regret.
“I should have made love to you, Corey. I should have made you a father. You would have been the best father a child could imagine.”
I kissed her wrinkled forehead and told her our life was perfect. I couldn’t bear to tell her I would have never agreed. I only wanted one woman and if someday I had children, I wanted them to come from her. My Kate.
“I’m dying, Corey. You know this better than anyone,” she told me one night as she stroked my cheek.
“No, Taylia, I can’t bear it.”
“Corey, husband, I ask one promise of you.”
“Anything, my friend.” I pressed the back of her frail hand to my lips, fighting tears.
“Never give up on Kate. She will come for you. I am sure of it. A woman so loved by a man like you could never give up on him. She will come.”
“I promise, Taylia. I believe it. My Kate will come.”
Taylia lived to see it. Kate walked up to her, holding my hand, and hugged Taylia like a dear friend. Taylia’s eyes shone with rapturous joy as she eyed me over Kate’s embrace. The greatest wish of her life was to see Kate of a Thousand Years reunited with her true love.
On the platform when Kate and I were so enmeshed with one another, ready to become husband and wife, Taylia’s joy beamed, tangible. When I saw her reaction to the undeniable and fervent love between Kate and me, something shifted in her. Her will to stay faded from her face.
My heart ached.
When Kate told me to take my wife home, I was almost relieved—almost. I carried her home, tucked her into bed and she pulled me alongside her.
“I am complete.”
I drew the coverlet around her shoulders and settled beside her.
“Birsharon will be an excellent leader. She already does most of the work,” her frail voice whispered into the night. “You have chosen your successor well, too, my husband. I believe Whelshti will make an excellent Cianti Todura.”
I nodded and tucked her head against my chest. The ache in my chest wouldn’t abide any distance between us tonight. I let the tears flow as she spoke her goodbyes in words of gratitude and contentment.
She slept soundly in my arms. I stayed awake with her all night, afraid she would drift off to the final sleep without me beside her. I stayed with my life companion and ruminated on the good life we had built together.
Before the sunrise, as the Tondo rose from the gardens in their morning flurry of wings and croons, Taylia woke and asked for her servant.
“Go get Kate and Eunavae and bring them to me,” her frail voice whispered. “Your lives together are going to start today.”
She was right. The sphere came for us at the moment of Taylia’s death. My grief and joy were so intermingled that it created a heightened emotional state that Kate and I could not resist. We were powerless against our feelings for one another. I had not felt physical attraction for two hundred years. With Kate in my arms electricity shot through me and I needed to pour into her two centuries of affection.
Her receptivity staggered me and increased my longing for her. I would have taken her as my wife under that willow tree, if we hadn’t been interrupted. It was time. I had waited long enough. We both wanted it, needed it, ran toward it with abandon.
I think if we had been able to complete our union that night, Kate would not have fluctuated in her feelings. Things changed after that.
The task force was formed and now we found ourselves in the dank basement facility of the Inner Circle, planning to jump into the unknown with Kate, basically, as the bait.
I hated the plan, but knew it was the only chance to save the technology that my great great grandfath
er Dr. Rick Wilson invented from evil intent. If she was going to survive this quest, I needed Trip to bind himself to her and move heaven and hell to save her. It broke my heart every time they would saunter off. I felt every kiss I imagined they shared in the pit of my being. Every touch, every passionate look that passed between them, was a knife coring out a hollow in me, but I kept my focus on the prize—keeping Kate alive. I was confident that between Trip and me, we could protect her.
Mama Ty continued speaking. I jerked my attention back to the debriefing. “We are only going to add jumpers from the Chartreuse team right now. They are adults, really, after that two century jump, and their longevity will prepare them emotionally to handle the situations better.”
“Aren’t they emotionally strained enough as it is?” Mel interjected.
“They have been resilient,” Kim stated, she had come back early this morning bearing Krispy Kremes that Trip was busy finishing off at the moment. “Most of them are good to go. I think we need to give Caitlyn and Navarro a bit more time. Honestly, I don’t know if you will be able to separate them long enough for one to jump without the other.”
“Kim will coordinate the jumpers camp side, and arrange errands and other timely favors that will send one of them to your cabin.” Mama Ty tapped her Compad and a map of the campus popped up over Dirk’s head.
For a full-sized, color map of Heartwork Village, visit
www.ladonnacolern.wix.com/ladonna-cole
“After your training here, you will all be relocated to First Cabin. It is more remote, set apart from the rest of the village. When you aren’t on a jump, you will stay there. There is an apartment above the boat house for the old married couple.” She smiled at Mel and Donnie. “The rest of you can stay in the cabin.”
Donnie grinned at Mel and I admit I felt a bit jealous. If Kate had been with us on that long jump, we would have probably been married by now, too. I wondered if Tara thought the same thing about Trip. I glanced at him. He was smiling at Kate, suggestively. I turned to look at her and she rolled her eyes at him, but the blush in her cheeks spoke volumes.
The Keepers Files 1.5 A Holding Kate Series Book Page 3