by Kristy Tate
“How do you do?” she asked him.
He answered by wagging his tail, scattering fallen leaves on the path.
The windows of the house were dark, but a trail of smoke curled from the chimney. It would be possible for his family to be asleep; it was certainly late enough. But the house wore an empty look. “Do you live alone?” she asked.
“Just Cherub and I.” Then, as if sensing her nerves, “You have nothing to fear here, my lady.” He climbed onto the porch and paused, waiting for her. Two chairs stood to the side of the solid front door, and sawdust surrounded the chair that faced toward the river.
Petra took the step onto the porch. She wasn’t allowed in a guy’s house unless his parents were home. Until this moment, she’d thought that rule lame, easy to break and difficult to enforce. But this is a dream, or something worse. In her real life she’d never go into a deserted house with a stranger in the middle of the night, but this definitely was nothing like real life. Her heart quickened.
“Where’s your family?” she asked.
“They passed on.”
Dead? “All of them?” Of course, she knew people sometimes were orphaned and had to live with relatives or grandparents. In her world a foster care system existed, but she didn’t know what became of orphans in 1610. She had a brief vision of starving pickpockets, Oliver Twist workhouses and scrawny kids picking through bare fields gleaning left behind potatoes. Emory didn’t look like he was starving. And he definitely wasn’t a kid. How old was he?
“I only know one person who’s died.” Her voice sounded small.
She wasn’t sure what she believed about an afterlife. At her mother’s funeral, the pastor had spoken at length of God and His kingdom, but Petra didn’t know how she or her mother fit into that kingdom. But she did believe that when she died, she’d see her mother again.
“Just one?” Pain and puzzlement flashed across Emory’s face. “No babes, sailors, a child?”
A chill ran up Petra’s spine. “Not a baby or a child. That would be terrible.” She paused. Although, depending on who you’ve lost, it can be terrifying whatever their age, she thought, remembering her mother lying still and silent in the hospital bed.
“How did your family die?” she asked, thinking of Dad, Frosty, Zoe, and even Laurel.
“Death comes early here. Perhaps where you’re from–”
Instinctively, she reached for his hand and squeezed it. “I’m so sorry.” She knew that in earlier generations life expectancy was shorter. A scratch could become fatally infected, childbirth was often deadly, and a cold could lead to pneumonia.
She held onto Emory’s hand a little tighter, anxiety mounting. In the moonlight he looked like a Greek god.
Death had followed those guys too.
Emory pushed open the door, still holding Petra’s hand. Coals in the grate glowed orange and red, casting large shadows. Stacks of leather bound books shared the shelves with cooking utensils. A trestle table, two benches and two chairs were all made of ornately carved wood. Maps in a variety of sizes of stained parchment nearly covered three of the walls. The fourth wall had two windows and the door through which they had entered. Another wall had a second door that presumably led to a bedroom.
He moved his hand to the small of her back. She felt its heat through the satiny dress, and her heart sped up. She’d never been so completely alone with anyone. At home, even alone, she was surrounded by neighbors within screaming distance and help was a telephone call away. Here, if she were to call out here, who, other than Cherub or perhaps a squirrel or two, would hear a cry for help?
“Are you tired, my lady? ‘Tis the middle of the night.” Emory closed the door behind the wiggling dog.
Cherub thumped his tail against the floorboards. It was so quiet. No ticking clocks. No humming refrigerator. No distant traffic or airplanes. She heard her own heart and hoped Emory couldn’t hear it as well. “Not really. That sleeping potion messed me up.”
Emory laughed and repeated slowly, “Messed me up.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Anne meant you no harm.”
“Do you?” Petra wondered, standing in the center of the room, unsure where to go or what to do, ready to run if necessary, And yet, she watched Emory and wondered if he felt the same tingling from their touch. “She could have killed me.”
Emory smiled. “But she didn’t.”
Petra sniffed. “How do you know her?” The thought of Emory and Anne as a couple made her uncomfortable. She remembered them going through her things and frowned.
Emory motioned for her to sit at the table. “I have known Anne since she was a child.”
He made it sound as if he was way older than Anne, but that couldn’t be true. “You were childhood friends.”
She hadn’t realized how tired she was until she sat. She took off the tiara and set it near her elbow. Wiggling her exhausted toes, she fought the desire to kick off her slippers. She needed to keep them on in case she needed to run away.
“Something akin to that.” Emory reached for a scroll propped against the wall. “How did you know Geoffrey?”
“Geoffrey?”
“Anne’s brother who recently died. You did not know? Anne thought you had met.”
Petra shook her head.
“Geoffrey fought a battle for light and truth.”
Light and truth? What does that mean? It sounded religious, and she’d learned in AP Euro about all the wars fought over religion. “Was he on a crusade?”
“Of sorts.” Emory untied a string on a scroll and unrolled a massive map on the table. “I’ve never heard of Royal Oaks, but perhaps you can recognize it.”
Petra put her elbows on the table, propped her head on her hand and studied the map while Emory weighed down the corners with smooth, round stones. Nothing looked familiar; many of the names lacked vowels. She doubted she’d be able to pronounce, let alone recognize, any of them. Her gaze strayed to maps on the walls.
“Those are all of lands much further away,” Emory said. “I thought since you arrived by horse you must not have come from far.” He took two other maps, and smoothed them flat.
Each of the three intricate maps had not only squiggly roads and winding rivers but also pictures of things like landmarks – a burnt stump, a cathedral, an inn. She studied them, impressed by the precision and detail. Emory stood behind her. She looked up at him. “Where did you get these? They’re amazing.”
Emory flushed. “I made them.”
“You? How?” She felt his warmth. “Did you copy them by hand? It must have taken hours.”
“By hand?”
“I mean, did you draw them yourself?”
He shifted as if uncomfortable. “I keep a journal and make sketches as I travel. In the evening hours I draw.”
Morocco, Asia, the Holy Land. “You’ve been to all these places? On your own?” She’d thought him close to her age. Besides, how could someone in this century travel so far? “Was your dad a sailor? Did you apprentice on a ship?”
He smirked. “Something akin to that.”
“Did you start sailing at age four?” she blurted, hoping she didn’t sound rude. She imagined a trip across the ocean with the tide and winds the only engine, taking years. “How old are you?”
“I don’t know my birth year,” he admitted and because he sounded a little sad, she let it go. Perhaps the I do not live meant I will not die and he had lots of time to travel and draw maps. She caught sight of Jamestown, Virginia, sitting on the edge of a giant mass of borderless wilderness. He would never believe she came from the other side of nothing, just like she didn’t believe that he’d traveled the world in some sort of perpetual youth.
He prodded. “Does anything remind you of your home?”
She shook her head and leaned against the table, frustrated and discouraged.
Cherub, who had been resting by the fire, bolted upright and ran to the door, barking.
“Who would come now
?” Petra sat up, alarmed, and looked out the window. The moon had climbed high over the river’s bank.
Knocking shook the door.
“Worry not.” He placed his hands on her shoulders, and his warmth spread down her back and settled around her toes.
The rapping increased to pounding and the door shook.
Cherub barked louder and faster, fighting not to be drowned out.
Petra watched the door. “You should see what they want,” she said, although hoping that he wouldn’t.
Emory frowned. “I know what he wants.” She tried to stand, but he held her.
“Sit, my lady. Study the maps.” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “Perhaps you can find the way home while I dispose of my caller.”
He stepped outside without her seeing who had knocked. She sagged against the chair, giving in to exhaustion and the heat of the fire. Like the chair from the Three Bears fairy tale, this chair wasn’t comfortable: The back was too straight; the wood was too hard; the arm rests were anything but cushy. Still she found her head nodding.
Petra snapped to. She straightened her spine, pushed back her shoulders and rolled her neck. She wouldn’t fall asleep. Again.
Can you sleep in dreams? Sleeping would make for a very boring dream. A dream within a dream? That would be new.
Petra looked around the room. Straw-strewn floor. Hand-carved furniture. Not one single modern convenience.
Sure, she’d always had a good imagination. Still, if this were all a hallucination or a dream, wouldn’t something be off? Then again, nothing makes sense in dreams, it doesn’t have to. The creature in the woods, the sleeping drug, the cockfight. Definitely nightmarish. But Emory? He was a part of a magical dream. The best part.
In dreams, can you smell? Taste? Touch? Petra didn’t think so, yet here she smelled the parchment and ink from the maps. Tea had stung her throat. She flushed remembering Emory’s touch and raised her hand to her cheek.
Petra stood and crossed the room. The dog followed her to the cupboard. “Shh,” she told him.
She didn’t mind if he watched, but she didn’t want Emory to see her.
Cherub sat and cocked his head, staring at her with large, brown eyes. Petra pinched herself. It hurt and left a small red welt. She put a finger between her teeth and bit. Ow. Pain, she definitely felt pain.
She picked up the knife from the cupboard and held it above her finger. Gripping the handle, she paused. She hated blood – the sight, the smell – especially her own. She wiped the blade on her skirt, remembering the cockfight. She took the knife to the fireplace where coals glowed in the grate and she stuck the blade in a small flame until the point turned black.
If she slept, would the pain wake her? If she was dead, would she bleed? Taking a deep breath, she pressed the knife against her finger as the door opened and then slammed shut.
“My lady?”
The knife slipped. She caught it by the blade and nicked her thumb. Gasping, she stared at the blood oozing from her hand. Pounding sounded in her head, and she clenched her eyes and fists.
Okay, I bleed.
Emory reached her in two strides and grabbed her hand. “By all the saints!”
Cherub barked short, rapid woofs.
Petra tried to wrench away, but he took her elbow and drew her against his solid chest. He held her tight, trying to get at her thumb.
“It’s no big deal,” she said, her voice strangled, “just a prick.”
Emory had her pinned to him with an arm around her waist; he held her wrist with the other. “No. Big. Deal?” he mimicked. “What can that mean? No big deal?”
“I know you think I’m an idiot.” Her voice shook. She tucked her bleeding thumb into curled fingers and held her hand against her chest.
“As your bleeding hand would testify,” he said into her hair.
She cradled her hand. “It’s just my thumb and it made sense at the time. It was supposed to be a prick.” Petra watched blood trickle through her fingers.
“Let me see,” he said, his voice hard.
Petra shook her head, and he sighed. “Why do you distrust me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about your friend poisoned me, you rifled through my things while I slept off her drugs, and then you brought me here to where we’re isolated…” her voice rose and she felt dizzy.
“So you were trying to speed your death?”
“Of course not. Like I said, it was only to be a prick, but you slammed the door and the knife slipped.”
“Why would you do such a thing?”
He already thought her crazy so she blurted, “I wanted to see if I’d bleed.”
Emory turned her to face him, his hands on her shoulders. “Why would you think you wouldn’t bleed?”
“If I were dead or sleeping, I wouldn’t bleed.” Her voice sounded small.
Emory clucked his tongue, sat her in a chair, and gently took her hand. “You are not dead, nor are you sleeping.” He knelt before her, pressing the wound in her hand with the tail of his shirt. “Did you think I was a part of your dream?” He searched her face.
She nodded.
His lips twitched. “I am a nightmare?”
“Of course not.” But she flushed.
“For the moment, you are very much awake and alive,” he said with conviction. “Why would you think otherwise?”
“I can’t think of any logical reason for my being here.”
He reached out and cradled her head in his hand. “Perhaps you’ve had a bump on your head and have lost your way.”
“Temporary amnesia?”
He looked confused.
“A case of forgetfulness.” She liked the idea, even if she knew it wasn’t true, it made much more sense than what had really happened.
With both of his hands clutching her wounded hand, he held her gaze. His eyes looked pained. “Tell me all you remember.”
She took a deep breath and watched his face for signs of disbelief. “I was at a fair, a marketplace, and I went to see a fortuneteller. There was an earthquake, and when I left the tent, everything was different.”
“Everything?” He stood, still holding her hand.
She thought back, cataloging all she’d seen: the cemetery, the blacksmith’s forge, the tapestries. She shivered, remembering the cockfight.
“Unhappy memories?” he asked.
She shrugged, debating on how much to tell him. “I’m ruining your shirt.”
He frowned at her effort to change the subject. “Was nothing the same?” he asked over his shoulder as he left the room.
“There was something, someone,” she said when he returned moments later with a bucket and with a strip of white cloth.
He knelt beside her, took her hand in his, dipped a corner of the cloth in the water and began to clean the blood. “Who was that?” he asked gently.
“Kyle.”
“Ah. Little Lord Falstaff,” his voice hardened. “The Earl’s son.”
She wanted to see Kyle, but what would she say to him? Hi, I’m a girl from the twenty-first century and I know someone from Orange County, California who looks just like you. She grimaced. No, that didn’t sound crazy.
“I think I know him.”
Emory tore the cloth in two and dropped the bloody strip into the bucket. “I think that it is possible you do not know him at all.”
Did she hear jealousy? “Then I shall get to know him.”
He frowned while winding the dry cloth around her thumb. “If this is a ploy to engage the Earl’s son, I promise, it won’t be successful.”
Petra straightened her spine. “I don’t ploy.”
“I must tell you, his father has plans for him that does not include a miss without memories.” Emory pulled the cloth so tight it hurt.
Petra bit her lip to keep from crying out. “It doesn’t matter. He’s the one person I recognize.”
“Only him?”
Petra stopped, mouth open, as she remembered Horse Guy’s
wink. But he hadn’t remembered her at all. Besides, she’d known Kyle since kindergarten.
He’d brought her flowers when her mom died and had drawn a heart on her valentine in sixth grade. Emory had done little more than winked. “I have to speak with Kyle.”
Emory stood. “Then you had better learn to call him my lord.” He tucked in the edge of the bandage, making it a little too tight. “There’s a gypsy camp a few miles outside of town. There’s sure to be a chovihanis. Do you remember visiting a gypsy camp?”
She shook her head.
Emory’s lips tightened. “If you did, it would make sense your sister is there still.” He stood, picked up her tiara and held out a hand. “Shall we go look for her?”
Chapter Seven
The Chained Oak is a gargantuan tree whose branches are held together with yards of thick metal chain. Who did this and why? There are lots of local legends. Most likely the 16th Earl, responsible for planting thousands of trees on his estate, greatly prized the old oaks, whose massive boughs, so large and heavy, often broke because of their own weight. The Chained Oak’s branches extended over a busy road. It’s possible the Earl ordered the chains to save not only the tree but also anyone who happened along the road. The dark spot on the road beneath the tree is a shadow NOT century old soaked blood.
—Petra’s notes
The trail twisted through the forest and craggy outcroppings. Petra, worried about getting lost in the fog, stayed close to Emory. When they emerged from the woods, the mist dissipated and in the meadow stood an oak tree bound with chains. A wind whistled and the chains clinked together without rhythm.
Emory noticed her staring. “Are you not familiar with the legend of the chained oak?”
Petra shook her head, studying the massive tree. The trunk looked as wide as a car, some branches considerably thicker than her waist. Corroded chains had carved grooves into the bark. Streaks ran down the tree like rust colored tears.
“Be very quiet as we pass,” Emory said, taking her arm. “We would not want to be responsible for a falling branch.”
“Are the chains to hold up the branches?”
Emory nodded. “Legend has it that many years ago on an autumn night while the Earl traveled this road he was approached by an old crone begging for food. When the Earl passed her by, the witch cursed him.”