Beyond the Fortuneteller's Tent

by Kristy Tate

“Fine. I promise that if anything happens to you I have to do triple dog dare.”

  Zoe beamed. “Then you have to stay. You can’t hear me scream from home.”

  Petra leaned against the seat. At least looking at the canyon was different from looking at wallpaper. “I’ll stay within screaming distance.”

  “Here?”

  Petra shook her head and pointed to the trail on the other side of Bear Ranch’s gates. A small bench sat beside a water fountain. It looked peaceful and germ-free. Petra picked up her journal and a pen. “I’ll be over there.”

  Zoe looked like she wanted to argue, but suddenly her expression lightened, as if a light went off in her head. “’kay, bye.” Zoe slammed out the door and bounced away.

  Petra climbed from the car. From the other side of the stable wall she heard Zoe greeting friends, human and animal. Clutching her notebook to her side, Petra put her pen in her pocket and hobbled the short distance to the gate.

  Fitz the guard, who looked suspiciously like Fritz from 1610, waved and buzzed open the gate. Smiling, she remembered the time Kyle had tried to break through the gates. He’d been captured on camera climbing the fence and had to spend an hour waiting in the guard house for her to finish her swim meet and rescue him.

  Petra took the sidewalk to the trailhead and then sat down on the bench. Flipping open her notebook, she wrote down the Fritz/Fitz similarity. She looked over her weeks of writing. Emory, Rohan, Anne, Robyn, and Kyle. In her head, it was beginning to make some sense, but that didn’t make her happy.

  Next on her agenda was to do genealogical research on Garret, Earl of Dorrington and Kyle to see if they correlated at all. A long shot, she knew, but she was curious. As a wedding present, a friend of Laurel’s had done family history search on Petra’s father to see if Laurel’s family lines had ever “entwined,” her word. Petra had thought it a lame word and an even lamer gift, but now, she wanted to know.

  A scream tore the air. Petra bolted up from her bench, heart thumping. Open-mouthed, she watched Emory and Zoe on a giant stallion sail through the air and clear the gate. Horse Guy, the rational part of her brain told her, but her heart was telling her another story, an irrational, emotionally charged story of another time and place.

  The stallion and his riders landed on the grass with a rumble of hooves. Zoe laughed while Fitz catapulted from the guard gate, waving his arms and yelling threats laced with obscenities at Emory and Zoe.

  Horse Guy swung to the ground and slapped the horse’s flanks. The animal took off, carrying Zoe away. Petra stared as Emory/Horse Guy walked toward her.

  Logic caught up with her. “Zoe! No!” Petra called after her sister, limping after the horse thundering down the trail. “No! You can’t!” She hobbled for a few yards and then stood, horrified, as Zoe and the horse disappeared around a corner. “Fitz, stop her!”

  The guard gave Emory a scowl, then took off after Zoe, running, his walkie-talkie pressed against his lips.

  Arms from behind wrapped around Petra’s waist; lips touched her neck and the familiar zing tingled up her spine. She stiffened in the embrace. Turning, ready to attack, she stopped when he caught her chin. Tipping her head back, he softly lowered his lips to hers and gave her a gentle kiss. All Petra’s fight drained away. Once upon a time, happily ever after, happily until death. Her head and emotions sang with questions.

  “I’ve been waiting two hundred years to do that,” he said.

  Two hundred years. No, four hundred. She didn’t say it out loud, because it sounded crazy, but he read her expression.

  “Ah, I see you’ve forgotten Sleepy Hollow.” He laughed softly, cradling her face in his hands. “Tis of no matter. This, perhaps, will remind you.”

  And he kissed her again.

  Excerpt: Beyond the Sleepy Hollow

  Petra Baron couldn’t sleep.

  The Santa Ana winds whistled through the canyon, spat dust and tossed the branches of trees. The wind seemed to be laughing at her. Not a hahaha aren’t we clever laughter, nor a teehee jokes on you giggle, but a cruel, moaning laughter that whistled through the stable, toyed at the window jambs and rattled the doors.

  Petra fluffed her pillow, and adjusted it so that she could see through the French doors without lifting her head. Out of the suburbs, away from streetlights, cars and the blue glare of neighboring TVs, the moon and stars carried more light. The late autumn moon, as big and as round as the pumpkins in the field, shone through the window and cast the room in a silver glow. Sleeping at the Jenson’s farm didn’t frighten her, even though she could see the golden eyes of the mountain lion pacing at the fringe of the property, looking for a hole in the fence and access to the animals safely tucked in the barn.

  Since her return from England, she’d been training at the rifle range. She could shoot (gun shooting lingo) pistols as well as rifles. Determined to never again feel at any one’s mercy, she’d also enrolled in a martial arts program at the gym. Not that she’d try to Ninja kick a mountain lion, but should a horse scream or a sheep bleat she planned on shouldering the shotgun and scaring away the big cat.

  But little cats were a different story.

  Petra shifted and tried to pull the quilt around her shoulders, but Magpie wouldn’t budge. Large, heavy, a glob of fur and drool, Magpie was a bed-hog. Magpie’s counterpart, Rudy, preferred to sleep under the slipper chair. As was the case with so many couples, Magpie was emotionally needy and Rudy was emotionally distant. Petra had tried locking the cats out of the bedroom. After all, they had a five thousand square foot hacienda at their disposal. Six unoccupied bedrooms, a den, a living room, a billiard room—they had free range. Petra only asked for one room. In fact, she’d have settle for one bed, but Magpie, as noisy as her name implied, refused to be shut out. And it didn’t really make sense to allow Magpie to share her space and not Rudy. Who, by the way, snored. A malady typical of Persians.

  Persians or mountain lions, which cat species did she prefer? Given a choice, she’d choose to be at home in her own bed, Frosty, her standard poodle asleep, sans snoring, at the foot of her bed. But the house-sitting gig at the Jensen’s paid well. She needed all the money she could lay her hands on if she wanted to attend Hudson River Academy, a small liberal arts college where Dr. Finch, the world’s leading professor of Elizabethan England. Her dad would pony up for a state university, but he wasn’t interested in paying for ‘liberal farts.’ Petra began to mentally recalculate her finances and because money bored her she fell asleep listening to the wind’s laughter and Rudy’s snore.

  ***

  The wind whispers the prayers

  Of all who live there

  And carries them to heaven.

  And the rain beats a time,

  For those caught in rhyme,

  For any who’ve lost life’s reason.

  Petra bolted up, and Magpie flew off the bed with a meow, her cry barely audible above the music. Pushing hair out of her eyes, Petra tried to wake from the deafening dream. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and felt the cold tile floor beneath her feet. Music still played. Electric guitars. A keyboard. Drums. Seventies sound.

  She oriented herself. Who’s here? The Jensons? No, they had just posted pictures of the Vatican online less than two hours ago. Garret? He attended UCSB. A three hour drive. It must be Garret, she thought.

  She looked out the window for a car in the driveway. No car. He would have put it in the garage. He’d have the remote. The wind had quieted, and the trees had stopped dancing. Steam from the horse’s warm breath rose from the stable. On the side of the hill, on the far side of the fence, gold eyes watched her window. The mountain lion, threatening, but incapable of manning sound systems.

  She took a deep calming breath. It had to be Garret. She waited for the music to die.

  If there are stories in your stream,

  Don’t let them stop you mid- dream,

  They’re just pebbles for the tossing.

  They’re just mountai
ns for the climbing.

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Wild hair, smeared mascara, long arms and legs poking out of her Domo-Kun pajamas. She considered slipping into her clothes, but she didn’t want to fumble in the dark, making noise, and maybe alerting the intruder. If there was an intruder. No, it had to be Garret, returning home, unexpectedly for the weekend. Why would anyone else break into a house and turn on a stereo? Who would do that?

  Petra shuffled to the door, and plucked the shotgun off the wall. She slipped a cartridge in the barrel and cocked the gun, just in case it was a Seventies-sounds-loving-lunatic and not Garret.

  Rudy squalled when she stepped on him. So much for not alerting the intruder, she thought as she righted herself and brought the rifle to ready position. Pushing through the door, Petra crept through the dark house until she found the source of the noise.

  Your head is singing with the whispering,

  So many voices, so many choices,

  Which roads to take.

  The stereo, an old fashioned tape player, six feet tall, flashing lights and thrumming bass, boomed in the billiards room. Petra stared at it and then shouted above the music, “Garret?” When no one answered, she called, “Who’s there?”

  Only the music replied. Magpie curled around her ankles. Her pajama topp slipped off her shoulder as she slowly circled the room, gun raised. Outside, beyond the fence, the mountain lion blinked at her.

  Petra turned on the light just as the music ended. The tape sputtered at the end and clicked. She walked to the elaborate sound system, a relic of some distant time, and stared at it. Tiny flashing lights, a series of buttons and switches, it looked as complicated as an airplane cockpit. She didn’t even know how it worked. Maybe she’d walked in her sleep, but turning on the stereo?

  The tape clicked out its questions, spinning round and round. Click. Click. Click. She found a switch, flipped it, and the system died. In the sudden quiet, she heard her heart’s rapid beats and her accelerated breath.

  “Not exactly a lullaby,” she said to Magpie, her voice nearly as loud as her thrumming blood.

  “Garret?” she called out again. Maybe he was in the shower, or in the garage, or asleep.

  She shouldered the gun again. Every bathroom and bed empty. The garage dark, and the cars vacant. She checked the windows and doors of each room. Securely locked. All of them. She flung open closet doors, and used her shotgun to poke through the wardrobes. The alarm system in the front hall blinked its tiny red light. No one had broken in, at least, no one who didn’t know their way around the security system.

  Petra sat down on the sofa in the living room and laid the gun across her lap. Magpie jumped up beside her, while Rudy watched from underneath the grand piano. She absently stroked the cat and felt a smidge less panicked. What should she do? Her cell didn’t get reception in the canyon, so she padded to the phone in the office and picked up the line.

  Nothing. She looked at the receiver. The wind could have knocked down the line. Maybe she’d walked in her sleep and turned on the stereo. Since her return from Elizabethan England five months ago, she’d realized that life doesn’t always make sense. Sometimes random, inexplicable, even crazy things happened. And crazy things don’t have to make sense. Maybe the craziness makes sense to someone else, because everyone has a skewed sense of reason, and as mortals, mere humans, we can’t know everything. Sometimes, really truly, only heaven knows. Or hell.

  The obvious answer would be to go home, crawl into her own bed, listen to her father’s snores rumbling the house. His snores were so much more reassuring than Rudy’s. But, looking out the window, she could see the mountain lion pacing. She couldn’t leave the animals. Shoot the mountain lion and then go home, a voice whispered in her head.

  Petra shivered and pulled the quilt lying on the back of the sofa around her shoulders. Sleep had eluded her earlier and now it was nothing more than a happy idea, as realistic or likely as chasing the mountain lion and making it her playmate. The grandfather clock in the hall boomed four times. Four a.m., California time, seven a.m. in New York. Maybe her Aunt Dee was awake and online. Petra plucked her laptop off the coffee table and turned it on. She’d much rather talk to Aunt Dee than try and shoot a mountain lion.

  She kept the gun on her lap and positioned the laptop on her knees. Her panic, so overwhelming just minutes ago, had nearly subsided by the time the computer powered on. Aunt Dee’s profile picture flashed on the screen. Seeing her aunt, her mom’s sister, always hurt a little, because the sisters with their siren red hair and clear blue eyes, looked so much alike, despite the fifteen year age difference. Petra realized with a jolt that Aunt Dee was the same age her mother had been when she’d died. The thought depressed Petra because Dee was so young, only thirty-two, beautiful and full of life.

  A screen popped up. “Hey, sweetie, why’re you up?”

  It took Petra a moment to rearrange her thoughts. She’d learned to keep her time traveling a secret from everyone but Emory, of course, because since her release from the hospital, she’d done her time with Dr. Harmon and she didn’t want to revisit crazy town.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she typed.

  “Poor Petra. Are you still coming to my opening?”

  Petra nodded, although she knew her aunt couldn’t see her. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “You’ll be working up a sweat.”

  Petra looked at the muscles in her arms she’d developed while playing Ninja. “How much sweat does it take to serve cheese and wine?”

  “You’ll be hanging paintings.”

  “That’s Vince’s job,” Petra said. When her aunt didn’t reply right away, Petra swallowed a small lump of fear for long suffering Vince. He’d been trying to wheedle Dee to the alter almost all of Petra’s life. When she was little, Petra had hoped to be her aunt’s flower girl. Now she wanted to be her aunt’s bridesmaid. She did not want to be a matron of honor when her aunt finally married long suffering Vince.

  “Wine and cheese?” The deep voice, silky and smooth, lilted, like a question or an offering.

  The laptop clattered to the floor as Petra scrambled for the gun and pointed it at the intruder. Black hair, blue eyes, red lips, other than an athletic build, he looked nothing like beach blond Garret.

  He sauntered to the counter and picked up a bottle of wine. “After all, this long last reunion deserves a celebration.”

  Petra jumped to her feet, stepping on first the laptop and then a cat. She cocked the gun and pointed at the guy’s chest. Always aim for the heart, her instructor had said.

  “Who are you?” she wanted to sound intimidating, but Petra’s voice came out barely louder than a whisper.

  “Sweetling, have you forgotten?” His eyes swept over her and goose-pimples rose on her bare arms and legs. Sweetling? So close to her aunt’s endearment, and yet, somehow he’d corrupted it by just adding the letter L. “I much prefer twenty-first century fashion to the maid get up you used to wear.”

  Petra looked down at her pajamas. Dumo had his teeth bared in an I-want-to-eat-you expression, but no one took him seriously. Petra felt a strange kinship with Dumo -- she had gun, her teeth bared, but this guy didn’t look threatened. At all. With his eyebrows lifted and a smile flirting on his lips, he looked amused. She tightened her grip on the gun as he stepped closer. He had her pinned between the sofa, the laptop and the coffee-table. She bit her lip and put her finger on the trigger.

  He laughed, watching. “You know that won’t work on me.”

  “Don’t come any closer,” Petra said, finding her voice.

  “We were close at one time,” he murmured. His black jeans matched the color of his hair; his shirt, blue but nearly black, matched his eyes. He wore boots -- could she outrun him outside, barefoot?

  He laughed louder and it sounded familiar. She recognized the laugh from another time and place. “You’ve forgotten.” He cocked his head at her and looked hurt. “How could you?”

  She opened
her mouth and wondered if they’d met in Sleepy Hollow. Her memory had been blocked, although Emory assured her she’d been there. He’d told her bits and pieces, but he’d also told her it was something he wished he could forget. She kept her gaze on her uninvited guest and a name came to her memory. Something that sounded like Cain… Dane.

  He leaned forward, his eyes focused on her lips. “We were lovers.”

  “No,” Petra breathed, inching around the sofa and coffee table, no longer caring about fallen cats or laptops. She would have remembered that. Her first time, that wouldn’t be so easily forgotten. “You’re lying,” she said, but she didn’t sound convincing, even to herself. She had known this person; something told her that she’d known him well. She shivered.

  He smiled and looked wicked. “You know angels can’t lie.”

  She choked and then spat out, “You’re not an angel.” This time her voice carried more certainty.

  “Who says?” Two wine goblets appeared on the counter and he filled them with golden liquid. “Champaign?”

  Petra stared at the goblets and managed to shake her head.

  He studied her. “No?” He sipped from his goblet. “Pity. It’s sad to drink alone and I’ve missed you, these past two hundred years.”

  “Once upon a time,” she said, quietly, remembering that the original translation of ‘once upon a time’ was two hundred years.

  “It was not unlike a fairy tale,” he told her, setting down his goblet. A heartbeat later, he stood beside her, placed his hand on her cheek, and the hacienda disappeared. They stood in a meadow of buttercups and dandelions. Puffy clouds filled the sky. Birds sang. He kissed her and the world went dark.

  A Note from the Author

  Thank you for reading Beyond the Fortuneteller’s Tent.

  If you enjoyed it, I would appreciate it if you'd help other readers enjoy it too.

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