Heart Journey

by Robin Owens

  But nicer to share this with her.

  He held a couple of branches away with his arm. “Up here, Del. Trust me to ’port you?” That took a lot of energy, and he could only do if she was nearby.

  “Of course,” she said.

  As she landed, the platform rocked and she hung on to him. He liked her clutching his arms. He bent down and kissed her. Carefully, she wrapped her arms around his neck, opened her mouth. His brain buzzed with passion, need, as if they hadn’t made love a few minutes ago. Then she ended the kiss, slid her hand down to link fingers, looked around. “Wonderful place.”

  “My playhouse.”

  Her mouth twitched. “I would have liked this better.”

  “It isn’t pink.”

  She laughed. “No.” She lifted her face as if studying the sunlight filtering through the leaves, the arch of the branches around them, drew in a slow, deep breath as if tasting the place. “Wonderful,” she repeated, squeezing his hand. She took a step away, squeaked a little as the floor swayed beneath her. “Oh. Even better.”

  “I’m glad you like it. The thieves didn’t find it, or they didn’t care.”

  “Is there something here?”

  “Yes, a boy’s treasure box.”

  With one smooth move she sat. “May I see?”

  “I have a gift for you.”

  Her dimples showed. “Thank you.”

  He reached for the box. It was no longer above his head. He’d made it of the hardest wood on Celta and it had weathered the years well. About the size of both his hands, it was black with age and the lid had warped so that there was no opening it with the pry of fingers. He sank to the wooden platform with a sigh.

  Del’s eyes were large and round. She had an anticipatory smile on her face and hope that looked nearly painful shone from her eyes. As he gathered Flair for a delicate spell, he asked, “When was the last time someone gave you a gift?”

  Her smile froze, her eyes shuttered. “You’ve given me flowers.”

  “Not enough,” he said, “and not often enough.” He set the box aside, took her hands. They sat cross-legged, knee to knee. “When was the last time, dearling?”

  She glanced at the box, back into his eyes, let out a quiet breath. “I don’t recall.”

  A yip came in the distance, floating from one of the open windows of the house.

  “Shunuk gives me occasional ‘gifts.’ ” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m appreciative but have never liked mouse feet or heads.”

  Raz choked. He’d decided right then that everything in the box was hers, and he needed to give her something more. He knew just what.

  Dropping one of her hands, he slid the box over to her. “Yours,” he said.

  She stared.

  He finessed the box open with a short spell; it creaked but didn’t break. The lid lifted slowly, then fell aside showing a cheap red faux silkeen lining.

  He glanced in, then away, shrugged. “A boy’s treasures.”

  “Raz, these mean a lot to you . . .”

  Not so much that he’d thought often of them over the years. But he’d known they were safe and he’d retrieve them someday. More focused on the future than the past.

  “Please,” he said gruffly. He caught the gleam of amber and reached in and pulled out the bracelet. The jewelry wasn’t as beautiful as he recalled and he winced. Surely she could pick up amber stones like these on her travels, the workmanship was amateurish . . . but then his boyhood friend had been an amateur.

  The golden drops were roughly tumbled to polish, hung on a gold-toned chain.

  “Oh.” Del blinked and Raz knew to the bottom of his soul that she was awed and grateful for the small gifts. Saw through their link that her last present had been from Straif T’Blackthorn, years before. One small carving. Her last expensive gift had been from her parents before she’d become an adult.

  He took her wrist and draped the bracelet around it, latched it shut. “A friend of mine gave me this when I gave him a model I made—our creative Flair. Not exactly T’Ash’s work.”

  “And you two were how old?”

  “Ten.”

  In a feminine gesture Raz had never seen before, Del moved her wrist to a patch of sunlight and twisted it to see the stones shimmer. The lady had a weakness for jewelry. He’d remember that. He hadn’t seen her wear much.

  “Where is your friend now?” she asked.

  An old ache stabbed, but Raz replied calmly. “He died in the last epidemic that came through. That winter. I wasn’t here.”

  Del nodded. “Celta can be harsh.”

  “But it’s better than living in generational starships,” Raz said. “I remember that from the old stories.”

  “Better than Earth, too, I’m sure,” Del said as she began lifting things from the box. Pretty pebbles he’d picked up in the stream running through the estate, a couple of gaudy feathers . . . three rolled and beribboned papyrus that Raz had totally forgotten.

  He flushed as she began to open one papyrus and read it.

  She chuckled. “I should have known. Are all of them awards for recitation at the local fair?”

  “Yes,” he muttered.

  “First place.”

  He straightened. “I won three years in a row. Then the rules were changed so only folk who lived here all year ’round could enter.”

  “Ah.” But she caught his slow smile and said, “Since you couldn’t compete here, you did so in Druida?”

  “That’s right.”

  She carefully rerolled the papyrus and put all the other small treasures of his childhood away in the box, ran her finger around the rim. “I think your mother would like the papyrus, and you should keep the pebbles and feathers and box, but thank you for the bracelet.”

  He wanted her to have it all, knew she valued the moment, knew she was being generous and not rejecting him, but he wanted her to have it all.

  She leaned forward and kissed him, her soft lips lingering on his, and the sweet warmth of tenderness moved through him. He touched her nape, curved his hand around it, and opened his mouth to slide his tongue against hers. One perfect moment.

  INCOMING scry! Rosemary and Shunuk sent mentally.

  Twenty-eight

  Water in the scrybowl is red, Shunuk said. Don’t know the woman.

  Then Raz heard the tinkle of the house scry. He drew back, looked into Del’s soft gaze. Her eyes were shiny. He brushed her cheek with his thumb. “My mother, probably.”

  SCRY! Rosemary shouted.

  We are coming, Raz said. He tucked the box under his arm and rose, pulled Del up, and stepped into her, wrapping her close. “On three I will ’port us.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “One, my sweet Del, two, Lucky Raz, three!” She gave him power—or rather, he used his Flair and some of hers to teleport them to the pad near the bedroom where they’d slept, the only room that had a working scrybowl. The small bowl had rolled under a cabinet and not been drained of Flair, though he’d had to reset the spell. “Mom must be trying the house scry.”

  “Lucky that the bowl was spared.”

  “Yes.” He kept his arm around her waist as they walked back into the room.

  Raz’s mother briskly planned the house restoration and buying new furniture. She’d commandeered Del and sent her off to deal with various people the rest of the day. From the gleam in the older woman’s eyes when she’d given her orders to Del, Raz’s Family was completely aware of who his HeartMate was. She hadn’t taken this many orders since she’d been training with the old cartographer. Though she grumbled, and interacting with so many folk was tedious, she still felt pleasure at all she’d accomplished when she’d reported to D’Cherry, and flushed with pride when she was complimented for her good work.

  Since Del had been taught all the cleansing spells a person would need for a house or a Residence, and learned the same for a camp-site, she took the lead in the housekeeping department. They were an odd and small circle—Shunuk sitting on
her feet, Rosemary on Raz’s shoulder, and Raz and she holding each other’s hands. But Flair and love connected them and their power was large enough to clean the whole house to sparkling without depleting their energy. That had garnered more compliments from D’Cherry.

  Late that afternoon, with a half-smile on his face, Raz led Del out to the glider and handed her in, then drove to a large space of packed earth out of town, exited his side of the glider, and came around to open her door and haul her out. “Now I will teach you how to drive, not just put a glider on autonav. Anyone who has a glider should know how to drive it,” he said with a mock frown.

  “I only have the Family glider and it’s antique, may not even work anymore.” She got out of the small vehicle and looked at it—a glider fun to drive.

  She still preferred animals. Stridebeasts, the rare horses. Anything live, though as she scrutinized the glider and remembered Raz’s, which he’d actually named, she wondered if the things could ever come alive. Be malevolent.

  She hoped not.

  With a flourish, he seated her in the driver’s side. He tapped the molding, which she understood to be a bespelled soft metal covered with thin furrabeast leather. Sometimes cloth was used, she thought. Hadn’t her parents put white silkeen in the Family glider as well as the house?

  “This is the console.”

  She looked at the studs and dials as he named them, repeated them back when he asked. Accompanied by Rosemary’s loud mental recital. SPEED DIAL, FLAIR METER, NAV INDICATOR TURN LEFT, NAV INDICATOR TURN RIGHT, WEB SAFETY SHIELD, WEATHERSHIELD, GLIDER HEIGHT FROM GROUND INDICATOR “HFG,” LANDING STANDS.

  Rosemary was lying perpendicularly on the console, her head hanging over to look at the controls.

  Raz rubbed his temples. “You know the commands: Go, Stop, Pull Over. You can also initiate all the spellshields verbally as well as manually.” With a grin he plucked Rosemary from her spot and placed her behind the front seats on her pillow. “Like ‘Privacy Screen.’ ”

  A transparent field shimmered between the back and front seats. From Rosemary’s open mouth, Del thought she was yowling, but Del couldn’t hear anything.

  I want to be up THERE! Rosemary whined telepathically.

  Del could hear that easily enough.

  Del doesn’t need your distraction right now, Rosemary. You can see fine from there, and I think you will be too delicate to drive a glider. You should let me drive you or, maybe later in my career, a driver.

  Del winced. “Maybe you shouldn’t have offered that.” She studied Raz. Like his father, she didn’t think he’d ever give up driving.

  Raz shrugged and tapped a blank space on the console and a rounded rectangle appeared. “Navmap,” he said.

  Of course Del knew that screen; it’d been in gliders forever, but she hadn’t ever studied it. Now she leaned over.

  “There are magnifications. Zoom in and out,” Raz said.

  Del frowned. “I don’t think this map is accurate.” She didn’t like the color indicators, either, dirt brown for the packed earth gliderways. “It should have more land contours. Everything’s flat.”

  Raz raised his brows. “I’m not sure most people would appreciate contours, and that might need more Flair in the spell than most want to spend.”

  “Huh.” Del frowned, then shook her head. “If Elfwort were alive, it would be a challenge for him. We could have worked on it together.” She swallowed.

  “The nav will recognize various features: cities, intersections, parks, addresses. The more often you go to a particular place, the more it will recognize that as important to you, it will do the same with routes. You can decide to use different routes to the same place. Not that we have a great deal of glider traffic; most of the vehicles on the streets are of transport services, noble Family gliders, and PublicCarriers.”

  “And people and beasts.”

  “Those, too, but more and more people are becoming Flaired enough to translocate even large objects and teleport themselves.”

  Del figured that was good.

  “This is the steering bar.” Raz pulled it gently from its rest in the console. “It’s very sensitive and works by a combination of Flair and finger pressure in this type of model. Some Family gliders are fully automatic.” His tone held disapproval, but Del could appreciate that quality. He set her fingers on it and she could feel oval spots of warmth beneath them. He showed her how to turn left and right, go faster, slower, stop, back up, all without opening her mouth.

  She had left the packed area—the fairgrounds—and was driving down a shady lane with overarching leaves when she found a little spot at the end of the rounded steering rod. “What’s this?” She tapped it and Rosemary bulleted from the back through the now-gone privacy screen.

  Raz shouted; his hand caught the kitten before she hit the inside of the window, but she escaped his fingers to tumble downward. “It’s the manual engage-release of the privacy screen, which Rosemary had continued to fling herself against.” He grabbed at the kitten and missed.

  “Stop!” Del yelled.

  The glider slowed, moving toward the side of the road.

  Rosemary fell under the console.

  The glider screeched. Halted. Stands came down and they rocked violently back and forth, then the stands gave way and the glider sank with a bump onto the ground.

  Del drew gasping breaths through her mouth. Adrenaline pumped through her, but she was caught in the web safety shield and could only tremble. Her hands tightened on the steering bar, but the warm spots were gone.

  “Webshield open!” Raz snapped, and ducked under the console to look at Rosemary.

  Scared, SCARED! BAD GLIDER, Rosemary whimpered as he lifted her to his lap, stroking her.

  Del’s webshield had vanished, too. She stared at the shivering kitten. “Oh, Rosemary.”

  “She’s not hurt,” Raz said, his fingertips poking and prodding the kitten. “She’s just frightened.”

  Del let out a whooshing breath, flung up the door, and adjusted her seat so she could stretch. She looked at the glider on the ground, its air pressure gone. “I don’t think I’ve ever been on the ground in a glider before.”

  “Emergency power-off,” Raz said. “Rosemary must have hit the switch when she was flying around the cabin.”

  He took Del’s hand and slid her fingers along the underside of the console. She could feel a small round peg sticking out.

  “Feel that?” Raz asked.

  “Yes.”

  “All right, pull down and toward us slowly. The Flair spell will reset and activate and the glider will rise to its usual meter above the ground.”

  She drew the switch as instructed and the vehicle vibrated around them.

  “A glider has forcefields around it determined by the nav screen. Usually a glider will not run into anything. If it happens to bump something unexpectedly, it’s mostly at very low speed and the landing stands will lower. This switch is for emergencies but is rarely used.” Raz scowled at Rosemary.

  She was sitting up on his lap, staring at the switch. I can’t SEE it.

  “It’s the same color as the console. You don’t need to see it. You don’t need to know it is there; most people forget that it is there.” He held her up to stare in her eyes. “If you’d had your webshield on, you would have been fine, even with a hard stop.” Then he cradled her next to his chest. “Hear my heartbeat? You scared me, Rosemary. Please don’t do that again.”

  Del leaned against Raz, gazed down at the kitten’s wide yellow eyes. “You scared me, too. Are you all right? Will we need to take you to D’Ash for an exam when we return to Druida?”

  NO!

  Del figured that would be the answer.

  I am a CLEVER Cat. I am fine.

  A snorting, hiccupping sound came and Del felt paws on her leg. Outside the vehicle, Shunuk chortled. Glider going smooth, then bump, then down! Very funny.

  “I’m glad you think so.”

  Glider is not like a str
idebeast.

  Del sighed. “No, it isn’t.” She was a much better rider than a driver and decided that would always be true.

  Raz had spent the rest of the afternoon arranging the viz and interacting with the theater manager, crew, and actors. When he returned to the house they rearranged the new furniture and ate a simple meal. Raz had stocked the no-times as soon as they were repowered. Rosemary grumbled about furrabeast bites instead of caviar and then vomited from the excitement of attending the theater.

  The play was wonderful, capturing Del’s attention from the moment the curtain raised and Captain Bountry walked out on stage. The holos behind him that showed infinite space made her shiver.

  Backstage was equally fascinating. Del liked Raz’s friend, Trillia, very much and praised her acting, though Del also sensed that the two had been lovers. When Trillia plucked Rosemary from Raz’s shoulder and beamed a smile at Del and said, “You don’t mind giving Raz and me and this wonderful kitten a septhour to catch up, do you?” Del could only smile back. “No, I don’t mind.” She kissed Raz’s cheek and strolled away.

  Shunuk? she called mentally.

  I am here in front of the theater. Only six theaters around this oval, not like Druida. He sniffed. Del’s insides tightened. She hoped her Fam wasn’t turning into a snobbish city fox. If worse came to worse, she couldn’t bear to lose both Raz and Shunuk.

  She went through the outer doors into the warm night with other stragglers and found the fox sitting under a spotlight, appearing a whole lot sleeker than when they’d ridden into Steep Springs. He looked like a city fox, well fed, groomed, bushy tail. He’d had the aspect of a trail fox and dangerous predator before.

  People were smiling approval at him and he waved his tail at them.

  His eyes narrowed. You are a little sad.

  All this time in cities is wearing on me. She rubbed her arms.

  I will not leave you. He hopped to his paws and licked her hand as she bent and stroked his head.

  His eyes slid slyly toward her as she straightened. But we may not be taking jobs a long way from the cities?