She started to get up and felt strong arms hold her. “You are all right, Sarah. You are going to be fine; you’re coming back into this realm now and leaving those memories.”
Sarah felt warm and safe. She turned her head and realized she was back in her human form. She also noticed that the simple movement of turning her head left her exhausted.
“It will get easier the more you shift from your dragon body into your human body.”
Sarah heard what Kusaila was saying but had a hard time concentrating. She started to fade into sleep and then realized she was lying in his lap and he was gently stroking her hair. The intimacy of the situation troubled her more so because she liked how it made her feel. Kusaila sensed the awkward tension, so he picked up her head and placed a pillow he had brought with him under it.
“There now, is that better? Your strength will come back in a few minutes. I won’t leave you until it does. And then we can have dinner. You will enjoy it and it won’t cost me near as much to feed a woman as a dragon!” He laughed a rich baritone laugh that began in his eyes, crossed his face, and roared from his mouth. Sarah smirked, then snorted and started to giggle in spite of herself.
She was so tense, so anxious, that when the laughter started, she couldn’t stop until it had rushed out and taken her worry with it. At first Kusaila was amused, but when it didn’t stop his brow creased and a frown replaced his smile. He bent down just in time for Sarah’s laughter to abruptly dry up and be replaced by a different torrent.
Her bout of uncontrollable giggling in front of someone she barely knew was shredded by a wave of tears that rained down from her eyes and into her hands. She didn’t know that a dragon person’s deep emotions could affect the weather, calling up dark rainclouds in a few short moments. Clouds gathered and the wind that accompanied them began to blow across the hill where they knelt. But Sarah was oblivious.
Her breathing was ragged to the point she gasped for air. Tears ran down her face like streaks of fire. Raw emotion burned its way out of the broken heart that had cradled it for so long. Her pain was an open wound. Kusaila had guided her back into the dark recesses of her memories. She had ripped the festering sore open and now her passions erupted past ramparts that could no longer hold them.
Now, he bent down and drew her close, holding her as she wept away her shame.
After long moments, Sarah’s tears subsided. Her weeping reduced to calming shudders. She looked up into Kusaila’s dark brown eyes and noticed the wrinkles around them, scars etched by time and experience. They held compassion that had been carved by suffering into courage and character.
Kusaila smiled. “Sarah, I realize you are very new at being a dragon and no one has instructed you in how not to call up a rainstorm.” Great drops of rain pelted them and now ran down his face and off the tip of his beard. In a deadpan voice he said, “Remind me never again to be flippant when talking to you about food. It seems to have a very adverse effect on you.”
She snorted and a plume of smoke curled out of her nose, embarrassing her. But this time Kusaila was ready. “Oh no you don’t!” He picked her up by her shoulders and stood her on her feet. “That is enough lessons for today. Come now, let’s go eat!”
****
Kusaila’s attendants gathered around as he and Sarah entered the camp. He gave orders that she should be given quarters close to his and told his servants to attend to her needs. The day passed quickly. Sarah’s cave vision had consumed the morning and her recovery had spilled into the afternoon, so the servants knew the late meal would be served soon and hastily escorted her to her new home. Sarah was still a little numb from her experiences and was moving slow. She was surprised to find the servants had a bowl of hot water and fresh clothes. Fluffy-looking pillows in a corner reminded her how tired she was. She finished cleaning up and was trying to figure out which side of her new robe went forward when she heard a familiar voice.
“Sarah? It’s Speaker. I see you are settling in well. And I know… I could have warned you that Kusaila is a vision caster and that you would probably have to face some difficult memories. But sometimes it may be better just to let things happen.”
Sarah was about to complain when the speaker interrupted again. “I do have a message from Harry.”
“What?” she yelped, jumping off the pillows and sitting up straight. “Great! I take back all the bad things I was thinking about you, Speaker…” And then she thought, Until the next time you withhold information.
“You know I heard that.”
“You know I don’t care. If you’re going to eavesdrop, you’re going to hear things you had rather not. Now, what is the message Harry sent me?”
“Well, I can recite it to you, or if you prefer I can just upload—that is the twenty-first-century term I think best fits this situation—and then you can close your eyes and read it like you would an email.”
“Close my eyes and read it like an email,” Sarah said without hesitation. “That way I can keep it and refer back to it when I get lonely.” And then another thought occurred to her and she asked, “I will be able to keep it, won’t I?”
“Yes, Sarah, you can keep it. And like you mentioned, you can refer to it anytime you wish.” And then to himself he thought, But from what I have recently observed, you may not be as lonely as you think you’re going to be.
“Great, then! Send it to me.”
Sarah closed her eyes.
Dearest Sarah,
When I think about how far apart we are, I want to curse. You are not just miles away, you are centuries away, in a time and land so distant I cannot imagine it. I think about you every day. I know that you are probably busy, and it has only been a few days, in my time. How about yours? Are your days the same as mine? I hope so. I would hate that once my youth has been restored, I would see it wasted, separated by fleeting months and years while you only endured a few days. But enough of that.
Sarah thought, Ah, Harry, I miss you so bad…
I have been involved in grueling training and made some interesting friends, a dog named Raleigh for one, that I can actually speak with. Now he is not...
Ha, considering how wordy you are, the poor beast doesn’t have a chance.
...to say the least, but I can understand him.
I also have a mysterious mentor who, although he claims not to be an angel, could probably pass for one very easily.
Whoa! That is amazing!
I have also engaged a terrible adversary. Her name is Belle Rodum and she is a wicked, scheming assassin. I had to fight her hand to hand and couldn’t help but hold back my blows. It seemed to anger her that I not only was able to stand up to her but had to constrain myself to keep from hurting her… but what do I care.
Heck yeah, should have smacked her good. Good thing I wasn’t there… makes me mad just thinking about it.
Anyway, her lithe frame didn’t seem to suffer from my attack. It seems that she is… and I know what you are going to think before I write this… but it seems she is a witch.
Humph! What does “lithe frame” mean, Harry? Seems like a pretty witch. Why is my radar going off about this… Awww no, not already…
With an assignment to ensure Hitler gets competent counsel and does not make the same mistakes he did in our timeline that lost the Germans the war. The more I think about it, I cannot see how I could have ever created a child with her.
Only you would have ever said it like that… I can imagine it pretty easy.
It grieves me to even consider that, Sarah!
I know, beloved, I know… oh, Harry!
She is a dark beauty that only deserves my attention as an adversary. I can’t wait to see you again and will write as soon as I can. You are in my heart and in my dreams. Always in my dreams. Who knows, maybe I can see you there; we have done it before.
Now that’s an idea. I wonder if I could talk to Speaker about that. Hmmm, or better yet, Kusaila?
Harry.
Sarah read the lett
er through twice. Both times she stumbled over three phrases: she is a witch, lithe frame, and dark beauty. Every word in the letter was precious to her. But those three phrases acted like thorns in a rose garden. It pricked her heart to think about them. She knew Harry was as faithful a man as God ever made, but an uninvited idea crept in. All God’s creatures were flawed and Lizzy was Harry’s biological child by a witch.
A rustle at her tent entrance drew her back from her worries.
“Mistress Sarah? Mistress Sarah? Lord Kusaila requests your presence at dinner,” a servant reminded her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lizzy paused to look around the room and was surprised to see that no one complained. The children were in a very solemn place. No one knew what to expect. Tears ran freely when she’d told how Sarah wept out the sadness of her past. The children had laughed when she told them Kusaila teased Sarah about how much a dragon ate. The girls had leaned into one another, cupped their hands around their mouths, and whispered when Lizzy told of how Kusaila had held Sarah while she cried. One little girl had vehemently shaken her head in disapproval while others nodded appreciatively. When Lizzy finally stopped, nobody complained. It was so unusual she asked, “Okay, guys, what’s the problem? You always gripe when I stop the story. Why so quiet now?”
Silence blanketed the room. Frowns and furrowed brows reflected the children’s awareness of their mood, but nobody seemed to have an answer. Then it came from a most unexpected source.
Ryan, the cowboy in the making, stood up and spoke. “Well, now, Miss Lizzy… I’ve been pondering that question and to be truthful, I don’t think any of us rightly know. We’re all kinda puzzled. Seems to me that Sarah don’t know her own mind. And Mr. Hank, I mean Harry now, he is pretty troubled. And even though we all are a bit mature for our age, because we’ve been marked by that old raggedy a…”
“Uh-uh!” Grace interrupted. “Ryan, you know what your mama said about you using that word about anybody. She said if she ever caught you saying the A word about anything that didn’t bray and have four hooves, she was going to rinse your head in Listerine and Ivory soap. And she said ‘head’ instead of ‘mouth’ cause she knew the mouth only speaks what the mind tells it to!”
Ryan balled his fists and narrowed his eyes. In as cold a tone as a first grader marked by an evil dragon could muster, he said, “Gracie Hackney, you need to keep your little mouth shut. There ain’t nothing bad about that word. It is a Bible word. Anyway, I heard the preacher use it last Sunday; he said it wasn’t the ox in the ditch that kept people from coming to church, it was the ass in the bed! So there.”
“All right already. Gracie, quit tattling; Ryan, even Bible words can be inappropriate when you use them with bad intent, but I do understand what you were trying to say. I think… So finish it, why are you guys so quiet?”
“We’re still trying to figure it out, Miss Lizzy. We don’t know what to think. If this was just a fairy tale, we’d all have an opinion, but it’s not. It’s a story about our friend. We all know Sarah. We know your daddy. And to see them struggle and not know their own mind, well, it confuses ours too. It’s not boring by a stretch, but it is a mite perplexen’.”
The chorus of yeps and nods echoed Ryan’s eloquent soliloquy.
“Okay, I get it. And you’re absolutely right. I don’t know what to think either, but it’s a good place to stop. I guess we are going to stop. If any of you have any dreams that you think might be about the story or what’s going on now—whatever now that is—you need to let me know, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Will do.”
“Sure enough.”
****
That night Lizzy could barely hold her chin up. She loved the kids but sometimes they drained her. Add to that all her questions and the fears for her dad and Sarah. She laughed as she thought what her little cowboy would say about it; he would say, “Too much butt for the saddle.” She had heard the little bumpkin use that phrase before, and truth was, it sure seemed to fit now. She tossed her clothes in the hamper or as close to it as she could throw and fell into her bed. She was too tired to even pull the covers down. How did I get so tired? was her last conscious thought before she slipped into a dream.
She was standing outside Kenneth Linscomb’s barn, moving a five-gallon bucket full of 34-0-0 nitrogen fertilizer. She had gotten some on her sweaty hands and the chemicals were burning her. Her clothes smelled like the diesel fuel she had mixed with the fertilizer. Lizzy kept shaking her head, hoping she would wake up… this was a horrible dream! She couldn’t break free, her arms were lead. She could barely move her head, she was so tired. It hadn’t rained in several days and the wood in the barn was tinder-dry and had been for years. A spark in the right place, and the fertilizer bomb she had built would blow the side of the barn in.
Lizzy felt like a spectator in her own body… She saw four other five-gallon buckets all filled with the same volatile mix shoved together on the outside wall of the barn. When had she placed those? Had she even been the one to build them and set them? She watched, terrified, as her hand rose. It held a Coke bottle with shredded washcloths stuffed in it. The bottle was full of gas. She lit the cloth and threw it against the five-gallon buckets. The blast picked her up and threw her backward through the air.
****
Lizzy woke soaked in sweat and screaming, her bed drenched from perspiration. Her heart pounded against her chest. The overhead fan was on its fastest setting but seemed only to move warm air around her, ensuring that she baked evenly. Thirst moved her to get up and get a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. Moving one leg, then the other, she pushed her weary body out of the bed and into the kitchen. The refrigerator light irritated her tired eyes as she opened the door and grabbed a bottle. Untwisting the cap, she downed half, letting the ice-cold liquid replenish her. She burped and was placing the bottle back in the fridge when a husky female voice said, “Well, that wasn’t ladylike.”
Lizzy screamed, jumped back, looked around, and saw a woman seated at the dining room table. Her breath caught in her throat. The kitchen was dark, lit only by the refrigerator, which did not allow Lizzy to see much about the woman who sat in the gloom of her dining room.
The woman just sat watching. She had pushed back from the table, crossed her legs, and folded her hands primly in her lap. Lizzy croaked, “Who are you? What are you doing in my dining room? What do you want?”
“It might be a little easier to answer your questions if you joined me.” The woman motioned to an empty chair.
The strange woman’s speech alarmed Lizzy. She couldn’t quite place the flow of words to a dialect or region. “I am fine where I am, thank you. Now, you have one minute to get up and leave my house or I will dial 9-1-1. It’s on speed dial.”
The woman nodded, pushed the chair back, and slowly stood. “You’ve been having strange dreams and you’re discovering powers that are starting to manifest. I can leave and you will be left to… how does your dad say it? Pencil things out for yourself, I believe was the expression he used. It’s up to you.”
Lizzy bit off a nervous laugh. “Sure it is, and just how do you happen to know about my dreams and the strange things that have been happening to me?” And then her temper started to outweigh her fear and she barked, “And above all… how do you know my dad?!”
“If you want answers, you need to come with me.” The woman stood, the light from the still-open refrigerator door barely illuminating her frame. “Your house is being watched. Change quickly. My car is parked down the street. We need to move now.”
Lizzy glared at the woman, who slowly walked out of the gloom and into better light.
Lizzy’s first impression was a tall, older woman—trim build, five foot nine maybe, with copper-colored hair and inching grey streaks pulled back in a short ponytail. She wore gunmetal glasses and dark clothes. She had an oval face, her nose tipped at the perfect angle, and her eyes were feral golden. On the left side of he
r face, running from her ear to her chin, was an old scar; it didn’t detract from her beauty. The impression the strange woman gave was dark velvet, hard but not cruel, strength feathered with femininity and framed in a distinctly foreign accent. If a panther could talk this is what it would sound like.
Lizzy heard with her natural senses but unconsciously with her newly manifested ones as well. At that level the strange woman resonated a harmonic that others would have called a purr or a desert wind whispering in the late night. Lizzy didn’t realize it, but the harmonic was an ancient strain whose frequency was intended to weaken resistance. The fact that Lizzy could sense it also meant she was immune to it.
The hybrid nature of both her father and her mother insisted she go with the woman. Hesitation was so rapidly squelched it never gained an audience. Lizzy dressed and shut off the porch light as she stepped out into the darkness to follow the stranger. They walked quickly and quietly down the street. It had been raining and the streets were still wet. Lizzy felt the dampness as an unusual fog wrapped its delicate tentacles around her. Another of her new skills manifested and she realized she could see a silver SUV parked along the curb underneath an ancient oak that seemed to shield the vehicle in its dark shadow.
As they drew close, the side door of the vehicle opened and a large man stepped out. His head was shaved. Though the dark covered most of his features, Lizzy could sense the cruelty radiating off him. Her intuition began to scream but it was too late. The huge man reached for her, grabbing her arm in a fierce grip. An ear-piercing shriek shattered the night. His grip loosened and she fell forward, slamming her knees on the sidewalk. She covered her ears.
Before Lizzy could catch her breath, she heard through bruised ears the terrible ripping of flesh. The large man screamed as a huge bird ripped into his shoulder, tearing it from his body. A bloody spray speckled her with a sick witness as she cowered on the wet street. With catlike speed, the strange woman abandoned her associate and Lizzy. She slammed the vehicle into gear and, with the side door still open, raced down the street.
The Harry Ferguson Chronicles Box Set Page 38