by Joy Nash
Exhilaration lifted her. She stretched her arms skyward as though she could touch the colors of dawn.
Celia stood nearby, a half smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“I thought I’d never get out.”
“If you had thought that, you would still be in the cave.”
Gina considered that. “I guess you’re right.”
Celia spread her arms wide. “You have passed through the womb and have emerged a daughter of the Goddess. Ma hayta kolah. We greet the sun.”
Joy, sharp and clear, enveloped Gina. She may be lost in a strange world, but she was alive, and facing a new day. It was an incredible gift.
Celia returned her smile. “Come, volah.” My sister.
She pointed to a path half hidden in some scrub pines. “This way to the village is much easier than the path you traveled to get here.”
They returned to Celia’s hut, where Gina fell into a deep sleep on her pile of furs, oblivious to the people stirring around her.
Much later, the low murmur of voices woke her. The afternoon sun streamed through the open doorway where Celia and Derrin sat talking. She couldn’t make out their words, but Derrin sounded angry. She sat up, frowning.
Derrin turned toward her, meeting her gaze with a hard expression. Gina found herself wishing for the carefree, laughing man of the day before.
She pushed aside the furs and nodded at Celia’s greeting.
“You are ready for the journey to the Fire Clan,” the Na’lara said.
Derrin rose. “At the rising of the sun, then.”
He turned and strode away, leaving Gina to ponder his retreating form.
* * * * *
Derrin felt as though he’d stepped into a hidden snare and been hurtled him into a bittersweet past. For two clear days, he had joined his kin of the Rock Clan and lived the life that had once been his own.
He had hunted, the bow light in his hands. He had shouted the call of the chase with a voice that had long been silent. His arrows had flown true. He had given the gift of life to his kinspeople.
He had sung the prayer of thanksgiving in the light of the feast fires. Afterward, he had imagined a partner waiting for him, nestled amid the soft bodies of his children. For a moment he had forgotten he was an Outsider, a stranger without the name of a man.
But the dawn brought reality, a reluctant traveling companion, and the continuation of a fool’s quest. Celia, like Zahta, had refused to call the web with the Circle empty.
So he trudged the trail leading to the Fire Clan, speaking little. Gina, behind him, seemed lost in her own thoughts. What they were, Derrin hesitated to guess. He knew she doubted him, but when he caught a rare glimpse of her dark eyes, he thought they seemed softer, hesitant.
That evening, he set up camp near a wide stream and cut a fishing spear. He was kneeling on the bank, inspecting his catch, when Gina’s shadow fell over him.
“Derrin.”
He heard the catch in her voice and looked up.
She fiddled with the sleeve of her dress. “There’s something I want to tell you.”
Bemused, he put down his knife and waited. Gina avoided his gaze. He’d never seen her so uncertain, not even when she’d been most afraid. He extended his mind slightly, enough to know she was not afraid now. Or if she was, it was not in the same way she’d been before.
“I wanted to say…” She stopped, met his gaze, then forged ahead. “You’ve been trying to help me and I’ve treated you badly. I’m sorry. I’d like us to be friends.”
Derrin sat back on his heels and regarded her with open amazement. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say, but an apology would have been last on his list of possibilities.
Friends. Derrin would have laughed if the thought hadn’t been so painful. She wanted to be friends. He wanted to toss her on the ground and ride her until she broke in a wash of bliss. He wondered what she would say if she knew.
“What made you change your mind?” he asked at last.
Gina sat down on the ground and shot him a weak smile. “I had a dream last night. I can’t remember it exactly, but when I woke up, I had the strangest feeling. I knew I could trust you.”
Derrin raised his brows. She’d fought him for days, not wanting to believe the reality of her crossing, even in the face of the evidence before her eyes. Now she’d decided to trust him because of a dream? He threw his head back and laughed.
A deep flush spread across Gina’s cheeks. Derrin struggled to contain his mirth, but failed. This was what came from living on the edge of a sexual knife, unable to find release. He was going mad.
“I thought you wanted proof of my good intentions,” he managed finally. “Do dreams pass for proof in your world?”
Gina sent him a scathing look. “Of course not. But we’re not in my world, are we?”
He sobered. “No. But a dream, Gina? You’re not of the Baha’Na. There must another reason.”
She glanced away, hesitant again. “There is, but it seems even sillier than the dream.” She looked up, her expression solemn. “I’ve passed through the womb of the Goddess.”
“Ah.”
“Have you been through the labyrinth?”
“Of course. All the Baha’Na have.”
“Then you understand.”
“Yes.” Derrin brushed Gina’s mind and for the first time, he felt no fear, no anger. Only trust.
“Can we be friends?” she asked again.
Not trusting himself to answer, Derrin leaned forward and took both her hands in his own. Even that small touch made his cock go hard.
He stifled a groan. Friends. She had no idea what she was asking.
Chapter Eight
Music flowed in sweet, endless joy. Balek listened, caught on the edge of an emotion worthy of any sacrifice. When the melody dimmed, a cry of denial burst from his lips.
He pursued the song into the abyss beyond consciousness. He had no choice. He could not risk its loss.
“Race you to the stream!”
Gina took off down the slope, laughter bubbling in her throat. She darted through the brush to the water’s edge, tore off her boots and plunged into the blissful, cool water. Derrin splashed in behind her.
“I won,” she said, tossing him a smug smile.
His eyes glinted silver in the sun. “You had the advantage.”
She shrugged.
His answering grin sent a jolt of pleasure through her body. He’d discarded his shirt on the bank. She watched as he scooped water with both hands and tilted his head back to drink. The muscles in his throat rippled with each swallow. The next handful of water sluiced over his head.
The shining cascade bathed his bare torso, sending rivulets on a path over his navel and into the knotted waistline of his kilt. Gina’s gaze followed, despite her best effort to resist the temptation. She could tell he had the beginning of an impressive erection beneath his kilt. Sudden heat curled in her stomach.
Abruptly, she turned away and took a drink from the stream, wishing her attraction to Derrin could be quenched as easily as her thirst. Instead, her fascination with him had grown steadily. Since she’d given him her trust two days ago, he’d dropped his reserved façade. He smiled often, and teased her.
Gina couldn’t remember ever being teased. She’d always been the straight-A serious type—not the kind of girl who usually got teased. And since she was an only child, she hadn’t had any brothers to do the job. To her dismay, Derrin’s flirtation caused her stomach to clench with a distinctly sexual response. Without underwear, her thighs were wet half the time. Add that to the way his emotions brushed her mind when she least expected it, and the whole situation became just a little too intense for comfort.
She waded to the stream bank. Derrin had already stretched out on the grass. She lay down beside him, not too close, but not far, either.
They’d entered a mountain pass the day before. She blinked up at the great thrusts of stone towering overhead. Pe
ace descended. For the first time since coming to this strange world, contentment eclipsed her fears. The wilderness, once oppressive, was now a source of constant wonder. Even her body had adapted—her legs no longer protested every mile she put behind her.
After a time, she sat up and glanced at Derrin. He lay on his back with his eyes closed. Beyond him a strip of forest crowded between the cliff and the water. Lush, beautiful and—empty. She knew there must be creatures about, because Derrin often pointed out their tracks. Yet she hadn’t seen even one since they’d left the Rock Clan.
She leaned over and touched his shoulder. “Tell me something. Where are all the animals?”
He slanted her a glance through half-closed eyelids. “What do you mean? Didn’t you see the leesha vixen near our camp this morning?”
“No.”
“What about the mountain doe with twin fawns we passed?”
“You can’t be serious! I didn’t see anything.”
He shot her an incredulous look. “What have you seen?”
Gina frowned. “Trees, of course, with enormous roots. Rocks. Some wildflowers and moss…”
Derrin grinned.
“What’s so funny?”
He pushed himself up to a sitting position, resting one forearm across his bent knee. “The creatures of the forest won’t run across your feet, Gina. How do you expect to see them if you look at nothing but the trail?”
“If I don’t watch where I’m going, I’ll fall on my face.”
Derrin started to chuckle.
“Stop laughing at me.” She picked up a pebble and tossed it at him.
He swatted it away and made an effort to keep a straight face. “To become a part of the forest, you must first be aware of it. Don’t let your mind focus. Open it. Do the same with your vision, your hearing, all your senses. See and feel everything at once.”
Gina sent him a doubtful look.
“Here, let me show you.”
He taught her to walk in the manner of the Baha’Na, each step rolling from the outside edge of her foot to the instep, rather than heel to toe. “This way, you’re aware of the ground without having to look at it. Your eyes are free to see the forest.”
With a bit of practice, Gina found it easy to move in the way Derrin described. When she did, the forest came alive, flowing past in a ball of fur, a whisper of a white tail, a red flash of feathers at the edge of her vision.
They reached the top of the pass the next morning and after a short, steep descent, the land leveled to a gentle slope into the next valley. Toward late afternoon, they drank from a spring half-hidden by a dip of branches, then followed a deer trail to a grassy clearing.
“We’ll spend the night here,” Derrin said.
He returned to the forest to collect firewood while Gina cut branches from a copse of evergreens. She built the brush shelter on the edge of the clearing, using her stone-bladed knife for the first time. When she was finished, she stepped back to admire her handiwork.
“Not bad,” Derrin commented, dumping an armload of deadwood nearby. “Are you going to light the fire, too?”
Gina sat down on the grass and shook her head. “Later.”
“All right.” Derrin readied the firepit, then sat and examined a number of thin, straight sticks he’d set aside. He pulled out his knife and cut notches in the wood.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s the lazy way to hunt. We’ll set some traps tonight and by tomorrow morning we’ll have fresh meat. This clearing attracts a good number of harta.”
“How do you know?”
“Their tracks are everywhere.”
“Tracks? I didn’t see any.”
He pointed with one of the sticks at a slight depression in the ground. “There’s a run right there. If you don’t focus, you can see it.”
Gina opened her vision and found Derrin’s words were true. When she looked at the ground the way he’d had taught her, the tracks sprang to life. When she focused on them, they disappeared.
They set several traps, interlocking the notched sticks and bracing large, flat stones against them. A bait of leaves was skewered on a sharp point of each trigger stick. The slightest tug promised to bring a rock crashing down on the prey.
They returned to camp under the spreading dusk. Derrin prepared the firemaking tools and tinder, then reminded Gina of her offhand promise to light the fire.
She gripped the handhold in her left hand, looped the bowstring around the spindle and sawed the bow back and forth. The spindle turned in its socket, but no smoke emerged.
She stroked over and over, until the muscles in her upper arm burned. Ignoring the pain, she tightened her grip on the handhold and whipped the bow furiously.
“Not so hard! The strokes should be fast and even, not brutal.”
Derrin’s advice only served to annoy her. A spasm struck the muscle in her bow arm and her rhythm faltered. The spindle shot out from the string and skidded across the dirt.
Gina threw the bow after it. “You do it.”
He retrieved the tools and within minutes had a lively fire burning. Gina sighed, rubbed her sore arm. Reluctantly, she turned her attention to the evening’s meal—a collection of thick roots she and Derrin had dug after setting the traps.
A sudden craving for pepperoni pizza hit. Gina wrenched the thought aside and concentrated on the food at hand. Once the fire had settled into a low blaze, she poked the tubers into the hot coals with a forked stick. They roasted and burst, giving off a tantalizing aroma. By the time they cooled enough to bite into, Gina’s hunger had sharpened and she welcomed the sweet, chewy texture of the meal.
The evening air hung low and warm. Derrin scattered damp, fragrant bark on the dying coals of the fire to ward off the worst of the biting insects. Then he stretched out nearby, hands linked behind his head, and shut his eyes.
The bell-like call of a hidden creature came from the treetops. Gina leaned back on her elbows. A sprinkling of stars dotted the swath of sky above the clearing. As she watched, countless more emerged, hanging low like glittering crystals. But Gina’s gaze halted on a collection of seven bright stars. Four outlined a lopsided rectangle, three arched in a line from one corner. The Big Dipper.
She stared at it for a full minute, then searched the sky for other familiar patterns. She soon found them. Orion, with his hunter’s belt, and the unmistakable “W” that was the reclining figure of Cassiopeia. Her mind raced, trying to grasp the implications of her discovery.
“Derrin,” she said slowly, “your sky is the same as mine.”
He slanted her a glance. “What?”
“The stars. The patterns are the same as in my world.”
He sat up. “Truly?”
She nodded. “I must be on Earth, but in a different dimension than my home. It’s mathematically possible. It would explain why so much of your world is similar to mine.”
“But much is different.”
“Like wizardry. Magic doesn’t exist where I come from.”
“Perhaps it does, but your people haven’t discovered it yet.”
She shook her head. “No. There’s nothing magic about crystals in my world.”
“A crystal isn’t magic in itself. Its power is determined by its structure and purity. Magic is a function of knowledge and experience. That’s why the man who creates a stone can command the most of it.”
“Man?”
“The wizards of the Hierarchy are all men. Women are…” he hesitated. “Not permitted.”
“Just great,” Gina muttered.
Derrin grinned.
She shot him a dark look. “How did this bastion of masculinity come into being?”
Derrin leaned forward and rested his forearms on his bent knees. “After the earliest wizards discovered the mental techniques needed to create crystals, they compiled information about various crystals and their properties. They formed the Hierarchy in order to share what they knew. Before long, the Congress of Lords
became wary of the Hierarchy’s power. The Church of Lotark denounced wizardry as the work of Tarol, the Evil One.”
“I’m surprised the wizards were allowed to continue.”
“To be sure, they nearly lost their heads to the executioner. At the very least, the Hierarchy would have been disbanded if not for a discovery that allowed untrained minds to use crystals.”
Derrin was gesturing now, intent on his subject matter. “It was discovered even an untrained mind can make use of a simple crystal if a trigger element is present. Light, heat and healing became available to all. The Congress of Lords hastened to befriend the Hierarchy. The Church continued to object, but wasn’t able to prevent the alliance.”
“What are the uses of the more complex crystals?”
“Shadowing and location, of course. Healing of serious illnesses, building structures and transporting heavy materials, and a handful of other uses.”
Gina considered his answer. “Why did you take the rose quartz crystal from my costume?”
“It was not like any stone I’ve seen before. I was afraid you would use it against me.”
“Are you still afraid of that?”
Derrin smiled. “No.”
“The rose quartz was a natural crystal, of course,” Gina said. “So according to you, it wouldn’t have any magical power. But it did glow just before the web appeared.”
“Truly? Perhaps it reflected the power of the webstone.”
“Or maybe it had something to do with the web opening. We should go back and get it from your grandmother.”
“No. Once a journey to the Signs is begun, it must be completed. I cannot go back on my word to Zahta.”
Gina sighed. “Then tell me more about wizardry. Do wizards specialize in the crystals they produce?”
“Yes. At least that was the case before the Blight became so severe. Now the entire Hierarchy is searching for a remedy. I’ve nearly abandoned my other research.”
“What was that?”
“The creation of twinned crystals. Another wizard and I discovered a way to create identical crystals. We grow them in tandem and they retain their connection even when separated. We can then communicate at a distance using a code of flashes.”