Hidden Jewel (Heartfire Series)

by Strong, Jennifer

  Ailill hovered just inches from his hideously bloodied face, obviously frightened out of her head, and he screamed at the fear he saw in her eyes, commanding her away from the merciless contagion; away, to the twin brothers on the other side of a vast and empty sea, to safety, the sound garbled as he choked on his own lifeblood and slumped forward in the aromatic heather of his marriage bed, his vision darkening from red to purple to complete and utter blackness, the fathomless color of his father’s eyes.

  Out of the Mist

  North Carolina, U.S.A.

  He had been out in the oak wood long before dawn, checking the traps he'd set two days earlier for small game. It was a tedious job, following the same route up and then down the mountain, gathering up the stiff, furry bodies of rabbits and squirrels in a pack, carefully resetting each line, but Micah enjoyed the solitude, the quiet noise of the living forest around him. The smell of loamy earth under his feet, the crisp, clean scent of Spring air were an aphrodisiac to his senses; caused a stirring in his loins, an intoxicating feeling of freedom inside his head. After the tragedies of the past few years, after almost twenty years of a life he would rather not have lived, he took great pleasure in just being alone, away from the ofttimes tyrannical rule of a man whom he frequently doubted could be his true sire. The other men about the tiny village of Willow Wisp did not feel a need to beat on their own sons over nothing; over everything; at least, not that he'd seen. Idly rubbing the latest bruise made by the foul-tempered man, a sizable purple smudge directly in the center of his broad chest, the bones beneath were sore enough to make breathing a bit of a bother, he made his way through the trees, toward the narrow trail that ribboned down the mountain into the village below, a lightness in his young heart that he had not felt for a long time. Today was the day. It had to be. A change was coming to his life, something... no, someone, that would have a great impact on his life would come about at long last; he sensed it on the breeze, had anticipated it all week; he'd spent time up the enchanting mount each day, to be certain he did not miss it. He had dreamt of her again, his dream lover. She had felt more real last night than at any other time; pulse racing, sheets soaked with sweat, slick with seed, he swore he'd smelled her when he awoke in the small hours, too full of her to sleep again.

  He sighed at the memory of that scent, pausing momentarily to refill his canteen in a clear stream that meandered over the hillside, so caught up in his own thoughts that he nearly dismissed it when his ears picked up the whispery sound of movement along the mossy, muddy trail. The sun had been up barely an hour, the sky above still a deep amethyst far to the west. Eyes narrowed in concentration, Micah couldn’t think of any women close to giving birth, the main visitors to the massive log home halfway up the mount being women seeking the expertise of Annie Mackintosh, midwife and physician to the whole of Willow Wisp, a kind, beautiful woman who seemed to have an unusual knack for bringing healthy babies into the world despite her own apparent unfruitfulness. It was the slow time for her; most babies were born in the fall, nine months after the long cold winter nights were but a memory, though spring had seen its own bounty of tiny faces and flailing limbs in the village, following the midsummer gathering of the year before where, it was said, most found at least one person to couple with beneath the starlight and moonbeams of the summer sky.

  Odd, he thought to himself, most people just use the mountain road. Listening closely to the sounds of approach, curiosity got the better of the striking young man. His heart thumped a warning at getting his hopes up, the very reason which had led the cruel Kiah to strike him again last night. His father had told him to butcher a doe that the idiot had killed months out of season; he'd stubbornly refused, insisted that he was going to camp out in Wilderdeep, that he would be there to meet Ailill, the long-gone daughter of James and Annie Mackintosh; his dream-goddess, he was sure of it; a stranger of whom the very idea filled him with want, with needs he could not have begun to describe. Micah’s refusal to bloody his own hands with his father’s mistake had infuriated the drunken bastard; the force of the blow knocked him to his knees, the air stricken from his young lungs. The pain had been tremendous, for a few breathless moments he had feared that his heart might explode.

  Micah gutted the scrawny deer.

  He spent most of the night trying to think of a way to get himself and his twin brother, Jacob, out from under Kiah’s roof without getting either of them killed for it. A near impossibility, proven the very first day they'd arrived at Hidden Jewel, when the Mackintoshes had been made witness to the inconceivable strictness with which Kiah Black ruled over his twin boys; exhaustion, only, had pulled Micah down, away from the troubled life he'd led for nineteen long years; an entire lifetime. He slipped into dreams at once familiar, a young woman who did not look like any normal woman, tiny, vibrant, whom he had begun to see in his dreams at the tender age of twelve; she came clearly into his mind though he had not dreamt of the beautiful enchantress in well over a year. The dream last night was why he was so sure that today would be the day, why he had slipped out of the small cabin, into the blue-black of predawn; a risk to the health, the very lives of both he and Jacob. A risk he was willing to take.

  Stepping silently away from the muddied trail, moving stealthily under the thick canopy of dew covered leaves, Micah stopped behind a large, sturdy oak for a peek at the rider coming at a slow but steady pace up the winding mountain path. He wanted to see her first, to get a good hard look at this woman who just might be able to help him get away from his maniacal father once and for all, as the dreams had led him to believe despite the utter queerness of those subconscious flights of fancy, the odd sensation of soaring high above an enchanted land, perching, occasionally, upon the cool stone turrets of various castles; a dream, surely, for it could not have been more, no matter that he'd saved a few small bits of the very stone he'd sat on the last time he met the unknown woman in his dream.

  It had rained the night before, the combination of moisture and unseasonal warmth covered the valley below with a thick blanket of mist; curling tendrils wound about the ancient trees like smoky fingers. His keen ears picked up on the sound of more than one mounted rider; disappointment rolled slowly through his mind, his heart; Annie had not said her daughter would be alone when she came but, like a fool, he'd assumed. Idiot! No woman in her right mind would travel alone through such a dangerous land. Especially the daughter of The Mackintosh. even the surreal woman he'd seen in his dreams for so long would move about so carelessly- if he could hear their approach, so could anyone else with ears. Unhappily, the fog kept the advancing horses cloaked, invisible to his sight; squinting rather absurdly for a man with perfect eyesight, he kept his gaze trained on the darkened ribbon of mud and last years leaves, just at the edge of the vaporous cloud, and suddenly, almost as if by magic, they appeared from out of the mist.

  There were two of them, as he had suspected, both riding twin sorrel mares laden minimally with thin bedrolls and heavy leather saddlebags. The first rider was... not the man he'd been expecting! His heart leapt with relief at sight of the old woman in the lead; the hair pulled back from her forehead was pure, snowy white, a marked contrast to the smooth, lightly tanned skin of her arms and face. Spine straight as a rod, her bearing was regal, her head cocked in a well-honed manner of aloof reserve; her clothes were fresh and clean, as if even a speck of dirt would not dare to settle upon the pale green folds of dress and cloak. Not moving, hardly breathing, Micah watched curiously as the ancient gently nudged her wandering mount away from the water-filled ditch that coursed mere feet from the trail. There was something odd about her, some inkling in the back of his mind that a part of her was not right. He noticed that, though clear, the rims not the least bit red, the strange woman’s eyes were abnormally light; seemingly colorless. With a sudden jolt, he thought the woman must be blind. Yet, if she truly were without sight, why did he feel as if she were looking directly at him? He shuddered involuntarily at the thought but the white head h
ad moved, her strange eyes already turned away, giving him the eeriest sense that despite the paleness of the orbs, the complete lack of color, she could clearly see where she was going as she passed by. Unless the horse was simply trustworthy enough that she counted on it to carry her safely? An odd notion, but still... With the slightest shake of his head, Micah pushed his wandering thoughts away. His eye was drawn to the second horse and rider, now lagging quite some distance behind the old woman, the pace halting occasionally as an obvious lack of direction from the rider allowed the equine to graze the sparse, succulent grasses a bite at a time along the way; as if the rider dreaded going home and purposely delayed her arrival.

  Home? No, it couldn’t be, Micah reasoned with cautious practicality even as his heart and mind confirmed the fact. As if by some supernatural force, he was drawn closer, his eyes wide in the shadows. His throat ran dry when he beheld the tiny young woman before him. It could not be her... could it? blinked, uncertain. She looks a ragamuffin, no dream goddess.She was absolutely filthy, so different from the impeccable older woman; her skin was strangely pallid, the blueish color of a corpse, smudged in many places with what looked very much like dried blood; some sort of drawn design, unrecognizable now, had been smeared along her cheeks, down her arms. Her hair looked to be plastered with mud, so much so that, even at the ends near the mare's flanks, it was impossible to see the true color. He was strangely drawn to her.

  Moving soundlessly, Micah followed her slow ascent up the mountain, staying carefully hidden behind dense foliage a few yards behind. He studied her with intense curiosity. It was at once obvious that she was not very tall; her legs, the same strange bluish shade as her face and arms, mud-spattered up the entire length, barely hung halfway down the withers of the fully grown mare. The well-worn moccasins on her feet were tiny, no bigger in size than any child would wear; these looked to be caked with dried... blood? Must be mud. Jesus, what has she been doing? And where the hell did she come from?His eyes automatically sought the small hands holding the reins in her lap, knowing before he saw them that they would be child-sized as well. She was young, he knew. Her mother had said she was only a couple years younger than he and his twin, that this Ailillhad left for the Scottish Highlands when she was four and had been there since, "furthering her education". Watching her lead the mare toward a runoff stream that drained into a small pond at the edge of the tree line, almost too close to the ranch for his own comfort, Micah was struck with a sense of disbelief. Disregarding her small stature, which wouldn’t be unexpected in any case, her own mother was nearly as tiny, Micah could see no trace of childish roundness in the sculpted form of her full, womanly body. No trace of any sign at all to say that the exquisite beauty was merely seventeen years old. And she was beautiful; even with the filth that covered her from head to toe, the questionable rust-colored substance spattered across her upper body, her filthy blouse, Micah could see a natural beauty in the form of her, a sort of grace in the small movements, the subtle shifting of her arms and legs so high up on the mare's back, quite at odds with his initial impression. Ragamuffin, indeed, he thought wryly.

  Dismounting with a suddenness that made him jump and duck behind a bush in surprise, the girl/woman tugged gently at the reins, nickered softly, urging the horse to follow her over to the cool, flowing water at the edge of a small glade already scented by the roses that grew wild about the place. Peering out through a break in the leaves, Micah watched as she balanced nimbly on one foot, then the other, removing the short leather moccasins. Even her tiny feet were that weird blue color, as if she were lacking enough oxygen. Her slim ankles were ringed with anklets that matched wide bracelets he had noticed earlier on her dainty wrists; though covered with mud, they sparkled just enough to draw the eye. Stepping silently onto the wet grass growing up wild along the bank, face lifted skyward, eyes closed, she raised her arms straight out, level with her shoulders, and began to turn slowly, stopping at each point of the compass; her lips moved soundlessly in the still morning air. He had seen her father and mother do something similar during the weeks he and Jacob had lived at Hidden Jewel when they first arrived in the Smoky Mountains, though he'd been too shy to ask exactly what they were doing. It was none of his business, after all.

  Moving with graceful ease, the girl took the few steps to the stream and stepped in, eyes trained downward, watching for sharp stones. Despite a decided nip in the air, she was dressed in a sleeveless brown top that came to just below her breasts; the vee shaped neckline ended with a criss-crossed lacing down the cropped bodice that moulded the shirt to the buxom globes, tied just tight enough to expose the lighter skin of her cleavage when she bent down to drink from cupped hands. She wore a short kilted skirt, the muted colors of a hunting tartan blending in with her surroundings so well that it almost seemed to Micah as if she might disappear completely into the dense forest of Wilderdeep if he so much as blinked. Hiking the skirt up high on muscular thighs, a rather unnecessary precaution, she waded into the knee deep water, churning up dirt and old leaves with her toes as she walked, spraying sparkling water droplets up into the air with the carefree motion as she moved toward the drop off that led into the pond.

  He watched her in utter fascination, wondering why she had stopped there when she was already so close to home and plenty of heated water; his unspoken question was answered a moment later when she dove, clothes and all, into the cool depths of Rosewater. Emerging almost at once, muddy water streaming down her back and arms, her face, from the long, long lengths of her hair, she sat down on a flat rock near the bank and began to wash the grime from her face and arms with a wet handkerchief and a bar of soap he'd not noticed before. Her eyes were closed, the motions of her hands causing a thick, foamy lather as she scrubbed the dirt from her head, down her body; even her clothing revealed their natural color after she dove again, and once more, staying under long enough to fully rinse herself the third time. Micah couldn't take his eyes off the water, stared at the blue-tinted scum floating on the surface of a pond he and Jacob swam in almost daily. It seemed a long time before she climbed back out, wringing out the thick ropes of hair with quick motions.

  A redhead... he sighed inwardly at the unusual sight. Aside from Annie Mackintosh, there were few true redheads hereabouts; he found the idea quite stimulating, the proof of whom she was burning brightly with the tardy sunlight. Brushing damp locks back from her face with her fingertips, the curls shimmered like wild flames as she moved, drawing Micah’s eye to small gold and silver hoops in her tiny earlobes that matched a somewhat larger one pierced through her navel; a thin chain around her neck disappeared enticingly beneath the bodice of her blouse; no longer mud brown, it had cleaned up nicely to a pale, creamy beige. He could see through the thin, wet fabric, noted that the water was obviously chilly, and caught a glimpse of lighter bare skin beneath the edge of her skirt when she bent to look around. An uncomfortable rising under his own hunting kilt brought a hot flush to his cheeks. She paused briefly, turned away to gaze through the trees, toward the ranch in the distance. He wondered briefly if she sensed him there; it did not escape his notice that the young woman had bathed fully clothed, though those clothes had been as dirty as the rest of her. Or perhaps she was just looking for her elderly companion?

  Taking advantage of the opportunity while her attention was focused elsewhere, Micah crept closer, knelt down behind a thick stand of bushes deeply shaded by the trees overhead, suddenly glad that he was dressed in colors that blended easily into the woodsy surroundings. From this new vantage point he could look out and see her clearly, directly before his eyes; closing them briefly, he took a deep calming breath to still the pounding of his heart. When he looked again, he thought he would surely die.

  The sun burned through the dying mist, lit on her head as she stood, turned in his direction, setting the thigh length ringlets of bright copper and dark cinnamon ablaze, sparking off the sun lightened streaks throughout, as lovely as warm honey, like a crown of earth’
s most precious jewels. Her heart shaped face was smooth, unblemished, cheeks rosy beneath tanned skin. Eyebrows the same shade as her hair arched delicately over wide blue eyes that sparkled like star sapphires in the watery sun, framed with long lashes, dark and thick as painter's brushes. Her nose was a small and delicately chiseled blade; a tiny diamond labret glittered in the right nostril, adding an exciting, exotic air to the overall effect of her features. Lips moist and full, a deep cherry red, invited kisses by the mere existence of them. Micah barely stopped himself from going to her, walking right up to the little beauty to see if her mouth was really as sweet and welcoming as it looked; with effort, he forced his gaze away. The smooth skin of her bare arms was deeply tanned, the soft golden bronze of one who spent much time out of doors, both narrow wrists encircled by the wide bracelets of interlaced silver and gold that added a marked contrast where they shimmered against the sun baked skin; hard, unbelievably well-developed muscles rippled immodestly beneath every inch of exposed flesh when she moved, blatant proof of much more than mere inner strength, making the young man stare, awed by the sight.

  Turning to cluck at the mare, Ailill began rummaging through one of the saddlebags, scanning the surrounding tree line with narrowed eyes; her gaze settled momentarily on the dense vegetation that Micah was using as a cover and he froze, not daring to move a muscle for fear of her discovering him. Blinking solemnly, she set her jaw hard and pulled the lacings of the shirt free, letting it fall with a wet smackto the ground at her feet, followed instantly by her kilt. At the suddenness of her beautifully moulded body laid bare before his eyes, an inaudible gasp escaped through his tightly clenched teeth. Clutching himself with both hands to still the tremor that suddenly rolled through him, his body responded to the touch instantly; fire gathered in his loins and, with a sudden involuntary jerk of the hips, viscous fluid spurted to the ground between his knees, leaving him dazed, trembling with bewilderment and inexplicable shame.