The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal

by Anna Erishkigal

  "Hello, Adam."

  I heaved my leg over the saddle and stiffened when a pair of strong hands wrapped around my waist to help me dismount. My arm tingled where his hand held my elbow. His touch felt far more corporeal than the dream-horse which I rode.

  "Okay, boy," I told Harvey. "It's time for you to get some grass."

  I tied his reins around his saddle and slapped him affectionately on his golden rump. He wandered back up the bank where a lush green blanket grew on land which had been fertilized by the floodtide. His golden tail swished contentedly back-and-forth as he lowered his head and ripped out great mouthfuls of verdant green grass.

  Adam and I stood in wary silence, unable to speak, for in this world only your actions mattered, not your words. In a perfect dream world, all of the wounds and worries which kept us from exploring this thing which had grown up between us would have vanished, but the dreamtime was a reflection of reality now, and right now the only thing which was real was two wounded people who felt a growing attraction to one another had been brought together to care for a little girl.

  I slid my hand up to touch his cheek, the perfect, chiseled features which were far too breathtaking to ever settle for a plain old stock horse like me. That same tingling sense of anticipation that I always felt whenever we touched in the real world rippled up my arm, as pungent and corporeal as it did within the waking world. Adam's nostrils flared. His eyes grew darker, bluer, his pupils so large I thought I might crawl into them and disappear. His fingers slid up to my wrist to caress the bracelet he'd given me. He turned my wrist upwards and made sure the leather was still securely tied.

  'Yes, Adam. You have marked me as yours. Show me I can trust you, and I will be your horse forever…'

  The first blush of the shadow-sun began to cast its rays upon the eastern horizon. Adam pressed his palm flat upon my cheek, his expression yearning. He asked me now, the same question he had asked me in the real world.

  A tear dripped down my cheek.

  "I -do- want you. I'm just so scared you'll throw me away."

  This time he did kiss me. As our lips touched the first ray of sunlight shot above the horizon. His shade slipped like liquid away from my embrace. I woke up reaching for him, with the feel of his kiss still fresh upon my lips. But the dream world was no more real than Pippa's fairy queen.

  I felt my wrist to make sure my bracelet was still secure. I did not look forward to facing Adam in the real world, so I took a long shower, cleaned the toilet, and gave myself a full manicure and pedicure before I wandered out into the kitchen.

  Pippa stood, poised over the counter with her royal scepter of a wooden spoon, officiating over a bowl of blueberry muffin mix, admonishing her father to turn the oven on to exactly 175 degrees. Adam bent over the oven like a loyal servant, searching for the red dot of nail polish I'd dabbed onto the knobs.

  "Good morning, Rosie!" Pippa said

  "Good morning, Pippa."

  Adam straightened up, his expression cloaked.

  "Good morning, Miss Rosamond," he said coolly.

  That, if anything, told me the dream world was a crock of dung. I gave him the same apologetic smile I'd given him in the dream. I'm sorry Adam. Really, I am…

  We ate some breakfast: eggs and toast and Adam's delicious coffee while the baking muffins filled the house with the scent of blueberries. Pippa buzzed around her father like a happy little bee, no longer the damaged child her mother had decimated over Christmas. Now, if only I could have the 'old' Adam back, the version I'd had just before I'd kicked him in the nuts?

  "Adam?" Butterflies flew inside my stomach. "I was, uhm, wondering. Are there any other buildings on this station besides the house and barn?"

  Adam's brow furrowed into a wary expression.

  "We have a bunkhouse set back away from the main complex, and a cabin near the river about a kilometer upstream. My brother moved in there after he graduated high school. But then he joined the army, so it's been empty except for when he came home on leave."

  "Would you be willing to take us on a walk? It would give us a bit of exercise."

  Adam scrutinized me, as though he feared my request was some kind of trick.

  "Okay."

  We packed a lunch and set out on our day hike. With over 700 acres of wetlands, fields and woodlands, the Condamine River Ranch had plenty to explore. As we walked, the cicadas serenaded us with their deafening midsummer crescendo, a blue-faced honeyeater broke out of a eucalyptus bush, and a small herd of kangaroos grazed on the fields until Thunderlane decided to give them a yapping chase. At last we came to a bunkhouse which was not the one I'd seen in my dream. To the side, a shedrow style barn provided room for three more horses, a tack room and a paddock. Pippa scrambled into the horse shed.

  "How many hands did your father used to employ?"

  Adam grew thoughtful, his expression wistful.

  "We had two permanent station hands growing up, plus occasionally my father would bring people in for a special job. All of the rest, me and my brother helped out as soon as we got old enough to muster cattle."

  "Did you like it? I mean, cattle mustering?"

  Adam stuck his hands into his pockets and grew silent. Every now and then a hint of jackaroo peeked out of Adam's carefully cultivated urban demeanor, but he denied that part of himself and did his best to hide it. I suspected it led back to whatever bad blood had grown up between him and his father. I was smart enough not to press him, especially not when he still smarted from last night's rejection.

  Pippa came bounding out of the horse-shed with Thunderlane limping sheepishly at her heel. The poor dog wore an enormous, broken horse bridle stuck over his head which dangled down his neck like the harness for a seeing-eye dog. The dog whined and gave us an embarrassed tail-wag.

  "Can I keep it, Daddy?"

  "What do you need that for?"

  "For my horse," Pippa said. "Come Saturday, I'll have thirty dollars saved."

  Adam's smile disappeared.

  "I thought…"

  I thought my daughter only wanted Flying Dutchman…

  I had no doubt that the moment Adam had gotten into work Monday morning, he'd made some inquiries to find out the asking price for Flying Dutchman and been unable to come up with $28,000 to buy his little girl her dream-horse.

  "You promised your daughter she could buy a horse as soon as she saved up enough of her own money to get one," I said. "One that will be hers, that neither you nor her mother can take away from her on a whim."

  Adam's shoulders slumped as though carrying a heavy load, and once again I felt guilty for judging him last night by my fears of what Gregory had done instead of the thoughtful man who had never asked anything of me other than to love his little girl. His vicious ex-wife had him stuck between a boulder and an anvil, but even he understood that Pippa needed goals which were totally within her control. His voice warbled as he gave a shaky reply.

  "Yes, I did promise that, didn't I?"

  "Yes, you did, Daddy." Pippa's chin jutted in the air. "Since Mommy doesn't want to buy me one, then I will buy a horse myself."

  Who is this confident young woman, I could almost hear Adam's thoughts, and what have you done with my little girl?

  Thunderlane pushed his cold, wet nose against my hand and whimpered. He looked quite ludicrous wearing a horse bridle as a harness, and as he walked, his front leg kept getting caught in the webbing. I turned my attention to rescue the dog.

  "You don't like that, do you, boy?" I asked in an exaggerated, high-pitched 'doggie' voice. "Did Pippa get you all dressed up like a draft horse?"

  I met Adam's wary gaze.

  "It could be worse, you know? If she was into ballet, she'd have your mother's dog dressed up in a bright pink ballerina tutu. Just think of how that would look on a dog named after Australian Thunder? Do you think he'd make their annual calendar?"

  A smirk snuck up into Adam's scowl. He looked away before he burst into laughter and ruined a perfectl
y good bad mood. Our hands touched as we extricated the dog from his makeshift BDSM harness. That familiar tingle of awareness radiated up my arm.

  Adam's nostrils flared. His pupils widened, but he did not pull away. He looked like he feared I might bite his head off.

  My lip trembled as I slid my hand to cover his.

  "I'm sorry, Adam. I'm sorry for being so afraid. But just last week, you and your wife almost reconciled, and now she's trying to get me fired. Can't we just take things one day at a time?"

  He slid his hand up to check the bindings on my leather bracelet, as if he wished to remind me he had marked me as his. His expression softened and I read the message in his eyes. Three more weeks, Rosie. Just three more weeks, and then I will be a free man. He wordlessly straightened and tossed the broken bridle back into the horse-shed, but when he stepped back out again, that painful distance he'd put between us lessened.

  "This way."

  He led us down a dirt path that was worn deeply into the soil, but the grass on either side of it had grown up from years of neglect. We veered, for a time, away from the river towards the road, and then we curved back again until the river finally came back into view. This path, I suspected, had been cut to circumvent the billabong which hid the sacred aboriginal well.

  The cabin became visible as we walked over a low rise, primitive and unpainted, with big, vacant windows that looked over the river like sad eyes on either side of a door that looked like a mouth. I fell silent as we followed the dog's tail through the waist-high grass. It was off the main road and quite a walk away from the house, a separate property almost, and yet it was still part of Adam's station. The mercurial warble of a flock of currawongs filled the air with their mournful song. At no time had I ever come this way during my travels in the physical world. I'd had no idea the cabin existed until the girl in the white pony showed it to me in a dream.

  I rubbed my aboriginal bracelet.

  "The roof is leaking."

  "How can you tell?"

  "Just look at those decrepit shingles." I pointed to a darker, bumpier bit of shingle that would be the approximate place I'd seen within the dream. "Anyone can see such a roof must leak."

  "Show me?"

  Adam felt around the door, and then slid out a key which had been jammed up underneath one of the shakes. The door creaked as he unlocked it and stepped inside. The damp, sweet smell of mustiness betrayed the cabin had seen little use for many years, but the accommodations were laid out in the meticulous, Spartan economy of a man who served in the military. On a tiny kitchen table which sat overlooking the river, a newspaper sat neatly folded, dated almost a year ago today. In the spot where the girl on the white pony had shown me, the floorboards were warped where the roof had leaked during the rainy season.

  Adam stuck his hands into his pockets. His eyes took on that same sorrowful appearance he'd had when I found him sitting on the edge of the dream-river, staring across the water. The cabin was primitive, but here and there were mementoes of his brother, the kind of things an Australian Special Forces soldier might keep to feel at home when he returned on leave.

  "My mother would be upset to see my brother's cabin in such a state of disrepair," Adam said. "I'll make some calls and find out if there's a handyman anyone can recommend."

  Pippa wanted to explore the inside, but Adam chased her out. I supported him in discouraging her from poking around. In a few short months he'd lost his brother, his father, and then after a period of sickness his mother too. Jeffrey had been his twin. I couldn't imagine how that felt, only that it put my own petty fears of rejection into perspective.

  I reached out and took his hand. As in the dream world, whenever we touched, every nerve ending in my body tingled. Adam did not protest as I led him out into a greener pasture.

  "Come," I said. "Let's go down to the river to eat our lunch."

  Chapter 40

  Adam smiled as I rode Harvey down the river bank, and as I dismounted, he clasped his hands around my waist and helped me down. I sent my loyal steed up to graze and turned to face him. By an unspoken agreement we sat, side by side, watching the flicker of moonlight as it played across the water. That sense of oneness I'd felt the night we'd danced tingled through me as Adam tangled his fingers into my own. When the dream-dawn began to brighten the sky, Adam squeezed my hand and scrambled to his feet. I could almost feel his alarm clock going off in his room. It was time for Adam to go to work.

  "I will see you," I said, "in the real world."

  Adam hesitated, and then he kissed me. His body pressed against mine, so real, so corporeal, it felt as real as the night we'd danced, and then he faded back into the waking realm.

  Harvey wandered down to where I stood and butted his head against my shoulder. I scratched him behind the ears, and then remounted to finish patrolling the fence line even though the girl on the white pony hadn't appeared. As we passed the house, her little white mare waited patiently outside of Pippa's bedroom window, as if the girl wished to pass her dream-horse along to her granddaughter in the waking world.

  When I awoke, Pippa had gotten up before me in a vain attempt to catch her father before he disappeared into that other world. We had her morning 'math muffins' halfway made when I heard a car coming up the driveway. Thunderlane ran to the door and barked.

  "Did Daddy come back?" Pippa's silver eyes waxed hopeful.

  "No, nipper," I said. "Linda Hasting's friend, David Maggio said he'd come on by to give us an estimate to fix your uncle's cabin."

  The ancient handyman, who had to be at least 75 years old, climbed out of an almost-as-ancient ute and held his hand down so Thunderlane could sniff it. Thunderlane wagged his tail.

  "Mr. Maggio?"

  "That's David," the gnarled old man shook my hand. "Dave to my friends. Mr. Bristow said you've got a cabin needing fixing?"

  "Its way off in the woods," I said. "There's a path that used to lead in from the road, but it's so hopelessly overgrown you'd need a chainsaw. I'm afraid you'll have to haul your tools from here."

  "That's okay, Miss," the handyman said. "I'm used to things like that. I keep a wheelbarrow in my truck, just in case."

  Pippa peppered the handyman with questions as he pulled a large, garden-style cart with bicycle wheels off the back of his truck. Linda Hastings possessed such a cart, as had the owner of the old riding stable where I'd ridden as a teen.

  "Can I help?" Pippa begged. "Rosie's been teaching me to use a saw."

  "Why, sure, little miss," Mr. Maggio said. He seemed comfortable around kids, and put Pippa to work loading tools into his cart. I helped him tie on an extension ladder, and then we set off down the trail to the distant cabin.

  "I forgot this place even existed," the handyman said. "I remember when Mr. Bristow's grandfather built it for his foreman."

  "You knew Adam's grandparents?" I asked.

  "Ah-yup," the handyman said. "On his mother's side. They was good people. Real fine people indeed. Took good care of their ranch hands. Not like…"

  He glanced at Pippa and fell silent.

  "I heard Adam's father was a hard man," I said softly.

  The handyman nodded.

  "He was. But when the oil companies came sniffing around, singing songs of free money underneath our land, he set us all straight real quick. Trevor Bristow, he was a hardline nationalist. Wasn't into any of those greenie causes. But when he told us what the oil companies gone and done to his daddy's station, weren't a single one of us would let them onto our land to drill a test bore. Good thing, too. You hear what's been going on up in Chinchilla?"

  "A little," I said.

  "River's been bubbling like a witch's cauldron," the handyman said. "It's always bubbled, certain places, certain times of the year. But not like that. The government men, they said don't worry about it; don't cause no harm to the people and the fish. But you know what? That's what they told Trevor Bristow's daddy, and then when the wells went bad, they claimed it didn't have nothing to d
o with them. Had to dump the herd at auction for pennies on the dollar. Most of 'em were so sick that all they could do was put 'em out of their misery."

  "What happened to his grandfather's station?"

  The handyman's eyes wandered over to where Pippa clamored on the porch of the abandoned cabin, chattering with Thunderlane who wagged his tail as though it was a propeller.

  "After they got notice the bank was foreclosin' on their station," Mr. Maggio lowered his voice, "Trevor's daddy went out to the well-head where he'd let Jackson Oil Company drill into his land, stuck a shotgun in his mouth, and blew his brains out. Word is, it was Trevor who found him. He woulda been just a teenager at the time."

  The handyman unstrapped his ladder. I waited while he climbed up onto the roof and gave me an estimate of how much it would cost to fix it, and then told him to go ahead and start the work.

  I herded Pippa back to the house to finish up her schoolwork. She didn't give me any lip as we measured her artwork and then cut down some broken frames Julie had helped us scrounge up from the dump. We clamped them together with wood-glue, and then we went into the horse-stalls to search for nails which had come loose and pound them deeper into the wall-boards. If Pippa was going to buy a horse, I wanted her to start getting a taste of the chores she'd need to do to keep it safe.

  "How come Daddy has to work the weekend?" Pippa asked.

  "He missed work Wednesday because your mother dragged him into court," I said. "He has to meet with your Aunt Roberta on Tuesday, and go back to court on Wednesday, so he's going to miss more work next week. The only way he can make up the days is to go out to the Basin and work straight through the weekend."

  Pippa's silver eyes narrowed with anger.

  "I hate her," she hissed.

  As tempted as I was to jump for joy, I knew better than anyone that when you hated someone who didn't care, all that happened was you ended up hating yourself.

  "Your mother is sick, nipper," I said. "You can't rely on her, but hating her doesn't do anything but hurt you."

  "I don't care," Pippa said. "Mommy is mean."