Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  One hand moved to grip the back of her head, the other around her waist, and he held her to face him. Moonlight shimmered over his raven hair, the plane of his high cheeks. His shadowed eyes flashed black light down at her. Slowly, resistlessly, she felt his muscles tighten as he drew her close. His head bent, blocking the moonlight, and her body coursed with yearning for the touch of that mouth.

  She felt his arms stiffen and fall. "Christ!" he whispered. "What the hell am I doing?"

  Then the wind blew over her body and Smith opened her eyes. She was alone with the moon and the wind and the trees.

  ***

  She thought the sun would never come up. She lay for hours in the glow of the treacherous moonlight, waiting for the sky to lighten into day.

  The robe lay where she had flung it over a chair, and she gazed at it in the cool white moonlight, as though the intricate exotic design by engaging her eyes might allow her mind to rest.

  It was uniquely beautiful, the robe. She had never seen anything like it. On midnight-blue silk the dragon, richly scaled in lush greens and turquoises, arched his neck up the back of the robe and breathed red and orange fire across the shoulder and down one sleeve. On the other side his finely veined wings in shades of purple stretched to the front of the robe. The serpentine green tail ran everywhere in intricate coils. There was a wide border on the square sleeves and the hem, and small flowers covered the background. The embroidery work was almost impossibly fine and delicate, and the glittering thread on the rippling yards of silk made the dragon seem alive.

  It seemed odd that Johnny Winterhawk's nameless woman friend should have left just this and no other piece of clothing in the house. If I owned a robe like that, Smith thought, I would be about as likely to forget it as my own hair. I wonder if Johnny bought it for her. That thought irritated her, made her restless. It looked antique. It must have cost a lot.

  It was something he would surely only have bought for someone special, someone he loved very deeply. Shulamith moved restlessly in the bed and remembered how Johnny Winterhawk had slept beside her there the morning after that awful night and how she had moved against him in her sleep.

  Deliberately she looked at the robe. I'll ask him where it comes from, she thought, and buy one like it when I go home....

  If she was ever allowed to go home. Panic quickened Smith's heartbeat, as it did every time her mind slid back down into awareness.

  "I will teach you...teach you...teach you...." She heard Johnny Winterhawk's voice like a whisper under the sound of her heartbeat, a whisper that pulsed with her blood along her veins.

  She fell asleep at last at dawn, when the sky had lightened and moonshadows no longer tormented her. She dreamed about being led down and down in a huge cavern whose walls were embroidered in rich, moving colours like the robe. The colours were vibrantly beautiful, like nothing she had ever seen before, but Smith was terrified. She knew that at the bottom of the cavern the dragon was waiting for her, the dragon of the robe, come to life.

  Thirteen

  Smith was down in the kitchen early, wide awake in spite of having had so little sleep. She made coffee, thinking about the story Johnny Winterhawk had told her last night, of his long-ago ancestor and the fire-haired woman.

  It was as though there had been a compulsion between them last night, pulling Johnny as much as it pulled her. It was no wonder he had remembered that story, because last night she really had felt almost possessed. If she hadn't suddenly seen his harsh features in the moonlight and remembered who and where she was, she might have let him make love to her right there on the moonlit balcony.

  But it had only been the effect of moonlight, and in future she would be careful to stay well away from Johnny Winterhawk on moonlit nights....

  The kitchen door opened behind her, and Shulamith turned her head and looked at Johnny Winterhawk across the room. She opened her mouth to speak, and then she closed it again, because suddenly she was choking, suddenly she had to swallow.

  It was there between them again, like thick smoke, and she felt its twisting fingers reach deep into her being, clutching her and drawing her to him.

  "Good morning," said Johnny Winterhawk, and even though she could hear the effort his casualness cost him, she felt a loosening in the clutch of those smoky fingers inside her.

  "Good morning," she responded, in a tone that matched his, but how long had they stared at each other before he spoke? "Is Wilf coming down to breakfast?" she asked, as though she had been doing this for a dozen years, making Johnny Winterhawk's breakfast in the morning.

  Their speech had released him, too, and he moved away from the door and crossed to the refrigerator. She hadn't made breakfast, only coffee, but Johnny Winterhawk was taking only cream from the refrigerator, so it looked as though he wasn't interested in eating. He was wearing t-shirt and jeans this morning. She wondered where he was going.

  "Wilf's down at his cabin," he remarked. "He'll be up in a while. He probably thought you'd sleep later than this."

  But Smith was used to early mornings and hard work. Even though there was nothing to get up for she wouldn't be able to sleep in.

  "I wish there were something for me to do," she said, pouring coffee into the cups he had set. Yesterday she had made moccasins, but that certainly didn't occupy the brain.

  "I could give you some reading matter. You could fill some of the gaps in your social education."

  "No, thanks," Smith said. "The last thing I need is to be cooped up with a lot of propaganda designed to brainwash me."

  "Or enlighten you?" he asked without heat. "Or shake up your comfortable, narrow view of the world?"

  Smith flinched. "My mother was a Jew," she said evenly. "She died in the Six Day War. Her parents emigrated to Israel in 1930. If they hadn't, I wouldn't be here. They both lost their entire families in Europe, in the war. So my worldview probably isn't quite as narrow as you are so fondly imagining, Mr. Winterhawk. There are other people besides your own who have suffered at the hands of the ruling class."

  It was his turn to look chastened. "Right," he said. "Sorry."

  The silence that settled over them then was almost companionable, as they drank the coffee. Then Smith said, "Isn't there anything I could do? I hate forced inactivity, I'll be—"

  "Don't think of it as forced inactivity," he said. "Consider it a holiday. After your year in Europe you probably need one."

  Smith gave him a half smile. They had somehow conquered that earlier compulsion, but now her wry smile seemed to catch him unawares, and she saw his response leap behind his eyes.

  "I haven't had a vacation since I was sixteen," she said, fighting not to let the look affect her. "I wouldn't know what to do with one."

  Winterhawk was calm again. "What's something you've never had time for but always wanted to do?" he asked.

  Love you. The words were there in her brain, quietly, like a primary, a given, an axiom placed there before time began but only now revealed. She felt the glow from it as from a rich dark gemstone deep in the mine of her being, and then she started in surprise. What a ridiculous thing to be thinking!

  "Oh, well," she said, for something to say, something to hide that strange, deep response, "I guess I used to want to write poetry." That was true enough, though she hadn't thought about it for ages. Funny it should come up like this, as though she really meant it.

  "Ahhh," said Winterhawk, looking at her with one eyebrow raised, as though that clicked with something.

  "What?" Smith asked. She supposed he was remembering what she had told him about the boy up at Paper Creek. The boy had set one of her poems to music, but she doubted if she could recall a trace of either words or music at this distance in time.

  "And now you keep it all locked down tight," he said.

  Which wasn't at all true. "No," she said.

  "There are paper and pencils in my study. Shall I get you some before I leave?"

  Smith shook her head, as much to clear it as to say n
o. "No, but thank you," she answered with a self-deprecating smile. "I think if I had any great talent it would have surfaced before this."

  "Do you only allow yourself to do things at which you'll be brilliant?" he asked.

  And what was so surprising in that? "What's the point in doing something if you don't do it well?"

  "Is that the opinion of the great Cordwainer St. John?" asked Winterhawk, and it was—she had heard her father say it hundreds of times, but that didn't mean it wasn't true.

  "You don't have to sneer!" she said hotly, suddenly feeling that she loved her father very much. "What's the point in doing something badly?"

  Johnny Winterhawk grinned. "The point is that quite often practice makes perfect. If everyone followed your father's rule the human race would have died out long ago."

  She blushed, though he had probably not meant anything sexual by it, he was probably talking about raising children or building shelter. But she blushed because that had suddenly made her think how inexpert she was at making love, and how willing she must have seemed to try....

  Johnny Winterhawk pushed back his chair and stood. "Well, maybe Wilf could give you lessons in wood carving," he suggested. "Or there are lots of books around the house that do not address the issue of native rights." He grinned. "Don't speak to any strange men while I'm gone."

  "When will you be ho—back?" she asked almost wistfully, almost as though she might miss him while he was away.

  "Probably around seven," he said. "Take it easy on Wilf, won't you? Remember he's an old man."

  "Me take it easy on him?" Smith sputtered. This struck her as rankly unfair. "Why don't you tell him to take it easy on me?"

  He looked down at her, and the laughter went out of his eyes. He ought to be kissing her goodbye, and she knew they both felt it.

  "So long," said Johnny Winterhawk, and left her.

  ***

  The only fault Smith had to find in the design of the house was the location of the laundry room: it should have been next to the kitchen, but instead it was further up the house near the bedrooms. A lot of distance to cover for someone who might be trying to prepare a meal and do the laundry at the same time, she thought. If it were her house she might turn the laundry room into a storage closet and move the washer and dryer down into the kitchen.

  The problem was that she felt cut off, Smith realized. The laundry room was small, and its window looked onto a tiny plant-filled space against the cliff. There was a skylight too, so there was plenty of light, but she couldn't see out over the island or the ocean in any direction. She felt uncomfortable: she wanted to be in the kitchen, where she could see the approaches to the island and the path to the house; she wanted to be in touch with what was going on.

  She wanted to be able to watch for Johnny Winterhawk coming home.

  Smith jumped away from the thought as though it burned her. Anyway, the idea was ridiculous—it was hardly noon, and he wouldn't be back for hours yet. Smith leaned against the dryer, feeling the soothing warmth of the metal against her body. She felt oddly desolate and aimless, oddly alone.

  But she had been alone lots of times in her life without feeling like this. This past year in Europe she had spent many, many hours alone in hotel rooms without being assailed by this nameless longing.

  Was it loneliness? Was that what the feeling was? How extraordinary to be suddenly aware of it like this. Of course she had felt it! She had felt it almost constantly after her mother died, when her father....It was a horrible, hopeless feeling, and she would have felt it in those European hotel rooms, too, if she had let herself....

  Odd, how a feeling could really hurt. Loneliness hurt. And somewhere back in time Shulamith St. John had decided not to feel lonely.

  If she suddenly felt lonely now, it must be because her desperate situation, the terrible fear of losing her father to death, was breaking down her defences. It was nothing to do with Johnny Winterhawk. She was thinking of Johnny because she could have told him about it. She could probably tell Johnny Winterhawk anything. Already she had told him things she had never told anyone before—even how her father had humiliated her up at Paper Creek.

  A buzzer went off to signal that the dryer's cycle was finished, breaking into her train of thought. Smith bent to pull out the clothes she had borrowed on the boat and her nightgown. She had mended the lace, but the hem was permanently stained with grease or engine oil, and at home she would have discarded it. But here she didn't have that luxury. She would borrow jeans and shirts from Johnny Winterhawk because she must, but she was damned if she was going to ask to borrow a pair of his pyjamas!

  As she left the laundry room, Smith glanced along the hallway to the door of Johnny Winterhawk's study and then on impulse walked over the creaking floorboard and tried the handle.

  The door opened. With a swift, surprised intake of breath Smith stepped inside the room and silently closed the door. Her heart thudded in her ears as she crossed to the desk, but before she reached it she was brought up short in dismay: the phone was gone.

  Well, she might have guessed. But a small setback like that wouldn't stop her. Smith set her little armload of clean clothes down on the beautiful handwoven rug that graced the centre of the oak floor and began a systematic search of the room.

  She paused for a long moment in front of the wall that was living rock. The house had somehow been pushed right into the side of the cliff, and the rock wall dominated the room. It was dry and cool to the touch, and unadorned save for the green plants that hung and stood nearby.

  The phone was not in the room—unless it had been locked away in one of the filing cabinets. She had picked locks before, and though these looked rather more solid than usual she knew that if you pushed a filing cabinet over on its side you could often release the lock. Now was not the time to try it, of course, not with Wilfred Tall Tree in the house. Smith picked up the pile of clothing and, with a quick eye out for Wilfred, let herself out of the study and ran to her bedroom.

  ***

  "Oh, damn," Shulamith said abruptly, as she sat in the kitchen watching Wilfred Tall Tree put the finishing touches to lunch. "We've missed the news." Not even in Europe, in countries where she couldn't understand the language and had sometimes had to depend on two-day-old English newspapers, had she felt so isolated from what was happening.

  Wilfred was serving an interesting-looking vegetable concoction onto their plates. "Are you afraid a war will start if you aren't keeping track?" he asked her, comically waggling his eyebrows.

  "Of course not," she said, confused once again by how swiftly this harmless old man could ruffle her. Wilfred laughed, dropping the wooden spoon into the saucepan he held. He leaned forward and tapped her forehead with a finger.

  "Or maybe if things get too quiet on the outside the war will start in there?"

  Well, what on earth did he mean by that? "It just so happens," Smith told him irritably, "that my father is dangerously ill in the hospital, and that my life has been threatened if he doesn't accede to your people's ransom demand. So I'm kind of curious about whether the two of us are going to live or die."

  "No, this isn't true. You know you are going to die," said Wilfred, placing a plate of thick-sliced brown bread on the table and sitting down opposite her. Smith stared at him, her eyes wide, her heart pounding crazily. "Everyone knows he is going to die. What you want to know is when. Because you think that if you did know, you could control events."

  Smith breathed out on an outraged sigh. Her heart was still thumping in fear. "I thought you were telling me that they were going to kill me," she said; and then after a moment, "Are they?"

  Wilfred stopped chewing. "I don't know,'' he said. "The world is very crazy. Things are crazy. Maybe there are some Chopa people who have been listening to the news too much."

  "I'd be more interested to know if there are Chopa people who have been to one of the PLO's terrorist training camps," Smith said. The words came out as the thought formed, and the moment sh
e heard them, a fear worse than anything she had felt before overtook her. She remembered her first vision of those five balaclava-masked figures around her father's bed, and suddenly anything seemed possible—except that she would get out of this alive.

  For the first time the thought that if her father didn't give in to the ransom demand she really might be killed sank deep into her mind.

  He must, she thought desperately. He has to love me enough for that, he has to give in. If I could only make him understand how much I want to live....

  "Where's the phone?" she demanded. "Johnny's hidden the phone, and I want it."

  Wilfred Tall Tree looked at her from gentle wise eyes and said nothing.

  "I want it! I want to phone my father!" she demanded hoarsely, her voice beginning to crack. "I can tell him, I can make him understand, Wilf, if you'll let me call him. He'll listen to me—" Smith broke off as the sobs welled up from within, choking her. She felt a terrible sense of urgency, as though she had lived her life all wrong up to this moment, and if she died now her twenty-six years on the earth would have been a waste. She wanted to live, she had to live so that she could change things, so that her life would not have been wasted....

  Gradually Smith became aware of the regular click of fork against plate. She lifted her head self-consciously. Wilfred Tall Tree was calmly eating the meal he had prepared. Smith wiped her eyes with her hands and sniffed. Then she reached for the paper napkin beside her fork like a guilty child. She didn't even know how to cry, she thought suddenly. Women were probably supposed to cry delicately into a handkerchief, not howl like a bull and then blow a reddened nose with a sound like a trumpet.

  But there hadn't been much training in femininity since her mother had died. And lumber camps and sawmills weren't the best places to succumb to tears. Not for the boss's daughter.

  Smith blinked her tear-spangled lashes at Wilfred Tall Tree as her breathing calmed. Then she scooped up a forkful of the vegetable concoction and tasted it. It was a delicate mixture of flavours, almost like a Japanese dish.