by Celia Jerome
“I don’t know. But it’s worth a try, isn’t it? We can do it first thing in the morning, before going out to that ranch.”
I liked the idea of a safety net and Doc as spotter for my high-wire act. Besides, I wasn’t getting a whole lot of dreaming done tonight anyway. If I fell asleep at all, I figured a tall, lean cowboy’d be riding the rem range.
I said I agreed if Doc agreed, and Ty sighed in relief. Then he kissed me. He really did care about me, I guess. A kiss so tender, so gentle, showed it. He deepened the kiss, showing he still wanted to get me naked. I responded to the caring, then I responded to the caveman. The kiss led to the edge of who gives a damn about tomorrow. Then I heard a rustle in the grass.
I jerked away, out of his arms. I pulled my sweatshirt down, without knowing how it almost got over my head in the first place.
“It’s only a possum.”
Only a possum? Only a heart attack in a fur coat. And a reminder of what we were doing besides communing with nature. I shifted an inch away on the sofa. “We’re here to watch. Nothing else.”
“Hmm.”
“Nothing else,” I insisted. We weren’t teenagers making out on the front porch. When the time was right, when we were ready, when we knew each other better, when nothing was going to slither across my foot. Then. Maybe.
So we watched and waited and wrapped the blanket over us. I leaned my head on Ty’s shoulder when my neck got stiff from being in the same position. He put his hat back on and started to chant along with the recording. I could feel the vibrations through his chest. “What are you saying?”
He let the recording go on without him. “Repetitive sounds, mixed with an ancient incantation to the Great Spirit. It’s supposed to be beckoning, praising, welcoming. Soothing, restful, peaceful.”
I didn’t know about the mares, but it sure worked for me. Soothing, restful, peaceful . . .
. . . I showed Hetty the sketches I’d made, and she smiled. She knew she’d get out of the tiny prison soon, and get her revenge, too. She touched the horseshoe charm on her necklace and went back to sleep. Good girl, I thought in my dream. She was a brave kid who’d make a great superhero, Hetty and her horse.
The horse.
The colt was lying flat out in a thin layer of straw, limp. Not dead—oh, God—not dead!
I could feel my panic rising and tamped it down. No. His chest rose and fell. He was worn out, weary, waiting for the end, but he was alive. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t feel his thoughts. I didn’t want to wake the poor baby. Hell, I didn’t want to crawl into his head or have him in mine, not after Ty’s reminder. But I was here, and I had to tell him to hang on. I had to find clues to his whereabouts. I had to keep dreaming.
I drew a picture in my head, a willow tree, a weeping willow. “Me.”
The white head rose up, as if looking for someone. My sleeping self clenched her fists against a coming rush of emotion, but the horse was too weak or too forlorn to project his desperation. His eyes shut against the glare from the overhead light bulb. His drained condition was bad, but maybe better for talking than the blinding agony. Maybe we could talk.
We had no language in common. So we’d use images. That was me, right? The Visualizer. I put up the willow tree again in my head, like a slide show. “Willow. Me.”
“H’tah,” came a whisper in my head, with pictures and emotions.
H’tah, not Hetty. Ah. I projected joy, that I knew my friend’s name, that we could communicate. He blew air out his nose. Ty might have known what that meant. I didn’t.
I tried to picture puzzlement, but had to settle on “What happened, H’tah? Where are you? Why can’t you free yourself or call to your mother?”
He laid his head down again. I’d gone too fast, given him too much that he couldn’t understand. Slow down, Willow. Slow down. I was in control. I was strong. I could do this.
I was dreaming.
I didn’t know what I was doing.
Then I noticed one of H’tah’s rear legs was swollen, red and bloodstained. I pictured that leg in my head, and tried to project caring and curiosity.
Now the flood of emotions and images came hurtling at me. A monster! Yellow eyes, noise, terrible smell, speed.
I quickly drew a vehicle. “Car.”
Yes! More images, more terror mixed with pain this time. The metal monster flung H’tah into the trees. The mares disappeared in the sweeping light.
“I couldn’t follow,” I wailed.
“No,” I shouted. “I am not you! I’ll help, but I am not you.” I tried to breathe deeply, calmly, peacefully. I concentrated on feeling that things would get better. “I promise. What next?”
Another monster, two-footed. In coveralls.
So Snake did have H’tah.
A sack over his head, a thunderous noise, speed, smells, roughness, then here. Alone. Abandoned.
“No, do not despair! Even if you do not know where you are, I do.” Damn, I kept forgetting he could not understand English. I mentally drew the closet or stall or wherever H’tah was. Then I put grass outside, and a man in a cowboy hat and me, tearing down the walls, coming to get him. “Tomorrow. I promise.”
He sighed. I hoped he understood my feelings, if not my words.
I played him some of Ty’s chant, restful, peaceful, soothing . . . until it was drowned out by a scratchy humming, heavy footsteps, things being dragged aside, metal rasping.
H’tah started trembling. He lurched to his feet, holding the wounded leg out to the side. He pressed himself against the wood plank so hard I felt my own flesh bruise.
“No, no, baby. Be brave.” In my head, I tried to draw a willow tree between me and a white horse. I couldn’t fill in the drooping branches fast enough to hide the white coat.
Then there was Snake and the smell of alcohol and unwashed body.
“Monster!”
I couldn’t tell if that was H’tah or me.
Snake came in, shined a flashlight in H’tah’s poor eyes, and started shouting: “Cure me, damn it! That’s what you’re supposed to do! Cure the cancer, you bastard.”
H’tah did not understand. I showed him a man with a tumor in his belly. He shook his head. I saw a huge white stallion pressing his forehead to an injured horse, who got up and trotted away.
H’tah couldn’t cure anything. He was too young. The stallion was the only one who could. Pride. Sire.
Snake was furious. He grabbed H’tah’s short mane and shook him.
“NO!” I screamed.
“Cure me!” he shouted.
H’tah fell down, moaning.
Snake reached behind him, to the bucket I hadn’t noticed him bring into the stall. “Maybe this’ll make you try harder!” He pulled out a snake as thick as his wrist, as long as the cell was wide, as black as Snake’s heart. He uncoiled it from his arm and flung it at H’tah’s head.
My head!
“Get up, get up!”
H’tah got his feet under him and backed as far as he could go. The snake hissed and writhed itself into a circle.
“Hetty,” I started to call. But she couldn’t walk. Couldn’t get there. Wasn’t in this part of the dream.
The snake was coming toward H’tah, its mouth open, tongue flicking back and forth, tiny eyes burning into mine. Coming. Toward me.
I knew I was sending my terror to H’tah. I couldn’t help it. “Get up. Trample the evil thing. Use your front legs. Jump on it, H’tah. Jump. It’s a snake!”
I had to help. I kicked my feet, flailed my fists, shrieked. “Snake!”
“Hush, Willow,” Ty said, grabbing at both my hands. “There’s no snake. It’s only a tiny lizard coming out of the leaf mold.”
CHAPTER 23
I WAS GASPING, PANTING, QUIVERING. Ty was wiping blood off his cut lower lip.
“Did I do that?”
“And near broke my toes, stamping on them so hard.”
“It was Snake. He has H’tah. He threw a snake. Snake wants a cure. H’t
ah can’t. Only his sire can. Snake—”
He put a hand over my mouth. I could taste the blood from where he wiped his own lips. “Slow down, Willy. It was a dream, that’s all. A nightmare from the white ladies.”
“No. It was real, it was happening.” I had to sit down again, before my legs gave out. One of the blankets from the sofa was already in a heap on the ground, so I sank onto it, then pulled the other blanket around me against the ice in my blood.
“It was real.” I started to cry. I couldn’t help that, either. Poor H’tah, left with that maniac. And a dead snake. I know it was dead, even if my last image was of the horrid thing still moving, with its head flattened under H’tah’s hoof. I shook at the image, and cried harder, great sobs that bent my spine.
Ty was kneeling beside me, rubbing my back.
Eventually the sobs ended on a hiccup. I straightened and he handed me a handkerchief. Not a tissue, but a real cloth handkerchief. I thanked him and blew my nose. Now I felt almost capable of coherent speech, except I didn’t know what to do with the sodden handkerchief. I kept it wadded in my hand. “Did you say the mares really came?”
“Yeah, just before you started screaming like a banshee.”
I looked past him, to the empty yard. “Did you get to talk to them?”
“There was no time. They vanished when you started yelling about Snake.”
“Not Snake, Fred Sinese. A snake. A big, black monster of a snake with tiny yellow eyes and a forked tongue and—”
He held me close, my head against his chest. “Yeah, sweet pea, I get the picture. Maybe the mares did, too. Horses don’t like snakes much.”
“H’tah didn’t.”
“H’tah?”
“That’s his name, only it’s got a click in it, and it’s attached to images and emotions. There’s a huge white stallion, filled with pride and confidence, but I know it’s still our colt. I think he must be the heir of his herd, the prince. Every time I thought about his name, I felt like bowing to royalty or something, but he’s still a baby.”
“That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, Willy.”
“But it’s their language, that’s how they talk, with pictures and feelings and sounds.” I didn’t say that was how Grant explained it. Not with another man’s hands around me. “I think they learn some of our way with words if they are here long enough.”
“Okay, let’s go on. You saw H’tah, or whatever you call him?”
“Yes. His leg is injured. Maybe that’s why he cannot vanish. Or he’s too young. He couldn’t cure Snake’s cancer, either. Only his sire can.”
Ty’s hat was off, and he ran his hand through his hair. “Damn, Willy, this sounds like one of your stories. How can you know it’s not your imagination speaking?”
“Because I didn’t put the healing magic in my book. Letty, the Froeler girl, the one in the wheelchair, mentioned it for a story she’s writing, but I didn’t use it. And before you’re thinking that somehow I tapped into Letty’s dreams, she’s not from Paumanok Harbor.” Which is to say she’s not skilled the way some of the natives were.
He sat back on his heels. “The curing business is from old myths. The unicorn’s horn was supposed to heal any illness. That’s why they got hunted out of existence, according to ancient legends. The myth still lives, with the unicorn’s horn transposed into a rhino’s horn.”
“I thought that was for impotence.”
“Needs curing, doesn’t it? Ask any man who can’t get his hands on Viagra. The poor rhino’s almost extinct, so a lot of men think it works. Black marketers sell it for other maladies, too. All that information has to be tucked in your mind somewhere. That’s what dreams do, bring up stuff you were thinking about, or things you’ve forgotten.”
“It wasn’t just a dream,” I insisted. “The snake was real.”
“Snakes are common enough in nightmares. A lot of women are terrified of them. Men, too, but without all the sexual connotations.”
I pushed him so hard he nearly toppled over. “What, you think I am a silly old maid, afraid of a man’s penis? And that’s what I dream about at night?”
“Whoa, Willy. I didn’t say any such thing. You might be a tad uptight about—”
“I am not uptight about sex, just because I have scruples. And that was a snake, not a black dick slithering around.”
“And you don’t think you might have been projecting your own fears into the nightmare?”
“It was real, the whole thing. Not Hetty, but the sad little prince losing his will to live, Snake’s desperation, that black serpent. You’ll see when we get to the ranch and find H’tah. There’ll be a dead snake nearby.”
“Then I’ll be sorry I ever doubted you and your dreams. And I don’t really doubt you. I’ve seen enough weird things in this world to believe just about anything. I just had to make sure. If you say it’s real, then it’s real.”
“And I’m not crazy?”
“Darlin’, you’re as sane as any of us, and twice as strong in your mind. How many people could keep themselves apart from what they were dreaming, and not get swallowed up in the terrors? You defended yourself and the colt, and you came back.”
I started shaking again, now that the adrenaline was gone from my blood. The cold remained. I felt sick at leaving poor H’tah behind. “Hold me?”
He did, and the shaking stopped. I let his warmth seep through me. I wasn’t insane. I wasn’t afraid of sex, only of getting used or getting my heart broken. It might be too late. I sniffed again and told him I was sorry about the mares. I knew how much he wanted to see them and talk to them. “Maybe tomorrow night.”
He shook his head no. “I think you sent them to the ranch. Or to look for snakes, anyway. I don’t know how good they are at directions or locations. They could be anywhere, back home maybe.”
“Not without H’tah. If they heard me or saw my dream, they know he is alive and waiting for rescue. They’ll find him now. I hope they get there soon. Maybe they’ll kill that devil and his snakes and free H’tah themselves without waiting for us.”
“Maybe they found the missing son already, thanks to you, and we can all sleep better.”
“But we’ll still go to the ranch in the morning?”
“We’ll go have a talk with that bastard, that’s for sure. If the mares didn’t get him, I will.”
“And we’ll find the dead snake.” And an empty stall.
And it’ll be over. Then Ty’d be gone. We both knew it, knew our time was limited. We both also knew we had something drawing us together. Chemistry, pheromones, or maybe some witchcraft from Grandma Eve and the matchmakers at the Royce Institute. Whatever it was, you could almost reach out and touch the thread tying us together.
“You said something before, about protecting your woman. I’m not your woman, you know.”
He pulled the thread tighter by smoothing my hair back off my face. “You are tonight, and for however long we both want. Not my woman to cook and clean and serve my needs and obey my orders. Not my woman to follow where I lead. But my woman to defend, yes, to cherish, to love.” He pulled the top blanket closer, so we were both cocooned in it. “May I love you tonight? Now? Here?”
This was neither the time nor the place I would have chosen. This was the right man, right now, though. I needed to be wanted, to be held, to be warmed. I needed Ty’s strength and understanding to fill the emptiness left by the dream. I wanted to be filled, by him. He was pure masculinity, and he did not lie. He did not promise tomorrow or forever. Just tonight.
I rubbed my hand on his shoulder, up to the long hair on the back of his neck. That was all the answer he needed. He kissed my eyelids, one after the other, then my ear, nipping at the lobe, breathing at the sensitive shell. Then he kissed my neck while I touched his cheek, his chin, his brow, like a blind person trying to feel the beauty of a sculpture.
He kissed my lips, then cursed. I tasted blood again from where I must have split his lip with my berserker punche
s. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, and kissed his lip as gently as I knew how, then touched the cut with my tongue.
He groaned and rolled us both to the ground, side by side, bodies pressing everywhere for the whole length of us. And he muttered “To hell with the hurt,” and kissed me again, with his tongue and mine exploring, learning, arousing almost past bearing.
I responded like a flower bud to the sun, turning into his kisses, then blossoming to his caresses. I could feel the dew between my thighs. I could feel his wanting me throbbing at my stomach. I needed to be closer, so I pawed at his shirt. It was gone, then my shirt and pants.
The man must have other magic besides horse; he could make clothes disappear with a kiss or two. Before I could feel the cold, he was covering me with his body, with his heat. We were skin to skin now, and I felt his hard flat nipples, his sculpted muscles, a faint line of downy hair that tickled.
There was magic in his words, too. Maybe he was casting a spell with my name, his name, endearments, compliments, encouragement, and sighs. The horse call still reverberated through the night, but his same low, deep voice was telling me how perfect I was, how much he wanted me, how beautiful my breasts were, just the right size for his hands. My skin was like rose petals, my waist the perfect width. I could understand how the horses adored him. I was mesmerized myself, lost in a fog of desire and arousal and expectation. I would have done anything right then, anything but make love to a man wearing boots.
That was cheap. That was for a quickie at a tawdry motel or behind a bar. If tonight was all I was going to have of Tyler Farraday, it was not going to be quick.
“No boots in my bed,” I managed to grumble.
He laughed, and my belly did a flip-flop at the sound.
“This isn’t your bed, darlin’, but anything to oblige my lady.”
My lady. How nice that sounded.
He sat up and tugged on his boots, cursing. I suppose he was used to one of those forked things that hold the heel while you pull your foot out. Or a valet, like the hero of those romance novels, to tug them off. I giggled at the thought.