An Outlaw in Wonderland

by Lori Austin

He glanced in Joe’s direction and stiffened, so she turned her head, too, expecting to see the Kaw with a knife. Instead the man stood, hands empty but clenched, his gaze captured by Ethan’s. For one so stoic, his expression now reflected uncertainty. He was torn, though about what, Annabeth had no idea.

  “Don’t,” Ethan said.

  While Joe had been out retrieving rabbit, Annabeth had retrieved her gun from beneath the mat, and replaced it in her holster. She set her hand on the grip. The two men continued to stare at each other until Joe sighed and headed for the door. Annabeth’s fingers almost slid free. Joe was leaving; that was all. Ethan didn’t want him to, but she wouldn’t mind.

  The Kaw brushed back the tent flap, reaching outside and returning with Ethan’s trousers in one hand. She’d meant to take his clothes to the river and wash them, but she hadn’t had time. She doubted Joe was going to.

  “Joe.” Ethan’s voice was urgent. Why was he so worried about his muddy, sweaty pants?

  Annabeth turned her gaze from the Kaw to her husband. Ethan was not only worried but afraid.

  She drew her gun just as Joe drew his hand from Ethan’s pocket. The sound of the weapon being cocked sliced through the silence.

  “No,” Ethan murmured, though whether he was talking to her or Joe, she couldn’t say.

  The Indian extended his arm, a blue bottle balanced upon his palm. Annabeth accepted the container. As it had no cork, she deduced it was empty. She turned it upside down. Not a single drop fell out.

  Confused, she lifted her eyes. Joe handed her a second bottle.

  That one didn’t have a cork either.

  CHAPTER 24

  The truth dawned on his wife’s face as she stared at the empty bottles.

  “Your pupils,” she murmured. “Sometimes they’re small, other times huge. But not when they should be. I thought I was crazy.” Her laugh sounded that way. “You kept scratching.” She shrugged. “Could have been anything.”

  “Beth,” he began, though what could he say? He didn’t think she wanted to hear that when he had “enough” laudanum, his pupils became too small, and when he didn’t, they grew.

  “You’re too thin, but so am I. Pale. I thought you worked too much. Depressed.” She spread her hands, still holding the empty blue bottles. “Who isn’t? How could I have been so stupid?” Now Ethan laughed, and she glared. “What could possibly be funny?”

  “I have an unquenchable thirst for laudanum, yet you’re the one who’s stupid?”

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Long?” he repeated. She lifted a bottle, tilted her head. “Oh.” Ethan considered. His mind was fuzzy, had been for about . . . “A year?” Definitely hadn’t been two.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You do.” She threw a bottle at the wall. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the wall was made of skin, and it only bounced off and landed harmlessly on the jumble of mats and blankets.

  Ethan cast a quick glance at Joe, but he was gone. Smart man. He returned his gaze to his wife. Her hair seemed to crackle like fire, standing up here and there around her head. Her eyes had gone dark, her face white. She both broke his heart and made it whole. He’d lost, then found her. Now he was about to lose her all over again.

  “Why laudanum?” he asked. “Or why then?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugged. Both questions had the same answer. “Alcohol wasn’t enough.” When her frown deepened, he elaborated. “To make me forget.”

  She lifted her hand, examining the bottle with sudden interest. “This made you forget?”

  “Yes.” At least until it wore off. He tried not to let it.

  Annabeth tilted the bottle to her lips, sucked on the opening, ran her tongue around the edge. If Ethan hadn’t been half dead, those actions might have brought him to life. As it was, they worried him.

  She threw the second bottle at the wall. This one, too, fell harmlessly to the ground. “You drank every drop and left none for me?”

  Memory flickered. Dr. Brookstone had adored Shakespeare. He’d quoted the bard often.

  “Drunk all,” Ethan murmured, “and left no friendly drop to help me after.”

  A chill trailed over him despite the excessive heat from the fire in so small a space. Romeo and Juliet. Doomed if anyone ever had been.

  “Where did you get it?” Annabeth demanded, ignoring his soliloquy.

  “Shakespeare.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “The laudanum.”

  “I made it.” He made all his medicines. He certainly didn’t buy them from a traveling show. Lord knew what those people put in their bottles.

  When she continued to scowl, Ethan elaborated. “Poppies. Dried and crushed. Boiled with alcohol. Some sugar and water.”

  “Where did you learn that?” She jerked her thumb at the tepee flap. “Them?”

  “The Kaw?” he repeated, incredulous.

  “They know more than you think. When you stopped breathing, Joe showed me how to bring you back.”

  There was no way that Ethan knew of to bring someone back if they weren’t breathing. “What are you talking about?”

  She let out an impatient huff and explained tersely what had been done.

  “Fascinating,” he murmured. “I’d heard of something similar in France, but how would—”

  “Not now,” she snapped.

  He nodded, regretted it instantly as pain exploded in his head, but he soldiered on. He certainly couldn’t ask for any laudanum.

  Where had he been? Ah, yes. How he’d learned to turn poppies into peace. “Dr. Brookstone taught me how to make laudanum.”

  “The physician you apprenticed with.”

  He’d told her about the man shortly after they’d met, one of the few times, back then, he’d ever divulged the truth. “He was an apothecary, as well as a physician.”

  “Men were dying in agony at Chimborazo. Dying from agony.” Her eyes darkened with the memory. Ethan could have sworn he heard the screams, and he wasn’t even asleep. “If you knew how to make laudanum, why didn’t you?”

  “You think I purposely withheld the knowledge so that Confederates would suffer? You know me better than that.”

  “Do I?” She bent and picked up one of the empty bottles.

  Anger flared. “There weren’t any poppies.” Her gaze lifted. “Hell, Beth, there was barely any corn, or wheat, or cows. If I’d had poppies, I’d have made laudanum.”

  “Now you do, so you did.”

  He didn’t answer what hadn’t been a question.

  Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the flames. He hadn’t wanted her to know. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know. But, lately, he couldn’t seem to keep secrets like he used to.

  “What on earth possessed you, Ethan?”

  “Despair,” he said simply, and she released a sigh so full of the same, his chest ached.

  She turned the bottle in her hand, and the firelight played across the glass. “You feel like you’re drowning,” she said. “You can’t breathe. It hurts.”

  “What?” he whispered.

  “Everything.”

  “Yes.” Sometimes he swore his blood hurt, his skin, his hair. Not to mention what was left of his soul.

  “You want to die.” She paused, swallowed, closed her eyes, and her fingers clenched on the bottle. “Like he did.”

  She had put his feelings into words. His pain was her pain. She understood. She was the only one who ever could.

  If they’d talked like this then, shared more of themselves than their bodies, maybe everything would have been all right.

  Ethan sighed. Nothing was right—not now, not then. He wasn’t sure it ever could be.

  “Alcohol wasn’t enough,” she murmured.

  “You don’t drink.”

  “I didn’t,” she corrected. “I couldn’t afford to. What if I let something slip?” She lifted the bottle to the light, turned it this way and that. “Drink me,” she whispe
red.

  Ethan’s mouth watered. Would he ever stop craving oblivion?

  “I’d have done anything to forget.” Annabeth continued to stare at the bottle, as if all the answers lay within. If it hadn’t been empty, they might. He’d certainly found answers there, or at least an end to the infernal questions.

  “There were times I rode until I could barely stay on the horse,” she murmured. “It was the only way I could sleep.”

  Until Ethan had tried laudanum, he would work, read, help everyone in town, even lend a hand on the outlying ranches for the same reason.

  “Whiskey until I passed out,” she continued. “But it gave me . . .”

  “Nightmares,” he finished, and she at last stopped looking at the bottle and looked at him.

  “Yes. Worse than anything that had truly happened.”

  He wasn’t certain that was possible.

  She glanced away, swallowed as if she might vomit, then stood and left. Naked beneath the blankets, he was so light-headed, he didn’t think he could stand. He definitely couldn’t run after her.

  He didn’t blame her for going. Not now. Hell, not even then. Still, he thought he might cry when he heard her speak to the Kaw, followed by thuds, rustles, grumbles, and finally, the thunder of hoofbeats fading to a silence so deep, it was unearthly. He’d never felt so weak, so useless, so discarded, disgraced, or deserted.

  The tent flap lifted.

  “You didn’t leave.”

  Her brow wrinkled as she placed a bowl of fresh water at his side. “Where would I go?”

  “After what you’ve seen, heard, learned?” He blew out a long, disgusted breath. “Anywhere but here.”

  “What have I seen or heard or learned that’s worse than what I’ve seen and heard and learned before?”

  “Your husband enjoys a nice bottle of laudanum.”

  “That is new,” she agreed, and pulled a large, lethal blade from her pocket.

  “You don’t need to kill me over it.”

  “I’m going to take out your stitches before they grow into your brain.”

  “With that?” The blade sparkled in the firelight.

  “Yes.” The tip lowered toward his head.

  Ethan tried to pull back, but he was already flat on the ground. “Disinfected?” he asked.

  “Used Joe’s whiskey.”

  “Where the hell did he get whiskey?” The army frowned on the Indians having alcohol. “He could get into trouble.”

  “He doesn’t have it anymore.”

  Joe was a good man, but he was not what Ethan would call a charitable fellow. “What did you give him for it?”

  “Your horse.” She flicked her wrist. A stitch popped. Didn’t hurt, but he didn’t much like it, either.

  “How will we get back?”

  Flick. Pop.

  She shrugged.

  Flick. Pop. Flick. Pop.

  “Wait.” He shifted his head to the side, lifted a trembling hand to stop her. He couldn’t think when she was doing that.

  Her mouth twisted; her fingers tightened on the knife, which she continued to hold poised over his face. “We aren’t going anywhere until you’re better.”

  Flick. Pop.

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be . . . better.” The word came off his tongue as if it were foreign. “I’m weak.”

  Her eyes found his. Already dark blue, in the firelight they shone like night. “If I’d had a way to make the pain stop, to forget . . .” She paused, but Ethan heard her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them.

  Forget him. Forget you. Forget us.

  “I would have.”

  “I don’t—” he began.

  “The lies, the pain, the things we saw.”

  She laid down the knife, soaked a bit of cloth in the water, then pressed it to his forehead. From the sting, there was more than water in the bowl.

  “The things I did,” she whispered.

  “What did you do?”

  Annabeth shoved the cloth into the bowl, became inordinately fascinated with rinsing it out. “Things I never want anyone to know.”

  “Me too.” He set his hand on her knee, waited until her gaze returned to his. “But you do.”

  “This?” She reached into her pocket and withdrew an empty blue bottle. “Oh, Ethan.” Her eyes left his, and the expression that cast over her face was infinitely sad. “This is nothing.”

  • • •

  The night passed—slowly, as nights often did.

  Though Ethan slept, his eyelids twitched. His hands moved restlessly; his legs jerked. Annabeth tugged the blanket over his ankles. He would only kick it off again, but she needed something to do.

  Just like a broken heart, the only treatment for laudanum dependency was time. Would the cure actually work in his case?

  Annabeth bathed Ethan with cool, fresh water. He thrashed and muttered and called her name. If she hadn’t understood why Cora hated her before, she certainly could now. If Ethan had spoken the other woman’s name, she wasn’t sure what she might have done.

  As it was, she whispered, “I’m here,” and “It’s all right,” even though she wouldn’t remain and it wasn’t all right. She had to swallow the tickle of tears at the lies, but they were what she did best, so she used them.

  In the darkest hour that preceded dawn, Ethan stiffened and jerked; his eyes rolled back as his jaw and neck tightened. Fearful that he might again have paroxysms, Annabeth slapped his cheeks and shouted, “Ethan!”

  “Beth,” he answered, but he didn’t seem to know she was there. “Thunder,” he said.

  She listened, heard nothing, not even the rain.

  “Mikey.” She stilled. “Need . . . you. Need you, Beth. Hold me.”

  She shivered as if a cool storm wind had blown across the prairie, across her. He was delirious or dreaming, perhaps both. When he reached for her, his eyes still closed, she wanted to skitter back, but she was frozen—the past and present shimmering together, coming apart. Like them.

  His fingers circled her wrist. He was so damn cold, he made her shudder. Her other hand landed on top of his. Could her warmth seep into him? Heal him? Comfort him?

  Comfort her?

  She removed her clothes—heat was best imparted skin to skin—then gathered him close and pulled the blanket over them both. But he was still so damn cold. She tightened her arms and held on.

  He muttered and moaned; she could only understand a word here and there. But she didn’t need many to piece together what he dreamed. She’d been there, too.

  That night they had made their son.

  In the dark, with only the shadow of the moon visible through the smoke hole above, Annabeth listened to Ethan ramble. But eventually, he warmed and then quieted.

  Together, they slept, and she dreamed of a past she had tried to forget and a future that had never been. She awoke when he kissed her. Like the girl in the fairy tale—which one was it?

  All of them, or at least the ones her mother had shared. Mama had recounted fables—“Androcles and the Lion,” “The Goose with the Golden Egg,” “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing”—to all of the Phelan children. But the boys had not been interested in any tales of girls, so Mama had shared those with her daughter alone. In every one, the princess, the pauper, the girl in rags who swept the fireplace would fall asleep, or worse, then be awoken by the kiss of her one true love. In the stories, true love solved everything. In life, the same could not be said.

  As Ethan’s mouth took Annabeth’s, the past, the present, the dreams merged. When he slipped inside of her, she had a moment to wonder. Was she still dreaming? Was Ethan even here? Was she?

  Though she was tempted to open her eyes, to make certain the tepee still ranged above them, instead she squeezed them shut. What if she saw the stars, a campfire, herself alone? Or worse, what if she saw a cave, a cabin, a rock face behind the outline of a man who was not him?

  But she tasted Ethan, smelled him, too. Her palms stroked a back as famili
ar as her own. The body above and within her was the first one she’d ever known. The only one she wanted to know.

  Maybe she was dreaming. If so, she never wanted to wake up, and therefore she opened her mouth, welcomed him in, just as she wrapped her legs around his and held on.

  He moved slowly. No rush as there’d been that first time. Even then, he’d been gentle and sweet. After the initial pain—not much, not really, as pain went—the world had narrowed to the place where they’d become one.

  As it did now. In. Out. Deep. Shallow. Slide. Retreat. Never, never end. Because when it did, she would have to remember. And remembering always, always hurt.

  Tears seeped from her eyes, dampened her hair. Not from pain or sadness, but from the beauty of what they shared—a pure and eternal rightness she had once believed in with all of her heart. She had been such a fool. Nothing was pure or right. Least of all her. Not then. Not now. Not ever.

  But she would worry about purity and rightness, truth, lies, reality, dreams later. Now she gave herself over to the wonder of Ethan. His kiss, his touch, his body within and above her—both familiar and new. Her husband. The man she’d loved, lost, and found again. The man she would love and leave once more.

  She clenched around him, pulled him close, surrounded him as he surrounded her. He kissed her freckles the way he always used to, sipped her tears, nuzzled her neck, then her breast. Her fingers stroked his back, his buttocks, his arms, tracing the bones, the muscles—relearning, remembering. His hair so soft, his chest so hard, everything about him fascinated her.

  He stilled, and she at last opened her eyes. Did the wonder in his mirror the wonder in hers? She felt as if they were in a room made of glass, reflecting the past into the present. Joining them forever, even as they shattered apart.

  Later, when they lay side by side, legs tangled, fingers too, she stared at the conical twist of the hides into the tepee above them as she realized what she hadn’t before.

  She never had been anyone else’s. Not the way that she’d been his.

  CHAPTER 25

  Time passed in the manner that time often did. Slow when she wanted it to be fast.

  Ethan trembled, delirious. He spewed out whatever he took in. He spoke of Mikey, of Michael, of Fedya. The war. His patients. The dying. The dead. His eyes rolled back, and he jerked, choked, breathed too fast, then didn’t breathe at all. She smacked him in the chest, demanded that he awaken, then kissed him like the prince kissed the princess, breathed her own life into him and, at last, he gasped.