Lights on the Far Horizon Trilogy

by Stone, Sailor

  He never let her from his sight and then moments later he was to her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her into his arms. She wasn’t breathing and he carried her quickly to shore and laid her on the sand, just past the reach of the waves.

  He began mouth-to-mouth with desperate prayers in his heart and a cold efficiency in his breaths. His only focus was on getting her to breathe again and when she blew water into his mouth he turned her head so she could retch and cough her lungs clean. She did, and with each cough he heard her crying with pain and he knew, while grateful for her breaths of life, that their ordeal wasn’t yet over.

  Tanner began to examine her for wounds and when he saw her foot, swollen, red, and oozing a clear slime, he knew he had to get her help. He looked to the bottom of her foot and saw two small, dark quills stuck deep into her skin.

  Lionfish sting, he said to himself. He knew she was in tremendous pain and he knew also that it would only get worse if he couldn’t get her the antidote.

  He looked around. Not a house in sight.

  Tanner picked her up and began to carry her back to her towel. She threw-up on his chest but he didn’t care, he kept walking and soon he had her lying on her towel.

  She was still out of it and mumbling deep from her throat with pain. Her eyes had yet to open. He found her cover-up and pulled it over her head and down over her arms and her bare breasts.

  He laid her head back and he went to her foot and snatched the quills from her skin in two quick jerks with his fingers. Her eyes came wide open and she screamed but he jumped quickly back to her head and put his arms around her, “Keep calm, Kins. I’ve got you. We’ll get through this together. I know you’re in great pain but I can fix it. I just have to get you off this beach.”

  Tanner looked to the trailhead that led from the beach to the road above and took a deep breath. It would be a long walk carrying her but he knew he could do it; he just hoped she could stand the pain until he was able to get her help.

  He wrapped the towel around her, picked her up in his arms and started for the trail. His feet sunk deep into the sand with each step and while it was hard on his calves he knew that it made for a soft carry back to the road for Kinsey.

  At the top of the trail by the road, Tanner took a look about. There were no cars coming, or even riders on scooters for that matter, and he considered how to keep Kinsey holding on to him as he drove her down the road on his own scooter. There was no way he decided.

  He spied a mailbox by the road, just down from them, but he saw no house to go along with it. Then he saw a foot trail going from the mail box into the thick foliage on the side of the hill. On a hunch he took Kinsey to the foot trail and began to carry her up it, hoping it led to someone’s home.

  He went around two bends and was considering giving up in his search for a home, but now, quite tired from his long walk up the hill, he decided to chance going around one more bend in the path.

  With Kinsey now looking up at him, and, he was sure, not believing who she was looking at, Tanner made it around the bend and saw a small home just up ahead at the end of the trail. He hoisted Kinsey higher in his arms and made for the front door of the home.

  Kinsey came out of the cold, black, wet darkness and vomited. It tasted of saltwater and bile and Kinsey was sure she was waking up in hell itself. Her mind was screaming out in confusion and she felt a deep pain in her head and a fire that burned like hot acid deep inside the bones of her foot and leg.

  Then she thought maybe she was in heaven because she was being carried from the ocean in the arms of the man that she’d do anything for, the man she truly loved.

  She closed her eyes because the only thing that made sense was that she was dreaming. She was in a dream of heaven and a nightmare of hell – both happening at the same time. It was best if she just closed her eyes to all of it. And so that is what she did.

  But then she’d open her eyes and there would be the gorgeous face of her husband, but that made no sense; she’d close her eyes again.

  Finally, though the pain in her foot and leg was almost too much to bear, she decided she could handle it if the man carrying her wasn’t a dream and was, in fact, though she couldn’t believe it to be true, her husband Tanner. She opened her eyes and there he was again, sweat pouring off his brow, as he carried her to wherever he was going with her. She kept her eyes open and she kept looking at him, waiting for him to go poof and vanish – but he never did.

  Tanner knocked loudly on the door of the house and soon enough it was opened by an old woman, a native Bermudian, who stood small and bent from a long and hard life. Tanner figured this out without ever consciously thinking about it.

  “My wife is hurt and I need a pan of very hot water,” he stated with a certain desperation in his voice, “Please, quickly,” he added.

  The woman looked at Kinsey from head to toe and when her eyes made it to Kinsey’s wounded foot, she said, “Ah, the lionfish has got her. Come inside quickly and we will make the water hot. Here put her on the couch and stay; I will be back soon.”

  She turned, and head bent, made her way through a door on the far side of the small room as Tanner carried Kinsey to the couch and put her down.

  “Is this real? Is that you, Tanner?” Kinsey said, looking up to Tanner as he stood above her fidgeting, waiting for the old woman to come back with hot water.

  Tanner turned his eyes from the door and looked down to his wife, “It’s me, Kins, and in just a few moments I promise your foot will start to get better,” Tanner took another look to the door, “I sure wish she’d hurry though.”

  “What’s wrong with me? My head hurts but my foot and leg feel like they have fire inside them.”

  Tanner dropped to his knee and put his hand to Kinsey’s face. He cupped her chin and looked into her eyes. “I know it does,” he ran his fingers through Kinsey’s wet, tangled hair and added, “I had a friend step on a lionfish in the Bahamas a few years ago. He said it felt like he was going to go out of his mind with pain. We took him to a hospital and the intern in the emergency room gave him morphine. It did nothing for the pain and I thought they’d have to chop his foot off or something. Then this nurse walked into his room with a pan of hot water and she placed his foot in the hot water. Within ten minutes he was much better and the pain kept subsiding until it was soon gone. I’d never seen anything work that quick.”

  Tanner took another quick, desperate look to the door, “I wish she’d hurry. I can’t stand seeing you in pain like this.”

  “What’s a lionfish and why are you here?” Kinsey asked.

  If the pain wasn’t so evident on Kinsey’s face as she asked, Tanner would have laughed at the situation. He imagined Kinsey to be almost baffled at his being on that beach, appearing from nowhere, to rescue her.

  Before he could answer, the old woman came, her feet shuffling along the floor as quickly as her legs would allow, into the room carrying a large pan with steam rising from inside its bowl.

  She carried it to the foot of the couch and she laid it quickly on the floor as Tanner helped Kinsey get to a sitting position.

  Tanner put his hands carefully around the oozing, swollen calf of Kinsey’s leg and placed her foot carefully into the pan of hot water.

  For Kinsey, nothing happened and she feared the hot water wouldn’t work to stop the unbearable pain, then, after a few seconds, the pain stopped getting stronger as it had been doing and began to subside.

  Kinsey looked to the old woman. The woman nodded to her and said, “It is getting better for you, no?”

  Kinsey nodded and she could see Tanner’s entire body relax into her answer.

  “I knew it would. The hot water always works for the lionfish sting. We use to not have the lionfish here but it has come and we deal with it. The lionfish is a bad fish, no?” the old woman asked.

  “I’ve never been stung by one,” Tanner answered, “but I watched a friend almost go into convulsions from the pain when he stepped on one. I�
�d never think hot water was the antidote.”

  “It’s getting better by the second. I might live.” Kinsey said.

  “The hot water is a good trick to know. I learned when my son got stung. The doctor put his foot in the hot water and he was better. You will be better, child.”

  The woman looked at Kinsey and Kinsey managed a weak smile in return, “Thank you so much.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Tanner said, “Thank you for opening your door. Many people would have been too scared. You let us in your home when we needed help and I’d like to give you this.” Tanner reached into the back pocket of his board shorts and pulled out a clip with money in it. He peeled off some bills and tried to hand them to the woman.

  The woman put her hands up in protest, “I won’t take your money. I was scared when the lionfish got my boy. I help anyone with the lionfish.”

  Tanner walked over to a small table and put the money on it. “Me too. You helped my wife with her lionfish sting and so I’m making sure you have something for your efforts. You saved her…,” Tanner motioned to Kinsey, “… you saved her from being overwhelmed with a terrible pain. I’m grateful and money isn’t enough to show you my gratitude but it’s all I have to give. You must take it.”

  “Please take it,” Kinsey said from the couch, “I’m feeling so much better.”

  The old woman thought for a moment, “I will take the money for you then.”

  There was a long pause and then Kinsey said to Tanner, “I don’t get what is going on but

  I’m so happy to see you. I’m going to make things right again, Tanner.”

  “Things got right for me when you came back from almost drowning. I don’t know what I’d do if something ever happened to you.”

  “I almost drowned?”

  Tanner shook his head, “You don’t remember because you hit your head. You got knocked out.”

  “I got knocked out?”

  “Let’s just say you’ve had quite an afternoon and leave it at that.”

  “Can I go home then?”

  “Not until I’ve held you for a few days here in Bermuda.”

  “Okay.” Kinsey put her hand to her head. Then the tears started flowing and there was nothing she could do to stop them. When Tanner’s arms wrapped tight and strong around her she began to gush and she cried harder than she thought was possible.

  Tanner put his hand to her wet hair and pressed her face into his chest. The more she cried the more intensely he held her. Then, when he could stand it no longer, he began to kiss her and when she responded with a desperate hunger for his lips, he found himself unable to stop kissing her.

  They’d forgotten all about the kind old woman until they heard her say, “The lionfish makes people do strange things don’t it?”

  24

  Seducing the Seducer

  “How can you dress so much like a man and still manage to look so much like a woman?” Justin asked.

  “It’s a talent. I guess it’s innate, something I was born with.” Sammy, beaming, turned on his toe and pivoted to give Justin, along with Tanner and Kinsey, a good look at his outfit. He was wearing sky blue pants, a bright orange shirt and a thick white belt that matched his shoes and necklace. The necklace featured a giant, polished to a gleaming shine, black shark’s tooth as its centerpiece.

  “I honestly thought, from what you said this morning at breakfast, that you’d show up here in a dress. Yet, here you are in a shirt and pants, just like a man, yet I feel like I’m in the company of a woman. How do you pull that off?”

  Sammy laughed and pulled up the leg of his pants, “It’s all in how you tie it together. See how my belt matches the strip in my socks as well as my necklace…”

  Kinsey interrupted, “We don’t have time for this guys. We’re already very late for this dinner party.” But she felt bad at interrupting Sammy and she added, “And you know I find you resplendent, Sammy? Very handsome.”

  “I do too,” Tanner said, as he stood behind Kinsey, his hand on her shoulder “And you Kinsey, you look resplendent as well. I want you both to be careful and if either of you feel like you need help just flash the light in your phone our way and Justin and I will come running to the ship. We’ll be sitting outside here at the Whitehorse Tavern having our own dinner.”

  “And if you can’t flash us, just scream like bloody hell.” Justin added.

  “Yes, that works too.”

  Kinsey turned to Tanner and reached her arms to his neck and hugged him. “I have to run into the bathroom and see myself in a mirror one more time.”

  “But you look great.”

  “I have too. I want this to work and I have to be perfect.” Kinsey gave Tanner a quick kiss, wishing she could kiss him all night, and then turned and stepped inside the White Horse Tavern to find a restroom.

  As she stepped into the door she heard Justin say to Sammy, “What about you? Don’t you need to freshen-up?” Then she heard Sammy laughing as she closed the door behind her and she missed his reply.

  Kinsey stepped into the bathroom, her mind running at full speed trying to keep up with all that was happening to her on this wild day. She was the only one in the bathroom and her thoughts went back to earlier in the day as she approached the mirror.

  Tanner had used the old woman’s phone to call for a taxi to come and pick them up to take them back to her hotel room. He didn’t trust her to drive a scooter with all she’d just gone through and, to be honest, at that time, she didn’t trust herself either.

  Once back at the hotel room she had a thousand questions and a desperate desire to be held by her husband but Tanner led her to the bed and insisted she lie down and try to take a nap. She’d said there was no way it’d ever happen but he insisted that she close her eyes and try for ten minutes.

  She thought he was crazy to even think she’d nap now that she was finally back with him, but she did as he said and closed her eyes.

  In her dream she found herself on the beach, trying to walk back to her babies as they played in the grass by her hotel. Jessica and Dale were watching over them. Jessica saw Kinsey on the beach and waved her hand for her to come and join them.

  Kinsey stepped from the white sand onto the trail that led to her hotel and the snake came out from the brush and raised up to strike her. It was an enormous snake, just like she remembered it to be, with its coiled symmetry, its tongue flicking in and out as it watched her, and the evil within the shining black of its eyes, terrifying her and she turned to run away.

  She ran for the beach but was stopped by Tanner as he came onto the path. He put his hands to her shoulders and said, “Overcome your guilt. Don’t be afraid.”

  She didn’t understand and she leaned into him and he put his arms around her and whispered, “It’s time to come back to us. The snake will crawl away; step toward it and see.”

  Kinsey knew he was right and she turned back to face the snake. She saw a piece of driftwood, long, strong and thin, on the side of the trail and she picked it up. It felt good in her hand.

  The snake spoke, “You can’t fight me; you belong with me.”

  Kinsey ran toward the snake and raised the club she’d found to strike down the snake. The snake was enormous, rising high above her, its mouth open, fangs exposed, and she swung her club at its angled head as it went to strike her and she cried out in shock as the snake dropped dead at her feet, her club never making contact with its head. The snake fell to the ground and began to wither and shrink; within moments it was too small to see.

  Kinsey turned to Tanner. He was running to her and he scooped her in his arms and he ran her up the path to their children. Tanner dropped Kinsey gently to the grass and both children began to crawl toward her, Bark with a big smile on his face and Jessie saying, “Mama, Mama.”

  When Kinsey opened her eyes Tanner was sitting on the end of the bed looking at her. She looked to the clock and two hours had disappeared from her afternoon.

  She smiled at Tanner and he smiled ba
ck, “I think you were right. I just slept didn’t I?”

  “Oh yeah, a deep, deep sleep, like Bark and Jessie after a long morning of play.”

  Kinsey thought about her dream and felt the sharp pangs of a mother’s ache for her children deep inside her womb, “I miss our babies, Tanner.”

  “I know you do. We’ll be seeing them soon enough. You can sit on the floor and play with them and then feed them and hold them. Do it forever if you want to.”

  Tanner, Kinsey could tell by the way he was looking at her, understood every emotion she was feeling and she knew he was going to make sure she had him at her side to deal with them. She nodded, “Is it too late? Have I broken my marriage to you and have I left my children to grow without me for too long?”

  Tanner slid up on the bed to be closer to Kinsey and ran his fingers through her hair; they made it about an inch before being stopped by tangles. He smiled, “You’re a mess Kinsey, a great salty, sea weedy, wet mess and I can’t wait to take you into the shower with me and clean you up nice. Our marriage isn’t broken and our children love you; they love you unconditionally. Let go of it. Don’t be guilty. Father Ron said you would be full-up with guilt once you started feeling better.”