by Marc Secchia
“Um,” said Zaranna, intelligently.
The Ducati was beautiful. Ridiculously shiny, full of gadgets and gizmos and swept-back lines that had to make grown men faint in ecstasy – a sleek dragon on two wheels. It looked more than ready to assault the road with a primal roar.
“Kai’s a test driver for Ducati. Used to be a professional on the circuit, but she loved tinkering more than riding,” Alex explained, not shedding a great deal more light on the subject.
“We trust you, but my company doesn’t,” Kai added, handing Zaranna a clipboard and pen. “Medieval torture, burning at the stake – that sort of thing, if you breathe a word about this motorbike, alright? Sign here, initial here and … here. Alex, you too. Why aren’t you wearing your leathers? I’ll help you into that jacket, Zees, while your boyfriend gets dressed.”
Wow again. Alex’s dazed look as the words ‘your boyfriend’ socked him between the eyes.
“Um,” she tried again. Honestly?
As Alex disappeared behind the car to do the necessary, Kai smiled with her almond eyes. “Tell you a secret. Just between us girls, he’s totally smitten, and I’m not exactly going out on a limb here when I say I can see why. So today, we’re going to –”
“How do you know Alex?”
Kai made a disgusted noise. “He hasn’t told you, has he? Men! I’m his sister. Half-sister, really, by our father’s second marriage, which sort of happened – okay, I’ll just spill it. He was married to three women at the same time, and a violent alcoholic to boot. Sorry. Weird family history. I usually live in Singapore but I was travelling over this way for work, so I simply had to stop by on the pretence of warming up the supercharger on this baby to see why my normally uncommunicative baby brother had such a severe case of the verbals about you. Savvy?”
“Just about. Thanks, Kai.”
Zaranna did not trust herself to say more, feeling ambushed in more ways than one. Alex sauntered over with a chirpy, ‘What ho, ladies?’ Never had a man looked more edible, she decided, brightening.
Definitely an improvement on the Chicken-Hearted Cheat she had been preparing to dump a few minutes earlier.
He said, “So, Zaranna, I hope you packed extra underwear. We’re going to start you off with a little pillion-ride behind me. See how fast we can shift this baby in a straight line, seeing as we have an entire aerodrome to ourselves this morning. Then, Kai will take you for a proper spin, do a few bends and suchlike. Show you what a real racing driver can do.”
Extra underwear? She raised her chin, eyes flashing. “I can dish out as good as I get, boyfriend.”
* * * *
They had thought it through. Zaranna’s trouser-legs had D-rings sewn into the sides which Kai buckled with short straps to the rear foot-rests, and a sturdy belt linked her and Alex at the waist, aiming to compensate for her weak arms. Her job was to snuggle up and let him do the driving.
Tough ask. Zaranna could definitely snuggle. And she would take Alexander Murray to task later for inventing an excuse to have her put her arms around such a hunk of prime Scottish beefcake. Perhaps that was what he had been hinting at? They had not even kissed, yet. Was she moving too slowly? Being too shy? He was her first serious relationship, and coming right on the heels of her accident … she had not felt ready. Was she now? Her heart throbbed palpably, right up in her throat.
Slightly tinny, Alex’s voice emerged from her helmet loudspeaker. “Your noble steed awaits, Milady.”
“Don’t spare the horses, James,” she teased right back, giving his waist a test-squeeze.
Yum-yum with strawberry sauce and cream slathered on top!
“I’ll break you in gently.” As if she were a filly? Rightly, she should be insulted. “Once down the straight to warm you up, then we’ll whiz back past Kai here, who will be filming us. And I have a bike cam.” He twisted the Ninja’s key, sparking a throaty growl from the engine that communicated right up her spine and set her fight-or-flight response afire. “You are going to love this. Scared?”
“Not yet.”
Alex’s laugh suggested she would be. Wickedly so.
Roar away!
At the far end of the runway, he put out his legs and turned the bike. Zaranna teased, “Why, that was most genteel, sir. I feel safer than a baby in a crib.”
“Barely broke a hundred, since you’re a newbie.” She hissed in irritation, making him laugh. Alex said, “So, want to see what she can do?”
Zaranna’s reply turned into an ungainly yowl as the Kawasaki sprang out of the starting blocks, howling like a rabid beast. The acceleration never let up, a giant fist in her stomach, and she knew that without the belt and straps, Alex would have left her way back there on the tarmac. Vaguely, somewhere, she heard him say, “One hundred,” but she was too busy wailing her little head off. The scenery blurred past. Muffled, the wind’s song played over her helmet. “One hundred and fifty.” Was that Kai? They flashed past before her brain could process the idea. “One seventy. One eighty.”
She started to laugh. He chuckled, “Alright, Beauty. You’re alive.” A massive force thrust her against Alex’s back. He stopped three feet from the end of the runway, and the stillness struck her like a thunderclap.
The laughter burbled, it seemed, from the depths of her soul. He was right. She felt alive. Buzzing. Crazy! “Alex, can we do that again?”
“As you wish, milady.”
Their fastest run was two hundred and sixteen miles per hour, as proven on the bike cam. Then she rode pillion with Kai, who was utterly mad. And brilliant. She burned up the tyres doing smoking circles, showed Zaranna how to corner like a professional, slid the back out, and did both front and back-wheel wheelies at over eighty miles per hour. By the time she was done, Zaranna was exhausted from adrenalin and laughter. Alex and Kai tinkered with the bikes for a while, before Kai’s students for the day began to turn up and she packed away the prototype Ducati faster than a cat pouncing on a mouse.
“Beginners.” Kai rolled her eyes.
Alex took her into York for lunch, then to the theatre to watch the Swan Lake ballet, and positively glowed when Zaranna complimented him enthusiastically on finding the best seats in the house – front and centre, in the disabled section. He held her hand all the way through.
Oh, there may have been some snuggling with intent. But wild horses could not have dragged that truth out of her.
The sun set over the steep, wild dales as they drove north past Leeds and up into the National Park to her home. Zaranna drifted off, worn out and satiated with happiness.
She dreamed.
* * * *
The night teemed with brilliance, a banquet of unexpected splendour blazing so closely overhead, it seemed that she could reach out at a whim and pluck as many stars as she wished from the velvety purple darkness.
Hooves thundered on the hard-packed white sand of Noordhoek beach. Misty Dawn and Zaranna galloped side by side through a warm African night, hooves pounding, the thrill of the run zinging through their veins and making their spirits light. To their right, the white surf broke gently against the broad, unbroken stretch of beach, a constant susurrus, never still, never ceasing. Ahead, deep amethyst clouds bellied against a spectacular night sky in which the stars gleamed with especial brilliance, breathtakingly close. She peered at the clouds. Peculiar – a summertime thunderstorm?
When she looked down, Zaranna saw that each hoof-strike sparked off a glittering constellation of its own, the strange phenomenon of phosphorescent beach sand that she had observed when walking along Noordhoek at dusk with her parents, years before, until she imagined the night sky reflected upon the sand, stars above and below, a disorienting mirror of reality.
Hooves? She shook her strangely long head. Galloping?
She said, “Misty, am I a horse?”
The mare shook out her mane, all gleaming silver filaments, reflecting and winking back the starlight, the subtle play of light hypnotic to the eye. Zaranna felt her powerfu
l body stretch out, the drum-roll of her hoofbeats quickening as if responding to the summons of the magical night, and beside her, Misty Dawn nickered happily.
The horse replied, “At last, Zaranna, we are of one spirit. Have we not dreamed of this day?”
The strangeness was of no consequence. All that mattered was the everlasting gallop. Faster. Faster! Flying across the sand. The pulse of blood in her ears, the crowding of breath into her lungs. Zaranna revelled in her newfound strength. She glanced at the ocean, sensing unexpected movement there. The sea-foam had become snaking lines of tiny white horses, sporting in the water’s edge, snorting and effervescing as they galloped onto the sand and dissolved, only to be swept back into the sea by the returning waters. Tiny equine motes frolicked amongst the starlight, pinging against her forehead with tinkling laughter.
Faster still, their hooves barely beating the night-sky sand, now. Misty Dawn drew her on, onward and upward into the storm; hurtling into the sky, their speed greater than any mortal horse could imagine. Zaranna saw that what she had taken for a storm-front was a great wave of black, grey and dark amethyst horses snorting and tumbling and billowing upon the winds, beasts of wild substance and furious power, their hooves lashing the sky into a turmoil, and she felt a curl of fear clench her gut.
“Onward!” Misty Dawn’s whinny rang above the storm’s swelling roar.
Her cry spurred Zaranna on. Higher. Closing with the storm-steeds. They flew so fast now, a comet-trail of starlight appeared to gush from their hooves, as though the force of their passage disturbed the very light and the enchantment streaming over the world, until the veil became as troubled as the storm, looming ahead, and it seemed that they flew through the rippling mane of a great horse prancing among the stars. The sharp tang of ozone singed her flaring nostrils. Storm. Drops of moisture.
A tang of sulphur …
No! Her stride faltered. No, this was wrong! Beside her, Misty Dawn’s body bulged grotesquely, sprouting wings and claws and a long, scaly neck. Gripped by a power beyond her ken, Zaranna kept charging toward the storm. It was all she could do.
The lava-red beast cracked open its enormous jaw, billowing Dragon fire across her path. Fire which did not burn. Fire which liquefied the air ahead of her, revealing shredded, frantic glimpses of a place beyond her world, a realm seemingly hemmed about by the roiling clouds, half-seen and half-hinted at amidst the tempest. Fire which broke into tatters, incongruously fluttering about in clouds of the carmine-and-yellow butterflies she had noticed before.
The storm broke over her with the force of a tidal wave, drowning out her shrill whinny of terror. Zaranna tumbled away, away, away …
* * * *
Into a kiss.
Zaranna screamed. Bit her lip. Stared up at Alex with huge eyes; he jerked back in shock.
“Great. A kiss makes you scream?”
“I-I … I was dreaming. A nightmare.”
“Obviously, I’m the nightmare,” Alex said tightly. “We’ve arrived. You can escape, lucky you.”
He kicked open his door, swung out, slammed it with a ferocious growl and stalked back to the trailer to fetch her wheelchair. Zaranna slumped in the passenger seat. Freaking dreams! Why was he in such a mood? Why – Rhenduror the Red. The name popped into her mind, as clear as a perfect dawn over the Dales. She must write it in her diary. Maybe she should start recording all her dreams. One day, they might even make sense.
Alex opened her door with exaggerated politeness. “Zars, I’m sorry. I messed up by not telling you about Kai. I will tell you about my family. Promise. Just – I need more time.”
Nodding, Zaranna began to shift across the seat.
“Look, I’m jealous, alright?”
Her head jerked so hard muscular pain shot down her neck. “Jealous?”
“Yes, jealous. You’ve got it so perfect – brother, sister, a real family home that actually has love inside its four walls, and you go to church together on Sundays, for God’s sake! It’s me who’s the stinker, who wants what you have so badly –”
“Perfect? You want what I have?”
Alex groaned in misery. “Oh, for Pete’s sake – that came out so wrong. I meant about your family, not … everything else. Oh, Zara, you don’t want me. My life’s a wreck.”
Before he even began to apologise, she made up her mind. Rising onto her stumps, Zaranna pivoted in the doorway of the car, reached out, and toppled into his arms. She caught Alex’s jacket with a flailing hand and a gasp.
“Zara, what –”
She could not manhandle him with her weak left arm, but her weight yanked Alex’s head down. Unfortunately, her kiss missed. Alex butted her cheek with his forehead.
She cried, “Ouch! What’re you doing?”
“Me? You’re the one who needs to be careful.”
He steadied her with one arm clamped around her upper torso, the other, happily, curved to cup the seat of her biking trousers. Mmm. When she grinned, Alex twitched his hand away as though he had seized a boiling kettle.
She snarled, “Put that hand back, or I swear you’re a dead boyfriend.” Decent lioness impression! Alex’s eyes flew wide. Zaranna drawled, “The other one, buster.”
“Uh … like this?”
Oh yes, he could blush, too. Past his shoulder, Zaranna saw her mother peeking out of the kitchen window. Almost, she lost her nerve. Almost, but not quite. She wound her right arm around Alex’s neck. He had a firm grip of her waist and derriere, drawing their bodies together with only the backrest of her wheelchair separating them. She gazed up into his eyes. Yes, life had stolen quite enough from her. She needed to take something back. Alex had given her a beautiful, memorable day. The best since …
Drawing close enough to feel the warmth of his breath on her lips, she murmured, “I think you’re the one who needs to be careful, Alexander James Murray. Because I require a proper kiss. And I intend to settle for nothing less.”
“Demanding.”
“You’ve no idea.”
Eternity dwelled in the dreams their eyes exchanged.
Zaranna had always wondered what books meant when they said the stars danced, or a kiss could make one lose track of time and cares – even sanity itself. But the way Alex kissed her? It was electric, like tiny shocks of lightning running amok throughout her body, a dizzying celebration of everything vital within a woman. She did not want to stop this feeling, ever.
A moment later, the slate-grey heavens of Yorkshire opened and dumped buckets of freezing rain on their heads.
Cackling madly, Alex whizzed her to the door, barged straight through the kitchen and on into the lounge. Fifty people yelled, “Surprise!”
Chapter 5: When it Rains
Party poppers! Streamers! Silly honking toys and congratulatory confetti! Owner of a new and decidedly tacky party hat, Zaranna stared around her. What? Who were all these people – oh, she knew Nurse Martha, Mrs Dundee, Doctor Jamil and Maxine the Physiotherapist, and Aunt Altosaurus and all her cousins – goodness, the place was crowded. A wide, wood-panelled lounge led through to the dining room and a glass conservatory beyond. The space was packed. She saw Chaplain Murray chatting to a contingent of her school and church friends, Mihret and her parents dressed in traditional white Ethiopian outfits, and Dad’s four brothers raising their glasses from the corner of the dining room, having stationed themselves near the food, their usual strategic choice.
“Er, what’s the occasion?” Zaranna asked.
“You,” said her father.
“But my birthday’s in April.”
“Speech!” Aunt Altosaurus could make herself heard across a concert hall. A couple of rooms presented her no difficulty whatsoever. “Speech!”
A brief ting-ting-ting of glasses later, Zaranna found herself encircled by expectant, grinning faces. And she had no clue what to say. “Thank you for coming?” she ventured. A cheer practically raised the roof. “I’ve no idea what you’re all doing here –” hoots of laughter “–
but I think I can guess.”
“Kiss him again!” yelled Yolanda.
Sisters. Zaranna threw Yols a scowl of colossal filthiness. Alex looked as though he would gladly have melted through the floor and leached away via the sewer system. She grabbed his hand for moral support while the laughter ebbed.
“Since you’re all here,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “I’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for saving my life, or for being part of my life. Mrs Dundee, you fed me up. Chaplain Murray spent many hours talking to me and praying for me. Doctor Jamil fixed up my legs, what was left of them. Alex was the first paramedic on the scene and Mom, you almost killed yourself trying to save me.” Alex squeezed her shoulder as she faltered. Zaranna took a moment to wipe her eyes, but it did not help. “I’m sorry that I don’t know you all, but I do want to. I can say this: I am grateful, deeply grateful, for all you’ve done.”
Her eyes lifted to the rain streaming down the conservatory’s glass panels, thinking of the storm-horses of her dream. She said, “Sometimes in life it rains; other times, the storms roll over us and it is all we can do to survive. Yet I am reminded there is a greater power at work behind our experiences.”
A power which had robbed her of two legs and deposited one Alex in their place? Did she trust such a power to direct her life?
Suddenly, her words neither seemed so clever, nor so heartfelt.
Her father, probably sensitive to her inner turmoil, took over smoothly. “Aye, gratitude fills our hearts. Susan and I would like to express our heartfelt appreciation to everyone present for helping in so many ways – practical and medical, spiritual and financial. We are so thankful for all of you. I’ll ask Chaplain Murray to thank the Most High for our meal. Then, I’ll invite everyone to sit and we’ll ask each person who wishes to, to share what they’ve done for our Zaranna.”