Surviving The Tempest: Tempest Tales

by Elsa, Sandra

  “When?” Harrison looked over and smiled, “I promised Frankie, father wouldn’t find out, and we haven’t had it confirmed by a doctor, but we have it on fairly reliable authority that our first child will be born nine months from now, give or take a week.”

  “He won’t hear it from my lips.” His hand went back to his lips as it had when I woke him. “Please don’t think me forward, Harrison. But would it be asking too much to allow your wife to touch me.”

  “You ‘want’ her to touch you?” Incredulity swelled in Harrison’s tone.

  “Yes, if you don’t mind. Just my hand. Nothing more.”

  “You don’t have your gloves, Uncle.”

  “She touched me this morning, or last night. I wish to know if it is possible because she is a null, or if her friend’s magic had something to do with it. I haven’t felt another human’s flesh on my flesh for thirty-five years. I beg this of you.”

  “I have no problem with it, as long as she doesn’t.”

  Jeffrey Drover turned beseeching red eyes on me and I reached out and poked his hand with my index finger. When nothing untoward happened, I wrapped my fingers around his. At the next table over, Lisa stopped eating and stared, as did Annabel.”

  Tears glimmered, without falling, in the corners of Jeffrey’s eyes. He raised my fingers to his lips, and kissed the back of my hand. “Bless you, Francesca Kendrel. I look forward to holding my great niece or nephew, when she is born. If you do not plan to return to District Seven, you must agree to meet me. To have family that I can touch will be a momentous occasion for me.”

  “We’ll keep in contact,” Harrison promised solemnly, almost as emotional as his Uncle.

  “And now, my food is cold, your story is done, and I’m sure you have things to do besides sit here talking to me. He snapped his fingers and the noises of the outside world entered our little part of it. He picked up his food and moved over to sit beside Lisa and Annabel.

  Chapter 32

  I looked over where Dee and Ryan were just finishing their breakfast and we strolled over to join them. “Dee kissed him. How is that possible if he can’t touch people?”

  “His talent was depleted. It’s magic that separates him from the world.”

  “His entire life?”

  “Since he came into his talent. I think he was fourteen.”

  We stopped beside Dee’s table. “Wanna go shopping?”

  “I’m on it, girlfriend. Sit down while we finish here.”

  Ryan nodded at the water. “You have company.”

  I turned to see Poppy and Paul. “Meet you down at the pier when you’re done eating?”

  “Sounds good.”

  Harrison and I strolled toward the pier since we were dressed enough we didn’t plan to swim. I took off my shoes, rolled up my jeans, and dangled my feet in the water. Poppy swam up to bump into them. “Good morning, Poppy.”

  She butted my feet then looked up at me chirruping in a questioning tone. I splashed some water at her and said, “Yes, of course I told him.”

  She swam out ten feet and leaped in the air, coming down with a splash, chittering happily while soaking me. “I’m going shopping, Poppy.” My voice was a bit sharper than I intended and she swam over to my feet wriggling like a dog who’d just done something naughty and was trying to apologize. “Of course I forgive you.”

  Paul laid a hand on her head. “I’m sure she’s not mad at you.” He turned to look at me. “She says she was excited because you understood her.”

  “Sorry to disappoint her, but it was easy to see what was on her mind. I didn’t actually understand her.”

  “Even reading her body language is a big step. We could teach you to speak dolphin, if you’re interested.”

  “Doesn’t seem I need to speak it; just understand it.”

  “The shyer ones don’t understand our language, but as far as Poppy goes, you’re right. Interested in learning?”

  “Sure, why not. Give me something to do while they cluster around Lizzie, because I don’t think I’ll repeat yesterday’s experience.”

  “Great! Meet us out here at one o’clock, and bring your bathing suit. Want me to dry you off?”

  “That’d be great. I’m supposed to go shopping in just a couple minutes.”

  “I can dry you off,” Harrison said.

  “Not like he can. It’s harmless Harrison, watch.”

  Paul stretched a hand up and clamped it over my soaked pants leg. With a flick of his hand, moisture wicked out of my pants and spread in a rainbow arc of water droplets away from the pier. “Did she get your shirt?”

  “Only a couple drops. Nothing you need to come out of the water for.”

  “All right then. Here come your friends. We’ll see you this afternoon.”

  I stood up and turned to where Harrison stood gaping as though he’d never seen me before. “Explain how he did that?”

  “Kind of an offshoot of yesterday’s discussion about birth control and why it can work at all. We’ve come to the conclusion that the nullfield is actually something generated by my body. It isn’t within me, but it completely surrounds me.” I told him all the conclusions we’d drawn yesterday.

  He nodded. “That sounds reasonable. And apparently it works. Did you plan to tell your father?”

  “If our unicorns are going to be nulls, father needs to know as much as we do.”

  “Good. Then I’ll bring them up to speed while you learn to speak dolphin.”

  “Speak what?” Dee’s voice crossed the last ten feet of pier between us.

  “Dolphin.” I grinned and Poppy did a tail stand. “That way she can tell me secrets without alerting the world.”

  Harrison’s arm came around my waist. “I for one am glad she’s bad at keeping secrets.”

  “I’d have told you anyway.”

  “Good, because it crossed my mind that the whole dragon thing was just a distraction to throw me off.”

  “You guys were on a roll, didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “And you don’t think a dragon interrupted?”

  “No. The dragon was something we need in the same way the unicorn is. You were already in that mode of thought and we’re going to go back out to the site in a couple days so I figured I’d crack the whip while you were in the lab.”

  “Swear it wasn’t just a distraction.”

  I kissed him. “I swear. My brain shut down for a couple minutes when Paul told me, but I got over it.”

  Ryan stared at us. “Unicorns?”

  “And dragons,” Harrison said arching his eyebrows.

  “All part of the new world you’re planning on starting.” Ryan was shaking his head. “I was having a hard time believing you could live outside domes and now you throw in unicorns and dragons. You don’t expect me to buy into this fabrication do you?”

  “We’ll show you if you stick around a couple more days,” Harrison told him. “The creatures are going to be recombinant life forms created for specific purposes.”

  “I have the summer months off, so I can do a couple more days,” Ryan said. “But if you’re pulling my leg…”

  “You’ll have a few extra days in Dee’s charming company without her going back to work or arguing against living in District Seven,” I told him. “It’s a win-win. But I begin to think we need to look up Herm’s recipe for a blood oath. We’re involving too many uncommitted people. I think with the oath, I might even trust Leo out there.”

  “Stop!” Dee waved both her hands in front of herself, crossing them back and forth. “Stop. Stop. Stop.” When silence reigned she said, “I think you missed the most important unspoken point in their conversation. Unicorn’s and dragons are all well and good. In fact Frankie and I had the first unicorn discussion, but the pertinent question is what was she distracting Harrison from?”

  Harrison pulled me in front of himself and placed both hands on my stomach.. “From the fact that Poppy informed her, via Paul, that we’re going to be parents.�
�

  Dee beamed.

  Ryan said, “You’re planning to be parents and going to start colonizing outside the domes. What kind of sense does that make?”

  “It wasn’t our plan--”

  “It’s not like you were virgins when you--”

  Dee busted out laughing.

  Ryan snapped his mouth shut and stared at her. “I fail to see what’s funny.”

  “I love you, baby, but you don’t know my girl at all. Until she met tall, blond and god-like, Frankie was a virgin.”

  “A fact you would know if you’d spoken to any of our other friends in the last two days,” Harrison said. “But that wasn’t what caused this. We had magical birth control. It proved effective until my father arrived on scene and we both spent days in and out of consciousness.”

  Ryan shook his head. “You’re accusing your father of sabotaging your birth control? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does if you know that Frankie’s a null. Why do you think he’s backed off and hasn’t tried to drag us home in the last three months?”

  Ryan spun from Dee to me. I felt him cast. Wasn’t sure what he tried to use. Harrison leaned his forehead against the back of my head and dove into null. As he had in the heat of battle, he reached in, snatched, and cast it back at Ryan.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Why don’t you tell us?”

  “Truth spell.” he snapped his mouth closed. His eyes bugged.

  “So tell me, are you interested in being part of our little group?”

  “I’m a schoolteacher. What would I do?”

  “In a couple of years we’ll need teachers, if not sooner.”

  “And until then?”

  “There will be plenty to do, to get this thing up and running.”

  “Let me see if I understand what just happened,” Dee said. “Ryan decided to test if Frankie was a null by throwing a truth spell at her and Harrison snatched it and tossed it back?”

  “Roughly, yeah you nailed it,” I told her.

  “Then let me ask one, were you serious about wanting me to move to District Seven with you?”

  “Yes,” Ryan answered not looking like the question upset him in the least.

  “You want me to give up everything I know and am familiar with, but you’re not willing to do the same.”

  “I am. I just need some reassurance that it’s real. Pretty much like you choosing to ask your first question while I can’t lie.”

  “It’s real that we’re going to do this, and it’s real, there will be children. Quite likely even some that will require teachers before ours will reach that age,” Harrison said.

  “Fine then,” Ryan almost looked cheerful, “count me in for the onsite visit. But I’m not sure I can commit. And you haven’t explained why you believe your father did something to ensure she’d end up pregnant.”

  “Sorry. I’ve lived every moment, of every day, for the past three months, getting to know my wife. I forget how few actually know anything about nulls.” We hopped in our car and Harrison enlightened his friend while we drove across the district to shop in a Zurn’s instead of the tourist trap shops.”

  “So what did Jeffrey have to say?” I asked Dee.

  “Lordy, girlfriend. That man don’t say much, but I like the way he talks. He gave me ten-thousand dollars. Said, in view of the fact he’d never heard of the ability I must be unregistered and he wanted to let me know how much he appreciated me putting myself forward on his behalf. Told him I didn’t do it for him, but for you. He just sorta smiled and asked for my credchip so he could show me his appreciation. Who’d have thought I could take a week off and come out two months ahead on earnings? So are we shopping for anything particular?”

  “Not really. Need groceries, thought I might get a couple pairs of jeans. Figured it’d be something we could do to hang out together. Got a couple hours until my class on dolphin-speak.”

  “There’s another fine man, you’ve collected, girlfriend.”

  “With an equally fine, fiancée.”

  “Don’t act like he’s engaged.”

  “It’s recent, and he’s trying.” I wanted to explain. Didn’t want either my friend or Harrison’s to think there was anything remotely questionable between me and Paul. I couldn’t believe I cared what anybody thought about me. But it wasn’t just me anymore and somewhere along the way Harrison had come to matter considerably.

  We spent the rest of the morning shopping. Dee insisted on buying me something that looked like she would wear to work. It was a red, sparkly, corset and thong. No matter how I protested, she insisted…and I did protest. All the way to the checkout; where we met up with Harrison and Ryan and both men showed their appreciation of what looked to me, to be a torture device. At that point I shut my mouth and hoped Dee would be discreet about who she was purchasing it for.

  Of course, I knew that was a futile hope. Dee shoved it in one of my bags before we left the register. Ryan pushed Harrison’s shoulder and said, “Lucky dog.”

  I shook my head and hurried away from them, cheeks burning. Harrison lengthened his stride until he caught up. “I’ve never asked you to do something you weren’t comfortable with, Frankie. I’m not blind, I know who bought it.”

  This was why I cared if people thought less of him for my actions. He was just so perfect. I wrapped my arm around his waist and leaned into him. “I love you.”

  His arm snaked around my waist and once outside the door he rolled me around and put my back to the wall, leaning in and kissing me with a passion usually reserved for places more private. I didn’t hesitate to return it, even if he thought this was going to end with me in a sparkly red corset.

  Dee broke it up with a tap on his shoulder. “Come on, loverboy. At least take us back to the hotel before you try talking her into it.”

  He smiled over his shoulder at her and said, “That had nothing to do with this.”

  “Then explain that kiss, because damn, ya’ll got me hot and bothered.”

  Harrison turned his hundred watt smile on me. “I’ve given Frankie everything she asked for, and a lot that she hasn’t asked for but I hoped she’d like anyway. We’re even working on creating three new species because she wanted them, and all I had to do was tell her I didn’t expect her to wear a corset for me to get her to say she loves me.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him. “I only asked for two new species. And I figured you knew I loved you.”

  “Girlfriend,” Dee clucked and shook her head, “men can be pretty thick sometimes. When a man loves somebody the way that man loves you--he wants reassurance from time to time that he’s not walking on that rope all alone.”

  “I married him. Gave him my virginity. Turned my life upside-down for him. And now I’ve turned my body into an incubator, for him. How could he doubt that I love him.”

  “Sometimes they just want to hear the words.”

  “Well the only relationship I had with any man before him was that of a friend. He’ll have to be patient while I fumble my way through.”

  “Ya’ll been together over three months, I reckon the man has the patience of a rock.”

  Harrison grinned at Dee as he tugged me away from the wall and wrapped his arm around me. “It’s not that I’m that patient. It’s more like I figured out early in our acquaintance that impatience caused serious backward motion and that patience made the little victories so much sweeter.”

  “I’m having your baby, because I know it’s what you want. You don’t think that says, I love you?”

  “I know it does. But I’d like to believe you’re not dreading having our child.”

  I took my usual route when I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I stayed quiet.

  “Frankie?” Harrison sounded less confident.

  I couldn’t handle the hurt in his tone. “It’s not that I don’t want to give you children…I just can’t picture myself ungainly and fat. Reactions will be slow. From what I know, emotions coul
d be off the chart, out of control, and I’m not always the most rational person alive. We’ve had people gunning for us since we met. I’m not sure either of us can afford the distraction.”

  “Then it’s a good thing Sorenson stayed. We’ll still have somebody around with the skills to keep us alive.”

  “Not every girl goes through all the bad things you hear about pregnancy, girlfriend,” Dee added. “Lot of women breeze through it.”

  “And you know this how?” I asked her.

  She just shook her head and grinned, “Sweetheart, while you’ve been hanging out with the guys pretending you don’t need to know anything about romance and love and babies, I’ve been hanging out with the gals getting an earful every day.”

  “You know me. I never take the easy way. Why would this be any different?”

  “You’ll be fine, girlfriend. There’s not a thing in the world Frankie can’t do, once she sets her mind to it. And it already sounds like you’ve decided to do this.”

  “No turning back now.”

  “Good, because I plan to live vicariously, through you,” Dee laughed. “And don’t you worry about babysitters. You’ll have all you need and then some.”

  Ryan once again looked like he was having doubts. “Guess this means you plan to stay with them no matter what I want?”

  “Sweetheart, I’ve only known you a couple days. I like you, and given the chance, maybe we could go places…” She shook her head. “Frankie and me go way back, and I don’t plan to move to District Seven. Not for anything. Not after having Jordan Drover’s eyes land on me more than once in the past couple days.”

  Ryan pressed his lips together and shifted his gaze between the three of us. Finally he strode out a step ahead of us. He waited at the back door of the car and snatched at the handle the moment the lock clicked open. The ride back to the hotel was silent. Ryan left the moment the car stopped. I stepped out and hugged Dee. “I understand if you want to stay with him.”

  “There are too many fish in the sea to give up a longtime friendship for what could be a short time relationship. He’ll get over it or he won’t.” The look she cast at his retreating back wasn’t as glib as her words. “I need to see what Carol and Hettie have gotten themselves up to these last couple days anyway.”