He nodded.
“Okay, meet us at the General Store, we’ll have ice cream and get reacquainted with everyone.”
“Yeah, okay,” he agreed.
“You too, Dirk. It’ll be a good chance to get to know the jumpers.”
“We’ll be there. We’ll just drop the team off at the stables.” Dirk climbed back into the wagon and picked up the reins.
“Everything okay, Kate?” I touched her elbow and leaned down to look in her face.
“Yeah. Sure.” Overly bright tones pressed through a forced smile. “Come on, let’s catch up.”
Kate and I jogged toward the others. I buried my worries in the pleasure of her hand in mine.
Thirty minutes later, we hurried to lick up our ice cream cones before the hot sun melted them away. Navarro acted out a story about killing a bear on a hunting trip he and his grandson had taken. Kate scrunched her nose when he said ‘grandson.’ It made me chuckle. We looked like teenagers, but the jumps had made us an ancient people.
Kate leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I’m gonna go clean up.” She held up her sticky hands. I caught a whiff of floral shampoo and my heart flipped. I watched her walk back toward the diner, appreciating the utterly feminine sway of her long dark hair and hips. She pranced away, beauty and grace in motion. My pulse raced just watching.
Eunavae caught my focus from across the circle and waggled her black eyebrows at me. When she grinned her eyes disappeared into crescents atop her cheekbones. She’d cut her hair and it hung silky straight, a black frame around her pale amber skin. I just grinned and picked a blade of grass. She looked down at her bony knees and chuckled.
Navarro’s story stole my attention again. The camaraderie of my Jewel City clan warmed my heart. I got caught up in story after story as we reminisced about our hundred and sixty years together, and filled in the holes of the fifty that Eunavae and I had lived away from them.
“Come here, Corey,” Eunavae drew me aside when Jose and Ash started a story we’d all heard a hundred times. “Spill. I want to hear everything.” She crossed her arms and fingered the tattoo on her wrist of a Chinese symbol she said was her mother’s maiden name. The fleur-de-lis symbol on her right wrist was a nod to her father’s French heritage.
“I don’t think I can say much.” Mama Ty had sworn us all to secrecy.
“What? You have to tell me about every moment you two have spent together!” She knotted her fists and planted them on her hips.
She wanted to know about Kate, not our absence or our mission. I laughed from relief and the familiarity of Eunavae in that stance. “She’s—she’s my life, Eunavae.”
She let out a sigh and wrapped her arms around her middle. “More.” She closed her eyes, and the corners of her mouth lifted.
I skipped the kiss-and-tell stuff and opened up to her about the mutual connection and the staggering reunion we shared once Kate and I were back together. She drank in every word as though it were a religious experience. I guess it did seem that way for her. We had spent the last fifty years of our life in an ancient forest with the Darchori Tree Dwellers, stoking the flame of faith that Kate of a Thousand Years would return.
Caitlyn sashayed over and touched Eunavae on the arm. “We’re headed back to the cabin to grill steaks and burgers.” Small groups of the Chartreuse team trickled down the hillside.
“Okay. No chance of a veggie burger, I guess,” Eunavae grumbled.
Caitlyn rolled her eyes at me. “Two hundred starving years of eating what we could find and she comes home a vegan!”
“That’s just the way we ate with the Darchori,” Eunavae objected, turning to follow Caitlyn down the hill. “Coming, Corey?” she called over her shoulder.
“Yeah! I wouldn’t miss Jose’s spicy burgers!” I turned my head and scanned the area. “I’m just gonna go find Kate, then we’ll come.”
“Don’t be too long, Navarro can pack away some red meat.” Caitlyn’s ghetto street cred had matured into poise and confidence in the years she had been married to Navarro on our jump. She and Eunavae waved and jogged down the hill to catch the others.
As soon as they turned, my face fell. Kate had been gone a long time, and worry pounded in my pulse. I checked Ermadean’s Diner, walked through the village and around the Admin Mansion, but found no trace of her. I circled around to the Staying Well, cobbled with stones, and saw Dirk talking to a cute brunette.
“Hey,” he said.
“Have you seen Kate?” I asked him, still swiveling my head in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.
The silent pause caused me to jerk around to look at Dirk.
His face registered hesitancy then he pointed to the cornfield maze. “She went to practice, I think.” He snapped his hand, pantomiming a whip.
Something about Dirk always made me feel like an odd ball when he looked at Kate and me. Even now, just asking about her, made me feel like I had done something horribly wrong. Not quite sure how to act around him, I shifted on my feet. Maybe he didn’t approve of jumpers having relationships with other jumpers.
“Oh. Thanks.” I awkwardly excused myself and then jogged around the fence to the back of the maze wondering what his issue with us could possibly be. I rounded the corner of the last row of corn stalks and skidded to a halt.
Kate had wrapped her whip around Trip, playfully capturing him. They laughed and touched intimately, his hand at her waist, her free hand stroking his cheek. Gazes locked in a private moment, an intense moment that punched me in the gut.
I ducked into the cornfield, embarrassed to have caught them in such an intimate posture. I didn’t want them to see me, to know I saw them, or how hard it hit me. I didn’t want to be this jealous boyfriend, but it knocked the wind out of me when I saw the force of her attraction to Trip. I bent over and steadied myself, hands on my knees.
Kate loves me.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I remembered the love in her expression, the passion of her kiss, the warmth of her words toward me. Kate loved me, this I knew more than anything. She needed something from Trip, but she loved me. I knew that for a fact.
I heard them saunter past the cornfield maze, near me. I stood frozen.
SNAP!
“See? It’s all in the wrist.” Trip’s voice pressed through the stalks. “Here, you try it.”
They paused right in front of me. I felt like an idiot, hiding mere feet away from my girlfriend and my best friend. I still didn’t have my composure and could think of no good way to explain why I hid in the cornfield, so I stayed concealed.
SNAP!
“Yay! That was a good one,” Kate squealed.
“You are a natural at this Kate!”
“I had a good teacher,” she lilted, soft and demure. I grimaced and ground my teeth.
They moved on arm in arm. I stepped out and watched them walk slowly back down the hill toward our old cabin. They never stopped touching one another. Kate bumped his shoulder with hers. He put his arm around her. They held hands for a while. Kate beamed up at him like he the best thing in her world.
Kate loves Trip, too.
I had misjudged their connection. Something deep and lasting had happened between them on that tornado jump. Kate didn’t like to talk about it, and the fear in her eyes when she did broach the subject, made me stop asking questions. I suspected her nightmares still featured that jump over all the others.
Kate! What do you want from him that I cannot give you?
Kate’s vast heart, and her ability to love, enfolded all. Kate and I suffered through so much to be together. We were solid. She was my girlfriend, had declared herself to me. I brought back the memories of the pink clouds in our Scriptorium experience, a thousand years of bliss with my Kate. We had talked and loved for a millennium. No two people on the planet were more bonded than we were. Our love had always been. I wasn’t worried. Nothing could separate us.
It seemed natural that she had a strong connection to Trip. He had been there for her whe
n I couldn’t be, a solid and immovable force in her life. He would risk anything to save her, to protect her on the jumps. That’s what I wanted.
Then why does it hurt so bad?
“[Our] experiment provides strong evidence that a quantum event at one location can affect an event at another location without any obvious mechanism for communication between the two locations.” ~ Alain Aspect, 1982
I WAITED UNTIL they passed the Staying Well, and then jogged to catch up with them. I called out, and Kate turned around. Her face lit up.
“Corey!” She threw her arms around me and planted a kiss on my lips. Where there had been a gaping wound, now thumped a whole heart. Her simple kiss and honest pleasure at seeing me soothed my soul.
“You should have seen my whip-cracking!” She unfurled her whip. “I spent the whole afternoon getting schooled by Trip. He is an amazing teacher, well duh, you know!” Trip and Tara had coached the Keepers in weapons and warfare during our three weeks underground. Their three year Scriptorium experience made them experts in the art of battle.
“She really did get the hang of it. She popped six kernels of corn off of the fence in as many snaps!” Trip raised his eyebrows. “Impressive.”
“Well, let’s see it, then.” I stepped back to give her room. She took three steps forward, shook her hair back and planted her feet, one ahead of the other.
With Kate’s back to us, I ventured a gander at Trip. His smile fell and his face grew somber. He shifted his weight and crossed his arms, locking his gaze on mine. His expression remained neutral, but his eyes held deep pain and regret.
An impossible situation, in that moment when our intents connected, Trip’s pain became my own. I wasn’t the only person suffering. At least Kate chose me. He didn’t even have that satisfaction, only passing touches and lingering glances.
We had talked about this. I wouldn’t force her into a suffocating relationship. She had freedom to come and go between us without fear of retaliation. Her best intuition centered in the unconditional love she had for her friends. Absolutely crucial to the mission, she needed access to everyone. I had made this arrangement fully knowing she loved me, confident enough to share her affections with the whole Keepers team. Even Trip.
I had been arrogant, thinking their connection fragile. It wasn’t, I saw the strength of it in the set of his determined stance. He didn’t want to hurt me, but he resisted the idea of giving her up.
Don’t push me into doing something we will regret, Trip. I clenched my jaw and gave a barely perceptible nod. Then we both turned to watch Kate snapping her whip.
She turned around and held her hands out to her side to take a bow. I cheered, “Bravo, bravo!” I swept her into my arms and spun her in a circle. She staggered when I set her down. I grabbed her hand and we continued down the hill to the feast we could smell already wafting its charbroiled scents in beckoning invitation.
Navarro made it his mission to match us bite for bite. My mouth watered at the familiar spiced seasoning of Jose’s burgers. Joey tried something different with the steak marinade. We laughed until our cheeks were sore, and then lapsed into an easy harmony as night fell and the logs simmered to glowing coals.
Kate’s head rested in my lap. Engrossed in her sleepy eyes and glow of firelight across her flawless face, I had to tear myself away from her beauty when Ash stepped in front of us.
“Will you please honor us once more with a song?” He handed me an exact replica of my guitar from Jewel City.
“How did you get this?”
“I made it.” He beamed, proudly.
I turned it over in my hands and examined the fine workmanship. “This is exactly like mine, Ash!” I strummed a few chords. It thrummed, perfectly tuned. In Jewel City, I had made one just like this to get us through the rough times. We would gather often and sing songs, at first in English, then as their language shifted, I would sing to them in the new tongue.
“I didn’t know you could play.” Kate sat up, interested.
I shrugged. “What do you want to hear?” I asked the family of my heart, looking into all of their eager faces.
They began to call out their favorites. I picked a lively tune and began strumming. Navarro grabbed some spoons and a metal pan and set the pace. We sang a song about Tara and her mighty band of warriors. Then I transitioned into a crisp tavern song. Caitlyn and Eunavae jumped up to dance. When that song ended, they called for another and another. We laughed and sang until our eyes streamed happy tears and our throats ached.
Caught up in the joy of my Jewel City clan, I turned to Kate to find her missing. I scanned the campsite and located her on the porch lying in the hammock with Trip. They swayed back and forth, pinkies linked, talking to Kim Stevens, Mama Ty’s assistant and acting RA of the Chartreuse cabin. She stood in the doorway thrown into silhouette by the cabin light.
It was then that I realized we hadn’t been singing in English.
I looked away and straight into Tara’s knowing eyes. We shared a moment of unspeakable dread. We both quickly turned away from the confirmation of the other’s expression.
Donnie and Mel strode up behind me. “We need to go,” he whispered.
“We have an appointment to keep.” Mel tilted her head toward the lake.
“I think it would be better if we wandered off two at a time,” Donnie murmured. “Less conspicuous.”
On the porch Trip lifted Kate out of the hammock and held onto her just a fraction longer than he needed to before he set her down and took her hand. They hopped down the porch steps and sauntered by the tennis courts toward the lake.
I continued strumming the guitar. Donnie and Mel waited a few moments longer, then nonchalantly walked behind the cabin in the opposite direction of the Scriptorium. Their shadows strobed through the distant pines as they circled around toward the lake a few moments later.
“My fingers are going to bleed! Ash, you’d better spot me.” I handed the instrument over to him and the next song started up. Tara strode into the cabin carrying dirty dishes. I gathered the rest and followed her.
We stood at the kitchen sink side by side and rinsed the dishes. “How do you stand it?” she whispered. “How do you continue on as though nothing is horribly wrong?”
I tapped a cup on the edge of the sink before setting it in the drying rack.
“I need them to be close,” I confessed, realizing that my plan hurt Tara, too. She loved Trip and they had been together, sort of, since they rescued me from the jump of the Darchori Tree Dwellers. “I need to know that he will guard her with his life.”
“You don’t know him very well if you think he would do any less for the rest of us.” She plucked up a dishtowel and dried her hands. “It’s who he is, Corey. He protects.”
She stepped out of the back door and turned to wait for me. I dried my hands, took hers, and we stole off to the lake.
We stood at the bottom of the lake in the Scriptorium entry chamber. Torchlight flickered across our faces as we prepared ourselves for the spiritual journey that would give us vital information for the jumps to come.
“So, how does this work?” I asked Mel. “Are we all considered jumpers or commanders now? Are you three going in too?” I waved my fingers at her, Donnie, and Dirk.
“We are all going to draw a stone. The Scriptorium will decide who goes in and who stays. The ones who go in will be the jumpers, the one who stays will be the Jump Commander.”
It sounded right. Let the One decide.
“Since we are a new team, we may have new team leaders, too,” Dirk explained as he passed the bowl of black water around and we each took a stone. “We pretty much start from scratch here, tonight.”
Team leaders were chosen by the Scriptorium as intuitive members to help guide the team into making decisions based on moral and cognitive matters, rather than survival instincts only. They usually had the ability to see through threats to the heart of the issue that needed to be resolved in the quantum therapy sessio
ns. The Scriptorium chose the first boy and girl of each team to enter the chamber ahead of the others and solidified them as team leaders for the remainder of the stay at Heartwork Village. The last time we descended to this antechamber the Scriptorium chose Kate and me as team leaders of the Chartreuse gang, but this was a different team. With Donnie’s and Mel’s experience, I assumed if they weren’t chosen as jump commander, they would be chosen as team leaders.
I didn’t have time to consider it very long. The stone already glowed warm in my hand. I held it out at the same time Kate held hers out. They both burned with an inner fire. Her mouth hung open, as shocked as I. She gave Mel and Donnie an incredulous look as she passed them to step to me.
“I’m not surprised at all, Kate. We knew you would still be team leader,” Donnie said, and Mel squeezed her arm.
We approached the rock wall as we had before, but this time I looped my belt through hers. She huffed in amusement, and raised her arms to give me room to work, cocking an eyebrow. My heart raced at the thought of another thousand years with her. I tested the buckles, gathered her into my arms, looping my fingers into her belt at her back. She wrapped her slender arms around my waist and pressed her cheek against my chest. We lifted our stones to the cave wall.
Click. We were slurped into the Scriptorium.
“At every junction in the quantum highway there may have been new realities created, but the path that leads to us is clear and unambiguous.” ~ Don Hainesworth, 2013
THE BRIGHT LIGHT faded. I stood alone. Kate absent, not looped to my side. I didn’t have on my jeans and screen tee. I didn’t even have on my shoes. Instead, a loose fitting cotton shirt, bright white, tucked into fine khaki trousers. Barefoot, I stood on a smooth boulder that overlooked a vast field of grain. It arched ripe, ready for harvest. The stalks swayed heavily in the soft breeze.
“Son,” a deep resonating voice spoke, but I heard it deep in my chest and not with my ears.
The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series Page 2