I blushed and enjoyed the prickles of heat as they spread over my cheeks. He rolled onto his back again, and I laid my head on his chest, in the spot I had claimed as mine forever. It was a hard place, set between his ribs and his collarbone, and the muscle that pillowed my cheek was taut and warm. But the heart beneath, the heart I had believed so well protected, was soft and vulnerable. And it belonged to me. I would protect it with my own. The night breeze didn’t bother me. The rustling and secret noises in the trees barely touched me. I was safe and warm with Jesse. I closed my eyes, and Jesse stroked my hair, my cheek, down my neck as I fell asleep again.
I dreamed we walked along the path again, but no threat lurked in the trees. Nothing waited to leap upon us, shoot us, rape us, or beat us to death. It was just Jesse and me. His hand was warm around mine, and he was laughing, telling me something I couldn’t hear in my dream.
But I was distracted. My left shoulder was stiff, which I assumed was from sleeping on the hard ground, and my stomach pain had grown worse. It was higher now, as if I’d damaged something within my chest. I stopped walking, and we both stared at my torso. It slowly turned blue while we watched, as if with a massive, spreading bruise. I collapsed onto my knees and looked up at him, but he was still staring at my stomach. I shook my head, and he frowned at me, not understanding. Then all at once the skin over my ribs began to tear, opening into a yawning wound that seeped, then poured blood. I fell backward, seeing him there, reaching, but never quite getting ahold of me.
Jesse! I screamed, but my voice was lost, drowned in the rush of blood that rose higher around me, rising until I feared it would cover me—
“Adelaide?”
A hand on my shoulder, trying to pull me out, but I’m too heavy. Drowning. Can’t—
“Wake up, Adelaide. You’re at it again,” came Jesse’s voice, soft and sweet in my ear.
Jesse!
“Yeah. It’s me. Wake up, sweet thing. Sounds like you got something you need to tell me.”
CHAPTER 38
From Within
The pain came in waves, an aching pressure becoming a fist, twisting deeper. In my mind, I could see it, something within me that would explode, that would devour me. Thomas Black had broken me. Thomas Black would have his vengeance, take me from Jesse, kill me even after he was dead. Thomas Black, just like Jesse had said, was a bad, bad man.
Jesse tried to question me when I’d awoken, but I could offer little. I told him about my dream, then said, “I’ve seen it, Jesse. I’m broken inside. I’m not going to survive.”
“That’s hogwash,” he said, hoisting me into his arms as if I were a child. The pain shifted and subsided, then came back full force, so that I grasped him tightly around his neck.
“Careful,” he teased. “I can’t run far if you strangle me.”
He ran forever, or so it felt, heading down a separate path from the one we’d been on before. I dimly recognized it as the one from which his father had come. I moaned when the pain caught me, feeling so weak my arms slumped from his neck. He stopped running and laid me on the ground while he caught his breath. I curled around my stomach, aching inside.
“Don’t you do this, Adelaide,” he puffed, frowning down at me. “Don’t you go and do this.”
“Take me to Wah-Li,” I begged. “Or Nechama. They’ll know what to do.”
“No time for witch doctors. No time to get there anyway,” he said. “Doc’ll know.”
“Doc?”
“Yeah. Doc. You’ll like him.”
I lost the rest of the journey, receding to a place where the pain had trouble finding me, hiding behind the sweat of Jesse’s body as he ran. He spoke to me, telling me stories to distract us both, occasionally stopping to catch his breath, but not resting for long. He set me by the riverside and bathed my face, helped me drink the water, but I was weak. Dizzy. Disconnected from my limbs.
“Hang in there, girl. Almost there,” he said at least a dozen times.
I woke to silence. A complete silence. No trees blowing, no water trickling along a pebble-lined edge. No birds or insects. No soothing voice of the man I had come to think of as home.
But pain, oh, that was there, roaring through me like a hurricane. I moaned, pressing my hands against my chest, and the sound brought me help, or what I assumed was help. A tiny, white-haired man stepped close, his hard-soled shoes causing the floorboards to squawk in protest. A strange, deeply creased face appeared, squinting down at me through spectacles badly in need of a cleaning. I watched him from as far away as I could get, clutching the sides of the bed on which I lay, then reverted back to the words I’d said so often in my past: “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me . . .”
“Hello, my dear,” said the man. “I am going to help you.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” I cried.
“Ah, now. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Jesse?”
“Yes, Jesse. Jesse brought you to me. So you see? You have nothing to be afraid of. I will help you.”
His words seemed muffled, far away, and my tongue with them. “Jesse?”
“My name is Doctor Allen. I am an old friend of Jesse’s. He brought you here.”
I was captivated by how his small, pointed beard moved like a trapdoor when he spoke. “Where is he?”
“Out. But don’t worry, my dear. He will be back momentarily. I have sent him to pick up something I thought you might like.”
The stomping of boots in the next room jerked me alert, but Doctor Allen merely patted my wrist. “See now? Here he comes. Ah, Jesse,” he said, turning away from me. “Were you successful in your quest?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jesse. I relaxed, breathing easier again, though the pain seemed to have spread through my ribs as well. Were they broken?
“How’s the patient?”
“Just waking up in time to go to sleep,” the doctor said.
“So you really—”
“Come along, then, Jesse. Let’s not worry the lovely girl. She has enough on her mind. Speaking of which, she’s been asking for you. Seems she’s rather fond of you, my boy. Can’t imagine why.”
Jesse laughed, a sound that was rapidly becoming one of my favourite sounds in the world. It was lower than his regular speaking voice, and rolled gently. Like a purr.
“There she is,” he said, coming to my side. “How are you?”
I smiled, trying to still my quivering chin. I didn’t want to start crying again. God, he must be so tired of seeing it. But I was relieved he was there. As friendly as Doctor Allen seemed, it wasn’t enough.
“What’s going to happen?” I whispered.
“Doc’s gonna fix you like I said he would. Remember that? I told you about him. He’s fixed me up so many times I’ve lost count.” He gazed down at me, golden eyes soft with concern. The roughness of his calloused fingers slid down my cheeks and curled my hair behind my ears. “I ain’t going nowhere, Adelaide. I’ll be right here with you the whole time.”
The monster in my chest twisted. I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Yes, yes. Time to move along, children,” said the doctor. “Jesse, bring me that bottle there, would you? The brown glass. Yes, there. And bring me the honey as well. Thank you, my boy. So excellent to have your assistance. Now, my dear, I suggest you not smell this before swallowing. Just drink quickly. There. There you go. That’s right.”
He touched the bottle to my lips and I choked on the foul stuff, sputtering brown liquid, but he was persistent. “There, there,” he said, his voice calm. “You must drink this down or I will not be able to help you with the pain in your stomach. Jesse? The honey, if you please.”
Jesse pressed a spoon to my lips, sticky with honey. “Try a lick of this, Adelaide. Takes the edge off the other. But you gotta drink it. You’ll get past the taste soon enough.�
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I managed to get it down, swallowing whatever they gave me, alternating between the sweet and the repugnant. After a while, my limbs felt heavier, my stomach pained me less. Or if it didn’t, at least I wasn’t aware of as much. My mind drifted, Jesse’s face faded in and out, and I clung to it, as if he could anchor me with his eyes.
“You sure, Doc? That’s enough?”
“She’s too small for more, dear boy. We shan’t encourage her to expire on my table.”
“But—”
“She feels very little now, but I imagine she will drift further soon.”
And I did. I floated above the bed, around the room, through the meadow that stretched beyond my family’s forlorn little house, listing slightly to one side, like a ship taking on water. Ruth and Maggie and me, skipping through the faded yellow grass. The faraway mountains that held the Cherokee, Wah-Li’s toothless smile and ancient hands, the baskets in her council house with their tightly woven reeds.
Then a burning. A pressure, a pain so sharp I screamed. I was back on the table, in the white room, with the little spectacled man. Jesse’s face loomed just behind, his brow creased with worry. He had grasped my hand to hold it down, and I needed to raise it, to protect myself. But his hand was too strong, my own strength almost gone. I gave up, aware I would either survive by some miracle or I would never see Jesse again.
“There, there,” the doctor said, clearly distracted. “So you see, Jesse, the spleen is located . . .”
CHAPTER 39
What is Right
He pressed, and it came again, the cutting, the burning, and I fled. I dropped into darkness where nothing moved, nothing spoke, nothing existed. Then shadows began to shape from that nothing, rising, taking on the silhouettes of men on the move, an army of hunters. Colour seeped into their features, and I saw they were Indians.
I was there now, close enough to the attackers that I could smell their excitement as it sizzled in their sweat, shone in their copper pores. They yipped in words unfamiliar to me, and I stared, trying to figure out what I was seeing. Who were they? The painted circles around their eyes—one black, one white—gave them an eerie skeletal appearance. Like an army in which each warrior consisted of two halves of a skull, one in the day, one at night. No hair grew on their faces or bodies, but four or five feathers stood in a spray over each head. Not Cherokee. A people I didn’t know. A furious people.
One of the skull faces appeared suddenly, unavoidably, an inch from my own, and though in my head I wanted to scream, to disappear, to fly like a shrieking bird from this place, my hands had other plans. They moved without hesitation to the sides of the painted skin, and my fingers pressed against the hairless temples. The black eyes seared mine, raging at my intrusion, but he was as captive as I.
My mind crept into his as Wah-Li’s had into mine. My questions stretched like tendrils within, dragging through his thoughts, curling around images that threatened to tear me apart. The strange Indians waited on one side, a town of unwitting whites went about their daily lives on the other.
The townfolk would be obliterated. That was what was in this man’s mind, his sole purpose: slaughtering the unsuspecting families in the town below.
I had to get out. I couldn’t stand to learn how this might end. I tried to do as I always had, to shove myself through whatever invisible bonds held me in the dream, pressed me into the boiling reality of the nightmare, but I couldn’t move. No matter how hard I struggled, the medicine I’d been given forced me to remain a prisoner to the devastating images in the man’s brain.
Then the demonic face was gone from before me, and I turned freely to survey my surroundings. About a mile in the distance I recognized the outskirts of New Windsor, the town I had visited in my childhood. We had travelled this way to trade, and the people of the town had treated us as if we were nothing but an irritation. My sisters and I had enjoyed seeing the sights of the town, but the people left us feeling small and unimportant. When our errands had been completed, our dilapidated wagon limped home, carrying our little family and our meagre possessions across the grasslands, then sat in the yard and rotted in the sun until the next trip. We were nothing like the townspeople, and they made sure we knew it.
New Windsor was also the place where I had first seen the men who had stolen my sisters and me from our home. That was the final time we’d gone to town. The men had been leaning against the wall of the blacksmith’s shop, observing our mother and the three of us girls from across the road. A few days after that visit, I saw the same dusty, feral smirks, only then they were inches from my face, contorted with the thrill of destroying my life.
I had no love for New Windsor and its inhabitants.
But in this dream, the people of the town were about to be slaughtered like sheep. Why? Why had I been shown this vision? What was I supposed to do? Maybe it would happen in spite of me, but I knew I couldn’t let it go without doing something. When I turned back to the unknown Indians, Jesse was there. His horse stood beside Soquili’s, and more Cherokee warriors lined up beside them. Their own faces were painted for war, their expressions fierce. The heinous skulls crept closer, and for a moment it seemed Jesse was the only barrier between the savages and the town. But he stayed, staring them down with angry eyes. In the next moment, the enemy was gone. Jesse and Soquili sat quietly, and the town stood undisturbed.
“Jesse!” I screamed, and the dream was over.
Jesse was beside me immediately, taking my hand in his. “What? What is it? Are you all right?”
“They’ll die,” I whispered, then grunted and flung my hand over my body, seeking the source of the pain. From the sensation, I feared my ribs were on fire.
Jesse caught my hand in midair. “Nope, sweetheart. Keep those pretty hands at your sides for now, all right?”
“Hurts!” I managed.
He nodded, but it was a small movement. “I imagine it does. Here’s some water. See how that feels.”
It felt wonderful. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was, but when he poured a few drops in my mouth, the water reached inside and soothed the fire. I sighed, then closed my eyes and opened my mouth, wanting more. He poured a few more drops onto my tongue, but it wasn’t enough.
“Slowly, girl. You gotta go slow.”
“What happened?”
“You’ve been sleepin’ for a couple of days. Doc’s been givin’ you medicine, letting you heal a bit before you woke. He . . . he had to cut you, Adelaide. You had something going on inside that had to come out.”
Cut me? “But—”
“Shh.” He turned away, then tugged a stool over so he could sit beside the bed. I grimaced at the sharp sound as the legs scraped across the floor, but he didn’t notice.
I noticed everything. Mostly the pain. But it was a different kind of pain from before. Sharp, intense, as if my stomach had been removed and shoved back inside. But I didn’t feel as if I might die. The pain wasn’t taking over my entire body like it had been. As if the worst was over. I prayed it was.
“Doc was amazing, Adelaide. Truly,” Jesse said, giving me that lopsided grin. “I’ve never heard of this kind of thing, but Doc seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He gets all the latest journals from the big cities, knows all the newest stuff. He showed me a diagram of what’s under your bones, and told me about the thing that was hurtin’ you.”
He looked at his feet, his frown softened by shame. “Thomas broke somethin’ in you when he hit you. It started bleedin’ inside you, so that’s why you were so weak and hurt so bad. But that thing, well, Doc took it right out.”
I closed my eyes, unable to battle the weight any longer. “So tired.”
“G’nite, sweet girl. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
But the darkness only brought back the creeping Indians, the light of madness in the warrior’s eyes. I burst back into the light, gasping.
&
nbsp; “We have to get them out!”
It took Jesse a couple of seconds to get to me this time. I wondered how long I’d been asleep. But time was running out. I sensed it.
His hand was warm, soothing on my brow. “You’re back. It’s good to see those blue eyes of yours, Adelaide.”
“We have to get the people out.”
He stared at me, his expression blank. “Oh really?”
“They’ll all die.” Frowning, he pulled the stool back and sat beside me. “Now, that’s what you said the last time you woke. What’s this all about?”
“The town. The Indians are going to attack. The town isn’t ready. Oh, it’s awful, Jesse.” I gripped the sides of the bed, needing to sit upright. I had to do something. No one knew but me. “We have to go.”
“No, no, no,” he said gently, uncurling my fingers one by one from the mattress. “Settle back down. You ain’t going nowhere. Doc just did some major surgery on you, and your body won’t be ready for anything for a long while now.”
“Jesse, they’ll all die.”
He crossed his arms. “You had another dream, huh?”
I nodded, then winced as pain broke through my shock. My concern for the town had taken priority at first, but now my body demanded attention.
“They’ll kill the town,” I whispered.
He looked doubtful. “You should think again on this one. Ahtlee and the rest have no fight with these folks.”
“Not the Cherokee.” I squeezed my eyes closed, needing to see them again, but the images were gone. When I looked again, the sun shone directly onto Jesse’s face, turning it a deep orange. Morning sun. Jesse squinted through the light, watching me closely. “Their heads,” I said. “No hair, but four or five feathers straight up. They’d painted circles around their eyes.”
“One black, one white,” he murmured, and I nodded. He saw the images even if I couldn’t. The muscles around Jesse’s mouth tightened, and the soft gold of his eyes sharpened. “Catawba,” he said.
Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) Page 25