by Alex Bledsoe
Bliss bit her lip, clenched her fists, and plunged into the forest after her sister and Rob. For a Tufa, the woods were as vast as the seas, and she was looking for a lone man adrift in them. But she had to try. At least she had a pretty good idea where they’d gone.
* * *
Curnen’s grip was as powerful as her sister’s, and Rob barely kept his feet under him as she pulled him through the dark forest. He deflected branches from his face with his free hand and yelled, “Hey, stop! Hey!” His mind flashed to the song Rockhouse had sung on the post office porch: Young women they’ll run / Like hares on the mountain.
Then they burst into the open and her hand slipped away. He almost fell from the loss of momentum.
They’d reached a wide clearing. He looked back, but saw no sign of their passage through the forest.
The air around him felt warmer than at the barn. A stream trickled through the nearby woods, and he heard a glorious chorus of frogs. Above him, the full moon shone down so brightly, it was like silver-tinted daylight. Fireflies drifted through the air, hot gold against cool moonlight.
Curnen watched him silently from the far side of the open space. She swayed on her bare feet, with the same motion as her sister when she sang. Rob got a little nervous, wondering why she’d brought him here. He felt a pang of real panic.
“So, ah … what happens now?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
As she’d done in his dream, Curnen leaped onto him. Her arms and legs wrapped around him, and he sat down heavily under her impact. She pressed her lips against his, and it took all his strength to push her away. He held her by the shoulders, and felt bones and wiry muscle beneath the dress. He wiped her excess spittle from his face and said, “Whoa, no, wait a minute, hold on.”
Her big eyes looked hurt.
“Just—look, can we talk first? Can you talk?”
She looked down and shook her head.
“But you can understand me, right?”
Again she shook her head. Then she laughed, giddy and simian-like. Was she joking, or just insane?
She felt amazingly strong and solid in his arms, and as she wriggled on his lap, he tried to banish his unexpected physical response. “Okay, look, I think you’re very, ah … interesting, but this really isn’t the best way to get a guy to like you.” He brushed some hair out of her face. Her big eyes seemed even larger as the moonlight glinted off them. “And anyway, you don’t know anything about me.”
She touched his chest over his heart, then mimed breaking a stick. Then she put her palm over her own heart.
Rob choked on unexpected emotion. “Well, I can’t argue with that,” he said, his voice ragged.
This girl was as beautiful as her sister, although in a wild way he’d never experienced. And she definitely aroused him. He hadn’t been with anyone since Anna, and now all those denied feelings surged to the surface. His hand shook as he cupped her cheek. “Have you ever really kissed anyone before?”
She ignored the question, nuzzling into his hand. The moonlight shone off her full, moist lips.
The desire had grown too strong to resist. “Okay, just trust me,” he said as he leaned up and kissed her again, with just his lips. She tasted of wild berries, and her breath smelled of fresh apples. When he pulled away, she whimpered very softly.
A tiny rational voice in his mind screamed variations of What the hell are you doing? but he was too entranced to acknowledge it. “Did you like that?” he said, moving his hands to her waist.
She nodded.
“Sometimes when people who really like each other kiss, they touch their tongues together.” It was like explaining something to a child, which was totally at odds with the urgency he felt in his body. “Do you think you might like that?”
She nodded again.
“Okay. Now close your eyes, relax, and do what I do.”
With her eyes closed, her body trembling, she looked impossibly young. But he’d passed the point of resisting his own impulses, and was motivated by both raging lust and overwhelming tenderness as he put his hand on the back of her head, drew her down, and touched his lips to hers. Their mouths opened and she tentatively met his tongue with her own.
Her hands brushed his face with light, fluttering fingertips, careful around his swollen cheek and eyelid. She shivered all over, making faint delicious sighs, and he let his hands move up her slender torso until his thumbs felt the swell of her breasts beneath the old, worn dress. When he stroked her lightly, she moaned into his mouth.
Her kisses turned into little nibbles that covered his chin and cheeks before returning to engulf his mouth. He let her dictate the pace, enjoying the way she delighted in each sensation. When she finally stopped and looked into his eyes, the simplicity of the tenderness he saw in them almost brought him to tears. He’d forgotten that look, and the feelings it inspired. “Hey,” he said hoarsely, not wanting to cry, “maybe we should slow down a li—”
She jumped to her feet and pulled the dress off over her head. Beneath it, she was naked. She tossed it aside and then fell on him again. Straddling his body, she kissed him hard and urgently. His hands slid to her back, down to her hips, then up to her breasts. Her body felt more voluptuous than it had moments earlier; were her breasts now somehow larger? He took off his own shirt, holding her soft, warm, slippery skin against him, feeling her nipples slide deliciously over his chest.
Finally it was too intense for him, and he reached for the clasp of his jeans.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “Other people may have, but I won’t.”
A tear dropped silently from her eye to his cheek.
“That’s not really her, you know,” a voice said from behind them.
18
Curnen leaped off him, and he jumped to his feet. Bliss stood at the edge of the clearing.
Curnen crouched on the grass nearby, clutching the dress against her. Her limbs trembled as she tensed to either flee or attack. She growled.
“She’s making you see what you want to see,” Bliss continued. “We can all do that, to one extent or another. Look at her now.”
He did. Now Curnen was the same girl he’d seen in his room, with long limbs, strange toes, and too-big eyes. In her gaze, he saw only animal wariness.
“The common term is ‘glamour,’” Bliss said.
Rob got to his feet and moved away so he could keep an eye on both women. “Glamour,” he repeated. “Like fairies use?”
“Rob, please, catch a clue here. Remember what I told you before? We were here long before the Europeans, even before the so-called Native Americans. How do you think that can be true?”
“So you’re saying you two are fairies?”
With an impatient sigh, she nodded.
He remembered the dancing teenage girl. “That’s what I saw back at the fire. A fairy.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what all the Tufa are?”
She wanted to slap him. How many ways did he need to hear it? “Yes.” And there it was: the secret known only to the night wind and her riders, spoken plainly in inadequate human words to a man she’d known three whole days. Mandalay and the other First Daughters would be so proud of her.
“But … you drive trucks, and work, and—”
“Yes, I drive a truck, and go to work, and watch TV and worry about the economy and terrorism. We don’t live in a storybook, you know. We live in the world, just like you. We’re just not … of it.”
Curnen, back in her dress, slipped under his arm and pressed possessively against him. He was too startled by all this new information to resist. She reached for his face and tried to turn it down so she could kiss him.
“Curnen!” Bliss scolded. “Stop that. Not now!”
Curnen glared at Bliss and bared her teeth. She released Rob and moved toward her sister, but Bliss wasn’t intimidated. “Don’t mess with me, Curnen. Now, get out of here.”
Curnen stopped, threw back her head, and howled. It was
the same sound Rob had heard that first night outside his room, and again at Doyle’s trailer. This close, it gave him goose bumps.
“Oh, stop it,” Bliss said. She fingered the fabric of the dress. “Whose garbage did you raid to get this, huh?”
Curnen slithered away—no other word described the quick, sinuous motion—and vanished into the darkness.
In the silence, Rob realized he heard nothing except insects and animals—no music, or traffic, or even airplanes overhead. No songs from the barn dance. Could he and Curnen have really run that far? Finally he asked, “So she got that dress from someone’s trash?”
“Yes. She’s mostly like a wild animal. She digs things up, buries things, thinks only in immediate sensation.”
“Because she’s inbred?”
Bliss’s eyes flashed with anger. “No. She’s my baby sister, I helped raise her and she was as normal as anyone once, she just—”
Then suddenly Bliss began to sob. She turned away and leaned against the nearest tree. Just like Rob at the picnic, things she’d kept under tight control burst out with no warning, all the pain and misery and loneliness.
Rob went to her, and she fell into his arms. He felt her tears against his still-bare chest, and she let him hold her up as her legs collapsed. “I’m sorry,” she said between cries, “I’m so sorry. I’m normally tougher than this, I just—”
“Shh, it’s okay,” Rob said. “Cry as long as you need to. You were there for me, I’m here for you.” He looked around the clearing for a sign of Curnen, but the other girl was gone. Above him, several of the kitelike objects flitted across the face of the full moon. The brief glimpse told him nothing, although he swore they had human legs and arms as well as big blurry wings.
Bliss was a dead weight now, her arms around his neck. He lowered her slowly to the ground and knelt beside her, trying to gently disentangle her. “Shh, it’s okay,” he said, stroking her hair. It was soft and deliciously smooth beneath his hand.
“It’s not okay!” she said fiercely, wrenching free to glare at him. “That was once a beautiful girl, with a voice like an angel! Now look at her!”
“Why do you let her live like this?” he asked. “What happened to her?”
“She lives like this because she has to,” Bliss said, wiping furiously at her eyes. “She’s the victim of someone’s hatred, the worst kind of curse.”
“Who?”
Bliss started to answer, but caught herself.
“Rockhouse?” he asked. “She’s got six fingers like he does. Is that who did it?”
She said nothing.
He sprawled back on the grass, wet against his spine, and gazed up at the stars. “Christ on a stick, Bliss. I don’t know what to believe here. You tell me you’re fairies, and that your sister’s cursed. You say I’m not a Tufa, but because someone smacked me in the head, I can see things only a Tufa can see. None of this makes any sense, you know.”
He turned to look at her. She gazed up at the moon, her back to him. Fireflies lazily swarmed around her, as if their light might provide consolation. Her shoulders shook with sobs, but she made no sound.
He got to his feet, stood behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I know you’re upset, and I’m not helping. Why don’t you just take me back to the motel and we’ll call it a night.”
She turned and looked up at him. “No. I need to sing you a song.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s our story, and you deserve to know it.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.” Curnen has claimed you, she wanted to say. If the curse is broken, she’ll be yours. If not, you’ll go down with her now and you don’t even know it. But she only repeated, “Yes, I do.”
She took his hands in hers, closed her eyes, and began:
When these hills were sharp as claws
Raked slow across the sky
We rode the wind that wore them smooth
And came to this place to die.
We thought our time had ended
As it does for all true things
But here we found a new green home
And room to spread our wings.
Oh, time makes men grow sad
And rivers change their ways
But the night wind and her riders
Will ever stay the same.”
She hummed a stanza of the melody before she resumed singing. As if she’d somehow conjured it, the treetops above them began to sway in the breeze. He shivered.
We sailed the slopes and valleys
Played in the hollers and hills
Our songs filled nights with wonder
Our tears the storms fulfilled.
Till men came over the mountains
And brought their changing ways
We loved them back when they loved us
And loved the children that we made.
She looked into his face. Her dark hair fell away from her ivory shoulders. She held his gaze as she sang:
And now we are the same as you
Our blood no longer tells
’Scept on nights when we spread our wings
And ride moonbeams cross the hills.
Now you, dear stranger, know our tale
Even though you don’t believe
So eat our bread and drink our wine
And you may never leave.
They stood quietly facing each other, holding hands. Another verse from that day at the post office went through his mind: Young women they’ll sing / Like birds in the bushes. It was almost as if the song had been a warning about the Overbay sisters.
She looked into his eyes. “So what do you think?”
He searched for the right word. “I’m … enchanted.”
She smiled, leaned closer, and softly, gently kissed him. It went on for a long time. It inspired no sexual passion, just a tenderness that drained away all anger and worry.
Curnen howled far in the distance. Coyotes joined in from all around, a chorus of loneliness counterpointing the lovers’ connection.
“Don’t worry, sister-girl,” she said to the night. “He’s still yours.”
“What do you mean by that?” he said, but a yawn cut him off.
19
It was dark outside when someone knocked on Rob’s door.
He blinked awake. The pressure in his bladder was horrendous. When he got to his feet, every muscle protested the movement, as if he hadn’t moved once during his sleep. “Coming,” he said, his voice raw in his dry throat.
Where the hell was he? The last thing he recalled, he was in the woods, in a clearing, with Bliss Overbay and her sister, Curnen, who had … Wait, what?
He rubbed his eyes and looked around. He was back in his room at the Catamount Corner. How the fuck had he gotten here? He squinted at the clock on the bedstand. The red numbers showed 4:14 A.M.
The knock came again. He opened it, squinting against the light from the hall outside.
Terry Kizer stood there, looking very tired and worried. “Can I come in and talk to you for a second?”
“Sure,” Rob croaked. “’Scuse me for just a minute. Make yourself comfortable.” He went into the bathroom and epically relieved himself. Then he brushed his teeth and drank what seemed like a gallon of water.
“I’ve got to go home to Michigan today,” Kizer said from the room. “I wasn’t prepared for an indefinite stay here. But I’m coming back tomorrow to help with the search.”
“She hasn’t turned up?” Rob asked as he came out of the bathroom.
“No, not a trace,” he said bitterly. “I mean, I can imagine her running off, even shacking up with some other guy for a while just to piss me off. But not without money, or her ID, or any of the stuff she swears she needs before she leaves the house. She’s always thought she was smarter and tougher than everyone else, no matter where we were. So yeah, I think something’s happened to her.”
“What do the cops say?”
He snorted. “The cops think I did it, even if they don’t know what ‘it’ is yet.”
“No, I meant about your leaving. Do they know?”
“Yeah, they know. I’m going to get a lawyer before I come back, that’s for sure.” He handed Rob a folded piece of paper. “This is my phone number and e-mail address. You seem like a decent guy. If anything happens while I’m gone, could you let me know? Please? I somehow doubt the Mayberry Police will go out of their way to tell me anything except my Miranda rights, and then only after they beat the shit out of me.”
“Sure,” Rob replied. He almost blurted out that he’d seen Stella, but stopped himself at the last moment. He didn’t want Kizer running afoul of Rockhouse. Or Bliss. He needed to think much more clearly than he was able to at the moment.
“Thanks,” Terry said. He started to leave, then stopped. “You don’t think I had anything to do with anything, do you?”
“Not a bit,” Rob said honestly.
“Thanks,” he said, sounding genuinely relieved. “Oh, Mrs. Goins asked me to give this to you, since I was coming up.” He handed Rob a folded note.
When Kizer left, Rob sat numbly on the bed. His bones felt rusted and his head thick and cobwebby. He unfolded the note and had to blink several times to focus his eyes.
I’ll call you in the morning. I imagine we have a lot to talk about. Bliss.
She’d drawn a little design next to the message, a symbol he didn’t recognize.
He pocketed the note, took out his guitar, and aimlessly picked the strings, skirting half a dozen melodies before deciding on one:
Oh, time makes men grow sad
And rivers change their ways
But the night wind and her riders
Will ever stay the same
He stopped, shook his head to clear it, and without thinking scratched the itching on the back of his head. He winced as the injury throbbed, and abruptly felt as if a hazy curtain had been drawn away from his eyes. He remembered everything clearly now. And he knew he needed help.
* * *