by Sharon
Behind her on the horse's broad back, he rode over gravel paths and starlit grassy slopes to the front gate of Greyling. A fascinated security guard let them out, watching them with benevolent interest, storing the anecdote.
Past the gate lights, the night fell into barbaric darkness, black edged against blacker still. The sky was refracted with brilliant stars over a horizon busy with trees.
In spite of Alan's protests, she was not surprised at the ease with which he'd leaped behind her onto Belle, moving in a single flood of clean motion. Logic might hint that people who lived without physical labor were soft, but she'd already learned during their closeness on the bridge that Alan's muscles had steel. They felt like her father's might, or her brother's, except that Alan's arms had the power to make her feel alive in a way no man's had before. And that was no simple thing to ignore.
They rode for a while in silence, joyously together and alone for once. One mile, maybe two passed before she directed Belle off the shoulder, down the shallow slope of a ditch, and up the steeper rise into a sweep of wooded parkland. Gravity jostled her, tossing her back until she was brought up short by his hard, warm body behind her, and sudden thrilling wings of heat fluttered inside her. Alive.. .so alive…
Alan was forecasting another night of headaches. She was enticingly near, a silhouette picked out in Stardust. He could see the luster of her hair beneath the translucent bonnet. The breeze caught her skirts, making them move up and down his legs in a caress. Above them, the high, parted branches exuded a pleasant coolness, heightening the sensation of warmth he received from her body and the massive Belgian beneath. The lane was a ribbon of starlight, and the horse stretched itself into a canter.
He gently laid his hand on her waist, curving his palm to her shapely flesh, catching the swing of her body elegantly matching the horse's rhythm. So much delight… "Would you be interested in hearing my theory about young women who enjoy spending so much time on horseback?"
She knew him well enough by now to spend a moment or two looking below the surface of that one, innocent though his voice had been. She glanced back at his shadowed features, then looked quickly forward again, swallowing shocked laughter. "I'd better take to riding sidesaddle, then, so you'll have no more grist to make theories of." The hand poised delicately at her side tightened, a brief acknowledging pressure that became softly kneading, and her breath caught, her hands began instinctively to slow Belle, her eyes closed briefly. "Please, Alan…" The touch left her obediently, but then the back of one finger came to rub lightly, comfortingly on her cheek. A small turn of her head and she might have pressed her lips against his hand, she might have learned the texture of the firm, clean-scented skin. She held her breath, concentrating until the temptation was withdrawn, though her heart continued to hammer uncomfortably.
"I'm of two minds deciding how you see me," she said. Holding aside a low-hanging bough, she brought them from the main path into a woodland corridor, where mossy scents made each breath delicious. "Sometimes it seems like you think you have me all figured out: a country mouse, primitive but healthy—"
"Definitely healthy."
She smiled at the provocative tone, and in a moment he prompted, "And other times?"
"At other times you seem to make me up as you go along. David says—"
"What?"
"That you'd like to make me into Polly Bates,"
"No." It would be simpler, perhaps, for him to see her as Polly: Polly, who lived in a context of his design; Polly, whom he could direct, his own invention, his toy. But Susan was so much more. Reared in the lost paradise of Los Angeles, self-contained, and spiritually malnourished in a pop-culture environment he could never have created a character with Susan's contradictions and color and passionate observation of the earth, whose jubilant emotional life challenged and fed limitless inner serenity. "I don't want you to disappear back into my unconscious."
Belle had ambled to a halt. Without the friendly thud of hoofbeats, the forest sounds swelled. Flitting shadows danced on his legs, on her back, on the Belgian's mane. Beyond that, his vision was useless. Ink.
"What's an unconscious?"
The darkest ink. He'd never been anywhere with such a complete absence of light. "The part of your mind that operates without your control."
She paused, seeming to think it over. "I don't have one of those."
Her tone was good-naturedly scoffing. He understood. Another one of his wrong-minded secular concepts. Ordinarily he would have enjoyed jousting the issue with her. Now his city-dweller's paranoia had begun to function. He was not afraid of the dark. In fact, he found it comforting—but within the confines of his own security system.
She sat in silence, waiting for an answer, and when it didn't come she clucked once or twice to the horse, applying the sides of her feet to the great belly, sending her skirts in a flying caress over Alan's lower legs.
The animal trotted into the swallowing darkness. Pebbles scattered; twigs snapped, crackling under the weight of the hoofs.
"It's dark," he said.
She interrupted the pretty tune she was humming under her breath. "Very dark."
"Do you know this area well?"
"I could ride it with a blindfold."
"I'm glad. We seem to be doing the equivalent."
"Don't worry. We haven't far to go. I know a nice spot where we can talk. When I was little we ran all over these woods, playing Anabaptist."
"How do you play Anabaptist?"
"You make teams, half Anabaptists, half persecutors, and the persecutors chase the Anabaptists and torture them. Well, pretend to torture them. That's how it was for us in Europe. Before we were Amish, we were Anabaptists. I had a grandfather, I don't know how many times great, who had his eyes gouged out." She paused and said good-naturedly, "It's better for us in America."
"I'm glad to hear that."
"When you think of it, if we'd met a couple of centuries ago, you'd have likely been tying me to a rack, or something."
He tickled her nape with a tender finger. "I would have tied you real loose."
Her nearness and the forest played with his senses. What a crazy place this was… gnarled blackness and a wizard's cauldron of scent. Her fragrance was more subtle here, a siren's whisper against a dampness that carried the animal tang of the horse and forest humus. No color shone through the absent light, but he could smell green everywhere. The black boughs above them dripped with it. Everywhere he could sense new life and decay. Snow White's forest. What kind of animals hunted in these woods? He could sense them crouching, invisible in the shadows, taking the scent of humans and horse from the air: Is it good to eat? Yes, it's good to eat.
A shriek exploded from the web-work of blackness in front of them.
"What in the name of—"
"Spooky, isn't it?" Her voice was a sudden whisper. "That was two branches scratching against each other."
A breeze licked the treetops, and leaves spoke in different voices, like whispering strangers. The darkness moved in broken quadrants. In the distance an abstract shadow sprang, glinting, on the right.
"What was that!"
"What? Where?" she returned in a quick whisper. "Did you see something?"
"To the right. Something moved behind the trees." Amazing. His pulse had begun to accelerate.
"Not… to the right?" she said in a little voice.
"Yes. Why? What's to the right?"
"Oh—nothing." The little voice tried to sound airy.
His pulse. Oh, his pulse. "Susan—"
"Well, if you must know, it's the…" She swallowed. "It's the swamp. I think I may have lost my way."
"But you just said you could find your way blindfolded."
"I thought I could. Some dead trees have fallen in odd ways since the last time I was here and… I'm not completely certain…" Her voice became even smaller and more anxious. "To be one hundred percent honest, I don't like to go near the swamp at night. There are some strange things th
at—Never mind."
Prickles ascended his spine. "What things?"
Her voice was shaky. "We used to hear this… I don't know. A scream, you might call it. We used to get together on our porch and listen, and in the morning we'd find the tracks of a big animal. At least, it must have been an animal. No one could tell. That's why when I saw Dash made up to be a—" The words had hardly passed her lips when she swung fully around and laid a quivering hand over his mouth.
"What the—"
"Shh!" Her cool, strong fingers pressed more urgently.
Her whisper became an eerie strand of breath. "I saw it too. Oh, Alan…"
He could dimly see the sheen of her fear-widened eyes, and that fear sparked in him a potent instinct of tenderness and protection. It flared in his mind: Women. Night. Attacks that had nothing to do with the supernatural. Swiftly and gently disengaging her fingers, he whispered, "Let's go."
She was perfectly still, a dusky statue. Terror seemed to have suspended her very breath. Then, startlingly, her posture alerted, tensed. One quick, frightened shake of her head and she slid from the horse, a streak of shadow.
"I have to look," came her- soft voice, hoarse and impulsive. She spun in the black daisy of her skirts and vanished into a thicket alive with shadows.
He reacted quickly. He had to. His mind exploded with images of her frightened, injured, harmed She had ran at Dash, instead of away. Whipping off the horse, calling her, running, he had only the muffled crash of her footsteps in the dry leaves to guide him. But it was not quite as dark as he'd thought, after all. Space opened; trees and branches were bold strokes against the sky. And then the forest burst wide into a star-flecked glade.
Her voice streamed back to him like a banner of fear from the dappled shadows. "Alan!" A sepulchral voice rasped through the night air. "It… is… a… werewolf." A small body bent like a witch's emerged from the black shadow of a gnarled oak. Two arms were outstretched in amateurish menace. "You… have… disturbed… its . .-. slumber!"
Her words dissolved into a carol of bright, clear laughter. There must have been something in his face… When she was close enough to see, the laughter doubled in intensity, until she buckled at the waist, hands knit in the lap of her skirts, giving herself up completely to the emotion.
When she could speak, she gasped out, "Have I the knack of it, do you think? Can I scare people? I remembered that you said fear was in the mind—leaping images, imagination, surprise…"
Again, looking up into his face, laughter overtook her.
His own heart rate had barely begun the process of recovery, and there was nothing to do but stand and laugh with her and let his senses absorb her. That laughter. Nothing was held back; there were no inhibitions, only complete release, the way an infant might surrender to tears. Only the healthiest and most unconstrained temperament could have abandoned itself so totally to the moment. He had never laughed that way in his life.
Made silvery in the starlight, she stood upright as the laughs wound down into a graceless pattern of husky coughs. By now his eyes had adjusted to the darkness and he could see her grin and the apology in her eyes. Her shoulders and breathing were relaxed, her posture supple and undefended. Somehow, he could see, scaring him had lowered her guard. She'd liked it. It had confirmed the idea she clung to that he was harmless. Under the wariness, she still possessed the ironclad determination to believe in his essential goodness.
As before, something stirred within him, a fleeting knowledge of his own slain innocence, a wondering pleasure in hers. In twenty-five years, nothing had defiled her charity or destroyed her trust. She was whole.
The claws poised before him again, scratching exuberantly at the fresh night air. Her brow was a happy questioning arch. "Did I give you the willies?"
"I passed into the outer limits of human anguish." He put an overdose of sincerity and enthusiasm into his voice, and she responded with a smile.
"You didn't, I know. But I think you got just a little nervous." She leaned forward and laid her fingers confidingly on his arm. "Do you know why I brought you here?"
"I have dozens of optimistic fantasies."
She sighed. Her fine eyes chided, and then began to sparkle at him. "I brought you to see the stars."
"Stars?"
For Susan, the ticklish feeling persisted. From the first, she'd watched him view the world through a screen of sardonic indifference, the smile self-mocking and aware but distant. Here was something new. An edge was gone. She had just seen, quite clearly, that he had the potential to laugh at himself. He wanted to live with more freedom and more heart. She. could feel it. She could feel the part of him that was wistful, reaching out, wanting to be part of her play but not quite knowing how it was done. An image half-formed in her mind of a crippled child hanging back in the quarantine of his crutches, watching the running, the shouts, the comradeship. Except that Alan was no child.
She knew she should behave more cautiously with him. Her conscience whispered and prodded, but she found it difficult to listen, because even now the fascination of being in his company was dancing throughout her body.
She saw that he looked surprised. Stars? He might well not have realized they were up there. When he gazed up into the magnificence of heaven, it was to check how its brightness registered on his light meter.
"Come with me." She took his hand, leading him to the forest's edge, their footsteps bringing up long crackles from the pillowy dry leaves.
In the meadow she found a patch of new grass, sweet-scented from sunlight, dry from yesterday's breeze, soft from the earth's riches. She sat down in it, then stretched but on her back, her hands crossed behind her head. His shadowed expression wasn't visible above her, but he must be doubtful, she supposed. Flopping full length on the ground was probably not something he was used to doing. So she patted the grass at her side invitingly.
"You'll like it," she said. "It's warm."
He came beside her, his legs graceful and coltish in silhouette, his body brushing soft sounds from the grass.
Above them the sky spread out like a brilliant diadem. She took a deep breath, letting the peace of it drift through her, hoping he could see, could feel the glory of it. Around them the meadow spoke in placid murmurs, in the scent of pasture grass and new clover.
"Look at all those stars," she said presently.
"There are so many of them."
His voice had a dreamy quality that stirred her, and she lowered her own voice to match his mood. "Guess how many."
"Maybe a billion?!"
"Maybe. But not that we can see. On a clear, dark night, with an unaided eye, you're looking at… oh, say, twenty-five hundred stars."
"Is that all? It looks like more." His leg dragged against her as he sat up, gazing skyward as though the thought amazed and stimulated him.
But she hadn't meant to prick his intellectual curiosity. She wanted to give it a rest and let something deeper come forth. "You might get a sore neck, leaning back like that."
Starlight picked out the vigorous lines of his smile. "I'm not used to relaxing."
"I know."
It seemed utterly natural to be here with him, alone on the rim of the universe, restful as she might have felt with a friend, a sister, or brother, though the faint erotic pressure of his thigh against hers reminded her of the dangerous and powerful pull of the land beyond friendship. Feeling his quizzical regard, she gazed up into it, knowing the darkness was hiding the sudden heat in her cheeks, knowing that he would be aware of it anyway.
The experienced eyes searched hers, grew gentle. "You know more than I realized." He settled back beside tier in a fluid motion, folding his hands under his head.
She paused in pleasure, studying him. "The stars have names, like people do. Did you know?"
"I seem to have that fact stored away somewhere." His gaze strayed back to the sky, and for a long time they stared upward together at the serene starlight, drinking its beauty. "Is that the North Star?" H
e pointed.
"No. There. Can you see? It isn't the brightest star-only second magnitude. But it's the only star that's constant. Everything else moves while Polaris makes a nest in the northern sky."
"Where are the planets?"
"In the constellations of the zodiac that ring the earth in a giant band. There's Saturn, in Taurus. The bright yellow spark—there—that's Mars. The earth is passing between it and the sun. Imagine these immense stately bodies drifting through the chill of space. But it has such order. In each season you see a different sky in a cycle without end."
The earth had a rich, licheny scent. Grass tickled their legs and caressed their cheeks.
"I'm looking for the Milky Way," he said.
"In springtime it's low on the horizon, and you can't see it for the ground haze. It'll be back before summer. When I was small my grandmother told me that if I made a friend of the stars I've never want for companions, because they'd be back faithfully year after year."
"Did your grandmother teach you about the stars?"
"My father did some, but mostly it was Grandma." A memory returned, making a warm flash in her heart. "She used to say that if I knew my way around up there, I'd have a head start when I got to heaven."
"Is that where heaven is—up there?" His voice held the gentlest amusement.
"That's where it is. And when I die, I'm going to go up there and fly around until I've seen everything—the gold rings of Saturn, the great comets, the most distant galaxies..."
"It'll be some adventure. Will you have wings?"
"No wings. I won't need wings." Tender blades flickered between her toes as she dug them into the grass. "I'm going to explore one end of the universe to the other and then—"
"What?"
"Then I'll be meeting my grandmother. We have a star all picked out."
Quiet. Then, "Which one?"
"Arcturus. It's in the Herdsman, east some from the Great Bear's nose. This time of year it's the first star of evening, glowing like a marigold. It's one of the brightest stars in the heavens, first magnitude, and there aren't more than fifteen of those."