* * * *
“How long do you think they’ve been gone?” Ethan asked Tansy.
“A long time, too long,” Tansy said while stroking Lucky’s head.
Both Ethan and Tansy sat by one of the fires sipping tea laced with brandy. They both needed something to calm their nerves. Darkness was falling. Emmy was bathing Michaela and Shanie was spinning a tale of knights slaying dragons to Ricky who lay spellbound.
“You’ve been quiet all day,” Ethan casually mentioned.
“I’ve been a bit preoccupied.”
“About Clint?”
Tansy looked over at him with an assessing glance wondering how much her facial expressions gave away. She had been thinking about Clint for the most part of the day. Tansy had been taken by surprise by Michaela referring to him as daddy. But after pondering the situation she realized it wasn’t as strange as it appeared. Michaela often heard Ricky refer to Ethan as daddy; she must have remembered a time when she had a man in her life that she called daddy.
Ethan tucked Ricky in, so did Clint with Mike. Ethan told stories and gave cuddles to Ricky, so too did Clint with Michaela. Clint made Michaela feel safe. Clint also spent many nights beside Tansy who lay on a bear rug beside Michaela’s bed. It was perfectly normal. Yet why did it make Tansy feel so...confused?
“I don’t know what to think,” Tansy told Ethan.
Ethan took in her distraught appearance; her face was pale and worried. He knew it could be due to the fact the others hadn’t returned, but he didn’t think that was all of it. He realized there was a larger underlying concern.
“You like Clint?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Maybe,” Ethan began, taking a more direct approach, “there’s something else that’s bothering you.”
Tansy stared into her empty cup. She was fraught with indecision. She looked up at Ethan, her eyes such a mixture of confusion and pain he put his cup down and was moved to put his arms around her.
“When I met him,” Tansy began hesitantly, “I was so afraid of him and Cord and Randy. Clint was never mean to us; he saved us and took care of us. But now, here we are in this place and we really don’t have anything in common except such loss,” Tansy stopped and took a breath shuddering, squeezing her eyes tight. Ethan urged her to continue and she began again.
“The whole world is different. My whole world. My old life vanished overnight. My husband is gone. We had been so hungry, so lost and alone, so terribly frightened. Then Clint was there, like a warm light of heaven at the end of a dreary tunnel of hell. Clint makes me laugh, he makes me feel safe, he loves my children and cares for them; he cares for me.” Tansy stopped abruptly.
“But something about him is bothering you.”
“Yes.”
“What? Please tell me.”
“I know he would’ve defended Michaela and me against Cord and Randy. But he wouldn’t have defended my other two against his friends, if other circumstances hadn’t arisen and an agreement had been made stemming from an altercation. I don’t know if I can get past that. I don’t know if I want to. I know things are different now, that you and Aidan would stop Cord if he tried to...” She cried, burying her head against Ethan’s chest. “Oh, Ethan, how can people be so uncaring and cruel? Why is it an unimaginable situation brings out not only the best in people but also the worst in people?”
Ethan held her, at a loss for words while she clung to him. He’d seen Clint ignore Cord’s advances to Emmy and had watched Aidan come to her defense as well as Tansy and himself at times. Ethan stopped Cord from terrorizing Shanie when Tansy wasn’t close by, but Clint had been. Clint hadn’t come to Shanie’s defense but neither did he to Cord’s. Ethan understood her apprehension and indecisiveness.
“Tansy, just because Michaela has become attached doesn’t mean you have to. You don’t need to make any decisions about any relationship unless you’re certain.”
Tansy looked up at him, eyes bright with unshed tears. “But I don’t want to be alone out here. This awful loneliness is unbearable at times. My heart feels so lost. I miss Shane so much. I get so afraid sometimes, no matter how strong I try to be for my children. My emotions feel so bruised, battered and confused. I wake in the night afraid, wondering, what is this place? How did I get here and where am I even going? I almost cry out before I realize no one is listening. He’s gone, Shane is gone. I’m alone.”
“You’re not alone, a cry in the night would be answered, sweetheart. Others would be more than willing to defend all of your children.”
“Like you?”
“Yes, like me. You’re a wonderful mother, you’re amazing with Ricky, you saved his life and mine. You take care of him as if he’s your own and though your girls are beautiful, they are to me just that...girls.”
“Thank you.”
Tansy kissed his cheek, then lingered long enough to press her forehead to his neck, then rose to check on Ricky who was sleeping. Michaela climbed into her bed clean and smelling sweet as Tansy had included petal water from peonies in her last batch of soap. Tansy tucked her youngest into bed and sang her a soft lullaby.
The day ended as everyone in the mine took their places. Shanie and Emmy decided on first watch. Tansy curled up on her bed and cast a quick glance in Ethan’s direction. He was also preparing to get some sleep, but both were reluctant to drift into slumber. One thing was certain, none who occupied the mine knew what tomorrow would bring, and none outside the mine were certain if tomorrow would even come for them.
* * * *
Morning came dull and overcast. Thick gray clouds rolled aimlessly amidst the turbulent skies. The sun remained elusive. A sense of foreboding hung in the air. All three men trudged wearily through the brush until they neared the lake. They had backtracked all the way into town. Then, tracking the dragon from where Clint and Aidan told Cord they had last seen it, they discovered a cave.
After approaching with caution, they entered and were aghast at the sight. A few half-eaten bodies in certain stages of decomposition littered the cave floor. Amidst the bodies lay the Komodo dragon. It had died. It became apparent Clint’s hunting knife had found a vital organ.
After putting a piece of soft leather up to his face Clint retrieved his knife and the men left. By then it was late and they dared not risk returning to the mine in the dark. They built up a good fire near a large overhanging cluster of rocks but were fearful of the ever present danger of the storms.
“Look,” Cord said, pointing off into the distance.
Across the lake they saw five elephants washing. A young one hovered near its protective mother by the shoreline. A large bull, off to their side, rocked back and forth waving large ears.
“Well what’d you think ’bout that?” Clint asked in awe.
“I’m wondering if you can eat elephants,” Cord said. None of the men had eaten since yesterday, the food they had packed gone the previous night.
“We might find out one day if we get desperate enough,” Aidan said grimly.
“That’d be a shame,” Clint said with some sadness.
“I bet they’re really on their way to becoming extinct,” Aidan mussed.
“Well, hell,” Cord said, laughing, “I think humans are topping the endangered species list right now.”
They entered the lake and bathed off the dirt and grime of the day before. It had been a tedious exploration of woods and the surrounding area of the mine even before they had ventured into town.
The men looked up as the elephants, now agitated, began a hasty retreat away from the water, obviously in search of safer ground. “I wonder what their problem is?” Cord mused, while donning a pair of buckskin pants Tansy had made him.
“’Parently when elephants run it’s ’cause a storm’s begun,” Clint said, his gaze up to the sky. The others looked up at the ominous descent as black clouds rolled in replacing the gray. A storm was upon them, the wind picking up. A large funnel cloud appeared before them without warnin
g, breaking through the trees moving like an out-of-control locomotive in their direction.
“Let’s move!” Aidan bellowed, while quickly thrusting his legs into his pants.
He grabbed up his vest-like shirt from a nearby rock that had been tailored with numerous convenient pockets, and soon all three were racing to find cover. The storm howled in, soon followed by the tornado as the men ran desperate to find a cave, a hole, an indentation. Anything to offer some sort of protection. Mother Nature came at them fast and furious as the wind whipped their hair into their eyes and tossed sticks into the air and against their bodies.
Old leaves from the bottom of the forest floor took flight in a life of their own, dancing haphazard in the stinging wind. The day turned a foreboding orange as baseball-sized hail began to pelt their unprotected bodies and the foliage around them. The volume of deafening noise grew, the sound earth shattering.
“Over here,” Clint screamed above the noise; he tossed his hand up in time to fend off a small flying limb, as leaves paraded wildly in the howling wind.
The three had just enough time to throw themselves into a cellar as the tornado thundered in around them. Slamming closed the rickety wooden door behind them they huddled back into a far corner against an ancient stone wall. Closely pressed together they waited.
“Damn that was close,” Cord muttered, he ran a hand absently along his shoulder where the hail had hit, a stinging sensation lingered and he felt a sticky wetness he could only assume was blood.
Most definitely luck had been smiling on them. Clint had been fortunate to see the remains of the house close by. The strip of bright red sheet flapping wildly in the wind had caught his eye. It was one of the indicators they used for marking safe hideaways that thankfully hadn’t been torn away during a previous storm.
“I hope everyone in the mine is okay,” Aidan voiced. Clint looked at him anxiously, but the cellar was pitch black. Aidan could hear in Clint’s voice what he could not see on his face.
“You think Ethan got ’em in okay?”
“Don’t worry, buddy. Ole Vinegar would just shout at the tornado to wait till she was good and ready, a brandy in one hand a magazine in the other,” Cord scoffed.
“She hears you call her ‘old’ and Tansy’s gonna turn into her own tornado,” Clint said laughing.
“Do you hear something?” Aidan asked, then cocked his head to one side, listening.
They all paused now, quiet and cautious. All three reached for their weapons. Aidan struck his flint against his knife to produce a spark. The spark was short-lived but with all three following suit they found a few sticks to add to the tiny fire Aidan started.
“Look,” Aidan whispered and pointed to a far corner.
They could vaguely make out the images of two small people pressed so closely together they appeared almost one. “Please don’t hurt us,” one of them whimpered in a tiny frightened voice and tried to curl up tighter to the other smaller figure.
“Who’s there?” Cord called to them in a harsh, demanding voice.
The whimpers turned to desperate frightened sobbing and again the young girl pleaded pitifully for them not to harm her or her younger brother.
“Well come closer and let’s get a look at you,” Cord told her, gentling his tone. He realized the threat they posed to them was nonexistent by the tone of her whimpered submissive plea.
Clutching her brother’s hand, the two children approached cautiously, almost crawling to the men. On first appearance in the shadowed dim light Aidan thought he was looking at two little girls. The young boy couldn’t have been more than three and his tangled mop of clumped stringy hair was as long as the girl’s, both were filthy. The young girl was shaking; they were both obviously terrified for their lives. Aidan rose to his full height, and both children cried out fearfully and sank the rest of the way to the ground, the girl covering her face with her free hand, the other remained wound around her brother.
“No, it’s okay, we ain’t gonna hurt you,” Clint told them, but the sobbing continued. Aidan decided it would be best to take the children to the mine with them and let Tansy deal with the situation.
“Are there other people?” Cord asked the girl. Then raised his voice in order to be heard over the sobbing children. “I said, are there other people?” his booming voice quieted the girl, her brother soon followed as the girl placed a quick hand over his mouth to silence him.
“No sir, there’s no one else.”
“Who’s been caring for you?” Aidan asked, once more crouching. He realized his height was intimidating to them. He removed the girl’s hand from her brother’s mouth, indicating it was all right for him to express his fear.
“At first it was Rourke, but he’s dead. I’ve been looking after us since then.”
Her eyes were downcast and her bottom lip trembled. She once more sobbed, placing a quick hand to her mouth, silencing herself. Aidan could see she was trying to control her emotions and wondered why; she was a child after all, it was reasonable she would have some fear of the unknown men. They were alone and without their parents, most likely had been for some time, the poor little things must be terrified. It would be presumptuous to assume they would be grateful for the men’s sudden appearance.
“Well, let’s get them back to the mine. I’ll bet they’re getting a bit frantic,” Aidan said.
The men had some difficulty opening the wooden door; it became apparent debris from the storm had settled across it. It took all three men, giving a mighty heave before they were free to leave. The children were hesitant to follow them from the security of the cellar, but after a stern word from Cord they came meekly, heads bowed.
In the light of day, the children looked far worse. They had bloody running scabs and horrible bruises everywhere. Their clothes were tattered and almost non-existent. Aidan could tell the girl would soon be reaching puberty, or had only just. They were painfully thin. The boy was missing his front two teeth, top and bottom; his lips appeared swollen and cut and were blood encrusted. This Rourke hadn’t looked after them very well, Aidan thought furiously.
Aidan reached to take the girl’s hand but she shrank to her knees terrified at his approach, her hands splayed before her in a pleading gesture. Her head bowed, she whimpered pitifully, her brother crouched close beside, a frail thin arm wrapped around his sister’s slight bony shoulders.
“She’s been beat up, or worse,” Cord said while gazing down at her crumpled form, a soft frown to his face.
“How do you know? Is that a reaction some women have shown in deference to you?” Aidan snarled, his thoughts getting the better of him as overwhelming sympathy for the girl engulfed him. His understanding at her reactions below ground now became apparent. Most likely she had been struck if she made too much noise or disobeyed.
Cord looked at him stone faced; he moved forward and retrieved the boy and stalked off with him, knowing the girl would need no encouragement to follow. She didn’t, just the idea of being separated from her little brother had her shooting to her feet and walking beside Cord docilely.
Clint followed as well, falling in behind Cord after he had once more attached a marker close to the shelter for later use if necessary. Aidan’s anger remained with him as he followed Clint. The idea of anyone abusing someone so helpless was repulsive. Aidan’s anger stayed and magnified as they made their way into the mine.
* * * *
“What’s your name?” Tansy asked the girl.
When the men and two children arrived at the mine, everyone was happy to see they finally returned home. They had waited anxiously throughout the long night and morning and were relieved to learn of the dragon’s demise. Mike flung herself into Clint’s waiting arms. She then noticed the young boy who was meekly carried by Cord; his tousled head resting on Cord’s large shoulder, his arms hanging limp at his sides, small filthy shoeless feet dangling. A young girl trailed not far behind.
“Mommy, look what Clint brought me.”
/> The young girl had burst into grateful tears as she noticed the other women, which set her brother off. Soon both children were sobbing while Tansy and Emmy comforted them. Cord left after grabbing some food, looking harried.
“What’s wrong with him?” Ethan asked Aidan with a puzzled expression.
“Maybe he’s feeling a bit guilty,” Aidan growled as his gaze followed Cord out of the mine.
“Now jist wait,” Clint said distressed. “Ole Cord, now he’s mean and all, but he ain’t never done nothin’ like that to a little girl.”
“But it’s okay if it’s a woman?” Aidan snapped; fists balled, his gaze then flashed angrily to Clint as he confronted him, his fury almost overwhelming.
“Cord ain’t never hurt no woman like that,” Clint said vehemently, and he stormed out after his friend.
Tansy sat the children down to see to their wounds after first feeding them. The boy was soon enamored with Lucky while Michaela forced cars at him hoping to entice the child to play, wondering why he didn’t answer any of her numerous questions. Ricky called to them both hoping for some kind of recognition as he was forced to remain in bed.
“Please tell me your name, honey,” Tansy asked the girl again. She stroked the child’s wan cheek wanting the young girl to give her even a meager amount of trust.
“My name is Rose,” she finally said, eyes downcast.
“That’s a pretty name,” Tansy said.
“My brother is Max, he’s deaf,” Rose told her hesitantly. She looked up at Tansy with huge blue eyes moist from unshed tears. “Will they hurt us?”
“Who?”
“Them,” Rose said, lifting her small shaking hand in Aidan and Ethan’s direction. Aidan still looked angry, which frightened the girl. Ethan was doing his best to calm his outraged friend, stopping his wild pacing with a firm hand to his shoulder and offered practical comforting words of understanding.
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