Three Wishes (River of Time California Book 1)

by Lisa T. Bergren

  Yeah, yeah. I sighed and reached for the top button on my brown day dress. I’d made it all the way to Santa Barbara and back in the cursed riding habit and corset—what would one more day be? Maria swiftly saw to the other buttons, I slipped it off, and she wrapped the corset around my chest and belly. In seconds, it seemed, she had it laced up the back again, like an old…friend.

  That was it. I just needed to make peace with the awful thing, and I wouldn’t resent it so much. That’s what I told myself anyway.

  Doña Elena awaited me in the foyer, looking fresh and smart in her own all-black riding habit and not the least out of breath. In fact, she looked totally pumped up for this adventure ahead. That makes one of us. After the trek south and back, I was over riding in such a contraption. So over it.

  “Ready, my dear?” she asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I muttered, passing by her through the door a servant had opened. I blinked in the bright sunshine, again thankful for the slight shielding of the veil on the hat. Sunglasses, version 1.8.4.0.

  Doña Elena paused behind me a moment and then followed, mounted and looking prim and perfect. Her silver hair was in a neat bun at the nape of her neck, her black hat pinned at a jaunty angle. With a glance back at me, sitting more confidently on my gelding today, despite my sore butt screaming to get back off, she set off at a trot.

  Sighing heavily, I followed, just wanting to get it over with now.

  Our two armed guardians fell into line behind me, their rifles across their laps. But they seemed relaxed, not really concerned at all. “So are the armed guards really necessary?” I asked the woman, when she settled her mare back to a walk, and I could come alongside.

  Guards had been with us all the way to Santa Barbara and back, of course, just more…subdued. Today they were all Secret-Servicey. Because I went with Doña Elena alone? Maybe the grand old lady demanded extra protection. Maybe she was more at risk, a bigger target, like the First Lady or something. I hid a smile, thinking of Hector or Ignacio with ear pieces and black sunglasses, speaking into a microphone at their wrists. “Lady Hawk is on the move. I repeat, Lady Hawk is on the move.”

  She glanced at me, and her dark eyes flicked back to the men behind me. “You were not the only one who saw the heavy taxes Javier paid at the charreada. To be seen without them would be to invite dark thoughts among our enemies, no? Many might suppose that if the rancho had that much gold to pay, there must be much more available to pay a ransom…Javier and I are determined not to give them such an opportunity.”

  My mind flicked back through all the people we’d met up with. Who would dare to truly threaten them? The Vargases? Lieutenant de Leon? But wasn’t she a fan of that guy, given that he was clearly a Mexican loyalist? Maybe she referred to Patricio… “You have far more friends than enemies, from what I’ve seen,” I said.

  “And yet it only takes one,” she said, turning away from me.

  I thought about having enemies in my own time. Guys I knew sometimes had enemies, mostly those in gangs, or the football players with their chief rivals. Girls at school did too, when they got sucked into Stupid-Girl politics or love triangles. But I couldn’t think of one person I’d call an enemy.

  Did the Venturas have true enemies, really? I thought back on the rodeo, the Vargases, and the nameless sea captain with Francesca, making them all tense.

  “Why do you have enemies?” I dared to press.

  Her shoulders stiffened, as if irritated by my questioning, but she looked back to me again. “We have money and position, which others envy and would like to make their own. We are against those who lobby for statehood. This is Mexican territory,” she said with a firm nod. “We shall defend her with everything we have against the aggressions of the States, or Russia, or anyone else who dares to trespass.”

  “Oh,” was all I could manage. That’s gonna be a problem, Lady…because in about nine years, the forty-niners will be arriving up north.

  She waved a hand in irritation. “That Patricio comes calling and fills Javier’s mind with all sorts of intrigue. My boy has more than enough to manage here on the rancho; he need not take on the concerns of foreign politics.”

  I filed that away in my brain, wondering if that played into Javier’s desire to keep watch over his family 24/7, with guards, if he couldn’t be present himself. With so many coming in and out of the harbor…Again, I recalled his first thought when we met—to accuse me of being a spy. Just what did he fear I might discover? That he had more cowhides than he claimed? A secret stash of tallow? What could a ranchero in the middle of nowhere have to hide?

  We spent the rest of the ride in silence, and my heart continued to beat faster and faster, the closer we got to the cove. What was I to tell her? The only thing I came back to, again and again, was the truth. Lord, I prayed, give me something else. Something she’ll believe.

  But the only thing I got back again was Truth. Tell her the truth.

  Yeah. That would never work.

  I forced myself to inhale and exhale as best I could. With my heart racing as I faced this confrontation, my breathing constricted, and the corset squeezing the life out of me, I was getting more scared by the minute. I figured I’d likely keel over, off the saddle, leg brace or no. At least it’d be a soft landing in the sand…

  We were churning through the dunes, up and down, the sound of waves now in our ears, the scent of saltwater filling our nostrils. And then it sprawled before us, that big, beautiful turquoise Pacific that I recognized as my own, yet felt like I was seeing anew at the same time. Again, I looked around, wondering if I might discover the shadows or ghostlike outlines of businesses I knew, set right about here along the PCH…hidden just behind the veil of time. But as I lifted my literal veil, I saw nothing but pristine coastline, and behind us, the vast acreage of Rancho Ventura.

  “Where does your property end?” I managed to ask Doña Elena as we reached the first damp sand, evidence of the morning’s high tide.

  “About two miles southward,” she said, gesturing down the coast. “There is a rocky jetty there that marks the beginning of Vargas land.”

  “What is their rancho called?” I went on, trying to buy time. The two guards split up and stayed high on the crest of the hill, where they could keep watch over us and yet also see any trouble coming from any direction.

  “Rancho Vargas, of course,” she said, eying me a moment. We looked along the cove, from the big lava boulders on the left, to the shipwreck, and up to George Point on the right. Or was it known as Punta Jorge in 1840? “Where did my son discover you?” she asked.

  “Down there,” I said, nodding toward the rocks. “I had fallen asleep.”

  “And were you anywhere else that day?” she asked softly.

  “Up there,” I said, gesturing toward the north part of the cove. “At low tide.”

  She frowned slightly. “Show me.”

  With a sigh, I led the way, my mount growing less labored, the closer we were to the water, as the wet sand became firmer beneath his hooves. We passed the big bones of the old shipwreck, and I paused, right above the place I figured the pools would be in a century or two. “It was here that it all began,” I said.

  Her dark eyes moved to the wash of the waves upon the smooth sand and back to me. She unhooked her leg and slid from the saddle, holding on to the horn in a graceful move that set her to rights in a moment. Blinking, I followed suit, but my skirt slid up to my thighs as I did so, and I landed heavily, almost falling over.

  Her eyes widened in surprise as I attempted to straighten and pretend that hadn’t just happened. She stepped forward. “Who are you, girl? Who are you really? You are educated, but you have none of our social graces.” She lifted a hand toward my horse. “You appear never to have ridden sidesaddle before. Your Spanish is neither common Mexican nor Castilian in accent. Your education is…remarkable. And you play the guitar? No woman I have ever met plays the guitar.”

  I stared back at her. “If
I could tell you, I would,” I said, again choosing honesty.

  She sniffed and looked down the length of the cove. “You said you found the golden lamp in tide pools here?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There were so many starfish with it, they practically covered it up. But then a wave passed and they moved, and I saw it. I fished it out from the very center of a pool.”

  She eyed me from the side, hands clasped before her waist. “I have come here often. Truthfully, it is one of my very favorite coves, and my husband and I used to picnic here. But I have never seen tide pools, no matter the time of day.” She turned to face me. Reached out and took my hand. “There is something you wish to tell me. Something you’re holding back,” she whispered. “Dare to tell me the truth, girl. I like to think of myself as a fair-minded person.”

  I cleared my throat, searching the wrinkled lines of her face, the deep pools of her eyes, wondering if I truly dared to do so. I wished I had that lamp in my hands right then. I wished I could tear down the beach, into the water, wishing, wishing to go back. I had simply done something wrong that day I came here, slipped through a portal I was never meant to go through…

  “Zara,” she said, squeezing my hand.

  “The pools,” I said urgently, “they were here. Right here. I swear it. There were orange and purple starfish. More than I’d ever seen before. A fisherman pointed me toward it. I’d never seen him before…”

  “A man,” she repeated. “Fishing along the shore? Perhaps one of our men?”

  But she was clearly more intent upon me than discovering the identity of the man.

  “I do not wish to be a burden to you, Doña Elena,” I said. “More than anything, I wish I could go home.” I pulled my hand from hers and lifted it to my forehead, itching where the veil blew against my skin.

  “You are anxious to return home. But you cannot. Even the tide pools that gave you the golden lamp are not where you last saw them. They’ve disappeared, further blocking your path home.”

  I searched her profile, still pretty, but with strong, almost masculine lines, puzzling over her words. “Yes,” I faltered. “Exactly. How…how could you know that?”

  There was something in her tone that told me she knew. She knew what I was saying. Believed me.

  She paused there, her distinct profile a silhouette against the sand dunes behind her. And then she turned to me, as if weighing her answer. “Because I, too, came to this family in a similar manner.”

  CHAPTER 18

  It felt like every ounce of oxygen had been squeezed from my lungs. I had to remind myself to breathe and then breathe again.

  “Pardon me?” I managed to squeak out. “What did you say?”

  “You understood me,” she said solemnly. “It was your golden lamp that brought me to Carlos, Javier’s father, in España. I was but a girl, longing for something more, something to move my heart, when I stumbled upon that lamp in a marketplace, very far from here.”

  I held my breath, staring at her. “You…found the lamp. My lamp. In a market.” I lifted my veil, wanting nothing between us.

  “Yes, Zara,” she said, staring into my eyes. “I was facing spinsterhood, almost thirty. And it was the year of our Lord, 1741.”

  We were silent and still for a moment. Then two.

  “It was 1741,” I dragged out, when I could manage it. About a hundred years prior to our current day.

  There was no way this woman was older than fifty-five or sixty, despite her silver hair. “And you were transported to the year…”

  “I arrived in 1810,” she said, turning to look at the valley before us. “I was the same, from head to toe, but I was in a different era than my own, far more advanced. With young men sailing to the colony of Mexico and others north from there…”

  “So you went f-forward almost seventy years,” I stammered. “I—” I hesitated, wondering if she was really ready to take this in. “I seem to have gone back almost a hundred and eighty.”

  “A hundred and eighty,” she breathed, her brows rising. “That must be quite…disorienting.”

  “Quite,” was all I could manage to respond. But although she’d mentioned disorientation, I hadn’t felt any disorientation within her at all.

  Long moments went by, both of us lost in our own thoughts.

  “So how did you come across the lamp?” she asked gently. “Can you tell me more?”

  “As I said…I found it in a tide pool. Those tide pools, as near as I can figure, are buried by about fifty feet of sand, right here below us. In my time,” I rushed on, “the beach is far narrower, the sand eroded. The shipwreck is gone. There are houses all in a line, right up there…”

  Her face sparked with alarm. I figured I’d better stick to the bare facts.

  “The morning after my abuela died—my only family left to me,” I went on, the story now spilling from me. If she had slipped through time too, maybe she knew the way to return! “I went for a walk on the beach. Abuela always loved starfish, and I went down to the beach and saw so many…That fisherman told me there were more in a pool just a bit farther out, so I went out among the rocks. And, after a wave passed, I saw the lamp. I climbed down into the pool and grabbed it.”

  “And then?” she prompted softly, as if half-remembering her own experience.

  “Then I was back on the beach, studying it, wondering what it might be and where it came from…thinking back on my last conversation with my grandmother.” I shook my head as if to bring myself back. “There was a loud pop, a bright light, I felt sick to my stomach and, and…I was here.”

  She nodded, her own black eyes now wide and distant, the lines of her mouth drawn.

  “And you…Doña Elena, tell me, please. How did you come to find that lamp?”

  “It was sold to me in a suk in Marrakesh,” she said. “I lived in España and was traveling with my father, a merchant. The dealer said it would bring me love,” she said, arching a brow my way. “My father said if it would make me a wife rather than an aging spinster daughter, he would buy it for me.”

  “And he did?”

  “He did,” she said.

  I was holding my breath, making me light-headed. Was it the corset or our conversation? Probably both. I forced myself to inhale, exhale. Marrakesh. That was in Morocco, I thought, which explained the odd writing on the lamp. “And then what happened?”

  “I was on my father’s ship, and we were just docking at home—in Valencia,” she added, looking my way to see if I knew of it, “and I was holding the lamp and thinking about what I wanted in the future.”

  Thinking about what I wanted in the future.

  “And then?” I prompted, when she fell silent, staring again toward the horizon.

  “And then I was still in Valencia, but in a very different time than my own.” She lifted her fingers and snapped. “A pop, a flash of light, the nausea, as you described, and my papá, his ship, the men…they were gone.” She blinked several times, as if reliving it. “Forever,” she added, in a whisper.

  She stepped forward, toward the water, head held high, shoulders back, the epitome of Spanish grace and gentility.

  “What did you do?” I whispered, stepping up beside her. “What did you say? How did you explain yourself?”

  “I didn’t,” she said, turning toward me partway, half with me, half in that moment. “And in time it didn’t matter. Because I’d found what I’d wanted in that future, right there in that time, where Carlos found me. Love.”

  I met her gaze. “Carlos found you there? He was the one to discover you, help you?”

  “Yes.” She took my hand. “And a year ago, when I tossed that same golden lamp out to the sea here, I prayed for you, dear girl. For a woman who might capture my wayward son’s heart. Captivate his mind. Intrigue him and anchor him into the destiny that is his for the taking. Making a life here, where his father worked so hard to establish a—”

  “W-wait,” I said, pulling away in confusion. “You threw the lamp b
ack into the sea? Like… bait for a fish?”

  “I didn’t think of it in such a way,” she said. “It was a prayer, a wish. For someone seeking us with a similar prayer or wish.” She lifted her hands, brows arching together. “And here you are! God be praised!” Her face faltered. “You are not quite what I imagined, but if the blessed Father has ordained this, who am I to—”

  “No. Hold on.” Anger stirring in me, I lifted a finger and waved it back and forth. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to leave my own time.”

  “I understand. You wanted something bigger, more important than even your own time.” She matched every step I took away from her. “Something your heart wanted.”

  “Did you not try to get back? To your own time?” I asked, lifting my hands to my head.

  “I tried, yes. But don’t you see? My wish was already coming true!”

  I shook my head and walked away from her. Here I had feared she’d think me crazy. But she was the crazy one. And she’d pulled me into her weird time warp!

  “Zara,” she said, striding after me, trying to take my arm.

  “No!” I said, wrenching away from her grasp. “Leave me alone!”

  But she didn’t, following me step for step, waiting for me to slow and face her again. The danged corset was working against me. In minutes, I was gasping for breath and sat down heavily in the sand, not caring if I harmed her precious old riding habit. Surprisingly, she sank to the sand beside me.

  “You’re angry,” she said simply.

  “Yes, I’m angry!” I spat out. “You…you trapped me!”

  “Trapped? Or gave you just the right invitation?”

  “What does it matter? You pulled me here, into your time and out of my own! Now what am I supposed to do?” I cried.

  She shrugged. “Allow your new destiny to unfold. If it is half as grand as my own, you will not regret it.”

  I shook my head. My hat flapped on my head, and I angrily pulled the pins out and sent it flying behind me. Just what I’d like to do to her…

  We sat in silence for a bit, staring at the waves cresting, washing over the beach, and receding. Then she dared, “May I ask what you wished for, Zara?”