The man slapped her so hard on her face that her knees instinctively jerked and her nervous horse bolted into a run. Stunned, she grabbed the saddle for balance as the man was jerked off his horse and, still holding her reins, was dragged beside her.
She kicked at the struggling man and immediately felt the weight leave as the reins were freed from the burden. Scrambling to grab them again, Maggie cried out in fear as she raced back toward Nick.
She saw Nick retreating, backing up to a tree and then with the grace of a ballet dancer, intricately avoid a thrust. In spite of her terror, she had to admire his skill, yet something in her was pleading as she galloped to the fighting men.
Her mind was screaming be careful, my love, yet her voice was mute with dread.
Speeding past a man, his face covered in blood, Maggie noticed he struggled to his feet. She gasped when she saw from the corner of her eye that the man had pulled a dagger from his waist and was running toward Nick’s back.
“Nooooo!”… she screamed and pulled hard on the reins, so hard she almost fell.
Nick spun around at the sound of her voice and, seeing the assassin, ran him through with his sword. Maggie was so stunned, having never seen death before, she could only stare in horror as the man fell to the ground. Montague ran over and grabbed her horse’s halter.
“What say thee now, Layton? The decision is yours,” Montague breathed out, while holding his sword up to Maggie’s chest.
She stared at the man, at Nick… and then saw the one who had caught her speeding back on his horse. They were outnumbered with weapons and as the second man slowed to dismount, she watched as Nick’s shoulders slumped.
Dropping his sword to the ground, he said, “It is over.”
She knew he was doing this for her, and her heart constricted with pain. But they were alive, and that’s all that mattered. Somehow they would go back and talk to Robert and—
All thoughts ceased as she watched the man who had hit her exchange places with Montague, who was now walking back to Nick.
“Not quite over, Layton,” the man sneered as he kicked the sword Nick had been using out of the way. “Lord Robert of Amesbury and all those who support his cause have a final message for you…”
Maggie looked at Nick. Across the space she saw a puzzled expression on his face, moments before Montague lunged forward and drove his sword right through the center of him. There was a mixture of horror and disbelief on his face, and Maggie was sure that time stood still as her mind refused to accept what she had just seen….
His gaze never left hers as his knees buckled with the withdrawal of the sword. He fell hard to the ground, swaying on his knees, holding his chest as blood seeped through his fingers.
Maggie leaped from her horse and ran to him. She didn’t care if they killed her. She had to get to him! Running, she stared into his eyes and saw something she refused to accept. As though his weight now was too much to wait for her, he fell forward into the tall summer grass. She whimpered in denial as she dropped to her knees and gently turned him over.
This nightmare cannot be real! It just can’t…
“Nick!”
He opened his eyes and looked up to her. Even though he was still alive, her entire world was stopped by what she saw in his gaze.
“Sweet Maggie…” he gasped, as she cradled his shoulders and head in her arms. “Please accept my apology, I’m so… sorry… the ethereal calls.”
She watched his lids slowly close as he dryly swallowed down his pain.
“Nick… !” She shook his shoulders to stop him from going. “Nick, no… no, no… stay here,” she encouraged through her tears. She looked to the man holding her horse and screamed, “Get some help! He needs help!”
Montague came forward and took her arm, dragging her away.
“Leave him… he is well killed.”
She stared at the man and broke free of his grasp. “He dropped his weapon! We surrendered…” she whispered, cradling her beloved again in her arms. Clinging to him, she urged, “Nick… you promised. Come on. Stay with me. Don’t go…”
He gasped and opened his eyes.
Gazing down into his beautiful, incredible blue eyes she could barely hear his whisper. “Remember me… my love.”
“Nick! No! You can’t die… you’re my twin soul. I just found you,” she pleaded through her sobs.
Nothing existed for her in the moment, but the love she saw reflected back to her… It was a timeless instant of recognition beyond the physical, as though they had always been a part of each other and always would. She broke free of it and refused to accept what was happening.
“Nick! You promised!” she screamed in desperation. “We spit on it! You and me, husband and wife… we have plans, our adventure! You can’t go now!”
Her brain fought off the inevitable as she gasped, the sobs cutting so deep within her soul that she too felt mortally wounded. A feeling of impending doom seemed to wrap itself around her and strangle her.
“Remember me… remember… re… member…”
Rocking him slowly, she watched the light slowly fade from his eyes. She felt his warm body go limp as his breath was expelled with his last word. How was it possible to know such fulfillment of love and hope only a short time ago and in an instant of cruelty, feel such indescribable loss? She continued to rock him as the memories of joy seemed to disappear and she was engulfed in agony. She felt saturated in grief, as she watched the light of life extinguished from the windows to his soul.
He was gone.
And she was alone.
Slowly, reverently, she laid his precious head back in the tall summer grass and rose to her feet. Her body was shaking, and she stumbled away, putting distance between herself and the horror… horror she had witnessed. Tears were streaming uncontrollably down her face and blocking her vision. She clutched at her skirt, making fists of material. Her mouth opened, and the depth of her anguish seemed to come from the very pits of hell as a wail of heartache and pain echoed out into the air and reverberated into the universe.
“Nooooooooooo…”
The sound of movement brought her back to the present, and she spun around to see a carriage and many horses traveling on the road. Instinct took over and she started waving her arms and screaming, “Stop! Help me! Help!”
Her legs started moving, faster and faster, all the while she was waving her arms. She heard the sound of Montague and his man cursing and mounting their horses, yet she kept running and yelling and pleading in her mind for the carriage to stop. She stumbled, slipping on the high grass, and felt her shoe leave her foot, yet she crawled upright and grabbed her skirt to continue. Nothing could stop her now. Her entire being was fused with one emotion.
Justice.
She saw the entourage slow down and three riders coming quickly across the field. Within moments they were upon her.
“They killed my husband!” she screamed, pointing at the retreating murderers.
The formally dressed men looked at her strangely, as though confused by something, and then immediately set off after Montague. Dazed, Maggie stumbled closer to a tree and sank against the trunk, sobbing, not caring any longer whether she lived or died.
Nick…
She couldn’t get out of her mind the look in his eyes… the regret, the love, the acceptance… the void. Maggie knew if she allowed her mind to replay what she had just experienced, there would be no sanity left. Her precious husband… lying in the grass… dead… gone… He wasn’t there. She was all alone.
She heard the snorting of horses and dragged her head up to focus upon the road. Just as she did, someone pulled back a ruby-velvet curtain on the window of the ornately decorated carriage.
Face-to-face, their eyes met in disbelief.
A woman with a sad expression stared at her as Maggie stared back in stupefaction. Her mind tried to wrap around what her eyes were revealing… a woman, older than she, yet looking so much like her that she couldn’t breath
e, or think, or see anything else.
Suddenly, as though she knew she was dying, Maggie watched as her vision began to fill with shadows, first around the edges then narrowing into a tunnel that closed everything out but the woman’s face. Lady Margaret’s face. Her face. It was all disintegrating, this time into darkness… and without Nick, she just surrendered her broken heart and her broken mind. It was the end, and she wanted to join him… wherever he was.
Chapter Eighteen
For a time nothing existed for her save warm, peaceful, beautiful darkness.
There was no sensation of wanting anything. There was no sensation at all, except of peace, of a weightless floating, though slowly, as though knowing she was now something, Maggie began to observe flashes of light forming in her mind. She didn’t really want to focus on them, for she was content to just drift in a warm swirling sea of black-purple… nothing. The bursts began to alter into shapes, glimpses, designs of deep rose and dark blue light, catching her attention, calling her away from the peaceful warmth of nothingness….
Annoyance was her first reaction but was quickly replaced by curiosity. Her mind seemed to be awakening more and more, and she focused her attention on the myriad colors and lines and then suddenly, from out of nowhere, a picture flashed for only a brief instant, shocking her farther away from the warm darkness.
Eyes. A man. A profile.
It took great effort, and she wanted to return to the peaceful darkness, yet again the pictures flashed before her, this time more quickly. A red dress with pearls. The smile on an older woman’s face. A fur cover on a high bed. Intricate tapestries hanging on stone walls. Crying before a fireplace. She wanted to stop the confusion, yet sensed she was helpless as the images seemed to increase. A hand holding a two-tined long fork. A blanket of green wispy ferns, dotted with tiny white flowers. Pieces of a puzzle raced before her and demanded attention.
She had no sensation of breathing, not even the need, yet there was a desire now to connect the pieces.
Quickly they came, each one pulling her further toward something larger, an expansion. Walking in a maze. A black horse pawing the air in terror. A woman dressed in a long blue gown sitting at a banquet table. A naked man, smiling, and offering her a goblet of wine…
There. The man. Something about the man called out to her, yet before she could place him, more pictures assaulted her, flashes of movement showing riders on horses, swinging swords, and faces of horror. Hers. And his… the man, the one who held her so tenderly and made love to her with such passion that Maggie knew she had to save him, to do something to stop the images from continuing for she knew now she didn’t want to see how it turned out. It wasn’t a dream at all. She had been there, holding his head in her arms and… he…
She refused to think of it as sensations invaded and bombarded her. Pain. Grief. Anger. Fear. She couldn’t get back to peaceful darkness now. She was lost in the illusion as a great weight descended upon her, crushing her, demanding that she breathe, and Maggie felt her chest heaving as she gulped in huge amounts of air.
“Nick!”
She didn’t know if she said the name, or only thought it, but she knew now how the pieces fit together in the puzzle, and she didn’t want to see it played out. Then other scenarios formed… being held in a warm, loving embrace, lying against a hard chest, hearing a heart beat and knowing that she was totally loved. Her fingers ever so slightly caressing a firm thigh and feeling a connection that reminded her of home, of belonging.
She breathed in the memory of pleasure and joy, and it was then that she knew him.
She called forth his face, wanting to see his blue eyes reflect back to her the love that was within her and, immediately, she felt her heart expand with exquisite intimacy that led her to experience a rapture of memories, all of it now filling her with such bliss that she didn’t mind any longer leaving the darkness.
She allowed her mind to enter into moments of tenderness, communication, certainty, wonder, awe…. and she began to hear something… music in the distance.
“You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.”
Again, she felt tiny flickers of annoyance, as though the noise was trying to pull her away from her joy. She wouldn’t give it her attention, she resolved, focusing more intently upon moments of love. The more she tried to bring forth those images, the more difficult it seemed as the lyrics became momentarily clear.
“Teach your children well…”
The sound of the music grew along with something else that sounded like screams of approval, and Maggie tried to shut it out, to stop it, though she was losing control.
Like snippets of movies, the images flashed against the screen of her closed lids, each one jolting her with confusion. Malcolm, looking at himself in a mirror. Robert’s hand on her thigh. Aunt Edithe hugging her when she’d cried. The little girl in the maze extending a rose. Racing through the forest. Robert standing in the doorway as she bathed. Nick throwing his cape onto the ferns. Evan holding the reins of a horse. Elthea holding out a pearl necklace.
From somewhere beyond herself, she experienced her hand reaching up to her chest and finding the small pearls beneath her clothing. She had them!
Aunt Edithe’s pearls.
Elthea’s pearls.
Hers… Nick gave them to her… Nick… Nick!
She clutched the pearls and lost herself in his memory, drifting with the distant music as it ended and muffled appreciation followed…. Then it happened. A sudden jolt of separation.
The music rose in volume, increasing her fear of what she knew was coming. No longer could she suppress the memory of it. He was dead. She had seen it, the duel, the thrust of a sword into his chest, words, the dying vow to remember, the way the light left his eyes, and then she was alone.
“Wonders what’s goin’ on… down under?” Lyrics seemed to break through the crescendo of anguish and noise.
A great surge of turmoil rose up in her belly, demanding release, traveling up her chest into her throat and burning with such intense grief that she opened her mouth and screamed to let it out! A wail of sorrow filled her ears and she shot upright, staring wide-eyed into the gray darkness as her cry was absorbed into a calliope of sound.
“If I’d ever been here before, I would probably know just what to do, don’t you…?”
Stunned at the refrain, Maggie tried to make sense out of the madness surrounding her. As her ears continued to receive an assaulting barrage of chords, lyrics seemed to mix with a roar of screams. Her eyes adjusted to the new darkness, and she distinguished the shape of framing, pipes and beams of gray against the blackness. Her hands were on the earth, and she felt grass against her palms as she tried to push herself up, to stand and leave this place of utter confusion.
She felt her clothing. Velvet. She was still wearing the gown, she thought, using every ounce of willpower to push down panic and rise. Her head hit something before she could stand upright, and she fell back down to her knees. Swallowing a frightened sob, she lifted her hand to her head and then stretched it farther. Again, she slowly rose, gathering her skirts and attempting to stand. Moments before she could, she felt something hard above her vibrating with the intensity of noise.
“ We have all been here before…
We have all been here before…”
Nothing made sense and, as she crouched, fighting the paralysis of panic, Maggie started pounding on the low ceiling. “Let me out! Help!” she screamed, hearing her voice get lost in the excruciating level of sound above her. Over and over she pounded, demanding release, then pleading and finally begging. Her fists felt raw and her voice hoarse as she sank back to her knees and collapsed against a box.
She couldn’t think, not now, not yet… she had to block out the noise and pull herself together. Gasping for breath, she felt her throat begin to close with emotion as each intake of air was a struggle.
It was just like in the maze.
Everything started to clo
se in on her, the hard framing, the strange boxes, the noise, the darkness, and she felt that same panic of claustrophobia return with a vengeance. It was as if she were buried alive!
“We have all been here before…”
Again she heard the refrain coming from above and something in the back of her brain was desperately trying to identify it. As the music ended and screams began, Maggie felt suspended in fear.
She sensed in every cell that she was losing control. Something inside of her snapped, and she began crawling, stumbling when her knees caught up in the long skirt. Help. She needed help. Nick… Aunt Edithe… God… Anyone. Banging headfirst into another beam, she barely felt the pain as she clawed at the grass to regain her balance.
The deafening music resumed, and Maggie again felt the fear gain power. She couldn’t breathe… breathe! Basic human instinct, survival, jolted in her. She started kicking and screaming at anything in her path, barely aware that she had lost a shoe as pain mixed with terror. It was then she saw a small light, a crack of white amid the black, and she moved on her hands and knees toward it, all the while gasping for breath, for life…
“We are Stardust. We are golden…
And-we’ve-got-to-get-ourselves back to the garden…”
She distinctly heard those lyrics as the crack widened to a wedge of light streaming from the most chaotic place she had ever seen, where machinery, bizarre-shaped boxes and cables were strewn in wild confusion. As the music died out amid the growing crescendo of screams, she thought she saw shadows blocking the light:
People!
“Help me,” she whispered, slumping against the side of another hard beam, exhausted. Her heart was slamming into her ribs, resounding in her fingertips and ears as she watched the light shift around the boxes until it shone on her.
Relief swept through her, though she was blinded and covered her eyes. “Thank you,” she kept whispering amid sobs of gratefulness. “Thank you, thank you.” She heard them coming toward her, and the light flicked back and forth with their movements.
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