A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (7 page)

“Hey! Hey! Hey! Come back! Thieves! Thieves! Police!” The man who made the ring charged after them through the suddenly thick and dense crowd.

“Run!” Will shouted, grabbing her hand and breaking into a sprint through the marketplace.

“Wait!” she protested, chasing after him. “Why don’t we just pay for it?”

“You have money?” Will asked without stopping. She hurried along behind him, dodging between people, too afraid to slow down, her pulse racing.

“No, but—can’t we just think up some money?” Kate asked. 

“Does it work like that?” he shouted over his shoulder.

“I have no idea!”

“Then keep running!”

Kate followed him through the crowded streets, passing buskers and flower salesmen shouting about discounts for people who purchased bouquets. Suddenly he turned down an alleyway, dodging between large wooden barrels and stacks of empty pallets. Kate’s heart pounded in her throat. This dream was fast becoming a nightmare.

Beyond Will, Kate saw an endless blue sea and sky. Her stomach dropped as she continued to follow Will—there was no where else to go.
Why not a warehouse or a refuge of some sort where we could hide?
she thought as Will came out of the alley, to a curve in the street and evidently, the island. There was a knee-high barrier between them and the sheer, seventy-five foot drop into pure ocean. Will skidded to a stop and looked over his shoulder. His cheeks were flushed and his face was split by a huge grin as his eyes narrowed and he sized up the threat behind them. Kate stopped at his side and glanced behind herself. Three uniformed police charged toward them, knocking down crates and shouting furiously.

“To jump or not to jump, that is the question,” Will said between breaths. His voice was charged. He sounded thrilled to be in the midst of action. “Makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?” he said, glancing at Kate with a bemused glow in his eye.

“No, it doesn’t. This is awful. I hate feeling like I’m in trouble.” That sounded whiny.
Would you like some cheese with that?
She shook her head in disgust at herself.
He’s going to think you’re boring.

“You afraid of heights, Kate?” he asked, releasing her hand and wiping it across his T-shirt. He took her hand again.

“Hardly,” she said. “I climb cliffs higher than this for fun. Are you actually suggesting we jump?” She leaned over the edge. Far below, white-capped waves crashed against the craggy rocks of the island.

“What a coincidence! That’s what gets me the most about you: we’re on the same wavelength. No more time for discussion—here they come. Hold your breath Kate!” He pulled her along with him over the ridiculously small rock barrier and Kate found herself moving automatically beside him. She jumped as far from their little launch pad as her legs could manage.

They separated in the air. Kate felt the wind rushing up through her clothes and hair as she plummeted like a seabird toward the water.

“This is a dream, this is a dream,” she chanted to herself. The words were ripped away from her face as soon as they left her lips. She sensed them shooting toward the dark blue heavens even as the sapphire water opened up around her body and let her in.
This is what it feels like to be a kingfisher. This is what it feels like to be a falling star. This is what it feels like to be a dolphin. An orca. A starfish. A thing of both sea and air. This is what it feels like to live on the razor’s edge of life.

Kate plunged deep into the water. The current was warm, then cold, then warm again as she sank. She kicked her way back to the surface. Bubbles frothed around her and shot skyward. Light broke through the water. Sweet blessed light. It called to her. Just when she thought her chest would explode and open to the water, a dead thing, a piece of flotsam merging consciousness with the seawater, so much like blood, so much like something that could save her—she broke into the sunlight and gasped air into her lungs. She breathed greedily, gladly, thankfully. Waves swayed and dipped around her. She tread water, searching the sinuous surface for Will.

He rolled into her without warning. They tumbled along, a tangled mass of arms and legs like kelp, floating over the waves until they found a secluded beach where they unraveled and disengaged and lay on their backs, laughing and gasping.

“Huh, I wonder why they didn’t follow us,” Will mused, laughing.

“I guess the danger didn’t match the crime,” Kate answered.

“Probably not,” he said.

“I would almost think you had experience running from the law,” Kate observed, rolling to her side and studying him.

“The other end of it, really. I did a lot of chase scenes in that cop show. I always did my own stunts, though stunts is kind of a grandiose word for what we did.” Beads of water rolled from the neckline of his shirt over the jagged ridge of his collarbone. He squinted at her from the corner of his eye and smiled.

“I’m sure for the time-period, they were stunning,” Kate teased.

“You said you climb rocks for fun, back there, before we jumped. Is that true?” He rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his arm.

She shrugged. “Pretty much. But I definitely don’t cliff-dive. That was scarier than any route I’ve done.”

“Route?”

“You know, a line up a cliff. Usually I do climbs that someone else mapped out.”

“I actually don’t know. I’ve never done anything like that. It sounds scary. Thrilling. Obviously I appreciate cheap thrills,” he said with a smirk and a little nod back toward the spot from where they jumped.

“Shall I call you Monsieur Cheap-thrills from now on?”

“Kate, that’s a lovely nickname. And I’ll call you Madame Daredevil.”

“Ick,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Madame sounds so old.”

“Mademoiselle? Ms.?” He furrowed his brow.

“How about just Daredevil.”

“Fair enough. But then you’ll have to drop Monsieur from my nickname. So I’m just going to be Cheapthrill. And you, Daredevil.”

“I like it. We sound like a team. Like Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Sherlock and Watson, Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Abbot and Costello, the Lone Ranger and Tonto.”

“Ok, who?” Kate laughed, raising an eyebrow.

“Too old for you?” he asked, giving a little regretful smirk. “I hate it when I do that. When I show my age.”

“You’re my age. Not much older,” Kate said, giving his arm a little shove.

“Here, I am. But really . . . “

“No, don’t say it.” Kate held up her hand to stop him from pursuing the idea further.

He nodded. “Fine, Daredevil.”

“Stop making me so happy, Cheapthrill.”

“I make you happy?” he asked, sounding hopeful.

She laughed and rolled away, into the sun, feeling it hot on her face. Soon his arm closed around her stomach and she felt his chin nuzzle warmly into her neck.

***

Kate gasped awake. She took several deep breaths before settling back into her pillow. It was the middle of the night. The window above her bed let light in as cars passed on the road outside. The sound of their passing struck a chord in her that sounded like loneliness.

He was gone. She touched her finger where the dragonfly ring had been in the dream, but even holding her breath didn’t make it appear there. All of it was a hallucination. A delusion. Wishful thinking.

She sat up, swung her legs over the side of her bed, and flipped on her lamp. The sudden glow singed her eyes and the hardwood floor was cold beneath her feet. Outside, the fan of the air conditioner rumbled to life and settled into a humming, monotonous drone. A deep breath brought in the familiar smells of her room—old Nag Champa and that of a musky, scented candle she had found at Whole Foods. She rubbed her eyes, feeling halfway tempted to go wake Audra up to tell her about that dream. What could it mean? Anything? There had been a dragonfly. The thing that made her run. Did that translucent-winged insect signify something in dreams? 

She stared at the floor, tired and lonely, reliving the dream in as much detail as possible. When she fell asleep again, would she dream of him? And if she did, would she remember him or would it be like last time, where it took her a while to remember?

Already she had forgotten his name.

The blue-eyed stranger had given her a dragonfly ring. She put it on and stole it from the artisan. He ran after them, screaming that they were thieves.

Chills clung to her bare arms.

Kate touched a key on her open laptop resting on the desk next to her. The screen woke up and she pressed play on the keyboard. A mellow song began. She switched off her light and flopped back onto her bed and snuggled down under the covers. With her eyes closed, and the song playing quietly, she could almost relive the good parts of her dream.

But she kept coming back to the dragonfly ring.  

That ring meant something. It had to. Why keep dreaming of the same man if the whole thing meant nothing? Somehow her mind fixated on the ring, as though the entire structure of her dreams rested upon that metallic insect. It had such a heavy pull for being such a tiny object. 

Kate sighed, her eyelids growing heavy. Her mind swirled recklessly in a jagged whirlwind around the idea that the dragonfly held meaning. That it symbolized something made sense to Kate, there, in the middle of the night . . . because it was the middle of the night, where everything made sense. Even recurrent dreams about a gorgeous stranger.

5: Too Many Surprises

“When you see Ty,” Audra said as they sped through the winding industrial section of the city, “don’t get all quiet and self-conscious. Have some confidence that you’re desirable, OK? Men like that. That’s an attractive trait. Not timidity.”

“I don’t get timid,” Kate protested with a scowl. “I’m the most confident person I know.”

Self-storage units, warehouses, and distribution centers flew by, and then Audra came to a screeching halt in a parking spot outside a building that used to be a warehouse itself. Given a facelift and dubbed Boulder Crazy, it was now the hot hangout for all the outdoorsy, Pilates, and yoga people when they couldn’t make it to an outdoor location to climb or boulder.

Audra finished telling Kate how she should behave to land a date with Ty as she put the Subaru Impreza in park and engaged the brake. Kate sighed and smirked.

“Audra, I’m not completely inept at this. I just know when a guy is out of my league.” Her seatbelt whipped back into the wall panel as she released it.

Audra leaned toward Kate and grabbed her arm before Kate could hop out of the Subaru. “Hang on, chickadee, he’s not out of your league. Thinking like that only makes you behave like he is. No guy is out of your league. You’re a princess!”

Kate laughed darkly. She wasn’t. She knew that much. Unless they were talking about princesses like Grace Kelly or Princess Di—chicks who were proactive Mother Theresa types—then princess was not for Kate. She never had Disney princess fantasies growing up. She had planned to be a doctor at one point, when she innocently thought she could stand the sight of blood
and
the thought of cutting into a person. And then she was going to be a vet, until she realized she couldn’t cut into
an animal
either. And then she thought
an astronaut
, because what could go wrong in space? When she saw
Apollo 13
with her dad on a random Saturday night, well . . . anyway.

She never aspired to be a princess.

Kate got out of the car. “Let’s go, I’ll be on my best behavior. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll always have you, right?”

“Of course! But only until I get married. And then you’re on your own. That’s just the way these things work,” Audra said, talking to her over the roof of the Subaru. They slammed their doors, grabbed their chalk-bags and climbing shoes out of the back and headed into the gym. Kate took a breath and thanked the heavens that she had a chalk-bag—her hands had sprouted oceans at the thought of seeing Ty again.

Though there were huge industrial size fans blowing loudly inside and though the room was the length of a football field with a climbing wall stretching from one end to the other, chalk dust still hung in the air like they’d just walked into a flour mill or cotton textile factory.

Ty had staked out a spot near the middle of the gym. When he saw Audra, who stood in front of Kate leading the way, he waved them over, smiling but maintaining a casual demeanor. His shirt was off and his muscles bulged in his chest, forearms, and back, like he’d been climbing for a while already. Kate wanted to stare. Instead she looked away, acting casual about things herself. Just because he was totally ripped and beautiful, didn’t mean he was some amazing, nice guy. She’d probably find out he was an ass. Right? She exhaled through her partially closed lips and talked herself into not giving a crap about handsome guys with climber physiques.

They waltzed over to his spot and set their chalk bags down on the thick crash pad.

“Hey, Audra, Kate,” Ty greeted them. “This is my buddy Malcolm. Call him Mal.”

Malcolm—Kate couldn’t bring herself to shorten it—looked familiar. He wasn’t as bulky or pumped as Ty. He had that lean, toned build of the classic rock climber, she though as she sat down on the edge of the crash pad and slipped her flip-flops off and put on her climbing shoes.