Blessed (16 page)

She picked one of the several paths leading through the gardens and away from the fountain. As she walked along it, she felt more and more like her old self. The worries and stresses that had been weighing her down for the last several weeks seemed to lift from her shoulders with each step she took.

Before long, she felt like she had hit the rewind button on her life. It was like she was twelve years old again, walking through Red Butte Gardens. Carefree and living for the moment. She suddenly remembered Dorothy and her friends lying down in the poppy fields and threw her head back and laughed. She dropped down right in the middle of the path and gazed up at the sky.

She tilted her head to the side and furrowed her brow, surprised that it wasn’t the color she had expected it to be. Instead of the bright blue color of the sky she had grown up under, it was just white. Not cloudy white, either—just a plain, bright white. A blank slate.

She sat up and let her eyes drift off to the horizon. There was no color variation at all. It was all the same exact intensity of white.

“What an odd place.” She said out loud to herself. She had gone from feeling like Dorothy to feeling more like Alice. She fought the urge to start rooting through the flower beds in search of a rabbit hole.

“It’s not that odd, Ardra. This place is what you make it.”

The soft male voice that came from her right startled a scream out of her. She jumped to her feet and turned to search for the now-familiar face that she knew had produced the gentle sound.

The man from her last trip down the rabbit hole, the man of her dreams, was standing a safe distance away and wearing the same dazzling smile that he always wore, no matter the venue. His outfit was the masculine reflection of what she happened to be wearing, loose fitting jeans, and a t shirt. She said a small prayer of thanks for the fact that he was clothed as images of his strong hands on her body threatened to override her ability to think.

He raised his hand and pointed to a spot at the top his forehead where hairline met skin, his smile momentarily growing even wider and brighter.

Several short hairs stuck out of his otherwise shaggy head of hair at odd angles. That must have been where she had grabbed a hold of him during their last encounter. It made her smile involuntarily. He was
really
cute and the chunk of hair making a valiant effort to grow back just added to his appeal.

She could almost feel his mouth on her neck and fought against the flush that she could feel creeping up in her chest. She had the sudden desire to pull on that golden mane in an entirely different kind of way.

In an attempt to appear a little more in control of the situation, she spat an order at him. “Stay where you are or you’ll have another patch missing on the other side.”

Her attempt at authority made him laugh out loud and the sound was melodious. She could tell that it came straight from his heart. The combination of that and his smile that reached clear up to his sparkling blue eyes made her melt. She was pretty sure that he knew it, too.

He stayed where he was though, allowing her to keep her comfort zone. He even sat down and crossed his legs in a show of submission. Ardra chose to stay standing while she interrogated him.

“What is this place? Who are you? Why do you keep bringing me here?” She fired the questions at him in rapid fire succession and quickly grew impatient when he didn’t supply the answers as quickly as she provided the questions.

She punched her fists into her hip bones and fought the urge to tap her foot.

“Well?” She threw her hands up in the air in an effort to add a little importance to her demand.

He picked at the blades of grass between his legs, placing one between his teeth before finally responding, “This place is your place, I’m your guide, and it’s you that brings me here. Not the other way around.” He grinned at her and waited for her next barrage of questions.

“My guide? Like, a spirit guide? I thought those were supposed to be animals. And if this is my place, why isn’t it more like somewhere I recognize? I’ve never seen anything like this before. I’m pretty sure nothing like this place exists. And what do you mean I bring you here? I don’t even know where
here
is! Let alone how to get here!” She had her hands on her hips again and she was building up to a full on rant when he threw her off track by responding with a question of his own.

“What color do you
want
the sky to be, Ardra?”

She shook her head in disbelief. “What kind of question is that? What color do I want the sky to be? The only color that it’s supposed to be!” She almost added, “The same color as your eyes.” But thought better of it.

As soon as the thought formed in her head, however, the plain white expanse above her head began to shift to a delicate blue. It deepened and darkened until it perfectly matched the color of his eyes.

Her mouth dropped open and his grin grew even wider.

“Told ya so.” He looked up, thoughtful for a moment, before adding, “Nice shade. It really brings out the blue in my eyes, don’t you think?”

Then he winked at her.

“How did you do that?” She asked, astonished and panicked that he had noticed the color.

“You did it, not me. Like I said, this is your place. You’re what we call a Controller. The space is here for you at all times, and you can control certain elements within it.” He paused to point at the sky to emphasize before continuing. “As for your other questions, yes, I’m a spirit guide. No, we don’t have to be animals. Your little patch of land here may not be somewhere you recognize from your version of the real world, but it does exist. Right here. All around you. As for how you get here, and how you bring me along for the ride, those questions are a little more complex and should probably be answered another time.”

To test his theory, she thought of the putrid green color that cartoon characters always turned right before they got sick. Before the color had even fully replaced the blue she was feeling a little nauseous with it and changed it back.

“So, I’m dreaming then?”

He laughed again, “No. Not exactly. When you dream, it’s just your mind taking a little vacation and relaying messages that your subconscious has for you. This is a bit more complicated than that.”

“I see.” She didn’t though. She wasn’t really sure of what she was seeing at all but she didn’t want to look like a moron. “So, why do I keep coming here? And why is it only when I’m wearing that necklace? I’ve never been here before that I can remember. What makes now any different from the previous twenty-one years?”

His chiseled face grew serious at the line of questioning.

“Nothing has changed really. It’s always been there just waiting for you to find it. Under normal circumstances, they wait for you to do it on your own, but your circumstance is far from normal, Ardra.”

“Wait wait wait. Who are ‘they’ and what do you mean my ‘circumstance’?”

He exhaled an impatient sigh, “They have been called a lot of things. We’ll stick with Fate for right now, as it is the easiest and most well known name for them. And your circumstance is the reason you have started coming here. You have a lot to learn and a very short time to learn it in. Things are changing Ardra, and not for the better. Not only for you either. The things that are happening in your reality are changing things in ways that we can’t possibly begin to imagine. The Sisters, Fate, have taken a special interest in you and your well being. That’s where I come in. I have the unfortunate task of making sure you are ready to handle the shit show, pardon my French, that is about to fall into your lap.”

She put her hands up in front of her, halting his rant. “I have to stop you right there. You are telling me that
the
Fates are behind all of this? Like, the three hags that share the eyeball? Are you out of your mind?”

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth in the face of her incredulity.

“You can’t tell me you don’t believe in dimensions other than the one you live in. I mean, look where you’re standing. You also can’t deny that there are ways to get from one to the other. You have a fist full of my hair in your bottom drawer at home don’t you?” He reached up and pulled on a few of the short strands protruding from his scalp. “Is a little belief in Fate really that far of a stretch for you at this point?”

He continued without waiting for a response from her, “The reality of it is, you’re not the person you have spent your whole life thinking you are. You’re meant for bigger things and in some cruel twist of Fate, I was the one assigned to teach your stubborn ass how you’re going to accomplish those things.”

She thought back to the nagging feeling she had had since her birthday and the darkness that she kept locked in the box inside of her. If that was where he was going with this, he could forget it. She had seen what happened when that stuff was set loose and she didn’t plan on ever letting it happen again.

“You’re crazy!” She yelled, throwing her hands in the air and turning another one hundred and eighty degrees.

She walked back in the direction of the fountain as she continued her rant.

“I’m just a girl. Every day, run of the mill, Mormon girl. I go to school, I go to church, I have a few friends, and I have a dog. I’ll admit I’m a bit prettier than most people I know, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t entitle me to this pedestal you seem to be trying to put me on. And even if it does, I don’t want to stand on it. That’s not who I am.”

She turned to make sure that he was following before continuing.

“Besides, even if I
am
who you say I am, for the sake of my immortal soul, I’d have to tell you to find a different girl. You’re sounding an awful lot like a Pagan to me, and I refuse to have any part in all that. My whole life I have been the one in control of my destiny. I have worked hard to achieve the things I have achieved and make sure that I’m doing my part to follow the plan that Heavenly Father has made for us. I lead a good life, I help those in need and I go to church. Someday, I’ll find a husband, get married and have a bunch of babies. That’s just the way my life is going to work out. It’s been that way since I was a little girl. So you can go back to your bosses and tell them that they need to find a new person for you to train because your version of things just doesn’t fit into my plan.”

“Ardra, I can’t do that. The wheels are set in motion and you’re along for the ride whether you like it or not.”

She turned on him as she reached the edge of the fountain and screamed, “Well I don’t like it! Not only is it totally bogus, but it’s against everything I believe in. I’m not going to toss the road map of my life, which I have worked hard to create, out the window so that I can be a minion for some phenomenal cosmic power. It’s not going to happen!”

As she commanded herself to return to her body, the gardens before her began to waver and fade. She was more than fed up with the load of crap he was trying to force down her throat and she was ready to get back to her body and take a drive to the Great Salt Lake and toss his hair, and the necklace, into the smelly, salty water.

Right before he faded away completely, she willed him into his animal form if only to prove that she could.

When she found herself looking into Kaiser’s soft, golden face, her heart skipped a beat and the world faded away to darkness.

She opened her eyes and found herself looking into the same face she had just left. The same lolling tongue, same intense blue eyes, same golden coat and she had the same sinking feeling in her stomach.

She leaped off of her bed in the direction that would take her furthest from the dog. Unfortunately, it put him between herself and her bedroom door.

“You!” She shouted at him. She thrust a finger in his direction to make sure he knew that she was talking to him, “You! How could I have been so stupid? You’ve been here all this time! Watching me!”

Flashes of heated memories and heavy breathing ran through her head and made her stomach churn.

She suddenly felt very violated as what had been nothing more than a dog suddenly became that very sexy, very manly hunk of a man that had had her swooning just a few minutes ago.

There was even a tuft of unruly fur above his eye that she had chalked up to being a cowlick.

“How did I not see this?” She asked him as she slid her back down the wall she had bumped up against.

He poked his head around the foot of her bed and stared at her with his big blue sad doggy eyes.

“Oh no you don’t!” She puffed herself up to express how serious she was. “Out!”

She pointed her finger at the door and he slunk out into the hall like she had beaten him.

She jumped up and closed it behind him. “Unacceptable!” she shouted to the empty room. What was she going to do?

She took several deep breaths as she paced in order to get her pounding heart under control. There was no way that her dog was actually a man from another dimension. There was no way that she had actually
been
to that other dimension. And there was no way that she was going to succumb to whatever it was these so-called Fates had in mind for her. She and her Heavenly Father had been making a plan together for the past twenty one years and she had no intention of letting this psychotic episode derail that.