Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (38 page)

"Andy, you're the one who forgot to keep your
cell phone charged. And mine was smashed by the hail. Besides, we're already
here," Lisanne observed.

There was a moment of silence as they all stared
at each other awkwardly, then Sam jumped up and said, "I want to see the
horses," and ran out the door. Harry followed her, bowling over a cat who was
sitting on the step.

"Hey!" Lisanne started.

"Sorry!" Sam called as she ran down the walkway.
"Harry's sorry, Merlin!"

"Merlin!" Jessica said, surprise in her voice. "We
heard about him tonight!"

Lisanne had picked up the cat and was smoothing
his black fur as he hissed. "It's okay, Merlin. You know how dogs can be."

Waldo woofed.

"Well, you know you dogs can be a pain
sometimes, Waldo. I'm just calling it like I see it," Lisanne replied.

"Lisanne, if you're ever going to get along with
Waldo, you need to be kinder to him," Andy told her.

"And why would I need to get along with Waldo?
Huh? He's with you, isn't he? And right now you aren't my favorite person in
the world!" Lisanne replied heatedly.

"Um, folks, why don't you come on in and let's
sort all this out," John suggested, opening the door wider. "Jess, let's put on
some coffee or something and then we can sit down and all talk calmly."

"Coffee! Oh, my God, yes, that's just what I
need!" Lisanne said, walking quickly into the house and following Jessica down
the hallway.

"Coffee! That's the last thing she needs!" Andy
responded, shaking his head as he walked in. He looked back for Waldo and saw
the dog running off after the golden retriever and little girl. "Well, I guess
Waldo wants to make friends. Is it all right if he goes with them?"

"Sure," John replied, looking out the door. "I'm
just not sure Samantha should be out there with all those horses milling
around, but Harry's with her, so she should be okay."

"Oh, the horse girl will take care of her--I mean
Janine, the girl, she's a girl I mean, not a horse." He stopped and started
again. "Janine is the girl who looks after the horses, talks to the horses,
rides with horses," he explained. "She'll look after the little girl."

John closed the door, saying, "That's okay,
then."

"You just accept what I'm saying about a girl
talking to horses?" Andy quizzed him.

"Around here, talking to horses sounds perfectly
normal. Come on, let's go get some coffee," John answered him. "My name's John
Samuels, by the way."

"The writer?" Andy asked.

John stopped for a moment and laughed. "Yes, the
writer. With all that's been going on around here, I'm more used to thinking of
my job title as 'Sam's dad' or as 'safe zone planner.' But yes, I've written a
few books too."

"I'm Andy Jordan and I think I've read all your
books. And there are more than a few!" he said enthusiastically. "You're one of
my favorite writers!"

"And do you feel lately like you're in one of my
books, part of the story?"

Andy laughed and said, "I don't think I've had a
spare moment to think about that, but yes, it does seem more like fiction than
real life, doesn't it?"

"Just wait. Once you've met everyone here and
heard our part of the story, I think you'll be convinced it couldn't be real!
At least, that's how I feel about half the time." He sighed and then said, "But
with the dreams coming true and all, I guess we have to believe it's real."

"You've been having the dreams?" Andy demanded.

"Oh, yeah," John replied wearily. "Just call us
dream central here."

Sonoran Desert, Arizona

Zack stretched out on his bed in the motel room,
still clad in a t-shirt and jeans. It had been a long day. The meeting with
Mayor Dubois and Alan Beakman had not gone well. He thought it was hard for
Maria to be convincing when she wasn't having the dreams and didn't totally
believe in all of what she was saying to the mayor. Zack knew it sounded crazy,
but he also knew it felt right. That the dreams really were predicting the next
disasters. Still, he was disturbed because parts of Margaret's story didn't
make sense to him. She seemed to be saying humans caused the disasters by not
taking good care of the planet. Kind of an environmentalist's revenge sort of
thing playing out on a global scale. That if they all became tree-huggers and
stopped polluting the planet, the disasters would end. Yet, that didn't make
sense to him. Ignoring the dream aspect of things, he knew that the earth was a
big place; a planet was a big place. To suggest that humans could cause its
demise was going a bit far. Yes, humans could cause damage, but he'd always
thought that the planet had a lot of self-correcting mechanisms. Still, perhaps
Margaret was right and the planet was indeed conscious. And fed up with the
behaviors of humans. But if that were the case, wouldn't humans be given a
chance to change? From his point of view, Zack thought it looked like the
humans were just being wiped out in large groups. A kind of behavior
modification plan was what Margaret seemed to be saying. Yet, to Zack it looked
more like genocide, or species-cide, or whatever the term would be.

He heard soft knocking on his door. Rising and
opening the door, he found Maria, standing there in a silky, cream-colored
nightgown with a matching robe over her shoulders.

"What's up?" he asked, puzzled by the fearful
look on her face.

"Can I come in and just be with you for a while?
I can't sleep."

"Sure, no problem."

"Thanks," she said, walking quickly inside, and
settled into a chair. "Were you asleep?"

"No, just lying down, thinking. There seems to
be a lot to think about lately," he told her. "Did you leave Cleo in your room?"

"No, I gave her to Phoebe for the night. She
seems to be able to calm Phoebe down."

"Okay. So, what's wrong?" He sat down on the
edge of the bed.

"Oh, nothing much, just the world coming to an
end, people dying everywhere, us following a damn psychic around, us not being
able to get on the air again, Phoebe barely holding it together, my mom and
dad...." Her voice trailed off after the burst of speech; then she covered her
face and began crying.

"Hey," he said softly, "hey, it's gonna be okay,
Maria." He crossed the room to her and knelt down beside the chair. Standing,
he pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. He rubbed her back
as she sobbed against his chest.

After a few minutes, her crying slowed down. He
let go of her and reached across the table for some tissues. "Here," he said,
giving them to her. "Any better now?"

Wiping her eyes and nose, Maria laughed darkly. "No,
not really. I guess I thought if I could cry it would all feel better."

"There's a lot wrong, Maria, and you haven't
really let yourself grieve for your parents. We've been so busy. And it all has
been crazy-making."

"Yeah, I know. I realized tonight--I'm never
going to have that again, that feeling of safety I had when I would go home to
see them. They were always there and being home made me feel so safe. And now
the world is at its most unsafe ever, and I can't go home. There is no more
home to go to without them."

"Maria, I am so sorry." He pulled her toward him
and hugged her. Slowly her arms encircled him, holding on to him tightly.

"You know I'm always here for you?" Zack
whispered in her ear.

"Always?" she replied shakily.

"Always," he answered firmly.

She leaned back in his arms and looked up into
his face, into those kind, gray eyes, like a calm sea tonight, she thought. And
suddenly she didn't want to think anymore. She reached up and pulled his face
down to hers.

The kiss was soft and tentative at first, then
more intense. As Zack kissed her, he felt amazed even as he worried if this was
the right thing to do. He kissed her face, moving softly from lips to eyes to
cheeks to nose and then back to her lips. His hands roamed up and down her
back, down further, pressing her against him. Murmuring against her mouth, he
asked, "Are you sure about this, Maria?"

"I want you," she replied. "I don't know what
will happen tomorrow, I don't know if part of it is grief or what it is, but I
know that right now I need to feel alive, really, completely alive. And I care
about you, Zack. I'm only starting to realize just how much. You've been there
for me for so long." She kissed him gently again. "I feel like you are all I
have left. So, yeah, I'm sure about this."

He let out the deep breath he hadn't even
realized he was holding in while listening to her response. Even as he slowly
slid the robe off her smooth shoulders and felt her hands running up under his
t-shirt across his chest, he still had a moment of doubt as he recognized it
hadn't been a declaration of love so much as one of need. But he'd never told
her how he felt about her either. Helping her tug his shirt over his head,
shivering as she ran her fingernails across his back and around to his abdomen,
and then feeling her loosening the belt of his jeans, he decided the doubts
could wait.

As his hands moved across satin and beneath it,
he said breathlessly, "Yeah, I'm sure too."

Cape Fair, the Samuels' House

Lisanne looked stunned, eyes glazed as she
watched Jessica re-bandage her arm using gauze instead of the old scarf Andy
had tied around it before. She shook her head sharply, trying to clear her
mind.

"I knew it was strange, the whole thing with
Merlin, and running into Andy and Waldo, and our having the dream--and I can't
believe Black got here before us! But hearing it all from you, the bigger
picture, well, it's just mind-boggling! And to think I thought at first it was
all because I'd been drinking so much."

Jessica looked up at that and exchanged a
worried look with John. Lisanne noticed the look and grimaced. "It's okay,
guys. I stopped drinking when I left Florida. Merlin kind of insisted."

Jessica couldn't help the relief that spread
across her face, but John asked, "That's not too long ago. Do you have a
drinking problem, Lisanne? Because we're going to need to know all of our
weaknesses as much as we know the strengths and skills of everyone here."

Lisanne shrugged and squirmed a little in her
chair around the big oak kitchen table. "I don't know how much of a problem I
have. For the past six months or so I've been drinking pretty heavily. But
maybe that was just because I was feeling kind of self-destructive--look, I don't
want to go into all of it. When my mother died, I kinda went into a tailspin,
and I'm only recently figuring all that out. I guess what I can say at this
point is I probably should stay away from the alcohol and I'll try to do that."

"What's that Alcoholics Anonymous saying?" Andy
asked. "One day at a time, right?"

"How should I know?" Lisanne replied. "I've
never been to AA!"

"I was just trying to--" Andy began, only to be
cut off by Jessica.

"Where's Sam?"

"Outside with Janine, hon, remember?" John said.

"Well, it's late and they shouldn't be out there
alone." She stopped and smiled ruefully. "Although, I guess they aren't alone,
not with all those horses, plus Harry."

"And Waldo," Andy put in.

Rising from the table, John said, "I'll go get
them. Why don't you all figure out the sleeping arrangements for tonight? We'll
find a more permanent place for you to stay tomorrow."

As John left to the sounds of Lisanne and Andy
bickering over whether they should get motel rooms and Jessica insisting they
stay here, he felt satisfied that Andy was going to be a good addition to their
group and worried that Lisanne might be a handful. He walked outside, across
the front yard to the patch of dogwood trees. Jessica had insisted on putting a
wrought-iron bench under the trees so that she could sit amongst the blossoms
in the spring. He approached from the side and the two girls didn't see him
coming as they sat there talking. He stopped a few feet away and shamelessly
listened in to their conversation.

"So you think it's pretty big? From what you can
tell with the horse-mind?" Sam was asking.

"Yeah, it seems like it," Janine agreed. "But I
can't really get into it. It's more like I can feel around the edges of it
beneath all the other horse stuff going on."

"Probably you shouldn't try to, not yet anyway,"
Sam said wisely. "It can be too-o-o-o much if you aren't ready for it. I almost
got lost there one time."

"Ooh, I wouldn't want to get stuck in there,"
Janine responded.

"Well, I don't really know if you can get stuck
there, but maybe you can get lost for a while."

"So you can talk to all the animals?" Janine
asked.

"Yeah--but don't go talking 'bout that too much
right now. Everybody's sort of upset by that. I think they get scared. They don't
have to be, but you know they won't listen to me." Sam shook her head. "Grown-ups
can be dumb sometimes."

"I remember when I was a kid, nobody would
listen to me at all," Janine said darkly, a scowl on her face.

"You're still a kid!"

"Am not!" Janine corrected her. "I'm sixteen!"

"Well, you're kinda small to be sixteen. I
thought you had to be bigger to be sixteen," Sam replied. "Max is bigger and he's
sixteen."

"Who's Max?"

"Just a guy who's living here with us. He has a
puppy named Ruby that he talks to. 'Course, Ruby doesn't know much 'cause she's
still a baby kind of."

"Yeah, I've noticed that with the colts--they
think like kids and don't know so much."

"You know your skin is almost the same color of
skin as Max has."

Janine looked startled. "He's African-American?"

Sam shrugged. "I don't know. Uncle Nathan just
came from Africa and his skin isn't that color, not like yours and Max's. Uncle
Nathan just has a good tan like I get in the summertime. But Max says his skin
is that pretty brown color all the time. I told him I wanted to have skin like
his, but he says I can't."