Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear
It Sleeps in Me (10 page)
OLD TEAL STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE PLAZA FROWNING AT Sora as she walked westward toward the bluff. In his conical rain hat and cape, he looked oddly unreal. Toothless, bald, his back hunched from age, he might have been a walking skeleton rather than a living man. His face was all sharp angles, which gave his white-filmed eyes a hauntingly dead look.
He lifted a gnarled hand and beckoned for her to come to him. She pretended not to understand, waved, and climbed the trail to the bluff top. The last thing she wanted was to speak with him. Teal had a way of seeing into people’s souls. She was afraid he would see her guilty thoughts as plain as her face.
Light rain fell through the maple and oak trees. But for the steady hiss of drops, the world had gone quiet and still. Birds perched on the branches with their feathers fluffed out, and the insects had all crept beneath fallen leaves or into cracks in the bark to keep their wings dry.
When Sora came to the faint path that angled out into the moss-cloaked forest, she stopped. Tracks dimpled the sand. A man had walked here before the rain, yesterday probably.
Skinner?
Anxiously, she shoved aside the massive curtains of moss and wound along the path toward the meadow. The raindrops that beaded her cape reflected the rich green shades of the forest, giving the white feathers an emerald tint.
She ducked beneath the last whisker of moss and emerged at the edge of the palmetto-choked meadow. The fronds dipped and swayed in the rain. She hadn’t been here in four winters, but she remembered everything: the red clay hill at the opposite end of the meadow, the gray rocks, the giant sycamores that ringed the base of the hill.
She didn’t see anyone.
By the time she reached the sycamores, her feet were soaked and cold. The trail led straight up the face of the hill to the top, where a small ramada sheltered a fire pit. In the depths of winter, hunters often came here to keep an eye on the animals that wandered into the meadow.
She took a deep breath and climbed to the hilltop. The air was heavy with the scent of spring blossoms.
The ramada, four upright logs roofed with grass thatch, measured five by seven paces. The fire pit inside was cold. All of the ash had been blown clean, leaving a few chunks of blackened wood. A short distance away, a pile of freshly gathered wood had been carefully stacked. She looked around at the forest. Dead limbs had been cracked off the west side of a persimmon tree. Sora’s gaze darted around, finding the same thing on several sycamores and oaks.
She involuntarily took a step backward.
The Black Falcon People always gathered dead limbs, roots, or bark from the east side of the tree. That was the good-luck quarter and stood for strength, while the west side represented weakness and death. Malevolent Spirits lived to the west, and it was the quarter from which witchcraft emanated. Only evil people gathered wood from the west sides of trees.
A witch might have walked this trail and gathered wood, but he hadn’t built a fire, or …
“I’m not a witch. Is that what you’re thinking?” he softly asked, and walked up the trail from the opposite side of the hill.
Startled, she stammered, “No, I—I wasn’t.”
His gaze went over her with infinite care. “It took you a long time to get here. Did you go to the place where I stowed my canoe first?”
“Yes.”
“Any others?”
“No.”
He leaned his shoulder against the ramada pole three paces away. His loose black hair looked freshly washed, shiny. Raindrops glistened on his handsome face and beaded the shark’s teeth that covered the front of his buckskin shirt. His leggings, like the red sash around his waist, were damp.
“Where’s your rain cape?” she asked.
“Skinner left our capes in the forest the night I died. I haven’t had a chance to Trade for a new one.”
Everything, even the way he clamped his jaw, reminded her of Flint.
“What happened here, Skinner? On this hilltop? Do you know?”
He hesitated for a long time before he replied, “I stole something very precious to you.”
Heat flushed her body. There was nothing in his voice. No anger. No regret. Only a frail tremor, as though he didn’t like remembering. “What happened?”
“I fed you a Spirit Plant.”
“What plant?”
He clenched his fists at his sides. “Water hemlock. I put it in your stew. That’s why you lost our son.”
Even now, the loss ate at her souls. In her dreams, her shadow-soul walked with that little boy, watched him grow, heard his laughter, felt his arms around her neck.
When her child died, she’d wondered if perhaps Flint hadn’t been feeding her small amounts of hemlock for a long time.
“What happened to the Trader I’d been talking with?”
Skinner made a futile gesture with his hand. “I followed him when he left Blackbird Town. Though it took me a full moon before I had the opportunity to slip poison into his tea pot.”
A chill ran down her spine. She had never known for certain that Flint had killed the man.
Five winters before her mother stumbled over the edge of the bluff and fell to her death, Sora began taking over more and more of her mother’s duties, negotiating fishing and hunting agreements, feasting visiting dignitaries, meeting with Traders. She couldn’t even remember the man’s name. He’d come from the southern islands to Trade pearls for fabrics. She’d been laughing at a funny story he’d told when Flint walked into the council chamber. Flint’s gaze had cut back and forth between them, noted their smiles, and his eyes had narrowed in fury.
He’d disappeared for two moons.
When he returned, he’d been withdrawn, living in some inner cocoon. Sora had dared to ask what he’d done. He wouldn’t answer. They’d eaten together in utter silence, a simple meal of catfish stew and maypop cake; then she’d walked into the forest to be alone. The gut-wrenching cramps had doubled her over almost on the very spot he was standing. The instant she’d cried out, he was beside her, stroking her hair, covering her face with kisses.
“Forgive me, forgive me, I love you so much. You must believe me! This is for the best!”
“Forgive me, forgive me, I love you so much. You must believe me! This is for the best!”
All night long, she’d begged him to go find Teal or another Healer. He’d just rocked her in his arms, weeping like a child, and telling her he loved her.
“Forgive me, Sora. I know I almost killed you, but I wasn’t—”
“Yes, I know. You weren’t trying to kill me.”
He lowered his head, and tears beaded his lashes. “No. I wanted to make certain you could never give birth to another man’s child.”
“Instead, you made certain I could never bear children at all.”
He stared at the ground.
She asked, “Where did you learn that water hemlock could make a woman barren?”
He shrugged. “Long Lance taught me. I know I acted like a fool, Sora. That’s why I finally had to go away. My love for you was an inferno consuming my insides. I couldn’t stand to be away from you. I was afraid to allow anyone to talk to you when I wasn’t there. Try to imagine what’s it’s like to be that afraid. Every instant of every day, I thought about your scent, about the feel of your fingers on my skin … and about another man thinking those same things.”
“That’s obsession.”
“You think I don’t know that? That’s why I finally divorced you. I was terrified that someday in a jealous rage I might kill you.”
The words took her by surprise. She had feared the same thing, but she’d loved him so much, she’d never allowed herself to believe it. “You did insane things when you were hurting. I understood that, Flint. I just—”
“No, you didn’t understand anything.” He slowly walked toward her. In an agonized voice, he asked, “Don’t you see? I left because my love for you was killing
both
of us. And … I didn’t feel like I was helping you anymore.”
both
of us. And … I didn’t feel like I was helping you anymore.”
His tormented expression lodged in her heart like an arrow. She hurt for him, as she always had when he’d begged for forgiveness. Wink had told her many times that she was just as crazy as Flint, that no other woman would take a man back after the things he’d done to her. But she’d loved him.
He came toward her slowly. “Sora, will you take a walk with me? I promise we won’t go far. I know you’re afraid to be alone with me, and the gods know I understand that. I just—I don’t want to talk to you here.”
What harm could taking a walk do? It wasn’t like there was a stew pot close that he could drop a Spirit Plant into. The fact that she even considered it, though, made her shy away from his hand.
“All right, but I must return to town soon. I don’t have much time.”
He nodded.
They walked down the opposite side of the hill and along the trail through the oak grove. The branches intertwined over their heads—dark filigree against the gray sky. Thick beards of hanging moss blocked most of the rain, leaving only a sprinkling of drops in the patches of dry grass beneath the trees.
She and Flint had taken this very trail a thousand times, laughing, playing hide-and-seek in the hanging moss, and her heart had not forgotten. The farther they went from the red clay hill, the more longing tore her souls.
She watched his broad shoulders sway. His body might have been Skinner’s, but he moved with the fluid, catlike grace of Flint.
Confused, oddly happy, she didn’t know what to think. For three winters, she had begged the gods to bring him back to her, and now, apparently, he’d returned.
When he held aside a curtain of moss for her, she stopped in front of him and looked up with her whole heart in her eyes.
“Are you Flint? Really?” The desperation in her voice stunned her. Had she wanted this all along? Just as Wink had suggested?
He touched her cheek, smoothed his hand down her jaw to her pointed chin, whispered, “Yes.”
He bent down and kissed her mouth, then planted a dozen tiny kisses over her forehead and cheeks. As he gently embraced her, he said, “Holding you eases my fears, Sora. Gods, how I’ve needed this.”
He untied the laces on her cape, and let it fall on the ground, but he kept kissing her, moving from her shoulder, down to her collarbone. With a tenderness she remembered in perfect clarity, he opened the laces on the front of her dress and freed her breasts.
“Please don’t; I—”
“No one will know, Sora. I give you my oath.”
“But Rockfish …”
As his gaze drifted over her body, he whispered, “Last night, you said I was the one great love of your life.”
The shock of those words coming from Skinner’s mouth affected her like a hard slap in the face. She blinked and stepped away from him. “Blessed Ancestors, what am I doing? You have me believing you’re Flint! I should never have agreed to go for a walk with you.”
“I am Flint. Let me prove it to you!”
She let out a small cry when he grabbed her, but it took barely five heartbeats for him to swing her into his arms and lay her flat on the ground. He jerked his war shirt aside, pried her legs apart, and shoved his rigid manhood inside her. The wave of pleasure that surged outward from her loins left her breathless. He took his time, each thrust going a little deeper, until he felt like a smooth wooden beam moving inside her.
The world seemed to come into sharper focus. The raindrops on her flesh pricked her with such superb reality they might have been icy needles. Before she was even aware she’d done it, she had locked her arms around his back and was matching him thrust for thrust.
“Yes,” he whispered against her throat. “I knew you needed me as much as I needed you.”
Their coupling became urgent, frantic.
She looked up. His dark eyes were glazed, on the verge of ecstasy. His thrusts began to come faster, pounding her against the ground.
When a dark shimmer began at the edges of her own vision, she whispered, “Flint, we mustn’t make a sound. We can’t take the chance that someone might hear us.”
“I know.” He clamped his mouth over hers to stifle her breathless moans while the contractions in her womb spread like tiny clenching fists. It lasted much longer than she remembered.
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