The Legend of the Bloodstone (2 page)

She said nothing but nodded, acquiescence easier when it
remained silent. His mouth tightened in a thin line and he shook his head as he walked away, muttering under his breath. Maggie turned back to the pile of debris and bent to clear it before he returned.

She did not locate the source of her injury, but she found the last
few rocks. She picked one up and meant to toss it in her makeshift pouch, but it felt warm as if it had lay in the sun all day and she paused to look closer at it. It was oval shaped and smooth against her palm, and in the glare from the single light bulb hanging above her head, it gleamed a dark green color, nearly black.  Her hand began to throb again, but this time it was from the spreading warmth in her palm beneath the stone. She leaned one hand against the bluestone wall to steady herself as she looked closer at it and noticed there was a vein of crimson running through the center. Had she stained the stone with her own blood?

Bile suddenly rose in her throat and she choked back a wave of nausea. Shaking her head in disgust of her own weakness, s
he supposed the chore could wait until the morning and she could surely use the rest. She clutched the smooth rock in her bloody palm and pushed off the wall with her good hand to stand. Her vision abruptly exploded in a halo of darkness.

“Whoa,” she said, reaching for the wall and
missing. Tiny bursts of stars now filled the blackness, and she grabbed for the wall again without success. Was she going to pass out? She thought it might be best to sit down, but control of her traitorous body was lost. Her legs buckled and collapsed in a useless heap as the rest of her flaccid body followed.

“Maggie?
Maggie
!”

She heard the echo
of his voice but could not respond, unable to push the words from her throat with the pressure of the darkness engulfing her. An urge to lie down on the ground pulled her closer to the floor, as if she could melt through the dirt and join somehow with some primal force to stop the maddening spin of her senses.

She felt a burning in her palm as the strange pulling sensation increased, reminded of that time as a child when she waded too far out in the ocean and the current became too strong. The riptide sucked her out, persistent at first, but quickly changed into a demanding dredge that pulled her further and further from shore. Her first impulse was to fight the pull, but as it began to
rise the pressure was too great, and the only thing left was to submit and let it carry her away. Marcus was her savior that day, but in the barn, no one could help her. Now the power surged from the stinging in her hand and the tide heaved her down to the earth, where she thought if she could only press her cheek to the damp ground, the urge might be relieved.

A
sliver of fear washed through her blood as her vision began to change, the dark haze overcome by a growing ember of light. Bright, it was so bright! Her shoulder gave way and she let her head follow, eager now to make the pressure stop, but perplexed that the light now surged stronger, blinding her, with each inch she pressed closer to the earth. Numbness throbbed in every muscle, coursed throughout her limbs, and churned in a heap in her belly, where it proceeded to drop inside, and she thought she surely would vomit now.  She opened her eyes. Only a shimmering sunset greeted her confusion, a sunset that seemed to grow larger and larger until it engulfed her. At last, when she thought she would burn because she could not tolerate the heat anymore, she dug her face into the cold mud and closed her eyes to the madness.

Chapter
2

Something tasted gritty and damp when she tried to moisten her cracked lips. She figured she must have slept like a rock if she was waking up with a cottonmouth, but when she tried to swallow all she could taste was…dirt.  Maggie sighed and rolled over, and when she opened her eyes, nothing made sense at all.

The palms of her hands
were caked with wet earth when she pushed herself into a sitting position.

“Wha
t the hell?” she groaned. She blinked a few times in an effort to clear the sleep from her eyes, and when her gaze finally sharpened, she was dismayed to find she truly was sitting on the ground. It also appeared she had rolled around in the dirt, because as she held each arm extended away from her body she could see the mud slathered on her skin.

A crescent moon was shining overhead
illuminating the evergreens in a silver glimmer, the sounds of a busy forest smothering her senses.  She was sitting in a patch of damp earth on the floor of a forest, her fingers digging into the earth, the heady scent of evergreen needles strewn around her, and she could still taste the bitter blood residue in her mouth from her wound.

Ok, she knew what was going on. She must be dreaming
. It was the only explanation. Time to stop acting like a ninny! She closed her eyes again, knowing when she opened them up, she would be safe in her own bed, snug and cozy like she was supposed to be. Not sitting on her ass in the middle of the night in a forest.

She gave it a go. Eyes closed, she counted backwards in a method
ical manner from ten to one. Yup, that should do the trick!

Oh, good Lord Jesus!

It did
not
do the trick. She remained there on her wet backside, just as before. Unease nagged her consciousness, turning into a rising howl as she glanced down at her hand covered with dirt and her own dried blood. Before she could make another attempt to wake from her curious dream, she heard the snapping of branches and could see the brush ahead separating. Something was making its way through the undergrowth, pointed in her direction.

Maggie had never seen a bear before in real life, so it was a bit of a shock to see how immense the creature looked in her dream. Ah, okay! If she
was trapped like a dirty little pig in an insufferable dream, she might as well get to see a bear up close! She giggled at her predicament and hoped she would remember it when she woke up.

Walking on all fours, the massive bear
was a solid chunk of dense brown fur. He lumbered toward her in a lazy swagger, his enormous head swinging back and forth. The creature’s head stopped abruptly when his deep brown eyes swung her way, and his weight shifted somewhat backward on his haunches, although he did not actually sit down.

Maggie stuck her di
rty palm up and waved, as if the bear was sitting behind a fence at the zoo.

“H
ey…bear,” she said. She rolled forward onto her knees, and it struck her as odd that she could feel the dampness through her denim jeans. She was fine with ignoring that bit of information, much more interested in getting close to the animal in her dream. As she reached for it, the beast opened its mouth and uttered a snarl, and she scrunched her nose. Rancid breath, indeed!

The beast
rose upward on its hind legs, still roaring his displeasure, its front limbs extended outward so close to her head she could see the round pink pads of his paws. She began pushing off with her feet and scrambled backward on her bottom, then turned over to crawl away faster. Dream or no dream, she did not want to be eaten by a wild animal!

Didn’t
someone once tell her if you die in a dream, you die in real life
? 

S
he was not willing to test the theory. She was still considering that conversation when she felt the blow to her right shoulder followed by a searing pain as she was slammed flat to the ground, the air from her lungs evacuating in one painful rush. Her mouth again tasted the dirt as she struggled to gasp for air.

“
Ikali-a
!” A shrill voice whooped from very near her face. Maggie could not see with her face pressed down into the ground, but she felt the air above her swoosh and the weight of the massive paw was suddenly gone from her back. The bear sounded angrier at the intrusion, its roaring mingled with the sharp rapid cries coming from what sounded like a man. Maggie pulled at the ground with her broken fingernails and struggled to breathe but her crushed ribs refused to expand.  She managed to curl into a half sitting position and back away from the melee at her feet. Her shoulder screamed in protest with every move and a steady trickle of blood dripped down the front of her parka. 

The scene in front of her was v
ery much like a movie - the brown bear stood on his hind legs, his front paws extended outward, looking as if he were about to give the man standing in front of him a hug. Only the bear was truly, really, there in front of her.  Moreover, crouched between her and the bear was a bronze-skinned man, lithe and quick on his toes, wielding what looked like a rather small knife in consideration of the size of his opponent.

“
Ikali-a nusheaxkw!”
the man roared, as if in challenge to the beast.

The stranger danced away from a swipe by the bear, eliciting another frustrated
bellow from the beast. Maggie could see the muscles of his legs flex through the buckskin pants he wore, and there were colored beads attached to a belt at his waist that bounced when he jumped. She had not gained enough breath back in her lungs yet to scream, but if she had, she would have been screaming by now from the absurdity of it all.

The bear aimed
another seeming half-hearted swipe at the man, and then gave his massive head a shake as he dropped back down on all fours. The man remained crouched between her and the beast, his fist extended with the knife pointing at it, the veins on his muscled arms standing out like cords against his skin.  With one last series of groans and roars, the animal tossed his head and then abruptly swung his shoulder around. The beast lumbered back the way it came through the underbrush. It appeared to have lost interest in the fight.

The man watched the bear
retreat. When he was satisfied it was gone, he turned to Maggie. She could see beads of sweat sliding down off his brow along his black hair. There was a thin braid down the left side of his face where his hair laid flat just past his bare bronzed shoulders, but she was perplexed to notice the right side of his head was shaved clean in a crescent shape from temple to nape. She could see the bone-handled knife he still clutched in his hand as he glared at her. His hands were fisted at his sides and his chest heaved with the effort of slowing down his breathing.   Maggie was too stunned to speak, but even just staring at him in return of his sharpened gaze was too much.  She felt her head spinning as if she would vomit, but the last thing she wanted to do was throw up in front of the stranger, so she leaned forward and put her head in her hands.

“
Keptchat!
”

She heard the utterance that sounded like a curse, and felt his presence when he kneeled down beside her. 
Uncontrolled shaking coursed through her and she felt she was going to lose her head to a moment of panic. Things were not making any sense. The warm hands on her upper arms sent a shock through her bones, and the man holding her was most certainly not a dream.

Everything that had just happened was real.

The man muttered words she did not understand, as if talking to himself in another language. Maggie felt fingers grasp her chin and then the wet rim of some sort of container of water as he pressed it to her lips. She took a few sips and then shook her head to show him she had enough.

“Aptamehele,”
he muttered.

He sat back on his haunches in front of her, now an unmoving statue as he surveyed her. Maggie returned his bold gaze this time.
She imagined she should feel uncomfortable with the way his eyes raked her body, but she did the same to him so she figured they were on equal footing. Other than his tanned buckskin leggings and knotted rawhide beaded belt, he was adorned with rawhide ties above each bicep and a long lanyard necklace decorated with beads and two black feathers.  The necklace hung down his broad chiseled chest, banging against his caramel skin when he moved. Some sort of hanging flap was secured around his hips by a narrow cord…was it a breechclout?

His features
could not be called handsome by the standards she was accustomed, but there was a fierce strength in the sharp lines of his face that captivated her.  When she slowly returned her gaze back to his eyes, she was startled to find they were a luminous deep blue, which seemed peculiar for an Indian.  A corner of his mouth slanted downward as he met her appraisal with his own.

“Why are you here, stupid white woman?” he asked
in clear, but hesitant English. She did not care for the mocking tone of his voice, nor the way he raised his eyes brows to wait for her answer, as if he held some authority over her.

“I-I don’t know,” she managed to stammer. “Why are you here?” she countered. This was apparently a humorous response, and it caused him to laugh
aloud and smile.

“Maybe you should be glad I am here. Lucky for you that bear was not too hungry.”

Maggie closed her eyes and shook her head. Yup. Still there when she looked again.  The blasted Indian was grinning as though she had provided him endless entertainment. How on earth was she sitting in the middle of the woods after being attacked by a bear, with a man dressed in an Indian costume laughing at her? Maybe she had been sleepwalking and stumbled onto…onto what? Wait, Halloween was next month! Yes, that had to be it! An early Halloween party and some adults running around in the woods in costumes, perhaps taking things a little too seriously. Hell, the guy was probably drunk, especially considering the way he shaved the side of his head for one silly costume event!