Shadow of Nevermore

by Lilly Black

  "Adanya is the name my momma gave me!" she cried both in her childhood and as she relived it in the bedroom of the cabin at the Deadfall.

  "What?" Jax asked. "Dani are you okay?" He walked over to her, and she collapsed in his arms, sobbing.

  "They took it all away from me, Jax. Everything my mother and father gave me, they took it away. They took away all traces of my color, and then I grew up and did the same thing. You can't even tell I was raised here in West Virginia because I was ashamed of my hillbilly roots out in the world just like my aunt was ashamed that we came from a poor, black family!"

  "Baby girl, it's okay," he said, gently smoothing her silky hair, but it only angered her.

  "Would you even be doing that if I had my natural hair? If I had dreads? If I kept it short with finger waves like my grandmother?"

  "Dani, I'd love you if you were bald. Where's this coming from?"

  "Would you? Would you really?" she demanded. "I mean, let's be honest. If I didn't look like this, you wouldn't have even given me a second glance when you saw me from the stage in Pittsburgh."

  Jax glared at her, wounded, but recognizing that whatever was bothering her was about her and not him, he swallowed his own feelings and focused on the woman he loved. He braced her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  "Dani, I wasn't drawn to you because of how you looked, so you need to get that out of your head right now. Don't get me wrong, I think you're the most beautiful woman in the world, but if it had been about looks, it would have been Olivia's hand that I reached for from the stage," he said, and her face twisted in anger. "Think about it, baby. Look at my history. Blondes. It's always been blondes, and it never mattered if they were beautiful. It was a pattern. A habit. But you. There was something about you, something that made me feel like I couldn't go on if I didn't touch you, and when you disappeared, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I had to find you. It had nothing to do with your hair or your looks. It was something deeper that I'd never felt before. I love you, Dani Templeton Bonham. Danielle, Adanya, whatever name you choose to call yourself, and I don't care what your hair looks like."

  "No?" she asked as she stood up and stared at him, convinced that he wasn't being honest. Then the scissors she had out to cut the fabric caught her eye. She backed away from where Jax sat on the bed to give him a full view as she grabbed them from the dress, and with her hair in her other hand, she took off six inches in one slice.

  "Beautiful," he said, standing and taking a step toward her.

  Undeterred, she did it again, taking another six or so, leaving the length just below her ears.

  "Beautiful," he repeated, moving closer, his gait slow and sultry.

  In a last ditch effort to prove her point, Dani began grabbing smaller sections of her hair and cutting it close to the scalp until she had less than three inches of hair at any given spot, then she looked at him as if to say, "Checkmate," but all Jax said was, "Beautiful," as he smiled and placed his arms on her shoulders.

  "Beautiful," he breathed once more as he brought his lips to her forehead, and though Frisco's voice inside her head still tried to assert its will over her, her love and desire for Jax were greater. She surrendered to him, letting him pick her up and carry her to the bed, and as he continued to look at her, his expression no different than when her hair was long and perfect, the voice was silenced altogether because she knew Jax wasn't lying to her. He loved her. And she loved him. Frisco could fuck off.

  Jax scooped Dani up in his arms, laying her down atop the purple silk on the bed, and without the slightest concern about what she had done to her appearance, he made love to her slowly and sweetly. When it was over, she lay in his arms having trouble remembering why Frisco had upset her so much. She did have a lot of issues to work out concerning her family and her past, but regardless of what drove her to become the person she was, she liked the person she was. And she stood by what she said to Frisco. Race didn't matter anymore. There weren't enough humans left for that sort of attitude.

  "What are you thinking about?" Jax asked as he brushed her freshly cut bangs out of her eyes.

  "Just how much I love you," she said.

  "I love you, too, baby girl," he replied, kissing her on the forehead. "And your hair is gorgeous."

  "But you are going to go out later and get me some extensions, right?" she asked, and they laughed. She knew as soon as she got them, she could put the molecules of her long hair right back where they belonged, but Jax would have to believe it was a weave for a while because she just wasn't ready to share that secret with anyone.

  Day 63

  Feeling estranged from her friends, particularly Olivia since Aiden had chosen her as the focus of his wrath regarding capital punishment at the Deadfall, when Liana made the schedule for this week, she arranged for Olivia, Dani, June, and herself to all have the same night off. It had been a long time since they had done anything together that wasn't directly related to the management of the community, and when she invited them, everyone agreed it was long overdue. Liana had gone out earlier in the week and looted the wine cellar of a very nice, presently unoccupied mansion near Princeton, and she already had several chilled bottles waiting when her friends started to arrive.

  Dani was the last to show up, unveiling the first of the beautiful silk gowns she had made for herself. She looked like a princess and was definitely overdressed, but what her friends wouldn't understand was why because she wasn't ready to explain to them how this dress was specifically designed to allow her to maximize the powers given to her by the witch. She had panels that she could choose to release that would wrap up someone threatening her to be dealt with later, and it had a tiny pocket aerodynamically designed to allow her to carry her rings on the wind since she couldn't seem to turn metal into air.

  "Well, well, Princess Danielle, don't you look regal," Liana teased as she walked through the door.

  "It's Adanya," she said. "And I think I look more like a queen." She gave Liana a crinkle of her nose as she sat down in her living room and reached for a wine glass.

  "Oh, hell! That was your name!" Olivia exclaimed. "I can't believe I forgot about that."

  "I can't believe you remember," Dani said.

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," Liana said.

  "It happened before we met you," June said. "Right after Dani transferred to our school, her aunt and uncle changed her name. I remember her being really upset about it. Wow. I had completely forgotten."

  "Yeah, me, too," Dani said.

  "So, do you want us to call you that now?" Liana asked.

  "Nah, I was always Dani. But now when we're doing something official, I'm not Danielle anymore. Okay?"

  "You got it, Lady Adanya," Liana said with a curtsy.

  "Can I change my name? I've always hated June."

  "What'd you have in mind?" Olivia asked.

  "I don't know, but now you all sound so important - Queen Oblivia, Lady Adanya, General Navarro, but I'm just June. Blah."

  "Lady June?" Liana suggested.

  "Still, blah," June complained.

  "Then how about Lady Chatterjee?" Olivia teased, and Dani and Liana, who remained unaware that June had taken Ravi as a lover stared wide-eyed, eager for an explanation.

  "Oh, don't act so surprised," June said, rolling her eyes, and Liana poured her a glass of wine.

  "Alright, I am going to need more information," she said, handing her the goblet.

  "And graphic details," Dani added. "Tell us everything about Lady Chatterjee's lover." She winked, and as her friends laughed, June blushed but only for a second. She was excited to tell them, and with less rambling, she gave them the same speech she gave Olivia the morning after her first tryst with Ravi, including the same complaints about them not being tenacious enough when they tried to get her to understand just how sexually repressed she had spent most of her life.

  "Please, June," Liana said. "You were so convinced we were all going to hell, there was no ge
tting through to you."

  "Well, I'm glad someone finally did," Olivia said with a sincere smile, and tired of the spotlight, June decided to pass it along.

  "Me, too, and now I want to try everything," she said. "And speaking of everything...do you and Amina just switch men, or do you ever get both of them in the same night?"

  "Oooh!" Dani murmured, surprised that their historically timid, naive friend was now talking about threesomes.

  "I would fucking love that," Olivia said. "But I do well to keep them from punching each other when they're in the same room together. If their dicks were out, there'd be bloodshed."

  They all laughed.

  "So, what it's like juggling the two of them?" June asked. "Who's better?"

  "That's a loaded question," Liana said.

  "They're just different," Olivia said, then as she tried to think of how they were different, she realized that those were just kneejerk words that came out based on the fact that she couldn't possibly designate either of them as the better lover. "Actually, they're really not all that different. They're both amazing, and they both seemed to know exactly what I needed from the beginning. It's like they were made for me, and the only significant difference is that Alek isn't circumcised."

  Suddenly, the others were rapt. They'd only been with circumcised men, and while Aiden might not have been cut if he had always lived with his dad's family in Canada, he was born in the US where his mother insisted that he be mutilated for conformity's sake.

  "What's that like?" June asked, and as Olivia opened her mouth to speak, there was a knock on the door that startled them all. It was Amina. June had left her phone at work, and the boys had told Amina where to find their mother when she stopped by their home.

  "It's Amina!" June whispered as she looked out the window to see who was on the porch.

  "Well, let her in," Olivia said.

  "You don't mean for her to stay, do you?" Liana asked.

  "Why not?"

  "Because of what we're talking about. Won't that be weird for you?"

  "As fuck," Olivia said. "But that's my life now. May as well invite the sister wife to the sex talk." Her friends laughed uncomfortably as June went to the door, thanking her for bringing the phone and inviting her in for wine.

  "I guess I could have a glass," Amina said, and Liana moved to the couch beside Olivia so she could offer Amina her chair.

  It was quiet for a long, tense minute before Dani couldn't stand it anymore.

  "Ok, where were we?" she asked with a smirk because she knew exactly where they were. Olivia was about to describe the difference between Reid and Alek's penises.

  "You know where we were," Olivia said, glaring at her, but then she exhaled and decided to just be honest. "Ok, fine. Amina, we're talking about Alek's dick."

  "And now I'm really curious about what an uncircumcised one looks like," June added.

  "Honestly," Olivia began, "it doesn't look all that different from an uncircumcised one when he's hard, but it feels a little different inside... kind of like... maybe the difference between a regular and ribbed condom? I don't know if that's right. I hate condoms."

  "I don't even know what either of those feels like," June said, the conversation suddenly rolling again.

  "You've never used a condom?" Dani asked, incredulous.

  "My first time was on my wedding night. Then Jobe used one, but everything hurt so bad, I couldn't figure out what was going on. Then, you know, Alek came in and beat him up, so..."

  "And what about Ravi?" Liana asked, and June looked down.

  "We're using the pull out method," she mumbled.

  "Oh, Junebug, no! You'll end up pregnant. I can't believe Ravi would do that!" Olivia chastised.

  "I told him it was okay. I told him I was sure I wasn't fertile. It's my fault."

  "Well, it's fucking stupid, and you can't do it again. Do you want to get pregnant?" Liana demanded.

  "Of course not! I just wanted to have an orgasm, and I did, and it was wonderful."

  "And I'm happy for you, but from now on, you're going to start using condoms or you're going on the pill or something," Dani insisted. "I'm not going to have you die in childbirth."

  "Please. I've had four children. By the time Elijah was born, it was like my water broke, and ten minutes later, he was in my arms. I won't die, but I will start using condoms. He just didn't have one that night, and I really wanted to do it."

  "You promise?" Dani asked.

  "I promise," she said.

  "Wait a minute," Amina said, finally drawn into the conversation. "If you had sex with Ravi without a condom, how did you not know what an uncircumcised dick was like?"

  "How do you know anything about Ravi's penis?" June asked defensively.

  "In most of India, they view circumcision as barbaric, so even when they moved to the states, I doubt he would have had it done."

  "I'm pretty sure Muslims practice circumcision," June balked.

  "Yeah, we do," Amina said. "But I don't see what that has to do with the Hindu you're sleeping with. You know, June, you might want to take a closer look at his dick and his belief system."

  Everyone but June laughed, Olivia loudest of all because she had been waiting for someone to call June out on her assumptions about Ravi and could not have picked a better way. At least June seemed to be getting a handle on her poor upbringing in that regard, or so Olivia thought until the next thing to come out of her mouth.

  "Why would you be Muslim? You're white," she said, and Olivia palmed her face.

  "I'm from Bosnia, and that's how I was raised," Amina answered, already accustomed to June's lack of couth in such matters from working with her in the infirmary. "There are Muslims everywhere, you know. Even in India. Ravi just isn't one of them."

  "Well, that explains a lot!" June said. "I thought for sure he would be against abortion because I thought he was Muslim, but I guess Hindus aren't bothered by it because we had an argument about that."

  "Ok," Olivia said. "I'm going to stop you right there. We're not getting into that debate again."

  "And besides," Amina added. "There's nothing specific about abortion in the Qur'an or the Bible for that matter, so to expect a viewpoint on it based on religion is unrealistic. If you think your view is based on religion, the truth is probably that your view is based on your preacher's view. As for Ravi, to the best of my knowledge, the Hindu philosophy on that is to do whatever will cause the least harm to the people involved, which in Serena's case is exactly what we did."

  June sat stunned. She had never had it put to her that way, and she needed time to process whether her beliefs on the subject were really hers, Gods, or Pastor Weiland's. Amina was ten years their junior, but she was so much more worldly than all of them, she slipped perfectly into the group. And Dani decided it was time to see just how perfectly.

  "So, since we clearly need to change the subject," she began, "before you got here, Olivia was failing miserably at telling us the differences between Alek and Reid in bed, so I guess that's going to be up to you, newbie." She winked at Amina, who looked like a deer in headlights for a moment before her expression melted into a smile.

  "I can see where Olivia wouldn't see the same differences as I do because she's in love with them both. To me, they're as different as night and day. I love Reid. I care about Alek, too, and he's a wonderful human being, but he's more like a friends with benefits, you know? So with him, we're just entertaining each other, fucking, not making love. Olivia's probably making love with both of them."

  For a second, the room was so quiet, they could have heard a pin drop, then Olivia and her friends all burst out in laughter.

  "You don't know Olivia at all, do you?" Liana teased.

  "What do you mean?" Amina asked.

  "Olivia doesn't make love. She counts orgasms," Dani said.

  "Anything less than twenty, and she thinks instead of getting fucked, she's getting screwed," Liana added, making them laugh harder.

&nb
sp; "You guys are assholes," Olivia muttered with an embarrassed grin because she knew it was true.

  "Now I kind of want to hear this same conversation between Reid and Alek," Amina said.

  "I don't think they're quite as mature about it as we are," Olivia said

  "You're probably right," Amina admitted with a laugh. "I'm just glad we can be mature about things. Hell, I'm glad I can be mature about it. I really thought I was going to hate you, but I can't."

  "I couldn't possibly hate you. Do you know how difficult my life would be without you?" Olivia asked. "You made it possible for me to keep Alek. In fact, I'm so grateful, I let you fuck my husband and my boyfriend!"

  "This is getting weird," Amina said, then she turned to Liana. "Do you have any more wine?"

  Everyone laughed.

  Day 65

  When Jax got home from his shift, he found Dani's rings laying on the vanity in the bathroom, and he became furious. He immediately went out looking for her. There was a small, former supply room in the lodge she used sometimes for counseling sessions, but she would also go to individuals' homes, so when he didn't find her in her office, he went up the mountain peeping in the windows of the trailers and tiny homes they had brought onto the property for their new citizens.

  He couldn't find her anywhere, and there was a very good reason for that. She had been counseling during the hours he was on his shift, but when he was free, Dani was free - as free as the wind following him around. If she had known why he was looking in the windows of the new women in their community, she wouldn't have stayed silent, yet as both were wont to do, she assumed he was looking for someone else, someone he was interested in from the prison.