by Lisa Cach
“Uncle George! Aunt Alizon! Come watch, come watch!”
She was pulled out of her lustful fog by Gabrielle, yanking on their sleeves.
“Pippa built a new jump and is going to test it!”
“Oh, Christ!” George said, climbing off her. She was right behind him as he ran out the sliding glass door onto the back deck. “Pippa! Pippa, don’t you dare!” he shouted.
The only reply was the revving of a dirtbike engine, floating to them from across the field that edged up to the back lawn.
“Pippa! You listen to me!”
George had bought the virgins horses soon after their arrival, in a misguided attempt to make them feel at home. The virgins had found the contents of the garage much more fascinating than those of the stable, however, and now the only exercise the horses got was galloping around the field trying to escape the off-road madness of virgins in Land Rovers.
Pippa, alone among them all, preferred two wheels to four. What was worse, she had a streak of the daredevil in her that George said reminded him of himself, at her age.
“Pippa!” he yelled again, the twang of a fearful parent in his voice. He had threatened to cut Pippa off from “Xtreme Sports,” her favorite television show, if she tried any more stunts like the time she rappelled down one of the towers. Then there had been the sheet-as-parachute disaster, which had required a visit to the emergency room to sew up a gash in her leg from landing in a rhododendron. Presently she was on a campaign for hang-gliding lessons.
George jogged down the wooden stairs in his bare feet, then ran across the lawn. “Pippa! You shut that thing off, you hear me?”
Alizon could see Pippa’s new jump from the deck: a ramp of dirt about three feet high that would send her flying over a long Pippa-made mud puddle.
Alizon hadn’t told George, but Pippa had already started talking to her about training to become a professional wrestler, a high-flyer like her idol.
“Pippa’s on the bike again?” Athena asked, coming to stand beside Alizon at the porch rail. George jokingly referred to his sister as Chief Virgin Wrangler. She had undertaken the basic education of them all, putting them to work on the same texts from which little Gabby learned. She and Alizon had become close friends, both certain that they had known each other in more lifetimes than this one.
Alizon nodded, then glanced at Reyne, Greta, and Braya, who had their purses slung over their shoulders. “Where are you all going?”
“Athena’s taking us shopping,” Greta said and smiled. The scar from the surgery repairing her harelip was concealed with makeup, and her hair, cut in a chin-brushing bob, had sunny blond highlights in it.
Reyne’s plastic surgery and dental work had been more extensive, but the results as successful. No stranger looking at her would suspect that her nose had once been smashed, her teeth broken, or that her eyelid had drooped. She was still shy of her looks, but there was a certain coyness to her now, as men started to notice her and she gained confidence.
George had forbidden any of his single wrestling colleagues to “so much as think about” getting involved with any of his “foreign cousins.” He told everyone they were distant relatives from Yugoslavia.
Reyne supplied the rest of the information on their outing in her softly sweet, misleading voice. “Braya has a date.”
“Shut up!” Braya said, blushing.
Alizon looked at Braya in surprise. “A date? Where did you meet him?”
She mumbled something.
“One of those online dating services,” Athena filled in.
Alizon looked at George’s sister in wide-eyed question.
Athena shrugged. “It’s hard to meet people these days. I wrote her ad and read the men’s out loud.”
“Does George know?”
“As if he would understand. He’s turned into a mother hen, afraid to let any of you out of his sight. He’d try to send a bodyguard with her.”
Alizon smiled. Poor George. It had been mothers overanxious to protect their offspring that had been the catalyst for his arrival at Devil’s Mount. Now he himself was living that frantic parental role, trying to keep safe five medieval women in a modern world full of temptations to trouble.
She and the others had been surprised to find out what George did for a living—but not as surprised as he seemed to have expected. Fighting had been entertainment in their time as well, and George’s version was just a little more colorful.
It had taken longer for them to understand that George’s world was still their own, only six centuries later. He had shown them travel videotapes of modern England, including one that showed Devil’s Mount. The fortress had been added to, burned, and rebuilt through the ages and was no longer recognizable, although the causeway across the bay was remarkably the same.
Markesew had become the town of Marazion, and history said the mount had become a pilgrimage destination, the legend of the slaying of the dragon having spread across the country. There was, however, no trace remaining of Belch, or any proof that he had existed.
She wanted to go see Devil’s Mount in person, but that would have to wait until George’s lawyer managed to convert them all from paperless, illegal aliens to legal residents of the United States, or some such nonsense. She and George wouldn’t even be considered legally married until the identity issue was straightened out, despite the ceremony held on this very deck a year and a half past.
The bike engine hit a fever pitch, and Pippa tore into sight from behind a clump of trees, a rainbow of ribbons flying from the plume atop her purple helmet. Yellow plastic guards protected her shoulders, elbows, and knees. Alizon was reminded of the pictures she’d seen of a knight in full armor, charging down the lists.
George stopped his own dash across the field, obviously realizing it was too late to halt the jump.
Pippa hit the ramp, ripped up it, and flew. The front tire of the dirt bike rose up, Pippa standing on the footrests like a rider in stirrups. The rear tire touched down in the end of the puddle, sending up a spray of water. The front wheel came down on dirt, and for a moment it looked like she’d caught the landing just right.
Then the rear wheel slid out sideways, and the bike went over on its side, taking Pippa with it and catching her leg under its weight. The plumed helmet hit dirt.
“Pippa!” George cried, rushing to her. He pulled the bike away and tossed it aside, then huddled down over her. Alizon could not hear what was being said but guessed George was checking her for injuries.
A minute later Pippa was on her feet, helmet off and black starburst hair flaming undeterred. She looked up at the deck and her audience, and even from this distance Alizon could see the grin of triumph on her face. The girl punched her fist into the air.
Gabrielle punched hers into the air in response, and then whistled with her fingers in her mouth as her uncle had taught her. Greta, Braya, and Reyne applauded politely. George stalked behind the daredevil, a dark and harried frown on his brow.
Alizon took his arm when he came up the deck stairs and pulled him away from the others.
“She’s giving me gray hairs,” George complained. “I found another one this morning.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest, hearing the beat of his heart beneath her ear. “Maybe that’s why they won’t let you play yourself in the movie.”
He swatted her on the butt, and Alizon giggled into his shirt.
“She’s going to break her neck. What am I going to do with that girl?” he implored.
“Promise her hang-gliding lessons if she behaves.”
He was silent for a moment, and then she felt the tension leaving his body. He ran his hands up her back and then pulled the chopstick out of her hair and laid it on the deck rail. Her hair fell in a heavy wave down her back, and he dug his hands into it, tilting up her face.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked.
“I can think of a few things.”
“You’r
e a temptress, my Alizon, and I’m no saint.”
She kissed him tenderly on the lips. “I never thought you were. But you’ll always be my hero.”
