Paint the Wind

by Cathy Cash Spellman

  "Hold still..." he commanded, needing to take charge again. "Don't move at all." She did exactly as he'd said.

  Hart scrambled for pad and charcoal, and did a series of quick sketches, trying to catch the elusive satisfaction of the moment.

  "Will you paint me?" she asked, and he nodded yes.

  A good many people tried to buy the canvas he did of her, after Hart's work had begun to fetch big prices, but Pallas never sold it.

  The years in Paris provided all the fulfillment Hart had ever lusted after as an artist, for the American West fired European imaginations and the integrity of Hart's knowledge made his canvases living monuments. The cognoscenti saw the truth and bought—the others merely followed suit.

  Pallas guided his odyssey from obscurity to fame: a voyage of museums and galleries, of private purchases and learning how to hobnob with the rich and knowledgeable.

  "Kings and princes hang your canvases in their palaces, Hart," Pallas said one day with an impresario's smug satisfaction. "Your Apache friends are renowned now because of you, what more could you wish?"

  "That my renowned Apache friends had been given justice," he answered her.

  PART XII: DANCE AGAINST THE WIND

  1893, New York

  "Nobody ever gits too old fer makin' mistakes."

  Bandana McBain

  Chapter 114

  The past four years since returning to New York have been the longest of my life, Fancy thought rebelliously, glancing at the reviews in her dressing room behind the stage. She was the grande dame of Broadway now, or so they said, nearly half a decade after Leadville. "One glittering hit after another"... "heights of passion"... "credit to her art form"... she read the phrases that said she was good at her craft and smiled ruefully. What was acting, after all, but a reconstruction of all the emotions you'd ever dredged from circumstance? And who better than she could know how to laugh or weep or storm heaven with useless cries?

  Fancy sighed as she looked at the pictures of her children that adorned her dressing table. Aurora was older now than she herself had been when Chance and Hart had found her. She frowned at the picture, for the dark-haired beauty in the frame was so perfect on the outside, yet something unlovely seethed beneath the surface, something indefinable. She'd tried to reach Aurora, tried to coax her into revelation or even civility, but always there was the quick rebuff, the words that stung her heart and left Fancy feeling lonely and betrayed.

  Blackjack's handsome face stared out at his mother from the second silver frame. Oh, God, those are Chance's eyes, Chance's laughing, fearless eyes... reckless, gambler's eyes. The boy was only twelve, but she knew as sure as he was his father's son that he would follow Chance's road to perdition. She'd placed him in the strictest military boarding schools she could find to fend off his improvident nature. Blood will tell, she thought, too old for fantasy. Blood always tells.

  Gabriel's freckled baby face looked out from the third frame; his eyes were watchful, artist's eyes. Sweet, loving Gabriel—she'd nearly named him Matthew after his father, for who was there left in life to chide her? But some instinct told her that Matthew Hart McAllister would one day be a famous name, and that naming him after his father could cause embarrassment to them both. So she'd christened him Gabriel... after her mother, perhaps... or because it meant "gift of God." For this child had been the one headstrong act of her life that was wise.

  Even Magda hadn't scolded her about this boy, who brought only joy to Fancy's heart. Each word she spoke, he listened to; nothing of her giving did he ever reject, as Aurora and Blackjack had. Not until his cooperative, intelligent nature had soothed her wounds of motherhood did Fancy fully realize the scars her other two children had left on her soul. She sighed at the thought of the long, strange road they'd traveled together. Funny, how she thought of life in stages: before Leadville, Leadville, after Leadville...

  Jason Madigan had befriended and supported her in the years after leaving Leadville behind, and finally, reluctantly, she had married him. She didn't love Jason, but that had seemed restful in a way, love had brought her so much pain over the long haul. But it had taken nearly four years of work, motherhood, and loneliness before she'd consented to Jason's proposal.

  She'd regretted the decision, almost from the first day, if the truth were told; it was such a defeat to her dreams. But she'd felt so thwarted in her attempts to reach Aurora, and marrying Jason was the one gift Aurora wanted more than any other. So she had done it to please her daughter, and out of utter weariness of spirit.

  Fancy sighed again... she'd been a fool to send Hart away. She missed him in a thousand ways—missed his kind and gentle strength, his common sense, and his honorable spirit. She missed other things about him, too. It was hard not to remember the power of his body as he made love to her, the strength of his sexuality that had borne her along in its sweeping tide, until she forgot everything but the joy they shared so fleetingly. And she missed his loving heart.... How sad it was that her conscience couldn't cope with the happiness he brought her. The timing was off—too much guilt over Chance had stood between them. Perhaps she'd needed loneliness to sort out the shards of her life before she could start over.

  It would be good to go home tonight, she thought, her body heavy with fatigue, and she was glad Jason was away on a business trip. Aurora had been acting very strange lately—more hostile, more volatile than ever, but with a pervasive lethargy, too, that was unusual in one so young. Perhaps she'd fallen prey to some peculiar illness, Fancy worried; the girl had never been strong in childhood. Or perhaps she simply suffered the malaise of the rich... no goal in life, no personal triumph to strive for. It had been a mistake to give her so much, without making her work for it—Fancy could see that now. Nothing had real value to Aurora and nothing gave her genuine pleasure.

  Fancy sighed as she closed the dressing room door; she felt old and tired tonight, and the comfort of her own bed was enticing. Maybe Aurora would sit with her over a cup of hot chocolate and she would try again to reach this reluctant child, who was a woman now. How much it would mean to me, Fancy thought sadly, if my daughter could be my friend. She thought fleetingly of Dakota and had to push the memory away because of the quick, hot tears that filled her eyes.

  She locked the dressing room door behind her and waved to the watchman as he let her out into the darkened street.

  Aurora wasn't there to greet her mother when Fancy arrived home; the servants said the girl had left orders she wasn't to be disturbed. Fancy, disappointed and weary, walked up the spiral stair of the town house alone. She opened the door to her bedroom, thinking how restorative a hot bath would feel tonight; she turned up the lamp near the doorway, and stood, too stunned to move, staring at the vandalism that lay before her.

  Fragments of the ancient music box from Beau Rivage were scattered willy-nilly on the floor... beside its splinters lay the remains of the golden locket that had held her mother's lock of hair. All had been trampled underfoot, the delicate golden casing crushed, the fragile ringlet within, shredded on the floor. Atticus' banjo, its strings torn and useless, its neck broken and dangling at a grotesque angle, lay beside the other ruins.

  Fancy's breath seemed sucked from her body; the only remnants of her "other" world lay mutilated before her, their music and memories stilled by violence. Her irreplaceable past destroyed by some ritual act of madness. What human being could do such an obscene thing to another? Who could possibly hate her this much?

  Fancy stooped to touch the broken things with trembling fingers—the priceless talismans that were meant someday to bring her home. She reached for the broken locket and saw, in the midst of the carnage, a torn shred of Aurora's dress, caught in the fractured banjo's splintered wood.

  Fancy lurched to her feet and made it to the gilded bathroom just in time to vomit up her anguish into the Florentine porcelain bowl. She let herself slide to the cold Carrara marble and laid her aching head on the edge of the travertine bathtub. The fragments in the
bedroom were not things, they were pieces of her heart; to seek them out so selectively for destruction, Aurora had to know precisely how irreplaceable they were.

  When she was finally able, Fancy stood up, splashed her face with icy water, and walked slowly down the long hallway to her daughter's room.

  Aurora saw her mother come in, then looked quickly away. Oh, God, she did do it... the awful truth was clear in the girl's hostile eyes.

  "Why did you do such a horrible thing to me, Aurora?" Fancy asked, barely able to breathe.

  The girl smiled a fraction at her mother's pain; she'd gotten her attention this time. She turned her head away from the accusing figure.

  Fancy stood silhouetted in the doorway, and stared uncom-prehendingly at this alien who was her firstborn. "Look at me, goddammit! I want to understand why you've betrayed me."

  Aurora looked up, and her beauty in the lamplight wrenched Fancy's heart. A medley of emotions crossed the girl's face—guilt, fear, the anger of a trapped beast, the hauteur of a queen maligned.

  "You betrayed me first!" she answered venomously, rising from her place.

  Fancy heard the ancient hatred in the girl's words. Where had it come from?

  "How did I ever harm you?" Fancy whispered, bewildered.

  "Harm me? You robbed me of everything! You took my father from me before I was even born... then you left the only man who ever really loved me and made me feel secure. I never wanted you to marry Chance... all you two ever did was fight with each other."

  Fancy stopped, shaken by the force of Aurora's accusation... could there be truth in the hurtful words?

  "I was wrong to leave you without a father, Aurora. I know that now... but as God is my witness, I thought it was my only choice then. I thought I could make life better for us if I left than if we stayed stuck on that godforsaken mountain.... How can I explain to you how it tore my soul apart to make that choice?"

  "I don't give a shit about your soul. Don't you know how much I hate you?"

  "No! Don't say that! Aurora, please. I love you... more than anything..."

  "Love me? You've never loved me!"

  Taller than Fancy by a head, Aurora rose to her full height, all the fury of years of unrepentant hatred and envy in her eyes.

  "You have everything and you left me nothing, Mother. I didn't ask to be born—even that was your own selfish doing. I've done nothing worse to you than you've done to me. Just think of all you've stolen from me that meant everything... I was simply paying you back in kind. I'm going to do anything I need to do to get what I want out of life, just like you did. And I don't give a damn who it hurts; just like you. I learned everything at your knee."

  Fancy stood very still, the years flooding her like riptide... Aurora angry in her womb... Aurora wrenched into life against her will... Aurora of the perpetually half-empty glass, always spurning her love and her efforts, taking everything as if it were her due, giving nothing back. She will be loved, Fancy, Magda had said, more than she deserves...

  "What have I ever done to you but love you?" Fancy whispered.

  "You brought me into this rotten world. You were beautiful and talented and rich and men loved you. What did that leave for me that wouldn't always be second-best?"

  She doesn't hate me for what I've done... she hates me for who I am. "But you have so much more than I ever did, Aurora," she countered, incredulous and shaken. "You've never had to scratch and claw for life as I have. Every morsel I've gotten has been fought for—nothing, nothing ever came to me without payment in blood. I thought that what I did, I did for us both."

  Aurora's eyes were cold. "Nothing you ever gave me was what I wanted. So I've decided to take what I want out of life for myself, just as ruthlessly as you've always done. I've merely copied you, Mother."

  Fancy felt her anguish drain away, and anger replace it. "You ungrateful, selfish little fool... how can you know the sorrows of my heart? All that you've been given, that you so cavalierly dismiss as not being what you wanted—I paid the price for all I gave you in my own heart's blood!"

  Fancy straightened her spine and faced this daughter who did not love her, her voice frosted crystals. "While you were learning at my knee, Aurora, it's a pity you didn't learn that copies are always inferior to the original."

  She turned to go, paused, and spoke one last time with her hand poised on the doorknob.

  "There are many things I've done in my life that I regret, Aurora. Never until this moment were you one of them."

  Where did it go so wrong? Where did all the love go? Fancy sat on the floor of her bedroom amidst the rubble, trying hopelessly to put the pieces back together, her daughter's words still echoing in her heart.

  Didn't you hear me when I sang you lullabies... didn't you know the times I went hungry to feed you... didn't you feel the unselfishness when I walked the floor with you in my arms, every muscle aching from exhaustion? How can you not love me, when I've loved you so utterly?

  Ain't nothin' much I seen so far about life makes me think it's fair , . . Atticus' voice whispered a response to her anguished question, and with it the last shreds of self-defense were shorn away and Fancy put her head down on the floor near her ravaged treasures, and cried. For herself... for Aurora... for all that life would never be.

  She didn't hear Aurora tiptoe down the stairs and out the door, into the darkened streets of New York City.

  Aurora felt the opium haze enfold her—lifting, freeing, numbing. She felt the smoke snake its way into every cell, permeating brain and lung and heart, moving her inexorably into a place of blissful delusion. She was powerful. She was beautiful. She was stronger than her mother. Smarter. More desirable.

  There was nothing she couldn't do, have, create...

  But none of that was urgent now. Later, she could touch the stars and take from them anything she wanted. Much later...

  Aurora stretched herself full-length on the opium bed; the hard wooden pillow felt downy beneath her head. Her eyes, glazed with the drug, stared with half-closed lids at nothingness.

  The Chinese watched with a small twist of the mouth that could have been a smile. She was completely in his power now; her need for the drug a constant that would keep her begging on his doorstep, bringing him money, however much he asked for, by whatever means she needed.

  Until she died of it.

  But that could be a long way off, for Aurora McAllister was young and strong and there was much wealth for her to draw on, before the drug swept her from the heavenly haze in which she now floated, to the squalid, writhing torment of the opium addict, who would sell her body in the streets, steal from the starving, even murder to secure just one more hour of bliss.

  The Chinese refilled the girl's pipe with the black tarlike substance and waited for the need to call Aurora McAllister back to him.

  Early in the morning, Fancy made her way to Aurora's room, uncertain of what she was looking for, but knowing there had to be an explanation for the outrage of the night before... some clue to the hatred and envy, some evidence of a pernicious influence that would make it understandable.

  Aurora slept, peaceful as a baby, and Fancy began a systematic search of her daughter's possessions. She'd never, in all the years, rifled Aurora's things... privacy was important, trust was important... her hand closed on the opium pipe in her daughter's purse and she drew in her breath, in shock. Never once had she thought of this insane possibility.

  Opium addict! The words iced her heart. Opium, lethargy, madness, death. The eternal cycle—the reason why the Chinese were so feared on the goldfields that they'd been driven out by force from town after town, for they were often the purveyors of this terrible death to desperate men, sent mad by the loneliness, the ravaging cold, and the endless, bitter disappointment.

  Aurora's lethargy and sullenness made sense now. The hooded eyes, dilated pupils, unreachable spirit. The gaunt appearance, the lack of interest in what had once been passions... Could the temper tantrums, too, be traced to
this source?

  Tears ran down Fancy's cheeks and splashed on the satin dressing gown. The drugged and sleeping girl on the bed never moved as Fancy sat beside her and laid a trembling hand on her arm and gently patted it, as she had a thousand times when Aurora was a child. I love you, Fancy whispered softly in the silence. I love you more than you could possibly imagine.

  After a long while, Fancy roused herself and stood beside the bed. She picked up the folded coverlet Magda had made for Aurora in childhood, a thousand years ago, it seemed... for one breathless moment she held the cherished token in her hands, then she spread the blanket on her sleeping daughter and left the room.

  Wu. She would get Aurora to Leadville and to Wu. He'd know what to do... for if he didn't, no one would.

  Chapter 115

  The trip to Leadville with Aurora was a nightmare Fancy would never forget. The girl had screamed, ranted, and denied her addiction existed, when confronted. In fact, she'd lied so convincingly about everything that Fancy had to steel her heart to keep from believing her. She would have given everything she owned to find it was all some hideous mistake... she's a better actress than I am, Fancy thought more than once during the hysterical outbursts. She could fool anyone on earth.

  It was Jason who hired the Pinkertons to follow the girl to Chinatown and take her into custody; he who hired the guards to travel with mother and daughter on the westbound private railroad car. Without the guards, there could have been no trip to Leadville and the ephemeral hope that Wu would possess a cure.