Charmed

by Catherine Hart

  “It will be a long way to travel, but if they will live in more comfort there, it will be worth the journey. But this is yet another matter I must attend to alone, Neeake. Even taken slowly, with all the proper provisions, it will be an arduous venture, strewn with all manner of possible perils. You could be great with child by the time we reach the end of the journey. It would be too hazardous, too hard on you.”

  “Then let me stay with Konah. I’ll wait for you, Thorn, for as long as it takes.”

  He shook his head regretfully. “Even there, I fear you would not be safe. Tenskwatawa would know where to find you, and he would know that I was not there to protect you. He would not hesitate to try some evil scheme, and the next time he might succeed. I cannot take that risk. Nor can you. We must safeguard our child.”

  Nikki clutched at his arm, her face earnest as she peered into his eyes. “You speak of risks. Isn’t it just as much of a risk to me and the baby to chance sending us back to my own time? Any number of things could go wrong, Thorn. I could end up in another year and be completely out of my element, with no one to turn to for help. That or I could lose the baby in the transition. Or what if the baby only exists in this time? That by leaving this time and place and entering mine, I found that I was no longer pregnant? If the transfer itself didn’t destroy me, that certainly would. I want this baby, Thorn. If we’re weighing gambles, that has some pretty high stakes, too.”

  “If I were forced to choose between you and our son, I would choose that you live, Neeake,” he informed her somberly. His eyes reflected the depth of his own distress. “I hope . . . I believe that you can travel to your era without harm to either of you. Contrarily, if you stay here, there is every likelihood that Tenskwatawa will kill you both, if only to spite me.”

  “What if I refuse to go?” she suggested stubbornly.

  “The choice is not yours to make,” he informed her, his gentle tone softening the blunt statement somewhat.

  “What do you mean? That you can send me back whether I wish to go or not?” she inquired, stunned at the prospect.

  “I believe so,” he replied. “After all, did I not summon you here without consulting your wishes? However, I do not wish to part from you with anger between us, my love.”

  “Well, I don’t want to part from you at all,” she countered.

  “Nor do I. A day without you will seem a year.”

  She gave a forlorn laugh. “Easy for you. As for me, a minute away from you will amount to approximately one-hundred-and-eighty-three years, give or take a few weeks. That’s an awfully long time to ask a woman to wait for you, Thorn. Especially when there is no guarantee that she’ll ever see you again.” Her words ended on a harsh sob.

  “I’ll come for you, my lovely wife,” he vowed. “If I must use my last breath, the final drop of blood in my body, I will come for you.”

  She blinked up at him through tear-misted lashes. “You’ll come for me? Does that mean that you will attempt to come to my world? Wouldn’t it be simpler just to call me back to you? Thorn, you don’t even know if it’s possible for you to travel from this time to mine.”

  “I found a way to bring you here, did I not? I shall find a means to come to you. I would not have you return here only to have Tenskwatawa resume his attempts to harm you. In your world, you and the baby will be safe from him, and I will join you there as soon as I possibly can.”

  “Thorn, dangers lurk in my world, too. Possibly more so than here. Everyday, hundreds of people are mugged, beaten, robbed, killed. Who can say if I would be safer here or there?”

  “But you will be with your family, with your parents and brothers who will surely look after you. You will be in a world that is familiar to you, and near your mother, which will be of much comfort as you near the time to give birth.”

  “I’d rather be with you. Especially then. In either place.”

  He nodded. “If all goes well, I will be with you to welcome our child into the world. However, I think I would rather come to you and try living in your time, to experience the many wonders you have described to me, than to continue living on in mine after all you have told me is to transpire. My life here, as I have known it, will no longer exist.”

  Nikki made yet another attempt to sway him. “It’s not all microwave ovens and automobiles and modern marvels. While I’ll admit that the conveniences are wonderful, we have plenty of problems with which to contend.” She ticked a few examples off on her fingers. “We have crime, corruption, pollution, the drug problem, gang wars, disease, hunger, poverty, racial prejudice, teen suicides, discord among nations and religions, the nuclear threat, natural and manmade disasters of immense proportions. All in all, sometimes I think the world is going to Hell in a handbasket with the Devil holding the handle.”

  Silver Thornas smile was as bleak as hers. “Has it not been thus since the dawn of time?” he asked softly. “Does not each age have its own distinctive problems?”

  “Then let me stay in yours,” she implored, her heart in her eyes. “At least we’ll be assured of facing our difficulties together. I don’t want to live in a world without you in it, Thorn. You’re my life. You’re every breath I take, every prayer I’ve ever prayed. If you send me away, I’m afraid we’ll never find each other again. And without you, I’ll die a little more each day.”

  “As will I, little goose. But it must be done.” He drew her close to his heart, cherishing the feel of her in his arms. “Do you feel that?” he asked after a moment. “Our hearts beat as one. That is how I shall find you again, my sweet. I need only search for the missing half of myself.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Neither of them slept much that night. Knowing it could very well be their last together, they made sweet tender love, rested briefly, and indulged their passions again. And again. It was as if they could not get enough of one another. Even in those short interludes of respite, they clung tightly to each other. Each kiss, each touch, every lingering caress was an expression of their deep, abiding love. A treasure to be hoarded against the long, dark days ahead.

  All too soon, dawn lit the eastern sky. “It is time, Neeake,” he told her.

  She clung to him, holding him at her side. “Not yet. Please. Not yet. Give us a few more days together.” Tears clogged her throat, preventing further speech.

  Gently, but firmly, Silver Thorn disentangled her arms from around his neck. He kissed her lightly, tasting the tears on her lips. Then he rose, leaving her alone on the mat. “I am not sure I have the spell determined correctly as yet,” he said, offering the only bit of hope he could without backing down from his decision. “Perhaps it will work, and perhaps not. We will not know until we try.”

  Nikki sniffled and swiped at her cheeks, drying them with her hand. “All right,” she conceded wearily. “Let me get my things together. Or do you want me to leave them here? All except for my driver’s license and my keys, of course, and some money. I’ll need those to get home from the park, if that’s where I find myself once you do succeed in sending me away.”

  He picked up on the anger lacing her last statement, and the sadness. Experiencing both himself, he could not fault her for venting her feelings, even though they were primarily directed at him. Just now, it was probable that she saw him as the sole villain, not another victim like herself.

  “Take your possessions. Pack them in your back sack, as you did before.”

  She graced him with a sneer. “Sorry. I guess you don’t want any reminders of me left behind for your next wife to find, do you?”

  Before he gave any real thought to the move, his hand shot out to grasp her arm and swing her around to face him. “You are right. I will need no reminders of you, Neeake. But not for the reasons you claim. I need none, for you have carved your image into my mind, your name into my heart, your very essence into my soul. I could not erase you from them if I lived five lifetimes.”

  He hauled her against him and kissed her once more—hard. Then he left her
to pack, waiting for her outside the wigewa, where he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again or to delay their parting.

  Nikki could barely see for the tears streaming down her face. She dressed hurriedly and stuffed the rest of her things haphazardly into her backpack. Then she had to unpack half of it to find her purse, and a tissue so she could wipe her nose. Hurt, anger, sorrow, rebellion. All this and more boiled around inside her until she could scarcely function. Her head throbbed; her hands shook, and she felt more than a little nauseous.

  As she was cramming her things into her purse once more, her wallet fell out and flipped open to the photo compartment. Her own image stared up at her from its plastic casing—not a studio portrait, but a snapshot of Nikki sitting on her bed at home, with her cat in her lap. Sheree, a fellow teacher and Nikki’s best friend, had snapped the photo just a few weeks ago.

  Impulsively Nikki ripped the picture from her wallet. “You won’t heed my wishes, Thorn, so why should I give a tinker’s damn about yours?” she murmured defiantly. “You’re going to have at least one reminder of me, whether you want it or not.” With that, she shoved the photo into the leather pouch Silver Thorn used as a traveling bag. Her small act of rebellion didn’t make her any happier, but it did help to release some of her anger. She joined him outside, feeling slightly less hateful, though still bitter.

  Silver Thorn was extremely frustrated. Nikki’s nerves were shot. All day, he had been experimenting with various ways to send her home. Each had failed. He’d tried having her dress exactly as she’d been upon her arrival. He’d revised the incantations several times. He even attempted to “re-empower” the special amulet that had brought her to him at the start. Nothing worked. Still, each time Silver Thorn was ready to try again, he and Nikki became tense with anxious anticipation that this would be their last moment together in his world.

  By the end of the day, Nikki was emotionally drained. Silver Thorn was baffled and annoyed, but not enough to end the project.

  “We shall try again tomorrow,” he grumbled.

  “It’s no use,” Nikki told him irritably. “You’re whistling into the wind, Thorn, and turning me into a basket case in the process. Can’t we just give it up and go back to Wapak?”

  She was hoping that, if he would agree, Black Hoof and Konah could talk some sense into him. Such was her reasoning when she added, “Maybe there the transferral will work. After all, I’m familiar with that area.”

  He mulled this over for several minutes and, to her surprise, agreed. “Yes, perhaps that is what is wrong. We shall return to Hog Creek tomorrow, for that is the place where you live in your modern time. If that fails also, we will go on to Wapakoneta.”

  Three days later, after a hasty departure from Tecumseh’s camp and another swift journey by canoe, Nikki and Silver Thorn once again found themselves traversing the Fort Amanda Trail in search of her family’s farm. This time, however, they were accompanied by warriors from both Peahchaete’s and Black Hoof’s bands. Locating the precise spot along the river was not as easy as Nikki had thought. Most of the present land was still densely wooded, whereas in her day it had been cleared for cultivation. Just as she was about to give up and give in to Silver Thorn’s demands that they choose any place that seemed near enough to effect the time transference, she spotted something familiar.

  “There!” she exclaimed excitedly. “See that big rock in the middle of the creek? We always wondered how it came to be there, one huge boulder all by itself with no others around it. We used to speculate that maybe it was the remains of a meteorite.”

  She led the way with confidence. “I know where I am now.”

  Within minutes she had located a small oak tree set apart from the others along the riverbank. “This has got to be it. It’s far enough from the creek to stand out into the field, and you can see the rock from here at about the right angle.”

  Nikki knelt and started to scoop a hole in the earth.

  “What are you doing?” Silver Thorn inquired.

  “I’m going to bury my message to Mom and Dad, as we planned before,” she told him. “That way, if you don’t succeed in sending me back, they might still know what happened to me.”

  “I will succeed,” he declared determinedly.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” she mumbled.

  He helped her bury the missive, and they got on about the business of transporting her to her own era. Again, nothing happened. Despite repeated attempts and amid much grousing and griping, Nikki’s feet remained firmly planted in 1813.

  While Silver Thorn’s mood soured, Nikki’s improved. With each failed attempt, hope blossomed that she would not be parted from Silver Thorn after all—at least not by nearly two hundred years. “Has it occurred to you that maybe I’m not meant to return to my own time?” she suggested mildly. “That the Spirits aren’t answering your request because they want me to stay here?”

  Silver Thorn speared her with a disgruntled look. “We will try again at Wapakoneta.”

  And so they did. With no better results. Here, however, Nikki had reinforcements of her own to help argue her case.

  Black Hoof offered to assign a half dozen of his best warriors to guard her. Likewise, Konah said, “Neeake can stay in our lodge where she will be within our sight day and night. With all of us to watch over her, surely no harm will befall her.”

  Silver Thorn remained unconvinced. “You do not know the depth of Tenskwatawa’s madness. I fear he would do anything, risk everything, to wreak his twisted vengeance and to prove himself more powerful than any other living mortal. To do so, he must eliminate his rivals, even those persons he mistakenly deems a threat to himself. That includes Neeake and my son, as well as me and Tecumseh and any other man or woman who would get in the way of his ambitions. I would not put you all in peril to protect what is mine to defend. By sending Neeake back to her own time, I put her out of his reach and no one else is placed in danger.”

  That put another slant on the matter, one which Nikki had not heretofore considered. While she still didn’t want to leave, neither did she want to put anyone else’s life in jeopardy.

  “So, what do we do?” she asked dispiritedly. “Just keep trying? For how long, Thorn? I know you are impatient to return to Tecumseh’s camp and resume your efforts to save him.”

  “It has come to me that we might achieve our purpose better if we retreat to the caves. It is there that I performed the rites and contacted the Spirits which brought you to me. The caves have always held a mysterious aura of power. Something mystical lingers there, in the air and the rock, in the cool, quiet depths of the earth.”

  A shiver ran up Nikki’s backbone. “Probably nothing more than a lot of ionized air,” she argued, offering a more scientific explanation of the phenomenon of the caves. “It’s probably not the caves at all, but the waterfall. As it cascades over the rock, it does something to the surrounding atmosphere. I don’t know the precise chemistry of it, but I think it charges the atoms in the air with added energy or some such thing.”

  “Then we will add this energy to that of the Spirits,” he decided. “Perhaps that is what is needed to make the spell work properly.”

  While she hoped he was wrong in this most recent assumption, Nikki feared he was right. Indeed, there did seem to be something unusual, eerie, maybe even supernatural about the area surrounding the caves. She’d felt it that first morning while touring them. That spooky feeling of walking among ghosts—or spirits. She was very much afraid that, if it were at all possible to send her back to the future, it would happen there.

  Thus, Nikki bid a tearful farewell to her new/old family, her very young grandmothers and grandfathers, great-aunts and uncles and cousins, with a growing certainty that she would never see them again. “Do not weep, granddaughter,” Konah told her, giving her a final embrace. “We will meet again, if only in the afterlife. When your time comes to join us there, I will wait for you on the star-path to guide your way.”

/>   “The Milky Way,” Nikki noted sadly. “I will think of you whenever I see it.”

  A small party of Black Hoof’s warriors escorted them to the caves, which allowed them to travel both day and night to better skirt the areas around the forts and generally expedited the entire trip. They arrived at the caves in half the time it had taken Nikki and Silver Thorn to travel the same distance by themselves. Not wanting their presence to interfere with the great magic Silver Thorn was attempting to perform, the warriors retreated downstream, where they would wait at a designated spot along the river for Silver Thorn to join them when he had accomplished his mission.

  Alone once more, Nikki threw her pride to the winds and again begged Silver Thorn to relent. “Please don’t do this, Thorn. I love you. I don’t want to leave you. I’m dreadfully afraid that if we part now, I’ll never see you again. You’re having a hard enough time trying to get this spell to work. It could take a miracle to find the right one to bring you to me.”

  “I will come to you,” he said. “Nothing but death can stop me from finding you.”

  “When? When I’m eighty-two?” she countered. “I don’t want to spend my life without you. I’ve only just found you, damn it! ” Hot, stinging tears rolled down her cheeks. “Please, Thorn. Let me stay. I’ll do anything else you ask. You can lock me in a cave if you want, someplace Tenskwatawa will never find me. Just don’t send me away from you.”

  He held her close, feeling her heart beat next to his. Then he kissed her, tasting the salt of her tears on her lips. And on his. “Let me love you just once more before we part.”

  She raised her face to his “Yes. I need for you to hold me, to love me with all your might. I need one final memory to carry me through until we can be together for always.”