He pressed his fingers to her shoulder, urging her to face him. Only when she dragged her gaze away from the activity below did he speak. “It’s not reality either. At least not as you know it.” He studied her face, a wise man calculating how well the rest of what he had to say would be accepted. “We’re in the Otherworld, and this is your soul quest.”
Despite the warmth generated by the crowd and the spotlights below, an eerie cold whispered across her skin and the muscles along her spine and belly clenched tight. She swiveled on the bench’s hard, metal surface. There were no exits. No people milling around the rings or milling anywhere near the sides of the tent.
No escape.
Standing, she squeezed Priest’s forearm. “We have to go back. You have to help me. I’m not ready.”
“The Keeper thinks you are.” He pried her hand free, stood and descended to her row with a feline grace loaded with confidence. Cupping her face with both hands, he leaned in close and declared, “I think you are, too.”
He did? Because right now she felt about as prepared as a right-handed person faced with penning a thesis with only their left hand. “Well, you clearly have a much higher opinion of me than I do. I need more time. Preferably with a study course and a practice session.”
“It doesn’t work that way. You get one shot. One chance to face who you are and claim your birthright.” Something behind her caught his attention and his fingers tightened, preventing her from turning. Whatever it was, though, brought the lightheartedness back to his face before he gazed gently down at her and said, “You wanted to know how the Keeper would come to you.” Sliding his hands to her shoulders, he guided her around. “I think it’s time you got your answer.”
A woman.
A beautiful one, dressed in an acrobatic version of a woman’s horse riding outfit with sleek black riding pants that shimmered in the light and a brilliantly fitted periwinkle coat that came to her thighs with black piping along the edges and lapel to match her pants and knee-high boots. Her hair was dark and glossy, arranged in one of those sleek styles worn by screen goddesses of the twenties. Atop her head was one of those old-fashioned silk top hats affixed at a jaunty angle and her makeup was that of a seasoned performer, the rich color of her eyeshadow accenting her coat and blended with deep liner to give her a sultry appearance.
Kateri spoke without conscious thought, the memory surging in tandem with her voice. “I remember you.”
“Do you? From where?” Her voice was as divine as her appearance, warm with the compassion of a mother and yet resonating with a power too complex to describe.
“You were here.” Dragging her gaze from the woman, Katy focused on the blonde woman galloping on a white horse around the left ring’s perimeter. “You were down there. I talked my dad into waiting in line to meet the performers after the show.”
He’d regretted agreeing later. Had called it bad judgment on his part to expose her agile mind to such a spoiled breeding ground.
Katy shook the ugly reminder free and let the Otherworld grow hazy, focusing instead on that day so long ago. On how lovingly the woman had looked down on her and the way her black horse had eagerly lowered its head for Katy to pet its muzzle. “I was ten. You smiled at me and told me I was beautiful. That my hair was the stuff of sunshine and stars.”
“I don’t believe that’s all I told you.”
The memory fell away and the real world—or whatever the Otherworld was—came back into focus. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember the rest of their conversation that day. Only being moved by her dazzling smile. “Maybe not. But it was at least thirteen years ago. That’s a long time to remember the details.”
“Do you want to remember them?”
There it was again. The whispered foreboding cold against her skin. A crossroads reached with a simple question. The same deciding point she’d run across too many times to count in her life, but never once crossed.
Priest lightly squeezed her shoulder, a subtle prompt confirming the magnitude of the question at hand.
You get one shot. One chance to face who you are and claim your birthright.
Her whole life she’d turned back. Taken the known road over the unknown. But her brother hadn’t. Neither had her grandmother. Or Priest. They’d all taken a chance and seemed not only happy with the outcome, but reveled in it.
She covered Priest’s hand with her own, hanging on as though she might somehow siphon his strength with the desperate contact. “I want to remember.”
A second later she was there, watching her ten-year-old self stare up in complete admiration at the woman.
“I want to be just like you,” her younger self said, complete certainty coating every word. “I’ll ride bareback and wear pretty costumes, too. Only I want my horse to be a gray one. Shiny gray with a black tail and mane.”
The woman leaned down and tucked her hair behind her ear. “You can be whatever you want to be, sweet girl. Hug your dreams tight and let them take you wherever you want to go.” She opened her arms to give Katy a hug, but her father jerked her away and ushered her through the crowd toward the exit.
Katy struggled to keep the woman in sight, but as small as she was the crowd prevented it, the press of bodies on all sides engulfing the beautiful woman in only seconds.
And then she was home. The late afternoon sun slanted across the tufted ivory comforter she was tucked under, her arm propped on a pillow beside her and covered in a cast. A low throb pulsed from her shoulders to her fingertips in time with her tired heartbeat, but her father seemed clueless to the pain. Or her fatigue.
He paced the length of her bed, her mother sitting silently beside her as if she too were too afraid to interject. “Are you out of your mind? You could have done much worse. Could have killed yourself.”
“It was an accident, Daddy. I was just practicing. The lady said—”
“Not another word, Katy.” Pinning her with an unmerciful stare, he stopped beside the bed. “That lady was a circus performer. A circus performer. Do you understand? It means she lives paycheck to paycheck. Means she’ll never be able to plan more than a few weeks at best for her future. I expect better from you. Now you will let this stupid idea of yours go and move on.” He spun and stalked out of the room, but not before uttering, “I wish I’d never taken you.”
Over and over, the scenes kept coming. For each one, Priest and the dark-headed lady stood beside her, witnessing each head-to-head and consequent surrender of her dreams. Of her passion.
The day she’d had to witness her mom and dad fighting because her mother had caved and taken her to her first gymnastics class. And two years later when the coach had asked her to join the gymnastics team—only to have her father insist she focus on the science and mathematics group he’d signed her up for instead. Even the opening night to the high school musical when she’d scored the leading role and only Alek and her mother showed up.
Every memory she watched. A shadowed spectator as the ugly truth she’d buried deep pushed its way free, spurred by a consuming, burgeoning fury.
She’d given up her dreams. Repeatedly. Altered herself for the sake of peace and conformity.
The landscape changed once more, shifting back to her room. The walls were no longer the cherry-blossom pink she’d begged for as a child, but a softer more acceptable version. A pale tea rose color that only whispered of the imaginings she’d left behind. She sat alone beside her desk, but her brother and father’s heated argument drifting from the living room through her open door was enough to crowd the room.
She turned the pages on the well-worn hardback in her lap, the escalating shouts making her hand tremble as she fingered the title at the top of one page.
Tarzan of the Apes.
It wasn’t the most fantastical story she’d ever read, but it had painted all kinds of beautiful images. The animals. The jungle. The w
ildness and the understated promise of romance. She’d lost count of the times she’d read it, picturing herself as Jane and learning the ways of the beasts Tarzan so easily interacted with.
Tucked inside one page was one of many travel brochures she’d saved over the years. Safaris. Cruises. Sites and experiences. She’d collected at least a dozen, each of them a reminder of where she wanted to go. Just a week ago she’d graduated from high school. Her enrollment at the University of Colorado was complete, but what she really wanted was to join two friends who’d invited her to work their way across Europe and Africa over the next year. One year to explore. To live and see all the things she’d read about. To put real life images to all the pictures she’d drawn in her mind.
Her father’s voice cut through the room, nearly as clear as if he were beside her rather than down the hall. “Goddamn it, Alek! You can’t just throw away two years of college. Your mother and I saved for that. The least you can do is finish what you started and be reasonable for once.”
“You call it reasonable,” Alek fired back. “I call it safe. And no offense, but criminal law is what you want for me. I want something else. Something that fits me.”
It kept going. Back and forth like it always did.
She smiled down at the book, though it lacked the usual pride she felt for her brother. He never backed down. Always stood up for who he was and what he wanted.
She pulled the brochures free of the book, the tiny fragment of hope she’d anchored with each one slipping free as she did so. She closed the book and stared at her nightstand. For years, she’d kept it close. Tucked inside reaching distance.
This time she stood, padded to the bookcase and slid it next to the textbooks she’d kept on hand for reference. She skimmed her fingertip along the side. A sad goodbye that broke something inside her spectator-self.
“No.” Her incorporeal self stepped forward and tried to stop her. “No. Put it back.”
But her remembered self didn’t respond. Only turned away, dropped the brochures in the small wastebasket beside her desk and paced down the long hallway.
“No!” Katy stormed after herself. “You don’t want to do that. You wanted to go. You should go.”
As she had in real life, the old Katy kept going, grabbed her purse and quietly slipped out the front door.
In the living room, the argument raged on, her father now outlining every foolish decision and perceived irresponsible behavior Alek had ever taken.
“Stop it!” Katy yelled, all the rage and pain she’d stuffed while growing up breaking free with the force of a fearless gale. She stomped so she stood between them, and while neither of them acknowledged her presence the words poured forth in a torrent. “He doesn’t want to do what you want. I don’t want to. It’s our life. Not yours. You had your chance and you didn’t take it. You stole from us all because you were afraid and I hate you for it!”
Unrelenting, the words rushed out of her. Uncensored. Honest and full of all the pent-up anguish that had festered until it hardened and lodged in her gut like a merciless thorn. With it, tears streamed down her face. Her throat burned with the emotion clawing its way free.
How long it went on, she didn’t know. Only knew that she needed to free every thought. Every burden until it was gone.
She welcomed it. Let even the memories she hadn’t been shown bubble up and dissipate in the light of truth until there was nothing left.
Nothing but the comfort of Priest’s arms around her. His solid chest beneath her cheek and his strong hands smoothing up and down her spine while she openly wept for the dreams she’d lost.
“Not lost, mihara.” He palmed the back of her head and smoothed his temple against hers. “Just tucked away. A reference for you to build new ones. Whatever they might look like.”
She sniffled and a hiccup rattled her torso, an ugly sound that matched what had clearly turned into the ugliest cry of the century. Not daring to lift her head for fear of how splotched her face likely was, or how red and swollen her eyes were, she dashed the back of her hand along her cheek to clear what tears she could. “You’re in my head again.”
“I like being in your head. It’s a complex and beautiful landscape.”
“One now free of the weeds that once choked its glory.”
The Keeper.
She was still here. Waiting.
And now that Katy had paused in her crying jag long enough to assess her surroundings, she wasn’t in her parents’ living room anymore. The air was thick. Redolent of rich soil and flora with the sweet lure of some untouched habitat.
Cautiously, she lifted her head from Priest’s chest.
The jungle.
Every bit of it unspoiled and painted in every variation of green possible. Beneath their feet, the soil was the color of dark chocolate and littered with fallen leaves, bark and vines.
Waiting patiently on a fallen tree with a trunk as big around as her first compact car, the Keeper watched her.
“You brought me here.”
“It seems only fitting that a woman who faces her darkest truth be rewarded for the effort.”
Dear God, she’d come unwound. Unleashed everything without the least regard for what came out. And not alone either. Priest and the Keeper had witnessed it all. “I loved my dad.”
“I know you did,” the Keeper said.
The silence stretched long and stoic between them. As if even the trees and brush waited to hear her pained confession. “But I hated him, too. Hated how he wouldn’t let us be who we were.”
Still, no one spoke.
Katy swallowed, what should have been a simple process complicated by the barbed knot in her throat. When she spoke, it came out as a whisper. “But I hated myself for giving him what he wanted even more.”
With the arm Priest had kept around her shoulders, he hugged her tight, showing without a single word spoken how proud he was of her honesty.
“There is no peace in being who others want us to be,” the Keeper said, “and no greater injustice to ourselves.” She stood and ambled toward them, her circus clothing bizarrely out of place and yet somehow perfect considering the ride she’d taken Katy on. With the same motherly kindness she’d sensed that day when she was ten, the Keeper wiped what remained of Katy’s tears away.
The gentle touch cleansed her. Left her feeling like she was ten years old again. A blank slate ready to draw whatever she wanted on it.
“Not a blank slate,” the Keeper said. “Life has simply given you more colors to fill in the finer details. How you change the design is up to you.” She looked to Priest. “Fate blessed you with a bright and compassionate mate. A worthy partner for a high priest. Are you prepared to teach her what she’s gifted with today?”
Clearly more comfortable in the Keeper’s presence than Katy was, Priest moved in squarely behind her and wrapped an unyielding arm around her waist. With his height and the form the Keeper had chosen, he easily towered over them both. “I would give her anything. Everything she needs.”
“I don’t doubt that.” The Keeper cocked her head, considering. “Though, you should have a care your vow doesn’t make you take a step too far one day.”
Before Katy or Priest could question what she meant, the Keeper crowded closer to Katy and cupped her face with both hands. Her voice whispered through Katy full of untold mysteries and fathomless power. “Will you accept the gifts I’m willing to give you?”
She’d thought when this moment came, she’d falter. That stepping into the unusual world she would have once said couldn’t possibly exist would take more courage. But after all she’d seen—all she’d felt and set free—it was easy. As if by letting the past go, she’d made room for belief, the spark of hope dusted off and bright again. “Yes.”
“Then remember this,” the Keeper said. “Those open to their emotions—flexible in their approa
ch to life—are the strongest. Use the tools you’re given and let life flow through you.”
The Keeper leaned in, her mouth on track for Katy’s.
Priest’s arm tightened around her, holding her steady for what was most assuredly going to be a kiss.
The contact registered for all of a second, the plush wonder of her glossy lips there and gone faster than she could draw breath. Replaced with a riptide of color and sensation. She didn’t have a body. Only had a pulse. A heartbeat alive with every shade of purple and shimmering with the delicate wink of moonlight on a softly undulating lake. It swirled and coalesced all at once, tossing her back to the surface of reality...or the Otherworld.
Her eyes snapped open and she gasped, air surging into her lungs as though she’d been underwater for hours. In front of her, the jungle stretched lush and quiet in all directions. Behind her, Priest held steady and firm.
But the Keeper was gone.
“What just happened?”
Checking every tree, every shrub and the fallen log where she’d seen her guide before, Kateri waited for Priest to answer. Only after several seconds did he answer, a quiet awe marking his rumbling voice. “What just happened...the rush and the color...that was your magic.”
Fisting and stretching her fingers over and over, she slipped from Priest’s strong hold and paced forward, turning her hands this way and that as if she might find some explanation for the soft-spun hum that danced beneath her skin. “It feels amazing. Like a night of twelve-hours uninterrupted sleep and a triple shot of B12.”
She turned, bounced a little on her toes to see if her body was as buoyant as it felt and grinned up at Priest. “I know I don’t have anywhere near the skills Alek does, but do you think you could at least teach me to give him a run for his money? I mean, I’d never do anything to make him look bad in front of the other warriors, but let’s face it. Every little sister wants to get a whack in on her big brother every now and then.”
One corner of Priest’s mouth quirked to a wry smirk. “Oh, I think you’ll be able to get a few in on him now, no problem.”
Guardian’s Bond Page 21
