VirtualHeaven

by Ann Lawrence

  “I’m not ready,” she said to herself. Instead, she pulled a pen and a small tablet from her purse. Although it took three long hours, she composed a letter that reassured her family of her love, offered plausible reasons for her year-long absence, and yet explained her need to stay away in terms her Gran would understand and convey to her parents.

  How could she “come back to life” when her quest was not yet finished? And as the hours passed, she felt more and more as if she was on a quest—a quest to find a way back to Kered and Tolemac. Just as Kered had said his quest was not over until he said it was over, so she must see this task through as her warrior lover might.

  Her Gran would understand.

  If only she understood herself.

  Maggie paced her small motel room, tapping the letter in the palm of her hand. Her gaze fell on the game magazine. The picture of Kered stared up at her, drawing her, torturing her with what could have been.

  “Courage,” she said to herself. She slipped the letter into her purse for later mailing and drew out her credit card, which luckily would not expire for another month. In the next few moments, she charged a plethora of phone calls and a round-trip ticket to Colorado Springs, the home of Townsend Creations.

  Unfortunately, she had no luck learning the identity of the model for the Tolemac warrior. The fact that the cover model would probably have little influence in determining the game’s fate didn’t discourage Maggie from starting her search with him.

  The burden of saving the game loomed like a dark specter over her shoulder. What would happen if Townsend Creations stopped the game? She couldn’t bear what her imagination conjured up—a Tolemac running with blood as red as the ugly Tolemac sun, the children starving along with their Selaw brethren.

  The way to Kered gone forever.

  She propped the phone between her ear and shoulder. Her pen circled a line in the Video Game article. The story contained a wealth of information about an upheaval among the board members of Townsend Creations, a hostile takeover bid by a Thomas Rawlins that had failed, and wary stockholders, but not one word of the man who was the personification of the Tolemac warrior.

  The reclusive creator of the game, D. W. Townsend, couldn’t be reached for comment. All she could glean about the man were quotes from a previous issue in which the game’s creator had lamented the lack of respect he and other cover artists received for their work in the romance field.

  A truck rumbled past outside, grinding its gears as it slowed for a turn into the motel. The semi idled right outside Maggie’s window, filling the small room with the thick scent of diesel exhaust.

  Maggie waited with nervous impatience. She’d been shuffled from one secretary to another in search of the cover model. He was as elusive as a bath among the Tolemac beggars. Mr. Townsend, the artist, was her best and last hope.

  On the fifth ring, a brusque female voice answered. “Mr. Townsend’s office.”

  Maggie sat upright, fumbling her pen. “Hello, my name is Maggie O’Brien. I’m trying to track down the model for the Tolemac warrior.” She wished she could think of some creative story. As it was, she felt like a groupie hunting her hero.

  “I’m sorry, miss, but the model wishes to remain anonymous. He is available for neither interviews nor photographs. He does not make personal appearances or attend conventions or signings.”

  “Wait, wait, don’t hang up! I didn’t realize he’d be so inaccessible. Is it possible to talk to Mr. Townsend?’’

  “Honey, we’d all like to talk to Mr. Townsend. Unfortunately, he doesn’t much like to chat. Now, what’s this about? We’re quite busy, you know.”

  “Of course. Forgive me for taking up your time. You see, I-I’m writing an article and would like to interview the model, but perhaps Mr. Townsend would consent to an interview instead?” Maggie frantically searched the magazine article for inspiration.

  “I’ll give you Mr. Townsend’s personal assistant. Just a moment.”

  Maggie leaned back, suddenly weary, and waited to be connected. She doodled swords and knives on the margins of the article. She embellished Kered’s photo with hearts.

  “This is Ms. Whitcomb, Mr. Townsend’s personal assistant. How may I help you?’’

  “I’d like to know if it’s possible to set up an interview with Mr. Townsend on his latest project—’’ Maggie began.

  “You mean the covers for the Apache Bride series or are you talking about Tolemac Wars? He’s not doing anything on Tolemac Wars, you know. No interviews. He’s not seeking any further publicity for that project.” Ms. Whitcomb’s clipped tones discouraged any further discussion.

  Maggie prayed for inspiration. “No, no, I don’t want to talk about the game.” Not much. “I want to ask him about a quote in Video Game magazine in which he said illustrators of romance novels don’t get the respect that other illustrators do.”

  “Well now, honey, that happens to be a topic near and dear to Mr. Townsend’s heart. Fax me your credentials and I’ll see what I can do. Mr. Townsend is rather capricious, sets his own schedule, you know.” Ms. Whitcomb rapped out a fax number, which Maggie scrambled to write down. She never got to say thank you before the phone went dead.

  Maggie gently replaced the receiver and fell on her back against the pillows. “Oh, God,” she said to the empty room. “I have no credentials. And what good is it to interview this artist?’’ She crumpled the fax number and pitched it away, tears welling up again.

  She curled up on the bed in the fetal position and willed herself to sleep. Perhaps rest would help her think of another way to get to see Mr. Townsend. Once she met him, she’d tell him all the reasons why he had to keep the game going—Kered and Vad, Tolem’s beggars, the starving Selaw children.

  And she needed to worm the cover model’s name and address out of the man.

  The only alternative was to find another Tolemac Wars game booth, wait for a storm, and then play until her money ran out or she was sent back into the game. The thought of never seeing Kered again, never touching him, never lying in his arms, made the tears run down her cheeks and a stone-like lump form in her throat. She fell into a restless sleep.

  Maggie woke hours later, feeling no more refreshed than when she’d fallen asleep. She washed her face and stared into the bathroom mirror. Sun streamed between the limp brown drapes in the bedroom behind her. The nor’easter had passed. She leaned on the sink and hung her head. Had all hope of returning to Tolemac passed with the storm? She thought of her life with Kered, the violence of their last few days together. She thought of Vad and hoped he had not suffered in any way trying to retrieve her pendant.

  Maggie stroked her fingers down an imagined pendant. Navajo silversmithing. Suddenly, she knew what credentials she would present to Mr. Townsend’s assistant.

  Half an hour later, Maggie was filling in a fax sheet at the desk of her motel. It seemed even cheap motels had moved into the technological world.

  With a large dollop of exaggeration, Maggie presented herself to Mr. Townsend’s assistant as a woman who wrote freelance articles, her latest one on Navajo silversmithing techniques. She did not mention that the Navajo article was all she’d ever written, or that she’d written it in college, for an obscure metalsmith journal.

  With a flourish, she gave the phone number of her hotel in Colorado Springs. She’d be there by the next day. After all, there was no storm to hold her in New Jersey.

  Maggie put her new tote bag on the floor beneath her airplane seat. Inside it, a stenographer’s notepad and a small tape recorder bought at the Philadelphia International Airport nestled between three game magazines. During the flight she would read up on Townsend Creations. She would go through the farce of pretending she was a freelance writer. Somehow she must trick the poster model’s name out of poor Mr. Townsend and convince him to save the game. She looked out of the window at the distant horizon.

  Fighting dragons and decapitating evil councilors had made her merciless when she though
t of this artist and his refusal to talk about Tolemac Wars. She pictured him at his easel, a Norman Rockwell sort of man.

  He hadn’t a chance.

  The pain in Maggie’s heart grew and mutated like a cancer with each passing hour. Doing the interview would be like an analgesic. It might not cure the disease, but at least she would be doing something concrete to help assuage the mental agony of being apart from Kered. If she never saw him again but saved the game, she’d know he was alive and safe.

  Outside the window, her plane floated in the azure sky. Who in the nineteenth century would have believed man would routinely travel above the clouds? How could she convince people that Tolemac existed?

  Desperation accompanied her everywhere. Her hopes and dreams all hinged on this one interview. Her sanity depended on this one small meeting.

  She slipped her hand into her tote bag. The airport security had accepted her excuse for carrying a knife. Just an example of her work, she’d said. She needed the knife with her. Kered’s knife. The knife represented tangible evidence that Kered and Tolemac existed. The knife sheath, a finely wrought piece of hand-stitched and oiled leather, was comforting to her hand. Her fingers stroked along the engraved and jeweled hilt. With her eyes closed, she could picture it in Kered’s hand, see him slide it into his boot. She didn’t need to close her eyes to remember the feel of his hands as he had strapped the sheath to her thigh beneath her dress.

  No, the touch of his hands was memorized forever.

  “Good morning.” The heavyset woman stood blocking the door of Mr. Townsend’s house. Her broad features and impassive expression immediately reminded Maggie of her Gran. Behind the woman, Mr. Townsend’s home looked inviting and warm in the glow of sunshine. On either side of the house, aspen trees shivered their bare arms in the autumn wind.

  Her fear made her stammer. “Good-good morning. I’ve come from New Jersey to interview Mr. Townsend. His personal assistant gave me his address and set up this appointment.”

  “Ah, Maggie O’Brien?” The woman smiled warmly.

  “Yes.” Relief swept in. She wouldn’t be turned away.

  “Come in. I’m Consuela, Mr. Townsend’s housekeeper.” The woman led the way down a glazed tile hallway with whitewashed walls. There were no paintings about. The walls held excellent examples of Navajo rugs of various sizes, but no canvases by Mr. Townsend. Maggie recognized the fine artistry of the rugs; some she could tell were old, woven by hand from naturally dyed yarns. The hallway floor gleamed with the soft peach of old terra-cotta. It led past a large, airy living room of muted colors.

  The woman did not pause, but opened a door and led the way through a large arch. Maggie had a brief glimpse of a kitchen outfitted with gleaming white appliances, scented with cinnamon and cloves and baking bread, before she was directed to a doorway. For the first time in days, she felt hungry. Much to her shame, her stomach growled.

  “Mr. Townsend said you were to wait in his studio.” Maggie’s guide threw open the door and gestured Maggie in.

  For a moment, Maggie thought she had stepped outside. A wall of glass gave her a soaring sensation of open space. As her eyes adjusted to the dazzling light, she realized she now faced the mountains, with Pike’s Peak dominating the landscape. The room tilted, then righted itself as she recognized the view from Hart Fell, the opening sequence to Tolemac Wars. But the colors were all wrong.

  She barely registered the housekeeper’s words. “Mr. Townsend, he often forgets the time. He’s out hiking.”

  Maggie nodded, looking quickly away from an array of canvases to her right as she removed her jacket and draped it over a chair. She still wore her black jeans and black shirt. She’d packed her duffel bag with nightgowns and an unfortunate jumble of the clothing she wore when making her jewelry. She could no more do an interview in a flannel nightgown than she could in overalls with holes.

  She smoothed her French braid and adjusted the cuffs of her shirt, then examined the room. A deck beyond the windows, cantilevered over open space, gave the impression that you could step off into air. A vapor trail cut the stark blue sky and reminded her that somewhere in the distance, the Air Force Academy was nestled at the foot of the mountains.

  “Wait here. I’ll bring Mr. Townsend as soon as he gets back.” The housekeeper went off in the direction of the kitchen.

  Maggie wrung her hands. Mr. Townsend was her last hope. His return might mean the end of her love, the end of something precious, something she needed as desperately as her lungs needed air. She had to shake off this fear.

  Maggie stood by the door for a few moments and peered about. A large drawing board stood at one end of the room. A long table, cluttered with the tools of an artist, sat next to it. There were coffee cans loaded with brushes, sheets of paper, pencils, and templates. But they held no interest for her. Cheek by jowl with the artist’s tools were two computers and a bevy of electronic equipment she couldn’t identify.

  Maggie slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans as she approached the computers. A well-worn chair on wheels stood askew before one computer whose screen showed a kaleidoscope of colors twisting and moving in fascinating repeating patterns.

  She was only prolonging her pain.

  She wrenched her attention to the other end of the room, walking slowly past a tan leather couch sitting squarely in front of the windows. A low coffee table crouched before it. Books piled there showed interests other than art. She touched one, open face-down. If I Never Get Back, by Darryl Brock. Curiosity, an itch she scratched far too often, made her lift the book and read the front flap. She slammed the book closed and dropped it on the table. A time-travel.

  Finally, she could no longer avoid the right end of the room. She squared her shoulders and held her hand to her queasy stomach.

  This side of the room held three easels. Stacks of canvases leaned against the wall and many hung helter-skelter across the white spaces. They were pictures of the mountains beyond the windows, painted in all seasons, all lights, and all moods. They were Tolemac in summer, Tolemac in winter, Tolemac in earthly colors, and unearthly.

  One oil painting caught and held her attention. She walked to it like an automaton, for there, front and center on an easel, sat a painting of Kered.

  Her eyes burned with unshed tears. He had been painted face to the wind, his hair blowing wildly behind him. A kilt molded his thighs. Heather-covered hills filled the background.

  Her hand reached out to the canvas, clutching the wide wooden frame that held the painting. A single bold word—Townsend—had been stroked across one corner.

  Every detail of Kered was perfect. Every hair on his chest. Every shadow of his beautiful face.

  She couldn’t bear it. “No,” she practically shouted. Her Kered did not dwell in the Highlands. She clutched the edge of the easel and it tipped. The painting crashed to the floor.

  A door behind her opened and closed.

  Frantically, Maggie tried to right the easel and replace the heavy oil painting, while wiping her tear-blurred eyes. She felt caught in some demonic slapstick routine.

  “Do you have something against my Highlander?” called a voice filled with laughter.

  Maggie felt heat flash up her cheeks and she ducked her head in embarrassment. She settled the painting in the easel and tried for nonchalance, “Actually, I’ve never much cared for half-naked men in kilts.” She pasted a smile on her face and turned to face the artist.

  The room stretched away from her as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. The man standing in the wash of brilliant sunlight cast a huge shadow across the white wall.

  Maggie took one halting step toward him, hand out, throat as dry as the Scorched Plain. “Kered. Oh, God, I’ve found you,” she whispered right before slipping into oblivion.

  Derek Townsend made a valiant attempt to catch her. He almost made it. Luckily, she did not strike her head on anything more solid than a pile of folded drop cloths. He knelt at her side. Unable to resist
, he reached out and smoothed the hair from her cheek. “Yes,” he said softly, “you’ve found me. And it seems I’ve finally found you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Maggie woke stretched out on the long leather couch. She moaned, then sat up. She swung her legs over the side and her gaze frantically searched the room. Rising, she saw him standing with the housekeeper by his computers. He turned toward her, his face blank. The pulse in Maggie’s forehead throbbed. Her body was cold and hot at the same time, for she saw no recognition in the artist’s expression.

  Consuela bustled forward. “Are you feeling better, my dear?”

  Maggie nodded to the woman, but it was the man who stood by her shoulder who held Maggie’s eyes.

  “This is Derek Townsend,” Consuela said, her hand on Mr. Townsend’s arm.

  The sunlight glinted off the artist’s wire-rimmed glasses so Maggie was unable to see the color of his eyes. “Forgive me for that little episode,” she said, rubbing her arms with her hands. Why didn’t he recognize her? Or say something? “You really look like…I mean…I thought you were…I’m so sorry.”

  The housekeeper clucked with concern and felt Maggie’s forehead and said, “I think you’ll be all right now. And he is that warrior fellow. He doesn’t much like to be reminded, but he is. I’ll make you some tea.” With that, she bustled off and left the room. Left them alone.

  Maggie stood up and faced him. He came forward and offered his hand. She took it in hers. The urge to tug him close was almost overwhelming. His words prevented her from making a fool of herself.

  “Miss O’Brien? Right? You’re here to interview me about cover art?”

  Despite the impassive expression on his face, the complete lack of recognition or any sign that he knew her, he was Kered. She would know him anywhere—in any world.

  He wore his brown, sun-streaked hair pulled back at the nape of his neck. Although he wore a faded flannel shirt and jeans, he was every inch her lover and friend.