HerOutlandishStranger

by Summer Devon

  “That’s close enough,” said Jas, and he sounded pleased. “Your father was a clergyman, right?”

  Was. Her throat tightened and she couldn’t answer. At last she managed, “Yes. He was. He was—a…a good clergyman. And a scholar. He loved to read works by theorists such as Isaac Newton or even translations of the Quran.”

  “What was he doing in Spain?”

  “Papa acted as a translator. He knew French and Spanish and Portuguese. As a man of God he felt he needed to lend his aid to the men who sought diplomatic answers.”

  She heard the straw rustle under Jas as he shifted but she didn’t dare look over at him. “I’m sorry, Eliza. About your father.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. She calmed enough to speak normally. “I interrupted you again. Do tell me more. About your Madame Blanro.”

  She rolled onto her side to face him. He stared back at her, and for once did not break their potent lock of eyes.

  Her insides felt as if they congealed at the power of his fierce, focused gaze. Why did he stare at her with such concentration? Pity for her, she assumed. She did not want it.

  “Pray, continue. Please?”

  He fixed his gaze back on the ceiling and sighed.

  “It’s all a myth, remember? Eh, so, ’kay. The followers of the Way feverishly worked to root out any contaminating influences to this eventual new… I guess you’d call it role…of the world. At first they had a cleansing campaign to force governments to rid themselves of corrupt politicians. Replaced by followers of the Way. The Way won seats in government, but they were especially good at using young people.

  “They got that schools with younger children offered the most success to spread their ideology, so they went into schools to work as teachers. The children proved to be good weapons in many ways—ways no one had never seen before. The tales say that if Way of Truth had won it would have been because of the children.”

  Jas stopped for a moment. His voice had faded away from the rhythmic tones of a storyteller. He was silent for a moment. His mouth was pressed tight, giving his pleasant face a grim expression.

  She murmured, “Pascal wrote that men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

  “Oh. Yeah. He might have been talking about the followers of the Way. An effective bunch, those Truthies.”

  “An odd name for them.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah, it is. Little kiddies of death, people called ’em. The Way of Truth seized power from all sorts of places. The first to go were the politicians who didn’t follow the Way’s rules. The Way followers dragged them out into the street and hanged them. Then after a while, anyone who openly disagreed with the Way became targets. And after that, even the people who opposed any of the Way’s rules, but did nothing against the movement.

  “Most ‘dissenters’ were herded into camps where special, um, tools turned them into creatures not much better than animals. Most of these people died because they lost personalities and their will to survive. The camps were bitter, harsh places.

  “These people and many, many others considered ‘less than perfect’ were lost forever, and Madame Blanro watched in horror. She wanted to take action and decided her best weapon would be her connection to the Five, Verren.

  “One night, Verren told her that he was taking her to a special event the next morning. She would be witness to a once-in-a-life time experience, he said. He took her to a secret meeting with Verren, the four other leaders and the Way’s most important followers were to meet on an island. Only they knew of the meeting. The leaders were smart enough to know that because many people would want to kill them they must stay apart at all times—except this one time.”

  Her heart sank. What a grim tale. She’d hoped for a livelier mythology, perhaps something with animals, like Zeus’s frolics with swans. “I think I know what’s coming. She becomes a killer herself.”

  “Yes, but with this magic.”

  She doubted it would be interesting magic. No invisible cloaks or talking animals.

  He went on, “After the special meeting, Madame Blanro managed to pinpoint the one half-hour or so when they all gathered together in a large room. And at last she used her new magical powers. She threw herself back in time and she carried a bomb.”

  Traveling through time was interesting. “She was a warrior,” Eliza exclaimed.

  “Not how she would have described herself.”

  “Indeed? I did not know legends even described themselves.”

  Jas chuckled. “No, I suppose they don’t. But I believe she considered herself a scientist.”

  “And so she died on the island?”

  “No. She was the only one in that room to survive the explosion, though she never walked again. With the leaders and important followers dead or injured, the Way quickly ended. When the new governments tried to discover how the bomb had been planted, they came upon some of her notes.

  “They came to the prison to interview Madame, and when at last she decided she could trust them, she told them how to use magic to fly through time.”

  His solemn tone, the way he spoke as if magic were real made Eliza smile. The myth reminded her of his piece of wood. Odd that she should find his primitive superstitions and tales endearing. With his strange beliefs he occasionally seemed childlike.

  She heard the scrape of his beard as he scratched at his cheek and she remembered that this was no child lying next to her.

  He was still telling the tale. “They begged her to continue her work. At last she agreed to help as long she had the final say in its use. There had to be very strict rules about traveling through time, she said.”

  Eliza giggled. “I should hope so. One wouldn’t want people jumping about in time. Think of the confusion it would cause. You’d come home for dinner and find your future self already at the table.”

  “Indeed,” he said dryly.

  She touched his shoulder to encourage him to continue. Even the light contact of her hand on his shoulder flooded her with the surprising desire. She held her breath, waiting, hoping for a sign he felt it too. He did not move.

  She let her breath out with a long sigh. “Tell me. What kind of rules did your heroine invent?”

  “Eh, well. She had been tempted to go back and stop evil before it began, you know, kill the leaders of The Way before they started the killing. But she saw this travel had to be used carefully, and this was the important part. She’d seen history was marked with tags. To show where the travelers should interfere. Where they were destined to go back. See?”

  Eliza nodded. “I understand. And what happened to Madame Blanro?”

  “She helped after they agreed to adopt her careful system of, um, magic. And she did more than that too. Many of the child warriors had died. A lot more had killed themselves at the end of the war. Others were so damaged they could never leave the special hospitals. But because of her, some of them could go out into the world again.”

  Jas took a deep breath and stretched as if he’d just awakened. He pushed his interlocked hands high over his head, and groaned. “And that is the story we tell in my country of a great hero. It’s my favorite.”

  He felt around the blanket and picked up a water skin. “I don’t think I have ever talked so much in my life. No, I know I haven’t.”

  He sat up to drink and looked intently into her eyes, again. She saw a question there, as if he waited for her response.

  Eliza pushed aside her discomfort at this tale and grinned at him. “She is as brave as Beowulf, certainly braver than Finn McCool, but I would have granted your heroine some better magical powers and monsters to battle instead of miserable, petty men,” she said. “Ah, but imagine, your country’s greatest hero is actually a heroine. Was she beautiful, this Madame Blanro?”

  He shoved the stopper back into the bottle and lay down again. “Not what you’d call gorgeous, though she had lovely eyes. So the legends say.”

  They
fell silent again and listened to the now soft tap of the rain on the roof and splat on the floor where the roof leaked. Their silence was not unusual, but Eliza, who’d grown accustomed to Jas’ moods, even when he did not speak, felt that the man lying at her side had wrapped himself in a peculiarly tense stillness. After a long while she sat up to examine his face.

  His eyes were open but his face was closed. He looked haunted. Perhaps he missed his strange primitive country, which had such strange heroes and grim stories of corrupt leaders and destruction for fairy tales. Eliza reflected that even stories of the Norse gods were less ruthless than the tale he’d told.

  She traced the soft line of his cheek and was startled when he gently grasped her fingers. Without a word, he reached for her shoulders and pulled her down onto his chest and wrapped his arms tight around her. She could hear his heart pounding hard under her ear. He seemed to want her warmth and weight as a kind of comfort. Eliza longed to caress him. More than once she lifted her hand, and had to chide herself for a wanton.

  He stroked her hair. He did not deepen his own caresses but seemed content to have her lie across his chest, a surprisingly cozy position. Eliza had only slept fitfully for months. Now she felt so soothed and heavy-limbed she soon dozed off, and slept comforted for the first time since her father left her in the cave.

  *

  They could travel again. Even Jas, who plotted their route, grumbled as he impatiently tapped the wood, which lay across his palm. “I wonder how far off the direct trail we have to go today. If we could have managed to go as straight as that thing you said.” He raised his brows and looked at her, waiting.

  “As a crow flies,” she said.

  “That, yes. If we could go as the crow flies, we’d have reached Lisbon days ago.”

  Then the landscape changed again and they wearily climbed tall hills and cautiously slithered down them. Sometimes at the top of the near-mountains, Eliza sank down to her heels and paused for a moment to scan the breathtaking views for signs of movement. A few times she caught sight of a far off shepherd and his flock, or another poignant reminder of life in peaceful times. Once she grabbed Jas’ wrist and pointed out the vision of a dramatic tower on a crumbling castle.

  “Huh.” Jas squinted around at the sweeping landscape. “It is a beautiful place, Spain. That’s consolation for all of this hiking.”

  As they made their way down the steep hill, Eliza tried to catch another glimpse of the castle. She stood on her tiptoes and found herself waving her arms for balance. She skidded, then fell. Jas deftly grabbed her before she plunged down the hill.

  He dropped onto a rock and hauled her tight against him. Jas stared down the steep incline and sucked in an audible breath. She leaned her head against his neck and felt as much as heard him gasp his words. “Liza. Don’t scare me like that, woman.”

  “Thank you,” Eliza whispered. “I shall be fine in a moment.” She closed her eyes and inhaled the pleasant fragrance of his skin. She knew he was more shaken by her fall than she, and felt a thorough cheat when she used the incident as a chance to cling to him. But she enjoyed the feel of the warm iron of his arms and chest surrounding her too much to inform him she was just fine and they could continue on their way. She pushed her face hard against his woolen shirt, so she could hear his quick heartbeat and ragged breath.

  At last she reluctantly pulled away from his grip. She stood and started her more careful climb down the hill again.

  “No.” He grabbed her upper arm. “Stay behind me. From now on when we head downhill, I’m in front.”

  She giggled. “Perhaps I shall collapse on you. We’ll be Jack and Jill and roll down the hill together.”

  He didn’t seem particularly amused. “Could be. At least I’ll cushion your fall.” After a moment he added, “Jack and Jill? Why does that sound familiar?”

  She tried not to, but ended up laughing heartily at his ignorance as she recited the nursery rhyme to him. “How can you know English and not know these?”

  “I think I heard a few, long ago. Tell me more of them.” For much of the rest of the day, she recited rhymes to him. Occasionally he’d chime in. He had learned some of them before. As they tramped up another hill, they chanted the Grand Old Duke of York, a ditty from only a few years earlier.

  Because of her fall, Eliza’s boot cracked open at a side seam. She soon grew impatient with the flapping leather and Jas cut off a piece of a flannel shirt to wrap the boot closed around her foot.

  He knelt by her and she put a hand on his broad back to balance herself. She lightly trailed the fingers of her other hand across the shifting muscles of his shoulder as he bound her boot closed.

  Neither of them spoke and she wondered if he had even felt her touch. But she knew he had, for after he let go of her foot, he tilted his head back and stared up at her, his pale eyes heavy and filled with heat.

  She stared back and knew the picture of his craving would be engraved in her memory. A heartbeat later he clambered to his feet and slapped the dust from his knees.

  “Come on.” He was gruff again. Ah, but she at last understood the reason for his brusqueness and as he stalked away, she gave his back a knowing smile. No, a smirk, really.

  With their dirt and clothes reduced to rags, they looked inconspicuous, despite their fair complexions, and made no more effort to avoid the other blank-faced people they passed on their weary tramp. But they did not dare stop to make camp near any farms or the small, huddled villages. Looters were too common and any locals who had not been uprooted distrusted strangers.

  They found an abandoned farm house and wonderful riches inside. Jas gathered up some sausages, a cook pot and more clothes. Eliza gratefully put the cleaner clothes on under her own garments, which were stiff with filth.

  “We should spend the night here,” she said.

  Jas shook his head.

  “Why ever not?”

  “You go ahead. Stay here. I’m not gonna,” he said firmly. Muttering about stubborn men, Eliza eventually left the cozy house to join him in the fast-cooling evening.

  Chapter Seven

  Jazz strode away from the farmhouse toward a copse of pine trees where he threw down his pack. A house was out of the question for a simple reason. Sleeping inside a building with Eliza again might prove too much for him. He needed to be able to escape quickly.

  After he set up camp, she drifted over to him with the blanket on her arm. She tossed the blanket on the ground, pulled his cloak from him and arranged the two cloaks on it.

  “What are you doing?” he croaked.

  She gave him an innocent smile. “It is so cold at night still. I thought we agreed we ought to share heat?”

  Heat. That was the word, all right. He opened his mouth to tell her she was a lunatic, but instead to his horror and delight, found himself on the blanket next to her. A pair of lunatics, he thought.

  Liza pressed to his back for warmth and, he knew, more. She wanted him too. Despite the sometimes excruciating discomfort, close to the edge of agony, of his own response, he reveled in the weight of her arm draped across his chest and the feel of her body against his back. He felt every one of her sighs, the shifting of a leg. Distracting didn’t begin to describe the sensation. Did she have to squirm against him like that?

  He had another reason he could barely sleep. He was worried she might accidentally slam an arm into him, provoking him to attack. At home he never slept in the same room as another person, much less wrapped up in a tangle with someone.

  The fear he might hurt her made him wish that for once in his life he had Dreemeze, a drug he hated. He was an approved candidate for Dreemeze, a carefully controlled substance, but he didn’t use it to squash the nightmares. When he went too long without dreams at home, his waking life grew muted, as if he were a spectator watching himself move through his days. His mother, Mag, had theorized that the bad dreams were some kind of outlet for him. So instead of drugs, he’d long ago taught himself to wake up during the
frequent nightmares. With Eliza next to him, he could only be grateful he slept so lightly.

  He soon discovered that not just nightmares tormented him now. He had to learn how to wake himself from good dreams too. More than once he dreamed Liza was in his arms, and when he awoke he was horrified to find he was holding her, moving, no grinding against her, touching her in his sleep, embarrassingly close to coming.

  Talk about wild-state. How in the world did he get through the many layers of clothing to find her silken skin in his sleep? Luckily she was a sounder sleeper than he, though she wasn’t exactly a log on those occasions. Unfortunately.

  He had to cautiously unwrap her arms, even her legs from his body, and pull himself away as she made small sounds of protest in her sleep. He’d throw his cloak over her, then he’d take a brisk walk through the cold night air, never far from her, but not so close he could see her. Just seeing her vulnerable as she lay on the ground was enough to set off the throbbing ache again. It was too easy and painfully tempting to crawl back and make love with her.

  At least outside he could easily get away. He became an expert stargazer during those long nights. He lay on his back staring up at the sky, using the CR to pick out constellations, all the while pretending a warm and lovely woman did not lie on the ground a few yards away.

  One night he woke to see her heavy eyes staring back at him. He promptly shut his eyes again and used all of his skill to make his breath heavy and slow, hoping she didn’t feel his frantic heartbeat.

  “Jas,” she whispered quietly. She leaned forward and gently kissed his cheek, her lips almost hot on his chilled skin. He bent his knees so she couldn’t press against him and feel the obvious evidence that he wasn’t relaxed. She pressed faint kisses on his mouth and face and with light fingertips of one hand stroked his hair, face, neck. He wondered if anyone could be convinced he’d sleep through such torture, but he did his best to pretend. A groan escaped him, but he managed to turn it into a sleepy sound.