When You Believe

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  “Three successful books of poetry, and you’re ready for a novel,” he’d said earlier, raising his wineglass.

  Dan didn’t know how soon a story would come to her, Miranda thought, yanking her arm hard one last time. At the same time as she yanked up, Brennus let her go. She tried to find her balance, but screamed as she put weight on her ankle and then began to tip. Back to the floor once more, she thought, putting out her hands to break her fall. But then she was caught and lifted, pressed against Sariel, who held her to his side, his hand firm on her waist. She grabbed at his chest, balancing, feeling how tightly he was built, everything under her hands smooth and hard. She closed her eyes and breathed away the pain in her ankle, smelling him: oranges, musk, soap.

  “This isn’t about generosity of spirit now, is it,” Brennus said. “You’ve always had a taste for bad meat.”

  Miranda breathed in and thought, Screw you, jerk, and was just about to say it aloud, when Sariel whispered in her ear, his voice soft and full of laughter, “Don’t say it.”

  She looked at him, and thought, Just like a man. He nodded, winked, and said, “For now.”

  “For now, what?” Brennus said.

  “For now, let me take her out of here. Back where she belongs,” Sariel said. He held Miranda close to him, his shoulder pressed against the side of her face. “I’ll do what needs to be done.”

  Brennus glowered, crossed his arms, stared at Sariel, but suddenly he didn’t seem so frightening. More like an irritated grandfather. Miranda looked out at the crowd. Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and despite their dark kooky robes, most of the bar crowd looked like people she might meet at Safeway, pushing a cart and grabbing Campbell’s soup off the shelves. Why they wanted to grab at her and carve her up was beyond her. Maybe it was a cult, some devil worshippers getting overexcited for some Halloween parade.

  “You should see our jack-o’-lanterns,” Sariel whispered, and he began to walk her toward the door.

  The crowd moved aside as they passed, but Brennus yelled out as they reached the end of the bar.

  “You know what to do with her after you’ve played the hero.”

  Her body buzzing with adrenaline, Miranda felt Sariel shrug. What was he going to do with her? she wondered, trying to keep her eyes focused in front of her.

  “Don’t worry. It won’t be anything horrible,” Sariel said. “Just keep moving.”

  Just before they were at the place where the door was or wasn’t, a woman reached out a hand. “Sorry, dear.” Turning, Miranda matched the voice to the face. It was Philomel, who turned out to be an older woman with wild springy gray hair so thick her hood couldn’t tamp it down, the velvet seeming to levitate over her head. Philomel reached out, touching her arm, and Miranda smiled, knowing that Philomel was the only person in the room besides Sariel who’d not wanted to stomp her to death.

  Miranda put her hand briefly on Philomel’s and then let Sariel lead her to the door, which was there exactly as it had been when she fell through it. Of course, she thought. Isn’t that peachy. Sariel clasped her shoulder, laughed low, and pushed out into the street.

  Chapter Two

  Outside, the street had burst back into normal life. There, finally, were all the people walking from bar to club to apartment. The lights shone from condo windows, the streets hummed with car and Muni life. A homeless man with a shopping cart walked by, his shoes scraping along the concrete, aluminum cans clinking as the cart hit bumps in the sidewalk. Three teenagers in huge pants and large puffy coats ran by, singing some kind of rap song.

  But when she turned back to look at the door, it was gone, the stone wall smooth and seamless. She turned, put her hand on the wall, half expecting her fingers to disappear as she did. But instead, she touched only the cold wall, nothing more.

  Miranda shook her head and sighed, almost afraid to look back at Sariel. For all she knew, he might have disappeared, leaving her here to hobble to the corner and try to hail a cab. She still felt him holding her around the waist, but she took a deep breath before looking at him. Of course, he’d changed. What else could she have expected in this ridiculous night? Now he was wearing a forest-green T-shirt and black jeans, his robe nowhere in sight. He looked like any guy she might have met in a bar, except better, his cotton shirt tight enough (but not too tight) to show his long, strong arms, his slim waist, his… God, she thought, shaking her head, blushing suddenly because she could almost feel him inside her head.

  She said quickly, “I wish I had your quick-change talent. Might come in handy someday.” Miranda held onto him tightly, her ankle throbbing.

  “You’re not surprised?” He looked at her, his eyes the color of cracked amber, dark flecked, intense.

  “Oh, I’m now in perpetual surprise,” she said. “But since this is just a crazy dream, I know anything can happen. Rooms and doors disappear. You can change your clothes without, well, changing your clothes. People can talk about carving other people up. I’ve given up on questions, though, because all you’ll have to do is read my mind.”

  “I’m a telepath,” Sariel said simply.

  “I just hope you aren’t a psychopath,” Miranda said. “Look, I don’t care what you are right now. I’ve given up. What I need is a hospital. My ankle is killing me.”

  Sariel brought his other hand to her shoulder and turned her toward him. Miranda blinked, her breath in her throat, blood rushing to her face. What was he going to do? Cave in and carve her up like the man in the bar suggested? Strangle her? Possess her mind? Or… or? Was he going to kiss her? What nerve, she thought, realizing she was tipping her suddenly heavy head back with her eyes half closed, as if she wanted nothing more than his mouth on hers. Already, she could imagine his lips, soft at first, insistent later with passion. Yes, she thought. Well, no. Not now. Maybe later. Okay, now. Yes, oh yes. He pressed her to him, and she smelled oranges again. She tried to say something, but her mouth wasn’t working right, and she closed her eyes, rested against his chest, and fell asleep.

  She awoke in a warm, dark room, in comfort, warm, happy, and soothed. But by what? Blinking, she raised herself up from the couch. A candle on the table burned red-orange, its light illuminating the walls of the room, which were lined with shelves, books stacked three deep and piling up on a smooth, dark wood floor. On a desk at the back of the room were scrolls and loose papers, some of which had fallen to the floor. A strange map was tacked onto the wall above the desk. The map looked like a normal world in some ways, but it was divided differently somehow, large red and gold and green sections that weren’t the countries she was used to. On another wall hung an intricate Japanese robe, the silk flickering purple and gold in the light. A huge sheathed sword hung over a doorway that led to a hall where a brighter light shone. She lay back, breathing in. The room smelled like Sariel, orangey, spicy, and hot.

  For a minute, she focused on the room, wondering what other bizarre things would happen before she woke up in her bed, twisted in sheets, and dripping with fever. Or maybe she would fly or transport to one of the weird countries on the map or turn into a toad before the doctor at General would say, “Miranda? Miranda? Snap out of it.” But until then, what a dream! What a room!

  I’m in Edgar Allan Poe’s house, Miranda thought. I hope he gives me some opium before he straps me under the pendulum or locks me in the cage.

  “No opium,” Sariel said from somewhere down the hall. “But I have other palliatives.”

  “Since this is my bad dream or intense coma, I’d appreciate it if you’d turn off that mind-reading thing,” Miranda said as he walked into the room carrying a silver tray. “It’s very unnerving. And when I wake up from this quasi-nightmare, I want to pretend I kept a couple of secrets.”

  “I promise, you won’t remember a thing,” Sariel said, sitting down in a leather chair across from her and placing the tray on the table. As he arranged the contents of the tray, his hair hung down, framing his face. She could see the candle flickering in the dar
k, lamp-black strands as he worked, his eyes focused, his arm flexing as he stirred something in a bowl.

  Miranda looked down at the tray—clay bowls full of what looked and smelled like sage and maybe lavender, one full of a liquid, a pyramid-kind of thing made of metal, and a cloth. There was nothing demented about these ingredients. No sharp knives or wicked pliers. No ropes or chains or long needles or saws. She looked up at him, watching him work with the fragrant plants, their tangy odors calming her further. He seemed so focused, so intent on helping her, that she truly felt her body soften, relax, fall back against the soft couch pillows.

  “So why won’t I remember a thing?” She crossed her arms. “I always remember my dreams, and they’re always in color. Just like this.”

  “This isn’t a dream. And I can’t allow you to remember it.” Sariel looked up at her, his amber eyes on fire in the candlelight.

  Who made you the boss? she thought hard, but Sariel didn’t look up, busy with the cloth and the herbs.

  “Okay, why then?”

  Sariel sighed and looked up. “May I have permission to heal your ankle?”

  “Do you have to ask? Seems like you guys kind of do what you want. Transport people around without asking, make doors come and go, threaten to cut up injured women.”

  Sariel straightened, stared at her, the right corner of his mouth pulling into what might turn into a smile. “I have to ask permission. It’s only polite. And your ankle needs healing.”

  “So not only are you a secret Dungeons and Dragons telepath, but you moonlight as a doctor?”

  “I’m a homeopath,” Sariel said, holding up a hand. “Not a psychopath. Or a sociopath.”

  Miranda leaned back and looked down at her ankle. It was swollen and throbbed still, the pain constant and heavy. If this were a dream, it was the most vivid she’d had. Probably she’d hit her head on a post somewhere and was in a coma at San Francisco General, Dan wringing his hands at her bedside. Clearly, she received a sharp blow and fell to the concrete with a severe concussion with epic delusions. Or maybe worse. So not only would she have the whole satanic cult trip to write about, she’d have a brain injury to focus on. If she could focus on anything once she woke up.

  “Look,” Sariel said. “I turned the telepathy off like you asked, so I don’t know what’s going through your head. I should tend to your ankle though. It’s not going to heal quickly on its own.”

  “You can turn your mind off?” Miranda stared at him. “Like a TV or a radio?”

  Sariel sighed again, and she could see that he was just barely controlling his irritation. Obviously, he’d never been in one of her dreams before, all of them full of twists and turns and ridiculous plot lines. He leaned back in his chair and pushed his hair off his forehead, breathing out. He watched her, and she felt blood pulse in her ears. In the flickering deep glow of the room, his eyes were full of light. Miranda remembered what it felt like to rest against his shoulder, his chest under her cheek, his smell of oranges and spice surrounding her. She remembered how light and floaty and wonderful she felt as he carried her off to wherever in the hell she was now.

  “Okay, fine,” she said quickly. “Yes, please, I mean. It’ll be nice to regain consciousness with one less thing to worry about.”

  Sariel raised his eyebrows, a bit more of a smile on his lips, and then stood up and sat down on the couch next to her feet, bringing the cloth and herbs with him.

  “Those shoes,” he said, his dark eyebrows raised. “Unless you’re a well-trained penseur de mouvement, I’d wear Nikes when running around the city.”

  Miranda stared at him as he took off her high heels and put them on the floor. “A thinker of movement? I do have some French, though I’d say it’s stuck at sophomore year. And even then, I got a D.”

  He flicked a look at her, and then brought his hand to her ankle gently, sliding one palm underneath it. Holding the weight of her tender flesh in his hand, he lay the folded cloth full of herbs on the top of her ankle and wrapped it loosely. He lowered her leg to a pillow, but he didn’t let go, his hand holding her firmly. She felt some warm energy move from his hand through the cloth and into her skin, under it, really, into muscle and bone.

  “Lie back and relax,” Sariel said. “This will take a little while.”

  She did as she was told, resting back on the pillow, closing her eyes, sinking into the darkness of the room around her.

  She listened to his steady breathing and then focused on his hand on her ankle. She could feel his strong fingers hold her ankle softly, and she remembered what Brennus had said in the bar. “You have a taste for bad meat.”

  Bringing women to his house and seducing them with magic hands must be what Sariel did, she thought. Or what he did in desperate women’s dreams. Or, well, whatever. Miranda didn’t care, bad meat or not. She’d wake up eventually, but now she had his warm hand on her, and she wondered what would happen if he moved it up a little, touching her like this everywhere.

  She held back a laugh, trying to stay serious so he wouldn’t stop. How long had it been since she’d let a man touch her anywhere? Since Jack left, taking with him her computer, printer, and heart? Two years, almost exactly. No one since Jack and his brilliant words, his lean, poetic body, and his girlfriends on the side. Sure, Dan had been asking her out for six months now, but she couldn’t get involved with her editor. Her poetry was all she had these days, and she couldn’t even kiss a man without one or both of them wanting more, so she’d said no to it all, hugs, kisses, and comfort. By saying no to that, she was saying no to anxiety, betrayal, stolen goods, and sleepless nights where she relived her every wrong move. Sex had always messed up everything.

  But this? Sariel’s hands moving carefully on her ankle and shin? It was lovely. She felt so relaxed, so peaceful. Her ankle wasn’t throbbing anymore and the energy from Sariel’s touch was growing hotter, slowly radiating in bigger circles from the point of pain. His fingers were steady and firm. She could feel the color coming from him into her, something as hot and red as the candle on the table, something tangy and delicious. In a strange way, she could almost hear him thinking, sending all his thoughts into her very bone, knitting the fracture back together. But how could she hear that? She pushed the notion away, letting his motions take over. His energy moved up in bursts to her shin, her knee, her thigh, and then she gasped as the circle of heat pulsed up farther, tentacles of pleasure pulsing all the way to her center.

  Miranda didn’t think she made a sound, but she did, hearing it float around the room before it finally vanished. She’d moaned. Loudly. Opening her eyes, she sat up wide-eyed and blinking, leaning on her elbows.

  Sariel looked at her, his yellow eyes steady. “Are you all right? Does it feel better?”

  She breathed in, trying to ignore the heat heavily pooling in her belly, her heart beating out jungle drum rhythms in her chest. Miranda was sure that if the lights were on, she’d find herself with continents of blush on her face, throat, and chest, her pale skin aflame. “Yes. I’m fine now.”

  He began to lift his hand from her ankle, and she almost reached down to stop him. Just a few seconds more, she thought, but having an orgasm simply from a man’s touch was too much for even a crazy dream.

  “Are you sure? Does it still feel tender?”

  Tender, she wanted to say, you have no idea. But Miranda shook her head. “Yes. I mean, no. I’m fine.”

  He took his hand away, and her body felt like someone had turned off her main switch. She swallowed and lay down on the pillow, holding back the urge to tell him that indeed she still felt a slight crick, a hitch in movement. But that would be a lie. Her ankle felt perfect, as if she could run a marathon in four-inch heels.

  Sariel carefully folded up the cloth and watched her, unblinking, a tiny smile at the corner of his lips.

  “Test the ankle. Make sure I did what I set out to.”

  If you only knew, she thought, lifting her foot off the pillow. “It feels great.” She
moved her foot slightly and smiled. “A miracle. You are magic after all.”

  “Let’s give it a minute, and then I’ll take you back where you belong.” He stood up and looked down at her, smiling. His hair hung down below his shoulders, and she wished he’d put his robe back on, so she could have the full effect of her Prince of Darkness-crazed brain before she woke up. What would her old Jungian therapist say about this? She could never tell her mother, but what would her sister Viv think once she heard? Long-robed lunatics worried about a menacing threat and a sexy healer in a candlelit room? The potential for interpretation was limitless. Sariel was clearly her repressed sexuality. The group in the bar was what? Her most feared audience? The Holitzer application committee? A packed crowd at the Herbst Theatre waiting for her to deliver perfect poems? The editor at the New York Times Book Review? But what about the threat from… who was it? Quain?

  “Who is Quain?” Miranda asked and then immediately wished she hadn’t. His face shifted, closed, shut down, his warm energy gone, and he turned away from her, picking up the tray and taking it over to a larger table. There, he poured them each a glass of what looked like brandy and brought back the glasses, handing her one.

  “You don’t need to concern yourself with that.” He swirled his glass and frowned, his eyes focused on his drink. “At least, for now your world doesn’t have to worry.”

  “My world? What does that mean? Listen, since it’s my dream and I’m going to forget it all anyway, why can’t you tell me?” Miranda sat up straighter and took a sip of her brandy, which wasn’t quite brandy but some kind of alcohol, thick and honey-flavored and smooth. “What can it hurt?”

  Sariel stared down at her and then sat down in the chair. He pushed the loose strands of hair away from his face and crossed his arms. As he watched her, she wondered what she must look like. Not the well put together sight she’d been when she’d left her apartment for the poetry reading, stylish in her tight green dress and black heels. No. She’d run a half-dozen blocks, fallen on the dirty bar floor, struggled with robed loonies, and done some kind of transporting thing to this couch. Somewhere between Geary and Lombard, her hair had gone mad, and she could see it curling all around her head and down around her shoulders. It was her caged animal look, she knew, and it wasn’t her best, her hair a bright cadmium aureole of tangle. But Sariel didn’t seem to really be looking at her, but just beyond.