Whispers on the Wind

by Judy Griffith Gill

  With plenty to occupy her, she would not spend even one minute thinking of a bronze-skinned stranger named Jon, with golden hair and grass-green eyes and broad, muscular shoulders.

  What?

  Bronze skin? Golden hair? Green eyes? Dammit, it had been dark in the night! He had been nothing more than a shadowy shape, a soft whisper, sure hands, and hot breath. He’d had no form, no color, no substance beyond those hands.

  From the top dresser drawer, she selected a good firm bra for her full breasts, cotton panties that came right up to her waist, and thick socks. Not the garments of a fanciful woman. Not the garments of erotica. They were her clothes, the kind she always wore, good quality, practical, they lasted. They provided value for money.

  And that, she decided, stomping down the stairs to make herself a good, practical, warm breakfast of cooked cereal, was what was important in life. Getting good value. Nobody ever got that from a dream.

  Burning...Pain. Swirling dark, welcoming, warming...

  No! Must hold, focus, concentrate. Bones to knit, blood to stanch, wounds to heal too large too deep too big for one alone...Help me. Help me. Where are you? I ask so little. A small, warm point of light. Return, return!

  No one. Nothing. Sleep and heal and let the swirling dark glide in...I must not die! Kahinya, seek help. Seek...Zenna!

  Jonallo! Zenna clutched mentally at the Kahinya encircling her neck as, for an instant, one brief, heart-wrenching moment during a risky translation, her brother Jonallo’s presence swept through her senses, stunning her. So strong was it, she nearly lost her focus, came perilously close to sliding out of the already unsteady link she had maintained, aided by her amplifier, with the criminal B’tar.

  Then, agonizingly, the fleeting connection with Jon was no more. Had it, even for that split second, truly been?

  On the ground again outside the house she shared unwillingly with her captors Rankin and B’tar, she resumed her corporeal form. In that first instant of full, Earthly awareness, she saw her three-year-old daughter Glesta running toward her, tawny hair streaming behind her, stubby legs pumping, a glad smile on her face. Zenna caught an equally glad sob in her throat as the only reason she obeyed Rankin and B’tar’s dictates flew into her arms.

  Chapter Two

  “DAMN, THAT HURTS!” LENORE slammed the heavy axe into the chopping block, tugged off the oversized and stiff leather gloves—all she’d been able to find—and sucked on a blistered palm. Crunching numbers for a living did not lead to tough hands.

  The blisters, which had developed over the past hour, popping up on the pads at the base of her fingers, had now broken, which effectively put an end to her wood-chopping and made stacking the product of her toil a task for another day. But at least she was tired, she thought, kicking off her boots at the back door, then bending to stand them neatly on the mat in the corner. Maybe tired enough to sleep the night through without dreaming.

  Placing both blistered palms against the small of her back, she stood erect, groaning. That hurt too.

  She unbuttoned her heavy flannel shirt, shrugged out of it, working her shoulders to try to relieve the stiffness and pain between them. The unaccustomed labors of the day had definitely taken their toll.

  In the kitchen, she took three loaves of fully risen bread and slid them into the hot oven before adding two sticks of wood to the fire. She smiled, recalling the astounded expression on Worth’s face when she asked for yeast in the small community store where she picked up supplies when she needed them.

  “You’d better get out of this valley, and fast,” she had said. “You’re turning into another Jane McQuarrie!” As if Jane was the only person in the valley who baked bread. But, on reflection, Lenore realized Jane might well be.

  The kitchen stove had been burning all day, meaning there would be plenty of water heated by the coils running behind the firebox for a nice long soak in the century-old claw-footed tub. Maybe fuel-cells weren’t all that necessary after all. After all, weren’t chunks of wood, in their own way, fuel-cells of a sort?

  Bubbles, she thought, heading for the bathroom. Lots and lots of bubbles. Even a hard-working, practical woman deserved the solace of a bubble-bath now and then.

  The hot water stung her hands, and it would take more than one soak in a bath to ease the twin aches in her lower back and between her shoulder blades, but she had to start somewhere. She lay back on the warm slope at the end of the tub, stretching her toes out to keep herself from sliding right under the water. She closed her eyes, drawing in the scent of the perfumed bubbles, mingled with the aroma of slowly baking bread.

  Ah...Heaven.

  She had no idea how long she lay there before the water began to cool, but she knew she should stir herself and get out of the tub. She tried, against the weight of lethargy, to sit up, but it took too much effort. Besides, what was the hurry? There was no one to want the bathroom, no one to make any demands of her, no insistent compad chime, no doorbell, no traffic sounds to disturb her.

  Bathe it, soothe it, cloak it in calm. Strength ebbing...No, focus, tighten, aim and...there! Is done. Rest now. Breathe. And...reach again. The next. Cloak, surround, ease. Good. Once more...cannot. But must. She, the strongest essence, must be well, whole, to help. Tighten, reach, touch and...done. Ahh. The swirling, welcome dark to drift...

  As the aches in her back floated away into the popping bubbles, the smarting of Lenore’s hands turned to a delicious warmth that soaked up her arms, into her shoulders, down her spine and through her legs, softening her muscles, leaving her totally relaxed. She entered a state of perfect peace filled with the faint popping of bubbles in the warm water, the scent of baking bread, the scent of the forest moss, the soughing of the trees and the distant crackle of the fire glowing, sending dancing light against the cavern walls...

  Cavern? Her lids fluttered as she tried to open them, but their heaviness daunted her and she let herself drift, knowing, wanting to know only the warmth of the water, the comfort of the tub. Peace.

  Just a few more minutes, she thought dreamily. Another five, anyway. The water, oddly, seemed warmer now, as hot as when she’d first run it. How strange...

  She sensed his presence—his energy and promise—even before hard lips covered her startled cry. His kiss, unlike any kiss she had ever experienced, filled her with heat. A hard body slid intimately between her legs, slippery with soap and warm water. A hard hand pressed against the back of her head, keeping her face above water and a hard, determined tongue dipped into her mouth. She sighed, accepted the stroke of that tongue against hers, sucked on it, tasted it and found it to her liking. Her heart rate climbed. He demanded her tongue, received it, toyed with it, treasured it, then returned it to her safekeeping. Her hands, cupped over warm, taut skin covering muscular shoulders, trembled.

  “Yes,” he whispered, lifting his golden head. “Come to me.”

  Lenore shifted her legs, drawing him deeper into the cradle of her thighs, seeking his heat, his hardness, opening for him. “I’m here, I’m here,” she said, her voice ragged. “Please, don’t make me wait.”

  “Come,” he said again. “Hurry. I need you.”

  She arched her back, her hands gliding down over his sleek, bronze hide, nails digging into his tight buttocks. “Now!” she gasped. “Now, Jon!”

  “Now!” he whispered, and then he was gone.

  Lenore gasped and sat up, water spilling down over her aching breasts. She looked at her nipples, touched them, feeling their hardness. Her breasts felt fuller, her body pulsed with unfulfilled need. Her legs trembled. Reaching down, she pulled the plug to let the water, cold now, bubbles just a memory in scum, drain out. How long had she been caught in the fantasy that time? She had not—she was certain she had not—been asleep.

  It was as if she had been...She frowned, disliking the connotations of the word that came to mind. Possessed.

  She shivered. Was that what was happening to her? Was there an unfriendly—or perhaps an overly fri
endly—spirit trapped with her in the cabin? Her sensible, pragmatic side wanted very badly to pooh-pooh the notion, but the image had been so strong, the physical sense of touch so real, a hitherto unknown side of her shook with fear of the supernatural.

  She struggled to regain control of her senses. Supernatural be damned! “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” she said, standing up so fast she sent water slopping everywhere.

  Isn’t there? The question seemed to come from way down deep in her mind, but still, she snorted with disgust. She glanced at herself in the mirror. Dammit, she did not believe in ghosts. Nor did she believe in hauntings. There was nothing wrong with the cabin; ergo, the fault lay within herself.

  “So leave,” she muttered. “Doctors aren’t infallible. Clearly, mine doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Burnout or no burnout, what she needed was to get back to her own home, her job, her responsibilities. Those, surely, would keep her mind off weird, erotic fantasies.

  Though the question remained, would returning home permit the other dreams to recur, the ones in which a small child came to her, seeking companionship and love and...connection? Or the one in which she experienced being the mother of the child, afraid, not so much for herself, but for her daughter, whom she felt was threatened in some way.

  She closed her eyes and the same feelings were there as had been each time she awoke from one of the mother dreams. She felt sick, disoriented, head reeling and heart aching. Those were bad feelings, yes, but they were never worse than when the dream was that of the little girl herself, when it seemed she came right into Lenore’s mind, demanding attention. From those dreams—that dream, for it seemed to be the same one, recurring, she awoke feeling bereaved, yearning to go back into it and find the child, to cuddle her close and accept the loving trust that was offered with such joyful expectation of having the feelings returned.

  That one, much as she disliked admitting it even to herself, had come when she was sure she was wide awake, sitting at her desk in her office in the Crompton Building in the center of Sector Seattle. It had happened at other times, too, such as when her car was locked onto the glideway across Puget Strait, or when she was walking in the park near her home. The damned little kid with her curious questions, her bright observations and her strange insistence that Lenore come and play.

  It was, of course, the child she ached to have and never would. Hence the intense feelings of loss and privation when the vision ended.

  Opening her eyes, she shook off the memories of those dreams and figments of her weird imagination. Deliberately, seeking normalcy, she looked at the pale peach bathroom walls, at the electric baseboard heater—another relic of times past—powered by the turbine in the stream above the cabin. The stack of towels on the vanity, her cosmetics placed neatly on a glass shelf under the mirror—all were such prosaic items. The toilet, complete with fuzzy lid and tank covers, remnant of the tenure of Caroline’s long-dead grandmother, had no place in a fantasy, she thought as she stepped from the tub, grabbed a towel and rubbed her skin briskly.

  She folded the towels she had used, hung them squarely on the rail over the baseboard heater, slipped into her flannel nightgown, which she covered with a terrycloth robe, and went to the kitchen to check on her bread.

  It wasn’t until she had shoved her hands into oven mitts to remove the loaves, beautifully golden-brown, the exact shade of Jon’s hair, that she realized something else was terribly, eerily awry.

  She set the last loaf down on the cooling racks she’d laid out, took off the oven mitts and stared at the palms of her hands.

  “What the hell?” she said, sinking down onto a hard wooden chair, suppressing the scream that rose up tight in her throat. “What in all the flames of hell is going on?”

  Lenore struggled to shake off debilitating terror as she stared at the undeniable but inexplicable. Not so much as a trace of a blister showed on the palm of either hand. She prodded the resilient pads of flesh at the base of her fingers. There was no tenderness, no torn skin where blisters had broken. No angry red flesh beneath. No slow seeping of fluid. Nothing. Her hands were as they had been before she began chopping wood.

  Standing again, though her knees felt weak and almost numb, she bent and touched her toes. Her back didn’t hurt, either. Not a twinge. She swung her arms. Her shoulders were fine, feeling strong and limber.

  “That,” she said loudly, finding some courage in the sound of her own voice, despite the tremor of apprehension she wished were not present, “is some great bubble bath!” She wanted, very badly, to believe what she said, to find in the bathroom some magic elixir that she might have poured by mistake.

  It was, however, the exact same brand she always bought, the exact same bottle she had brought with her. She had not accidentally used something her friend might have left behind on a previous visit, something exotic from one of globe-trotting Caroline’s Asian treks. There were no toiletries in the bathroom besides the ones she, Lenore, had carried up the mountain with her.

  She had known that, of course. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it. She sighed and sat down on the fake-fur cover of the toilet lid. “What is going on?” she said again. “What in hell is happening to me?”

  Shaking, Lenore pulled her robe tighter around her, feeling an unexpected chill in warm bathroom.

  “Food,” she said. “You’re lightheaded from lack of food.”

  She was also, she thought, incredibly thirsty. Something, the altitude, maybe, or the dry climate, had made her crave liquids terribly the past few days. The thirst was greatest when she awoke from one of her dreams, she realized, wondering if there could be a connection.

  Her stomach growled. Hunger, like thirst, had been her constant companion for the past few days—almost since her arrival. That must indicate the doctor’s prescription of rest and relaxation was working. Ordinarily, when she was depressed or stressed, food was the last thing on her mind. Loss of appetite was simply one more of the symptoms that had driven her to seek professional advice.

  Her stomach growled again and a vision of a thick, juicy steak, a mound of mashed potatoes and gravy, floated before her eyes. Lord, if she started to eat like that, she’d weigh a ton before she left. The McQuarries had stocked the cabin for her with a wide variety of real meat from their private stock—pork, beef, chicken, ham, none of that bogus stuff made from soy beans and seaweed that was available to the vast majority of the world’s population. If she ate even a quarter of that bounty she might have to take on the entire woodpile, she thought, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

  In the kitchen, she ladled herself out a bowl of stew from the pot she’d left simmering all day on the back of the stove. It did contain meat, though not in great quantities. She sliced into a hot, steamy loaf knowing it was much too soon to do so, but craving the new bread despite its turning doughy at the touch of the knife. She slathered on butter, a treat she could not resist, watching it melt, then set the slices on the side of her plate.

  She ate hungrily, draining two glasses of milk with her meal, telling herself that ghosts did not exist, therefore, she hadn’t experienced that episode in the tub, where she had actually felt the man’s physical body, run her hands over his back, dug her nails into his buttocks. It had not happened any more than the fantasy of having a little girl’s voice in her head had ever happened, or that of a frantic mother. All had been hallucinations.

  Likely, she thought, shoving her empty plate away, she’d hallucinated the wood-chopping, as well. And the blisters, she decided, checking her hands again.

  Sure. That was it. She really had fallen asleep in the tub—it was another manifestation of that extreme lethargy she’d complained about to the doctor. And sleeping, she’d dreamed of the wood-splitting, dreamed another encounter with the bronze-skinned man.

  There would, of course, be ample proof of that. All she had to do was go outside and assure herself that the neatly racked cords of dry poplar remained intact in their
round, unsplit state. The axe would still be where the last wood-splitter—likely Angus McQuarrie—had hung it on the wall of the shed. She probably hadn’t even ridden Mystery to town and back today and then left him to wander and nibble at the sparse grass between the cabin and the forest.

  Although she knew she was right about what she would find outside, she still had to fight reluctance to go out there and prove it to herself.

  Slowly, she walked to the back door where she stuffed her feet into her boots again, dragged a jacket on over her robe. Outside, she wrapped her arms around herself as she stared at the shed. The axe was stuck into the chopping block. A freshly split pile of wood lay in an untidy heap beside it, off to one side of an incomplete cord of sawed logs, which had, earlier in the day, been intact.

  With a sick feeling, she remembered she had planned to restack the split wood in a few days’ time when her hands healed.

  She paced to the small barn and found it empty. She turned when Mystery trotted up, whickering in the pale light of the newly risen moon. She backed him into his stall, where he went willingly, and tossed his head before hopefully nuzzling her pocket.

  It felt normal, tending the horse. He felt real, he smelled real, he sounded real. This, she hoped, was not another delusion, but it was getting to the point where she couldn’t tell. Maybe, she thought, filling Mystery’s feed box with the mixture Angus, who looked after him when neither she nor Caroline was here, had prepared, maybe none of this is real and I’m safely locked away in a padded cell somewhere.

  She stood and stroked the horse’s neck while he munched. “I don’t know, Mystery,” she said. “I just don’t know.”