I scrutinized the remaining line intently, trying to memorize it. The symbols gave off a too-bright, effervescent sheen that merged with the white light itself. Ian and I shaded our eyes and looked away. The light began to dim around us. The scene shifted, faded, transformed. We stood on the rock ledge in the middle of a world that began to melt and surge around us.
Ian and I closed ranks, him throwing an arm around me and me grabbing him around the waist.
With a soft whoosh of energy, we were back in the real world, or at least some part of it. We stood in a shadowy clearing surrounded by trees. It was almost sunset. The huge hummocks of blue-green mountains rose in the distance. A silver-blue mist filled their hollows and the sky above them was red and gold. The air smelled perfect, sweet, cool, full of a ripe, spring night to come.
We turned around slowly. We stood at the base of a gentle slope.
At the top of it, sheltered by oaks, was the log cabin Mary and Ian had built.
Home.
Cold prickles spread over me. “It looks . . . not old. It should be gone, like everything else, or at least just a pile of rotting logs.”
I’ve kept it safe for you, the white light said gently. It stands here as it was the day Mary walked out the door the last time, the day she went to the ridge to battle the banes and was captured by the demon. It is no illusion. I have hidden it from the outside world and protected it. And now it’s waiting for the two of you to share a night inside its arms again.
The light kissed me, slowly, on the mouth, and in less than a platonic way. When I looked at Ian, whose eyes were half-shut and his mouth parted, it was clear she was kissing him, too. Then she was gone.
We walked slowly up the slope. My stomach twisted. “Look. That low pile of stones among the trees over there. The hummock of rocks covered in vines. Is that our . . . oh, God, it is—”
“Just a grave,” he said hoarsely. “Naught left it in but dust.”
My eyes stung. “I guess only the cabin has a protective charm over it. Because out here we had a little barn, and a chicken coop, and a split-rail fence around a little garden. I saw all that in Crow Walker’s visions. But it’s all gone now. And . . . so are we.”
“Our bodies are gone, not our souls.” But he sounded upset. We hurried past. I couldn’t make myself look toward the grave again.
15
We ate unleavened cornbread older than the Constitution. The golden, fried hoecakes were still fresh and crunchy in a covered iron pot on the hearth in the cabin’s main room, just where Mary had left them. We drank creamy milk she’d stored in a crockery urn; milk from a cow that had lived out its life when the flag had only thirteen stars.
We sat across from each other on woven cane chairs at a rough wooden table the other Ian had built. This Ian rubbed his fingertips over the smooth tops of iron nails the other Ian had made at the forge. I examined a beautiful table runner woven of pine needles. “I bet Mary made this. She was probably an artist. Like me. Or I’m like her. I think of her as somebody else. And I miss her like she was my best friend. Go figure. But she’s right here.” I touched my chest. “Right?”
“Ay,” Ian said quietly. “I know she’s in there somewhere, just like you can see him in me at times, I hope.”
We looked at each other over a flickering oil lamp, sharing a deep pit of longing to be comfortable together as Mary and Ian, the people who’d never gotten to grow old in this sweet little place, the people we’d been.
“We’ve eaten a meal we left for ourselves,” I rasped. “I think we’re on the verge of a paradox.”
“And what would that be meaning?”
“A then and a now that can’t possibly be connected, but they are.”
I looked around. The cabin was full of dark shadows, but it still felt cozy. Safe. We sat inside the lamp’s small pool of light like we were floating in a new universe. “Maybe this isn’t real, Ian. Maybe we’re dead.”
He laughed. “Now you’re fecking with my head a bit too much. No. We’re alive, Mary-Livia.” His humor faded to a somber smile. “And we’ve got to merge. Madame Rock said so.”
I stood, agitated already. “I’m not sure I’m ready.”
Ian stood too, scowling. “God’s balls, woman. It’s not the poking and the humping that Madame Rock is talking about. It’s the giving.”
“I don’t know how to give. Everything and everyone I love has always been taken from me. I’ve been alone too long. And I still think I should fight this fight alone.”
He thrust out his jaw. “Well, that’s all moot, isn’t it? You’re stuck with me, Mary-Livia. Now, look. If it’s just a ceremony with no heart you’re after, let’s head over yon right now—” he jerked his hand at the bedroom across the dog-trot hallway outside—“but I’ll be damned if I’ll settle for you just laying there staring at Lindholm’s face and gritting your teeth ’til it’s over.”
Wounded and grim, he picked up his backpack and headed for the door to the hall. The axes clinked dully.
I blocked his way, furious. “Do you think I’d be that cold?”
He glared down at me. “You’re changing the subject. Do you want to feck me or not? You just don’t want to feck me. Admit it.”
I grabbed the tail of my t-shirt and dragged it over my head. I reached behind me to snatch off my thin black bra. Ian grabbed me without a word, picked me up around the waist, shoved open the door, dragged me across the open hall, shoved the door to the bedroom open, then toted me inside, kicked the door shut, and set me down hard in a rocking chair by the fire place.
It was dark. No fire. No lamp. Just a soft glow of moonlight through the wavy glass windows of which Mary and Ian had been so proud. He dropped to his heels in front of me, holding me in the chair with both hands pinning my wrists to its arms. “Do you give a damn that I have feelings too, and that I’d treat you tenderly if you just gave me half a chance?”
“Of course I care—”
A fire whooshed to life beside us.
We jumped.
In Mary and Ian Thornton’s fireplace, on logs Mary had placed there herself before leaving her home for what would turn out to be the last time in her life, a cheerful little fire started itself.
“This isn’t the Talking Rock at work,” I said in a low voice.
Ian nodded slowly. “’Tis my Mary herself. Mary.” His voice rose gently. “Love,” he called. He searched the shadowy room for any glimpse of her. The room was simple, with just the fireplace, a low bedstead covered in woven blankets, and the rocking chairs. “Mary? Would you have a talk with yourself, I mean with this one here, for me?” His eyes gleamed with tears. “Mary. Speak to me, at least, m’love.”
No answer. He sat back on his heels, his head bowed.
I looked at him sadly. He loves her. That me. Not this me. Not that I blame him.
She did not answer him, or me.
After a moment, he settled on a stool by the hearth, his face carved with disappointment.
I choked back my own emotions and said as casually as I could, “I suddenly understand something. We’re not the same people we were then. We can’t be. Every life changes us. Not just what we look like, but what we know and expect. You . . . don’t have to love me in this life. It’s all right. I don’t mind being a substitute for her.”
A lie, but I managed to sound sincere.
He scowled at me. “What you’re really sayin’ is that I should no’ expect you to love me now, because you’re still in love with the man I was. You do no’ see how you look at me sometimes still, Livia. It hurts. You’re doin’ it even now.”
True. I was staring at Lindholm’s bearded face and gray eyes, his dark hair shagging over his ears and forehead. Through the open collar of his shirt I saw short, wavy hair where Lindholm’s chest had been shaved and smooth. Ian looked less like Lindholm every day. And the expression in his eyes had transformed him from the beginning. But the rest of him was still not Ian.
I said hoarsely, “Maybe we�
��re both in love with the past.”
He scowled harder, then looked from the fire to the bed to me. “If you’d rather not look at me I could put a sack over my head. Or I could put a sack over yours. But I like looking at your face, Mary-Livia.”
I craned my head. Everything was a challenge. “Why?”
“Those grand green eyes, that little sideways crook to your nose, the way your long hair swoops across your forehead, and how your lips press together when you’re mad . . . seen a lot of that look, I have . . . ”
“You don’t have to flatter me.”
“And you do no’ have to pretend it matters to you, one way or t’other, what I think.”
But it did matter. I sat back in the rocking chair, pulling a blanket around me.
He hunched toward me. “Just tell me that deep inside you, you wish you could open up and have the feeling for me.”
“I do. I wish. But it’s not that simple.”
His face brightened. “Oh, yes it is. Let’s get back to discussing how much I like looking at you.”
I gestured at my scarred feet and tattooed arms, then at the row of studs marching up the sides of my ears. “This isn’t how Mele looked.”
He leaned closer, his elbows on his knees. The firelight carved Lindholm’s face in half-shadow, half-light. I desperately scrutinized it for hints of the black-haired Irish frontiersman inside. Ian frowned dramatically, cocking his head to study me from more than one angle. I huddled deeper inside my blanket. “You’ve got arms and ears on either side of your hypnotizing breasts?” Ian asked slyly. “I have not noticed.” He leaned closer, peering at the blanket as if seeing through it. “Ock. There they are. Well, you do! Arms and ears and bosoms. Glory be.”
A strange sensation bubbled in my throat. A laugh. I smothered it. “Just tell me the truth. Do you wish I looked like Mary?”
He pushed his stool between my feet, splaying his legs on either side of my knees. He frowned at me. “Did I not point a hard cock at you that first day, when I stood naked at Sarah and Charles’ place?”
“Cocks point at anything warm.”
“Have I not made it clear I’ve wanted to touch you every moment since?”
“Men like to fuck.”
“Ah, there she is right now, such a gentle soul, and such a sweet way with words.”
“Ian.”
“Do I like you? O’ course I like you. More’n you like me. Besides, you were n’er a sweet little daisy. I’d be disappointed with you if you changed. Mary once threatened to clang me with a cooking pot. In fact, I have a clear memory of her throwing one at me.”
“Really?”
“Ay. And, no doubt, whatever her beef, I deserved it.”
I slid to the edge of the chair. “Look, I know we need to bond on a deeper level. So let’s just . . . get on with it, okay?”
“Now, now. I know you’re raging to have me, but I’m not the kind of man who fecks at the drop of a hint, you ken? I have to work my way up to the moment.”
He leaned down, took my left foot, and lifted it to his thigh. He unlaced my left hiking boot. Strange, how his hands in that simple act, undressing me by way of my shoe, made me want him a little. He set the shoe aside, slid his fingers up my ankle, hooked them in my heavy gray sock, then curled the sock down. He stripped my foot as if the sock were a silk thong sliding from between my labia. “Ah, Livia,” he whispered, cupping my bare foot in his hands. He stroked his fingers over the coarse pink scar tissue. “Ah, Livia,” he said again, sadly. “Your poor feet. Do they hurt?”
He called me Livia. Not Mary-Livia. Livia. My name. A heady moment.
“Not anymore,” I said.
He took off the other shoe and sock then sat with both of my bare feet on his thighs. I could feel the thick muscles of his legs flexing under my heels. I resisted an urge to curl my toes.
He stroked my scarred skin. “Do you like having your feet rubbed?”
“I don’t know. No one’s ever done that before.”
“Well, now’s the time.” He massaged my feet, my ankles, and worked his hands inside my jeans to rub my calf muscles. It felt good. I relaxed, but only from the knees down. I flinched when he slid his hands higher.
He looked at me as if I’d stomped his heart. I eased my foot from his grip. “I’m sorry,” I said hoarsely. “This isn’t going to work for me. Too much time to think about the wrong things.”
He blew out a long breath and scrubbed his hand over his hair. “You know, maybe we should just strip down and get it over with. You shut your eyes and I’ll be as fast as I can. Maybe more good will come out of the coupling than we know. Maybe all we have to do is make the effort?” He looked up into the darkness of the room. “Whoever’s judging us, listen up, you ken? Give us some scores for trying, all right?”
I nodded and stood up, easing away from him with what I hoped was a casual step or two. Didn’t work. His mouth flattened. “No need to run, Livia. I’ll not try to corner you.”
“I’m going to take off my clothes and get under the covers of the bed. Then you take off your clothes and get in bed with me. I won’t try to avoid you and I won’t try to make you feel unwanted.”
“When you put it that way I can no’ resist,” he deadpanned.
I turned my back, stood by the bed, undressed but left my bra in place—how stupid, but I was suddenly shy. Then I pulled back the half-dozen thin blankets that Mary had left on the narrow, double bedstead and climbed in quickly, covering myself.
The sheets were a soft gray, some kind of coarse, hand-woven cotton—fancy stuff for the 1700’s, probably because Mary’s father could get the goods from traders passing through the mountains. So his beloved oldest daughter and his beloved son-in-law would have fancy woven sheets from the fine port cities of Charleston or even up north, Philadelphia, for their cabin in the wild woods.
I touched the sheets gently, flattening my hand on the cool surface, trembling, then turned on my side, facing the log wall. Behind me I heard the fire crackle as Ian stoked it, and I felt Ian’s gaze on me like a worried laser. His heavy boots, the ones I’d called his urban lumberjack look, made slow, somber sounds as he crossed the plank floor. The skin along my bare spine puckered.
“Aw right, Mary-Livia,” Ian said behind me, his voice tired. “I’m shucking off and climbing in.”
“No problem,” I lied. I sounded hollow. “Do me a favor. Could you just call me Livia?”
“Ay. Sorry.” He sat down to undress with his back to me, his hard ass brushing mine, his weight tilting the thin feather mattress downhill toward him. I clutched the bottom sheet, holding myself in place. His boots scudded as he tumbled them to the floor. The whole bed shook with his slightest move. I heard the zipper on the fly of his khakis. He stood. I heard the soft rustle of the pants, and no doubt his briefs, heading south.
The bed shook again as he turned to face it, bumping it with his bare knee. “Sorry,” he said.
“No problem.”
I started shaking when he lifted the covers on his side. He sat down quickly and slid his legs under the blankets and sheet, and suddenly there he was, taking up more than half of the bed, Lindholm’s brawny, six-foot-plus body instantly crowding me. He lay on his back, one thick forearm plowing a furrow between my shoulder blades, his naked thigh pressing into my naked ass. He still wore his shirt, just like I still wore my bra, but the rest of us was skin-to-skin.
“Livia,” he said in a miserable tone. “Stop your quivering. I’m not just going to pounce on you, all right?”
I turned to lie on my back too. I stared up at the plank ceiling, watching the shadows from the fire. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not stupid about sex. I haven’t been a virgin for a long time. I’m not Mary.”
“Mary was no stranger to men by the time I came along.”
“Really?” I twisted my head just enough to look at him. “I thought things were stricter for women back then.”
“No. About like now. Everyone pretended to
be saints whilst merrily sinnin’. Besides, her mam’s people weren’t sticklers for chastity. The women didna bow to the menfolk. They didna live under the men’s thumbs. Or under their cocks, neither.”
“I’m impressed.”
“She gave up the chance to marry a chief’s son in a town further up the mountains. I saw the fecker naked at a stick ball ceremony once. Hung like a fecking horse. But I won her away from him. I took great pride in that.”
“I bet it wasn’t much of a contest after she met you.”
He twisted his head a little to look at me. “Ah. Now tell me, why would you think a homeless blacksmith wandering the Cherokee lands with naught but a mule and an anvil would be such a catch? Not that I’m fishing for praise, you understand. Just curious.”
“She saw your good heart, your sense of fair play, your endless courage and loyalty. She knew you were special.”
That was all it took. “Livia,” he groaned. He turned toward me quickly. Under the covers, his right hand slid over my bare stomach. His fingers splayed on my skin.
Lindholm’s fingers.
I made a startled sound, not a welcoming one. My stomach muscles pulled back from his touch, leaving his hand in thin air. At the same time I felt his hard cock poke my outer thigh. I shifted away from it. He pulled his hand back. “Damned hand,” he said gruffly. “Has a mind of its own.”
Our sweet intimacy was now just a dull chill. I hated my reactions, but I couldn’t stop them. “No more talking,” I told him wearily. “Just come here.”
“All right.” The words dripped defeat. He sat up then got to his knees, taking the blankets with him. The room’s warm, pine-scented air hit my bare stomach and crotch. I clenched my fists by my sides.
I stared at the ceiling rather than look at Ian, no, Lindholm, no Pig Face, no, Ian, Ian, it’s Ian! kneeling beside me with his hard-on at full mast. “I’ll move to the center of the mattress,” I announced. I sidled to the bed’s middle.
“Ay, a good plan. Pull up your leg, please, and let me betwixt your knees.” I bent my right knee to let him past. “I’m putting a hand of each of your knees, all right?” he asked brusquely.
Soul Catcher Page 23
