Daughter of Destiny (10 page)

“Whoosh!” Jake ordered the camel.

Kai frowned attentively.

Instantly, the camel began to buckle his long, lean front
legs. After Freddy settled on his front knees, he folded his back legs and tucked them beneath him.

That was pretty cool, Kai thought. The word, whatever it meant, had made the camel rest in a sitting position for mounting purposes. She saw Jake carefully place the thick wool padding around Freddy's hump and then, very gently, place the saddle on top. Soon Jake had it adjusted properly, and gave the order for Freddy to stand. A few minutes later the girths were in place and tightened.

“You want me to mount in here or take him outside?” Jake asked Coober, who was looking very impressed.

“No, that's all right, mate, mount Freddy here. I'll go saddle up Sprite while you take him out of the paddock. Just ride him around the area until I can join you.”

Jake grinned and nodded. “Sure thing.” He caught Kai's wide-eyed look. There was a mixture of admiration and new respect in her eyes and it made him feel ten feet tall. Maybe Kai would realize that he wasn't just excess baggage on this mission, that he could contribute in some ways, even surprising ones at times. He saw her mouth pull into a smile as he ordered Freddy to lie down again. Nose peg rein in one hand, Jake placed his foot in the left stirrup and lifted his right leg up and over. Settling in the saddle, he called, “Up!” to the camel. Instantly, Freddy's rear legs shot upward like power elevators, throwing Jake far forward. He compensated instantly so that he remained balanced and seated. Then Freddy threw out his front legs and, with Jake on board, rose to his full ten feet in height. Luckily, the barn interior was over forty feet high and the doorways massive, so it was no problem.

Jake grinned down at Kai. She shook her head and rolled her eyes. When Coober went inside the tack room to get a saddle for the other camel, she drawled, “You look right at home. All you need is a sheik's turban and you're set for a bit part in
Lawrence of Arabia.
”

Chuckling, Jake turned his baseball cap around on his head. He leaned down and patted Freddy's soft tan fur. “Call me Larry for short.”

“You're so full of it, dude.”

Laughing softly, Jake lifted his hand. “Why don't you wait for us at the tourist hut? We'll probably be gone about thirty minutes, is my guess.”

“Good idea, because I'm not tramping around on foot trying to follow you two.”

Jake's laughter was rich and strong as it rolled through the enclosure. Kai laughed with him. She made her way out of the corral area and back to the small house with a wooden porch beneath the shade of a huge silver-leafed eucalyptus, or gum tree. Its white trunk reminded Kai of the white-barked, smooth-skinned sycamores that grew along the rivers and streams of Arizona.

The heat was rising. Kai saw the men on their camels leave the fenced area and head for a high sand ridge nearby. She watched with some pride as Jake, who was in the lead, rode his mount at a loping trot on the red sand dune covered with clumps of spinifex. He looked like he'd been born to ride camels.

Shaking her head, Kai chuckled again and went into the small house where Coober signed up riders. She found bottles of water in the refrigerator and plunked
down a couple of Aussie dollars on the wooden counter to pay for one.

The place was cool compared to the outdoors, and she remained inside, studying the hundreds of colored pictures gracing the walls. Many were of rows of tourists sitting on camels, the nose peg of one animal tied to the back of the next one's saddle. Nose to tail, the humped animals stood like proud ships of the desert, bearing their greenhorn cargo.

In a way, Kai was looking forward to this journey. She'd never ridden a camel, but now that she'd seen how well Jake handled the animal, she was eager for this new adventure.

 

About thirty minutes later, Kai heard Jake and Coober approaching on camelback. Looking up, she saw them trotting between the corrals, heading directly for where she stood on the porch. Jake and Coober ordered the camels to sit, and instantly, both animals obeyed.

“How's your head feelin', missus?” Coober asked as he dismounted.

“It's much better,” Kai told him dryly.

“That's great,” Coober said, patting Sprite gently on the forehead.

Giving him a brief smile, Kai continued, “I'm almost good as new.” She glanced at Jake, who was giving her a narrow-eyed look, his mouth twitching. “Well,” he said lightly to Coober, “I hope this means we can rent two of your camels tomorrow morning and take them to Kalduke?”

Lifting the hat off his head, Coober wiped the sweat from his brow. “No problem, mate. Of course. I'll give you Rocket and Booster. They're the best geldings of my herd,
aside from these two racing camels, which I won't loan out to anyone. Rocket and Booster were born twins.” He grinned.

Relieved, Jake nodded and smiled. “That will be fine.”

“Rocket and Booster?” Kai murmured. Those names brought images to her mind—not good ones.

Coober grinned. “Yeah, that's right.”

“How'd they get their names?” Kai eyed the herd of camels at the nearest corral.

“They were twins born from one of my best broodmares, Gracie. From the time they hit the ground after birth, they loved to run. They would rocket around here at a gallop. Though their momma isn't a racing camel, their daddy is and I think they got a lot of their dad's blood in 'em. You want a pair of fast-walking camels to make your trip to Kalduke as short as possible, don't you?”

“We do,” Jake said, noting the laughter in Kai's eyes. She was having a tough time keeping a straight face around Coober. “We'll take them, Coober, thanks. Once we put these camels up, let's come back to the office and I'll give you the money.”

Brightening considerably, Coober replaced the hat on his head. “Oh, that's all right, mate. I'll put these two away. Let's get the finances out of the way now. I think you should be here at four-thirty tomorrow morning. The best time to make your way across the Red Center is in the early morning hours. You should rest during the heat of the day, and push on in the late afternoon until nightfall, when it's cooler.”

Jake nodded and tied Freddy's rope to the back of Sprite's
saddle. That way if Freddy got up, he wouldn't wander off. All he could do was stand and wait. “Sounds good to me.”

Kai was glad to get back inside the cool office. As Jake joined her, he slid his hand gently under her left elbow. “Were you bored out of your skull waiting on us?”

Giving him a slight smile, Kai secretly relished his fleeting touch. Coober was still outside. “No. It's pretty here. I had a drink and sat out on the porch, just watching the world go by. I like being out in nature. It's not a hardship, you know.”

“It's gorgeous country,” Jake agreed with a sigh, releasing her elbow. Again, he'd seen her eyes go soft when he'd touched her. He found himself wanting to do a lot more, but pulled back on the reins on that idea. At least for now.

“When you were riding, did you find out why Coober named this Mulga Station?”

“Oh, yeah…I did. He's got a female brown king snake that lives here.” Jake pointed toward the porch. “He calls her Wanda, after his deceased sister.”

Eyes widening, Kai stared at the porch. “The snake lives
under
the porch? That one I was sitting on most of the time?”

“That's what Coober says. She comes out every evening and he leaves her a dish of warm milk with honey. Wanda loves it.”

“Egads,” Kai muttered. “What would I have done if she had come out while I was sitting there?”

Laughing shortly, Jake raised his brows. “Scream?”

“Funny, Carter. I'd have run like hell….” Kai laughed then, her warm gaze falling on Jake. She
was
looking forward to their journey together. More than she wanted to admit.

K
ai mounted her camel, Booster, as if it came naturally to her. The lights in the corral area were on, casting deep shadows beneath the inky sky. It was 4:30 a.m. and the stars seemed so close she swore she could reach out and touch them. The sky in the Outback was even more impressive than that of the North American Southwest. Here there was more sky than land, and she felt as if she was part of it. As she swung her leg over the saddle in front of Booster's hump, he turned his imperious head and looked at her. Jake had told her that if a camel felt a person weighed too much, it would start bellowing and bawling. Booster just blinked at her, his black, liquid eyes watching her with childlike curiosity.

Coober finished tying the pack of food, water and sleeping gear on the back of Booster's saddle. Jake checked the snugness of the load.

“Mate, you're going to need an elephant gun out there,” Coober announced. Pointing to the leather rifle sheath that hung just behind Kai's saddle, he said, “You know that a
feral bull camel with his own herd will charge if he sees you. He regards gelding camels as a threat and doesn't know the difference between them and a solitary wild bull looking for a herd of his own.”

“I'll take the gun,” Kai said. Last night at the hotel, Jake had steeped her in camel lore until she nearly fell asleep from oversaturation. Kai had been surprised to find out that the wild camels that ranged across the Outback were herd animals, much like a wild stallion with his band of mares. And like a stallion, a bull camel would fiercely protect his herd of females. Only, Jake had told her seriously, a twenty-five-hundred-pound bawling bull charging at full speed would deliberately run into them, killing both her and the animal she rode on impact. That was why having an elephant gun was mandatory—it was the only weapon with a large enough bullet to drop a crazed bull camel in his tracks. Of course, the shooting would go easier if the camel she rode stood still during the charge, but that would never happen. Kai would have to shoot a moving target from atop a galloping camel. There'd be no room for error if the situation arose, Jake had warned. Shoot or be killed. It was that simple.

“Yep, I got it. Hold on a moment,” Coober said, and hurried into the tack room.

Jake mounted Rocket and smiled over at her. Kai was wearing her nylon baseball cap with the fabric down, falling to her shoulders like a sheik's headdress. The sun was fierce and the material would protect her vulnerable neck and shoulders. He wore the same type of hat.

In the deep shadows, he saw her smile back. “Ready for this adventure?” he asked.

“I'd still prefer a horse, Carter.”

Chuckling softly, he chided, “Now don't go and hurt Booster's feelings….”

Reaching down, Kai patted the camel's soft furry hair just ahead of the saddle. She held a braided cotton rein in her hand attached to the nose peg. Booster's fuzzy ears twitched back and forth with pleasure as she petted him with long, smooth strokes.

“I think he likes you,” Jake said, grinning widely.

Grimacing, Kai sat up. She had to make it seem as if she could handle a camel getting up without being pitched off. Jake had drilled her on the procedure last night. She had to make Coober believe that she was just as practiced as Jake was, to convince the man to allow them to take the camels to Kalduke.

“Here we go….” Coober called as he trotted out of the tack room and brought the elephant gun around to Kai's side. “Now, missus, you're sure you can handle this rifle? It's a Remington .416 Safari and when you fire it's got a buck that can knock you off this camel.”

Kai nodded. “I'm sure I can handle it, Coober.” She took the rifle and opened the breech to make certain it wasn't loaded. When she closed it again, Coober handed her a large box of ammunition.

“My advice is put a round in the chamber and keep it locked and loaded, because a feral bull could be anywhere out there. He'll see and hear you coming long before you spot him, and chances are you'll have seconds to pull this rifle out of the sheath and get a bead on the crazy thing. You won't have time to load the gun before he gets to you.”

“You've convinced me.” Kai took a bullet and shoved it in place. Locked and loaded the rifle and placed the safety on it, then passed it to Coober to slide into the sheath. When she saw him begin to place the strap across it, she stopped him.

“Leave it off,” she commanded. “If I need that rifle in a hurry, I don't want to have to play around with a leather snap.”

“Hmm, okay, missus, no problem. Just make sure it doesn't fall out.”

“Not a chance,” Kai assured him dryly.

Backing off, Coober set his hands on his hips. He looked at the radium dials on his wristwatch. “It's nearly 5:00 a.m. The sky is going to turn purple in about twenty minutes. Dreamtime is what the Aboriginals call it—a stretch of time preceding the actual light of dawn. Very beautiful. Mysterious-looking, like a purple curtain. Let's get your camels up, shall we? I'll open the gate. Jake, you have a compass and a map? You know which track to take out of here?”

“Yes, I do, Coober.” Jake uttered, “Up!” to Rocket. Instantly, the camel lurched, unfolding his rear legs. Jake leaned far back in reaction. While Rocket straightened his front legs, Jake looked over at Kai. She had uttered the command, and he saw her gracefully lean back, her shoulders almost touching Booster's hips as he lurched forward. Feeling relief, he saw her take the camel's roller coaster movements in stride, as if she'd done it all her life. Grinning to himself, he waved to Coober, who stood at the gate.

“We're ready, Coober. We've got a satellite phone on us, and we've got your phone number. If we run into any problems, we'll be calling you.”

“That's great, mate!” He opened the gate and swung it wide.

Jake kicked Rocket, who took the lead out of the gate. Right at his thigh came Booster, whose slobbering mouth was drooling across his leg, but Jake didn't mind. He'd told Kai to let the camel stay close to him. After all, they were herd-oriented animals, and she didn't really have to guide him with the rein at all; he'd just naturally stick to Rocket's hip like glue. That way, Coober wouldn't suspect Kai had never ridden or handled a camel. She could learn the fine points once out of eyesight and earshot, on the great red desert that sprawled in front of them.

Kai loved the silence. The soft footfalls of the camel's feet didn't disturb the darkness as they moved in a northerly direction. Off to her right, she knew, Uluru sat in the darkness, even though she couldn't see it yet. The gentle swaying of the camel was a huge surprise to her; it was like being gently rocked by her mother in a rocking chair. As they climbed up and over a sand ridge and were heading down the other side, the camels avoiding the clumps of sharp spinifex grass, Kai said, “Dude, this is a cool ride!”

Jake heard the joy in her tone, and his heart lifted. Kai sounded happy. “I told you it would be.”

“This is really something! Better than riding a horse, that's for sure.” Kai used her heels and nudged Booster closer to Rocket so that they could travel side by side. “I really like this! It's like riding a gaited horse, you know that? On a regular horse you get jostled around when it trots, but not on a camel.”

Nodding, Jake kept perusing the area around them. “Be
cause of their size and the length of their legs, camels are the Rolls Royces of riding. Their smooth gait makes horseback riding seem awkward in comparison.”

It was still too dark to see much of anything. They had to rely on the camels' eyesight not to fall into a hole or trip over clumps of grass.

“Amazing,” Kai murmured. Her foot brushed against Jake's from time to time as the camels swayed in unison down the ridge and back onto the flat desert. “I could really get used to this.”

“I told you it would be a lot of fun. No sore butt from riding a camel, that's for sure.”

Smiling, Kai looked up. Her smile dissolved. The black sky was changing, in an almost eerie way. “Jake…am I seeing things? Look at the horizon….” Her voice dissolved into an awed whisper, then silence once again surrounded them.

Jake squinted. He saw the night sky about one-third of the way up from the horizon turning a deep purple color. “That is
something
…. Coober called it Dreamtime dawn.”

Kai stared in appreciation as the blackness melted almost magically from ebony into a deep indigo color. As the minutes passed, she watched the indigo turn to a soft purple. Within minutes one third of the sky looked like a purple curtain hanging down from space. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and Kai recognized in some dim recess of her primal self that what she was privileged to see was something so incredible and magical that there were no words to describe how she felt.

As she swayed back and forth on Booster, Kai felt the color surround her. The sensation was unexpected. Star
tling. When she looked around, she found that the entire horizon was purple. In the distance she could see ghostly silhouettes of haunting, ghostlike desert oaks and corkwood trees, plus the stiff arms of the spinifex grass, reminding her of giant crochet needles sticking up everywhere. The world, it seemed, had come to a halt to honor Dreamtime.

“Stop,” she urged Jake, and pulled on the rein to halt Booster. The camel slowed to a standstill. They were on top of another sand ridge, with the mystical, silent curtain of purple surrounding them. Everything, including them, became washed in that ethereal, otherworldly color.

Jake pulled Rocket to a stop. He drew abreast of Kai and saw the rapt attention on her face as she stared, wide-eyed, into the purple curtain of Dreamtime. Looking around, he realized all sound had ceased. It was silent in a way he'd never heard before.

“It's like we're in a vacuum,” Kai whispered. “No sound, nothing, between here…and somewhere else…. I feel like I'm not here, not there….” She gestured to her body and the camel she rode.

Nodding, Jake felt the same almost dizzying sense of being nowhere and yet everywhere at once. “I can't put words to it, either,” he murmured.

Kai sat there, gazing in awe. “Have you
ever
seen anything like this in your travels, Jake? I haven't.”

He shook his head. “No, not even in the Middle East. I've never seen a purple dawn like this. This is…incredible….”

“I feel like we're in between worlds, between dimensions right now…neither here nor there. It's such an
odd
feeling.”

“Yeah, it is.” Jake stared wonderingly at the purple curtain. It was getting brighter and brighter by the minute, the purple turning to a lavender hue as the sun continued its march toward the horizon. “I've seen a lot of dawns, but nothing like this….”

Kai felt herself being drawn powerfully into the curtain. “I feel like…well, I could go anywhere I wanted—anywhere at all. That time no longer exists…and that all the dimensions I've heard Grams talk about when I was a kid are here. She told me that the universe is multidimensional, that a shaman who was trained could journey between these worlds…. That's the closest I can come to expressing how I feel about this color and how it's affecting me….”

Jake heard the wonderment in her husky tone; at this moment she seemed more like a child than an adult. He felt like a child, too, looking at this silent miracle before them. “It reminds me of a rift in time opening up to reveal other dimensions that I've read about in science fiction books,” he murmured, his gaze never leaving the drama before them. “An opening in time, a door to the other worlds…”

“I don't know anything about Aboriginal Dreamtime, but Coober said this was Dreamtime dawn for them. Do they wait for this opening once every twenty-four hours? And then what do they do? Meditate? Do they use it as an opening and journey into it? I want to reach out and touch it, Jake. And I feel like if I did, I'd somehow connect with it. This is so weird, so incredible….”

“I remember my mother telling me that there are places all over the world where you can find doors that open to the other dimensions. She said that Mother Earth is criss
crossed with lines of energy—ley lines is how she referred to them—and where they cross one another, there's an opening available.”

“This is more than a ley line, Jake.” Kai swept her hand in an arc. “This is the whole horizon from one end to the other! That's more than just a crossing point, don't you think?”

“Logically, you're right. My mother never mentioned a dawn like this one, or the feelings we are having right now….”

Kai sat back in the saddle and allowed the color to penetrate her. She knew enough from her grandmother to shut off her yappy left brain, which was rooted in the third-dimensional world. Instead, she shifted to her right hemisphere, where Grams had told her all her sixth sense equipment was located. Unfocusing her eyes, she let the lavender color infuse her. Instantly she felt a spinning, whirling sensation at the base of her spine. Heat suffused her spinal column like a pleasant flow of warm water and shot upward. In seconds, Kai felt as if she were going to fall off the camel, the vertigo that followed was so powerful and sudden. Gripping the leather-covered pommel with her hand, she shook her head.