Fantasyland 03 Fantastical (4 page)

It wasn’t hard. I pulled aside the hides,
noticed the thunder and lightning were gone, as was the driving
rain, but the day was still gray, dreary and a persistent drizzle
was falling. The mouth of the cave was huge, the preliminary space,
though, was wide but not vast. There were two hide covered
antechambers, the one I was in and another one I discovered which
was full of split logs, kindling and more weapons – these, lances,
knives, daggers, hatchets, hammers, clubs and a couple more
swords.

Hmm. Seeing as his cave was heavily armed,
it seemed Noctorno earned that scar through his lifestyle.

Picking my way carefully on my bare feet,
five times (with much smaller loads than Noctorno could bear)
across the rough surface of the main space of the cave and back, I
replenished the wood stock, threw a couple more logs on the fire
and climbed back under the hides.

I barely got them settled over me when I
heard the snort of a horse and hooves on the stones outside.

Noctorno was home.

Drat.

Not long after, the pelt at the opening was
thrown back and Noctorno was there.

I looked at him. He looked at me.

Then he looked at the fire.

His head turned and he looked at the
reloaded stash of wood.

Then his head swung back in my direction and
he didn’t try to hide his surprise.

Jeez, how lazy was I in this world? Only a
moron, or someone really idle, would hang in a dark, damp, cold
cave and not keep the fire burning.

Noctorno moved to the fire and I noticed he
was carrying something over his shoulder. He swung it around and
dropped two small, bloody, skinless carcasses that were hanging on
a stick to the stone floor by the fire.

I stared at the carcasses.

Holy crap!

“Are those…
rabbits?
” I asked,
sounding as aghast as I was.

He had been moving toward the table but
stopped, his gaze sliced back to me and his lip curled.

“My deepest apologies, Cora, I didn’t bag
your favored venison,” he stated sarcastically.

I stared at him in horror.

We were already having Thumper for lunch and
he was apologizing that we weren’t eating Bambi.

Ick!

I couldn’t eat rabbit. And furthermore, I
wasn’t hungry. Not for rabbit, not for anything.

This was a first. I could always eat. But no
way was I eating Thumper.

He continued to the table, grabbed the iron
rods from the bottom shelf and moved back to the fire and I decided
not to share the state of my appetite seeing as he was wet, he
looked (still) angry and he’d gone out to kill a couple furry
critters so we wouldn’t starve to death in a cave. Therefore, I
figured I should keep my mouth shut on that score.

He set up the apparatus which was,
essentially, a rotisserie, over the fire and he set this up with
the rabbit carcasses on it. Then he added more logs to the fire.
Then he left and came back (three times) with even more logs to
reload the pile.

I guessed this meant we were in it for the
long haul.

When he was done with his chores, he
crouched by the fire probably for the same reason I stood by it, in
order to get warm and use it to dry his clothes.

What he didn’t do was speak to me.

What he also didn’t do was rotisserie the
rabbits. He didn’t turn the handle that was at one end of the iron
rods at all. That meant one side would get roasted and the other
wouldn’t. Furthermore, even though they were rabbits, which freaked
me out, all their juices were falling into the fire. If they were
captured and used to baste the darned things, they would end up
more succulent and flavorful.

I decided not to share this culinary
expertise with him either. Instead, I got out from under the hides,
went to get the frying pan and then moved to the handle by the
fire. I gathered as much of my nightgown as I could in my hand
(which was a lot, seriously, there was a huge amount of material
covering me), used it to shield my skin against the heat of the rod
and squatted as ladylike as I could by the fire while using the
handle and holding the pan under the rabbits to collect their
juices.

I did this for awhile feeling his eyes on me
before he spoke.

“By the gods, what are you doing?”

I didn’t look at him as I replied,
“Rotisserie. You cook them like you were, one side will get
charred, the other won’t cook. And everyone knows you need to baste
meat.”

This was met with silence.

I kept turning then when I gathered enough
juices I lifted the pan and poured them over the meat. Then I held
the pan under again as I kept turning the handle.

Truth be told, the actions were tedious, the
pan was heavy and my arms were beginning to ache. But at least I
had something to do.

After awhile, he called, “Cora.”

“Yep,” I answered, lifted the pan, basted
the meat then returned it under the carcasses, all the while
turning the handle.

“Cora,” he repeated.

“I said, yep,” I replied.

“Look at me, woman,” he ordered.

I lifted my eyes to him. His face was blank
but his eyes were alert and working and they were fastened on
me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I told you,” I reminded him.

“What are you doing?” he repeated and I felt
my brows draw together.

“Dude, I
told
you,” I returned.

His face turned cold. “Do not call me this
name,” he commanded. “I do not like it.”

I stared at him. Then I sighed. Then I
looked back to the fire and muttered, “Whatever.”

“Cora,” he called again and my gaze cut back
to his face.

“What?” I snapped.

“Explain yourself,” he demanded.

“I already did.”

“When did you learn this?” he growled,
tipping his dark head to my movements.

Uh-oh.

Lazy Cora of this world clearly did not know
how to baste nor would she trouble herself to do it.

Oh well. Never mind.

I shrugged and said, “I heard it somewhere
and if I have to eat rabbit, it might as well taste good.”

He studied me then said quietly, “You are
strange.”

My hand on the handle stopped moving, I
glared at him and bit out, “I’m not strange!”

His eyes moved over me then came back to
mine before he kept speaking in a soft voice. “You are not
you.”

Hmm. What did I do with this?

It was the perfect opener. The problem was,
I was guessing since he had lots of weapons, and none of them were
guns, grenades or bazookas, he rode a horse and he didn’t have a
camp stove but an iron spit, that this world also didn’t have
movies. So he probably wouldn’t respond positively to the fact that
the me Cora of my world might have been (a guess) switched with the
Cora of this world that he knew.

Then again, they had curses in this world
that we didn’t have in my world so maybe they had magic. Maybe he’d
get it.

“Uh…” I started but couldn’t think of what
to say.

“It won’t work,” he told me and I blinked at
him.

“What won’t work?”

“This change,” he stated.

Oh dear.

“Uh, Noc –”

“What you did was unforgiveable,” he cut me
off and I sucked in both lips and bit them at the harsh look on his
face. “I will protect you, keep you safe from harm, keep you alive
as I vowed to do as your husband and because your sister holds a
place in my heart. But for no other reason. You cannot carry logs
and cook meat and make me think you sweet. I know you. I know this
is not you. What I also know is that the only energy you will
expend is to connive and maneuver to take best care of yourself.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking me a fool.”

I swallowed then began, “I –”

“Planned it from the beginning,” he finished
for me. “Hunting,” he went on, “gave me time to think. You took me
because you had no choice but also because you could not have Dash
but it meant you
could
have what I could give you, your
home, your life lazy as you like it. But you schemed the whole time
knowing that you couldn’t have Dash but not wanting Rosa to have
him either. So you got what you could from the arrangement but made
sure your sister didn’t get what she wanted most in this
world.”

Wow. That hurt. And, obviously, it was
totally untrue.

“That’s not true,” I whispered.

“I am no fool.”

“It isn’t true.”

“It’s pure you.”

I held his eyes and he stared into mine, his
handsome, scarred face a cold, blank mask.

There was no way I was going to convince
him. Apparently, the Cora of this world wasn’t all that great.

And I didn’t like being her.

This whole thing sucked, like a lot, but now
it sucked even more.

I broke eye contact, started turning the
handle again and used the gathered juices to baste the rabbits.

I looked at him again when he rose.

“Call me when they’re done,” he ordered,
turned on his boot, strode to the opening, shoved the hides aside
and disappeared.

I stared back at the fire and I told myself
it was the smoke that made my eyes wet.

But it wasn’t.

Sleeping Arrangements

I ate Thumper.

What sucked was that Thumper didn’t taste
all that bad.

I ate him because I didn’t want to suffer
malnutrition before what I hoped fervently would be my happy ending
and I was returned to my world.

When I used a knife from the wall to check
the meat was done, I called Noctorno. He took the rabbits off the
spit, carved them on the table and handed me the bowl full of meat.
Then he watched as I ate my portion without a word (except to say,
“Thanks” when he handed it to me which got me a heavy scowl
indicting Cora of his world wasn’t polite either) as he ate his
portion, tearing it directly off the spit. Then he disappeared
again.

This meant I was left to my unpleasant
thoughts and not much else. I’d get up every once in awhile to feed
the fire but other than that, I had nothing to do.

From the small opening in the ceiling, I
could see night had fallen. There wasn’t much light outside due to
the bleak day but there was none at all when night fell.

I was staring at the opening, half-asleep
and hoping when I woke up I’d be back in my bed in my
apartment.

I didn’t think much of my life before I left
it.

Just two months ago, I’d broken up with my
boyfriend of four years, Brian, because he’d refused to take it to
the next level, him telling me he surprised there
was
a next
level. Why he thought we could date for the rest of our natural
born lives was unknown to me. What stunk was, I loved him, I missed
him and I wanted him back. He was fun. He was funny. He didn’t
scowl at me, call me lazy or accuse me of scheming. Sure, the truth
was, he
was
lazy, case in point, him thinking that he didn’t
have to put more effort into a relationship beyond dating. But he
was fun to be around and furthermore he’d been around for awhile, I
was used to him.

My job wasn’t all that great either. I got
paid well because I’d been there for ages but the air was rife with
rumors of layoffs, the agency wasn’t doing very well, and everyone
knew that the people who got paid the most were the first to go.
The economy wasn’t booming and even though I had good skills and my
boss loved me so would give me a good reference, I’d been at the
agency that long because the thing I hated most in the world was
job hunting so I avoided it at all costs even though I was in a
nowhere job that didn’t challenge me all that much.

And I’d decided just before I broke up with
Brian that it was time to get on the property ladder. I was still
in the one-bedroom apartment I’d moved into when I was
twenty-three. It was dinky, the landlord refused to paint it (so I
did, on my dime), the appliances were old, sucked and broke down a
lot and my bathroom suite was mustard yellow. I wasn’t big on
change but I figured it was high time to move on. These plans were
stalled firstly because Brian and I broke up and secondly because I
wasn’t sure I’d be employed for very much longer.

Even with all that, I wanted to go back. It
was familiar. In my world, we had cell phones. In my world, we had
plumbing. Okay, so the birds weren’t as colorful and the landscape
wasn’t as splendiferous but that only was the case here when a
curse hadn’t settled on the land.

There were no curses in my world either,
another plus.

And I’d miss my folks. I was an only child
(which, if Rosa was my sister here, and she seemed so sweet, it
would have been awesome to get to know her better before she was
swept away by malevolent creatures) but my parents were way cool.
They were a little bizarre, seeing as they were screaming hippies
(and I was so far from a hippie as to be not funny, how I sprang
from their loins was anyone’s guess) but they were awesome.

Not to mention my friends, who were also
awesome. It didn’t seem Cora of this world was very friendly.
Though, Dash seemed to like her.

On this thought, I heard the hides being
moved back and looked from the ceiling to the opening to see
Noctorno arrive. Then I watched as he walked to the hides I was in.
Then I watched as he lowered his big body to them and pulled off
his boots. Then I watched as he loosened the laces at his collar.
Then I watched as he lifted his arms and his long fingers curled
into his shirt at the back between his shoulder blades. Then I
watched him yank it off.

Then my breath stuck in my lungs.

Holy crap, his back was
out-freaking-standing! I didn’t know a back had that many muscles.
All of them defined, tight and hard.

Yowza!

Then I saw them. Puckered scars. Three of
them. One on his right shoulder blade. One along the right ribs of
his back. The last along his waist.