HerOutlandishStranger (8 page)

She saw her father and sister were walking in a field that
caught fire. She screamed and cried to them, but they ignored her and just
smiled and talked to each other. At last she felt the fire burning her and she
had to run away without them.

“Hush, hush, you’re safe.” A voice next to her ear dragged
her from the nightmare. Somehow Mr. White had raised her up and into his arms.
She lay across his lap as he held her close, cuddling and rocking her. She
understood that she had been sobbing in her sleep.

“My family. My father. M-my sister,” she tried to explain as
real sobs, not just the useless dry weeping of bad dreams, shuddered through
her. He crooned soft, meaningless words into her hair and she clutched one of
the strong arms that reached across her body. She held on to his solid arm and
cried until she couldn’t breathe without pain. At last she lay limp and
exhausted in his lap.

After such a long time, he must have thought she slept. He
softly placed her on the cloak, this time facing away from him. He pulled her
tight against him, and wrapped the cloak around them both. She could feel his
heat and arousal against her back, and his ragged breath on her cheek, but he
did nothing other than enfold her in his arms and hold her for the rest of the
night. Once she thought she felt his fingers stroke her hair but by then she
was nearly asleep. Again the tension inside her melted and for a few seconds
before sleep overtook her, she thought she was in the arms of the man in her
hallucination.

She was only dimly aware of a chill that bathed her back as
he eased himself away from her at last.

* * * * *

The storm worsened and they spent the next day in the small
shed. Eliza knew the chaotic strain his presence created inside her was not
going to dissipate, but she was strong enough to ignore the nagging desire to
touch him—a desire that occasionally created the most astounding twists and
swoops inside her belly and played havoc with her breathing.

When the sleet and rain slowed, they ventured out into the
wind and Jas returned with some torn and dirty cloth and handfuls of straw he
found near the shed. He put the least-damp pieces of cloth and straw under the
cloak so that they lay on a soft layer. “It is almost cozy in this nest,” Eliza
commented as she snuggled under the cloak that lay on top of them.

“And that is not all,” Jas said, triumphantly. “This is a
very superior inn, Miss Wickman.” He held up an orange for her inspection.

“Oh Jas,” she breathed, impressed. He peeled the orange
carefully and fed her the sections. She blushed as she realized she’d lightly
scraped her teeth and tongue over his finger as he fed her. She could taste the
salt of his skin along with the juice of the orange. At the touch of her mouth,
he’d whipped his hand away, almost dropping the rest of the section between his
fingers.

They both pretended nothing had happened, but Eliza felt the
artificial hush fall and contain them both for almost a minute. Her heart beat
too quickly. “You must eat some of this treat,” she protested, hoping to push
past the awkwardness.

“Nope. Don’t like them much.”

Eliza wasn’t sure she believed him, but didn’t argue the
point. After the high point of the orange feast, she stretched and yawned. “Oh,
what I wouldn’t give for a book. I’d even welcome a collection of edifying
tales for the moral enrichment of young women or some other of the dreadfully
dusty volumes Aunt Carolyn gave to me every Christmas. Ah! Perhaps I can recite
some of the lessons for your edification or entertainment.”

He nodded. “Please, yeah. I could use some moral
enrichment.”

She told him a few of the more awful stories that detailed
the abysmal fates of women who strayed down the path of wickedness. His rumbles
of disbelief made her giggle. At his request, she recited some of the rules of
proper decorum, until they both were roaring with laughter.

“Such conventions are formed for a purpose,” she protested
when she had caught her breath again. “Many of them. Granted of late it might
cross my mind to wonder why the color of gloves to be worn on such-and-such an
occasion should be of such vital importance. But many of society’s rules allow
life to flow more smoothly.”

“I have to take your word on that,” he said, still
chuckling. “You’re the expert.”

They sprawled at each edge of their nest, obeying an unspoken
agreement not to touch one another, though she felt acutely aware of each
breath he took, each tiny shift of his large body. They listened to the sleety
rain pounding on the roof.

She marveled at his ignorance of what seemed to her the
basics of polite behavior, as if he were indeed a savage—or at the very least
appallingly informal. Again she wondered what his life was like in his unusual
country. She pictured a rough settlement in the wilds of the new world. Since
he seemed loath to talk about himself in any detail, she knew she must continue
to speculate.

Experience of Mr. White had taught her that he would, on
occasion, answer her questions, but volunteer little information.

She decided to pry for less-private information. “I know you
like to read. What sort of writing do you enjoy most, Jas?”

“Fiction, I suppose,” he said. “At home I don’t have enough
time to read as often as I’d like.”

She sat up and tried to discern his face in the gloom. He
lay on his back, his hands behind his head. He looked relaxed but awake. She
prodded him with her forefinger. “I also enjoy stories. Since we cannot read,
can you tell me a story from your country? A legend, perhaps? Do you have your
own heroes?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about one. A hero of whom I have never heard.”

She lay back down and waited. He was silent for a long
while, staring at the low thatched roof above them. She wondered if he was
ignoring her question when at last he slowly answered. “I suppose our most
legendary hero would be Madame Blanro. We have several stories about her. She
is a legend like your King Arthur. Or maybe more like the early gods? Anyway, I
first heard of Madame Blanro when I was about thirteen.”

She thought it an oddly late age to first hear a common
fairy tale, and wondered why he picked a female, when she asked about a hero.

“Madame Blanro,” she prompted him and settled back to enjoy
his tale.

Chapter Six

Eliza watched Jas sit up and shove impatiently at the straw.
He plopped back down on his back with a grunt and braced his hands behind his
head. Then, without so much as a “once upon a time”, he launched into the
story.

“Madame Blanro decided to become a-a magician. While she was
a student, she met and fell in love with a fellow magician. He was an idealist
but he changed somehow, got warped and he joined a group of young radicals
called The Way of Truth.

“Eh, Eliza, you know all about people who want to rule the
world. Bonaparte—he’s someone like that. But the most dangerous regime was the
one Madame Blanro’s lover formed. The Way of Truth was more than just one man
and one country. It had five different leaders in five countries. Madame
Blanro’s love, Verren, was one of The Five, the group of leaders.

“Madame Blanro soon saw what was happening, but was
powerless to do anything. She tried to influence Verren. He still adored her,
but lived for his dream of ‘Unity Under the Way of Truth’, which was actually
the slogan of a religious movement.”

Eliza interrupted. “I have never heard of a religion that
adopted such a phrase.”

He nodded and said, “Makes sense you don’t know about it.
Few people in your country have heard of the religion. Anyway, it is hard to
understand, and harder to explain. I guess the basic idea is that the world was
created to someday grow to be one unit or one creature, and the people in it
are developing into what might be called the world-creature’s brain. The people
share information on something called a network. Eventually the network will be
the thoughts of the world’s mind and the people and all other life forms, the
substance or body.”

Eliza couldn’t stop herself. She abruptly sat up and
demanded, “Is this peculiar story true? Is there actually such a theology?”

His brow furrowed for a moment then he hesitatingly
answered, “Only in my part of the world. A few outlying communities. But it is
no longer popular. Remember, this is a very old tale.”

She still could not keep silent. “Do you hold this belief?”

To her surprise, Jas shrugged. “I’m not sure what I
believe.”

She nodded. That was something she occasionally felt
herself. Her papa had reassured her that even clerics had their doubts.

She remembered something else her father had said. “Oh now I
think I have heard of these queer theories. My father described something he
called the ‘God as a clockmaker’ school of thought.”

“That’s close enough,” said Jas, and he sounded pleased.
“Your father was a clergyman, right?”

Was.
Her throat tightened and she couldn’t answer. At
last she managed, “Yes. He was. He was—a…a good clergyman. And a scholar. He
loved to read works by theorists such as Isaac Newton or even translations of
the Quran.”

“What was he doing in Spain?”

“Papa acted as a translator. He knew French and Spanish and
Portuguese. As a man of God he felt he needed to lend his aid to the men who
sought diplomatic answers.”

She heard the straw rustle under Jas as he shifted but she
didn’t dare look over at him. “I’m sorry, Eliza. About your father.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. She calmed enough to speak
normally. “I interrupted you again. Do tell me more. About your Madame Blanro.”

She rolled onto her side to face him. He stared back at her,
and for once did not break their potent lock of eyes.

Her insides felt as if they congealed at the power of his
fierce, focused gaze. Why did he stare at her with such concentration? Pity for
her, she assumed. She did not want it.

“Pray, continue. Please?”

He fixed his gaze back on the ceiling and sighed.

“It’s all a myth, remember? Eh, so, ’kay. The followers of
the Way feverishly worked to root out any contaminating influences to this
eventual new… I guess you’d call it
role
…of the world. At first they had
a cleansing campaign to force governments to rid themselves of corrupt
politicians. Replaced by followers of the Way. The Way won seats in government,
but they were especially good at using young people.

“They got that schools with younger children offered the
most success to spread their ideology, so they went into schools to work as
teachers. The children proved to be good weapons in many ways—ways no one had
never seen before. The tales say that if Way of Truth had won it would have
been because of the children.”

Jas stopped for a moment. His voice had faded away from the
rhythmic tones of a storyteller. He was silent for a moment. His mouth was
pressed tight, giving his pleasant face a grim expression.

She murmured, “Pascal wrote that men never do evil so
completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

“Oh. Yeah. He might have been talking about the followers of
the Way. An effective bunch, those Truthies.”

“An odd name for them.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, it is. Little kiddies of death,
people called ’em. The Way of Truth seized power from all sorts of places. The
first to go were the politicians who didn’t follow the Way’s rules. The Way
followers dragged them out into the street and hanged them. Then after a while,
anyone who openly disagreed with the Way became targets. And after that, even
the people who opposed any of the Way’s rules, but did nothing against the
movement.

“Most ‘dissenters’ were herded into camps where special, um,
tools turned them into creatures not much better than animals. Most of these
people died because they lost personalities and their will to survive. The
camps were bitter, harsh places.

“These people and many, many others considered ‘less than
perfect’ were lost forever, and Madame Blanro watched in horror. She wanted to
take action and decided her best weapon would be her connection to the Five,
Verren.

“One night, Verren told her that he was taking her to a
special event the next morning. She would be witness to a once-in-a-life time
experience, he said. He took her to a secret meeting with Verren, the four
other leaders and the Way’s most important followers were to meet on an island.
Only they knew of the meeting. The leaders were smart enough to know that
because many people would want to kill them they must stay apart at all
times—except this one time.”

Her heart sank. What a grim tale. She’d hoped for a livelier
mythology, perhaps something with animals, like Zeus’s frolics with swans. “I
think I know what’s coming. She becomes a killer herself.”

“Yes, but with this magic.”

She doubted it would be interesting magic. No invisible
cloaks or talking animals.

He went on, “After the special meeting, Madame Blanro
managed to pinpoint the one half-hour or so when they all gathered together in
a large room. And at last she used her new magical powers. She threw herself
back in time and she carried a bomb.”

Traveling through time was interesting. “She was a warrior,”
Eliza exclaimed.

“Not how she would have described herself.”

“Indeed? I did not know legends even described themselves.”

Jas chuckled. “No, I suppose they don’t. But I believe she
considered herself a scientist.”

“And so she died on the island?”

“No. She was the only one in that room to survive the
explosion, though she never walked again. With the leaders and important
followers dead or injured, the Way quickly ended. When the new governments
tried to discover how the bomb had been planted, they came upon some of her notes.

“They came to the prison to interview Madame, and when at
last she decided she could trust them, she told them how to use magic to fly
through time.”

His solemn tone, the way he spoke as if magic were real made
Eliza smile. The myth reminded her of his piece of wood. Odd that she should
find his primitive superstitions and tales endearing. With his strange beliefs
he occasionally seemed childlike.

She heard the scrape of his beard as he scratched at his
cheek and she remembered that this was no child lying next to her.

He was still telling the tale. “They begged her to continue
her work. At last she agreed to help as long she had the final say in its use.
There had to be very strict rules about traveling through time, she said.”

Eliza giggled. “I should hope so. One wouldn’t want people
jumping about in time. Think of the confusion it would cause. You’d come home
for dinner and find your future self already at the table.”

“Indeed,” he said dryly.

She touched his shoulder to encourage him to continue. Even
the light contact of her hand on his shoulder flooded her with the surprising
desire. She held her breath, waiting, hoping for a sign he felt it too. He did
not move.

She let her breath out with a long sigh. “Tell me. What kind
of rules did your heroine invent?”

“Eh, well. She had been tempted to go back and stop evil
before it began, you know, kill the leaders of The Way before they started the
killing. But she saw this travel had to be used carefully, and this was the
important part. She’d seen history was marked with tags. To show where the
travelers should interfere. Where they were destined to go back. See?”

Eliza nodded. “I understand. And what happened to Madame
Blanro?”

“She helped after they agreed to adopt her careful system
of, um, magic. And she did more than that too. Many of the child warriors had
died. A lot more had killed themselves at the end of the war. Others were so
damaged they could never leave the special hospitals. But because of her, some
of them could go out into the world again.”

Jas took a deep breath and stretched as if he’d just
awakened. He pushed his interlocked hands high over his head, and groaned. “And
that is the story we tell in my country of a great hero. It’s my favorite.”

He felt around the blanket and picked up a water skin. “I
don’t think I have ever talked so much in my life. No, I know I haven’t.”

He sat up to drink and looked intently into her eyes, again.
She saw a question there, as if he waited for her response.

Eliza pushed aside her discomfort at this tale and grinned
at him. “She is as brave as Beowulf, certainly braver than Finn McCool, but I
would have granted your heroine some better magical powers and monsters to
battle instead of miserable, petty men,” she said. “Ah, but imagine, your
country’s greatest hero is actually a heroine. Was she beautiful, this Madame
Blanro?”

He shoved the stopper back into the bottle and lay down
again. “Not what you’d call gorgeous, though she had lovely eyes. So the
legends say.”

They fell silent again and listened to the now soft tap of
the rain on the roof and splat on the floor where the roof leaked. Their
silence was not unusual, but Eliza, who’d grown accustomed to Jas’ moods, even
when he did not speak, felt that the man lying at her side had wrapped himself
in a peculiarly tense stillness. After a long while she sat up to examine his
face.

His eyes were open but his face was closed. He looked
haunted. Perhaps he missed his strange primitive country, which had such
strange heroes and grim stories of corrupt leaders and destruction for fairy
tales. Eliza reflected that even stories of the Norse gods were less ruthless
than the tale he’d told.

She traced the soft line of his cheek and was startled when
he gently grasped her fingers. Without a word, he reached for her shoulders and
pulled her down onto his chest and wrapped his arms tight around her. She could
hear his heart pounding hard under her ear. He seemed to want her warmth and
weight as a kind of comfort. Eliza longed to caress him. More than once she
lifted her hand, and had to chide herself for a wanton.

He stroked her hair. He did not deepen his own caresses but
seemed content to have her lie across his chest, a surprisingly cozy position.
Eliza had only slept fitfully for months. Now she felt so soothed and heavy-limbed
she soon dozed off, and slept comforted for the first time since her father
left her in the cave.

* * * * *

They could travel again. Even Jas, who plotted their route,
grumbled as he impatiently tapped the wood, which lay across his palm. “I
wonder how far off the direct trail we have to go today. If we could have
managed to go as straight as that thing you said.” He raised his brows and
looked at her, waiting.

“As a crow flies,” she said.

“That, yes. If we could go as the crow flies, we’d have reached
Lisbon days ago.”

Then the landscape changed again and they wearily climbed
tall hills and cautiously slithered down them. Sometimes at the top of the
near-mountains, Eliza sank down to her heels and paused for a moment to scan
the breathtaking views for signs of movement. A few times she caught sight of a
far off shepherd and his flock, or another poignant reminder of life in
peaceful times. Once she grabbed Jas’ wrist and pointed out the vision of a
dramatic tower on a crumbling castle.

“Huh.” Jas squinted around at the sweeping landscape. “It is
a beautiful place, Spain. That’s consolation for all of this hiking.”

As they made their way down the steep hill, Eliza tried to
catch another glimpse of the castle. She stood on her tiptoes and found herself
waving her arms for balance. She skidded, then fell. Jas deftly grabbed her
before she plunged down the hill.

He dropped onto a rock and hauled her tight against him. Jas
stared down the steep incline and sucked in an audible breath. She leaned her
head against his neck and felt as much as heard him gasp his words. “Liza.
Don’t scare me like that, woman.”

“Thank you,” Eliza whispered. “I shall be fine in a moment.”
She closed her eyes and inhaled the pleasant fragrance of his skin. She knew he
was more shaken by her fall than she, and felt a thorough cheat when she used
the incident as a chance to cling to him. But she enjoyed the feel of the warm
iron of his arms and chest surrounding her too much to inform him she was just
fine and they could continue on their way. She pushed her face hard against his
woolen shirt, so she could hear his quick heartbeat and ragged breath.