The Enchantment (19 page)

It was all because of that damn storm, she thought dully. That night, sitting huddled next to the rock face, itchy and exhausted and alone, she'd felt the beginning strains of fear.

Now she felt it all the time. It sat on her shoulder like a vulture, waiting patiently for the moment to swoop down and devour her. With every second of this trip, each mile traveled, her hold on her emotions unraveled. Building inside her was a loss of control so complete, so terrifying, she couldn't even contemplate its magnitude. It took all her concentration to keep her anger and frustration under control.

So she kept her mouth sealed. As long as she was silent, she maintained the illusion of dignity. And right now, illusion was all she had.

If only she could sleep, she thought for the thousandth time. If she could sleep, even for a few precious hours, she would have the strength to fight. But that blissful state eluded her, floated just out of her grasp; iti-172 Kristin Hannah

no matter how hard she reached for it, she came up empty-handed. A catnap here or there kept her functional, but at night, when it counted, her eyes remained achingly wide and painfully dry.

She pulled the flimsy, unfashionable hat lower on her sweaty brow, and immediately felt a tiny bit of relief from the hot sun. Thank God Larence had brought an extra hat. If he hadn't, her face would be lobster-red and cracked by now.

She glanced tiredly around. It was like another planet, this sloping, rising plain that twisted in and out of blue-topped mesas and eons-extinct volcanoes. The easy days of simply sitting on Tashee were gone; now they were constantly going up and down, weaving their way through rocky, cactus-thick arroyos that scared Emma to death.

The land was barren, burnt and empty. Somehow menacing.

Mountains, steel-hued humps against the eye-splitting blue of the sky, sat along the horizon, watchful and unfriendly. Huge, red sandstone walls rose up from the shrub-studded earth, and grayed, pointy spires thrust up beside them like ancient, accusatory fingers.

Nothing was normal or even remotely familiar about this land. You couldn't even trust what you saw.

They had been moving steadily toward the largest of these mesas for two days. And they were no closer now than when they started. The damn thing seemed to be retreating at the same pace they were advancing.

Ratified atmosphere. Larence had used those words to describe why the mountains actually moved.

"Look, Emmaline, a dwarf pinon ..."

Emma rolled her eyes. Could he possibly believe she cared? He'd been rambling on since dawn, pointing out

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each and every bit of flora and fauna that dared to survive under this scorching sun, as if she really wanted to know the name of every dusty little leaf between here and Arizona.

When she had first stopped talking to him, he'd repeatedly turned in his saddle to speak to her, apparently thinking she didn't answer because she didn't hear. But after a while even Dr. Dimwit had gotten the hint. Now he understood that she was ignoring him on purpose. He hadn't turned to speak to her in hours.

Fortunately he no longer dropped down to draw at every change in the wind's direction. The steep, rock-strewn arroyos and thorny bushes had encouraged da Vinci to remain mounted. It was the only good thing about this part of New Mexico.

Emma sighed, feeling a sharp jab of metal against her bottom rib at the exhalation, and tried to find a comfortable position on Tashee's bony back.

Larence's detailed travelogue rolled around her, swirling into a vaguely comforting rhythm of monotonous sound. Exhaustion rounded her shoulders. Her eyelids felt like weighted curtains; no matter how often or how diligently she lifted them, they persisted in falling back to the closed position.

God, she was so tired. . . .

Within moments, she was asleep.

Ten minutes later, Tashee followed Diablo up a steep, rock-strewn embankment. Emma's sleeping body bobbed with each of the burro's lurching steps.

A long, thorn-studded branch grabbed Emma's heavy woolen skirt and yanked hard. She hit the earth with a thud. Her head smashed into a hot, flat rock. Stars shot across her eyes, and nausea bubbled in her stomach.

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Tashee walked past Emma, her snotty black nose still buried in Diablo's tail.

She opened her mouth to scream at Larence, and sucked in a fistful of dirt. Her yell died in a fit of coughing.

The pack mule ambled along beside her prone body, climbing the embankment with ease. His tail whipped across her face. At each hoof-fall, gritty, gray-brown dust slammed into her nose and mouth, mixing with her saliva to form a thick, muddy paste on her tongue. Hacking coughs racked her lungs, made her throat go dry.

"Look, Emmaline," Larence's cheerful voice floated back to her. "Another jackrabbit."

Stop! Oh, God, please stop . . . She tried to scream, but couldn't force a single sound up her bone-dry throat. Panic sluiced through her blood, made her heart hammer in her chest. She surged up the rock-strewn embankment. Her fingers clawed wildly at the loose earth, but the faster she climbed, the faster the ground gave way beneath her. She slid downward in a cloud of rolling, puffing dirt.

Coughing, eyes watering, she started up again. Sand embedded itself in her fingernails, clogged her nose and eyes. Thorns grabbed hold of her clothing, biting into tender skin beneath.

After what seemed like hours, she reached the top of the bank. Panting hard, she stared in helpless horror at the pack mule's hindquarters. It was getting smaller-all three animals were getting smaller. The little caravan marched single file across the desert in a moving mushroom of dust. Their steady clip-clopping steps echoed across the dry land, the sound threaded with the lilting cadence of Larence's whistling.

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Larence . . . stop! The words blared through her mind, loud and commanding; they squeaked out of her parched lips in a breathless, rasping whimper.

She tried desperately to get to her elbows. At the effort, her head swam; the queasiness in her stomach trebled. She collapsed like a broken doll.

How long she lay there, lost and alone, in the gray-black hinterlands of semiconsciousness, was a mystery to her. All she knew was that suddenly she was awake. She strained to hear the steady beat of the horse's hooves, or even Larence's idiotic whistling, but there was nothing; no sound save the hushed whisper of the wind through the grama grass. Hot, cloying air pressed in on her.

She blinked, and the sight that greeted her brought another stab of panic. They were gone. With all the strength in her body and soul, she crawled through the hot, dusty dirt. But the desert was stronger. The heat and the dust and the pain conspired against her, robbing her of willpower.

Finally she collapsed, panting for breath. She lay there, beaten and afraid, and closed her eyes. Tears burned her eyes and wrenched her throat. She didn't even try to stem the tide; there was no one to see her weakness. They streaked down her cheeks and disappeared in the hot earth.

No one—not even that traitor, Tashee—noticed her absence. Oh God, why hadn't she talked to Larence? If she had, even once, he might turn around in his saddle to speak to her, might notice her absence. But as it was . . .

She shivered at the thought and forced it out of her mind. But it came right back, louder and stronger and unable to deny.

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How long would it be before he realized she'd fallen off? Dinnertime? And how far away would he be by then? Too far to do her any good . . .

Despair and defeat consumed her. She'd fought all her life. And what had it ever gotten her except a lonely mansion and a broken heart? God, she was tired of it all. Maybe it was time to say enough. Time to let go ...

"Larence." The word came out in a cracked, broken whisper of pure defeat. Would it really have cost her so dearly to talk to him? A harsh, self-deprecating laugh grated in her throat at the obvious answer: Certainly her silence had cost her more.

She rested her face against the hard ground. The sun-hot earth pressed against her cheek, the arid scent of the high desert filled her nostrils.

She swallowed, trying to dredge up some hidden bit of saliva to slide down her parched throat. The swallow died, stillborn, on her swollen tongue. Without a hint of moisture, it was impossible. Too bad the canteen hadn't fallen off with her. Then she might have had a chance. As it was . . .

A shadow slithered across her body. She tilted her face and looked skyward. A huge, brown-winged bird circled a few feet above her head. Beady, unblinking eyes stared down at her. A sharp yellow beak glinted in the sunlight.

A vulture, already? She felt a racking shiver of fear. Oh, God . . .

Larence heard something and stopped whistling. He cocked his head toward the noise, listening. It was the far-off keening wail of a hawk. The high-THE ENCHANTMENT

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pitched screech echoed off the distant mesas, reverberated through the still, heavy air.

He smiled, remembering the majestic red-tailed hawk that had swooped alongside them this morning. He wished he had the talent to capture the effortless, gliding circles of its flight on paper.

Something on the ground caught his eye. A blur of grayish-green.

He glanced down at it. His breath caught. It was a perfect specimen of Agave parryi. Perfect.

He reined Diablo to a stop and dropped to the ground, hurrying toward the compact cluster of rigid, spadelike leaves. The tip of each leaf, a vicious thorn, glinted like a drop of sterling silver in the hot afternoon sun.

Whistling, Larence squatted by the cactus and began to sketch.

It was a full five minutes before he realized that something was wrong. He frowned. What was it?

Emmaline. He couldn't hear her exasperated, impatient breathing. She hadn't spoken to him in days, so he didn't expect to hear her voice, but whenever he stopped to draw, she had always made her frustration known by breathing in short, angry pants. He shot a distracted glance her way. And gasped.

Tashee was riderless.

"Oh, my God!" He crammed the notebook and pen back in his shirt pocket and ran awkwardly to Diablo. Vaulting into the saddle, he turned the horse around, waited for the mule and burro to follow, and then kicked Diablo hard in the sides.

The horse moved into a pounding trot. Larence clung to the saddle horn, bouncing hard on the leather seat. Only his toes, rammed deep into the stirrups, and his white-knuckled grip on the saddle horn, kept him from

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falling off. Every time his butt hit the seat, pain vibrated into his rib cage. His innards rattled and shook, and an involuntary groan shot out of his mouth. He gritted his clattering teeth and hung on, thankful, for once, for having learned to live with pain.

When had she fallen off? And why the hell hadn't she said anything?

Maybe she hadn 't been able to. . . . The idea sliced through his thoughts like a lance.

It was his fault. In the past two days he'd given her too much freedom. He never should have let her get away with her childish silence. He should have insisted she take an active part in this expedition, should have forced her to change instead of letting her retreat deeper and deeper inside herself.

When he found her, things were going to be different. She was going to talk, do her share of the chores.

By God, he'd even make sure she learned to laugh—and at herself first.

If he found her . . .

He kicked Diablo again. The horse responded by moving into a more manageable lope. Larence sat deeper in the saddle, riding his mount's rocking gait with relative ease.

A piercing, high-pitched screech rent the quiet air. Larence snapped his chin up and looked around.

The hawk was off in the distance, gliding in a small, perfect circle. How far off, Larence had no idea—the atmosphere at this altitude made it impossible to judge how far away things really were.

His heart sped up. The bird was flying low to the ground in tight, controlled circles. It was irrational, he knew, and yet somehow Larence was certain that the hawk was leading him. . . .

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He jerked the reins to the left. Diablo turned toward the bird with lightning speed, and ate up the ground with his thundering gait.

An hour later, Larence finally saw the first faint outline of the body lying prone on the ground beneath the hawk's gliding circles. She was a heap of black wool and white cotton and blond hair.

Heart pounding, palms sweating, he pressed up onto the balls of his feet and peered over Diablo's head.

Please God, let her be okay. . . .

At their approach, the hawk gave one long, screeching shriek and flew away.

Larence grabbed his canteen, wrapped his leather reins around the saddle horn, and leapt out of the saddle. When his boots hit the dirt, his knees buckled. Pain radiated up his bad leg. Wincing, he raced to Emma's body and dropped to his knees beside her.

She was lying spread out on the hot ground, one arm pinned to her side, and the other curled protectively beneath her cheek. Strands of dirty blond hair fanned out across her sunburnt cheeks and disappeared against the pale gold earth. Her lips were cracked and colorless.

Larence swallowed thickly. Fear lodged in his throat like a lump of burning ash. Hesitantly he reached for her. His fingers slid along the flesh of her exposed throat, feeling, testing. God, she was so hot. . . .

Then he felt it: the gentle, thudding beat of life. His whole body buckled with relief.

"Emma?"

Nothing. He gently rolled her onto her back and slid one arm behind her neck, lifting her toward him. She lay in his arms like a wet dish towel.

He pried his canteen open and tipped it, letting a few

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precious drops of water slide down his fingers and pool in his palm. Then, careful not to move her too harshly, he dipped two fingers in the water and rubbed it along her parched mouth. It took a couple of times before her lips parted, but when they did, Larence felt like whooping for joy.