The Enchantment (24 page)

But of course, he couldn't. He lay wide-awake, thinking, his eyes staring blankly into the darkness. He didn't believe there was any real danger—if Ka-Neek had wanted them dead, they'd be dead.

The real danger lay in Emmaline's reaction. If she

got scared, or didn't trust in Larence's instincts, she'd want to turn around. For her the quest would end.

His stomach twisted into a hard, cold knot. The thought of losing her now, when they'd come so far and been through so much, made him feel sick to his stomach. Something had happened between them last night; they'd begun forming a bond. But their new feelings for each other were tangible threads, too easily broken, and once the strands snapped, they would never be forged again.

There's one thing you could do to keep her. . . .

Larence was disappointed in himself for even thinking it. Yet he couldn't stop himself. There was a surefire way to keep her—if he were willing to lie. A single untruth would keep his quest safe. And not even an active lie; just a simple failure to speak. What she didn 't know about couldn't frighten her.

He had to admit it sounded good.

But he couldn't do that to her. She was an intelligent woman who deserved to have all the facts. If she chose—and he prayed she didn't—to leave him and the expedition, it was her choice.

The morning dawned crisp and clear. Sunlight glowed through the tent's white canvas, and still Larence lay wide-awake. Waiting. With each minute that passed, each second, he felt the noose tightening around his neck. She 'II leave you.

"Morning, Larence," she said quietly beside him. He flinched, stared straight ahead. "M-Morning." "Is something the matter? You look . . . tense." With a ragged, tired breath, he rolled onto his side and found himself looking directly into Emma's eyes. Close enough to see the tiny network of sleep lines that 220

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crisscrossed her cheeks, he felt an almost overwhelming urge to take her in his arms and hold her tight.

To lie to her and pretend nothing had changed.

He wrenched his gaze away from her face and dug into his jeans pocket. Pulling out the scrap of leather, he tossed it onto her bag. It landed with a muffled plop.

Emmaline picked it up, studied it. Then she looked over at him, a frown etched in the valley between her eyebrows.

"It's a Cibollan marking," he answered her unspoken query.

"Where did you get it?"

"Ka-Neek left it by the fire."

"What does it mean?"

He felt as if a great weight were pressing down on his lungs. When at last he spoke, he barely recognized his own voice in the haggard words. "It's the ancient symbol for danger."

She went perfectly still; so still, he couldn't even see the steady rise and fall of her chest. The color seeped slowly out of her cheeks. "Is it a warning or a threat?"

"I don't know."

She lifted her gaze to his. It seemed to take forever before she spoke. "If Ka-Neek wanted us dead, we'd be dead. But it doesn't matter, anyway, does it? We're going forward."

He hadn't known he was holding his breath until that moment. "It could be dangerous."

She laughed. "Hell, Larence, I've lost a fortune, almost died alone in the desert, and been kidnapped.

And that's just since Monday."

He smiled, as proud of her in that moment as he'd ever been of anyone in his life. She had the courage of THE ENCHANTMENT

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a lioness. "Not alone, Em," he said quietly, "never alone."

After breakfast, Larence got out the diary, his map of the area, and his compass. As he settled in to do a few computations, Emmaline came up beside him.

"You know, Larence," she said tentatively, "I was thinking ..."

"About what? General Electric?"

She flashed him a smile. "About that mesa behind us. I know I'm no explorer, but the damn thing seems big enough to be on somebody's map."

Larence cocked his head and looked over his shoulder.

The blood drained from his face. "Oh, my God!" He lurched unsteadily to his feet, spilling coffee down his pant leg as he turned around to study the mesa. He took a few cautious steps backward, then a few more and a few more until he was practically running backward.

"Larence!"

Through a distant, detached part of his mind, he heard Emmaline calling to him, but the words sounded far away and unimportant. Turning, he ran as fast and as far as his bad leg would allow, until, wheezing for breath, he finally stopped and turned around. Now he could see the whole thing.

The mesa rose out of the grass-strewn plain like a huge, flat-topped table of red rock. Behind it the sky was an intense, cloudless blue. He dropped to his knees in awe.

The Sky City. It had to be, though it was bigger than he'd ever imagined. He knew from his research that the

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mesa was 365 feet tall, but he'd never realized how high 365 feet was.

He lurched to his feet again, ignoring the pain caused by the sudden movement. The early morning scents of pine resin, blue lupine, and nameless wild things wafted to his nostrils, but he didn't notice. Not this time. All he could see now was the city he'd read about since childhood. Acoma. The Sky City. Quite possibly the oldest continually inhabited pueblo in the country.

On the mesas's top, something glinted in the harsh sunlight. Excitement surged through Larence's blood.

He tented his hand over his eyes and squinted, trying to see. Maybe it was the light glancing off a knife blade, or a woman's silver earring, or—

He heard the quiet, steady crunching of Emmaline's heels in the dirt and felt an almost blinding joy that she was here with him. To have someone with whom to share this moment was the answer to his every boyhood dream.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her close, pointing at the mesa. "That's Acoma."

"A what?"

"Acoma. The Sky City."

Emma squinted into the rising sun. "City?" she repeated doubtfully.

He nodded eagerly. "There's a whole city full of people on top of it. Some claim the pueblo was founded as early as 600 a.d."

"Wait a minute, you mean that's the city?"

"No," he answered with a laugh. "Ka-Neek wasn't that nice. He probably thought he was taking us miles out of the way, but what he actually did was take us to the diary's starting point. Esteban's recorded journey began here, at the base of the Sky City."

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"Acoma." She said the word a couple of times, as if trying to remember where she'd heard it. Then, finally, she shook her head and muttered, "Worthless book."

"What book?"

"I learned history from a book called The History of the United States Told in One-Syllable Words. I knew it was sort of ... abbreviated, but I didn't think the damn thing was wrong."

Larence chuckled. "It's not wrong, not according to most other books. The men who wrote the books—all the books—care only about white man's history.

"But look around you, Em. This is the birthplace of this country. The real core. The Anasazi, the Ancient Ones, were here, living and building, while the Europeans were living on a flat continent surrounded by make-believe sea monsters."

His words tugged at her, tapping into some deep, fundamental emotion. Emma found herself getting caught up in his excitement. For the first time she had an inkling about what this trip was about. About what it meant.

"We could prove it to the world," he said quietly. "We could show everyone that Jamestown wasn't the first important settlement in this country."

"How?"

He took her hands in his and stared down at her. "Cibola. Think about it, Em. You and I can change history, right an ancient wrong. If we find Cibola, the world will be forced to acknowledge the Pueblo Indians. Everyone will know that the first Americans were great artisans and great builders—like the Egyptians and the Romans." His voice dropped, caught. "And even more important, the Indian children will see proof of

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their forefathers' greatness, and they will hold their heads up with pride."

Tears stung Emma's eyes, blurred her vision. When had she ever cared about anything except the almighty dollar? And what had she ever given the world, except a few more gold coins?

Then sanity returned. Ruthlessly she quelled the traitorous emotions that threatened everything she believed in. Everything she'd spent a lifetime working for.

He'd tricked her, damn him, tricked her with his puppy-dog eyes and wistful voice. And she'd been such easy prey. She, who should know better, had been tricked by pretty words and grandiose dreams. . . .

Fairy tales were something she knew a great deal about; her father had spun a thousand of them for her, each grander and more farfetched than the last. For years she'd even believed.

She'd been about seven years old when reality had hit—and hit hard. She'd awakened early that morning, freezing cold and hungry. Tugging the worn, holey blanket tighter around her shivering body, she'd glanced at their room. And in that gloomy predawn morning she'd finally seen the place for what it was. Not Cinderella's temporary home, but a dark, dank, cheerless hovel.

From then on she'd seen the world through her own eyes, not her father's. She stopped waiting for the prince to rescue her from the coldness of her home and stopped believing in her father's schemes to bring them wealth. Never again had useless imaginary dreams reached her.

Until now. She glared up at Larence. She felt— absurdly—betrayed. He wanted her to feel this way, wanted her to care about a bunch of long-dead people and their way of life. That's why he'd told her his story.

r

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Well, his teary-eyed dramatics and rambling on about a few Indian children wouldn't work. She wouldn't let it.

Oh, she might let herself change. Might make the occasional dinner or roll up the sleeping bags, might even let herself be Larence's friend. But change only went so far. Being a better person didn't include being a poverty-stricken person. No way.

She'd never change when it came to how she viewed money. She couldn't afford to.

Neither could she afford to get tangled up with Larence's vision. Dreams were a useless waste of time.

Larence could change the world if he wanted to. His kind always did. People who'd never been poor could give money to charity and sleep with a clear conscience. But those who'd eaten off the street and slept in the dark on a cold floor didn't care much about the pride of a few small children. They couldn't afford to.

She couldn't afford to.

Changing history wasn't her dream, and she wouldn't let herself be swayed by its seductive pull. She was in this for the gold. Beautiful, shining gold.

She might let herself cry in front of Larence, might even let herself like him, but the one thing she'd never, ever do was let him steal her future. It was all she had; all she ever hoped to have.

Half the gold was hers, by God. Indian children or no Indian children, half that gold was hers.

And she intended to get it.

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That day Emma finally rode beside Larence like an equal. A short equal, she admitted with a smile, but an equal nonetheless. She tented a hand over the brim of her straw hat, extending the shade a small bit, and glanced up at him. He was a foot or so above her, sitting tall and proud in the saddle.

She shook her head in amazement, still unable to believe the change he'd wrought with a simple whisper.

Emma had tried to get Tashee to give up her favored spot at Diablo's tail for days; she'd kicked, screamed, hit, and pleaded with the little burro, and all to no avail.

Not so Larence. He'd whispered once and patted Tashee's neck. A whisper and a pat—that's it, and voila! Tashee trotted eagerly to Diablo's side as if that was where she'd wanted to be from the beginning.

Maybe there's a lesson in that. . . .

A quiet, companionable silence filled the air. Now and again Larence pointed out and named some bush or animal, and surprisingly, Emma found herself listening to him, and if she allowed herself to admit it (and she wasn't entirely sure that was a good idea), even enjoying his soft-spoken monologue.

But now he was silent. The hot sun pressed down on 226

them, made Emma slump lazily on Tashee's back. She swayed side to side, her thoughts far away and pleasant.

She was so relaxed, it took her a moment to realize that something was different. There was a noise. And out in the great, waterless alone, that was something worth taking note of.

She straightened, listened.

The sound increased, drew close. Pitter-pat-pitter-pat.

She looked down and couldn't believe her eyes. A bird—quite possibly the ugliest one she'd ever seen—

was running along beside them. Running!

As if aware of her scrutiny, the funny-looking little bird cocked his head at her. Beady eyes stared up at her, and she thought for one amazing moment that he actually smiled at her.

"Larence, look!"

The second she spoke, the bird lowered his head again and dashed forward, zipping in and out of the animals' path like a drunken sailor and then disappearing in the distance.

Larence didn't even glance at the bird. He was looking at her with a cocky grin. "Noticing wildlife, are we?" he drawled. "I've got this notebook ..."

Emma couldn't help laughing. Lord, she felt . . . good. It had been years—forever—since she'd been so relaxed and ready to smile.

And it was all because of Larence.

She felt . . . comfortable with him. She shook her head in disbelief. Who would have thought it possible?

In all the years she'd known Eugene, she'd never once felt comfortable or relaxed around him.

Comfortable. The word conjured all sorts of ordinary images—images she'd spent a lifetime banishing to the

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darkest corner of her mind. Holding hands. Whispering. Laughing. Walking in the park on Sunday.

Cuddling . . .

Images that no longer seemed frightening or the least bit threatening. In fact, now she wondered how she'd lived so long in fear of such simple emotions.