The Enchantment (43 page)

The crack was gone.

It took Emma a moment to react. Noooooo . . .

With a strangled cry, she snatched up her skirt and started running. Ahead, the wall of sandstone was a blurry wash of brown. No matter how much she blinked, or how hard she focused, she couldn't see anything except the wall. No crack, no opening.

Pain jabbed her side, but still she kept running. Now and then she swiped at the sheen of tears and dust in her eyes, but the moisture returned almost immediately. Dust puffed up from her punishing steps and formed a gray-brown cloud around her. Tears blurred her vision, turned the world into a shifting, incomprehensible mist of rust and blue. Her breath came in serrated gasps.

She clambered up the escarpment. Her skirts tangled in her feet, and she hit the dirt hard. Coughing, she got back to her feet, and ran blindly through the cloud of dust.

She crashed into the rock wall, and staggered backward. Her breath expelled in a pain-sharpened groan.

Where was the opening? Where was the goddamn opening ?

Sick fear and panic sluiced through her. Desperately she searched. Her fingers scoured the rock, probed every hairline crack and indentation. "Please, oh please, oh please, oh please ..."

There was nothing. Not even a hint that there had ever been an opening.

Fear and horror and panic coiled in her stomach, twisted her insides into a fiery knot. She pressed a THE ENCHANTMENT

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shaking hand to her midsection and pressed hard, hoping to stop the vomit she felt rising to her throat.

A bleakness unlike any she'd ever known pulled her into a black pit of hopelessness and despair. Tears welled in her eyes and then dried up, became a bone-dry ache too deep, too raw, for tears.

A kaleidoscope of images and pictures tumbled end over end through her mind. Larence. The home they would have built. The children they would have had ...

In agony she screamed, a high banshee wail that bounced off the mesa's walls and rang back at her, taunting her.

"I'm sorry," she screamed to God. "/'/n sorry. Don't do this to him because of me. Please." Her voice cracked. "Please," she said with a sob, "be just. Take me instead. I want to die. . . ."

"Emma?"

The word came to her as a thought. A loving memory.

Oh, God . . . She'd spend the rest of her life hearing his voice in the whispering of wind, feeling his touch in the brushing of every breeze. She slumped forward, rested her forehead against the warm, gritty rock.

The feel of it reminded her of resting her brow on Larence's bristly chin, and a new wave of pain washed through her. It's okay to be afraid. I'll take care of you. . . .

"Emma, are you out there?"

She jerked upright and stared at the rock in horror. It couldn't be. She had to be going insane. That couldn't be Larence's voice, coming from behind the rock. Could it?

She stepped closer, pressed her fingertips against the rock. "Larence?"

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"Emma," he yelled, "is that you?"

It was Larence. He was behind the rock, buried alive.

In the dark . . .

She hurled herself at the rock and started clawing. "Open, damn you!" Sobbing, she beat her fists against the wall and clawed at the solid rock face until her fingernails were ripped and bleeding and her hands were coated with blood. Every blow surged up her arm and lodged like fire in her shoulder, but still she persisted. Screaming, crying, pounding.

"Emma." His voice came to her, jolted her out of her frenzy. "It's not your fault."

Exhausted, hollow, she sank to her knees. Her fingers scraped down the sandstone wall and fell in a useless heap in her lap. He was wrong. It was her fault.

She wanted to die. Ached to die.

This time the tears did come, great, wracking sobs that wrenched her soul and scalded her eyes.

Emmaline had come back for him. Larence couldn't believe it. He felt the pain of the last few hours melt away. She did love him. Somehow that made all the difference. At least now he could die happy, knowing he'd been loved.

If only he could see her again, touch her one last time. He huddled close to the jet black stone, trying to draw some remnant of her scent through the rock, trying to feel some hint of her warmth in the cold darkness around him. The muffled sounds of her sobbing reached through the rock and coiled around his heart.

"Ah, Em," he said in a ragged whisper of despair, "don't cry ..."

"I love you so much, Larence. I came back to—to say I was wrong. Only, it's too late. I'm so sorry."

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"It's my fault, too," he choked out. "I was wrong, too, Em. You're my dream. You, not some city."

"Oh, Larence ..."

He could hear the sadness in her voice, feel her hopelessness.

Stay together in the city. The words came back to Larence, mocked him. He'd ignored the Indian, and in anger and hurt, had let her go. Now they were both alone, both frightened and afraid and vulnerable.

And Cibola, the glorious city of his dreams, had become not his refuge, but his tomb.

"I should have listened to Pa-lo-wah-ti," he said dully.

Larence's tired voice seeped through the stone. It was a moment before the words registered.

Pa-lo-wah-ti! Emma surged to her feet. Hiking up her skirt, she scrambled down the escarpment and ran pell-mell through the tall grass. By the time she reached the plain's center, she was wheezing and out of breath. Gasping, she doubled over and concentrated on each breath until her breathing normalized. Then she straightened and looked around.

' 'We watched your every move. Tracked your every thought."

Tall, silent mesas stared back at her. Overhead, the sky was a bright cobalt blue.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and screamed as loudly as she could: "Pa-lo-wah-ti!"

The word vibrated in the hot air for a long moment, then evaporated.

Emma's narrowed gaze scoured the heavens and the mesatops. She listened intently, tried to hear something besides the thumping of her own heart and the restless sigh of breeze through the grass.

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Nothing. No movement, no sound, no answer.

She yelled his name again. And again and again and again, until her voice was ragged and hoarse and tears were streaming down her face.

And still there was no answer.

Finally, defeated, she dropped to her knees and bowed her head. "Help us," she said in a cracked, pitiful voice.

"Emmaline."

She jerked her head up. Pa-lo-wah-ti and Ka-Neek and another man stood before her. Proud, solemn.

"Pa-lo-wah-ti! Oh, God," she whispered, crawling on her knees toward him. "I was wrong. Please help us. Please ..."

His muddy blue eyes fixed unerringly on her face. "Sometimes choices are made too late."

Emma knew that somehow he could see her. She held her gaze steady on his, refused to look away.

Directly overhead the hawk banked right and swooped closer. She felt the soft whirring of displaced air against her cheek. Still she didn't look away. "And sometimes they are not."

A glimmer of respect flickered in the sightless blue eyes. One ash gray eyebrow pulled upward, and Emma knew he was waiting for something else.

"I came back alone," she said quietly.

"Why?"

"For the drop of magic."

She thought for a moment that he would smile, but he did not. He just continued to stare down at her through light, muddy, soul-searching eyes. "And what do you seek of me?"

She swallowed thickly. "I want you to open the doorway to Cibola."

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"Why?"

"Larence is in there. Alive."

Pa-lo-wah-ti said nothing. His gaze cut to the seamless rock face. Long minutes passed. Emma felt the thudding of her heart. The sound pounded in her ears like repeated hammerblows on hardwood.

Please God, please God, please God . . . The formless prayer cycled through her brain in dizzying repetition. She remained on her knees, her hands clasped in her lap. It was all she could do to keep from standing up and yelling at Pa-lo-wah-ti to do something, but she held herself in steely control.

For Larence, she'd remain on her knees a lifetime.

"There is a price," Pa-lo-wah-ti said at last.

Emma uncoiled her fingers and forced them to her sides. "There always is."

"You must walk away from this place—both of you. And you must never tell a soul what you have found."

Emma gasped. Her eyes rounded with horror.

"I know," he said quietly, and there was a wealth of compassion in his voice. "You have cost him much."

Emma squeezed her eyes shut. Tears seeped past her seamed lashes and fell in hot streaks down her cheeks. Not much, she thought dismally. Everything. She'd taken everything from him. Fame, fortune, peer respect. His dream. By leaving him alone in Cibola, she'd stripped him of every dream he'd ever had.

"Your answer?" Pa-lo-wah-ti asked solemnly.

She winced at the sound of his gravelly voice. What answer could she give? It was too late to salvage some remnant of Larence's life's work. She'd taken it all from him. All she could do was give him back his life, and pray to God it would be enough. Pray he could someday forgive her.

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God knew she could never forgive herself.

Dully she opened her eyes. "Yes." The word felt as if it had been ripped from the depths of her soul.

Pa-lo-wah-ti laid his skeletal hand on her shoulder. Warmth seeped from his flesh to hers. Emma looked up, met his gaze. For endless seconds they stared at each other, and she knew he saw her every fear.

"You have chosen well. The magic will fill your soul. Now close your eyes."

She did as she was told, and immediately she felt the change. Shadows fell across her downcast face; the sky overhead darkened. The ground rattled and shook. Dirt rained down from the mesatops and pattered the earth. The air turned cold. Wind swept through the canyon, whistling through the tree limbs.

Grass slapped across her lap and lay shivering.

The scent of burning rock mingled with the sharp tang of magic and filled the small valley like a cloud.

Thunder rumbled before a flash of unearthly light. Something hit the rock with a resounding crack. The vibrating grind of shifting rock echoed through the valley.

And then it was quiet.

When Emma found the courage to open her eyes, the sky was a bright blue. The sun was strong and hot.

She looked around. Pa-lo-wah-ti and the other men were gone, and there wasn't so much as a bent blade of grass to hint that they'd ever been here.

"Emma!"

Her gaze shot to the sandstone wall. Larence was standing inside the gaped zigzag entrance to Cibola.

She lurched to her feet and started to run toward him. Then she remembered the vow she'd made to Pa-lo-wah-ti, and her steps faltered. Uncertainty gnawed a

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hole in her heart. How could anyone—even Larence— forgive what she'd done?

He started running. When he crossed into the sunlight, he tripped, stumbled. He regained his balance quickly, and kept running, but this time he moved unevenly. Awkwardly.

The magic was gone. His limp had returned. Emma felt an overwhelming sense of sadness and regret and self-loathing. God, hadn't her greed cost him enough?

He scooped her into his arms and twirled her around. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, knowing that the moment she told him that her greed had cost him his life's work, it would all end.

Gradually his hold loosened, and she slid down the long, hard length of his body. Looking up at him, she lifted her hand to his face and stroked his cheek. She memorized every line of his face, every detail so that years from now, when she was old and alone and lonely, she could remember this moment, this man who was everything she'd ever wanted and more. Every dream she'd ever suppressed, every prayer she'd ever bitten back.

This man who was her love.

"Emma, I—"

"Wait! Before you say anything, I have to tell you something. I—" She looked away, chewed nervously on her lower lip. "I ... I had to promise we'd never say a word about the city."

He touched her chin and forced her to look up at him. "Emmaline Amanda Hatter, in the face of God and all that I hold sacred and holy, I promise to love, honor, and cherish you all the days of my life."

"Oh, Larence ..."

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Tears formed in his eyes, slid silently down his cheeks. "Mrs. Digby, do you love me?"

Emma was crying so hard, it was impossible to speak. All she could do was nod.

Then he did the most amazing thing. He kissed her. Emma felt his lips form to hers, felt the whisper-soft touch of his tongue against her tear-dampened mouth, and hope filled her heart to bursting.

She blinked up at him.

"I love you, wife," he said simply.

She was afraid she'd misheard. "But your dream—"

"You're my dream. I may be an absentminded professor, but I never make the same mistake twice."

"But, Larence, I—"

"You never did know when to shut up," he said, kissing the moisture from her eyes. "Don't you know by now that I'm a man of many dreams? Have you heard of Atlantis?"

"Of course, but that's just a legend. ..."

He kissed her again, a slow, gentle, loving kiss that set her heart and soul afire. When their lips parted, Emma thought she felt a whir of breath against her mouth, thought she heard him whisper: "So was Ci-bola."

And that's when Emma knew: The adventure of her life had just begun.