The Lost Hearts (23 page)

Chapter
Twenty

Alexis had nothing left in her.  Like a zombie she rode back to the village, owed only to her horse’s wits.  Her body was nothing more than a sack to hold her broken parts together, and she barely noticed that it was her host who led her into the hut, her large black eyes blinking with worry.  Alexis was covered head to toe in mud, hair wild and knotted, eyes totally vacant.  Mulmulum clucked her tongue, her hands clutching Alexis as she sank to the matted ground. 

She recalled shadows of hands passing across her vision, the softness of palms pressing against her cheeks and neck.  She
heard shells of murmurs circle through the hut, and then she closed her eyes.  When she awoke, Lewis was by her side.  He sat stiffly, legs folded, his face pulled into an expression of deep puzzlement and concern.  “Alexis,” he breathed softly as her lids fluttered open.  “Are you okay?”

Alexis took a deep breath and she sighed pensively through her nose.  With a half chuckle she said, “I’m not feeling too well, I guess.” 

Lewis looked away uncomfortably, his fingers unconsciously fidgeting with the braids in the floor mats.  He seemed afraid to say the obvious, to state the reality of the situation.  But Alexis had been restored the energy to spare him this uneasy task.  “So Trevor left,” she said flatly. 

Lewis nodded his head slowly, his brows lifting uneasily. 
A young girl with coffee skin approached carrying a thick clay bowl, and Lewis thanked her as he took it from her tiny hands.  “Can you sit up?” Lewis asked. 

Alexis suddenly felt embarrassed.  She was being treated as though she were an invalid.
  She strained to lift her head and saw that her body was caked with dried mud. 
Oh my God,
she thought,
I look positively insane.
  She felt the humiliation of her broken heart and in an instant she longed with immeasurable intensity the refuge of her bedroom in Boston.  She could hide, she thought.  She could sit at the table by the window and look out at the willow tree.  Instead she was swimming in the clamminess of a fever, sipping tepid water from a heavy clay bowl.  She was watching the shame of her rejection in Lewis’ eyes.

Lewis gulped, and his mouth opened reluctantly.  “I must say, Alexis…I’m a little confused by what happened today.  Trevor is a good friend of mine, and he left with very little explanation.  I…hope…I hope that I was not the cause of some misunderstanding.”

Alexis cleared her throat, her eyes locked blindly on the light in the doorway.  “No, Lewis.  It had nothing to do with you.  Please don’t worry about it.  Trevor loves you.  What happened was between him and me.” 

Lewis nodded silently, and Alexis could not guess the discomfort he felt in talking to her about the apparent nature of the conflict. 

“I suppose you talked about it with Trevor, but I’d like to make sure you’re able and willing to finish the trip with me.”  Alexis rested her hand atop Lewis’ knee. 

“Yes, of course Alexis.  I’m happy to do it.”  Lewis injected his tone with more enthusiasm than he meant, but watching the limp, defeated frame of his new partner, he shrugged at its concession.  She leaned the weight of her small body on one elbow to take the water, but it trembled with weakness.  Her skin, which had tanned nicely over the weeks, now seemed sallow, almost purple, coated in sheen of sickly sweat.  “Are you sure you’re okay, Alexis?  You look very ill to me.”

She needed air.  With shaking limbs she lifted herself up.

“Alexis,” Lewis protested
, his grey eyes darkening with worry.  “Where are you going?”

The room began to spin and she shook her head.  She felt a cool sweat burst through every pore, and her chest expanded in heaves as she tried to catch her breath.  “I need to get out of here,” she finally managed to produce in a panicked whisper.  “Air.”

Now Lewis stood beside her as she clambered toward the entrance of the hut.  She felt his hand grasp her elbow.  She heard the shape of his words turn to soft amorphous pattering against her ear.  Then she was gone. 

She crumpled in his arms, and just before her head smacked the floor, Lewis swept her up.  His heart seized in his chest.  Her eyes were rolling back in their sockets.  He’d never felt so totally hopeless.  He cried out to Mulmulum, and in an instant she was gone to alert the chief.  Lewis put his ear to her chest and heard the faint thump of her heart.  He pulled back and watched her, found himself stroking her che
ek.  “Please, Alexis,” he called, hoping his voice could reach her.

In the black, Alexis stirred fitfully.  She thought she was dreaming the soft humming, a sound which whistled low like a brittle reed.  It stretched and caught itself, pulled her along into its rhythm.  It cradled her.  “Trevor,” she called feebly. 

The humming did not stop, but she saw a shadow grow larger and turn black.  “I’m here, Red,” he whispered.  Alexis was too weak to lift her head and she felt hot tears trail down her temples.  Her shoulders shook with desperate relief. 

“You came back,” she cried.  He leaned down, his face nuzzling her ear. 

“I’m so sorry,” he told her, his arms scooping her up in a pile against him. 

“How could you leave me like that?”  She sounded like a child, but she was in too deep now to conceal her vulnerability. 

He was silent for a moment, and she could feel the muscles in his body stiffen.  He cradled her head against his chest.  “I’ll never do that again,” he said. 

She was smiling now.  She was burrowing into him, into the softness of the humming.  An irresistible, shameless happiness lit up her eyes and she opened them wide to take him in.  All she saw was blackness.  She shook her head in confusion.  And then she felt hands on her legs.  They were warm, calloused, and thin, but they pressed her, kneaded her with a youthful firmness.  She let out a soft moan into thick wet air.  She opened her eyes, expecting to find the fragments of her subconscious dissipate.  Instead she saw the source of humming and the calloused hands crouched limberly above her. 

It was an old woman with a knot of silver hair bursting above the loose, sagging lines of an old face.  She was the oldest woman Alexis had seen in the village, and she remembered meeting her when she and Lewis had asked about medicinal customs.  S
he was the tribe’s healer, just shy of five feet.  She stooped when she walked, and Alexis’ eyes widened in surprise to see such nimble movements as she massaged Alexis’ legs.  If she noticed that Alexis had awakened, she did not acknowledge it.  Her eyes, clouded milky white with glaucoma, were fixed absently on the dark space around them. 

Alexis’ heart broke at the discovery that Trevor had not come back for her, and it took her a moment to
absorb the strangeness of the situation.  She was quite certain she was no longer dreaming, yet the reality seemed farfetched.  Alexis rolled her head from side to side, hoping to spot some evidence of reality.  “Lewis?” she whispered hoarsely, only to find that it sent blades of razor-sharp pain splintering through her brain.  She saw a figure rise from beside the fire.

“Alexis,” Lewis cooed gently. 

“What’s going on?” Alexis managed, her voice pinched with the uncertainty of a child waking in pitch black from a bad dream.

“You have a very bad fever,
” he said, his tone clipped.  Alexis was grateful that she could not see Lewis’ face.  She could hear the concern in his voice, but for now, in her semi-delirium, she could imagine that she was bedridden with nothing more than an aggressive fever. 

“So…why…”  Alexis could barely speak without her skull splitting with excruciating pain.  She lifted a hand and gestured toward the medicine woman. 

“She is rubbing an herbal mixture into your skin.  It’s what they do when they fall ill.”  Lewis seemed to hold his breath, as though any sound might betray the gravity of her situation. 

“Are you concerned?”
Alexis managed to squeak, bracing herself for the worst. 

“No,” Lewis said after a long silence.  “Not with Minata here.  I can tell she is an experienced medicine woman.” 

If Minata heard her name, she made no indication of it, nor did she pay any attention to their conversation as she worked over her patient’s body.  Alexis looked down and realized with sudden, though unwarranted horror that she had been stripped of her clothing.  All that remained as a gesture of modesty was a thin cotton slip which clung damply to her torso.  Minata smiled when she saw the peculiar wideness of Alexis’ eyes as she took her in her body.  A low, good-natured hiss issued from the cracks and holes of her ancient, decaying mouth.

The old woman continued humming into the night, grinding the dark, viscous substance into Alexis’ skin until the whole of her body was covered.  In this bizarre blanket of cake Alexis felt her skin tingle with life, and every breath that passed through the hut seemed to engulf her in a soothing coolness.  Mint, Lewis would later tell her.

***

“It’s been days since I moved, Lewis.  I
need
to stretch my legs, and I
need
to see some natural light.  I’m starting to feel crazy.”  Alexis looked pleadingly into the dark shadow of Lewis’ face, his eyes were unblinking, his jaw set.  His brow slowly lifted, and she could see he was testing her.

“I promise,” she reassured him grumpily.  “I’m feeling quite strong.”
  She elbowed him, a playful demonstration that she had recovered her strength.

Lewis nodded his head
with a skeptical smirk and let his hand fall against her forearm.  He closed his fingers around its smallness.  “You’re too thin, Alexis,” he chastised her softly.  His hand lingered, and Alexis felt heat inflame her cheeks. 

She cleared her throat and
shifted.  “When can we leave?” she asked him, injecting as much strength and vitality into her voice as she could muster. 

Lewis
lifted himself onto his haunches and rubbed his chin.  “Not until I see you’re ready.”

Alexis groaned plaintively
, letting her head sag pathetically against her stack of tough, leathery pillows.  “When’s that going to be?” she whined with a dramatic sigh.

Lewis laughed through his nose.  “You are improving quickly…”  When he saw the desperate eyes batting hopefully at him, his mouth split into a wide, white grin.  “No promises, but I think a few days, okay?” 

Alexis rewarded him with a toothy smile of her own, and clutched onto his arm.  Lewis helped her slowly to her feet.  The movement sent shards of razor pain through her legs and she struggled to stifle the automatic winces so as not to give Lewis more cause to baby her.  They hobbled through the hut to the door, and Alexis looked down at what once seemed a miniscule slip.  She was too tired to think of it now, too used to her sick, clammy body exposed to all the world.  As she passed through the door, her mind flashed with the memory of the last time she crossed its threshold, the image of Trevor packing up and bidding the chief farewell.

“What is it?” s
he heard Lewis ask her.  She brought her eyes to his, saw the knowing, heavy gaze, and she shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said, sque
ezing his arm with reassurance.

***

“Another?” 

Trevor raised his sluggish gaze beneath the brim of his hat toward the gruff voice behind the counter.  A man, red and fat, his face covered in a thick patina of sweat and oil
, nodded his head at the empty shot glass in front of him.  Trevor grunted, jerking his head curtly.  He watched the corpulent fingers squeeze the bottle’s slender body, a pungent amber liquid plummeting violently toward the pit of his glass.  Trevor ran his finger over the rim, as though considering whether to take it.  With a single movement, he brought it to his lips and felt the harsh, acidic moonshine gush fire down his throat.  He closed his eyes.  He saw her.

“Goddamn it!”
He bellowed.  Trevor felt the room, which had been colorless, lifeless, without context in his liquored trance, draw into a palpable hush.  He saw the heads of the few ragged men turn his direction.  He gave no explanation.  He was just another drunk as far as they were concerned, here for gold, women or services to the British army stationed on the eastern coast.  This was the hideaway for true pariahs, a battered shack with the minimum wood and nails required to make a brothel and bar.  He knew that just a mile away was the saloon frequented by British officers looking for drink and a romp in the bed, where the sofas and wallpaper were fine and imported.  He preferred the raw bowels of this sorry hole.

The floorboards creaked behind him and he felt a soft arm snake over his shoulder, a velvet hand grasped the back of his neck.  “Hello, stra
nger,” her throaty voice cooed in his ear.  She was young and beautiful, her skin dewy and supple, the color of molasses.  Her bright, amber eyes radiated over high, full cheek bones and a seductive ample mouth.  Trevor felt a ball form in his throat.  Though he had never slept with a prostitute, he tried to summon the wherewithal to take this one to bed, to extinguish the unrelenting flame of Alexis in his mind.  He turned to her, her lips parting as she neared his face.  His guts seized and twisted, and he recoiled, the shoddy barstool clattering to the ground.