The Parting Glass (Caitlin Ross Book 4) (8 page)

Thrilling, indeed. We hadn’t even started yet, and already the intricate polyrhythms threatened to carry me away.

We found Sage and the drummers not far off, in a grassy space near the restrooms. Imperious in a white dress and pink head scarf, when she spotted us Sage waved an arm glittering with gold bangles at her crew. They broke off their warm up, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the ground settled more firmly under my feet.

“Hey, Caitlin.” Sage looked Timber up and down and inclined her head infinitesimally. Her gold earrings jingled. “Big Man.”

What’s
he
doing here?
Her black eyes flashed at me.

I gave a helpless shrug.
He followed me. Sorry!

Muttering low in her throat, Sage retrieved a bottle of rum from its resting place among the drums. The percussionists joined us, and we formed a loose circle. Sage stood on my left, Timber on my right.

“We all know why we’re here.” Sage lifted the rum bottle and took a hefty swig. “Long live the sun! Let it shine down on us!”

“Let it shine!” everyone responded.

Sage passed the run bottle to me and I drank, thinking of my morning’s meditation. “Blessings of the season on us all. Power of the Oak King to us.”

By my side, Timber gave a little start, then steadied.

“Blessings of the season!” everyone responded.

I passed the bottle to Timber, who drank and said, “Light and life of the Longest Day to us.”

Was it my imagination, or did his twilight gaze seek out mine as he spoke? I shook the idea away. His words had been generic enough to encompass the entire gathering. I had no reason to believe he had meant them for me in particular.

The rum went round. Everyone drank and spoke a few words. By the time Sage reclaimed the bottle, we had almost emptied it.

“All right, children,” she said. “Let’s dance!”

The drummers went back to their instruments. Sage turned to Timber.

“You. Big Man. Go sit under a tree and stay out of the way.”

“Yes, Mother.” Grinning, he moved off.

“I ain’t nobody’s mother! And don’t let those drums take you anywhere!” she called after his receding back. “No telling where you might end up!”

I kicked off my sandals and breathed up the earth’s energy, feeling the grass lush and alive under my bare feet. A tingling sensation raced up my legs and rushed through my body. Life, sun, fertility, desire. My pulse throbbed.

“How you doing with that man?” Sage came up beside me.

“Not now, Sage,” I hissed. Then a whistle shrilled and the cowbell called out the beat. The lead drum, the Manman, sounded its bass voice; the Segon and Boula joined in elaborate counterpoint. And Sage and I began to dance.

We’d been meeting to dance on the Summer Solstice for five years, ever since I’d taken one of Sage’s classes for the body-centered component of my college coursework. Although based on a Haitian fertility dance, what we enacted was not a ritual from either Sage’s tradition or mine, but held something of both, while at the same time transcending them. Recognizing in each other a kindred spirit, we’d begun the tradition as a simple celebration of our friendship. It had grown to have deep meaning for both of us.

Perfectly in synch, we moved in a complex triple step, first right, then left, hips swaying and arms twining over our heads. The lead drum spoke; we dipped into a turn, skirts brushing the grass. Coming upright once more, we crossed wrists and circled, hips still swinging, feet keeping time. Sweat began to trickle down between my breasts; I ignored it, caught up in the rhythm and sensation of the dance. A crowd of onlookers began to gather, as they always did. I ignored them, too.

The drum beat out a
kasé,
signaling a transition. Side by side, Sage and I danced forward and leapt into the air, clicking our heels together. First to the right, and then to the left. One of the watchers whooped. I felt untethered from the earth, as if with another leap I might take flight.

Regaining the ground, we swept back into the dance, Sage’s compact, dark form and my taller pale one: twins and opposites. I lost track of time. I forgot everything but sensation and motion: my muscles working, the swish of silk against my skin, the warm earth beneath my feet, the uninhibited ecstasy of the dance pouring through me, and from me into the world. Then I forgot even that.

And then the drums sounded in unison: once, twice, three times. And it was over until next year.

I came back to awareness of myself with infinite slowness, blinking sweat from my eyes. Sage and I turned to one another and embraced.

“Happy Solstice,” I told my friend.

“And to you, Honey.” Sage gazed past me. “Oooh, Girlfriend! You lit a fire! Don’t you get burned, now.”

I glanced over my shoulder, wondering what she meant, and saw Timber staring at me. His eyes seared me right to the bone. I felt blood rise to my face in answer. We gazed at each other for a long moment before he shook himself and broke the contact. Turning his back on me, he headed for the creek, stripping off his shirt as he went. He walked straight into the water, knelt in the stream, and dunked his head.

Sage chortled. “Oh, my. You can see the steam rising!”

I poked her in the ribs. “Shut up.”

Timber tossed his head back, spray from his dark hair flashing like diamonds in the summer sun. Still he knelt, motionless as a statue. The skin of his torso was very fair, a startling contrast to his tanned arms. Tree shadows dappled him gold and dusky. A trickle of water ran, silver, down his back.

My legs turned to liquid, and my breath came short.

“Uh-huh,” Sage said. “You be careful, now.”

I didn’t notice when she left.

Timber got up and squelched up the bank, water streaming off him and running out of his boots. I tore my eyes away and made a business of hunting up my sandals. Presently, I became aware I was not alone.

“You’re soaking,” I said.

“Aye. I got hot. I’ll dry soon enough.”

Our eyes met. I dropped mine. That was worse. Creek water dripped from the Soul Catcher on the thong about his neck. It beaded in the dark hair on his chest, ran down to pool at his belt line.

“Your boots will be ruined.”

“I’ve wetted them before.”

He’d retrieved his shirt and held it wadded in one fist. Now he put it back on. The black cotton clung damply to the lines of his body.

“That was quite a dance.” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat. “D’ye do it every holiday?”

“Only on Lithe.”

We stood four feet apart, but I felt the heat of him as if he were right beside me. He took a single step forward. So did I. The air between us thickened, electric. We both stepped back, and I shivered. My belly clenched. Perilous. Warning bells sounded in my brain.

Timber cleared his throat again. “You said I could buy you a meal sometime. May I take you to lunch?”

Perilous. I knew I should say no. I should tell him to go back to his sister’s place. I should go home and do accounts or something tedious. Cool down.

But the unconquered sun beat down on my head, filling me with wanton life. And I’d been alone too long.

“All right,” I said.

Chapter Eight

T
hings cooled between us somewhat as we walked back downtown, Timber leaving dripping footprints on the pavement. I breathed a little easier. Maybe this could be okay. We’d have lunch, and I’d go home. Tomorrow we’d be back to business.

“So,” he said as we crossed Canyon at Third, heading back to Pearl Street. “Where would you like to eat?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. Anywhere.”

He shook his head. “I’m not going to let you get off so easily. Where’s your favorite place?”

Oh, good. A question I could answer. “Di Napoli’s. It’s a little Italian place on Walnut. Do you like Italian?”

“Very much.”

I hesitated. “It’s pricey. At least it is at night. Maybe lunch will be better.”

“Dinna worry about that. I shot some pool last night. At the pub. Between beers.” He pulled a soggy wad of bills out of his pocket, grinning his mischievous grin. “I did quite well.”

I added pool shark to my growing list of Timber’s accomplishments. And he’d claimed his budget didn’t run to extras. “You’re a man of many talents.”

“Aye. I am.”

We arrived at the restaurant just short of noon, and the lunch rush hadn’t yet started. A pretty hostess in a tight black dress asked us if we wanted to sit inside, or out on the patio. I thought of the dimly lit dining room with its intimate tables. Then I glanced at Timber. He no longer dripped, but he was still pretty wet.

Wet. No.

“Outside,” I told the hostess, and she led us to a table underneath an umbrella with “Campari” written large all around its edge.

I didn’t bother to open my menu. I almost always got the same thing: Spaghetti Diabolo, homemade pasta in a spicy sauce with olives and sausage. Timber perused his own menu with rapt attention. The same dark lock of his drying hair fell over his forehead, into his eyes. Absently, he shoved it back, humming under his breath. I didn’t recognize the tune.

“What’s that you’re humming? Something traditional? I don’t know it.”

“Hmmm?” He closed his menu and looked up. “Och, no. It’s Eddie Rabbit. One of the truckers I hitched a ride out here with was a fan, and I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Oh dear.”

“I could sing some for you, if you like.”

I giggled. “No, thank you.”

“Just as well. I can’t remember all the words.”

The waitress came to take our order and ask us what we’d have to drink. Both of us declined anything stronger than water. I still could feel Sage’s rum humming in my veins, and I didn’t want to risk getting any more buzzed. I wondered that Timber didn’t indulge—he seemed a man who liked a beer—but accepted the fact without comment.

“So you hitched out here?” I asked when the waitress had left.

“Aye. Country music and bitching about politics. For a thousand miles.” He made a wry face.

“How terrible for you.”

“Sometimes. Mind, when it got too bad, I’d put on the Scot and pretend to be a student tourist with no opinion of the matter.”

“Handy you haven’t lost your accent, then.” I toyed with a bread stick. “How long have you been here?”

“Twenty years.” His face closed in the weird way it did sometimes, when, I guessed, some memory or association bothered him. After a moment, he shook the troublesome thought out of his head and went on. “I did pick up a ride in Salt Lake that wasn’t terrible. Still Country, but the older stuff. Johnny Cash. Patsy Cline. And Bluegrass. I can listen to that. And we talked mechanics, not politics, so it was all right. He had a Twinkie on his dashboard, still in the wrapper. It had been there five years and it looked just the same as when he bought it. He said he kept it as a reminder never to eat such junk again. One of the thin ones, he was.”

“Ugh!” Our food came. I dug in, trying not to think of five-year-old Twinkies. It had been a long time since breakfast and my stomach felt hollow. “Thin ones?”

“Aye. Truckers come in two kinds. The round ones, who as a rule don’t eat much at all, and the thin ones, who eat everything in sight.” He glanced at his lunch. He’d ordered the combo plate, a huge mound of pasta, sausage, and meatballs. “This is a gigantic amount of food.”

“I’m sure you’ll do it justice.” I watched him poke listlessly at his plate. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”

He raised his head. “I dinna think so. Why d’ye ask?”

“I’ve never seen you so disinterested in food before.”

“Ah. No, I’m not ill. Just…distracted.”

Blue eyes burned into mine and my face heated. The air sizzled. Nothing had changed since the park, only been postponed. Why in the world had I been stupid enough to agree to this lunch, today of all days, knowing how things lay between us? I’d let physical impulse guide me. That had to stop. I had to get him talking about something innocuous, defuse the situation somehow. Otherwise I might find myself flat on my back, amid shattered plates.

“So this thin trucker brought you all the way to Boulder?”

He blinked. My ploy had worked; his dangerous train of thought had been derailed.

“No. He was on his way home at the time. A strange little place west of here. Gordarosa. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“Pretty. Well, from there I caught a fruit truck into Denver. Some campers brought me up here.” He cut into a meatball, tasted it, and swallowed. “I made good time. Portland to here in two days.”

The energy between us normalized. I returned to my food with a sigh of relief, and cleaned my plate for a change. Timber only made it halfway through his own meal before giving up. He kept shifting around in his seat as if he couldn’t quite find a comfortable position. I imagined his damp jeans chafed. I imagined him taking them off, and tried very hard to keep my interest in the idea off my face.

When the waitress returned to offer desert and see if Timber wanted a box for his leftovers, he waved her away.

“Just the bill, aye? I do hate wasting good food,” he said in answer to my raised eyebrow. “But I’ve come over restless. I need a walk. I thought to ask you to show me that creek path you spoke of.”

“You were on it this morning. Down by the park. I’m sure you could find your own way back.” I spoke very fast. I wanted to be rid of him. I wanted to go home, stick my head under a pillow, and sleep until Lithe and its risky energy had passed.

I wanted him to ask me to stay.

He did.

“It’s hard to be a stranger in a strange town,” Timber said. “Please.”

For once, I made no snide remark about his ability to charm, to win friends and influence people as effortlessly as snapping his fingers.

Together, we left the restaurant and headed over to the creek.

We strolled up the creek path a careful four feet apart, not close enough to touch by accident, not far enough to escape altogether the tension that had arisen once again between us. The sun tides of the Solstice pulsed in my blood; I knew they pulsed in him, as well. It mattered not at all that we were walking on a public path, with bicyclists, runners, and other pedestrians all around. We might have been alone in the world.

Better not to think about it.

I cleared my throat. “So, Timber MacDuff.” My voice came out high and false, over-hearty. I forced myself to modulate it. “Tell me about yourself.”

He twitched a little, startled; he’d been thinking, too. “Tell you what about myself?”

“Anything at all. I know your name. I know you’re a shaman and you’re from Scotland by way of Oregon. You have a sister in town who let you borrow her car. You can pick locks and seem to be a dab hand at pool. That’s about it.” I shrugged.

“Isn’t it enough?” He walked along a ways, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. “There isn’t much to tell, aye?”

“Your sister is younger than you?”

He nodded. “Spruce is the youngest. She’s twenty, nine years younger than I am. She was born here. I’m the oldest. There are four more between.”

I tried to imagine his parents emigrating from Scotland with five children nine and younger and another on the way. I couldn’t do it. “You both have such unusual names.”

“Aye. My father is a woodworker with a sense of humor. He named us all after trees. The others, at least. I got the generic. Birch comes after me, then Ash, my brother, then the twins, Hazel and Hawthorne. Then Spruce.”

“What kind of thing does your father do?”

“Fine furniture, mostly. Some cabinetry.” Timber fell silent. We ambled on, the quiet becoming thicker and heavier. I felt it on my neck like a yoke.

“So, you came here when you were nine…” I prompted.

“Aye.” He looked at the ground. “I…didna do well. It’s very different from Skye, where we’re from.”

“I can imagine.” No wonder the MacDuffs had emigrated. Life must have been very difficult for a woodworker on Skye, where nearly all his materials would have to be imported. The Pacific Northwest might look like paradise by comparison.

“I got in a lot of trouble. Dropped out of school and left home when I was fourteen. Lived on the streets for a time.”

“Oh.” I was sorry I had asked.

“Then Mitch found me. He was a friend of my family’s, in Portland. Had the apartment next door, when first we arrived. I’d made it as far as Los Angeles when he caught up with me. One day, he just showed up at my squat and hauled me out by the ear. He said I had too much potential to let it go to waste, and he was taking charge of me.” For a second, Timber’s amazing grin flashed across his face. Then he sobered. “If I’d known what he meant, I might have stayed on the streets. But I was seventeen, and I thought nothing could hurt me.”

“What did he do to you?”

“A shaman’s training isna easy,” he said by way of reply. “He made me go to college, too.”

“College?” I had a very hard time imagining Timber in a classroom.

“Aye. I didna like it. But Mitch would have me stick with it, so I did. I have an MA in Cultural Anthropology from Portland State University,” he tendered a bit reticently, as if he were ashamed of it. “I graduated a little over a year ago.”

“Oh,” I said again, trying not to show my shock. I hadn’t thought Timber an idiot by any means, but I wouldn’t have pegged him as having a graduate degree, either. My respect for him rose by several notches. How had he managed getting an MA and completing a shaman’s training all at once?

“I dinna do anything with it, mind. I hate academia, and that’s the only place a degree like mine can take you. Still, all knowledge is worth having. And it comes in handy, in what I do.”

“What do you do?”

His hand strayed to the thong holding the Soul Catcher around his neck. “Healer, mostly.”

I remembered the energy he had given me at Stonefeather’s studio. Yes, he would be.

“When I need money, though, I’m a carpenter,” he added.

“And a pool shark.”

He chuckled low in his throat. “Aye, that too.”

We had drifted closer together than four feet as we talked. Much closer; our shoulders almost brushed. He gazed down at me, the unruly lock of hair falling in his eyes. Then we both realized at the same time how close together we were, and both of us jumped back to a safe distance. Timber coughed. I hugged myself against the sudden warmth rushing from the tips of my toes right up to the top of my head.