Whispers on the Wind (10 page)

She staggered slightly from the impact of the vision, and the movement unlocked her fingertip from the golden bead of light, breaking contact. She remembered to breathe as she stared at Jon, watching him watching her.

She clenched her teeth, resisting with all her might the desire to touch that bead again, to return to the warmth of that unreal garden.

The desire eased enough for her to step away from the ledge, away from Jon, away from temptation, and suddenly she was assailed by the memory of an earlier sensation, one of desperate need, of incomparable loss, of being forsaken, or of having forsaken someone—no, not one, others—of great value. It echoed too closely the emotions engendered by her dream of the mother seeking a haven for her endangered child.

“You must help me...collect my Octad,” Jon added, his green eyes fixed squarely on her, and she experienced a tug of emotion so strong it nearly drew her back to his side. “You must help me take them home.”

A flicker of the Maxfield Parrish–like landscape flashed before her but she battled it down.

“I don’t ‘must’ do anything,” she retorted, glaring at him, and felt the pull subside. “Not even stay in this damned cave.”

“No!” His voice was sharp, his facial expression one of disbelieving hurt. Clearly, he thought her capable of abandoning him there, which, of course, her hasty words had suggested. “You must not leave me.”

“I will, of course, get help for you,” she said. “But you have to be willing to help yourself, too, by answering my questions. In case you aren’t aware of it, you have a badly broken leg and a head wound that should have been stitched. As it is, it’s probably too late for that, and you’ll end up with a scar. It’s a good thing your hair is thick.”

“Why?” he asked, his head tilted in curiosity. “For all its thickness, my hair did not protect my head from injury.”

She frowned at him. “It’s good it’s thick because it will hide the scar.”

He sat silently for a moment, studying her. “What is a ‘scar’?”

“What is a scar?” she echoed, and he nodded. She closed her eyes for a moment as sadness filled her. Was that the answer, then?

The poor soul was mentally incompetent! She’d seen other simple people who had great physical beauty, serene faces, unlined regardless of age, because they had no cares, no worries to mark them. It explained much, she thought, then reeled under the barrage of new questions her conclusion raised.

Maybe he seemed intelligent at times, but there were idiots savant, weren’t there, who could play beautiful music, but not be trusted to walk across the street alone? There were those who could add massive columns of figures in their heads, but were unable to master the complexities of putting on their own socks. Maybe this man had something going for him, but a good vocabulary wasn’t part of it.
What is a scar, indeed.

“I need to know who you are,” she said gently, ignoring his question about the scar. It was unlikely he’d remember having asked it, or care about the reply if he did. “You have to tell me how you got here.” She managed what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “Someone must be worried about you.”

Again, he looked at her sadly. “My entire Octad will be concerned, disturbed by my absence—assuming they still live.” His throat worked as he swallowed. “I have no sense of them! Not even of Fricka, who maintains our surround. Only of you...and some dim points of light and strength where assistance might have been found had you not come. But you did, so I released them.”

“You...released them,” she echoed. “I’m sure they appreciated it.” Not that she believed him for a minute, but...the fact remained, she was here, in this cave, and she had the creepy suspicion that he had actually caused her to make the hike up the mountain. The “how” of it all was another matter. One she chose not to dwell on too long.

Moving closer, she touched his hand gently. His skin was nicely warmed now. It felt good, touching him. She wanted to wrap her fingers around his wrist and slide them up over his arm, to feel the crispness of the hair that lay so neatly, almost invisible, over his skin. She wanted to crowd closer, press her cheek against his bare chest. She wanted to slide her arms around his torso and rock him tenderly, cradle him, nurture him, feel him nurturing her. She wanted to touch that necklace again! She wanted that quite desperately, wanted to...
know!

What is it you wish to know?
his voice asked inside her head. She was sure it was inside her head. She had heard him, yet his lips had not moved. They still did not as he added,
You need only ask. Touch my Kahinya again and it will share my life with you.

Quickly, Lenore edged back again. “Who are you?” she demanded, surprised by the hoarseness of her voice. What she had really wanted to ask was
What are you?
That, alone, the realization she was actually unsure of what he was, was enough to further terrify her.

“I am Jon,” he said. He smiled, a smile that beguiled her, drew her to him as strongly as had the warmth of his skin. “Yes, it could be short for Jonathon,” he added, though she had not said that name aloud. “Do you like it?”

She stared at him.

He nodded. “You do. It is a good name. You may call me that if you wish, though I am more accustomed to Jonallo, or simply Jon.”

“Jonallo?” The emphasis was on the middle syllable. When he said it, it came out like a phrase from a song. When she did, it sounded like...like some kind of skin preparation to take care of itching.

“That is correct. My parents, Attana and Ling, named me so. It means Bold One. And you are Lenore.”

Had she told him so? Had she called him by his name since arriving in the cave? Obviously, she must have, but she didn’t remember. A vague memory surfaced, of the voice in her living room using her name. She shoved it away.

“All right Jon,” she said, refusing to try again—or for that matter—buy into the ‘Jonallo’ name he wanted her to believe, or the names of his supposed parents. What kinds of names were those, anyway? Ling? He certainly lacked any visible connection to the Chinese race. He was going to great lengths to confuse her and she recognized a snow-job when she saw one. He reminded her of the many people she had met who pretended to be so open and above-board that no one, not even the IRS, could possibly doubt the veracity of their tax returns. She’d learned to watch out for them—they could be dangerous to her professional integrity. They were the kinds of people she insisted reveal every detail of their taxable transactions. Luckily, in her profession, she was allowed a reader that could delve more than just superficially into any client’s chip. If any refused to cooperate with her, she refused to work for them. Too bad she didn’t have it with her in this cave. Or even in the log house down the mountain.

She’d simply have to rely on her own instincts.

“Now, let’s have the truth,” she said. “Let’s start with the basics. What are you doing in this cave, without your clothes?”

“I am a mountain climber,” he said. “I was climbing in the nude for a photographer who sells the pictures to a...company that makes postcards. People from foreign... He pursed his lips before going on, as if he were searching for an unfamiliar word again. “Foreign...nations buy them.”

Lenore put even greater distance between them. She stared at him through the heat shimmer as she crouched to lay another few chunks of poplar on the fire. Had she been talking aloud during her speculations? It wouldn’t surprise her. She’d been babbling to herself all week.

“I see,” she said. “And where is the photographer?”

“I do not know.”

“Where is your climbing gear?”

He blinked, looked thoughtful and then shrugged those magnificent shoulders. His abdomen rippled above the silver fabric of the sleeping bag. “Perhaps...up there,” he said.

He glanced at the cleft in the rocks where the smoke wafted away.

“I was up there and fell, uh, through.” His tone was bright, as was his smile. His expression was one of pride. “I slid down that chimney and crawled to where I now lie.”

“Yes,” she said, narrowing her gaze at his handsome, ingenuous face. “Where you now ‘lie’. Lie, as in ‘tell untruths’.”

Again, he looked so guilty she wanted, inanely, to laugh. “I have no wish to tell you untruths, but...”

She glared at him in irritation, paced back to stand at the bottom of the ledge, her eyes on a level with his as he sat leaning on her pack. “But what? That story about the climbing, about the photographer, it’s too pat, Jon,” she said. “Too much an almost verbatim repetition of what you must have heard me saying while you pretended to be unconscious, and I don’t accept it now any more than I did then. I was merely speculating in the absence of any concrete evidence.”

He looked perplexed, charmingly so, much too charmingly so. “I did come through that chimney. Or perhaps just...near it.”

“No damn way!”

Snatching up the lightcell, she rushed to the back of the cave, crouched, narrowed the beam and shone it upwards. She turned back to him triumphantly. “As I thought. It hasn’t enlarged itself miraculously over the past twenty years. You’d need to have as little substance as the smoke from the fire to have come through that cleft. Now I strongly suggest, mister, that the next few things you tell me had better be true, or I walk out of this cave and forget I ever met you.”

He looked at her for a long moment as if assessing the depths of her intentions, then said, “I had much less substance than the smoke when I came through that crevice, or perhaps through the—the very stone itself—of these cavern walls. But because I was weak, because I was lost, alone, I could not control my descent. I lacked the strength and cohesion provided by my Octad.”

“So how did you get here, then?” she shouted, entirely losing her patience.

“My—” Again, there was a word that sounded almost like a song, so alien to her she could only guess at which language it might have its root in, but he touched his necklace— “was able to give me guidance. It sought shelter for me, and found it in this cave, but even it, due to electronic interference from the solar storm, could not prevent my materializing before time.”

Lenore sank down onto a stack of rock-slabs near the fire. “Materializing,” she said. Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears. Sickly, she recalled the times when he had not been in the cave with her—or had not seemed to be. Had he been “dematerialized” then?

Feeling like Alice, she asked him.

He nodded. “I was dematerialized. But now I am fully corporeal.” He thumped his very solid chest with hard knuckles. “I will maintain my corporeal state. Be as solid as you are, so you can see me. So you can touch me. I enjoy having you touch me. Will you do it again?”

Lenore had serious doubts as to her own personal state, corporeal and mental, but held back from expressing them. “Not on your Nelly, pal!”

His face took on a half-questioning look, head tilted slightly to one side. “I cannot access the word ‘nellypal’. Will you explain it for me?”

“I’ll explain nothing to you until you tell me what the hell you’re doing here, where you were when you weren’t here, and when you expect to disappear again.” She glared at him. “I hope it’s soon!”

Jon recognized the fear in her tone, and wished she would allow him to properly alleviate it. Since she would not, he would have to do his best without the required soothing mind-touch. “I will not disappear again,” he said. “I did it only because it was very difficult for me, in my weakened condition, to maintain control over my form. The food, water, and warmth you brought me will allow me to remain as I am now, and to heal.”

“Another lie,” she accused, her gaze following his fingertips as he lifted a hand to his head.

“Oh, no. It is the truth.”

“Jon...if your name is Jon, you are beginning to annoy me mightily! Get on with it. Tell me your story!”

“If I must, to please you, then I will, however, you know it yourself, if you would but admit it. I have given you all the information you need. More, you took from my
Aleea-Kahinya
.”

“Ah-lee-yah-ka—what?”

“Ah-
lee
-yah-kah-
heen
-yah,” he said slowly. Again, he touched his necklace and, for an instant, he knew how deeply she longed to do the same.

Her entire being reverberated as she projected the desire to revisit his home. Through the brief glimpse she expelled, he knew she would always think of it as a beautiful, magical garden filled with sweet scents, warm breezes, dazzling birdsong and that incredible sense of peace. As her throat ached with the need to return there, so did his, to help her return, if just for a moment. He admired the courage and determination she evinced as she forced her mind away from the temptation to touch his
Kahinya
, or even the single
Aleea
she had stroked.

“
Aleea
-
Kahinya
,” she repeated, then frowned, her mouth twisting to one side as if in disgust. He sensed she was disappointed in the way the words came out flat and unmusical in her voice. Without her knowledge that she was once more projecting, he heard her mind say the syllables over and over, striving for the proper lilt. He knew she had heard it. He knew, too, that soon, she would be able to replicate it. She had an amazingly quick and agile mind. She needed only train her vocal processes.

“We seldom use the full word, though,” he continued. “Just
Kahinya
. Each of us has one. Our parents create it for us at birth, with only two small
Aleeas
. As a child grows and learns, he adds more
Aleeas
to his
Kahinya
.”

“What does it do for you?” she asked, then spun away, angrily. Of course. She hadn’t wanted to ask, because she didn’t want to give him or his story any credence at all. The fact that she had blurted out the question gave him hope.

“It is my center,” he explained. “It holds all my memories and those of my family for whenever I choose to access them. Because in my employment I must do much traveling, I have so chosen on many occasions. I need only to touch it to be where I want to be, with those whom I love, in places where I feel safe and happy. The
Aleea
you touched took us to my grandparents’ estate on the Isle of Nokori. It is a beautiful place, is it not?”