Wild Heart (11 page)

He put it on the little round table beside the chair she was sitting in. West's gift had had colored ribbons around it for a decoration, so Michael had tied the string from his pencils around the pretty silver fish. The bow hadn't turned out right because the string was too short, so he'd added a flower, a yellow one he'd found in the walled garden. The fish smelled good, and he thought it looked beautiful.

He wasn't sure what to say. Everybody stopped talking, and Sydney looked at Michael, then at the present. She had a glass in her hand, full of something orange that smelled terrible, not as bad as O'Fallon's bottle but almost. She had on a dress the same color as spring grass, and a filmy belt around the middle that was yellow. Sometimes she wore her hair down, not up, with pretend-flowers holding it behind her ears somehow. She had it that way now, and it was his favorite, because he could see the fox colors better, and he could almost feel how soft it would be if he touched it.

What had West said when he'd given her the flowers?
These are for you,
he thought. Something like that.

He put his hands behind his back so she wouldn't know he was nervous. "This is for you." She didn't say anything, so he added, "It's a present for you. From me." Still nothing. "Because you gave me one." He felt the first stirrings of unease. Taking one step back, he made himself say, "I am returning it in kind."

He wanted to turn around and see why Sam and Philip were coughing, but Sydney's face was too interesting. He could see the whites around her blue eyes, they were so big. Then she ducked, but he could still see her cheeks and forehead and ears all turn bright pink. She put her glass in her lap and her other hand over her mouth.

This was wrong. He remembered the things she'd said to West—"Oh, Charles, they're
beautiful,
where did you ever find them? How very thoughtful—
thank
you, Charles"—and on and on for a long time, smiling, touching West on the arm. And all for some flowers with no scent, and no use except to look at. Wasn't a fresh, fat fish a better gift than that?

Miss Winter made a noise in her throat; he looked at her, thin as a dead sapling, sitting in the big chair by the window, and saw that she looked ... he didn't know the word.
Surprised
wasn't enough. Next to her, Dr. Winter had his hand over his mouth, the same way Sydney did.

Then he understood. They were all laughing at his fish. At him.

He could feel his face turn red, like Sydney's.
Oh, God,
he thought. He wished he could disappear, but he was afraid to move. Anything he did would be wrong now. Sydney lifted her pink face, and he saw that she was crying.

Crying.
He went close again, leaned over her, "Sydney, don't cry, don't cry. I'll take it away. I'll eat it myself."

A sound exploded out of her mouth, like a captured thing suddenly bursting free. He froze, horrified—until he realized that high, liquid, trilling sound was her laughter. And he loved that sound. And her eyes, overflowing with tears, were warm and sorrowful and sweet, asking him to please, please understand.

Then it was easy. He looked at his fish, wrapped in string with a flower on top and resting on the shiny wood table. He had given Sydney a dead fish. Everybody in the drawing room was laughing or trying not to, even the dog. What could he do? He threw back his head and laughed with them.

* * * * *

"Michael, it was a wonderful gift."

"No, it wasn't."

"Yes, it was. It was thoughtful and practical, and you made it yourself. So to speak. And it was a nice fish, a
beautiful
fish, really. As they go."

"What kind was it? What do you call it?"

"Philip said a whitefish.".

"Whitefish."

They were sitting in the garden in the twilight, watching fireflies twinkle in the treelops and listening to the birds call good nights across the paling sky. Sydney laughed softly, again, and beside her Michael chuckled. She couldn't stop thinking about the way the fish had looked, with its mouth gaping and its yellow eye staring, stretched out on the mahogany piecrust table next to the silver and cut-glass sherry decanter in Aunt Estelle's pristine drawing room. And every time she thought of it, she laughed.
Thank God
Michael had a sense of humor.

She leaned against his shoulder, sharing the joke, letting her affection for him show. Laughter made the fastest, easiest friendships, she'd always thought. At this moment she felt closer to him than she ever had, with none of the tension or strangeness that had colored their relationship in the beginning.

"Listen," she whispered. "Isn't it pretty?"

"Yes. What's it called?"

"It's a wood thrush." They listened to the rich, flutelike notes in a companionable hush, both smiling. "Thoreau wrote something about the thrush I never forgot. He wrote, 'Whenever a man hears it he is young, and nature is in her spring; whenever he hears it, it is a new world and a free country, and the gates of heaven are not shut against him.' "

Michael expelled a soft breath, his still face full of emotion. "Wait here, Sydney," he whispered. "Don't move, and be very quiet."

"Why?"

"Shh." He smiled. "Another gift." And he was gone, silent as a shadow.

She listened intently, but she couldn't hear anything except the sounds of dusk, crickets tuning, sleepy birds chirping. And the lake lapping against the shore, soft slapping sounds tonight, familiar as her own heartbeat.

What would become of Michael MacNeil? She wasn't sure if he'd had the fortune or the misfortune to end up in the custody of her scatterbrained father. She worried about him more every day; the longer she knew him, the more she wanted for him. And feared for him. He was such an innocent, in some ways a child in a man's body. How would he make his way in the wicked world? She wanted to sit her father down and make him
concentrate,
focus on this intriguing problem that had fallen into his lap, and come up with a
plan.
Michael must live from day to day, moment to moment, with no idea of a future, no shape to it in his mind. It wasn't fair, and it wasn't kind. By a trick of fate he'd become the Winter family's responsibility, and she was impatient for all of them to start shouldering it.

"Sydney."

She barely heard her name, he'd whispered it so quietly. He was behind her—how had he gotten there?—but she didn't move, didn't even turn her head, because he'd told her not to. Without a sound, he sat down on the bench, but facing the other way, so the right side of his body grazed the right side of hers. With slow and careful movements, they turned toward each other.

She wasn't surprised to see him cradling something in his hands. In her heart she even knew what it was, although her mind still told her it couldn't be. Slowly, so slowly, he opened the soft box his hands made, and inside, calm and beautiful, its little heart beating fast, sat the wood thrush.

Sydney was afraid to move, couldn't even sigh. The bird had huge black eyes and rust-colored wing feathers and a speckled breast. Michael breathed, "I took her from her nest. She has four eggs. I must let her go soon."

Sydney gave one slow, careful nod. She was still holding her breath. She wanted to stroke the sleek curve of the head, feel the flicker of the pulse in the warm throat, but she didn't dare. "She's wonderful. So lovely." And she wasn't afraid, or else Michael had put a spell on her. His hand on top was soothing, not holding her, and still the bird was motionless, the shiny eyes alert but not frightened.

He took his right hand away and held his left out and up. Sydney drew back a fraction of an inch, preparing for a wild flutter of wings and a scramble for freedom. But nothing happened. The thrush turned her head in quick jerks, surveying the lay of the land, as if intrigued by her new perspective. Michael laid the side of his index finger against her breast, and she jumped onto it, pink-legged and pointy-clawed. Another silent, breathless moment passed. Each second they kept her was like a miracle. It ended when she suddenly sprang up and flashed away into the night, with nothing but a gentle
whish.
And when she was gone, Sydney could scarcely believe they'd ever had her at all.

"Wood thrush," Michael murmured into the quiet that followed. "I like knowing the names. What things are called."

"Michael."

"Yes?"

"How on earth did you do that?"

He moved his shoulders, smiling.

"Thank you. It was a most wonderful gift."

"Did you like her?"

"Very much. She was beautiful. Thank you."

Her words made him turn to her, angle his body on the bench so that they were face-to-face. Before he lowered his long black lashes, she saw something in his eyes, a look of expectancy that had her nerves jumping, even before she knew consciously what the look meant. And she was sure of it once it hit her: he thought they might kiss now. Because she'd kissed Charles after he'd given her flowers. Michael had seen them. He thought grateful gift receivers showed their gratitude with kisses.

Well, they did, sometimes. Frequently. It was a courtesy, a social reflex . . . nothing one needed to think too hard about. . . .

She couldn't think at all. She made the mistake of glancing at him again, and caught him staring at her mouth. The stillness, the fascination, the hunger in him stopped her heart for one long, dizzy second. But afterward, he made no move toward her, didn't try to touch her. The yearning silence deepened.

Had she been wrong? After all, what did he know of kisses? Twice he'd seen her kiss Charles; and Sam, much more often, although that was a different kind of kissing. He'd probably seen her kiss Philip and Aunt Estelle. Her father.

On second thought, he knew quite a lot.

But she was making too much of it. All this unbearable tension must be coming from her, not Michael. He was only sitting there, gazing off to the side now, his dark, clear-cut profile beautiful in the dusk. Breathless with daring, she leaned toward him and pressed her lips to his hard cheek.

He sat perfectly still, his only movement the rapid blinking of his eyelashes. The smell of him was soap and pine and man. "Thank you," she murmured, and laid her cheek lightly against his, reluctant to draw away just yet. But he never moved or spoke. She sat back, uncertain. Her heart was pounding hard and fast. He wouldn't even look at her. She touched his arm.

It was trembling, the muscles corded and rock-hard. Then she saw his fingers gripping the edge of the iron bench between them, the tough tendons flexing in the back of his hand.

She stood up quickly, awkwardly. Absurd to be afraid of Michael, and yet fear was what she felt. Sharp, panicky fear, of something wild and dark, unpredictible, and held in check by a white-knuckled control she had no idea if she could trust.

"Well, I'd better go in—it's late—my aunt—" She took a deep breath. His pale eyes pierced her, seeing through her confusion and her incoherence. He understood her fear, and he accepted it. Approved of it.

That scared her more than anything.

She lifted her hand toward him and let it fall. "Good night, Michael." She made her voice light, careless, denying that any of this was happening. But it was, and he knew it.

Chapter 7

Michael's new sitting room had a clock. It sat on a shelf on the wall, wagging its wooden tail behind a glass door all day and all night. Sticks floated past numbers, telling you what time it was if you knew how to tell time. The sticks would say one thing, then you'd turn your back to put on your shirt or comb your hair, and when you looked again they'd say something else. Now he knew they moved all the time, because he'd seen them, slow, so slow, like the moon rising or the stars coming out in the night sky. You had to be patient and watchful, like when you were waiting for a rabbit to finally poke its nose out of a burrow so you could catch it. His sitting room had furniture, too. A lot of it, all heavy and dark, made of wood but smelling like oil and wax. There was paper glued to the walls, with a picture of the same thing over and over—a bunch of blue flowers tied with white ribbons. He had a desk, two chairs, a cabinet, books he couldn't read, a bowl of dried-up flowers and reeds, and a window with no bar on it.

In his bedroom he had a box with a door for his clothes, with a mirror on the door so he could see his whole body if he wanted to. There was a chair that rocked back and forth when he sat in it. But it made too much noise; he didn't feel safe in it. He didn't use it.

His new bed had a cloth roof, and another bed under it you could pull out and have two beds. He didn't sleep in either one. Every night he took the heavy cover off the big bed and curled up with it on the floor, and every morning he put it back on the bed.

The house was quiet tonight. Sam had gone to sleep— that always made it quiet—-but another reason was because Sydney and Philip had gone to the fair. No one was here but Dr. Winter and Aunt Estelle—Miss Winter, rather. At first Dr. Winter was going to go with Sydney and Philip to the fair, but the aunt said, "I will not be left alone in this house with that man." She hadn't meant for Michael to hear that, but she had a voice like a crow, he could be under water and still hear it. Two days ago he'd heard her say, "His manners are atrocious," after Sydney had invited him to eat dinner with her family. Since then, he'd been taking his meals in his room by himself.

The stairs creaked. His room was on the ground floor, but he always knew when someone was going up or down. He listened; Dr. Winter was saying something to his sister. "Well, if they are late, it's your fault," she said back to him. "If Philip had been confined as I advised, he wouldn't be out tonight at all." Dr. Winter said something else. "Well, at least you've got
one
sensible child," the aunt said before their voices got too faint to hear.

He heard a door close upstairs, then another. Under his door came that sharp, sweet smell that meant someone had turned off the gaslights. The house creaked and cracked. A moth beat against his window; a mosquito bit the back of his hand and flew away before he could slap it. The clock clicked. The house went to sleep.

Michael got up from the chair in his sitting room. He left his shoes where they were and went quietly down the long corridor to the front door, where the stairs came down and the hallway turned right. The house was shaped like one of Professor Winter's pipes, with a long, thin body and one fat wing stuck on behind, facing the lake. The terrace in back was a half circle, and you could get to it from either wing by going out through the dining room, the drawing room, or the professor's study. Moving softly so as not to wake up the dog, who wasn't smart like a wolf and might bark if he saw him, Michael headed for the study.

Instead of turning on the bright light, he lit a candle he found on the desk in a shiny metal holder with a handle. Shaking out the match, he thought for the hundredth time or so about what it would have meant, how it would have changed things, if he'd had matches to light fires at home. He'd had the thought so often, he could let it go now; it no longer interested him.

He carried the candle to the wall with the books, rows and rows of books, one on top of the other, all the way to the ceiling. He knew the one he wanted; he had seen the professor put it back after looking at a picture in it. It was on a high shelf, thick, with a dark red leather cover and gold letters. He pulled it out, took it to Dr. Winter's desk, and sat down.

The beginning part, the first half at least, was all words, small, mysterious scratchings on the crisp white pages. He turned past them to the pictures, to the back where he knew
wolf was.

There. He put his fist on his chest, pressed with his knuckles to try to stop the pain. The wolf picture didn't really look like the old wolf—this one was small and too white, probably a female. But still, it made him cry, and it made him sick for home. He wondered if his friend had lived through the bitter, hungry winter. Without Michael to help him, he didn't see how he could have lived. More likely he'd starved, or died slow in a trap, or gotten sick. Michael couldn't stand to think about it. Worst was thinking of the old wolf dying alone.

He wiped his face and turned to another page. Here were two foxes, one dark and one light. He could read the word under them, f-o-x, but not the other two words, r-e-d and g-r-a-y. He knew the letters, but he'd forgotten how to read them. He could only read "fox" because he
knew
it was a fox. But this animal on this page, he knew it so well, had played games with it, come into its burrow, eaten its food and shared his own—and he couldn't read its name. B-a-d-g-e-r. It meant nothing, just a string of letters dancing in front of his eyes. Frustration made him smack the book closed, almost snuffing out the candle.

He opened it again, and went back to the pictures. He knew owl, raccoon, skunk. Bear. Because he'd always known them. But what was m-a-r-t-e-n? And f-i-s-h-e-r? He
knew
them, but what were their names? What were the snakes, twelve kinds, all with different names? What were the birds? He only knew
robin
from before, and
wood thrush
because Sydney had told him.

To calm himself, he turned to the pages with trees and bushes. Trees were better; some of them even grew here, all around the house. It wasn't so bad that he couldn't name this one, s-p-r-u-c-e, even though he'd eaten its hard, brown flowers. He stared at the pictures and pretended he was home, looking out over a rolling green forest from a hilltop in the summertime. Birds circling in big loops, and the sky too blue to look at. Peace. Calm. Safety, for a while. Nothing to hear but the plop of an acorn, the whisper of a pod gliding to the ground. Smell of earth. Warm skin, sun making his hair hot. Rasp of an insect. Peace.

He heard the sound of wheels turning, the clop-clop of a horse. He sat up straight, ears straining. He heard a carriage door open and close, and two men's voices, one Philip's. The carriage started, and then moved away. Steps on the porch, and now the front door opening. Sydney said, "Shhh," and something too soft to hear, and Philip laughed. Thud of footsteps on the staircase.

Michael turned back to his book—but straightened again when he heard the light, quiet steps, under the heavy ones on the stairs. Sydney's steps. She was coming down the hall to this room.

He had remembered to close the door when he came in. She opened it and looked inside, curious and careful.

"Michael!"

He got up and moved over to the terrace door so she could come close to the desk if she wanted to. This was his habit now; he'd been staying away from her since the night in the garden, when she'd put her lips on his cheek.

Kiss.
Sometimes he tried not even to look at her. He'd scared her that night—he'd wanted to take his hands all over her, keep her in his arms and press his mouth against her skin, her hair, her mouth. He wanted to do that now. So he backed away and kept his distance.

The scent of her was exciting, confusing; she smelled of people and food and horses, and a hundred other things he couldn't name. Her face was pinker than usual, and she looked tired. But happy.

"I came to get a book," she said, looking at him, looking at the burning candle, wondering about him.

"Did you like the fair?" he said. He had no idea what a fair was.

"Yes. Oh, yes. It was—well, it's too late to start to tell you about it. Because it's too big, too—too everything!"

He liked seeing her like this, glowing and excited; it made her look even more beautiful. She had on a blue jacket made of velvet, unbuttoned so he could see the shirt underneath, white, with a blue tie, like a man's tie. Her skirt came down to her toes, and all he could see of her skin was her face. Even her hair was covered up with a hat, something blue with bird feathers and ribbon. She took off her gloves, and then he could see her hands.

"What are you doing?" she said.

"Looking at that book."

She went around the desk and touched his book. He was glad when she said the name out loud.
"Hudson Bay to Tennessee: A Field Guide to Eastern Forests."
She looked at him with curious eyes.

"I wish I knew the words," he admitted to her. It shamed him, but he could say this to Sydney. "I know what the pictures are, but I can't say the names."

"Oh." She nodded. She understood. "Well, I'll teach you."

He had to go closer, just a few steps. "You would?"

"Yes, I'll teach you to read."

"To read." Like Sam, he thought—he'd be able to read like Sam. It was too good. He put his hands behind his back and held them together tight. He could feel his face getting hot.
Blushing,
Sam called it.

Sydney didn't laugh at him. She knew what it meant, what he was thinking—she always knew. "We'll start in the morning," she said. "And afterward, I'll tell you all about the fair."

* * * * *

After three days, it came to Sydney why teaching Michael to read was so easy. Because she wasn't teaching him, she was
reminding
him. And he wasn't learning, he was
remembering.

"Who taught you the letters? Who gave you your book? How did you first learn to read?" When the realization struck, she had bombarded him with questions, with no idea that they were distressing him until he turned away from her, shielding his face by pushing his fingers into the hair on the side of his head. His way of hiding; not unlike her father's, but more attractive somehow. "It's all right," she had said quickly. "It doesn't matter if you can't remember. What difference does it make? Let's go on. Can you read this?"

They had begun their lessons at a table out on the terrace, which was very pleasant, but they had had to move inside when Sam wouldn't stop pestering them. His lessons at school were nowhere near as interesting as these going on between his sister and his new, special friend, and he loved to show off his own brilliance by crowing the answers to questions Sydney asked before Michael could get his mouth open. So now they sat beside each other at the big dining room table, with the door to the hall and the glass doors to the terrace firmly closed, for two hours every morning—a light schedule she had set deliberately, so that he wouldn't tire of the task too soon.

But there was no chance of that. He was a teacher's dream pupil, dedicated, attentive, eager to the point of obsession. When their time was up, he stayed put and kept on working, and nothing could budge him but the maid setting plates and silverware around him in preparation for lunch.

Needless to say, Aunt Estelle didn't approve. Her protests were vague; this tutoring business was "unsuitable," she maintained, but without explaining why. Fortunately she was preoccupied by her duties on a committee of ladies charged with protocol for the visiting dignitaries, including minor royalty, currently flocking to the World's Fair. She spent her days in meetings or on the telephone with her sister-gatekeepers, too busy for once to supervise Sydney's life, however
unsuitable
it had become.

Once he had grasped the fundamentals, Michael's reading skills progressed rapidly. Writing was harder and came much more slowly at first. He wrote in big block letters, like a child, and she knew his efforts embarrassed him. But he plodded on, dogged and determined. She taught him to write his name first, after a discussion of the various possible spellings. Was he sure it was MacNeil and not MacNeal? Or MacNeill? Or McNeal, or McNeil, or McNeill? The more options she gave him, the more confused he became, but in the end he always came back to
MacNeil.
Did he have a middle name? Michael
James
MacNeil? Robert? Edward? George? He didn't know. He thought he might have, but he couldn't be sure.

It was at this point that Sydney realized she had an opportunity to kill two very large birds with one stone. Under the guise of helping him practice his writing— which was really no guise at all, since he certainly needed the practice—she asked him to compose reports each day, short writing assignments on any subject he chose, but with a strong suggestion that he pick topics with which he was most familiar—his own past, for example.
How clever,
she thought. She could teach him composition while she discovered, without the poking and prying that made him uncomfortable, all about his fascinating history. Ingenious.

The first report wasn't quite what she'd expected.

* * * * *

Sydneys dress was green blue this day like her eys. She has smal feet and flotes when she walcks. She lafs like music.