Beautiful Warrior (5 page)

Chapter Six

Getting to the present realm was easy
. We just imagined that we were there and voila, we arrived in the middle of a country road, rife with small town charm. Birds lined up on power poles, chirping in the sun, with an occasional car or truck chugging by.

It could have been Anywhere
, USA. But it wasn’t, I reminded myself. I was knee-deep in a hallucination, trying to help Duncan stay alive when he didn’t even believe that he was going to die.

Seve
n glanced around, taking in our surroundings. “At least we landed in the right area.”

“Are we in the vicinity of the warrior’s home?”
I asked, wondering what the other warrior, the one we’d just left behind, was doing.

“Yes,
” Seven replied. “We’re fairly close to where he lives.”  He gestured to where the road became less visible. “It’s over that ridge.”

“How would you know?” Face mocked
. “Because you peeked down your pants and looked into your crystal balls?” 

The psychic wasn’t having any of it
. “Fuck off, Humpty Dumpty, and mind your own business.”

I bit back a smile
. Face did look like a depiction from that nursery rhyme, but without the arms and legs. Mr. Potato Head had been an accurate description of him, too.

When
he spotted my amused expression, he flew behind us and skulked, but I figured it was only a matter of time before he made a pest of himself again.

As for
Bud, he walked along, puffing on a stinky cigar and keeping his thoughts to himself. Dingo pranced happily beside him, pausing to lift his leg now and then.

While the dog piddled in front of a farmhouse dotted with wildflowers, we all stopped to wait for him
. Seven kept busy by reaching down to pluck a bright blue blossom.

“It’s pretty around here,” I said
, much too aware of the sentiment. Blue was Abby’s favorite color.

He
tucked the flower into a buttonhole in his shirt. “I grew up in the present realm. But it wasn’t in an area like this. I was a city dweller, sleeping in back alleys and stealing food to survive.”

“Duncan went dumpster diving
when he was on the streets, eating other people’s leftovers. He’s obsessive about hoarding groceries now.” Only he hadn’t grown up in 105. His life had been immersed in reality, aside from the strange stories Jack used to tell him. But Jack was sick, like me, so Duncan didn’t believe those stories any more than he believed mine.

Seven
resumed walking, and I fell into step beside him.

He softly said,
“It was tough sometimes, being by myself. I was only eleven when Abby created me, and I didn’t have any family. Eventually she created Dingo, Face, and Bud, and I hung out with them, but at first it was just me.”

At least Duncan had Jack from the beginning, I thought
. “I’m sorry.”

“I was scared of the monsters
. I knew they were going to try to attack me someday. Abby told me that from the start.”

My sister
had informed me about the border monsters, too, educating me about their lurking-in-the-shadows history. They were the same type of creatures that hid under children’s beds and frightened them at night. They weren’t permitted to attack kids, but they could go after them once they got older, which made Seven a prime target now that he was an adult.

“They’ve been waiting to ambush me,” he said
. “Tracking me with their red-eyed radar.”

“I know.”
  I also knew that Bud, Face, and Dingo were being targeted simply because they were associated with Seven. “But at least they can’t get any of you out in the open.”  They could only ambush them at the border, the very reason we needed the warrior to help everyone cross it.

“I just want to see
Abby again.”  He adjusted the flower, making sure it stayed secure in his shirt. “I love her so much.”

His words made me ache
. If only Duncan loved me the way Seven loved my sister. Because I didn’t know what to say, I went silent.

 
“Hey, you know what I just realized?”  He flashed his wild-spirited grin. “We’re off to see the warrior again.”

I scrunched up my nose
. He was back on the Oz kick.

 
He said, “Just think about it. You’re Dorothy, Dingo is Toto, I’m the Scarecrow, Bud is the Tin Man, and Humpty Dumpty is the Cowardly Lion.”

Face f
lew forward and flicked Seven in the back of the head. “I heard that, dipshit. And for the record, I have plenty of courage.”

“Yeah, but you don’t know how to use it.
”

“Really
? Well, think about this: you’re a moron for making yourself into the one who was searching for a brain. Seriously, that just proves what a dumb-ass you are.”

Before Seven could respond,
Bud interjected himself into the conversation. “The Scarecrow wasn’t brainless, Face. All of the characters already had what they were looking for.”

Face rolled his
standard brown eyes, making them bulge. “I know what that stupid movie is about.”

“It’s not stupid.”  Bud waved his cigar, spreading the pungent smoke
. “It’s a classic.”

“
Classically dumb,” Face mumbled.

“Just don’
t start singing the song again,” I said to Seven.

“But we are off to see the warrior, and it’s everyone this time, not just you and me
. Hell, we should all sing it.”

I shook my head
. I wasn’t going to sing or skip or do anything Dorothy did. I was too nervous about meeting the present-realm warrior to mimic a musical.

“Even the border monsters fit into it,” Seven said
. “They’re like the Wicked Witch.”  He glanced at Face, who was flapping his wing-like fingers. “Maybe I should have made you into a flying monkey instead of the lion.”

“Yeah, a
flying monkey who kicks your ass.”

“As if you could.”

“I could if I wanted to.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

They started fighting, swatting each other like flies. I sighed and glanced at Bud. He broke into a Lord-have-mercy laugh. I laughed, too, simply because of how absurd we were.

S
chizophrenic Dorothy and her twisted band of weirdos.

By
the time we approached the ridge where the warrior’s house was supposedly located I was no longer feeling giddy.

I
peered up at the sky and saw familiar cloud formations, billowing shapes of feathers, flowers, and broken arrows.

“Those are from a painting of Duncan’s called
Life
,” I said.

“Is there a house in the painting?” Seven asked.

I nodded. “A ranch-style with a pretty red barn.”

“Is that it over there?”  He gestured to a place on the other side of the road.

“Yes.”  My heart hit my chest. “That’s it.”  The property looked exactly as I remembered it in the painting, with a single-story house and a brightly painted barn surrounded by a field of grass.

Concerned about how the warrior
would perceive me, I glanced at my schoolmarm shoes, wishing I had a trendy pair of boots instead. Back in the real world, I was fussy about my appearance. Abby wasn’t, though. She was a mess most of the time. Or that was how I preferred to remember the differences between us. I’d been told that I went through bouts of being unkempt, which was why I saw Abby that way.

Nonetheless, I was grateful that Seven loved her. I’d given them the kind of relationship I longed to have.

We
cut across the field, and the clouds shifted, the shapes morphing into butterflies. Was that my way of placing myself into Duncan’s painting, of becoming a romantic part of it?

I actually wanted Duncan to do a portrait of me, but I wouldn’t dare ask him
. Lori said that he only painted people he loved. And the only person I knew of who Duncan loved had been Jack. But I had other things to think about right now, namely muddling through this hallucination without my schizophrenia getting worse.

We neared the house, the five of us staying together
. When we reached the front door, I was encouraged to knock.

I rapped lightly, but no one answered.

“Try again,” Seven said.

I knocked
harder this time, but still no answer.

Face co
mplained. “We came all this way, and he isn’t here? Talk about a waste of time.”

I frowned, wondering what we were supposed to do
. Sit on the porch and wait?

After a long pause, Seven said, “He’s in the barn
. I just got a reading on him.”

“He better be
,” Face remarked.

We
walked around to the side of the house and toward the barn. Seven’s reading was correct. The warrior came out of the building, holding the reins of a big black stallion.

He caug
ht sight of us, and I stopped in my tracks. Even from this distance, I could see his remarkable likeness to Duncan. If I didn’t know better, I could be fooled into believing that he
was
Duncan. He wore his hair banded into a ponytail, and his clothes were a casual white T-shirt and jeans.

“You should go talk to
him alone,” Seven said. “We’ll stay here in case you need us.”

With my pulse
shooting straight through my pores, I ventured off by myself, trudging through the grass toward the warrior. The horse whinnied, and I took that to be a friendly sign. Thank goodness it wasn’t snorting or pawing the ground.

As I got closer
to Duncan’s clone, I noticed that he was as aware of me as I was of him.

We came face
to face and gazed into each other’s eyes, neither of us uttering a single word.

Chapter Seven

After a long
, sweet flutter of soul-stirring, heart-jarring silence, he finally spoke.

“D
o I know you?” he asked. “You seem familiar.”

“My name i
s Vanessa.”  I was still staring at him, still reeling from his effect on me. “And we sort of know each other because of where I come from.”

“Did you create me?”

I nodded, pleased that he sensed our connection. He behaved so much like Duncan, I had to remind myself to breathe. Of course there was a significant difference. The real Duncan didn’t believe that I’d created him.

“Do you want to ride with me?” he asked.

“Where to?”

“Just some trails.”  He pointed off in the distance
, far beyond his house.

I wasn’
t about to refuse. I would go anywhere with him, even to hell and back if that was where he took me.

He boosted me onto the horse
, then hopped up behind me. We would be riding bareback, our bodies pressed intimately close. Already I was lost in his nearness. He even smelled like Duncan, with a hint of spicy cologne. And like the warrior from the previous realm, his wrists were tattooed, also mirroring Duncan’s.

He took the rein
s and guided us in the direction he wanted to go. I glanced up at the sky, curious to see if the butterfly clouds were still there, but they’d gone back to being feathers, flowers, and broken arrows. If I wasn’t already acquainted with those symbols, I would’ve thought the broken arrows were out of sync, compared to the feathers and flowers. But in most Native tribes, broken arrows represented peace. I’d learned that from Duncan, who’d researched it online.

I leaned back, toward my current companion
, taking comfort in his Duncan-like presence. We rode for a while, daylight surrounding us. The terrain was beautiful, with colorful foliage and sparkling streams. But as we traveled deeper along the trail, it became thick with trees, reminding me of the place where the other warrior had built his cabin.

We stopped in the middle of the forest
, and he helped me dismount. My feet touched the ground, leaves crunching beneath my ugly shoes.

He said,
“There’s a spot out here that opens up into a meadow. But we have to walk the rest of the way.”

“What about your horse?”
  I petted the stallion’s nose and it nuzzled my hand, treating me like an old friend.

“He’ll be fine here by himself.”

We took a narrow path with low-hanging branches crowding our way. I followed the warrior through the tight maze, captivated by his tall, dark beauty. But I always marveled at Duncan’s handsomeness, too.

Finally he announced
, “This is it.”

He c
leared the way to let me see. I gasped, but not because I was impressed. The meadow was covered with daisies, and I was afraid of what that type of flower represented to me.

Death, I thought.

Duncan had made a reference to “pushing up daises” once when he was disputing my fear of him dying, and ever since then, I could barely look at a daisy without shivering.

And now I was besieged by thousands of them.

“Come on.”  The warrior took my hand and led me to the yellow-and-white-dotted field.

He really was taking me to hell and back
. I considered running away as fast as I could, but I couldn’t bring myself to abandon him out here. I was concerned that if I did, the curse could become accelerated, killing him sooner.

“Are you all right?”
he asked, as we sat in a meadow of death.

I shook my head
. “There’s something I need to tell you.”  I told him about Abby and how her people were in danger. I mentioned Duncan and the warrior from the past. I defined the curse. I even explained the disturbing significance of the daisies.

Afterward, he replied,
“I don’t believe the flowers are harmful, but I believe everything else you said.”

Grateful that he accepted my story, I prayed
that he was right about the daisies. “Can you protect Abby’s people from the border monsters? And can you help me find the magic that will break the curse?”

“I can get
Abby’s people across the border, but I can’t help with the curse. We have magic on this realm, but it’s not strong enough for something like that. You’ll have to go to the future realm and deal with it there.”

“Just me
? Without Abby’s people?”

He nodded
. “It wouldn’t make sense for them to accompany you.”

Me
. Alone. In an ever-changing place. It made my stomach flip-flop. I didn’t need to ask who I was supposed to see while I was on that realm. Obviously, it was the future warrior.

I studied the
man seated across from me. He looked so strong and chiseled, the way Duncan looked whenever he sat in the sun. “I wish you could help with the magic.” 

“I’ll help your friends while you’re gone
. I’ll get them across the border. But that’s all I can do, Vanessa. The rest is up to you.”

“
Then I’ll do it.”  I would go the future alone, no matter how much it scared me. “I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep Duncan alive. And stop you and the other warriors from dying, too.”

“Am I really that much like Duncan
?”

“Yes, you are.” 
Battling my feelings, I scraped the dirt, digging up a handful of flowers. I desperately longed to kiss him.

I wasn’t alone in my desire.
I sensed that he wanted to kiss me, too, but he wasn’t going to let it happen. To him, I belonged to Duncan.

I released the daises I’d u
prooted and asked, “Are there wood nymphs on this realm?”

He leaned back, away from me
. “Yes.”

“Are there some who live in this forest?”

“Yes. But they only appear at night.”

“Are they your lovers?”

He frowned. “You shouldn’t ask a man about his bedmates.”

I took that to mean that he was sleeping with the nymphs
. “Duncan had a lot of lovers before he was with me.”

“And now he’s only with you?”

“Yes.”  But I doubted that Duncan would fault me for having sex with the past-realm warrior or for being attracted to this one. Not when they were patterned after him.

“We should get back
to my house so you can say goodbye to Abby’s people and prepare for the future.”

“Promis
e me that you’ll get them across the border safely.”  If something happened to them, I would never forgive myself.

“I promise
.”

“I need assurance that
the monsters won’t hurt you, either.”

“I’ll do my best to keep from being harmed
. But you said that I’m not destined to die for another year, so even if they hurt me, I’ll survive.”

“Just be careful
, okay?” 

“
I won’t take any foolish chances.”

At least he seemed cautious, unlike the old-fashioned warrio
r who thought death was power. “Thank you for everything you’re doing.”

“You’re welcome.”  He reached for my hand and helped me to my feet, the attraction between us swirling like a mist.

But once again, neither of us acted on it.

We
returned to his house, where Abby’s people were waiting. While the warrior stood in the background, I told them what the plan was.

After I explained everything
, Bud came forward to hug me, wishing me luck and telling me what a trouper I was. I thanked him with a quaver in my voice.

He stepped back, allowing Dingo to jump
into my arms. I cuddled the wiry little dog before I put him back on the ground.

Face was next
. He gave me a sour look, refusing to get affectionate. But I could tell that he was going to miss me.

And then there w
as Seven. As soon as he approached me, my eyes filled with tears. I was happy he was going home to Abby, but I’d become accustomed to having him here with me.

We embraced, and he whispered in my ear, “Dorothy had a tough time saying goodbye to the Scarecrow, too.”

I smiled through my tears, struggling not to bawl like a baby. I should have known that he would toss an Oz reference into it. “Just be good to my sister.”

“You know I will.”

We separated, and I dabbed at my eyes. “Will I see you again when this is all over? When I’m able to go home, too?”

“That’s up you.”
 

Up to me and my schizophrenia
. In a sane world, there would be no Seven. Or Abby. Or Bud or Face or Dingo. “I want to see all of you again.”  But I wanted to manage my illness, too.

He didn’t reply
. He just looked at me, obviously aware of what I was thinking. If my condition improved, he and Abby and the others would disappear.

Avoiding the complication,
I changed the subject. “Do you know what the future warrior is going to be like? Have you gotten any readings on him?”

“No
. But if there’s another painting of Duncan’s with a location that fits into this, then I suspect that’s where you’ll be going.”

“
There is, actually. It’s a mansion that’s designed to look like a castle, with a majestic landscape and reflecting pools. Duncan titled it
Magic
.”

“That works.
”

“
It absolutely does. But I still have no idea what to expect of the warrior there.”

“Y
ou certainly have a way with this one.” 

I glanced at the man in que
stion. He remained in the background, looking strong and fit in his T-shirt and jeans. “He could be Duncan in every sense.”

“Maybe the future dude
will have his qualities.”

“I hope so.”
  I glanced at the present warrior again, so completely taken with the way he carried himself.

“You
need to say goodbye to him, too.”

Yes, I did
. And it wasn’t any easier than parting company with Abby’s people. I hugged Seven one last time, then walked across the grass and approached the warrior.

We stood off to the side,
a light breeze blowing between us. I thought about putting my mouth squarely against his and stealing a passion-drenched kiss, but I refrained, keeping things as they were.

“I’ll never forget you,” I said.

“I won’t forget you, either.”  He went quiet. Then he said, “Be well, Vanessa.”

“I’m trying.”
But being well was difficult for me. To combat my sadness over leaving him, I slipped my arms around his neck.

He nuzzled my hair, the way D
uncan often did. “You better get going.”

I didn’t ask how I was supposed to travel to the
future. I knew that all I had to do was imagine being there.

“Goodbye,” I said softly against his ear.

“Bye.”  He spoke gently, too, his body warm against mine.

Before I did something stupid, like told him that I loved him,
I squeezed my eyes shut, envisioning myself in the next realm.

And letting him go
.