Authors: Eden Maguire
‘… Not a good fit,’ he muttered back. ‘Oliver is a better candidate.’
Like I say, I didn’t hear most of what they said and I didn’t know who Oliver might be, but I did notice Cristal stayed at the sound board while Daniel, Aaron, Zoran and I left the studio and headed for the house.
‘Cristal has work to do,’ Zoran explained to a puzzled and disappointed Aaron. ‘Daniel, maybe you can take Aaron outside and show him our new arrivals.’
With a quick nod Daniel took Aaron towards the arena where the mustangs stood sniffing the air and tossing their tangled manes. I watched Daniel’s rear view – long legs, tight butt, broad shoulders – maybe looking for a single imperfection that would steady my rapid pulse. Nope, nothing. And now the guy could train horses too.
‘I’ll let you into a secret – Daniel is really into you,’ Zoran confided without a shade of embarrassment.
What can I say? I didn’t know what to do with the information but I was deeply flattered and my pulse continued to race. ‘So I guess I should carry on with my hike,’ I sighed.
‘Let me show you something first,’ he offered with a smile. ‘With your background, I just know you’ll find this interesting.’
He led the way through the main door into the white marble hallway, down two storeys in the elevator and along the silent corridor beyond. ‘You like ethnic art?’ he checked. ‘I have an extremely rare object to show you.’
I nodded, expecting him to stop and deliver a short lecture as we reached the row of Aztec masks – origins, spiritual significance, that sort of thing. He would pick one out – maybe Tepeyo-thingy, god of the underworld. But no, he was in so much of a hurry to show me his latest precious object that he brushed carelessly against the last mask in the row. I held my breath and watched as the mask – a ceramic representation of a primitive elongated face decorated in a red and black – slipped from its hook and fell to the floor.
I heard the impact, saw the mask smash and fragment, immediately crouched to help Zoran pick it up. But the shards seemed to shift under my fingers, sliding together again as if drawn by a magnet and fitting right back into place. I found myself staring down at the black circles painted around two bulging eyes and the piece of bone piercing a broad nose. The mask was back to its original condition as if the accident had never happened.
‘Not a problem,’ Zoran said with a strange knot of concentration between his brows. He put the mask back on its hook.
‘But how—’
‘Don’t ask,’ he cut in. ‘Just follow.’
First I wanted to yelp then I wanted to groan. That was so weird, like stepping out of reality into a dream for five brief seconds – so short that now I couldn’t believe that it had happened. Shaking my head, I almost felt my brain rattle inside my skull.
‘Come with me,’ Zoran insisted. He led me into a storage room next to the small cinema where we’d watched the recording of last week’s wildfire and went to a white cabinet built into an alcove in the wall. Sliding out a drawer, he beckoned me across.
So now I was looking down at a small, solid gold figurine – a snake’s head with pointed teeth in its jaws and a long, forked tongue hanging down. The body curved in an S-shape and ended in a plate decorated with bright-green stones. The whole thing was perhaps three centimetres long. ‘What is it?’ I asked, still queasy after the mask episode.
‘A labret,’ he told me. ‘Hold it. Feel how heavy it is.’
I saw what he meant – the ornament was solid, smooth and heavy, cold in my palm.
‘An Aztec ruler would wear it through his lower lip. This one belonged to Mochtezuma in the year 1519, the year of disaster when the Spanish came to Mexico.’
‘This is almost five centuries old!’ I whispered. The thing was ugly but held some kind of fascination – maybe in the fact that those people would voluntarily mutilate their faces to wear them. Face piercings go way back, it seems.
‘They believed in omens – a comet blazing across the sky at noon, a temple destroyed by lightning and flames.’ Zoran paused and studied my reaction. ‘What’s your take on omens, Tania? I know your opinion of miracles, but do you believe in supernatural warnings?’
‘I never thought about it,’ I murmured, wondering why Zoran’s attention was once more focused on deep subjects. The snake’s eyes were made of the same sparkling stones – probably emeralds. They seemed alive in the gold head, following you as you moved.
‘The year 1519 was the year Mochtezuma saw a huge tongue of flame burning in the night sky above Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. That’s when he knew that his empire was at an end. Look here.’ Opening another drawer, Zoran lifted out a rolled parchment. ‘Not the original, of course,’ he told me. ‘It’s a facsimile. Actually, this is a translation from the Spanish describing what the invaders found when they seized the city: “A land rich in gold, pearls and other things … There are in the city many large and beautiful houses … along one of the causeways run two aqueducts made of mortar … the citizens are dressed with elegance. Considering that these people are barbarous, lacking knowledge of God, it is remarkable to see all that they have.” What do you think of that?’
‘Amazing, totally. Is it OK if I take a picture of the snake?’
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t,’ Zoran objected, seeing me slide my hand into my pocket for my camera.
And here was something else weird – suddenly I couldn’t move my fingers. They stiffened up and started to tingle, like a bad case of pins and needles.
Zoran took the parchment and the gold snake and put them back into their shallow drawers. ‘My insurers are pretty strict over how this stuff is stored,’ he explained, staring hard at the pocket where I kept my camera. ‘One of the clauses states absolutely no photographic imagery.’
‘Sure.’ I felt a shiver of fear then my hand stopped hurting and my normal movement returned. ‘Now I really have to leave.’
This time Zoran didn’t stop me. ‘Cristal will show you out,’ he said abruptly.
His beautiful sound recordist showed up right on cue. She arrived silently, smiled at me and beckoned for me to follow.
I left feeling that I’d just undergone some kind of test and wondering if I’d passed. I don’t know how I got that impression – maybe in the way Zoran seemed to have stage-managed everything; the meeting on Black Rock, the presence of Aaron at the house, the presentation of horse-whisperer Daniel in the best possible light. And now his sudden and total fading of interest in me as Cristal led me from the house.
‘I’ll find Aaron, check if he wants a ride back to town,’ I told her as we said goodbye.
‘Sure. Try the arena,’ she said, turning back through the sliding doors without showing the slightest reaction. Had she really been dating him, or had Aaron made the whole thing up just to make Holly jealous?
I made my way across to the round pen to find Daniel alone with the mustangs.
‘Aaron left,’ he said, flashing me a warm smile. ‘He had things to do.’
‘Me too.’ Straight away forgetting the topic of Aaron, I felt my heart rate speed out of control. The dust-covered horses milled around Daniel, who stood calm and confident amongst them.
‘Before you go,’ he said, stepping on to the lower fence rail then vaulting clean over, ‘I do really want to spend time with you, Tania. No strings; just getting to know you.’
Oh God, my heart bumped and raced along! ‘It’s difficult,’ I murmured.
‘Really – no strings.’ He looked at me long and hard then turned with me to walk up the mountain, hands in pockets, staring at the ground.
I felt the impact of that golden gaze, found that I couldn’t talk and didn’t have the power to tell Daniel no.
‘You’re special. You don’t know it but you are,’ he said. Then we walked a while in silence before he elaborated. ‘I think you’re exotic, like the bird of paradise – like you don’t belong round here.’
I listened, looked up at the peak of Black Rock shimmering in the midday heat, glanced at Daniel’s amazing face. ‘Same here,’ I breathed. ‘You guys are totally different.’
‘A breath of fresh air?’ he grinned. He stopped suddenly in the shade of a gnarled pinon pine, bowed his head and looked up at me from under half-closed lids. ‘Don’t let Zoran intimidate you.’
‘He doesn’t,’ I lied.
‘He’s in control around here and that’s the way he likes it. But we don’t have to meet at Black Eagle Ranch. It could be someplace else.’
‘I don’t know,’ I pleaded. ‘I need to think.’ Shaded pale-blue eyes were staring at me, heavy lashes casting deeper shadows.
‘I’ll call you,’ Daniel promised, quickly turning and walking away.
M
y shallow, shallow heart.
I was so caught up in my latest meeting with Daniel, endlessly replaying our short conversation and the precious glances that passed between us that I wiped the morning’s images from my digital camera – maybe when my hands cramped and I got pins and needles. I guess I pressed ‘delete’ by mistake.
‘Play!’ Holly commanded that same afternoon. She’d thrust a tennis racket into my hand, shoved me on court to partner Orlando then gone to join Aaron on the other side of the net. Let me add right here that Orlando and I had not yet talked through his latest high-drama, door-slamming exit from my place, and hostile rays were currently zapping me from his side of the court.
The game began and I struck the ball without giving it my full attention. It landed in the net.
‘Fifteen love,’ Holly announced, crouching low at the net for Aaron to deliver his next serve.
I’d accidentally deleted my photographs but not the memories of Daniel working with the mustangs – long and lean, surrounded by dusty, sweating horse flesh.
Whack
! – I hit a forehand straight at Holly. She volleyed back, found the gap between me and Orlando.
‘Thirty love!’
Daniel had told me I was special and exotic. I returned the third serve down the line; Aaron hit it into the net. Thirty fifteen. ‘Did you get home OK?’ I muttered as he stooped to pick up the ball.
He nodded uncomfortably. ‘Don’t tell Holl I was at the lodge, OK?’
‘Are you two still on a break?’
‘Yeah, but …’
‘OK, I won’t say a word.’
He served again – a double fault. Holly looked disgusted with her partner’s poor performance.
Daniel had promised a no-strings, getting-to-know-me deal. How would that work? Ouch! A ball from Holly hit me in the gut. Forty fifteen.
‘You played like an idiot,’ she told me after the game had ended.
Later, in the clubhouse, Jude showed up without Grace. If you knew how joined at the hip those two used to be, you’d realize how odd that was.
He came in looking lost and worried.
‘No Grace?’ Holly asked, making space for him on the sofa.
Jude shook his head and accepted a Coke from Orlando.
‘How are things?’ I muttered. ‘Are you two getting along any better?’
‘Worse,’ he sighed. ‘I just came from her house. She won’t even see me.’
Holly soon muscled in, leaning across and tackling the topic head on. ‘You want my advice? Things between you two have gotten too intense; you should take some time out.’
‘Like you and Aaron?’ Jude shrugged. ‘The problem with that is – I care about Grace.’
‘So?’ she bristled. ‘Aaron knows I care about him, don’t you, Aaron? It doesn’t mean we can’t give each other some space.’
Aaron gave me a meaningful stare.
OK, OK! I stared back.
‘But I’m worried about her.’ Jude’s not normally a guy who shares his feelings, but right now he obviously needed to vent. ‘She’s changed so much I hardly know her.’
‘In what way?’ Holly pressed.
‘She’s different. I haven’t seen her smile in a week.’
‘Yeah, that’s not normal,’ Orlando agreed. ‘Grace is always so chilled about things.’
‘Now she stresses all the time. It’s making her sick. Plus, she won’t eat.’
‘You guys didn’t make up properly after the party?’ I checked. I was thinking a million things that I wasn’t free to mention, not only about Aaron and Cristal but about Grace and Ezra at the party, and I felt certain that Jude and Grace’s current problem would link straight back to Black Eagle Lodge.
He sighed then picked at his fingernails. ‘Grace went ahead and met the Ezra guy. You saw him at the party, right?’
I nodded, still said nothing.
‘I spoke to her on the phone. She denied it, but Leo saw them together by Turner Lake. He was out there fishing until he was rained off by a freak storm. They didn’t see him. He said there was something going on between them for sure.’
‘That’s bad,’ I acknowledged.
‘It’s not just that she’s lying to me,’ Jude went on. ‘She’s started to totally make things up – weird things.’
‘Such as?’ I asked queasily, casting a worried glance in Holly’s direction.
‘She told me more about the party, admitted it was pretty wild. She said there were shooting stars in the sky, brighter than you’ve ever seen, and some of the guys dressed as gods and angels – they actually flew into the air.’
I kept on looking at Holly to see if she’d taken this in and saw her suddenly catch her breath, though she soon covered up her surprise. ‘Weird shit happened,’ she muttered. ‘We all drank way too much.’
We agreed we didn’t, I thought. My old anxieties flared up. I still really believed this wasn’t just alcohol we were talking about. ‘What else?’ I asked Jude.
‘I’m not making this up – Grace was convinced she could fly too. She recalls looking down on you guys dancing, like, levitating high above your heads.’
Now everyone was giving Jude their full attention and even Holly was silent for once. He let out a long sigh. ‘That’s how come she bruised her ankle. She says she didn’t know how to end it so she kind of crash-landed.’
‘She needs to see a doctor,’ was Orlando’s snap judgement before Jude had even finished. ‘You know what I’m saying – a shrink.’
Jude shrugged. ‘Her mom made an appointment with a counsellor. Grace refused to go.’
‘I’ll go see her, try to talk her into it,’ I promised, getting up straight away. This latest news had hit me hard.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Orlando offered, apparently wanting to make up at last.