Authors: Elaine Lowe
She continued through the trees, coming out at the base of the Great Hill. Even to a girl brought up in the relative flatness of Geauga County, Ohio, the Great Hill of Central Park wasn’t so great. She’d crossed the Appalachians when she’d come to New York by train some six years ago. She’d read books about adventures in the Austrian Alps or the occasional magazine article about the majestic Rockies. Heck, she’d almost gone out to Frisco instead of New York, if only to experience the train ride there. Her mother had kept on talking frantically about earthquakes, so she’d gone East instead of West.
Frankly, just trudging up to the seventh floor of a building with a broken elevator gave a girl a better perspective of height than this here hill. But still, it was usually worth the climb. She’d have made the climb too, despite the snow and her dratted shoes but those people she’d felt earlier were up there. Whatever strange business they were up to so damn early on a cold March morning, she thought she’d best leave them to it. They were standing in a circle, the whole lot of them. Old folks and some women, a couple of young fellows and a kid.
Mighty curious, that’s for certain
.
She skirted around the edge of the oval track around the base of the hill. The people were all staring off toward where the sun would be rising. Well, everyone except for a little kid, who had turned and peeked out from her mother’s coat to stare at her. She was still a way off but she suspected that under all the layers of winter clothes the little blonde thing was a girl. After a full minute of intense staring, Sophia couldn’t quell the impulse to stick out her tongue. However she did manage to suppress the giggle that threatened to erupt from the shocked look and then the bright smile that she got in response. It just wouldn’t do to disturb such a quiet that held those on the Hill.
Moving her eyes from the girl, she passed them briefly over each of the assembled group. An ancient black woman, a jolly looking old grandfather. Two mothers, one with an infant. A young kid who was maybe twenty and probably a dockworker by the clothes he wore. Probably Irish, with hair that bright red. A youngish couple, who were either Puerto Rican or Cuban or maybe Mexican. And a man.
His hair was long, right down to his elbows but there was no denying that he was a man. She’d have said the hair was black but there were other colors hidden there. She found that she longed for the sun to rise, so she would know what those colors were.
Then, the sun had better hurry up and set, so I can feel that hair cascade around me in the dark
.
She blinked at the stray thought. Bedding a man hadn’t really crossed her mind as a serious intention in a long time. Certainly not after just seeing him from afar. He wasn’t tall but he wasn’t short either. He wore no heavy coat, just a rough leather one. The jacket, brown trousers and boots combined made him seem like some wild character right out of Zane Grey’s westerns. There was something about the way he stood, staring off into the east with an intensity that made her shiver. He cradled a bowl in his large hands, almost like he would a baby.
She should have gone off the path, down the hill and across the Loch to the North Meadow. Instead, she followed the track around, needing to see the face of the man standing so still, his even breaths puffing out clouds of steam into the cold morning air as he waited.
He had a strong jaw and deeply tanned skin. It was the kind of face that could hide in any crowd in the city but once you got a good look at it, you’d never really forget it either. Before she quite understood it, she was standing right below him. The sky was lightening, the tips of the trees behind him were touched with light almost like candelabras. His hair became a dark flame, streaks of red appearing among the black. She knew the sun was rising. He had lowered his gaze to the bowl he held.
She should keep going. She was interrupting something.
But she had to see his eyes.
She stepped on a twig and the noise sounded like a gunshot in the uncommon quiet. He raised his head and she gazed into eyes rich and green. So green, she could see her childhood playing in the forests around her home. She could smell her Grams chopping herbs for her brews. She could see Jimmy smiling at her and then walking away dressed in a dull green and tan uniform.
An agonizing wave poured out of her, as emotions warred within. She wasn’t ready for this. She would never be ready for this.
The world crashed back into her in full flood. She was the man before her. She’d crossed an ocean and taught horses to dance. She’d seen a mother dance for death and a father blown to pieces. She’d seen a sister birth her first child. She’d traveled from one end of Europe to the other, all in the blink of an eye. And she knew all the other people on that hill, almost as well as her own family. Their lives and life force began to invade. And then the birds and the trees and the hundreds of thousands, the millions of people in the City of New York.
She was being crushed. Life was beautiful and ugly and happy and sad and extraordinary and too damn much. The only thing keeping her sane were those eyes. They’d condemned her. She couldn’t hide anymore.
She had to live. She had to feel. Her last thought, before she fell into blackness was that she’d never again be alone.
Maybe, those eyes had saved her.
Chapter Two
The cold air filled his lungs with an odd sense of home.
What does that mean? Do I even have a home?
His home had been the road, the forests and the foothills of the Alps. His home had been constant motion and open air. Stars and rain and snow. The slow gait of a horse pulling a wagon. Alienation, even among those he’d known all his life.
Daron West was a
Magi
. For him, home was a person, not a place.
Home was certainly not the forgotten, unkempt forests of Central Park, New York City.
He’d been here a long time though. Three years on the island of Manhattan had been the longest he’d ever stayed in such a small place. But each city block, each neighborhood, each face were all a different country. His undeniable instinct to wander, refined over thousands of years by his ancestors, had not yet pushed him to leave the island. Even if he was, in a way, setting down roots. Roots that did not involve his
ashavi
.
The New Year’s dawn would be coming soon and he pulled out his hair from the queue he usually kept sequestered under the collar of his shirt. It fell almost to his waist now, even after having cut it so short when his mother had….when he’d left the
Sinti
. Usually, it was easier to just hide the length of it, rather than deflect all the strange looks and “Howdy, Injun!” comments.
But the people surrounding him on this sacred day didn’t blink an eye at his eccentricity. The small tribe he’d never intended to gather could not care less whether he had long hair or wore an odd selection of clothes or had an indefinable accent when he spoke English. They themselves were each eccentric in their own way.
They surrounded him in a circle, with him at the easternmost point. Grounding the west, Mary was older than the eldest widow of the
Sinti
. She’d come up to New York from South Carolina many years previously. She’d known hardship and what it had been to be treated as property. Her skin was wrinkled and the color of dark ash, her hair wild and white as snow. But her eyes still carried a spark in them and she gave freely of that spark to any and all who would listen.
At the south, Giuseppe was not quite as old as Mary and his wrinkles were merely an emphasis to his ever-present smile. He embraced the world with a full heart and he still embraced the old ways of his people from the Apennines.
Standing between the two eldest, June and her daughter Hester were both very quiet in the coming light of dawn, their pale blonde hair glowing the same shade of gold. Hester was half asleep, leaning against her mother and not quite understanding why they were out in the cold so early in the morning. Hester’s coughing wasn’t so bad out here in the fresh morning, which would make her mother more able to take her ease and enjoy the coming of spring. Years ago, June had fled from something evil and found refuge in the anonymity of the city, so that Hester would not be tainted by it. She still would not talk of what she ran from. None of their small band would make her do something she was not ready for.
Tommy guarded the north. Not yet twenty, he was as brash as they come. He’d come over with Daron on a ship from Ireland, most likely to escape the Troubles. Tommy was from the outer islands off Galway but he’d gallivanted all over Ireland stirring up his own kind of trouble, mostly with willing lasses. Still, he’d not forgotten the lessons his mother had taught him though. Once Tommy had recognized something odd about his newfound Traveler friend, he suggested starting this little extended family of theirs. Others who kept up the old ways.
Between Tommy and Mary, Irene held her infant son Michael still asleep in his sling. She was dressed far better than any of the others, kept warm by a stylishly long down-filled coat and a luxuriously thick cashmere blanket wrapped around her and her son. An air of aloofness still surrounded her, no matter that she was with friends. There was pain in her eyes, pain she would allow no one else to see. Little Michael was one balm to that pain and the sharing of this sunrise would be another.
Carlos and Ixchel stood just behind Daron, flanking his left and right, together in strength even if they were physically parted. They had fled the madness of their homeland instead of being caught in the throes of bloody revolution. Here, they found a little bit of home thousands of miles to the north as they stood with others assembled to greet the dawn of Spring.
Daron didn’t know how he’d managed to find a new family so far from the one he’d left behind. His father would have not been pleased that he’d become part of a group that was not
Magi
, not
Roma
and not that of his
ashavi
. His mother however, would have understood. These people needed him. He needed them.
He held before him a bowl of water, icy cold but not quite frozen. He would greet the New Year, as it had been celebrated by his people for thousands of years. He held the bowl toward the light of the coming sun and prepared for the ritual to watch the Dawn of Spring dance in liquid gold. A deep sonorous tone that spread as a sensation rather than a sound flowed through the group at the sun broke through the edge of the sky. Daron stared intently at the face of the water, as the first shimmering appeared. Then, the sound of a twig breaking the silence brought his head up. And there she was.
He’d truly never believed his father. They were the only
Magi
he’d ever encountered, even though he’d met dozens of groups of
Romani
and
Sinti
through their time in the mountains. He’d never believed that he would feel a piece of himself falling away to be caught by another. That he would know himself better in that instant than ever before. And he would know his partner, his mate, his
ashavi
even more deeply than he knew himself.
The embodied Dawn was before him. She shone, rose and deep gold. Encased in amber light, she was only a shadow against the sun. He could not make her out clearly, other than her hair was short, wisps teasing her jaw. He didn’t need to see her figure to know how his body would react to her.
Once his eyes met hers, every part of him reached out to meet her. Despite the cold, he felt the rush of blood as his body made its demands known. The hushed silence was broken with the thrumming of vibrant power. The force that he had felt coiled with him for his entire life began to break free. That energy had found its complement and it reached out with living tendrils to reach for its other half.
Her eyes held the warmth of the earth and the heat of a banked fire. They were innocent and wise, shocked and knowing, aching and fulfilled all at the same time. Most of all, they held a question for which he knew he himself was the answer. He felt a wave of her own power extend from her like a river that had broken through a dam. The force of it knocked him back a step and though he was unaware of it, it did the same to the motley band assembled around him. After only a moment, all of that energy seemed to flow backward into her, pulling part of his soul with it. He kept staring into those deep brown eyes, unable and unwilling to look away. She glowed for a moment, a look of fear and ecstasy upon her beautiful face. Then she collapsed bonelessly upon the patchy snow.
He expelled a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and shook himself. He was inalterably different now. Connected on the deepest level to this
Gadgi
woman. This perfectly normal American girl.
She had been a goddess moments before. A part of him would always see her as such. In the growing light of day she was a modern woman, like a thousand others you could pass on the streets of New York. Light brown hair, brown fur coat, lovely bare legs beneath that coat. She looked exhausted and fragile now, when a moment before she’d held the lifeblood of the universe in her thrall. He was at her side, his arms around her before he was even aware that he had moved. His ears once again regained their use and he suddenly realized that he and his woman were surrounded by all the others, the women clucking concern and the men shifting nervously from foot to foot, not sure how to be useful.