Water Song (9 page)

"Mam, I just can't get my strength back," Jack cried in frustration to the regal woman sitting beside him on the giant bent, twisted root at the foot of a towering cedar in the flooded forest. "Swimming in that cold well took all I'd gained out of me."

"It cost you dearly," she agreed, holding her two palms up to him as though sensing his energy. "The spirit field around your body is very weak."

"I want to be completely well again!" he shouted, burying his face in his hands in despair. The long healing process was defeating him. He was used to being vigorous, strong, and fast. He didn't recognize this injured body as his own. It angered him to be trapped inside of it.

"You've been deeply hurt," she sympathized, stroking his hair tenderly. "Your body has been ravaged with poison and your spirit has been wrung dry

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from seeing so much death and misery. The old healing ways can only do so much, especially when they are ministered in this dream time and in this manner."

Again she smeared the concoction of swamp mud and tree lichen across his eyes. He sighed at the wonderful coolness. His burning eyes hadn't felt this soothing relief since the last time she did it.

"Mam, I met a girl and I want her to think loving thoughts toward me. How can I make her love me, weak and wrecked as I am right now?"

"Do you love her?"

He hesitated. Did he? Really? Or was it simply pride? Did he want to know that she would see him as worthy of her love?

He thought of her curled in the chair with the lamplight falling on her brown curls; how graceful and peaceful she looked then. He remembered how her eyes flashed when she was angry with him. He recalled her bravely helping him out of the well and the vulnerability he'd seen in her face the day they had fought over which of them was the more prejudiced.

"I think I do love her," he told his mother. "But what hope can I have of winning her as I am now, low as an injured swamp frog?"

"You are no such thing," she said with a note of irritation. "You are from a line of kings and queens taken from their lands; driven from their homes, but royal just the same. My great-great-grandmother was a princess of the Natchez people, her daughter was a revered medicine woman. Many bloods have mingled 
with those of your ancestors since that time; they have blended to make you the fine prince that you are."

"In my world I am no prince," he scoffed.

"There are princes of your world who are more common than any peasant," she insisted. "You are a true prince of the spirit. And you have been taught the princely magic. Do not forget who you are."

As he gazed on her, she began to lose her vividness. He didn't know if it was his eyesight or if she was leaving him. "How can I make her love me?" he asked, desperate to hear her words before she was gone.

"Be always worthy of her love."

"But I am not strong as I once was," he said despondently.

"You have been taught the love potion," she replied. "It's locked in your memory, my darlin' boy. It is there for you to find. But be cautious about using it. It is the stuff of trickery and deceit. Do not use it lightly."

Once again, time speeded up and the clouds raced past. In the next second he was staring up at the rich brocade of the bed's canopy. Touching his eyes, he discovered that they had stopped burning though there was no longer any mud on them.

His mother had taught him this intentional dreaming as a young boy. It felt so real that he was never sure if he had actually transported his soul somewhere or if it was, indeed, a dream.

Back when his mother was alive, some people had claimed that they'd seen her in one place at noon and then others had sworn she'd been spotted miles 
away mere minutes later. Even after her death people continued to make the same claims. She was one of fifteen children, nine of them female. It was possible folks were seeing her sisters, Jack's aunts--and, later, maybe they were even seeing one of his own five older sisters. He'd been raised in a world so ripe with superstition and magic that he could never be sure of what was real and was not.

Gazing around the room, he realized that Emma had gone out. A plate of cabbage, potatoes, and sausage by his bed told him that Claudine had already been there with lunch. That's when he remembered that it was their day to go to the market.

A terrible dread washed over him like a case of cold chills. Something was not right.

He felt her absence more keenly than he ever had when she was gone, as though she'd taken every last bit of her essence and energy out of the room and was now irrevocably and absolutely gone forever.

The very idea of never seeing her again formed a cramp in the pit of his abdomen, and he curled in the bed feeling sick to his stomach. If he had been unsure before whether or not his love was genuine, he knew it now with complete certainty. Only true love lost would have the power to cause him this much pain.

When Emma was about a quarter mile into the woods, she stopped to lean on a tree. Before this, she hadn't dared to rest but now she felt safe enough. More than anything, she wanted a moment to tear open the letter the woman had handed her.

My Dearest Rose and Emma,

I pray this letter reaches you both, as I am sick with worry for your safety. I shall never forgive myself for allowing you to take such an ill-conceived journey. All I can say in my defense is that the estate has always seemed to exist in an isolated world of its own and it never seemed possible that the war would reach you there. I suppose I thought of it as enjoying the same protection that those of us in England experience, at least for the moment, although that too could end if the enemy gains control of the English Channel as they are so aggressively attempting to do.

She looked up from the letter, tears filling her eyes. He
didn't
know about her mother, then. Her letter never reached him.

At least, judging from the tone of the letter, he didn't think her mother had left him. He simply believed they were stuck here together due to the war. How she wished that were true.

For the moment, though, my fondest wish is to have you both home safe with me,
she continued reading.
I have attempted to come get you myself but to no avail. The several boats I have attempted to hire have cancelled the trip due to German U-boat attacks in the channel. I have succeeded in contacting a Mr. Delmont Mayhew, an associate of mine residing in Dunkirk. I have written his address at the bottom of this letter. I exhort you to reach him in that town. I have paid him handsomely to arrange your safe transport across the channel.

How desperately I wish I could be there to comfort you. I hate to think of you both there trying to make sense of this seemingly senseless war. Keep in mind that one of the reasons we are at war now is because we must honor the promises we have made to our allies. It is an honorable thing to stand by your promises; one of the few ways we have left of knowing the right thing to do in a world that is rapidly giving way under the pressures of chaos.

Emma put down the letter, her tears now falling freely in trails down her cheeks. It was as though her father were right there, speaking to her. How deeply she wanted to wrap her arms around him and sob. "But he's not here. It's only a letter," she reminded herself as she wiped her eyes.

Lifting the letter again, the word
promise
seemed to jump off the page at her.

Her father's words made her recall her promise to Jack. If he gave her the locket, she would be his true friend. She'd said the words I
promise.
The deal was nothing if not utterly clear.

But the terms were not as obvious. She hadn't delivered the so-called friendly kiss. What held her back was the fear that he was secretly laughing at her. She could easily picture him chuckling and saying he'd received better kisses from a skeeter hawk or one of his other colorful phrases. Everything was a joke to him.

Still ... she
had
promised to be his true friend and to kiss him, as a friend. But the truth was ... she thought she knew what this new feeling toward him was.

Possibly it was love, or something like it. She didn't exactly know what this kind of love felt like. She'd thought she'd loved Lloyd, but she had always really known, deep down, that it had been just thrills and excitement, not really love.

But if this thing she felt toward Jack was love ... and she kissed him ... and he made a joke of it ...

If that happened, she couldn't bear it.

But ... she
had
promised to be his friend. Would a true friend leave him behind, thinking only of her own escape to Dunkirk?

"Hey there, sug. I didn't expect to see you again," Jack greeted her casually from the bed when she came into the room that evening.

"Oh? Why?" she asked, setting her net bag of foods down on the dresser.

"Just had the feelin' you were tired of being cooped up, that you might make a break for it."

"I did make a run for it, if you must know," she revealed, "but it didn't seem right to just leave you here all alone."

"It's a free world--at least last time I looked, it was," he commented breezily.

His remark made her feel like a total fool. Here she'd given up her chance to escape because of her promise to him, and he couldn't care less. Infuriated, she picked a hairbrush off the dresser and hurled it at him.

"Hey!" he shouted, dodging the brush. "I am a wounded soldier in Her Majesty's army, if you don't mind!"

"You're not even that injured anymore," she came back at him angrily. "Come to think of it, it's time you took the chair and let me have the bed."

"As you wish, princess," he said, getting off the bed.

"Don't start calling me that!"

"That's what you are, a spoiled princess, isn't it?" he said as he moved to the chair.

"I most certainly am not!"

He just sat there smirking at her in that superior way that enraged her so. Why had she ever come back for this grinning idiot, let alone had the idea that she was in love with him?

It was beyond imagining. Being shut up in this room with him was making her lose her mind!

That evening she stretched out on her newly returned bed to read. She'd finished
Pride and Prejudice
and had moved on to
Wuthering Heights,
by Emily Brontë. It was a story of ill-fated, turbulent romance taking place on the Scottish moors between Cathy, a young woman of means, and Heathcliff, the difficult and proud orphan her father had brought into the house. Her friends at the Hampshire School had told her it was a wonderfully tragic love story, but so far she'd just found Heathcliff to be annoying and arrogant.

Jack sat in the chair with his legs slung over the arm, still reading
Great Expectations.

Slow reader,
she observed, glancing over at him.

In another half hour he was asleep in the chair, the book in his lap, his blanket piled on the floor below him.

Watching him sleep, looking so boyishly vulnerable, caused some of her anger toward him to seep away. Maybe it was just his pride that made him act like he didn't care. She'd been so focused on her own insecurity, her fear of ridicule, that she hadn't considered he might harbor insecurities of his own. It was possible he had realized she might not come back and was only trying to cover up his feelings.

With a sigh, she got out of bed, took the book from him, and replaced the blanket. She did these things warily, half expecting his arm to snap out as it had before, but he continued to sleep, muttering something about alligators and swamp mud before 
settling down again.