Читать книгу Claiming Her - Marilyn "Mattie" Brahen - Страница 7

CHAPTER 4

It had been a used crib to begin with. When Richard came over that weekend to visit Daniel and me, to talk, Mother and I showed him the dismantled crib, now stored in the garage.

We left the supernatural out while telling him our story, as we had when telling Dad and Fred. In our modified version, Daniel had been awake and safely with me in the kitchen when the crib collapsed, that Mom had grasped the crib post while tidying the room, when the whole thing came tumbling down. The three men agreed we had been damned lucky the baby hadn’t been in it. Some might think we deceived the men, but they wouldn’t have believed us, had we told them the entire truth.

Only Ginnie had been told the whole of it, while we dismantled the old crib and once again set up the old laundry basket as a temporary overnight crib for Daniel. Ginnie listened without her usual skepticism, knowing that even if someone had broken in and moved Daniel, knowing about the crib would have in itself been a psychic act. But Ginnie conveniently detached herself from our unorthodox brand of the supernatural by ascribing Daniel’s mysterious relocation to God. “Miracles are God’s province,” she said firmly, “alone. I really don’t have any other explanation, unless one of you moved him earlier and have developed temporary amnesia about it.”

“Amnesia has been under discussion lately,” Mother said wryly. “But we only told you, dear, so you could be on the lookout if anything of an unusual nature occurs.” She was well aware of Ginnie’s blithe disdain of what she called our hocus pocus. “Will you help us out?”

“I’ll be your Sherlock Holmes in all things mundane when it comes to the out-of-the-ordinary. But I doubt if I’ll ever see a ghost or spirit, and if I did, I’d be looking for the projector, thank you very much. And don’t expect me to be picking up on any telepathic conversations either. But, yes, I will keep this weird occurrence that you’ve told me about a secret, a desire I can plainly read on your faces and know from long experience.”

“That’s two for Sherlock Holmes,” I murmured.

“What?” Ginnie asked, holding Daniel and shifting him to her other shoulder.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’d really appreciate your detection work, if anything else happens, especially because you measure things so logically.”

“Appreciate my finer talents, huh?” She laughed. “I think this kid of yours has gone to sleep. You sure he won’t crawl out of this basket bed?”

“Gin, he’s only nine weeks old. And after what happened this afternoon, I definitely think someone’s watching over him.”

“God.”

Mom took the baby from her. He yawned as she lowered him into the basket bed. “And sometimes God’s agents.”

Ginnie shrugged. “I’d rather cut out the middlemen. But can we talk about something else? The baby’s all right, and all this business about dark spirits and protective auras is giving me the willies. I’ve had to listen to that stuff since I was old enough to understand English, and I’ve never experienced one whit of it. Why don’t we talk about clothes? My sister’s back and I haven’t even had time to go shopping with her . . . and Leigh Ann, they’ve got some divine numbers at the mall on Cottman Avenue. Maybe we can go tomorrow night when I come home from school.”

“Maybe Leigh Ann and I will be shopping for a new crib tomorrow,” Mother cut in. “Hopefully one with an instant delivery schedule. In the meantime, it’s nearly midnight. Time for bed.” She lightly kissed Ginnie and me on the cheek. “Try to keep quiet,” she said. “Your father’s already conked out, and you know what a devil he is if his sleep is disturbed.”

She headed down the hall to her and Dad’s bedroom.

Ginnie shrugged and began undressing. “Then let’s go mall shopping this weekend,” she said.

“I haven’t any money, Gin. And with you in nursing school, I wonder that you do, unless Dad’s being less stingy with allowance this year.”

She pulled a nightgown over her head and tugged it down. “Dad stingy? I’ve told you. You just have to butter him up. I just hug him and talk sweetly and, presto chango!, he’s as generous as can be.”

“That’s one magical act I haven’t managed yet.” I took my old night shift from the other closet, undressed quickly, and put it on. I picked up our day clothes—Ginnie’s lay on the floor as usual—and chucked them in our hamper. Just like old times.

“You know, that’s your problem,” she said, sprawling on her bed. “You’re too damned honest. Even with your and Mom’s, uh, refraining from discussing your psychic stuff, you’re so direct, it irritates him and then Dad gets all grumpy with you. You have to learn how to coddle. I mean, he’s the one who told us you get more flies with honey than with vinegar. It’s one of his favorite sayings.”

“Too late.” I lay back on my own bed. “We’re both set in a pattern, Dad and I. If I started to kiss up to him now, he’d know it. Besides, I’ve never been able to fake anything very well.”

Ginnie yawned. “Never too late to learn. If not with Dad, maybe with other men. It’s possible to be too honest, Leigh Ann. I mean, you’re not doing too well in the love department, heading for divorce, with a young baby and all.”

“I really don’t know where I’m heading with Richard. Maybe I can forgive him. He seems to want me to.”

“You’ll have to make up your own mind about that.” She yawned again. “Turn off the light, will you? You’re closest to it.”

I checked on Daniel in his temporary bed, satisfied that the sturdy plastic basket prongs were high enough to keep him inside, then switched off the overhead light. “Goodnight, Gin.”

“Night, Leigh Ann.” Another yawn, silence, then, “I can’t see what you see in Richard. You can do a whole lot better than him.”

“I’ll put up a sign,” I murmured. “Only slightly used woman with child. Looking for an improved version of Prince Charming. Willing to barter.”

“Oh, Leigh Ann,” she whispered back. “Good night.”

“Good night,” I answered, and lay awake for a short while, trying not to think, until sleep claimed me and I dreamed.

It seemed so real—my first inkling that mortal reality did not consist only of wakefulness, sleep, and the dream state. Both Mother and I knew that dreams could include past as well as present life memories, subconscious symbols skewered together with surprisingly strong and recognizable images. But neither of us knew that we could relive a memory, as clearly as if we were experiencing it for the first time.

Since then, neurologic science has found that an area of the brain, when externally stimulated in surgery, will cause this virtual memory to be relived mentally, as if it were happening physically.

But that night, I knew nothing of this potential to go back in time and feel things as if my mortal life was the dream, and I, the dreamer, fully awake. It was not a cognizant dream; I was not aware that I was dreaming. Later on, I trained myself to dream cognizantly, for there came, into my dream world, times of danger when the ability to wake myself became imperative.

But that night I dreamed I was in Eliom, and knew it was a different dimension from Earth, and that Earth was a youthful planet that we, my people and I, were still forbidden from visiting and exploring.

We looked human, but we were not human. If you were to gauge time as we did, and the manner in which we grew and changed, you would call us immortals. We were also the beings Earthly religions would one day call angels, although the correct name, if translated from our language, would be “angelfolk” or “people of the light.”

Bael was one of the angelfolk, and I watched him approach my thachka, our word for the cottage-like dwellings we lived in, from a small window near my pallet in the loft. His father walked beside him, and I became excited, knowing Bael would keep his promise, made after a hasty stolen kiss last evening on our way back from working in the Garden.

I say stolen because we were not supposed to embrace before Bael formally declared for me and my father Michael formally received and approved my acceptance. A kiss or two was generally tolerated before betrothal during the courtship ritual of initial mating, but not more than that. When you came of age in Eliom, you were watched over by your elders, even more so than when you were a child. Whether male or female, you were taught that sexuality was one of the Creator’s greatest gifts, to be treated as sacred.

I watched until Bael and his father passed beneath the door lintel, out of my range of sight. They were wearing the traditional short, white, sleeveless robes of summer, but adorned them with soft purple sashes worn loosely around their waists. The sashes ended in a tassel of gold.

I moved away from the window and sat down in my curtained alcove. The curtains enclosing the three alcoves could be swept back and away to make a dayroom filled with sunlight. But this morning I wanted privacy, nervous, knowing my father would soon call me downstairs.

The curtains hid a painful reminder that love could be destroyed by acts of rashness. My father now slept upon a single pallet. He had long ago detached the twin pallet once belonging to my mother.

I was five when she and her brother had disobeyed our Creator’s edict. She and Adam had trespassed on Earth, leaving the protective dimensional winds on a mutual dare.

Like willful children bent on peeking at a forbidden object, they had planned to look and leave and, believing they had done no harm, expected to be forgiven, should the Creator spy them.

It was folly. The Creator knew and saw all. Eve and Adam knew this. They truly believed the Creator, out of love, would absolve them, but the first great tragedy they brought upon themselves.

The unstable atomic structure composing the mortal dimension of Earth—unstable to the molecular structure of the angelfolk—instantly altered Mother and Uncle Adam into a hybrid of angel and human, with the angelic DNA dominant. They became half-mortal, their bodies metamorphosing within seconds into temporal flesh . . . trapped on Earth, unable to leave that world, except through a process foreign and incomprehensible to us until the Creator described it.

Death.

We were told all this, and still my father believed my mother would be returned to Eliom and him.

Celestial time, we were told, differed from mortal time; a span of minutes, hours, years on Earth lasted three times longer in Eliom. It was also carefully explained to us that life in the mortal world was challenging and cyclic, a learning ground for its natives. The transition called death, which ended one cycle and began another, was triggered by both environmental and biological factors. For mortals, it was followed by rebirth. Mother and Adam, however, would be released from mortality’s cycle, once they underwent this death. The Creator would then correct the imbalance in Earth’s atomic structure to prevent such hybridization from recurring.

My father waited fervently for five of our years. Then one day, without explanation to me, he went up to the sleeping loft and dismantled Mother’s half of their pallet. I asked him why he did this. “They are lost to us,” he said. “They may be lost to us forever.” All of my later questions brought two consistent replies: “Only time and the Creator can answer that,” or “You’re far too young to understand.”

From that day forward, he no longer believed, and I knew with a child’s instinct that Mother and Adam had in some way further angered the Creator.

Father would not explain. He became loving but quiet, seldom smiling. When he did, a wistfulness played at the corners of his mouth, as if he could not be happy without also acknowledging his sadness, and his light melodic laughter seemed gone forever.

I became my father’s helpmate, keeping house for him as I grew older, protecting his need for peace and silence, and loving him dearly despite his grief and reticence.

The rest of the angelfolk in Eliom were solicitous and watched over us, none more so than the family of Lucifer. His wife Affaeteres often had me visit their thachka, slightly larger than ours, for it sheltered them and their three boys: Ashtoreth, Bael, and Azmodeus. Ashtoreth, three years my senior, was gentle and kind to me. Bael treated me warily, as if a girl one year younger than him acting so sedately and modestly proved an unfathomable mystery. Azmodeus, a year younger than I was, paid me little attention until we grew older, and then attempted to shock me with teasing and mischief. His older brothers pounced on him for that; it only fueled his rebellion further. He found me too quiet, too ladylike, and labeled me “Miss Perfect.”

Notwithstanding Az’s behavior, I was always welcomed in their house, and Affaeteres often visited my father and me with food and other gifts, mothering me in a fussing affectionate way.

It seemed natural now to me, as I listened to the men below, that Bael and I, despite our initial shyness toward one another, should fall in love.

The careful mutual wariness had been put to rest last summer. The sun had shone pleasantly hot as we completed our tasks in the Garden, and a group of us, teenagers and younger children, had rushed off to the lake to cool down with a swim. As we splashed about, Bael’s thick black hair became wet and stuck to his head. His tall, elven-shaped ears, usually covered, were exposed. Some of the children began snickering, laughing and calling out. “Pointy ears! Pointy ears!” they cried, and their own fingers mimicked the object of their mirth.

Bael’s face flamed as hotly as the sun. His hands rose to cover his pointed ears—an uncommon genetic trait among the angelfolk, but by no means rare—then abruptly lowered as he stared defiantly at the chittering youngsters.

His lower lip trembled, and the ache of oncoming tears glistened in his eyes as they swept over the faces of his tormenters.

I lashed out vehemently at the name-callers. “Stop it! Leave him alone. There’s nothing wrong with his ears. It’s yours that are short and stunted!”

The children, startled at seeing this quiet, demure, little mouse suddenly roar at them, fury in her gaze, stance and clenched fists, stopped their shrieking and jeering. I was well-liked among them and had never chastised them before.

“Apologize to him!” My tone had dropped, my anger cooling. “You’ve been rude and cruel, to someone your elder, no less. You know this behavior is not proper in the Eyes of the Creator.”

The small band of harassers sloshed uncomfortably in the lake waters. One of the smallest, Avram, waded forward, looked at Bael, and murmured, “I’m sorry.” Golden-haired Elisha moved beside him and echoed his apology.

Bael had kept his lips firmly set, his posture stiff and expectant. Now he slowly relaxed as the other children mumbled their retraction, glancing at me. I nodded approval, and they went back to their water play.

Bael had maneuvered closer to me. I returned his stare, but not without a hint of my old uncertainty, his gaze so unflinching and direct.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

My words rushed out in one breath. “I couldn’t bear to see them hurting you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said. He splashed off and joined his friends, his younger brother Azmodeus among them.

“Leianna’s in love!” the willow-thin fourteen-year-old with his mop of unruly blond hair shouted, mocking me.

Bael cuffed him lightly. He protested, not at all injured, then swam off with his brother, who left him behind with swift arm strokes.

I waded back to the shore and sat watching them frolic in the water. My friend Chloe came over, sitting beside me, her short robe dripping. “Are you?” she asked, her fingers untangling her long brown hair.

“Am I what?”

“In love with Bael.”

I murmured, “How would I know what love is?”

“You don’t know love,” she said. “You feel love.” She laughed, noting my blush. “It’s getting late. We should be going.”

“You go on,” I told her. “I want to sit here a bit longer. It’s cool and restful.”

Chloe’s grin challenged me. I lifted my eyebrows, my eyes widening, denying her the insinuation that grin plainly expressed.

“Fine,” she said, and stood up. “You’re so proper, you’ll probably make him swim the lake back and forth for you.” She started off, then turned back. “Why don’t you just tell him?”

“If I do things improperly,” I said, “I’ll have both my father and the High Council come down on him and me.”

“Oh, pooh on propriety!” she said and walked up the bank toward the path leading back to our village.

The sun was setting as the boys meandered out of the lake. Bael said something to his friends and left them, walking swiftly toward me.

I sat motionless, watching his approach, looking up when he stopped a few feet away.

“Come on, Leianna. I’ll walk you back.”

He held out his hand. I grasped it, and he pulled me to my feet.

We let go of one another’s hands, walking back to the village, not speaking, our silence easy and unstrained.

We reached my father’s house. Bael smiled softly, secretly, and headed off to his own home.

That afternoon proved our true beginning. Our friendship blossomed, the shyness we had once felt replaced with the pure enjoyment of being together, a growing respect, and, yes, an intense attraction and need also grew between us.

I was fifteen; Bael, sixteen. We were children no longer. And just yesterday, as we worked side by side, tending new shoots in the Garden, Bael had asked in a low whisper: would I accept if he declared for me?

My breath seemed stoppered. I could only smile giddily at him.

“Will you?” he repeated, his tone an urgent throaty growl.

“Yes,” I finally whispered back. “Yes.”

“Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow I will come and declare our betrothal.”

On the way back to the village, we found a less-used trail, and under its canopied arch of tree foliage, alone together for a moment, Bael leaned over and kissed me. I returned his embrace, all traces of resistance shattered. The kiss lasted only five seconds, but lingered on my lips as Bael led me from the shaded side-path. We heard a rustle of footsteps not far behind us. No doubt, an adult, watching at a distance. We grinned conspiratorially as we joined the others, traveling home from their day’s work in the Garden.

We reached my thachka and Bael, with a knowing glance and smile, saw me in before hurrying off to speak, I knew, with his father.

That night sleep was elusive, and I awoke barely rested. My father raised his brows at my sudden smiles and the pinking of my cheeks when he caught me in languid reverie, but never complained when I burnt the flower cakes at breakfast and steeped the tea too strongly, actions so unlike his perfect daughter.

Unable to hide my feelings from him—for the man must make the Declaration of Betrothal and the woman not discuss it with her family beforehand—I climbed up to my sleeping alcove to do my mending.

Father had smiled at me then, not wistfully, but as if he knew.

An hour later, Bael and his father had greeted my father and been welcomed inside. I could hear their voices below.

I concentrated on the robe I was repairing, trying to compose myself.

It didn’t help. When Father called my name, I jumped.

“Please come down here,” he called. “We have visitors.”

I watched my footing as I climbed down the ladder and turned to see my father, Lucifer and Bael smiling expectantly at me.

“Leianna,” Father said, “Bael has declared himself as your betrothed, in the presence of Lucifer, his father. You may accept or deny him as your intended husband. What say you?”