Forbidden Spirits (20 page)

"That's not only resourceful, it's ingenious," Rose said. "But these aren't just simple pictures like cartoons,
they're works of art. No wonder you worked three times as hard as the other kids when you were in school."

Tyler laughed. "You were right the first time. In school the pictures were more like cartoons, but when I
write in my journal, that's how I do it."

"
A journal," Rose mused. "I never would have thought that's what this is all about, but then your entire thinking process is hard to understand, just as the mind of a genius would be. But you did all these from memory, yet you claim you have a problem memorizing things."

"I don't have a problem memorizing what I see
, it's what's written that's the problem," Tyler explained. "What's around me comes back in detail, like I've snapped a picture of it with my mind, and when I draw it later the details are still there."

"Like this one?"
Rose turned the tablet over and opened it to the picture of her in the cavern in the pool. "How soon after you saw me sitting like this did you draw this picture?"

"
That same day, around midnight," Tyler replied. "It had been in my head all day and I needed to put it in my journal."

"But all the details
are there, even the 'S' curve handle on my little incense pot, along with the curl of smoke coming from it. You even have the light from the lantern coming from the right direction on my back and shoulder and my… well, the rest of what you saw."

"Okay, that isn't exactly how I saw you," Tyler replied. "I added what
was missing from view that I wanted to see, and when you stepped outside the cavern and your white T-shirt was damp and sticking to you, it wasn't hard to picture what was under it. That's the pose in the nude picture. I put you in the cavern because that's the way I wanted to see you, stepping out of the pool and looking at me and not feeling embarrassed because you felt natural being with me like that, and I was naked too and you wanted me to come to you and hold you. I'm visualizing it now, like it's stuck in my head, and I haven't even seen you undressed."

"When you do see me
that way, will you remember all the details forever?" Rose asked.

Tyler
looked at her, thoughtfully. "You said
when
, not
if
, I see you, so it sounds certain."

"
I don't know," Rose replied. "But would you see… all the details?"

"Maybe. Some details last longer than others."

Rose flipped the page to the nude one, and said, "What if we were married and I got old and wrinkly. Would you see me like this, or the way I'd be then?"

Tyler looked
reflectively at the picture, and said, "I'd see you the way you'd be then because I wouldn't have any reason to hold on to the old memory because, however you'd be would be beautiful to me. Time and age would never change that."

Rose set the tablet on the drafting table, and c
urving her arms around Tyler's neck, she said, "You told me you had trouble expressing yourself, but that's the most romantic thing anyone's ever told me."

"It's only the truth," Tyler replied.
In an instant his mouth covered hers and his arms closed around her, and in that moment Rose felt a combination of passion… and longing… and needing… and affection… and infatuation… and a touch of anger because the issue with the spring was still unresolved. But all the other feelings quickly overpowered that one negative, and she was again on a euphoric high, while wanting to stay where she was forever.

But when
Tyler's hands began tracing the contours of her sides, and his thumbs followed the curve of her breasts, she broke the kiss and said, "We're about to get carried away again, so we need to get back to where we were."

"Which was looking at a picture of you the way I imagine you when I'm alone in my bed at night," Tyler said.

"Then we need to switch to another subject." Rose turned out of his arms and walked over to the bookcase. "While I was looking around I noticed your books, and now I'm curious." Brushing her finger over the spines, she said, while stopping at a particular book, "Why a book on magic?"

Tyler looked at the book she was pointing to
. "My mom knew I wanted to learn some magic tricks so she got me the book, figuring I'd be interested enough to read it, and I was, cover to cover, and even learned some basic magic tricks. So Mom decided, if she could find books on subjects I was interested in, I'd read more, and she was right. I still read at a snail's pace, but I like learning things so I read every day."

"And
Shakespeare?" Rose asked, while running her finger over the spines of the collection.

"I did a lot of pretending
when I was a kid, which was my way of dealing with the fact that I didn't fit in, so when high school drama class was auditioning students for Hamlet, I figured if I could get a part in a play that other students found difficult, I'd prove I wasn't as stupid as they thought. So I put together picture sequences for the first act, but when it came time to recite some lines I couldn't focus, I couldn't speak, and I went totally blank, which proved to everyone I was exactly what they thought. The school idiot. So, I decided to get the play and memorize the entire thing at home, and when I did, it was a huge personal victory." He laughed. "Hamlet knew what he was talking about when he said,
'Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in his own house.'
Now I recite Shakespeare to relax, and when I recite it to my mares, they relax too."

Rose couldn't help smiling when she visualized Tyler standing
surrounded by his mares while reciting Shakespeare. "Can you recite something for me?" she asked. When she looked up from the bookcase and turned to face Tyler, in that moment she thought he was the most striking man she'd ever seen, with his beautiful raised cheekbones, and sensual male mouth, and his dark perceptive eyes, soulful eyes that were fixed on her.

"Especially for you
," he said.

W
alking up to her, he tucked a finger beneath her chin and lifted, so she had to look directly at him, and said in a voice that was solely for her, "
Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love
."

Rose blinked rapidly, while trying to grasp this completely unexpected side of Tyler, like there was no end to discovering new facets of him, a complex man who saw disabilities where she saw
gifts. "That was beautiful," she said. "I assume it was from Hamlet."

"
It was. Act 2, Scene 2."

"How did you know
that?"

Tyler shrugged. "
My problem is getting the words off the page and into my head, but once they're there, I simply open a page in my mind and find it. It's the same with movies. The scenes stick in my head and I remember them in sequence. It's inconsistent though. I can recount every detail of a place I might go, like a rodeo, but I can't recall what someone might tell me about a place they went because I wasn't there and don't have the visual images to connect the words to."

"So you
must remember everything about the times we’re together," Rose said.

Tyler gave her a wry smile. "
Pretty much. But it's not just visual images I hold in my head. My senses have memory too. My body remembers the way your body feels against it, and my hands remember where they've been and what they held, and my tongue remembers the details of your mouth, and odors have a special place in my mind that I can pull up, so when I smell roses I'm thrown into a world with you where it's like you're part of me. It's hard to describe."

"You just did it beautifully," Rose said. "I wish I had your gifts."

Tyler laughed again, this time with cynicism. "No, you don't. Holofernes said it best in Love's Labor's Lost: '
This is a gift that I have… a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory.
' Sometimes there's so much recalling, my mind gets overloaded, which is why I need to live an uncluttered life."

Rose placed her hands on
his chest, and said, "I hope someday you'll find peace within yourself."

"That's a dream I gave up years ago," Tyler said
. "I have different dreams now." He took her hands and put them around his neck and pulled her into his arms and kissed her. The kiss was beginning to escalate into another open-mouth, passionate kiss when Tundra abandoned what was left of his rawhide bone and began pacing.

Rose
broke the kiss and looked at Tyler, and said, "Tundra's getting restless so I'd better take him back so he can exercise or he'll find a chair leg to either pee on or chew up."

Tyler
crooked a finger beneath her chin, kissed her one last time, and said, "Very soon, he and I are going to have a man-to-man talk about learning to be patient when I'm kissing you."

Rose laughed, and taking
Tundra by the collar, led him down the passageway, but once outside, when she started running around and calling for Tundra to chase after her and play, Tyler rushed up and caught her by the arm to stop her, and said, "If you flail your arms around he'll go into predatory mode, which could be dangerous. The canine teeth of a hybrid are bigger than a dog's, and hybrids have the capability of crushing bones. You need to work slowly around him. What he needs is an old settled dog as a companion. He'll copy the older dog's behavior and learn from it, and it would also give him a sense of being in a pack."

Rose looked at Tundra,
who was staring at her like he understood, which had her smiling, as she said, "Okay, boy, we'll think about getting you a friend as soon as we get our own place."

"You have an option
right here," Tyler said.

Rose saw that he was dead serious. "That option's still a ways off
," she replied. "You need to give everything with us a lot more thought. You want an uncluttered life and I'd be bringing to it a wolfdog and his dog companion, and I'd need a place where I can weave baskets, and there would be the likelihood of kids, so even in our small world there would be a certain amount of chaos when we'd all be talking over each other. How do you reconcile all of that?"

Tyler touched her face, and said, "My life, and whatever you'd bring to it, would never be cluttered
as long as you are in it, angel."

Rose smiled. "That's what you call your mares."

"I know," Tyler said. "They're my angels too." He kissed her lightly. "Meanwhile, I'll put Tundra on a lunge line for exercise. He'll get the idea in a few minutes, and once he's learned the routine, it's a good way for you to exercise him in a small area."

Tyler grabbed a lunge line from the
tack room, and after clipping it onto Tundra's collar, led Tundra back into the corral. At first Tundra looked baffled, like he wasn't sure what to expect, but within a few minutes he understood. Tyler started by jogging with him in a small circle at a trot, then gradually he let out the lunge line while praising Tundra, and before long, Tundra was trotting in a circle with his tail wagging and his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

After another
ten minutes or so, Rose said, "I need to get back. Now that Marc's home, I want to get my things together and stay with my folks a couple of days and catch up on some of my chores there, but I'll be back in the morning."

Tyler
led Tundra out of the corral, and after turning him over to Rose, he said, "I want to see you after work tomorrow. Can you come here so we can talk, and other things? I'll fix dinner."

"
The
other things
will have to wait a little longer because we still have some issues to resolve first, but I do want to see you so, yes, I'll come so we can talk." Rose looked toward the garden and while she was staring at the new fencing, a series of happenings began to fall into place. She hadn't planned on getting into it at the moment, but she wanted Tyler to have a better understanding of what she'd been trying to tell him, so she started in by saying, "You do realize that the tree fell on the fence right after you started drilling in the cavern."

Tyler shrugged
. "Maybe. I don't remember."

"
Well, it did, because it struck me at the time that it was an odd coincidence," Rose said. "Then when I found you in bed, and you told me the horses weren't responsive because you were dizzy, that was shortly after you returned from drilling through the floor of the spring."

"
Don't try and connect the two," Tyler replied. "Animals sense emotions in humans, and my mares pick it up whenever I'm off."

"That may be
true," Rose said, "but shortly after that, Gypsy came down with mysterious lameness, so bad things started happening after you began drilling in the cavern. This is what I've been afraid of, and although I know you don't want to hear me suggest that spirits could be working against you, at some point you might have to consider that possibility."