Heir of Earth (Forgotten Gods) (17 page)

I met April
in town that afternoon. Alana and Norah joined us. We sat around a little table on the tavern porch, drinking our Cokes in solemn silence.

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” April said, staring at the table.

I was relieved that Alana and Norah were actually being nice girls today without Tara around to impress. I wondered if they felt guilty for teasing Christine. Norah actually dabbed at her eyes every now and then.

“Who was that guy she was dancing with last night?” Alana asked me.

“I didn’t know him. He asked me to dance at first, but then…” My voice trailed off and I looked to April.

“He was just a tourist in town for the festival.” April didn’t bother telling the girls about why I didn’t dance with him. Instead, she looked out on the foot traffic walking in and out of the shops. Half the population of Clonlea on a given summer day were tourists.

“They’ll find her. Maybe it was love at first sight and she ran off to get married,” Norah hypothesized. I nodded in agreement.

“She was certainly in love last night, from the look on her face.” I remembered how captivated she had been by him. I really needed to believe that she was okay. I wouldn’t let myself think about how close I had possibly come to danger. Maybe I should have thanked Dayne last night.

“Just think. She’s going from never been kissed, to married before all of us!” Alana tried to joke, but her words were clipped and shaky and I had to wonder if she was jealous or feeling guilty about being so mean to Christine last night.

April and I left to help Rose close up the bakery. We walked down the street in silence. A man in front of us stopped at the light pole and hammered a sign to it. When he stepped away we saw Christine, staring back at us, smiling in her senior picture. The edge of the paper fluttered in the wind, sending one of the memories I had forced to the very back of my mind screaming back at me like a bullet.

For a second, the world around me switched to a familiar black and white. It was the same missing poster I had seen in my dream weeks ago. The dreaded guilt I thought I had left behind crashed into the pit of my stomach like a wrecking ball when I realized what I had done. I could have saved sweet Christine from a fate I had known about for weeks. Even if, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but feel like it was supposed to be me.

Rain pattered softly against the window, gently waking me to welcome another day. The house was quiet except for the melody of nature outside. A gentle breeze blew in, billowing the curtains and bringing with it the smell of the earth, washed clean from above. The breeze prickled goose bumps on the parts of my body not covered by Rose’s hand-made quilt, and I wiggled them into the warmth.

It was cozy there on the couch, snuggled beneath the blankets, my warm little shelter from the cold outside. I wondered what time it was. How much longer could I pretend I was still asleep? I decided it didn’t matter. Phin would wake me up when it was time to go. There was something so soothing about the raindrops. Their rhythmic falling lulled me back to dreaming.

As soon as my mind settled back into sleep, I was really glad I was a procrastinator. The dream that took over my body in those briefly fleeting moments when my eyes closed again was one of the best dreams of my life. One of the really good lucid ones, where it all seemed so real, like the night in the barn.

I struggled to move my arms so I could reach out and touch his face, but they wouldn’t move. Instead I just stared into his eyes. My body was buzzing and tingling like it does when an adrenaline rush takes over. My heart beat so loudly in my ears I was afraid I was going to faint—but I refused to close my eyes in the dream…it was that good.

Dayne’s face was so close to mine I could feel the heat of his body radiating against my cheek and neck. I had the sensation I was lying down on cool wet pavement, surrounded by night. His arms were somewhere around me, but my body was so electrified by his proximity I couldn’t tell exactly where they were.

His hand came up and gingerly stroked the curls away from my face. This wasn’t the same Dayne I knew in real life. This was the Dayne of my dreams, but I tried really hard to forget that and convince myself it was real.

He was gentle and careful with me, like he was afraid I might break. His face was soft, and in his eyes I saw a tenderness I had never seen before.

I could tell he was worried about me. Had I discovered some secret or was I in danger? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that Dayne was with me, and his presence alone was pushing the bad things away.

His hand left my hair and rested warm against my cheek for a moment. I didn’t want it to be a dream. I wanted him to want me like this for real.

His eyes sparkled with the newfound wonder of first love, and his brilliant smile slowly spread across his face. He bent closer and rubbed the tip of his nose playfully along my cheek, at which point I was reminded it had to be a dream. Dayne only looked at me like this when I was playing make believe. But still, I didn’t care. My dreams would have to do…. it was the only place Dayne would ever be mine.

He arched away and looked into my eyes again. The smile left his face, and he began to focus on my lips. His head moved toward mine, and I knew he was about to kiss me. The anticipation of his lips touching mine raced through my body. A scream of excited delight bubbled in my throat. As if in slow motion, his lips approached. He licked them slightly and left his lips parted, just so, waiting for my lips to slide into his. We were just about to make contact when it happened.

In an instant, the dream world around me turned into a black and white fuzzy blur, snapping me into the reality that I was seeing the future. My heartbeat quickened, spurred by the fear of what future role Dayne would play in my life.

I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to know what was coming, but my visions didn’t listen to me. Struggling wildly, harder than I ever had against a vision before, I managed to force my eyes open, but the familiar surrounding of home didn’t greet me. The muscles around my eyes twitched, and the lids fluttered together faster than butterfly wings. Even then, with my eyes open, the black and white world with Dayne stayed in my sights and I quit trying to push it away.

I began to have the sensation I was spiraling backward out of control through a long dark tunnel, but he was still there. His face just inches from mine. Together we tumbled through the darkness and I felt the softness of his lips connect with mine. The tender, but urgent, need of his body pressed against me as the scream of excitement melted into of moan of wanting in my throat.

The visions disappeared the moment I screamed, and I fell off the couch, tangling myself in the quilt that covered me as I landed with a thud on the ground.

I knew what black and white meant. I had seen the future. But what I couldn’t understand was how in the world Dayne DeLaney was ever going to want to kiss me? There was just no way.

Maybe I was dreaming I was seeing the future because I wanted it so badly? That’s the only way a vision like that could make sense.
Right?
Dayne hated me. At the very least he was indifferent to me. There is no way his lips would ever touch mine for real, and I wondered if I was losing my mind.

Phin shuffled into the room.

“You sleeping on the floor now, Faye?” he asked through a yawn.

“Um, no…I thought there was a spider on the couch,” I lied quickly to explain why I was in a pile of covers on the floor. A chilly breeze blew in from the cracked window and sent my hair swirling around my face. I pulled my blanket closer around me and retreated back to the warmth of the couch, trying really hard to forget what I had seen.

“No use getting up. This weather’s set in for the day.” Phin said when he saw me start to fold the blankets of my makeshift bed.

“Are you sure?” I faked disappointment for his benefit.

“Don’t need any sick horses or sick girls. I’ll be back after while.” He pulled a heavy coat over his clothes and an oiled cowboy hat low on this head. He cussed as he reached the truck. No doubt he had left his window down all night.

Rose had been gone for hours. It was her busiest season with the tourist trade of summer. I was all alone facing an entire day with absolutely nothing to do. I had a long list of places I wanted to explore in Ireland. There hadn’t been time for sightseeing since I arrived. Another look out the window at the gray blanket that surrounded the cottage and the rain that fell like a water hose spray from the sky told me today wasn’t going to be the day to check that list off. The weather was abysmal…even for Irish standards. I would have to find my entertainment indoors today.

I finally talked myself out from the coziness of my shelter and into the warmth of a shower. I wasn’t used to such cold dampness in the summer. I showered leisurely, taking the extra time to do all the frilly girl things like slathering on a body scrub and deep conditioning my hair that I hadn’t had time for recently. I folded the pile of clean clothes I had left in the laundry hamper and dressed in an oversized St. Anne’s sweatshirt and blue jeans.

I spent time unpacking the last few items remaining in my suitcase and stuffed it under my bed so it would be out of the way. After tidying up the little room, I was two hours into my day and had run out of things to do.

I grabbed my iPod from the bedside table, placed the earbuds in my ears and cranked the volume up to drown out the deafening silence of an empty house. Halfway down the hall, on my way to tidy up the den, the door between my bedroom and my bathroom caught my eye. It was the only place in the house I’d never been. I remembered Rose telling me it was all of Phin’s old riding stuff—which I imagined would be dusty old tack, dry-rotting from years of neglect, and spider webs. Pretty boring stuff. But on a rainy day that forced me inside, it sounded as exciting as a National Geographic expedition.

I turned the knob, and the door slowly swung open on its rusty hinges, protesting loudly to be disturbed from its slumber. The door fell open and landed with a hollow thud against the wall, stirring swirls of dust into the air as it passed. Light filtered in from a dirty window on the far wall, showcasing trophy lined shelves from Phin’s racing career, glass boxes sheltering the brilliant emerald green and gold of his racing silks, and pictures of a young Phin aboard magnificent animals, draped with the rose covered garlands of victory.

“Wwwooooowww…” I whispered, wide-eyed, as I slowly took stock of the treasure chest Rose had dismissed as
Phin’s old riding stuff
. I stepped into the smells of mothballs and must, where time lay trapped in cobwebs, dragging my fingers over the priceless memories of a forgotten life. My fingertips left trails in the thick varnish of dust covering the room.

Why would anyone ever want to lock all this away?

Phin’s accident had been horrible, incomprehensible even. Stolen a promising career from him when he was at his prime, but he had accomplished so much before his fall. His career was the stuff of legends. Regardless of how untimely its demise seemed he was still the best rider to ever come from Ireland’s western shores. It didn’t make sense to hide it all away instead of proudly displaying his successes to the world.

I studied picture after picture, each one labeled and dated with fat black marker in a fluid female handwriting I didn’t recognize as Rose’s. Trophies and ribbons and newspaper clippings—more than I could read in a day— all spoke to Phin’s unrivaled horsemanship. An old desk sat in the dustiest corner of the room. I opened one of the drawers, finding it stuffed full of old notebooks. I grabbed one and opened it up, seeing Phin’s handwritten notes scribbled in the corners of various track maps and programs as he prepared for the races he inevitably won.

In the middle drawer, I found an old leather-bound box with a lock on the front. It’s key dangled from a string. I pushed it in, despite its rusty resistance, and the latch flew open. I lifted the top off and was greeted by a picture of Phin when he was my age, grinning ear to ear as he held his arm around a girl who was not Rose.

Black and white tunnel vision took over my eyes. I gasped as the vision from a few mornings before flew back from the dark place I’d pushed it to. My pulse quickened, as it always did when one of
them
came flying back to me, and I closed my eyes to calm it. Taking a few calming breaths, trying to warm the air that had gone iced cold in my lungs, I open my eyes and looked down at the strangers in my hand.
This was the past, Faye,
 I told myself.
Not the future.