Wild Heart (6 page)

She felt herself flushing. The silence between them was worse than before, because now it was charged with sexual awareness. "Beautiful day," she said inanely. "Don't you think?" He looked at her speculatively. She looked up. "Not a cloud in the sky. It rained every day in England. Italy was lovely, though. I went there with my aunt." She smiled, because she felt ridiculous. "We stayed for three months. I had a dreadful time. I was . . . lonely, you know. Homesick, but not really sure home would be any better. My husband ... I was married, but he died. A sailing accident." She laughed softly, shaking her head at herself. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm . . ."
Talking to you,
she almost said, but that sounded rude.

"Lance," she murmured, self-conscious. "It's a silly name, isn't it?" She smoothed her thumb over the handle of her parasol and admitted, "I never know what to call you. They say you said 'lost' when they found you." She looked at him directly, smiling at her own folly. "Were you lost?"

Her smile faded slowly. She sat still, arrested by the intensity in his face, tight with an emotion she had never seen before. His eyes pleaded for,
demanded
something from her. He pressed his lips together. He said, "Michael," in the barest whisper.

She stared. The hair on her arms rose; the breath backed up in her lungs. She waited, waited, afraid she had misheard, praying he would say it again.

Then Sam screamed.

In a blur of speed, he jumped to his feet and began to run. Sydney followed, heart pounding, hating this. Sam was flapping his arms in the air about fifteen feet out from the edge of the dock, shrieking, "Help, help! I'm drowning!"

Sydney and the man—
Michaell
—pounded to a stop at the edge of the pier. "I can't swim," she cried, and her distress at least was no act. "I can't swim!"

"Help! Save me!" Sam gasped for air convincingly, pinched his nose, and went under.

The man hesitated—she hadn't expected that. His body jerky with fear, he wheeled to look behind him, searching for O'Fallon. Not there. She met his eyes, only for a second, but the cold dread in them told her the one thing she did not want to know. Before she could react, he leaped into the water.

And sank.

"Oh, my God! Sam," she screamed when her brother popped up next, "he can't swim! He can't swim!" Sam began to thrash toward her, and then she knew true panic. "No! Don't! Don't go near him!" Michael would drown Sam, too, in his terror. She whirled, scanning the line of trees. "Help," she called, again and again, but no one appeared. Father, Charles, O'Fallon—they all thought this was part of the act!

She was weighted down with clothes, she would sink like a stone like this. Tearing at skirts and petticoats, kicking off her shoes, she had no time for all the buttons down the front of her shirtwaist. In blouse, chemise, pantaloons, and whalebone corset, she dived into the lake.

Michael surfaced ten feet away, rising high—he must have sprung up from the bottom; it was only seven or eight feet deep here!—water streaming from his mouth when he gasped for air. "Stay away from him," she screamed at Sam, who was dog-paddling closer. Michael's heavy, flailing arms were going to kill them all. "Help!" she tried again, just before lunging for his hand as he went back under.

She caught it and pulled, trying to keep him at arm's length and kick them both toward the dock. But she couldn't turn; he was holding on too tight. "Sam, get out," she sputtered, "get help—-" She went down with Michael, and panic engulfed her.

Her feet hit the squishy bottom, and they jumped together, breaking the surface at the same time. Her free arm struck something solid—the port quarter of the sailboat. She grappled, but there was nothing to hold onto;

the gunwale was too high. Michael's grip was like a vise, punishing and inescapable, and his heaviness was dragging her down again.

Once more her feet touched bottom, and she flexed upward, jackknifing with her legs for more power. The boat had turned; she made a grab for the painter that moored it to the dock.

"I've got it!" she yelled, clinging to the line for her life. Michael lunged at her. She thought he would swamp her, but at the last second he twisted and grabbed for the counter. The boat zigzagged crazily, almost capsized when he hurled his body halfway over the taffrail and hung there, vomiting water and gasping.

Sam swam straight to the ladder at the end of the dock and clambered up. Grabbing the painter, he hauled it in, with Sydney still clutching at it. The sailboat's stern gently bumped the dock.

Footsteps banged overhead. Papa and Charles skidded to a stop at the edge and peered down at her. "Are you all right?" they asked in unison.

"I'm fine." To prove it, she let go of the line and swam over to the ladder. She weighed a ton; Charles had to help her up and over the last two rungs. Sam pulled the line in until the boat was inches away from the ladder; her father helped him hold it steady. "Need a hand?" Charles asked, bending down toward Michael.

Michael ignored him. He climbed the ladder deliberately and walked away from all of them before he stopped, put his hands on his knees, and coughed up more water.

"Never thought of that," Dr. Winter mused, watching him. "Can't swim, eh? Hm! Who'd've expected it?" He scratched his head and blinked down at his notebook.

Disgusted, Sydney padded, dripping, over to Michael. She touched the wet coat sticking to his back. "Are you all right?" He turned, and when she saw his face she drew back in dismay. "Oh, God," she blurted, "oh, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It was stupid—I knew it—I did it anyway. Michael, wait—"

He wouldn't stop. Without looking back, he walked off in the direction of the guest house. After a startled second, O'Fallon followed.

Charles, solicitous as always, draped his jacket over her shoulders. "What did you call him?" he asked interestedly.

They watched the lost man plod through the sand and finally disappear into the trees at the end of the path. "Michael," she answered, miserable. "That's his name."

Chapter 4

“You're saying you're going to continue with these experiments?" Sydney stopped drying her hair to stare at her father incredulously. "Even though you know he can speak? He can say his
name,
Papa, I
heard
him."

When he was feeling beleaguered, Dr. Winter's defense was to grow even more vague than usual. "Not saying any such thing," he muttered, ducking his head between his shoulders, turtle fashion, doing his best to disappear behind his desk. "Not saying anything at all. Not talking," he finished inaudibly.

Charles wasn't as reticent. "You don't know
what
you heard, Sydney. You heard him say something—"

"Michael. I heard him say Michael."

"Even so.
If
he said it, and
if
that really is his name, what does it prove? Nothing." Her father looked up at that and nodded. "It only means he remembers his name. You seem to think it means he's a Harvard graduate who happened to get lost in the woods."

Her father chuckled at that.
Chuckled.
In her anger, Sydney forgot to be tactful. "You're scientists—you're supposed to be objective. How can you ignore what's been in front of your eyes for weeks? Especially you, Papa. You knew it already, or you suspected it. You wrote it in your notes!"

"A suspicion, perhaps, the merest—"

"No, you wrote it, don't you remember? 'His manner indicates he could speak if he would.' And you wondered why he had a book with him. Don't you see what it means? He knows everything!"

"Oh, nonsense."

"Not everything," she amended quickly. "But he's not the—the cipher you were hoping for, not by any means, so how can you experiment on him anymore as if he were a lab animal?"

Charles, who had been standing behind her father—like a son in a family photograph, nothing missing but the filial hand on the paternal shoulder—came around the desk and crossed to her. She had changed clothes, but her hair was still wet; the damp towel dangled from her fingers, forgotten. He reached for it, but she shook her head and held on. He urged her toward a chair, but she resisted. "You're upset," he said understandingly. "You've had a shock. What happened this afternoon was terrible, and you're not over it yet." Behind him, her father hemmed and hummed in agreement. "No one's going to hurt the man, Sydney. You know that, don't you? It's true we're scientists, but we're not
mad
scientists, are we?"

She hated it that he was making her smile.
Was
she hysterical? Charles's reasonable voice and his soft hand on her arm made her want to laugh one second and yell at him the next. But irritation at his condescending tone eclipsed everything else. She moved around him to confront her father again.

"Don't you at least think you should reevaluate what you can get out of him? He can't be 'Ontario Man' anymore, can he?"

"Hm, can't be sure. Too soon to say." When he reached for his pipe, she knew she'd lost him. He could easily occupy five whole minutes with finding his tobacco pouch, opening it, filling his pipe bowl, locating his matches, lighting the pipe, letting it go out, relighting it, et cetera, et cetera, all to avoid a subject he didn't feel like discussing.

"Of course we'll have to reevaluate," Charles answered for him. "It's true that he may have lost his value to pure anthropology as a 'cipher,' as you say, someone on whom we could' ve observed the layerings of civilization in a neat, experimental environment. But his value to us as biological ethicists is by no means at an end. We can continue to observe him as a specimen of pure man, loosely speaking, still relatively uncorrupled by human society— that's one way to look at it; another is that he's a savage from whom the benefits of human society have been withheld. It all depends on one's particular bias."

"Charles—"

"And then again, you may be right: his worth may have passed from the realm of science to that of philosophy. Or zoology. In which case—-"

"What about his worth as a man? What about
him?
He's not a study, Charles, he's a human being. You don't own him, and neither does the university. Doesn't
he
have any rights? How do you know he doesn't have parents somewhere? The only word he ever said before today was 'lost.' Why isn't anyone trying to find out who he belongs to? I just don't think—I don't see how you can keep him locked up any longer, or spy on him through a hole in the wall, or play tricks on him for the sake of some— experiment that may not even—that doesn't even—" She ran down, unused to speaking out like this. Her father looked nonplussed.

"All very well, my dear," he said through a cloud of tobacco smoke, "but it doesn't change the fact I've got a report due by summer's end. Slocum's expecting it. Said I'd give it to him. Can't renege."

"Yes, but if—"

"Not saying nothing's changed. Lot's changed. Have to study, mull it over. All I'm saying." With that, he turned around in his chair and started rooting through his bookcase.

Charles put his hand on her shoulder. "Sydney," he said in that gentle voice that could somehow draw her in and pull her away at the same time. "Let's go for a walk. We need to talk this over."

"No, Charles, I can't. Not right now."

"Ah." He nodded understandingly, eyeing her damp, straggly hair. "Later, then."

Her thoughts were already elsewhere. "Later," she echoed, as vague as her father. She went out, still holding her towel.

* * * * *

The front door to the guest house stood ajar. She knocked once and pushed it open. A stale smell hung in the air, musty sweet and unpleasant. The source of it became clear when O'Fallon shoved up from a chair in front of the cold fireplace and took an unsteady step toward her. A bottle sat on the floor by the chair, half empty.

"You're drunk," she accused and kept walking.

"No, I ain't. Where you going? You can't go in there. Hey!" She had already unlocked the door to the inner room and opened it. O'Fallon hurried over, smelling like a barroom. "It ain't safe, miss. I can't be lettin' you go in there, not on yer own."

"I'll be perfectly safe," she snapped. "I'm going inside, Mr. O'Fallon. You can rush in and save me if you hear me scream." She sidled inside and closed the door in his face.

The small room lay in semidarkness. A movement by the window terrified her for an irrational split second—until the figure coming toward her materialized into Michael. Her heart rate slowed almost to normal. Almost. He was wearing a pair of clean, dry trousers. And nothing else.

"I, um ... I ..." She swallowed, feeling silly, and leaned back against the door. "I've come to apologize to you." He looked very beautiful in the half-light; if his body bore scars, she couldn't see them now. He looked perfect. "I've come to tell you I'm sorry. It was wrong of us. We—Sam and I—we pretended we couldn't swim so that . . ." Oh, how to explain this? "My father wanted to see if you would try to save Sam. He's a scientist—you know that. They've been studying you. You're the 'lost man,' and they want to find out how men are, how they act before they're civ—before they've been with other people." She rested the back of her head against the door. "Do you understand any of this?" she asked hopelessly.

Silence.

"Well. Anyway, I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. For the part I played in their little experiment. So's Sam. He feels terrible, in fact."

He had an unnerving stare, as if he saw things other people couldn't see. His nostrils flared slightly, and she knew he was scenting her. It made her blush. She didn't think he was angry or hurt any longer, though. That was something.

"Well," she said a second time. She had her hand on the doorknob when the invitation popped out of her mouth. "Would you like to go for a walk with me?"

He moved toward her, straight to her. She froze, stupidly afraid again, until she realized what he wanted. His shirt, hanging on the door behind her.

* * * * *

O'Fallon followed them. Michael shut him out of his mind and tried to make his steps small, like Sydney's, but it was strange to be walking beside her and he kept forgetting. Then he would have to stop, feeling stupid and awkward, and wait for her.

They came to some big rocks in the sand and she said, "Shall we sit for a while?" and they sat down on a rock, next to each other but not touching. She talked about her brothers and the summer and sailing their boat on the water, safe and calm things, but under her voice he could hear that she wasn't calm. Then she stopped talking and there was stillness between them, not easy but tight, and she turned her body toward him. Their knees bumped. She put up her hand, the way Sam had that first time on the beach.

"I'm Sydney Darrow," she said. "Are you Michael?"

He looked at her hand, small and white, and at her face, so pretty. Her smile tight and kind, full of hope. His hand swallowed hers up when he took it. He was careful with it, not squeezing too hard. He knew she was waiting for him to say words to her. He had before—one word, anyway. Why was it harder now?

But he did it. He said, "I am Michael MacNeil."

Her eyes filled up with water. She was
crying.
She took her hand out of his and turned her head so he couldn't see her face. "I'm sorry," she said with a funny laugh. "It's not sad. I'm just .. ." She put her fingers under her eyes and flicked tears away. "Michael MacNeil," she said softly and looked back into his face. He could see she wasn't sad, but she was . . . something. She said, "What happened to you, Michael?"

All he could do was look at her.

She could see the question was too big. She changed it. "Do you remember when you got lost?"

He remembered last winter when he was starving and he walked too far from home. He lost his way, and then he stole food from the humans to save himself.

But he didn't think she meant that. She meant before; the beginning.

"I remember a boat in the water."
So many words.
He hid his fear by looking at the lake and taking slow breaths through his nose.

She said, "A shipwreck?"

He nodded, although he wasn't sure. "Everyone died in the water. But not me."

"When you were a child? A little boy?"

"Yes. Like Sam."

"Sam's seven."

"I was like Sam."

When she looked away from him, he could look at her. She said very softly, "My God."

He couldn't remember exactly who God was. Did he belong to her? But O'Fallon said,
God damn you,
and the professor said,
Good God.
It was confusing.

"How did you survive? How did you live?"

Another question he couldn't answer. He thought of the dark-skinned people who had found him the first winter and had given him food. But the old woman died in the summer and the two men went away and left him. He was alone for a while, then he lived with the wolves, then a white man caught him in a trap, and then he was alone again, with no one but the old wolf.

But he couldn't say any of those things to her.

He asked her a question. "Are you with your father?"

"With him?"

'Together. You and your father and Mr. West. Are you with them?"

"Oh." That meant she understood. He could see she was thinking. "No. I'm not with them, I'm by myself. With you."

"With me." He smiled. So did she, and it was a real smile he wanted to keep or to touch. But he wasn't allowed to touch her at all, so he sat on his hands.

The sun was going down behind the water. "The sun is going down," he said. It was strange to say out loud something you could see with your eyes. But they—people— did it all the time, said things, explained in words what they already knew.

She said, "Mmm. It's a beautiful evening."

There. Could she tell what his thoughts were? "Yes, it's a beautiful evening," he repeated. He didn't understand how he could sound so calm, as if nothing new was happening to him, when inside his head everything was flying in circles.

"Michael," she said, "did you talk when you were in the wilderness?"

Wilderness.
He liked that word. "Yes. No. I didn't talk with my mouth." He whispered a secret to her. "I forgot my name."

She leaned close to him. "But now you've remembered it?" He nodded. "How?"

"Once I heard Sam talking. Not to any person, to himself. Talking loud."

"Yelling."

"Yelling. His name, at the lake. For nothing—for fun."

"Yes," she said, smiling.

"Then I remembered, yelling my name over the water where I was. Michael MacNeil—I yelled it over and over.

I was little, like Sam. Scared. I didn't want to forget my name." He took a deep, slow breath. "But I did forget. I didn't call myself anything. T—not even 'I.' Nothing. I just. . ."

"You just were." She sounded funny again. Was she sad? He didn't want to make her sad. Could he ask her what was in her head? He couldn't remember, but he thought there might be a rule against it in his book. They were friends now, but not like Sam was his friend. She was different. She made him feel ... he didn't know the words. But he had to be careful with her, because so much was not allowed. One wrong thing and she might go away.