Hidden Sanctuary, page 22
The well was drying up. I felt it. The water level was low. Sluggish. Muddy.
The village was dying because I’d failed.
And Efra?
I looked at the woman who had motioned for me to get out. With sad eyes, she pointed toward the church. I imagined the worst. Pushing through the crowd, I ran into the village, heading for the church. Flinging open the door, I beat a path down the aisle and into Efra’s private chamber.
She was in bed, asleep, but at the sound of my entrance, she opened her eyes and smiled at me.
Shocked, I did not return the smile. Pete had said she was fine, but that was days ago. Now her cheeks were sunken, her hair dull. Her body frail. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I hurried to her bedside and dropped to my knees.
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “We need to get you to a doctor. Take you to a hospital.”
Even though her body seemed to be shrinking, her eyes remained bright. “It looks like you’re the one who needs healing,” she said, her gaze fixed on my casted arm.
“I’m fine, but we need to get you help.”
She shrugged. “Pete came by, and I saw a doctor. Some man from your company sent him.”
“What did he say? Did he give you anything?” Panic rose in me.
“What is there to say or to offer? I am old. Much older than you think. No doctor or drug can cure age.” She waved the issue away with thin fingers. “We have more important problems. Did you retrieve the tiles?”
I pulled the red bag from my pocket and opened it, spilling the contents onto her bedspread.
She sighed in relief and sagged against the pillows.
“I knew you would find them,” she said. “I knew you would bring them back.”
“Barely.”
“Barely is acceptable,” she joked, and for a moment, her pleasure at my success was enough.
“Help me up.” She pushed the covers back, and my breath caught in my throat. Her nightgown was heavy linen but the thickness of the cloth could not hide her thin legs and sunken skin. “I am dying, and there are things you need to know.”
The panic I’d been fighting finally overwhelmed me. “No! Don’t say that!”
She hesitated, her dark eyes searching mine. Now they were full of sorrow. “I do not want to leave you, but I cannot live forever. Nor do I want to. Before I go, there are things I must tell you. Important things. Can you listen?”
Whether it was her words or her tone, something in me calmed even as another part of me stuck its fingers in its ears and hummed, denying what I couldn’t bear to hear. “I can try,” I murmured, my voice breaking.
“Good. There is much about the tiles I have not told you. They have a purpose. An important one.”
“I already know,” I told her.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Do you?”
I nodded. “I had a vision. I know the tiles are powerful.”
She smiled. “Aleta, she was the Marian you saw?”
“Yes.” I was, no longer surprised at the depths of Efra’s knowledge. Now that I was talking, I needed to tell her everything. “And I met more Marians. They’re gathering tiles. I think they’re trying to reconstruct the mosaic.”
Efra stared at me as if I’d given her the moon. “I never thought it would happen,” she whispered, her voice tinged with surprise and disbelief. Her black eyes watered, and she wiped them with shaky fingers. “Yet you brought the tiles back to me.” She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“I made a promise.”
“So you did,” she said, understanding. “And you kept it.”
“No,” I replied. “I failed. I’m late, and now you’re dying.”
She touched my face, and I realized I was crying. Again. “I have lived an interesting life. More interesting than I wanted sometimes. I am ready to go. Almost.”
“But I’m not ready to let you go,” I said through the tears. “I just found you.”
“You have your sisters now. They are your family.”
Ana. Eve. Catrina. “Yes.”
“The mosaic is more than a source of power, Tru. When complete, it will align the earth and stop the catastrophes that have plagued the world of late.”
I nodded again, barely hearing her. Not caring about the rest of the earth. The woman in front of me was all that mattered.
Her frail hand stroked my hair. “You must take the tiles back to them and help them in their mission. That is where the tiles belong. Where you belong.”
I sniffed. “What about you? Your people? The well?”
Putting a finger under my chin, she raised my face to hers with an enigmatic Madonna smile. “I do not think it is coincidence that a dowser of great skill was brought to me. You will find my people a new well. One that will not dry up. One that will never go dry.”
“What if I can’t?” Out of habit, I touched the place above my heart where my amethyst used to rest. Without it, I wasn’t sure I could push through the stress to help her people.
Efra shook her head at me, having none of my pessimism. “You are stronger than you think. Stronger than even I thought was possible. You have to believe.”
I scrubbed my face. I hated to cry. “I can do that.”
“I know.” She pushed the covers back again. “There is something I want to show you. Something that belongs to you and your sisters.”
I realized that she was getting up, with or without my aid. I slipped my arm around her waist and helped her to her feet.
Her body was light as she leaned against me. Slowly, we made our way to the next room and the Madonna sarcophagus.
Hooking a chair with my foot, I pulled it over and helped her sit.
“Open it,” she said, her dark eyes bright and her voice strong despite the fragility of her body.
I pushed the lid up and blackness overwhelmed me.
Aleta lay in bed.
Her breaths were counted now, but she had no regrets for her life. Except one—the mosaic.
Unfinished. She would not live to see it complete. Still, she was leaving it in Maya’s capable hands. While that did not end the regret that plagued her, it assuaged it to a degree.
Besides, it wasn’t as if she had a choice.
“Daughter,” she said, holding her hand out.
Sleeping in a chair across the room, Maya started awake.
“It is time,” Aleta told her.
Maya hurried to Aleta’s bedside, her dark eyes filled with tears. “Mother,” she whispered. Like a child, she crawled in beside Aleta, laying her head against her chest for comfort.
“Your hair is still like silk,” Aleta whispered, stroking her locks. “Did I ever tell you that? Like a black silk waterfall.”
“Yes,” Maya replied. “All the time.”
“I shall miss it,” she whispered. “Miss you.” Her heart was slowing. It wasn’t long now.
Maya’s shoulders trembled as she sobbed.
“Do not cry, little one.”
“What will I do when you are gone?” Her voice broke.
Aleta stroked her hair, knowing there was no answer she could give to assuage her grief, but that was the way of goodbye. It was easy to leave. Much more difficult to be the one left behind. “Do not grieve too long, my daughter. I am off to a new adventure. And it is one I look forward to.”
“I know,” Maya sniffed.
“And you know that I leave you with an important job.”
“The mosaic.” She looked up, her black eyes understanding in their grief.
“You must complete what I could not.” Her heart slowed even more. A few more breaths…
“I will finish it.” Maya nodded, touching Aleta’s cheek.
“I know.” Aleta leaned back into her pillows. “Youare a good daughter,” she whispered, realizing it was time to leave.
Her muscles went limp. Her heart stopped.
She crossed over into a new adventure.
I opened my eyes, and this time there was no confusion or disorientation. I was on the floor. Again. Lying at the base of the Madonna sarcophagus. A vessel that housed hundreds of tiles, and not just the few I’d recovered.
And though the woman on the lid was the Madonna, I knew she was more than that. It was Aleta. The piece was an ode to a great artisan, created by her best student and daughter, Maya, and infused with the ability to contain the energy of the tiles.
A miracle in a miracle.
I looked at the ceiling, my gaze following a crack in the plaster. All this time, I’d thought the visions were about Aleta, the woman who finished the mosaic. A Roman priestess who left behind the world she knew, to help the rest of humanity.
They were about her. In a way. Thanks to the visions, I knew how to rebuild the mosaic. Not all of it, but enough to get the Marians on the right path.
But the visions were more. They were about saying goodbye. About duty.
About Maya and what it meant to be the one left behind.
Knowing what I would see, but still hoping I was wrong, I looked over at Efra in the chair. She was slumped forward, her eyes closed. A smile was on her lips.
Her chest was still.
I rose to my knees.
“I won’t let you down,” I said, laying my head on her lap. “Good journey, Mother.”
I shut my eyes and cried for what seemed like forever.
Chapter 20
“I knew you’d come back,” Ana said. “The others weren’t so sure, but I knew.”
We were walking through the orchard near the farmhouse. Griffin and I had arrived late last night with all the tiles from the sarcophagus.
Perhaps it was Efra’s will, or my own urge to please her, but my talent was strong enough to overcome the grief that consumed me, and I’d found the new well for the village within hours of burying my mentor and friend.
My mother in spirit, if not blood.
Then Griffin used his money and my manpower to move the village and sink the pipes. Fresh water flowed within a few days.
When I’d returned to camp, I’d discovered that Dynocorp had terminated my contract, which was not a shock. I didn’t care anymore. I was gone within hours, leaving Pete to move our people to the next site.
It wasn’t grief at losing Efra or anger with Dynocorp and Simon Adriano that had driven me to return to the Marians so quickly. Finding oil was just a job. There would always be villains. And loss was a part of life.
I had a duty now. A purpose.
The Marians needed me. They needed the tiles. I had a promise to keep.
“How could you be so sure we’d come back?” I asked, kicking a pile of wet leaves. “I didn’t even know that until later.”
“I had a feeling.” Ana smiled.
Looping my arm through hers, I laughed, but then stopped as something niggled at my dowser senses.
I had a feeling, as well. It had nothing to do with friendship.
“What’s wrong?” Ana asked, disengaging her arm from mine. “You look weird.”
“There’s something here. Close by,” I said.
“What?”
I held my hand up, indicating she should be quiet. Shutting my eyes, I reached out. “Something Marian, I think.” Whatever it was, it was weak. So faint I couldn’t get a bearing on it. Perhaps if I had my crystal, I could locate the source of the energy.
I’d tried a few other crystals since losing mine, but none gave me the intensity and the focus of the one I’d lost.
I opened my eyes.
“Well?” she asked.
I shook my head, disappointed. “I don’t know. I can’t get a bearing on it.”
“Could it be the temple?” she asked.
“What?”
“The temple,” she explained, “where the mosaic was built.”
My heart started pounding at her words. Aleta’s temple? The cavern where she worked on the Madonna mosaic?
Ana continued. “We’ve been looking for it. We know it’s close, but we can’t find the opening.” Her gaze bored into mine. “Can you?”
I shut my eyes again, willing myself to find it. To be strong.
I was rewarded with another niggling feeling in my head that was almost undetectable. “Sorry. It’s close, but the energy signature isn’t strong enough. Not anymore.”
Ana sighed. “It’s okay. We’ll find it,” she said, continuing down the path. “Eventually.”
Lost in thought, we walked in silence. Ana stopped when the path ended and the orchard opened up to a view of the rocky, rolling foothills. “She would have loved this,” she said.
“Who?”
“Scarlet.” Hands on her belly, Ana looked over the wild land before her. “That’s the other reason we’re so eager to find the temple—not just because we want to rebuild the mosaic. We didn’t bury Scarlet. That was simply show for the public and the Adriano family.” She said the Adriano name like a swear word. “Scarlet was cremated. When we find the temple, we’ll put her ashes there. A place of honor.”
She laughed to herself. “It sounds funny to say that aloud. A place of honor. She was such a free spirit, and that sounds so stuffy.” Ana sighed and leaned against me. “But it still feels right.”
“I wish I’d known her,” I said, putting my arm around Ana’s thickened waist.
“What do you think you’re doing, so far from the farmhouse?” a voice shouted. We both turned at the interruption, to see Griffin and Robert walking toward us. “It’s freezing,” Robert called again.
Ana grinned at the admonishment. “I’m pregnant, not stupid. And I’m wearing a coat.”
Her husband frowned, but the anger didn’t reach his eyes. “Still, you’re gong to catch your death,” he scolded. When he reached her side, he pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her expanded waist. “Come back to the farmhouse and get warm. I’ve made you hot chocolate.”
Ana’s grin broadened. “Marshmallows?”
“Of course.”
Ana shrugged a goodbye, and I knew that my company was no match for marshmallows and chocolate.
Especially when shared with her husband. “See you back at the house.”
The pair walked away, arm in arm.
Griffin joined me, and we walked in silence over the hills, with me following my feet and Griffin keeping me company.
We rounded a large grouping of stones, and before us was a waterfall, steaming in the cold air. Taking care on the mossy rocks, we made our way to the water’s edge. I dipped my hand in. “It’s thermal,” I said, pleased with my find.
“Maybe later, we can go skinny-dipping,” he said, enveloping me in his arms.
With my back against his chest, I snuggled into him.
“Happy?” he asked as we watched the water flow and splash.
“Very.” I missed Efra, but there were no regrets. Though it seemed absurd, I knew that everything had unfolded just as it should have, and there was some small comfort in that.
Destiny.
“When this is over, come with me to Cairo,” Griffin whispered.
I turned in his arms to face him, and as always, his hand cupped my cheek. His eyes filled with expectation. “I don’t want to lose you, Gertrude Palmer.”
I stuck my tongue out at hearing my given name.
He grinned. “It seems the only way to make sure you don’t shoot someone, and they don’t shoot you, is to stay by your side.” He kissed my mouth. “Close by your side.”
I swiped his bottom lip with my tongue. “Will you let me drive?”
“Never.”
I sighed. “You are such a man.”
“So, Cairo?” His other arm slid around my waist, and his eyes looked into mine. Questions. Eager. Hopeful.
I knew I had everything that mattered and more.
A mission. A mosaic to reconstruct. A legend to bring back to life. A family. Love. And the only answer I could give.
“Yes.”
ISBN: 978-1-55254-705-2
HIDDEN SANCTUARY
Copyright © 2006 by Sharron McClellan
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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