THUNDER PEAK, page 9
She watched him disappear into the dark woods, then closed the door and slid the bolt home with a reassuring thud.
Casey checked on her father, adjusting his pillows and changing some of the leaves covering his welts. Finished, she sat on the edge of the sofa again and saw that he seemed to be resting easier.
I suppose he’ll be fine if I just poke out to the barn for a short spell.
Pulsing with malicious satisfaction, Nightblade watched Taliko leave the human dwelling.
Maneuvered now into a position to infiltrate the mind of the shell warrior—the scaled folk had proved their usefulness. More, they had warned him that the juvenile and the half breed shared a mind-speak bond—how else could the unicorn have known she needed assistance with the honey collectors?
Finding the bear had been fortunate. But fortune favors the prepared and was to be both expected and welcomed. Though it had proven too stubborn to influence for long, the animal was easy enough to agitate into striking the hive. Once aroused, the honey collectors were more easily driven, and even now their tiny, lifeless bodies lay in the woods, each drop of mane-folk blood devoured from their stingers.
Assured thus that his frein had been well spent, Nightblade watched the shell warrior disappear into the woods. Oh, how he longed for the moment he would dismember the foul jevaling and see it fade away into ethereal dust.
Patience.
Manipulate from the shadows.
The moment to strike must be both prepared and prepared for.
Let the juvenile regain its strength. Each time it left the barn, Nightblade would instigate more honey collectors to strike, then recover the blood spoils when it was over.
The process would take time. Hopefully not too much time.
If only human folk blood wasn’t so toxic. Then he might have manipulated the destruction of the half breed long ago and restored himself. As it was, human blood tainted the inherent blood magic of faerie beings whenever the two were mixed, making it useless to any creature that might feed on it, including him. The same uselessness was inherent for jevaled beings; the magic that evolved them dissipated when it left their bodies.
No matter. The plan proceeded apace and as well as could be expected.
One spikeless unicorn, one half breed, a jevaled shell warrior, and one human, even armed with silver as they were, would be no match for the Cree Chieftain once he was reborn.
6
Forbidden
“Hello?”
Though she had been sleeping soundly, Taliko’s visit had set her thoughts racing, and now she was simply too alert to fall asleep again. Looking to her father, she watched him resting for some twenty minutes before deciding it was okay to simply let him be, light a lantern, and head over to the barn.
Now here she was, stepping into the gloom with the heavy satchel full of ice apples over her shoulder. “Hello?” she called again.
A gentle hoof clop sounded in the darkness, and the outlines of a horse came into view.
“There you are,” she said, reaching up to stroke his face. “You were very brave, coming for us like that. How did you even know we were in trouble?”
The horse stepped into the light, then nudged the saddlebag with his nose, and Casey got a good look at the endless angry bruises added to the bites and scratches the steed had suffered the previous night.
“Oh, you poor thing,” she said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a piece of fruit. “Dad said this is just the thing.”
The horse stepped back, nodding its head sharply.
“What’s the matter?” Casey asked, still holding out the fruit.
The horse trod slowly forward and then back each time Casey tried to feed it the fruit. After several failed attempts to get the horse to eat, she let the horse nuzzle her hand until finally he pushed it against her chest.
“What?” Casey held the fruit to her mouth. “You want me to eat it?”
The horse pawed the ground and knocked the fruit against her face with his muzzle.
“Ow.” Casey winced. “My tooth. All right. All right.” Casey bit into the small, delicious fruit, and not realizing how hungry she was, devoured it quickly, followed by another. The horse, with its luminous silver eyes, watched her all the while, as if waiting.
Tired of standing, Casey sat on a milking bench and pulled out a third. “These were supposed to be for you,” she said, taking another bite, but if you’re not going to—
“Hello.”
“Finally!” Casey exclaimed. “Why do you keep giving me the silent treatment? It makes me feel like I’m going crazy.”
“For that, I apologize,” the steed said in her mind. “But I had to be sure of your motivations.”
“Motivations?” Casey muttered. “I’m trying to help you.”
“And for doing just so, I thank you,” the horse said, taking an apple from her hand. “Still, I was told there would be no Sentinels here, so I am surprised to find you. And when you finally did answer my call, you were wielding a firestick, so I chose to exercise caution. Have you been stranded as well? Does anyone know you’re here, hiding among the humans?”
“Sentinel? I’m not—I don’t even know what that is.”
Casey squinted in bewilderment as the horse finished a second apple. Peering at her closely, his thoughts asked, “You are not a Sentinel? Then why are you here?”
“I live here, with my dad.” Casey giggled softly. “Who’s now my father,” she added happily.
The horse raised his head sideways. Casey could sense his confusion and continued. “I thought he was my uncle. That he adopted me after my parents died so he could raise me like a dad, but now I just found out that he really is my father.” Casey looked up into the horse’s silver eyes. “I have you to thank for that. So, thank you.”
The horse continued to stare at her a moment, then his voice appeared in her mind again. “But we communicate—that should be impossible for a human. You have a jevaled ally. And this place.” The steed glanced around the barn. “The wards are so powerful around it that I sensed it as an aril haven from a great distance…”
The horse trailed off for a moment, then mused, “And yet, though you hear my words in your mind, I don’t hear yours unless you say them aloud…”
Peering intently at Casey, the horse tilted its head, first left, then right.
Abruptly, its eyes widened, gaze filling with a realization that drained the enthusiasm from its movements. “The human is your sire…Now I understand why communication has been so difficult between us. I thought it was because I have yet to go through my Wrivening. But that was false. It is you, and what you must be—one of the Forbidden.”
“Forbidden?” Casey frowned. “I don’t know anything about no Forbidden. What’s that mean? It sounds…ugly.”
The barn door opened then, and Jonas shuffled in with Taliko. “What sounds ugly?” her father asked.
“You’re up!” Casey said. “You should be resting!”
“And miss the excitement?” her father said with a chuckle. “Not a chance. I’ll be okay. Taliko gave me something awful to drink, does a lot for the pain.”
Casey nodded. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now. Both of you,” she added, glancing at Taliko, and the turtle nodded at her. She smiled at him and then turned back to the horse. “He called me one of the Forbidden, whatever that means. But I don’t like the sound of it.”
Jonas watched the horse nuzzle an apple out of the bag and eat it. “So you can really talk to this horse? Is the fruit helping?”
Casey nodded, then clarified. “Well, I can talk to him, but it’s…I can hear him in my head, but he only hears me if I talk out loud, if that makes sense.”
Casey looked at her father and saw him staring at her intently, his expression unreadable. Worrying suddenly how her words sounded, she quickly added, “I’m not crazy! You know a giant talking turtle! And he can talk to the horse too! Ask him!”
Jonas took a seat on the milking bench to take the weight off his injured thigh. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said, raising his hand. “No, I’m just trying to make sense of what’s going on. What it all means.”
“Okay,” Casey took a deep breath and nodded.
“How come I can see him?” Jonas asked. “Didn’t you say Nash and Savannah couldn’t see them?”
“Huh?” Casey wondered aloud before turning to the steed. “Why can my dad see you when my friends couldn’t?”
After a long moment of consideration, the steed replied, “Invisibility is an innate defense possessed by all unicorns to use at will. The magic works best against creatures bred of shadow and darkness. But it is also very strong against those who lack a faerie bloodline—such as humans. At the moment, I am also not trying to be unseen.”
Casey translated. Jonas nodded, glancing at her as if expecting a question. When it was obvious she hadn’t put the facts together yet, he gestured toward the sack of ice apples on the floor. “Right then. Toss me one of those before he eats them all.”
Casey did as he asked while the horse watched. After glancing up at the horse a moment, Casey nodded and turned back to her father as he took his first bite. “He says it’s not the fruit. You won’t be able to hear him unless you are one of the Forbidden too.”
“Figured as much,” Jonas said around a mouthful. “Damn near forgot how good these are. I’m eating it anyway.”
“These are even better than our apples,” Casey said frankly. “The way the juice tingles like cold water is amazing.”
“It certainly is,” Jonas agreed. “That’s why I named them ice apples.”
“You named them?”
“Long story for another time,” Jonas said, taking a loud bite.
“So these have been out there all along? Why haven’t we ever gotten any?”
Jonas sighed. “The waiting. It’s always been about the waiting for me.”
“Waiting for what?”
“I’m not sure how to answer that,” Jonas said sadly. “Your mom showed me that tree, said the fruit was special. That it could heal and nourish her frein.”
“Frein?” Casey asked.
Jonas nodded. “Her soul, her spirit. I think that was just her word for it. But harvesting from the pearlwood was a big reason her people used to come here. That’s why I thought it might help him.” Jonas gestured at the horse. “And I never ate from it, so there would always be plenty if…” Jonas shook his head. “I’ve been waiting for her to come back again, so I look in on it occasionally to see if it looks picked, or for some other sign that might mean she could be returning soon.”
“Ahh.” Casey breathed, her gaze drifting up the walls of the barn but looking into the past. “A sign, like something that couldn’t be explained. Something like this horse.”
“Something like this horse.” Jonas agreed, and Casey grew reflective, watching them both eat while Taliko hunkered down close to the ground, alertly surveying all with his watchful topaz eyes.
It was a lot to absorb. Still, Jonas knew Casey would make the connections and break the silence once she was ready, and she did. “Dad, do you know what a Forbidden is?”
“I think I do,” he answered. “Come closer.”
Casey did so, and Jonas took her hand. “Your mother lives where this horse does. She used to visit me often, and even though she still wants to, the people in charge there won’t let her come back. According to the Elders or some such, falling in love with a human is against the law. Forbidden. And us having children, like you, was especially forbidden. So that’s what I think it means.”
While he spoke hot tears filled Casey’s eyes, and she was already hugging him before he finished.
“I’m sorry Nightingale,” Jonas whispered, rubbing her back. “I wish it were a happier story than that, but the most important thing to remember is”—Jonas dropped his eyes a moment and then looked back up—“is that love doesn’t care about time or distance. That’s how strong it can be, and forbidden or not, no one can stop us from how we feel. And from that came you, and a true blessing you are if ever there was one. Wherever she is right now, I know she feels the same way and she’s glad you’re here safe with me.”
Casey stepped back. “Safe from who?”
“From them. Those idiot Elders. To them, our relationship was a crime, so your mother risked everything to get you here.”
“If I was born across the ocean or wherever, how did I get here? How did mom?” Casey looked at the unicorn. “How did he get here?”
“All of you came the same way. You though, were quite a puzzle at first,” Jonas admitted quietly. “I was asleep when a loud bang downstairs at the door woke me—a real thud, like someone was trying to kick it in. I checked from the second-floor windows, but it was the middle of the night, and couldn’t see anything or anyone.
“I crept down, quiet like, with Liberty tight against my shoulder. That’s when I saw it.”
“Saw what?” Casey asked, eyes wide.
Jonas smiled before continuing. “A basket. In the middle of the floor.”
“Me?” Casey asked.
Jonas nodded. “You. Tiny little you. Wrapped in a gold blanket. And no telling how you were dropped off with the door locked and no window broke.”
Casey’s eyes sparkled. She glanced over at the mysterious horse, then Taliko, and finally back to her father. This, she realized suddenly, was the story she had been waiting her whole life for.
“I opened up and called out a few times to see if anyone was about. Later I found out your mom sent you here with Taliko to protect you. But he wasn’t ready to introduce himself yet and didn’t answer. So I sat down to have a look at you. That’s when I saw you had little moccasins on your feet. Just like mine.”
Casey looked down at her toes.
Jonas nodded. “The very same. They just keep growing right along with you. Under your blanket I found the hawk pendant that I gave you for your tenth birthday.”
It is part of the secret! Casey felt a pleasant tingle run through her body and hugged herself. I knew it!
Jonas brushed his face quickly, then finished. “That was all the evidence I needed. No question. Somehow, someway, your mom found a way to get you to me, where she knew you’d be safe and cared for.”
Casey smiled at him and then peered back at her feet again, at the magic moccasins that she could never grow out of. In the midst of wriggling her toes, Casey’s face darkened, and her eyes snapped up. “Do you think they hurt her? Punished her? Is she all right?”
“Punished, yeah. But hurt her? No, I don’t think they hurt her,” Jonas said with certainty. “When we realized she was pregnant, we started to plan. Next time she came, I was going to sell the place so we could move somewhere they’d never find us. Only you made it, so they must have found out somehow. It was dire straits trouble for sure, that’s all that could have kept her, but your mom is tough. Really tough. That’s where you get your spirit from, that fire in your heart, and she was ready for whatever punishment she thought they might give her.”
Casey frowned. “Wish I could go wherever she is and bring them Elders the trouble they deserve.”
“Me too.”
They were quiet a moment, and the horse whinnied softly, eating another ice apple out of the satchel.
“Wait a second,” Casey said, pointing at the horse. “He said something like that too. Falling in love with a human? What does that mean?”
Jonas chuckled. “I was starting to think you weren’t getting it.”
“Noo,” Casey searched for the words that would clarify her thoughts. “It’s just, I always imagined there was just one secret. But really there are a bunch of them, and all of them lead to new questions about more secrets. So the whole thing is like a great big, out of control fire. And I’m trying to get there so fast with the water that I lose half the bucket on the way to putting it out.”
Jonas nodded knowingly, and after a few moments of listening to the great black colt munching on apples, he began. “You look like her. Thin. You’ve even got those cute angles to your chin and nose like she does. The narrow diamond-shaped ears. Quick and strong. And getting stronger I bet.” Jonas nodded in memory and snickered. “Your mom was stronger than any man I ever met. I can’t imagine how powerful the men are where she lives.”
Casey shook her head. “Why do you keep saying it like that? Where does she live?”
“Your mom, the horses you saw, this horse right here. They live…in another place. They can only come here through a special gate. It’s hidden in the forest out past Point Lookout. I don’t know how it works, but it’s like…If we had a magic door right here in this barn, and when you walked through, you’d come out in town. And if you were in town and walked back through the same door the other way, you would return here, in the barn.”
“I kept thinking you meant another country.” Casey tossed her long braid with a side to side shake of the head. “But that sounds…sounds like the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland.”
Jonas chuckled. “I haven’t read that one yet, but my guess is you’re probably right.”
Casey giggled with him. “So much has changed since yesterday.”
“It has,” her father nodded.
After a long glance at the colt, her father continued. “Apparently, according to your mother, her people were good friends with the Apache and other Indians before the whites came and ruined it for them. No way to know for sure of course, but it occurred to me after, a lot after, that her people coming through the portal, befriending Indians, and doing amazing things like talking to animals could be the source of a lot of legends.”
“Okay, that sort of does make sense,” Casey conceded. “Wait! You think that’s why everyone thinks Thunder Peak is haunted?”
“I do.” Jonas pointed at her. “Because that’s where the unpredictable weather comes from. Thunder Peak makes its own magic. Something even your mom and her people don’t understand. But loose magic up in the sky opens sky doors that allow the storms to pass back and forth like they’re coming out of nowhere. And why sometimes we hear thunder and have rain when there’s no clouds at all.”
