Six
Natasha and Jakob had passed the British Columbia border when he said “When will you move for real from that toilet you live in?”
Natasha gazed out the window at B.C.’s endless expanse of Rockies. “This view is amazing,” she murmured.
“So purchase real estate.” Jakob slipped on his sunglasses.
She ignored him.
He turned the car stereo off and what she heard next was
—Echo Creek is poison—
mind-to-mind, a communique she forbade whenever a conventional, normal, method was available.
“Stop it,” she said.
—Sell Head To Heal to that person who is your partner—
“That person has a name and you know it far better than I.”
There. That shut him up. For a few seconds, anyway.
“She’d buy it from you in a heartbeat,” he said. “That man she is with is about to propose, so now she’ll never leave Echo Creek.”
“Really?” Natasha turned to face him. “When?”
“Sooner than he should. Poor, stupidni man. She is stubborn, hot-headed—”
“And so lovely she takes your breath away.”
He glared out the windshield and eternity ticked by before, squirming with remorse, she said “You never told me your Shadows show you things about Railey.”
“Peonies,” he bit off, once a few more miles slipped by.
Ah, peonies. Big blooms that burst forth overnight and were next to impossible to kill. Like true love, Natasha mused, then chastised herself for thinking like someone out of a fairytale.
Fairytales often end violently.
She shuddered and shooed the Shadows away, looked at Jakob. “You’ve also never told me that your Shadows show you peonies for love.”
He twitched a shoulder. “One more trait we share. And let me be clear, sestranek: I see peonies for your friend only in relation to the idiot man who’s fallen at her feet.”
“Of course,” she said.
The look he gave her had teeth.
She shrugged. “I didn’t think otherwise.”
—You are lying—
She didn’t answer. Fixed her gaze out the windshield and many quiet miles slid past before “Jakob?” she ventured.
“Hmm?”
“Have…do you ever see peonies for yourself?”
“Ne.” Scenery sailed by in silence. “I’m no one’s milacek, Natasha.”
She sighed. “Me either. But…maybe that’s just not how the Shadows work.”
He tilted his head, gave her a small grin. “Are you wishing to see peonies?”
“Pfft.” She waved a hand. “Ne. Last time it was such a bust.”
He laughed a little then he reached over, squeezed her hand. She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth and blurted—“Railey’s wedding will be in the spring.”
“Wrong. This August.”
Peonies for Railey. Her heart cramped as she looked at him. “Spring or August,” she said quietly, “don’t you think you should go?”
“I’ll be out of the country.”
Case closed. She sighed.
“And hopefully you will be out of the piss-pot,” he added. “Sell her Head To Heal at a bargain, as a wedding gift—”
“Dost!” Enough! “And go where?”
“Anywhere! You torture yourself in Echo Creek! And why? Because you believe all the superstitious hokum of local no-minds—”
“All superstition is rooted in truth, Jakob.”
He gaped. “All superstition is rooted in ignorance, Natasha. What we are capable of…ja, it is energy. Electricity, even. But it’s not magic. It’s genetic. In a thousand years—maybe even five hundred—everyone will be like us.”
Could that be true? Did she want it to be? And either way, this ability, their Shadows…they could be unnerving. Frightening, even. They’d certainly scared the people in Echo Creek. Who in turn had scared her. “They…they painted me with a red brush, Jakob,” she whispered, lowly.
He gripped the steering wheel and the silence that slid by felt cold, then—“They did,” he agreed, voice as low as the thunder of their Shadows. “And then I painted them with a brush just as red.”
Natasha shrank against the passenger door. “H-how much longer?” she asked.
“Couple hours, give or take.”
“Can I sleep?”
“You do not have to ask.”
She curled up tighter. Closed her eyes.
“Natasha?” he said.
“Yes?”
“I regret nothing.”
She knew that. Knew also, deep within the locked corners of her heart, that she did not regret anything he’d done either. And he deserved to know that. She closed her eyes
—I love you, my bratranek. For everything—
“As I love you, Natasha,” he replied, aloud. “Sleep now. Tonight will be late.”
Because of course his Shadows knew things hers didn’t. She pushed the little shard of resentment away and closed her eyes. Drifted into a quick, yet unsettling dreamscape where fairytale turrets loomed darkly, and where she grasped hands with a Rapunzel-like figure with long, curly hair. They were running from—or with?—a rough looking knight who had eyes like the sea…
“Natasha,” murmured Jakob and she shot up in a flurry of imagined flower petals cast off by the dream.
“Oh!” Wait. The street was full of flower petals, and all along the boulevard fruit trees marched in full blossom; peach, cream, and rich ruby. “Oh,” she repeated. “Oh, my.”
They cruised between yards with emerald hedges and thick carpets of lawn, pruned perfection paying homage to the blushing beauty of the trees.
“Vestemere, British Columbia,” said Jakob, and down-shifted to a crawl, allowing perfumed blossom scent to roll into the car. “Happy now, that you came?”
Yes. She was.
He braked at the curb before a tiny bungalow with a sign in the window. FOR RENT. “Ah…Natasha?” he said.
Her Shadows immediately swept forth and showed her a shell game; a ball appearing, then disappearing, deft hands keeping it hidden. “Ja-kob.” She flicked the Shadows away. “What did I just see—”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Petals rained onto the windshield.
“Where I arranged for us to be renting—”
“Hi there!” A voice from outside the car. Natasha looked and gasped. Blue Eyes was moving down the walk, flesh and blood and three-dimensional.
“—we know the owners,” Jakob finished.
She swiveled to gawk at him.
“I’m actually surprised your Shadows didn’t show you,” he said, and the way he made it sound like it was her own fault for not knowing made her want to leap on him, shake him.
Blue Eyes, on the curb, lifted his hand in a wave, smiling gamely.
—I want to throttle you, bratranek—
she thought fiercely.
“That’s what you say, but that’s not how you really feel.” Jakob got out of the car.
—Yes, it is!--
She glared at how smoothly he moved round the vehicle while she sat there, trembling. One day, Jakob. One day I will hold trump. ‘He’s manipulating you,’ Railey had said, and now she didn’t even have time to be angry as he opened the passenger door (such a gentleman, she thought sourly), and her Shadows encroached, a roll of smudges swimming ’round Blue Eyes who said “You must be Jakob’s cousin, Natasha.”
“Ja—yes,” she croaked. Looking at him was like watching a picture book—a fairytale— spring to life.
“Hello.” A new voice and more Shadows burst up off the sidewalk and down from the fruit trees. Natasha turned and Jessalyn Chandler-Haslom, Heart Face, approached them, petite and with a riot of curls down her back. Rapunzel? Who was next? That sea-eyed knight who’d been racing with them (or against them?) away from those turrets?
“You’re Natasha?” Jessalyn queried, and extended a paint-stained hand.
Natasha could not grasp her fingers even though Shadows bit at her hands, trying, it seemed, to lift them and force contact.
“Don’t worry!” the other woman said. “I won’t get you covered in paint.” A rueful grin danced on her face. “I’m an artist. My hands are a mess all the time.”
"Oh! I—” I’m embarrassing myself. Making a fool of myself.
—Calm, sestranek—
—Shut up, Jakob. This is all your fault—
She apologized—in Czech, of all things—rattling herself more. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, in English. “I didn’t notice your hands,” she lied. “Just…too many hours in the vehicle.” Did she sound punch-drunk? She certainly felt that way.
“All the way from Edmonton,” Jessalyn’s heart-face bent with pity. “What a drive.”
It was mesmerizing to hear this voice which, up till now, had echoed only in her Shadows. “I…I actually came from further than that,” she babbled, for it was imperative to steady her nerves by saying something. Anything. “I live in Echo Creek, an hour east of Edmonton.”
“Echo Creek?” Rob frowned. “I don’t think I’ve heard of it.”
“That’s because it’s a toilet.” Jakob smiled, satin charm. “Natasha should move.”
She pasted him with a look. Must he? Especially in front of these strangers who were no strangers?
—Do you not think you’re in enough trouble with me, bratranek?--
then “Dost,” added softly. Enough. “Please ignore him.” She could be just as satiny as he. “Unless you need proof that he’s an arrogant dictator.” Oh, lord listen to her. All worked up and saying ‘deek-tator’.
Jessalyn laughed. “You have delightful accents,” she said. “Is your first language Russian?”
“Czech,” Jakob inserted smoothly.
“Even so I’m fast losing my Czech,” Natasha nabbed the conversation back from him for, to her surprise, the Shadows showed her an unexpected word—
Friend
—hanging over Jessalyn; the proof in the open interest on her heart face. In her welcoming smile. “I…I only have him to speak Czech to anymore,” she went on, “so…”
“Use it or lose it,” Rob mused.
“Ja,” she replied with a smile.
“Well that would be a shame,” Jessalyn said. “I’d be so grateful for some sort of culture. As it is, my bloodline’s just a hodge-podge.”
“Is that so?” said Jakob, and Natasha could sense him pulling from his Shadows. “The area where Natasha lives is predominantly people of eastern European descent. Perhaps you could adopt the heritage of where-ever you’re from….?”
Natasha winced. Didn’t he think he was being the tiniest bit obvious in his probing? Or did it just seem so because she knew what she knew? Either way—
—back off, bratranek—
better safe than sorry. Still, she listened when Jessalyn replied:
“I grew up everywhere. My father was a cop. We were posted all over the country.”
A cop?
No, Policii, the Shadows corrected, and from the dark smudges more words skirled, meeting her ear with an accent like her own, and in a mix of English and Czech just like her own tired, broken speech. Friend. Bratr.
Milacek.
Was that just her own entangled thoughts swirling out of shock, nerves and that fairytale dream? Show, she commanded and the Shadows immediately changed color, became an eager, gratified kaleidoscope that looked, felt, like….Bliss. She rarely embraced her ability, but when she did the pleasure was like nothing else, and it left her weakened and thirsting with a deep, near carnal craving for more.
Her Shadows billowed, a bath of color, and in the middle a tiny figure emerged, wriggling in delight, chubby arms and sturdy little legs flailing. A baby, yet dite, she thought, aware that again her first language was dominant, but why? She had not been lying before. She really didn’t speak Czech often. Yet here in the presence of Blue Eyes and Heart Face, it was reflex.
“Dost!” growled a voice from the Shadows and Natasha flinched. The gurgling baby disappeared.
—Jakob? Was that you?—
He was staring at her. “You are bleeding, my cousin.” He passed her a tissue and the Shadows floated away.
“Everything okay?” Rob asked.
“J-just tired,” she whispered, Kleenex held fast to her nose.
Jessalyn whipped around, faced her husband. “Give them their tour then turn over the keys,” she said. “Poor Natasha’s exhausted.”
Shadows spelled Friend on the sidewalk. “Thank you,” Natasha murmured and it struck her that she did not know whether it was to Jessalyn or to the Shadows themselves that she spoke.
“I’ll wait in the truck,” Jessalyn said, then broadly smiled, a dimple dancing in her left cheek. “Welcome to Vestemere,” she added.
Jakob reached for her hand and lifted it to his mouth. “Thank you, Elayna.”
Her fingers snaked backward. “Pardon…what did you call me?”
“Jessalayna?” he said, face awash with affected confusion.
The silence was earsplitting, yet Jakob, ever the showman, looked, baffled, from one of them to the other. “Did I hear your name incorrectly?”
Eons elapsed before “Yes,” she replied. “It’s Jessalyn.”
Natasha’s breath rushed out and as Jessalyn moved to the truck at the curb she, with Jakob’s hand against the small of her back, followed Rob robotically into the rental, listening only minimally when he said “I use this place for my finishing carpenters to practice the latest trends in décor, so while it looks a little dated on the outside…”
He let the inside speak for itself and was right; cottage was like something out of a magazine, all granite counters, hardwood, and sharp, clean colors.
And Shadows, hissing at their feet.
“There’s a few more looks my guys will be trying over the next few weeks in the bathroom and one of the bedrooms—can you live with that?”
“In a fully furnished designer home?” Jakob raised his eyebrows. “I think we’ll survive, yes.”
Blue Eyes beamed then "Oh!" he said. "Did I already say no pets?" then handed over the keys.
"No problem," said Jakob, and when he shut the door behind him bounced the keys in his hand, eyes visibly alive. “So,” he said.
“Yes.” She anticipated him. “A new question. Who is Elayna?” He nose began trickling again.
©bonnie randall 2005