Sara had dreamed but when she woke all she could remember, was that the dream had been pleasant. She rolled over. Jared was slipping into his boots. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“I’ve been awake for a while,” she smiled. “I had trouble falling asleep last night.”
His eyebrows shot up. “All things considered, that’s a little hard to believe. Am I losing my touch?”
“I don’t know.” Sara pursed her lips. “Maybe you better check.”
He smirked, bent down, caged her with his arms and kissed her. She put a hand behind his neck, pulled him closer, and threatened to ignite a familiar fire. He considered undressing and giving in to her but resisted the temptation. “Oh no! We got away with it yesterday. I doubt Dad will be as patient this morning. I know what you want, but this time, I’m giving you a rain check.” He sat on the side of the bed and picked up his comb.
Sara reached for it and knelt behind him. He drew in a quick breath and closed his eyes. She pulled the comb through his hair in slow, sensual strokes, which didn’t help his already aroused state. “Are you helping your father with the fence line again?”
Her warm breath tickled his neck. Jared’s eyes changed to deepest glowing amber. He shivered and fought for control when she used her fingers to separate his hair into sections, and lightly grazed her nails over the skin of his neck. “Yes,” he said slowly. “What are you and Mother doing?” he countered in an unsteady voice.
Sara finished braiding his hair and tied it off. She could tell by his quickened breath, she was getting to him. She traced the outline of his ear with an index finger. “I wanna go with you,” she said in a soft, seductive voice.
He turned. “You’re kidding – right?”
“I thought I’d take my guitar and work on some new songs.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “It’s gonna be extremely hot out there, Sara.”
“I know, but I don’t mind.” She kissed the side of his neck. “Please.”
He sighed deeply, grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Alright, but I’ll have to pack a beach umbrella and make sure we’ve got plenty of water for everyone.”
Sara pouted. “You don’t want me to go?”
Jared arched an eyebrow and smiled. “You know I want you with me. I just wanted you to understand the conditions you’d be enduring. If you get bored, we can’t bring you back. We wanna try and finish today so we might be out there for a long time, maybe even until dusk,” he hinted. He was trying to convince her she didn’t want to be there. He didn’t need her tempting his willpower.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, determined to prove she could rough it if she needed to. “I’ll take my book, which you so graciously packed for me and read it if I get bored. I’ll be fine. Please Jared – I wanna be with you.”
Resist that – no way! He took a cowboy hat from his closet. “Alright, but, you’ll have to wear one of these. And I do mean wear it,” he said and shoved it on her head, so the brim covered her eyes.
Sara sighed and pushed it back enough she could see. “I’ll wear it, but I don’t have to like it!”
Jared chuckled and took her hand. “Come on. We’ve still gotta convince Dad.”
~ ~ ~
Tom wasn’t as willing to give in as Jared. His attitude wasn’t helping Sara’s cause. Having experienced her determination and felt her wrath, Jared was tolerant but fueled with Tom’s iron will, he agreed with his father. Sara needed to stay home.
Nadine stood in the background, enjoying the argument with humorous interest. Knowing in the end Sara would win; she’d packed extra food and water. When the debate was over, Tom crawled behind the wheel of his 4x4. Jared buckled his fiancée in the back and rode shotgun to his dad.
~ ~ ~
He used a different road. Not long into the journey, Sara realized she’d made a mistake. Leftover from their last significant rainfall, this road was riddled with deep potholes, which made it extremely uncomfortable. Jared explained, though the desert was dry, and they saw little rain, when it did rain, it came down in buckets. Water fell in such volume, the arid sand couldn’t absorb it fast enough. As a result, they often experienced flash floods. This explained the enormous holes they kept swerving around and bouncing through.
If Sara had voiced her honest opinion, she wished she’d listened and stayed at home. It wasn’t the heat or her driving thirst that would kill her. It was the monstrous machine beneath her, intent on dislodging her insides, which threatened to do it. She must have made some kind of sound, although she doubted it could be heard above the noise of the engine and the constant banging of something in the back. Tom stopped the vehicle and Jared turned his head. His handsome face adorned a sly grin. “You OK back there, angel?”
Using the back of her hand, Sara wiped the sweat from her cheek and straightened her hat. She opened her mouth to speak, but it came out as a raspy whisper. Her throat was coated with the desert dust. She cleared it and tried again. “I’m fine.” My insides feel like scrambled eggs! I’m breathing baked earth, and I never wanna sit down again! No problem! In truth, she felt like one of James Bond’s famous martinis – shaken - not stirred. “I don’t remember the road being this bumpy on the bike.” She winced the second the words left her lips.
Jared laughed and turned in his seat. “That’s because it’s a lot easier to avoid the potholes. It’s not much further now – we’re almost there.”
Sara sneered at his back. The corners of Jared’s mouth turned up.
~ ~ ~
Tom approached what looked like a small canyon. Sara’s eyes widened. Surely to God he’ll go around it. The front of the 4x4 angled down. Oh, shit! He’s not! She took a slow breath, tightened her seatbelt and grabbed the handhold above her head. Did Thunderclouds descend from Japanese Kamikazes?
Jared grinned, said something to Tom in Navajo, and they burst out laughing. Clearly they didn’t want her to know they were enjoying themselves at her expense and her posterior’s pride. As usual, his not much further, and we’re almost there, turned into the day after eternity. She was about ready to throw up. At last, Tom pulled next to a row of fence posts and stopped. Sara felt like a dehydrated pea in a bushel basket, one with bruises on its backside.
Tom and Jared stepped around to the back. They each grabbed the side of an oversized roll of barbed wire and lowered it to the ground. That must’ve been what was banging around in the back! She propped against the side of the truck and waited while they deposited the wire next to some seated fence posts.
Jared came back, pulled out a massive beach umbrella and a chaise lounge chair, and set them up for Sara. He handed her a bottle of water from the cooler and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Now, you stay under this, and if you get thirsty – drink,” he said, firmly. It wasn’t a request. It was a command. Sara treated it as such.
Her breath quickened, her eyes widened with confusion. Jared softened. He smiled and gently kissed her. She didn’t need water to keep her cool. She needed ice. Jared’s kiss had its usual effect. She pulled him closer. Jared smiled again and sighed. “This is gonna be a long day!”
~ ~ ~
Sara watched them for a while. She yawned and picked up her book; anxious to see how the story ended. Her eyes began to droop. Before she realized it, she was fast asleep and dreaming again, but this time, it wasn’t about wooden wolves and totem poles. Even that dream made more sense. This one flashed from one scene to another so fast it was incomprehensible.
~ ~ ~
At first, she saw herself sitting on the bed, looking down at George Thundercloud’s book for the first time. She opened it as before. Instead of the ink scrolling off the paper, a pale blue glow rose from the pages and hovered over her. There was a bright flash, and the next thing she knew, she was on her hands and knees, trapped on one end of the ledge at Mother’s Mountain. On the other end, spiraled in a tight coil and poised to strike, was the pissed off rattlesnake.
The ground beneath her crumbled, forcing her to inch forward, toward the rattlesnake. Seconds after she’d moved to a more stable part of the ledge, the earth began to crack and collapse. She was left with two choices, move forward or plummet to her death.
After being forced forward again, Sara called out for help. She eagerly looked up for Jared, but this time, no one came. Each time she was forced to move forward, the rattler’s strike came closer and closer to her face. Whether it happened by the snake or a fatal fall, it was inevitable; Sara was going to die.
The ground began to crack and crumble again. She decided, rather than die a slow, agonizing death from the rattlesnake’s venom, she’d rather die by falling. It might be painful at first, but it would be over quick.
She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her heart raced; the ground crumbled. She screamed as she began to fall. Her descent slowed until she was falling in slow motion. She opened her eyes and looked down. The ground was a lake of molten lava. Tongues of fire shot from its surface. Her nose and the back of her throat burned, from acrid gases rising on waves of heat.
From the burning lake, ascending the flames came what appeared to be a bird. The lake morphed and became the center of an active volcano. Sara saw a woman, standing a few feet from the mouth of the boiling pit. At first, she thought the woman was her, but as she moved closer, she saw whom it was; Donna Rigden, Gary Browne’s cousin.
She was trapped. On one side of her, the volcano, on the other side, a rattlesnake with glowing crimson eyes, bigger than the snake Sara faced.
The bird swooped and headed straight for Donna. She picked up a rock and threw it. While the snake was distracted, she made a run for it. She was almost past the snake, when the bird grabbed her leg and pulled her toward the edge of the volcano.
Donna struggled, but the bird sank its talons into her leg. Sara could see the blood soaking Donna’s blue jeans and dripping down her ankle. After a while, she stopped struggling, and the bird began to drag her toward the volcano.
When she went over the edge, the woman changed again. It wasn’t Donna, it was Sara. She was no longer a spectator of the dream. The woman in the dream was Sara. She could taste the sulfur. She could see and feel the heat rising from the mouth of the volcano. Sara struggled and tried to scream; the molten lava below her morphed into the shape of Jared’s face and then Tom’s. They were both in the pit of molten rock.
~ ~ ~
“Sara. Honey. It’s alright, Sara. Honey wake up. You’re having another nightmare.” Jared gently shook her shoulders and wiped her face with his saturated bandana. He was afraid she might be suffering from heatstroke. “Sara, are you awake? Are you too hot?”
She opened her eyes, threw her arms around his neck, and hugged him, burying her face in his neck. “Jared, you’re alive,” she cried. “You’re both alive! Oh, Jared! It was horrible. At first it was Donna. The bird was dragging her into the molten lava, and then it was me.”
Tom softly laughed. “Well, of course, we’re alive, Sara. It’s you, we’re worried about. We’ve been trying to wake you for at least five minutes. You were struggling and trying to scream.”
“It’s alright, angel,” Jared said. “It was only a dream.” He picked her up and held her in his arms.
Sara looked up. “The dream seemed real, Tom. You were both there, in the middle of the molten lava.” She looked back at Jared. “There was a big bird, dragging Donna down in the pit. Then it wasn’t her it was,” she broke off. “Oh, Jared!” she began to cry again.
“Hush now - it’s alright. We’re both fine. Dad, I’m gonna get her outta this heat. Start packing things up and I’ll help you when I get her settled.”
“No, you stay with Sara. Make sure she’s OK. I’ll load this, and we’ll head home.”
~ ~ ~
Jared sat Sara on the back seat and crawled in beside her. He put an arm around her shoulders, lifted her chin and kissed her. Sara almost forgot the dream. “How much can you tell me about your family trait? The thing with your eyes?”
“Pretty much anything you wanna know. Why?”
“I don’t know why I keep having nightmares about wolves, and strange blue crystals, and rattlesnakes and firepits. I didn’t dream about wolves this time, but this dream was scarier than the last.”
He frowned. “Tell me the dream about the wolves. What happened?”
“There were three wolves, a white one, a black one and a charcoal-gray one. The black one was the alpha of the pack, but the charcoal one challenged the black one and killed it. It bit its head off, and then the charcoal wolf changed to Seth. The black wolf changed to your father and the white one….”
Jared sighed. “Changed into me, right?” he finished.
“Yeah. I’m scared, Jared. What does it mean?”
“Probably nothing, angel. It was a dream. You probably fell asleep while you were reading your book. I think I need to make you a dream catcher,” he joked.
Sara smiled. “I think I could use one. I’ve had dreams before, but none like this. These seem real. I’m afraid I’m gonna lose you.”
He kissed her temple. “You’re not gonna lose me.”
Tom finished loading the 4x4 and started the engine. He didn’t comment on Jared sitting in the back with Sara. He turned around in his seat. “So, is our girl OK, doc?”
He smiled. “Yeah, but she needs to stay outta the sun.”
“Don’t worry, Sara. We’ll be home in a little while.”
~ ~ ~
They were about halfway home when Tom’s phone rang. Since it wasn’t a main road, he accepted the call. “Oh, hi, Leo,” he paused and listened. “Really?”
Jared leaned forward. “What is it, Dad?”
Tom held up a hand. “I see. What about the rest of the herd? Honestly. Well, at least that’s something. Alright, I will, thanks, Leo.” Tom sighed. “It was anthrax.”
Jared looked at Sara, a serious expression on his face. This was the news he was hoping not to get. Sara was heartbroken. She couldn’t stand the idea of putting down Jade or Angelstar. It wasn’t fair. Tears glossed her eyes.
Jared turned to his father. “And the rest of the herd?”
Sara held her breath and waited.