That night, Jared pulled Sara into his arms and kissed her. She rested her head on his shoulder. “Sleepy?”
“A little,” she sighed. Her mind was still unsettled, afraid she’d screwed up. How could she have been so careless when he’d trusted her so completely? He must’ve sensed something.
“Sara, are you feeling OK?”
“Sure, why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. There’s something different, but I can’t put my finger on it. Are you still sure about this? About us?”
Her head jerked. His eyes filled with dark clouds and uncertainty. She frowned. “Why would you ask me something like that?”
“Because, I need to know. I need to know you’re as sure about me as I am about you.” She looked at him for a long time. “Well, are you?”
“Surer than I’ve ever been about anything. Why don’t you believe me?” Her voice broke.
He kissed her forehead, eased her head back onto his shoulder and caressed her hair. “It’s alright. I believe you. It’s just, well… since we made love this evening, you’ve been a little… I don’t know, distant, I guess. As though there’s something on your mind, regret maybe.”
Sara silently cried. Her heart was breaking. She had betrayed him.
Jared lifted her chin. “What’s wrong, baby? Why are you crying? Was it something I said?”
He believed her tears were his fault. She couldn’t let him feel this way. It wasn’t his fault. It was hers, on both accounts. What to do? Tell him, that’s what. It would do her no good to try and keep it from him. If her fears were founded, he would know anyway.
“Sara?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. Her heart pounded so hard she was sure he felt it. His face went blank. She had to think of something fast. She had to face the consequences. But, what if it made him angry? What if he didn’t want her anymore?
“I’m sorry,” she choked.
He smiled. “Sorry for what? What have you got to be sorry for, Sara?” His smile quickly faded.
She laid her head back on his shoulder and breathed in his scent for fear this might be the last time she could be this close to him. His muscles tensed. “I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said. “Honestly, I just forgot.”
“Forgot what?” he asked sternly.
“I’ve taken them up until yesterday. It just slipped my mind.”
“You forget to take your birth control pill?” She nodded. Jared held her close to his body, so close she could barely breathe. He inhaled deeply, processing what she’d said. Sara guessed he was deciding whether to be angry with her. Her silent tears dripped onto his bare shoulder. She held her breath. Finally, he relaxed his hold on her and sighed. “It’s alright, angel, don’t cry. I can’t stand it when you cry, no matter the reason, so please, stop crying.”
“But you’re mad at me,” she sniffed. “You think I did it on purpose to try and trap you.” What would he do if she told him about his Grandfather’s book? Could she risk it? No, let’s get past this first, but I’ll tell him. If not tonight, eventually, I will tell him.
Jared softly laughed. “Is that what you think? I’m not mad at you, silly girl. Afraid, but never mad, not, for this reason. How could I be?”
Sara swallowed hard. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Oh yes you do, and I deserve you. If I hadn’t believed we deserved each other, I wouldn’t have shared my spirit with you, Sara. It’s not something I do lightly.”
Maybe now’s a good time to tell him about the book.
Perhaps it was time for her to lay her cards on the table; ask what she wanted to know, and not give in until he gave her answers. Answers she probably could find in the book, but she wanted them to come from him.
“If I tell you something else… will you promise to keep an open mind?”
Jared took a slow breath. “You mean about the book?”
Her eyes widened. “You know about it? How could you?”
He kissed her lips and pushed her head back onto his shoulder a second time. “Of course, I knew.”
“Jared?”
“Hmm?”
“You said I should’ve come to you first and yet,” Sara broke off, unsure of how to approach the subject, but it was an issue which needed to be resolved. “When I mentioned the book or when you….”
Jared lifted her chin. “Sara,” he breathed her name as though it was the most precious name in the world. He frowned as if in pain. “Are you afraid of me?”
How could she answer, truthfully? Was she afraid of him or afraid for him? The day his grandfather had passed, she’d run from Jared. Had it been because of shock or fear? Sara blinked past stinging tears. “Yeah, I guess so,” she answered honestly. “At least in the beginning but,” her voice trailed off.
His eyes glossed. “Are you now?”
She stared into the darkest brown eyes she’d grown so familiar with and shook her head. “Not now. I’m not sure it was fear that made me run before. I think it was more of a reflex or shock than fear.”
He forced his breath out. “I’ve only myself to blame. When Granddad passed, I should’ve known the change would be stronger in me, and harder to control, especially when you’re a weakness for me.” He closed his eyes and kissed her forehead. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. You don’t need to be afraid of me. I won’t ever do anything to hurt you – ever!”
“Will you tell me? I mean, can I ask you about it?”
“What do you wanna know?” he smiled.
“It won’t get you into trouble with your Spirit Guide or anything, will it? Because if it will,” she broke off.
“Well, let’s see,” he smirked. “Other than having to crawl across the desert with a single drop of water on the tip of my tongue, walking through incinerating flames and draining my blood to the point of death….”
“What? No!” she interjected. “I don’t want you to,” she broke off when she felt him tensing up again. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. She pursed her lips and frowned. “That’s not funny!”
Jared silently chuckled. “I’m sorry. You were just, so serious, I couldn’t resist. Go ahead. Ask me. There’s no turning back now, not after yesterday. You’re in my soul now, and I’m in yours.”
“So what you did yesterday wasn’t just making love?”
“Well, it was… and it wasn’t. I made love to you, but I shared much more than just my body with you. I released the full force of my gift on you. I’ve walked through your soul and touched your spirit. Something meant only for my perfect match or someone extremely important to me. It’s a form of bonding, beyond anything you could understand. That’s as near as I can describe it. There are no English words which truly fit. You probably couldn’t pronounce the Navajo words.” He stroked the top of her head and kissed it.
“So, we’re bound on some kinda spiritual level or something?”
“Yes. Even if you decided to,” he hesitated. “If you ever decided you didn’t want me anymore, I don’t know if I could ever share that part of me with anyone else. What I’ve given you, what I’ve shared with you, I could never love so completely again. I don’t have that anymore. I’m not sure, I could ever get it back. I don’t even know if I’m meant to… get it back.”
“So, you’ll never be able to do it with me again?”
“I’ll be lucky if I can keep from doing it with you, now,” Jared snorted. “I only know one way to love you, Sara, and that’s completely, the way I loved you yesterday.”
“I have one request.”
“Anything.”
“If you ever decide to, you know, do anything stronger to me, do you think you could warn me, so I can prepare myself.”
He smiled. “I’ll try, but I’m learning new things with you all the time. I don’t wanna make promises I might not be able to keep.”
“Seems fair,” she nodded.
“Is this all you wanted to know?”
“Well, no, but my mind’s a bit overwhelmed, to say the least, right now. I’m sure I’ll think of something, later on.”
“Now can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
He lifted her chin again. “And you’ll answer me, truthfully? Even if you don’t want to, and even if you think it might hurt me?”
Oh, God! Why would he ask me that? Sara swallowed hard, knowing she would probably regret her answer for the rest of her life. She could deny him nothing. Her lips trembled. “Yes,” she said slowly.
“Have you read any of the book?”
Her head flooded with flashbacks. She shook it as if to erase the memory. “Not a lot. I read the introduction,” she hesitated, “and, well, I wasn’t able to read anymore. I tried to, but,” her voice trailed off.
“What happened?” he asked determinedly.
“I don’t know, something strange and horribly frightening, at least it was for me.”
“Please, tell me, Sara,” he whispered.
“Well, Joel, your cousin, said the book came with a curse, and I was honestly beginning to believe him when I tried to read the actual contents of the book.”
“Please, stop talking in riddles. Tell me what happened!” he said plainly and tensed his muscles, struggling to hold something in, maybe anger, Sara wasn’t sure.
She closed her eyes and tasted bitter betrayal, her betrayal. “The day of your grandfather’s funeral, I decided to read the book, so you wouldn’t know. I was gonna tell you, honestly, when I got up the nerve. I planned to get rid of it. You know, put it away and never touch it again. Because it was your grandfather’s book, I couldn’t even think about destroying it. Believe me! I don’t wanna touch the thing again.”
“And?”
“Well, I sat on the bed to read. As I opened the cover page, a gust of wind came through the window and blew it shut. But I didn’t remember opening the window. So I thought, maybe it was just me. That my nerves were playing tricks with my mind, making me see things and all. Anyway, I dismissed it and opened the book. The wind blew through again, only stronger this time, it blew the book onto the floor.”
Sara paused and checked Jared’s reaction. “Continue,” he said indifferently.
“Well, you know how stubborn I can be. I picked up the book and laid it on the bed. I shut the window, determined if it happened again, it wouldn’t be because of that open window.”
“Did it happen again?”
“That’s when it got weird. I tried to read the first paragraph again, but the words were different. What I had read in plain English, was now these odd looking symbols. The words wound off the page, spun into a ball of black ink and hovered over the page like a ball of yarn. I didn’t know how to take that. I watched in horror as it spelled out ‘Sara, don’t be afraid’, in thin air. It unwound, back onto the page and became those mysterious symbols again.”
Jared still seemed indifferent. Either he didn’t believe her or this was nothing new to him. Maybe he thought she was crazy. He stared into her eyes for a long time before saying anything. He took a slow breath. “Sara, the only curse is the one, men like my cousin and Seth, have fabricated to frighten people. They’ll believe what they want anyway, no matter how many times you tell them the truth.”
“So how do you explain what happened?”
“Honestly, it sounds like someone drugged you with dream dust. I’ve read the book before, many times. It has never done anything like that with me. It’s only words, tales of legends, old stories, with only the meaning you give them.”
“What about your eyes, Jared. I mean, being able to change the color of your eyes is not exactly a normal thing,” she countered, defending her sanity. “I was at least fifty yards ahead of you, and you chased me down like a cat chasing a mouse. One minute you were sitting beside me, and the next I slammed smack into you like a brick wall. If that’s normal….”
“Before my cousin gave you the book,” he broke off. “Sold you the book, was he alone with it for any length of time?”
“For a couple of minutes, why?”
“It sounds like he sent you on a worse trip than we’d thought. One you never should’ve taken.” But one you’ve obviously survived. That could mean only one thing. You’re not what you think you are!
“But you said there was nothing supernatural about the book or what was in it,” she argued. “What about the blood and urine tests your friend Dave ran on me? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“If you were exposed to what I think you were,” he broke off. “It’s not like other mind-altering drugs.” He shook his head. “For you, it could’ve been fatal. Joel knew that.”
She stared at him with worried eyes. “You mean I could’ve died? But you said it was LSD – acid!”
Jared frowned. “It’s another one of those legends you should’ve come across if you’d read the book. I understand why you were reluctant, but heaven only knows what you might’ve seen if you’d persisted.”
Sara stood by the window and stared into the night, silent tears dampened her cheeks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to read it. I just didn’t want you to read it until I had explained, you know, about me and other things. I didn’t say there was nothing supernatural about what it contained. I said there was no curse. The book is not cursed, Sara!”
“Then you won’t mind me asking about it, will you?” She whirled, tired of his lies and evasiveness.
“I’ll tell you whatever I can. Whatever I’m allowed to.”
Sara narrowed her eyes and groaned. “Oh, no! No more satin pillows! No more tiptoeing around Sara’s naive integrity. You either give me some straight answers or I’m gonna believe, what happened between us yesterday, regardless of how special it might’ve been, was brought on by the combination of stuff you added to the bath and was no more real than the lies you’ve been telling me since we met! You can’t keep protecting me from something you think I don’t wanna know or something you don’t wanna tell me. I love you, and I’m a big girl, Jared. I wanna know!”
He sighed and buried his face in his hands. “It’s not that simple, Sara.”
She knelt in front of him and lifted his head. “Yes, it is. You just tell me, and trust me. Why won’t you show me all of your sketches, Jared? What’s in them? What don’t you want me to see? Why don’t you want us to have a baby? Who or what are the Dine'é Kay-Yah and the Dine’é Yá, and why didn’t you tell me the Dine'é Kay-Yah was the real name of your Clan? You’re not Navajo, Jared.”
His eyes widened. He tightened his jaw. “Who told you about them, Sara? How did you find out? What have you been doing?”