The path crumbled beneath her hiking boots. Ariel jumped backward, but not quickly enough. Her weight made the path disintegrate faster. She reached for the stable part of the mountain, but her hands couldn"t find purchase.
She suddenly found herself on her back, sliding down the cliff toward the water. She couldn"t grab anything. Her pack was between her and the ground.
Using all her strength, she rolled over and grabbed her knife from her belt. The rock-strewn ground cut into her bare skin, abrading it. She stabbed at the dirt, trying to slow her slide so that she could grab a tree branch or a root or anything that would keep her from sliding the thousand feet into the river.
The strain pulled at her barely healed shoulder. She could feel the rocks sc.r.a.ping her skin, but she couldn"t seem to hold on to anything. She was sliding faster and faster and she couldn"t stop.
And the worst part of it was, no one was here to see her fall, to help her, to record her death. She would plunge into the river and she might never wash up again.
No one would ever know what had happened to her.
She struggled harder, her fingers raw and bleeding. Her knife was finally slowing her fall. She could feel the movement ease, her body remaining stationary while the dirt slid beneath her. All she needed to do was dig herself in somehow and she would be all right.
Carefully she shoved her toes into the ground, then stuck the fingers of her free hand in as well. She found herself hoping to see the crazed arrow guy. She"d pay him to haul her off this mountainside. She"d even explain to him how to do it, since she doubted that anyone who ran around the woods while wearing diapers thought of carrying rope.
The mountain seemed steady. The little landslide had ended and she hadn"t slid any farther. She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Then her blade snapped and the fall started all over again, faster this time. Suddenly she was in free fall, no longer touching the ground at all.
This was it then. She was going to die, alone, unnoticed on this mountainside.
The portents had been right after all. This trip was a strange one--and it was going to end in her death, the strangest journey of all.
Darius hurried out of the trees, running toward the path. The woman was sliding on her back like an overturned turtle. She wouldn"t be able to do anything from that position.
Then, to his surprise, she righted herself and pulled out her knife all in the same elegant movement. She dug the blade into the ground, trying to slow herself.
She didn"t seem panicked at all.
It had been years since he"d seen an ordinary mortal who was so calm in the face of death. The last one had been Napoleon, and he hadn"t been calm, he"d been crazy.
Darius stopped just shy of the place where the slide began and watched her fall. She was slowing down--the blade was working--and he knew then that she would be all right.
He stayed above her, though. She might need his a.s.sistance getting back up the mountainside. Normal, humanlike a.s.sistance, with rope and a lot of effort. No magic at all.
She stopped sliding near the edge of an embankment. The mountainside turned into a cliff face not a hundred yards from her feet. She dug her fingers and toes into the dirt and sighed with relief. Darius started the spell for the rope, hurrying toward her as he did so.
With a crack, the knife blade snapped, and she was sliding again, faster than before. He ran toward her, but he was too late. She slipped over the edge of the cliff and vanished.
She didn"t even scream.
He knew what that edge looked like. It was a sheer drop to the river. No one would survive that fall.
Not without help, anyway.
Darius raised his arms and cast a spell, one he hadn"t used in a thousand or more years. He made it as specific as possible. He was creating a ledge, one that would break her fall, so it had to appear below her.
He only hoped he got to her in time. If the ledge was too far down, he"d kill her, and nothing he could do would bring her back. Not even the Fates would let him revive her.
The air crackled with lightning and thunder as the magical power left him. Then he heard a thud. He started down the slope, but more ground loosened, and he nearly lost his footing. So he murmured another spell and floated over the edge.
The ledge had formed about thirty feet below him. She was sprawled on it, face down, her body twisted at an unnatural angle. He floated toward her, terrified that she was dead.
He landed on the ledge and crouched over her. She was breathing, but she had been badly injured. Blood trickled out of her nose, and she made a strange whistling when she breathed.
It had been so long since he had used magic for anything other than parlor tricks and transportation that he had forgotten almost everything he"d learned. He wasn"t supposed to heal injuries or sickness from natural causes, but he might be able to slide this one by on a technicality.
He had created the ledge, so the injuries couldn"t be natural. They were his fault. At least, that was what he would tell the Fates when they decided to punish him all over again.
Darius closed his eyes and tilted his head back. The river roared beneath him and he thought he heard the scream of a rafter. A warm breeze caressed his face. He forced himself to blot all that out, trying to remember the exact words of the healing spells he"d learned from a midwife in King Arthur"s court.
After a moment, the words came to him. He clenched his left fist and extended his right hand over the woman"s back. She was still breathing, but her breathing was shallow. Then he recited the words of the spell. Light appeared through his fingers and illuminated her skin through her clothes. He saw blood spilled inside her stomach disappear, broken ribs knit, a punctured lung mend.
He moved his hand, repeating the spell over her head, and then again over her arms and her twisted legs. He was careful, though, to make sure it was only internal injuries that got healed. External ones had to remain. She would remember the fall and think it suspicious if she didn"t have sc.r.a.pes and bruises.
When he was done, he felt dizzy. He sat down and put his face in his hands. He had forgotten how draining using real magic was.
But he wasn"t done. He had to make the ledge disappear before the seasoned rafters noticed it and realized it was new, and then he had to get the woman to a place of safety.
He scooped her up in his arms. She was lighter than he expected. He could feel her muscles beneath her skin. She moaned as he picked her up. Her eyes fluttered and then opened.
They were a rich green, almost an emerald color, and they were natural, not contacts at all. The color enhanced her ivory skin and her auburn hair. He found himself staring at her as if he had never seen a woman before.
"My pack," she whispered.
Her pack? It must have broken off after she started to fall the second time. He didn"t see it anywhere.
"It"s got everything ..." Her voice trailed off, but he could still see the concern in her eyes. She wouldn"t rest until he told her what happened to it, and if she didn"t rest, he wouldn"t be able to get her off this ledge.
"It"s fine," he lied. "I"ll get it after we get you taken care of."
She smiled and mouthed "Thank you" before closing her eyes. Her body went limp as she lost consciousness again.
He cradled her to him, feeling her warmth against him, then recited a levitation spell. They rose up the cliff face.
A yellow raft made its way down the river, and one of the guides stared up at him. The guide tapped someone beside him and pointed. At that moment, they hit white water, and the guide nearly toppled out of the raft.
Darius reached the edge of the cliff and landed on a safe area away from the slide. That guide would remember what he saw, but he wouldn"t be able to prove anything.
Still, Darius felt careless. One of the many rules of the magical was to avoid calling attention to himself and his spells. He should have used a location spell. Obviously, he wasn"t thinking as clearly as he would like. That irritated him. But the proximity of this woman, the nearness of her death, and the fact that he had used more magic in this one afternoon than he had used in the past hundred years was clouding his judgment.
He would have to be careful from now on.
He raised his hand, balanced the woman against his hip, and used the spell now. Their surroundings vanished. For a brief half second, they existed in darkness, and then they appeared in the guest room of his house.
The guest room was big, with a comfortable bed made out of logs. Log furniture sat in the corners, and a desk he"d owned since the mid-seventeenth century sat beneath one of the windows. The main window opened into the forest. The green rug that covered the floor had grown threadbare, but it would do.
At least the room didn"t smell of mothb.a.l.l.s. He"d had the window open during most of his stay.
With a nod of his head, he used a slight spell to change the sheets. He couldn"t remember having a guest sleep over since Ernest Hemingway stayed here more than eighty years before. For all Darius knew, the sheets hadn"t been changed since then. It was probably less a reflection on his housekeeping skills than it was on his need for privacy. He hadn"t allowed anyone to stay in this house for a very long time.
It seemed odd to him that this woman was here now, right after his visit from Cupid.
Darius stiffened. Cupid hadn"t used those silly arrows on him, had he? Darius would have noticed.
Or would he?
Was that little creep finally getting his revenge?
The woman moaned again, and Darius focused on her instead. He laid her on the bed. Her hair had spilled out of its ponytail and cascaded across the pillow, accentuating the pallor of her face. She still looked as if she were in pain, but that could be simply the aftereffects of the fall. Her forearms were sc.r.a.ped raw and she had a large bruise on her right cheek.
He went into the bathroom and got his medical kit. From it, he removed some wet disinfectant pads and some bandages.
Then he went back into the guest room and cleaned off her sc.r.a.pes.
She tossed her head from side to side. It appeared that what he was doing hurt her, but not enough to wake her up.
After he got the wounds cleaned, he bandaged them, then covered her with a blanket. He was staggering with exhaustion now--the magic use having taken its toll--but he still had several things left to do.
He went outside and reversed his ledge spell. From the river below, he heard shouts, followed by a curse, and then laughter. Apparently more rafters had been going by, but only one saw the ledge disappear. Darius smiled. That person would talk about his rafting hallucination for a long time to come.
Darius walked to the good part of the trail before doing his last spell. He watched the river, saw several rafts float by, and waited until he didn"t see them anymore. Then he raised his arms and did a summons spell.
At first, he thought it didn"t work. Then a water-soaked backpack emerged from the river. The pack was torn and pouring water from its side. It rose the thousand feet, then dropped in front of him, landing with a soggy thud.
He wasn"t sure how he was going to explain this one to her. She was all right, but her pack had gotten wet? It had somehow fallen into the river and he had managed to fish it out, despite the steep canyon walls and the dangerous currents? Maybe he would tell her that a rafter had thrown it the thousand feet from the river below. Surely she would believe that.
He smiled. He was exhausted. He was getting punchy. Any more magic use would take the last of his reserves. That was what happened when a man didn"t stay in shape. If his best friend Aethelstan were here, he would be able to do all these spells and not lose a bit of energy.
Darius had become lazy over the centuries, and he hadn"t even realized it. All of the parlor tricks he had done to impress recalcitrant lovers had taken very little of his magical energy.
Then, in his mind"s eye, he saw her bruised face, heard her soft voice, filled with despair.
"My pack... It"s got everything ..."
He knew what it was like to lose everything in a single moment. It was a sensation he never forgot, no matter that thousands of years had pa.s.sed in the interim.
Slowly, he raised his tired arms to cast one more spell.
Heaven smelled like spaghetti.
Ariel kept her eyes closed. She lay on the softest surface she had ever been on in her life. A light, smooth blanket covered her, and her head was cushioned as if it were on air.
Everything was so clear. She remembered sliding over the edge and then falling, unfettered, toward the river and the rocks below. She had died on a beautiful day, in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. If a woman had to go out, she might as well go out spectacularly.
She didn"t remember hitting--someone had been merciful there--and then an angel had come for her. Only it wasn"t one of the golden cherubs from the murals in her childhood church. This angel was even better.
He had curly golden hair and eyes so blue that they couldn"t have existed on Earth. His nose was perfect, his lips thin, his face filled with concern. It was almost as if someone had plucked the image of the perfect man from her mind and then let him cradle her as she made the transition from life to afterlife.
He was what a grown-up Cupid should look like, not like that wizened little man she"d seen in the woods. Wouldn"t it be funny if the Greek myths were the true version of the afterlife, not the Christian versions she"d learned in her parents" church or that hokey white-light stuff she"d seen on countless TV shows?
But if the Greek myths were true, shouldn"t she be on a river right now, trying to find fare to pay the scary guy who was supposed to ferry her to Hades? And if she was dead in the Christian universe, the one that she had been raised in, shouldn"t she be standing at the Pearly Gates, talking to St. Peter so that he could decide whether or not she was supposed to go up or down?
She had seen white light, but that was sunlight glinting off her angel"s curls. She would swear to it. She thought, as she half-opened her eyes, she had seen eagles flying above him in the beautiful blue sky. A pair of eagles, obviously in love ...
She smiled, stretched--and immediately whimpered. Every muscle in her body ached. If she were in heaven, then someone had screwed up. She "hurt."
Ariel opened her eyes. She was in a bedroom, with windows that had a view of a forest. Sunlight dappled across a thin green carpet. An end table covered with very old books sat across from her, and beneath the window an antique desk rested, a quill pen and an inkwell on its edge. The bed itself appeared to be made of logs, cut and polished but otherwise left in their natural form. Other furniture in the room seemed to be made of logs as well.
This was not heaven, although it did smell of spaghetti. She was in someone"s bedroom, and she was still in the Idaho wilderness.
She frowned, wondering how much of what she remembered was real and how much a dream. She had fallen off the edge of that cliff--she knew that much. She would never forget the way time slowed down, the way she could feel every second, the strange calmness she felt when she knew she was going to die.
She had thought she was alone, and she accepted that. No one would witness her fall. Even if she managed to survive it, no one would save her. She had been on her own.
As she hit the open air, she had thought that she"d better enjoy the view because it would be her last.
But she obviously hadn"t been alone. Someone had seen her fall and had rescued her. But how? She had been on a sheer cliff, and she knew she wasn"t going to hit anything. She had looked down in those slow-motion seconds and seen nothing between her and the river.
It was a spectacular sight--frightening and beautiful at the same time. Part of her had felt like Wile E. Coyote-- as if she wouldn"t fall until she realized she was in trouble.
But she had fallen, and somehow she had come out alive.
Ariel pushed herself into a sitting position and let out another cry of pain. Her back muscles hurt. Her shoulder was so sore, she wondered if she had damaged the rotator cuff again. Even the muscles in her arms and fingers ached, probably from trying to grab hold of the ground.
She"d thought she had too, and then her knife blade had snapped. Snapped and sent her falling to her death.
Maybe heaven was like they portrayed it in the movies-- a place that was somewhat familiar. Hence the guest room and the lovely smell of spaghetti sauce.
But that didn"t explain the pain. Only living bodies felt pain. And it wasn"t just her muscles that hurt; the skin on her arms and chest burned.
She looked at the sore places on her arms. Someone had bandaged them. Then she pulled her shirt back and saw a raw sc.r.a.pe that ran from her breastbone to her navel. She wondered if the entire front of her body looked like that, then realized it probably did.
She had ridden down the mountainside on her stomach. Of course she would be sc.r.a.ped.
Obviously the person who had saved her hadn"t known about this. She would have to tend to it herself.
She sat all the way up, letting the pain shiver through her. Slowly she eased her legs off the side of the bed. They throbbed too, and her knees burned. More sc.r.a.pes, she a.s.sumed. More sc.r.a.pes and pulled muscles.
Then she slid off the bed and her left leg buckled beneath her. She crumpled to the ground and sat there for a moment, pain so pure and fine coursing through her that it took her breath away.
She eased her leg out from beneath her and then looked at it. Something was wrong. If her leg wouldn"t support her weight, then some bone was probably broken.
She ran her hands along her thigh, over her knee, and down her shin. The skin was sc.r.a.ped and raw over the knee and part of the thigh--whoever had bandaged her arm hadn"t found these wounds either--but it was her ankle that caught her attention. It was puffy, red, and three times its normal size.
Broken.
Ariel gritted her teeth and straightened her leg. This was just one of life"s new challenges. She was very lucky. She wasn"t dead. She had to remember that.