When the Wind Blows Read online

  I put some of the medicated goo on my fingers and carefully touched his body. Odd. My fingers were trembling a little. I could hear my own breathing, which was too loud in my ears, but I was certainly focused on the task at hand.

  So much so that I was surprised when Kit lightly grabbed my wrist.

  “Did I hurt you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, but you’re killing me, Frannie.”

  Kit put his free arm around my waist, and in one smooth movement lifted me and set me down on my back in the grass and pine needles, half covered me with his body. He was obviously strong, probably a hundred eighty pounds, but he was also gentle.

  My arms were high and tight around his neck. He pulled me against him and I felt him, all of him, against my thigh. I didn’t have any fears or doubts about this, none at all. That surprised me, shocked me, actually, but there it was out in the open.

  I wanted his mouth, and suddenly it was mine, as sweet and fresh as I had imagined. I was starving for this, the salty taste of him, the touch of his hands, the roughness of his day-old beard against my skin. I wanted Kit so very much, more than I could have imagined.

  Kit lightly ran his hands over my breasts but there was too much fabric between us. I heard soft moaning sounds coming from my throat, which I barely recognized as my own. I tried to help him undress me. I was pulling at my workout top. I was struggling with his shorts, too. I hadn’t felt like this in so long.

  He looked at me and his eyes were warm and sincere and, most of all, honest. I recognized the look, and suddenly I realized how much he liked me, and how much I cared about him already. A bolt of lightning had hit me, and I never, ever saw it coming. I never suspected, never would have guessed this could happen. It was kind of scary, but also unbelievably exciting and wonderful.

  Two years of grief and repression had combusted in a rare moment. I felt his hand at my belt, cinching it tighter so that the buckle’s tongue would slip from its notch. I heard the zipper of my shorts give way under his fingers. I wanted this to happen. I was melting, and it was my choice.

  Cool air rushed around my thighs as he slid my shorts down to my knees. I shivered, and I loved everything about the moment, our first time like this, the suddenness of it, the surprise.

  I reached for his belt. The leather was stiff, unyielding. I was wrestling with the buckle when I heard him saying my name. I shivered at the sound of it and I wanted him inside me now.

  “Frannie, Frannie. Wait. Stop.”

  Wait? Stop?

  I forced myself to look at Kit’s face. It was as if someone had suddenly turned on powerful bright lights. I blinked at him. Wait? Stop?

  “We’re both out of our minds,” he said, panting. “I don’t know where I’ll be next week.” He sighed deeply. “I don’t even know where I’ll be tomorrow.”

  I wanted to say, so what? Instead, I felt a wave of almost unbearable sadness. One small particle of brain matter was still rational. It told me that I wasn’t going to make love to Kit and get over it easily. I wasn’t going to forget this night in the mountains, or him.

  I nodded. “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay?”

  “Okay. You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. Let’s stop before we make a big mistake.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said into my hair. He sighed again. “I really want to do this. I love being with you. It’s just that—”

  I put my forefinger across his lips. “Don’t,” I said. We held each other for a good long time, long enough for our heartbeats to slow, anyway. I had stopped melting—but not really.

  We kissed again, this time a gentler, more civilized kiss. To show we could still be friends? Then I stood up and pulled on my shorts.

  I found my sleeping bag in a heap where I’d left it a few hours before and dragged it to the far side of the fire. How could I have been feeling so good, and now suddenly feel so unbearably bad?

  “Frannie,” Kit said.

  “Yuh?” I whispered. My voice sounded thick. Yuh?

  “Bring your sleeping bag over here next to me.”

  I hesitated. Shook my head in silence. I think that maybe my pride demanded a little distance. Stop? Wait?

  “Do it,” he said. Then more gently, “Please. I’m the G-man, remember? You’re the civilian. I’ve got the gun. You’ll be safer where I can see you.”

  Ah. He did have the gun.

  To hell with my doctorate in veterinary medicine. Forget that I could outrun him, outclimb him, and that I’d slept in these mountains gunless and manless other times before. I picked up my sleeping bag and unrolled it next to him. I did what Kit asked me to do.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered before I fell asleep. “I’m really sorry.”

  Very noble of you, Kit.

  Chapter 51

  KIT COULDN’T BELIEVE HIS EYES. The children were flying. The two of them looked so fine and free, like a pair of angels.

  They did a graceful loop together and he had the sudden, terrible feeling that they might fall from grace. They were hundreds of feet in the air, easily as high as some small planes fly.

  He looked around for Frannie, but she wasn’t there. He didn’t know where she might have gone.

  He began to yell, and only hoped that the children could hear him.

  “Little Mike, Tom! Come down here. Please come down before you fall. This is Daddy. Daddy wants you to come down.”

  They couldn’t hear him from so high, so far away.

  Then suddenly both of his boys began to fall, to plummet, to drop like stones.

  Neither of them had wings. They were in free fall.

  He wanted to rescue both his sons, but he could only catch one of them. He had to choose, but it was impossible. He had to choose one son.

  He watched as Little Mike and Tom both crashed horribly to the ground. He hadn’t been able to save either of them. Out of nowhere, there were EMS ambulances, Rhode Island police cars, the wreckage of a small plane.

  He was there at the nightmarish crash scene. Inside the smoking plane, looking through the twisted, crumpled seats and the dead passengers.

  He found his two little boys and his wife in the terrible wreckage. He gently touched them and couldn’t believe that they were dead.

  And then Kit woke. It was early morning, a hint of salmon pink tinted the blue of the sky. He was in Colorado. In the mountains.

  Frannie O’Neill was bent over him. “Shhhh,” she whispered. “She’s up there. I can see her.”

  Chapter 52

  MAX WOKE with a terrible start.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed, but she’d obviously fallen asleep. It was morning again. She was wet-cheeked and shivering from the cold that had swept across the mountain between sundown and sunrise.

  She felt small and alone and utterly abandoned on the mountainside. She missed Matthew and she even missed the awful, despicable School a little bit.

  No!Ican’t think like that.Imustn’t start acting likealoser. Losers lose! she told herself. I’m notaloser.

  Max lifted her hand to wipe her cheeks and, as she did, felt something like spiderwebs all over her. Ugh! She pushed at the irritating, clingy stuff and it shifted but didn’t melt away from her face.

  What was this? What was happening? She opened her eyes wide. Oh God!

  She saw shapes bending over her. People! She couldn’t tell how many!

  They were standing between her and the sun, and it took a moment for her to understand what was happening to her. When she did, she filled her lungs with air and screamed.

  She screamed bloody murder! That scared them. The shapes backed off, then crystallized as the woman doctor and the man. They’d snuck up on her in her sleep. Bastards! Creeps!

  Max screamed again, louder than she’d ever screamed in her entire life. The inside of her head was white with fear. She couldn’t think straight, could only flail wildly at the net. But pushing only made the string snag and catch on her fingers and wings, her legs, feet.
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  Ohgodohgod what was this? What could she do? She had to escape!

  They had her in some kind of strong animal net. They had caught her! The creeps!

  Max scootched back on the ground until she was up hard against the bark of a quaking aspen. The leaves clicked and clattered together as she tried to raise herself to her feet. She was crying and shrieking, beating her wings furiously, hurting herself, trying to hurt them somehow. She wasn’t, though. They were too crafty—too human.

  The woman doctor was talking to her, but she couldn’t, wouldn’t listen to what she was saying.

  She would not be put to sleep! She wouldn’t give up now! She wasn’taloser!

  The man reached out to her and she batted his hand away. She struck out hard at him, remembering how Uncle Thomas would grab her to get control, to get his way.

  The man’s hand reached toward her again. Feinting one way—then clutching. Sneaky, crafty man!

  He was trying to grab her and win. She bit his hand, really hurting him, and heard him say a swear word.

  She kicked out hard with her strong legs. Missed him. “Take it easy,” he was saying. “Just take it easy. Jesus, she’s strong, Frannie.”

  His hand came again, reaching near her face, reaching for her wings.

  Uncle Thomas was in her mind. She could see his despicable face. Ugh! Ugh!

  Max covered her head, bent over, made herself into a little ball, but she couldn’t escape the terrifying net. It dripped over her in folds and there was no end to it.

  Oh, I made a horrible mistake. I shouldn’t have been watching them.I shouldn’t have rested.

  The doctor was talking to her. Trying to, anyway. Typical doctor crap. Always so soft, the whispers, the lies coming so gently, so easily. Just like with Uncle Thomas and the other creeps.

  “Everything’s going to be all right. Please trust us. Please, darling. We won’t hurt you.”

  Liars! You are hurting me. YOU ARE HURTING ME NOW!

  Max screamed again, even louder this time. But no words—just screams!

  Her voice came right back at her in the mountain air, the echo mocking her.

  This was so unfair. So bad!

  The doctor tried to get closer and closer. Max saw something clutched in her hand. It wasn’t a gun but it was just as bad.

  No, it was much worse.

  She knew what it was.

  It was a needle!

  Max would not be put to sleep.

  NO! NO! NO! GET AWAY FROM ME! I’LL BITE YOU! I’LL KILL YOU!

  She glared at the woman doctor with all the hatred and fierceness she could muster. Then she swung her gaze back to the man, who was coming around behind her, sneaking around. She didn’t know who to look at anymore, which of them was more dangerous to her.

  She looked back at the doctor! Then at the man again. It was getting harder and harder to keep up with their movements.

  The doctor started yelling, “Bring her down, Kit. Do it now! ”

  Max wanted to call for help, but she knew that no one would come. There was no one anywhere who would help her. Except maybe Matthew. Oh God, where was her brave little brother?

  She sucked in more air and opened her mouth to scream again. The scream never got past her throat.

  Chapter 53

  WE HAD THE GIRL in a “mist net,” actually a couple of them. The nets were used to trap large wild birds for banding.

  The netting was light enough so that it wouldn’t damage wings or crimp feathers much. It doesn’t so much bind as tangle, preventing her from doing anything but thrash. And she was thrashing!

  I felt as if I were about to have my third—or maybe it was my fourth—heart attack in the last couple of days.

  I was close enough to the girl to touch her. Swiftly, I did it—I touched her. All right, she was for real. She existed. She was flesh and blood and my fingers had just touched her miraculous wing. Below the wings and attached somehow were her arms. She was double-limbed and it looked and worked just fine.

  She wasn’t tiring, but I sure was. She was still furiously fighting the net. Her beautiful white and silver-blue feathers were floating around us, and I was terrified that she was going to hurt herself. She was in a rage state.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” I said. “We won’t hurt you. I’m a doctor. It’s okay.”

  Either she didn’t understand me or she didn’t believe me, because she opened her mouth impossibly wide and screamed again. Her screaming was the most awful sound I’ve ever heard, like an animal shrillness but with a human undertone that made me think of the cries of mother seals, or maybe mother whales when their families are in danger.

  I wondered if she had a human larynx, an avian syrinx, or both. The syrinx has no chords, just a sac at the bottom of the windpipe. It contracts to force air out. And maybe I had just heard it at full blast.

  It hurt my ears to listen to her. My eyes, however, couldn’t get enough.

  Just as I’d thought, almost everything about her was, well, human—but not in conventional proportions. Her eyes were round, and incredibly intense, and seemed intelligent, or at least very focused. Her hair was light blond, quite long, and hanging way below her shoulders. Some of her feathers were also blond, which made some sense, since both feathers and hair are made of the same material, keratin.

  As I gorged on the vision of her, the girl was punching out at Kit.

  I got a real good look at her mysterious, absolutely marvelous appendages. They were muscled and jointed as human arms are, but the forearms were shorter. Her fingers were elongated and cloaked in feathers out to the last joints of the digits.

  Because they were made to fly, Frannie!

  Jesus, Jesus. She was a miracle. She couldn’t be—and yet here she was. How could this have possibly happened? How could she be here? How could I?

  Her beautiful wings were feathered in pure white, and in the early-morning light, I saw glints of blue and silver shining through. A strange feeling came over me then—I think I almost envied her. She was so beautiful, and she had such an amazing gift.

  She could do what nearly all of us wish we could do—this little girl could fly. How in the name of God had it happened? Was she a miracle? An angel? No. Angels can disappear, get out of a net.

  I snapped myself out of my trance, my inner thoughts. This was the wrong time and wrong place for it.

  The girl was in a panic. She could damage her wings, and she could just as easily go into shock. I’d seen animals die of fright before. Their hearts just seemed to burst.

  When Kit had tried to touch her, she’d been obviously threatened by his hand coming toward her. When I tried, she panicked, but not as fiercely. That showed me something—what, though? Had she been mishandled by men? Where? Who?

  “Hang on to the net,” I said to Kit. “Hang on to her.”

  Then I ran as fast as I could back to the camp. I was going to have to subdue the winged girl, but God only knew how I was going to get a needle into a vein. God only knew, because I sure didn’t.

  When I returned moments later, the situation was exactly as I had left it; terror, hysteria, the child’s face was even brighter red. Her veins were bulging dangerously. I told Kit he was going to have to bring her down.

  He said something about an “end run” and I’d seen just enough Sunday afternoon football to get his drift. I started talking to the girl again. Actually, I was making word music, soothing sounds, the kind you make when you’re trying to get close enough to a badly frightened, eye-rolling horse to grab its halter. I was the bird-whisperer, right.

  Kit got behind the girl. Good, good. Now if only she kept looking at me.

  I waited until the very last moment to take out my syringe.

  The girl saw it and screamed again, flailed, and Kit made a quick, desperate dive for her. In a tackle that would have made one of the champion Green Bay Packers proud, he grabbed, then lifted her straight up off the ground. Then he rolled with the girl nestled in his arms,
neatly cushioning her fall.

  We had her! We had her!

  Now what?

  Chapter 54

  IT WAS AS IF I were watching a terrifying and yet mesmerizing dream that I was a part of, but didn’t quite believe. The girl fought Kit as a full-sized man would. She was incredibly powerful, brave, but also stubborn and committed to getting away. Maybe that was a stunning clue about her origins, too, or at least how she had gotten free.

  Luckily, Kit was stronger than most men, and he was that one man in a hundred who seemed to know his own strength. He subdued the girl without hurting her. She was strong, but I wondered if she was also light—for flying. I wondered if she had hollow bones?

  I jumped right in there and hit her with the needle. The drug dropped her like a lead weight. Her piercing shrieks were still bouncing off the mountainsides, hanging in the air, but they were getting weaker.

  And then she was out.

  I didn’t know she’d bitten Kit until I saw him squatting with his right hand tucked under his left armpit. That wasn’t good; it could be very bad, in fact. I grabbed his hand and looked at the bite mark. She’d left a perfect impression of uppers and lowers—but she hadn’t broken the skin, thank goodness. Had she held back from hurting him? If so, why?

  “You don’t look so good,” I told him.

  “I’m okay, Frannie. Take care of her.”

  I took a deep breath and began to work. We got most of the net off the little girl, and I took her pulse. It was a normal sixty-four beats a minute. She was sleeping soundly, but for how long?

  I moved long, wet strands of hair off her face. There were dark blue circles under her eyes and her lips were dry and cracked. Again, I was visited with an eerie feeling that this child had been physically abused. It turned my stomach.

  “How long will she be out?” Kit asked.

  “I’m not sure, but if she metabolizes at the same rate, say, as a large dog, she’ll be out for a couple of hours. Oh hell, who knows?”

  He nodded and the two of us continued to watch the girl in silence. We couldn’t help ourselves. I wondered what Kit was thinking about, what he knew. He was lost in thought, or maybe awe. I put my hand on his shoulder.