A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (19 page)

Where’s Will?
Kate wondered. Was this the dream or just a strange, vivid dream?

Oriental sounding music drifted across the river. Along the shore, Kate saw the milling crowds. Others crouched on the beach and lit their own paper lanterns that they released into the water. A few street lamps guttered nearby on the road cutting into the banks of the river. There was something ghostly about the night and it bothered her.

She had to find Will.

Finally the boat began to move downriver. Kate glanced over her shoulder and wondered if she was going in the right direction. How would she find him, trapped in the boat like she was?

As the dinghy cut through the dark water, she had the urgent sensation that she needed to find Will as soon as possible.
Now! These dreams are never long enough anyway.

Her guide steered the boat while the other continued to light the lanterns and carefully place them in the water. Up ahead, Kate saw a patch of black shaped like an arch over the river. A weak light glowed above it like a fading halo over the brow of an angel. A bridge, maybe.

They drew closer and Kate became more convinced it was a bridge. Hundreds of glowing lily lamps jostled around their boat, clustering in eddies and floating away on various streams. Kate felt like she was a dim star, void of its spark, swimming through the blackness of space against a backdrop of unfathomable illumination.

There, on the bridge, a figure hovered alone, a stark shadow against the lights of the village twinkling on the hills behind it. Kate’s heart thumped.
That’s him,
she thought. She knew.

As they passed beneath the bridge, Kate tilted her head back, watching the figure for some kind of indication that it was Will. She had the impression for just a moment that it wasn’t a man at all, but a giant crow, perched there with the faint light glinting off its dark feathers.

“Kate!” the figure said. Oh. It
was
him! But too late! The boat was under the bridge. Kate’s pulse raced and before she knew what she was doing, she’d dropped the shawl from her shoulders and stood up, rocking the small boat with her sudden movement. Faintly, she heard the sound of cracking wood. She reached up, unthinking, just wanting to reach him . . . wanting to stop the boat . . .
wanting
. . .
him
. Her yearning reached out like a baby bird, stretching its tiny, fragile neck out as far as possible seeking the connection to its parent, its savior.

As the boat emerged from the other side of the bridge, a strong hand closed around hers and pulled. The dinghy slipped away underneath her. Impossibly, she was lifted up as though she weighed nothing, and in the dream, that was probably true. Before she had time to marvel too long, Will pulled her through a gaping hole in the protective wall of the bridge and placed her next to him.

“Wow,” she whispered, connecting the vague noise of breaking wood to the hole Will just pulled her through.

“Kate,” he said breathlessly, touching her all over as though afraid she wasn’t real.

“I found you, Will.”

“We found each other,” he said, cupping her chin and pulling her close for a tender kiss.

She pulled away. “Took us long enough. Where are we?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’re together, again. Nothing can separate us.” Yet there was a hint of doubt when he said it. As though he knew, like she knew, how the entire universe came between them.

***

“Let me take you somewhere,” Will said, rolling out of bed and pulling on a pair of convenient gray boxer shorts. He sat back down on the edge of the bed.

“Ok. Why not? Where should we go?” she answered, smoothing the fabric of the comforter as she rested on her side. She sat up and inched toward him.

“You’ve wondered about what I was like when I was alive—I mean, besides being a brilliant thespian and such. So I was thinking, and now I have an idea,” he said, grinning like he was about to do something shocking. As if anything could be more shocking than the life they’d been sharing in the dream.

“Well, what is it,” she prodded, sliding her feet over the side of the bed. She leaned against him where he perched with one foot on the cross board of the bed. He didn’t embrace her; instead he kept his hands on the mattress where he was propping himself up. He chuckled as Kate nuzzled his arm with her forehead.

“Just trust me, Kate. You’ll see when we get there.”

“This doesn’t sound like I’m going to like it. At all,” she groaned and then fell over flat onto the bed, her feet on the floor and her back on the rumpled comforter. “But I guess I’m stuck?”

“Yes, that’s right. You’re stuck. With me. Get moving,” he teased, pinching her side softly until she jumped up and went to the closet.

She paused at the door. “So, what should I wear?” She’d gotten used to pretending that the dream was real, that she had to physically change her clothes, rather than just conjure something else up in her mind. Admittedly, she liked the process of taking off her clothes in front of Will, and then dressing again. There were hints that he liked it, too, that the ritual brought them closer together somehow.

He stood and sauntered over, placing his finger against his lip as though he was thinking about it. “Let me see, probably something classy. Sparkly. Maybe some sequins. Perhaps a dress?”

“Oooh, this is sounding fancy. I like where you’re going with this, but you know what? I really wouldn’t call sequins classy. Sparkly, yes. But . . . classy?” She opened the door and walked into the large closet. It was empty except for one outfit—a white sequined off-the-shoulder dress, with a belt in the middle. She frowned, feeling a kind of dread wash over her, and pulled it off the hanger. “What is
this
?” she asked, covering her mouth with one hand.

“Oh come on! You love it, don’t you?” Will said, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her close. “Put it on!”

“Wait a minute, this looks like something Olivia Newton-John wore in
Xanadu
,” she remembered aloud, still holding onto the outfit while Will tried to twirl her around.

“You’ve seen
Xanadu
?” he asked with a laugh.

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. We watched it during one of our movie nights at work. The guys just made fun of it. Another time we watched
The Jazz Singer
, the one with Neil Diamond,” she mused aloud. Thinking about that
other
life in the midst of this place with Will felt strange and disorienting. It made her feel thin, somehow, and detached, like she was being yanked out of the . . . the . . . present? She knew it wasn’t the present. It was fake. All of it. Will wasn’t real.

And yet . . . normally it felt so concrete and thick around her. Real.

“I love Neil.
Loved
him. He was great,” Will agreed, pulling one of the arms of the dress up like it was a dove’s wing. He dropped it. “So? Get dressed.”

“Does this mean we’re going skating?” Kate asked, not budging, trying to immerse herself back into the dream. 

He let her go and stepped away, making hustling movements with his hands. “You’ll see. Put it on.”

Audra would love this,
Kate thought to herself as she undressed and pulled the dress on.
She would freak out and insist on putting on blue eye shadow and feathering her hair. Kate, come one, stop thinking about
real
life
, Kate thought as she studied herself in the full-length mirror on one wall. With a sad smile, she realized for the first time that Audra would love Will, too. She would die over him. She would push Kate toward him and encourage her and tell her that Ty was boring compared to Will.

“What’s wrong?” Will asked, noticing that Kate’s face had darkened and a frown creased her cheeks.

“Nothing—it’s nothing. I just, I think you’re great. You’re fun to be with, is all.”

He laughed, took her by the hand, and pulled her close. Kate blinked, noticing that Will was wearing a polyester suit and his hair—typically flat and straight against his head in a late-fifties style—had gotten kind of poufy and feathery like they were suddenly starring in
Staying Alive
. He leaned down and kissed her, hard. When she opened her eyes, music was playing and they were standing in the middle of a skating rink. Disco lights twirled around them and people zipped by, skating and dancing at the same time.

Her pulse fluttered. She loved it, what Will was doing. Taking charge, caring about having these experiences with her, being a
man
that made her feel like a
woman
. Guys didn’t do this. Guys weren’t men, though, were they? At best they were men-children. They wanted to be young and irresponsible, and in a way, modern girls let them. Kate had seen enough old movies to recognize the distinctions between the world Will grew up in and the one she lived in, not that Kate was under some sort of delusion that movies represented a super accurate picture of life. 

Anyway, women let men get away with the shit. The lack of courting. The instant sex. The lack of chivalry. Women gave that up when they insisted on equal rights, supposedly, as far as men were concerned. It wasn’t true, though, was it. Women still deserved respect. It was just a mistake, how it all got unraveled and tangled again, rather than ever being deconstructed into something that made sense at all. Someone needed to repackage it and then unwind it all again and make sure certain things stayed in place. 

Oh my crap,
Kate thought as she sank into Will’s arms and saw the gleam in his eyes. This place was flashback city. All at once memories of junior high school flooded over her and she was scared witless, feeling the way she had when she longed to go ask the cutest boy in school to skate. This was better, though, because she could tell from the way Will moved with her in bed that he was going to be lyrical on skates.

“Kate, my sweet girl, let us skate,” he whispered in her ear, pushing away, while keeping hold of her hand and pulling her along beside him. She pumped her legs, feeling unskilled on the skates. The dress billowed around her and she felt a momentary confusion: this should be
easy
. It was a
dream
, after all.

“Wait up,” she called, concerned that this heavenly moment was going to turn into a nightmare. Will slowed and kept his pace even with hers.

“Take it easy, Kate. Remember it’s just a dream.” His hair fluttered in the air as they spun across the floor, the disco lights flashing off the sequins of the other skaters’ outfits.

“Right, of course,” she said with an uncomfortable laugh. Finally she felt competent as muscle memory kicked in and she recalled how to balance and move on wheeled shoes.

“At last! You’ve got it. You’re doing great. This one’s for you, Kate.” He caught her gaze and pointed a finger overhead to indicate the
Xanadu
love song that began to play. She laughed, trying to keep up with him as he moved and swayed with the song and the lights, spinning expertly across the scuffed floor. Her heart melted at the dedication.

Is this what romance is? Because I
’ve never—I don’t—uh, how?
How did a girl respond to romance? She had no idea. She’d never taken part in it. Never. So far Ty had only invited her along to do cool stuff with him. And it wasn’t that she didn’t love hanging out and doing “cool” stuff, because she liked that. But this, t
his
was magical.

They floated around the rink, twirling and dodging in between the other skaters, chasing, slowing, then spinning around and holding on tight to each other. Will pulled her close and wrapped her arms around his neck as he skated backward. He looked down at her, his blue eyes dancing in the disco lights as he sang, “Why do I feel, so alive, when you’re near?”

Kate’s heart thudded in response and she bit her lip, wondering if she should sing the part of Olivia Newton-John or simply grin and enjoy his antics. Before she had the chance to figure it out, the song faded to its end and they finished out the tune twirling around each other in the center of the rink.

Was this heaven?
Kate wasn’t brave in real life, not really. She could accuse Ty of not being romantic, could accuse all the men of her generation of not being romantic, and the truth was, Kate was scared of how to handle it. She was also unsure of how she would handle a roller skating date in real life. Sure, she dared to take on a sport like rock climbing as a total rookie and grow and get better, but she did that with her friends. She was comfortable with them. The sole reason Kate was comfortable here, skating with Will, was because the dream gave her courage.

Or Will did.

That, and maybe the dream changed her entire personality in some way. After all, how many men would she jump into bed with at first glance? The honest answer to that was zero.

Will stared at her, his sequined black polyester shirt glimmering in the disco light. His blue eyes were afire. The silliness and fun had slipped from his face. There was a depth to his pupils that swallowed her. “Kate, I—” he said, and halted. Kate could feel the pounding of his unreal, dream-heart beneath his ribs he was holding her so tight. Her own heart mimicked it, thundering like a timpani through her bones.