Trailing off, she felt her energy leave her, as though she were falling asleep, but at the same time her weakness felt different. She felt that this dizziness was something she didn’t want to give herself up to. At all costs, she thought, she must fight this. She must open her eyes!
“I say, let’s hang the bastard,” she heard a man say.
“Yeah. Get rid of him once and for all.”
“Hear that, Jordan? Make peace with your Maker, ’cause these are your last moments alive.”
“No,” Kady whispered weakly. “Don’t hurt a Jordan. Such a nice dress. You shouldn’t hurt one of them.” For a moment she almost succeeded in opening her eyes and sitting up, but then she heard another voice, a man’s voice.
“Help me, Kady. Help me.”
Kady could see only blackness inside her closed eyelids, but she knew that if her Arabian prince, the man she had seen in her dreams a thousand times, had spoken, his voice would sound like this man’s.
“Yes,” she said and quit struggling to sit up. “Yes, I will help you.”
In the next second Kady collapsed against the sofa, unaware of where she was or even who she was. Limply, her hand fell to her side as she gave herself up to the deep swirling sensation that overtook her.
Chapter 3
KADY OPENED HER EYES TO DAZZLING SUNLIGHT, THEN caught herself to keep from falling as a wave of dizziness overtook her.
“Ow!” she said, covering her eyes against the glare, then looked at her palm, scraped bloody from where she’d fallen against a rock covered with a thorny bush. Feeling dizzy and weak, she leaned back against what she thought was a couch only to meet more rock.
It was several minutes before she could stop her head and body from spinning and squint against the sunlight to try to see where she was. Moments before, it had been night and she had been in her apartment, but now she seemed to be standing in front of a pile of enormous boulders, with scruffy little oak trees trying to grow in the cracks, and it was the height of the day.
With the back of her hand to her forehead, Kady stepped back into the shade, then sat down on the smallest rock.
“If I close my eyes and count to ten, I will wake up,” she said, then proceeded to count. But when she opened her eyes, the rocks were still there, as well as the sunlight, and she was still not in her apartment.
There were aspen trees around her, blocking her from a long view of her surroundings, but a rocky, narrow path led down what could possibly be a mountain. It didn’t take a degree in botany to know that this was not the lush greenery of Virginia. This was high mountain desert. Her head came up when in the distance she heard the high-pitched cry of a bird as it flew overhead.
“I have been working too hard,” Kady said, smoothing out the skirt of the wedding dress she was still wearing. “Working too much, and now I’m dreaming.”
When she tried to stand, she was again dizzy and had to steady herself against a boulder. The rock certainly felt as though it was real!
“Very real,” she said aloud. “Yes, indeed, this is the most vivid, most realistic dream anyone has ever had, and if I have any sense at all, I’ll enjoy it. I’ll . . .” She looked about her. “Yes, I’ll observe everything, then I’ll have a wonderful story to tell Gregory.”
It wasn’t easy to concentrate because the dizziness kept coming over her in waves, and it was difficult to take deep breaths while fastened in the corset. Kady thought of loosening her stays, but she feared that if she did, she’d never be able to stand upright. At the moment, whalebone was the only spine she seemed to have.
“I will not be frightened,” she said to herself sternly. “This is a dream, and as such, I cannot be hurt. Not really, actually, truly hurt,” she clarified.
As she looked at the rocks, she saw something under a sparse little vine hanging down one sandstone side, so she pulled the vine aside. “Petroglyphs,” she said, running her lace-encased fingertip over the ancient symbols. Stick-figure men with bow and arrows hunted what looked to be elk. One man seemed to have fallen, while three others pursued more animals that were running away.
As Kady touched the figures, suddenly it was as though, smack in the middle of the rocks, a doorway appeared, and through that open doorway, she could see her apartment.
There was her couch, her jeans and chef’s coat flung across it, and on the floor was the old tin flour box the wedding dress had been in.
Never in her life had Kady seen anything as enticing as the view of her own apartment. Without bothering to toss the train over her arm, she took the two steps toward the doorway.
But as she reached the threshold, her foot paused in the air; she heard what sounded like a shot, loud and clear in the crisp air. Turning, she looked back toward the trees but could see nothing, so she turned again toward the doorway leading into her apartment.
But this time he was there. Her Arabian man on the white horse, his face and body hidden in great swathes of black. Kady drew in her breath sharply. Since she’d repeatedly seen this man almost all her life, he should have been familiar to her, but each appearance was always a wonder. And the sight of him always made her yearn for something she couldn’t describe or explain.
But this time seeing him was different, for this time he seemed clearer, more real, as though he were not a foggy dream but an actual man before her.
“Who are you?” she whispered. “What do you want of me?”
He looked at her over the dark scarf covering the lower half of his face, and his eyes seemed to be full of sadness. “I am waiting for you,” he whispered.