Shadow Woman (45 page)

She fiddled with the zippers of
the sleeping bags for a moment, then zipped the two bags together and
slipped inside. “You sleep on that side, where you’re
farther out of the wind. Your blood is probably still thin from
living in the desert.”

Pete sat at the foot of the
sleeping bags and looked up at her while he arranged his boots and
jacket and put on his hat.

She could feel him staring at
her in the darkness, trying to read her mind. She sighed, then said
in the kindest voice she could summon, “No, I haven’t.”

“Haven’t what?”

“Changed my mind about…
anything. All I want is your body heat. This is the way to sleep if
you want to be warm without a fire.”

“Sure,” he said.
“I’ve heard that somewhere.”

He carefully slipped in beside
her, holding himself in a straight, rigid position so far from her
that a cold breeze blew under the taut surface of the sleeping bag
and chilled her toes. She laughed. “I’ll tell you what.
If this is too weird, we’ll each go it on our own. I don’t
think we’ll freeze tonight.”

“No, no,” he said.
“It just takes a certain mental… what’s the word?
Insensitivity.” He nodded sagely. “I can manage that.”

“Good,” she said.
After a long silence she said, “But if I wake up with a hand on
my ass, I’m going to pinch it. The one who says ‘ouch’
had better be me.”

It worked. She heard him
shifting on the bed of boughs and then felt the sleeping bag regain
some of its slack and warm her back. She closed her eyes and listened
to the wind blowing past above her head and the sounds of trees
moving back and forth, whispering like the sea. In a moment she was
asleep.

She was not cold anymore. She
felt the hot, mild breeze where her skin was exposed to the air, then
sank lazily beneath the surface. The warm water supported her, made
her feel as though she were flying. She slowly, effortlessly glided
above the bottom of the pool, the light resistance of the black water
running along her body like a warm touch.

She looked up at the silvery
underside of the surface, saw the bright moon wavering above it, and
let herself rise up to meet it.

She came to the surface and took
in the first dry, sweet breath, then let her muscles relax and
floated. She was in suspension now, drifting passively, waiting. She
reveled in the knowledge that he was sure to be here, and fretted,
teasing herself with the lie that he would not.

She heard the water sloshing
somewhere behind her head and looked up at the moon, her body going
tense with anticipation and longing. When his big arm slipped around
her waist, she let out a gasp that was certitude and joy and laughter
at the same time. She let him pull her close. She could feel his
chest against her back, his lips softly kissing the back of her neck.
She leaned her head back on his shoulder. He was strong and gentle,
and warmer than the water. She could feel his hands moving, never
leaving her body, instead touching her lovingly everywhere from her
scalp to the tips of her toes, the hands returning, lingering on each
of the places she would never have let him touch.

He slowly turned her around and
she looked into his eyes. There was no question in them, no
uncertainty that would force her to speak. They did not have to talk,
because they had been through this before, and he had somehow sensed
this time that her answer had changed. She had just misspoken,
forgotten on that other night that this was all right. The first kiss
was slow, their lips drawn together and barely meeting at first, then
staying together. She let it go on as long as she could bear it,
feeling so safe, being cradled in his arms and cherished.

She slipped the straps of her
bathing suit off her shoulders, then took his hand and made him peel
it down and off. Pete’s bathing suit came off too, or maybe it
was already off. They embraced again in the warm, dark water, and
this time it was so much better, with the water tickling the exposed
skin to remind her it was bare. She felt so free that she was
surprised at how constricted and uncomfortable she must have been
before. She and Pete floated weightlessly, and something about the
motion of the water seemed to make them drift together.

She let herself savor the
moment, the world so dark and quiet around her, but her feelings so
bright and hot and clear. She was so glad she had found out that this
was allowed. But then she sensed that off in the dark beyond the
pool, there was some kind of disturbance. Maybe someone was coming.
“No, not yet,” she pleaded. “Just a little longer.”
But Pete seemed to lose his solidity, to slip away from her. She
reached for him.

Jane felt cold. Why had the
water turned cold? She slowly rose toward consciousness to
investigate her surroundings and opened her eyes to a terrible sense
of loss. Then she was suddenly, abruptly, wide awake. She was shocked
– frightened – not by the dream but by the realization
that she was the dreamer. It was an enormous relief that it had not
happened. She had not committed adultery, thrown her marriage away.
She had not betrayed Carey. She had not done anything at all.

She sat up, as careful not to
touch Pete as though he were a rattlesnake that had slithered in
beside her for warmth, and extricated herself from the sleeping bag.
She felt deeply depressed as she slipped her jacket on and walked
across the cold stone shelf to retrieve her boots.

The Old People had studied
dreams the way they studied every other event that passed before
their eyes. When somebody awoke from a dream, he would immediately do
his best to interpret it and fulfill whatever command it had brought
him. Something was bothering the dreamer, something he had not given
sufficient attention to while he was awake. Now that he was conscious
again, he had to correct the oversight – overcome the inertia,
the fear, or the inhibition mat had prevented him from seeing clearly
before. If Jane had lived in the Old Time, she would have been
required to wake Pete up and demand that he act out the dream with
her to set her mind at rest.

As she tied her boots, she
looked over at Pete Hatcher. He was lying on his side facing her, his
eyes closed and his jaw slack in sleep. He would be one of the
seventeen men on the planet who looked good when he was asleep. She
fought off the urge to resent him. None of this was his fault. She
was just lonely for her husband, and she had been alone with Pete so
much that her misguided subconscious mind had somehow drafted him to
stand for Man. No, she thought. The dream had been too convincing and
too specific for anything so abstract. Pete was an attractive guy who
had the morals of a stallion and had made it disconcertingly clear
that she was the one he wanted. Some part of her mind obviously had
not taken her refusal as final but had been mulling the offer over.

She found her watch in her
jacket pocket and consulted it as she strapped it to her wrist. It
was only four o’clock, but she wasn’t going to crawl back
into that sleeping bag with him right now.

She heard the distant screeching
of birds. She cocked her head to listen, but she could not identify
their kind. She did sense that they weren’t singing, they were
frightened. Something must have come too close to their nesting
place. She heard the wings of a flock of them passing overhead in the
dark. It was too early for the birds she knew to fly.

“Pete!” she said.
“Get up. It’s time to move.”

It was dark and still and cold,
and as Jane and Pete rolled their sleeping bags and ponchos and put
on their jackets, she could see thick clouds of steam puffing into
the air from their nostrils.

Hatcher whispered, “Why
are we in such a hurry?”

“Some birds woke me up,”
she whispered back. “I think something scared them.”

As Jane gathered the pine boughs
and carried them below the trail to hide them, she knew that she was
not being foolish. This was unfamiliar country, but she had begun to
get used to the sights and sounds, and the birds were behaving
strangely. When she had removed every sign of the campsite, she used
the last pine bough as a broom to sweep the rock shelf, then all of
the footprints that led to it from the trail.

Jane set a brisk pace as they
moved up the trail in the frigid predawn stillness. She led Pete
northward, past thickets of berry bushes in alpine meadows, up rocky
inclines that skirted the treeline. When the sky began to take on a
blue-gray luminescence and she could see objects in depth, she began
to hear other birds. She listened to them as she walked, trying to
detect any sudden calls from behind that might be warnings. When the
sun had turned the peaks to her left a dull orange, she said, “Are
you up to a little run?”

Pete said, “Ready if you
are.”

They jogged until the sun was
high, going single file on the narrow footpath. Jane listened harder
for sounds that came from behind but heard nothing. When she saw a
mountain that might be Iceberg Peak on her right, she stopped running
and walked while she studied the map.

“Where are we?”
asked Pete.

She pointed to the spot. “What
we want to look for next are more glaciers: Ahern Glacier, Ipasha
Glacier, and then Chaney Glacier, all middle-sized, close together on
the right. Then we take a fork in the path. It looks like a good five
miles from here.”

“It’s rough
country,” said Pete. “Are you planning to run all the way
to Canada?”

“I wish we could,”
she said. “I’ll probably feel better when we’ve
passed that fork in the trail – one more chance to send a
tracker in the wrong direction.”

“Do you seriously think
somebody could have followed us this far?”

“I honestly know some
people could do it. I don’t think it’s likely that these
people made all the right decisions and did it, but I’ve
decided that it’s stupid not to minimize the risks.”

“How do we do that?”

“Move faster, stop less
often, and keep traveling as long as the light lasts.”

Pete walked along beside her,
ducking now and then to shrug a branch past his shoulder. After a
moment she realized he was trying to get a close look at her face, so
she turned it to him. “Something wrong?”

“I was just having a
fantasy.”

“Pete…”

“It was about dancing.
Honest.”

“Pretty tame, for you. It
must be the lack of oxygen up here.”

His hands came up to gesture as
he described it. “See, we’re at this ballroom. It’s
got one of those old-fashioned spinning balls in the center made out
of mirrors. The light is dim, except for that. I’ve got a
tuxedo on. You’re wearing – ”

“A blue business suit.”

“A black velvet dress:
straps, just low enough to hint that the endowment is adequate.”

“ ‘Endowment is
adequate’?”

“Nice tits.”

“Sorry I asked. Are we
done yet?”

“No. I walk up to your
table. You smile. You stand, you hold out your right hand – ”

“And wave good-bye.”

“No. I take your hand. The
music begins.” He hummed a waltz as he walked, his eyes closed.
Jane waited, but he kept humming, the waltz going on and on.

She looked at his face. “Is
that smile supposed to make me uncomfortable? Pete?”

“Sssh. Don’t
interrupt my fantasy. I finally got to lead.”

She stared at him for a moment,
then the laugh fought its way out and she slapped his arm. He opened
his eyes and shrugged happily. “A guy can dream.”

“I’m sorry,”
she said. “I apologize. I’ll let you make the decision.
Do you want to get to Canada quickly, or do you want to stroll along
like this for a few hours, sleep on a frozen rock in a forty-knot
wind, and maybe get killed?”

“Lead on,” he said.

She pulled ahead of him again.
For the rest of the morning she tried a new routine. When they were
in thick cover among the evergreen trees she walked, striding along
with a purposeful gait, trading the time lost for the chance to catch
her breath. But when the trail led them up into grassy fields or onto
bare, rocky ridges, she broke into a run, taking them across the open
ground as quickly as she could. She never let herself forget the
rifle.

Earl sat under the set of trail
markers and rested while his dogs sorted out the conflicting sets of
footprints. T-Bone raced off up the right-hand trail and Rusty took
the left, sniffing the ground methodically. It was good to see that
Jane had tried to throw him off like this. It had certainly taken her
longer to do it than it would take him to find the right path. Almost
as soon as he had formed the thought, he saw both dogs coming back,
sniffing the grass beside the trail.

The dogs converged again beside
the third path, the one that didn’t have a sign anymore, and
Earl stood up to watch the dogs work. They were staying beside the
trail instead of on it, and in places Earl could look ahead of them
and see spots where the weeds had been pushed aside by feet.

Earl
found the first footprints a hundred yards farther on. The first ones
were hard to see, so he wasn’t positive yet, but his heart beat
a little faster and he hurried on. He found the next set in a muddy
depression, and they were much clearer. They had wrapped something
around their boots to disguise the zigzag treads. He took in a breath
that tasted thick with tantalizing possibilities.
“Auf
den Fersen folgen!”

Rusty and T-Bone scrambled to
his side, and he knelt by the prints while the dogs sniffed. He saw
their eyes brighten, as though the smell were some kind of drug that
actually conjured an image in their brains. They looked at Earl, ran
ahead a few steps, then came back, panting and pleading with him. He
was sure now. Hatcher and the woman had done the worst thing they
could. Maybe it was a piece of a shirt, maybe even a sock. But it
wasn’t something they had picked up along the way. They had
tied something around their boots that had touched their skin,
something they had worn and sweated on. Now the dogs had their scent.