The Eye of the Wolf (11 page)

“Ah ha!” He exclaimed and held
up a finger. “This is very important.” He slammed the heavy book from the
twelfth century on the table. He pointed to the page he had been reading
earlier.

“Oh, you can’t be serious. You
didn’t actually read that. How do you know it is important?” Mikayla rolled her
eyes.

Will gestured to the book.
“Just look at it, okay!”

Mikayla slipped on her glasses
and turned the book so she could see what was so important that he had found by
just randomly turning pages. She looked at it briefly. As she did, her eyes
widened. She looked up at him. Will grinned broadly. He gestured for her to
keep reading. She pulled the book towards her and sat down heavily in the
chair.

“Will, do you have any idea
what this says?”

“Of course I do.” He gestured
behind him to the spot where he had been sitting for the majority of the
morning. “I was sitting over there for over an hour translating it.”

“Oh, I thought you were
watching me.” Mikayla sounded almost crestfallen.

Will grinned. “I was doing that
too!” He raised his eye brows in a practiced move. “I can do more than one
thing at a time.” He winked at her.

“Oh, for heavens sake!” Mikayla
pushed the book to the center of the table. “Will, this is a record of the
weight and size for the Eye of the Wolf, right before King Richard’s death. It
remained uncut. That proves that it was still in existence when Malachi became
king.”

He gestured for her to keep
reading. The legend of the Eye of the Wolf suddenly seemed closer, more real
than it ever had in his entire life. He had been raised on the fairy tales and
treasure hunts of the Amor children. He had searched for the Eye of the Wolf
himself, as a child, but never had it seemed so real as it had in the last
week. The sapphire was real. He knew it. He also knew that he had to find it,
soon.

“According to this, the stone
was kept within the walls of the Secluded City. King Richard, apparently,
carried it with him wherever he went. Apparently, he believed very strongly in
its mystical powers.” Mikayla removed her glasses and looked up at Will. “So
does Malachi get rid of the stone after his father’s death to prevent something
or is it stolen? What happens to the stone once Malachi becomes king? How does
Malachi bring about peace after one hundred years of war and conflict?”

Will grinned as Mikayla’s voice
babbled out question after question that sounded more like fairytales and
treasure hunts than the serious history she preached. He closed the book and
set it on top of the diary. Mikayla’s jaw dropped down, and she was speechless.
He took her hand in one of his and closed her laptop with the other. “Now, come
with me.” When she resisted, he tugged a little more. “You promised that if I
found something important we could do something else today. I found something
important. I held up my end of the bargain.” He tugged again. “Let’s go!”

“Will…” Mikayla protested even
as she allowed him to tug her out the door.

         
The tires of the navy blue Jeep
roared over the dirt road as it wound up the mountain. Gravel spit out from the
tires and bounced off of ancient trees that had long guarded the road,
protecting it from change. The sun streamed through the canopy of palm trees,
dappling the gravel road that stretched in front of the Jeep as it bounced over
ruts in the road.

Mikayla
stretched her arms above her head and grasped the fabric covered roll bars. Her
fingers tapped in the sunlight to the oldies music that blared from the
speakers of the Jeep and woke up the birds sleeping in the trees. Birds flew
out of the trees with loud cries of dismay as Will accelerated just a little
bit to make the next curve. Her laughter at the wind and the birds filled the
air with music. She began to sing.

“Everyday,
it’s a getting faster, going faster than a roller coaster…”

Will
grinned. Her voice was terrible, but she was enjoying herself. Her messy bun
had collapsed early in the ride up the mountain, and now, pins gone, it
streamed out behind them and whipped into her face. Wild, free, lovely. Because
he was enjoying himself, he joined in, blending his voice with hers on the
chorus.

“Love
like yours will surely come my way.”

Mikayla
laughed lightly as the Jeep crested the hill and rolled to a stop in an empty
plain, the top of the island, the top of the mountain that had once appeared
either through plate tectonics or some ancient volcanic activity. She stood in
the Jeep, grasping the bars for support and allowed the sun to beat down on her
shoulders and head, clearing away any dreary thoughts or feelings, any guilt
from having left her work behind. She breathed deeply and took in the clean,
fresh air, air that seemed untouched by human hands. Air that cleansed the
soul.

Will
climbed from the Jeep with practiced ease. He had long ago given up on doors on
the Jeep. It was too much work to keep putting them on and taking them off.
They spent most of their time off anyway. He reached into the backseat for his
camera bag and the picnic basket he had packed before leaving that morning.
Something had told him early on that today he would not be eating in that
dreary cell of the Hall of Records. Today was different. It had been since the
sun had risen and woken him, early, early enough to know it was a good day for
climbing mountains and capturing beauty on film.

He
pulled the heavy bag with his camera equipment from the Jeep and looked up at
Mikayla, still standing on her seat, breathing in the air, taking in the view.
It was a marvelous view that deserved to be appreciated. Will held out a hand.

“C’mon,
there’s an even better view from over there.” He nodded slightly in the
direction of the cliff with his head. Mikayla bent under the roll bar and took
his hand. She jumped from the Jeep and landed next to him in the dirt that
faded off into vibrant green grass, a green that she had never seen before in
her life.

“Have
you ever noticed that the color of the flowers, the grass, the sky, even the water
here are brighter than anywhere else in the world?” Mikayla asked as she
slipped her sun glasses onto her face to cut the glare of the sun. Her eyes and
head were in constant motion as she tried to take in everything. Her attention
was so focused on this new place of paradise that Will had brought her to that
she didn’t even notice that he still held her hand, warm and firm, in his own
as he led her to the cliff that overlooked the island.

Will
looked around him and tried to see the world through her eyes. He had lived
most of his life on the island, other than those years spent in England
attending school with other rich boys destined for greatness. Perhaps, because
of this, he had forgotten the beauty of Amor, but he had never forgotten his
tie to his home. Regardless of where he was in the world, Amor always called
him home, like a mother to her son. And he always came when he heard the call.
He had heard the call just weeks before, just as Mikayla was arriving at Amor.
He hadn’t understood it, but he had heard it, and he had answered. And that was
why he understood that their paths were connected somehow. She had arrived, and
he had been called home by a longing to see Amor again, to experience it again.

Now,
as he looked about him, through her eyes, he realized that everything did seem
brighter than other parts of the world. Will had seen the entire world through
a camera lens, and he knew that Amor shown brighter than any other place in the
world. “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess you are right.” He smiled
down at her as she grinned up at him. He squeezed her hand once and led her to
a grouping of large stones that were in a perfect symmetric circle near the
edge of the hill. He gestured for her to watch her step as they stepped over smaller
stones into the shade of the larger stones.

Mikayla
looked about her with the eyes of an adventurer, not a historian. The spot he
had chosen for their afternoon picnic was something out a fairytale with the
sun shining down, green grass laid out like a velvet carpet dotted with yellow
clover flowers. The stones were laid out in three circles, each a smaller
circle within the larger. Each stone was perfectly carved, smooth and straight,
standing tall against the elements that battered it for centuries. The air here
felt different, charged with an energy and a peacefulness she didn’t
understand. She realized she didn’t want to understand. She was to enjoy, revel
in, but not understand.

“What is this place?” Mikayla
whispered in awe, an awe she was barely aware she felt.

Will spread a blanket out on
the grass in the center of the smallest circle of stones, where the shade was
the best. He glanced at her briefly as she turned in the circle, taking in her
surroundings. He knew what she was feeling. He felt it every time he came here
himself, and he came here often. To sit. To think. To dream. To wish. To do
those things his own life didn’t permit. He frowned slightly as he opened the
picnic basket. He had never told anyone about this place, though he knew there
were others who had discovered its mysteries, but he had never shared it with
anyone he was close to. He didn’t know what had driven him to bring her here;
it had just happened. It made no sense, yet inside it felt perfectly right to
have her there with him, sharing in its magic with him.

“According to local legend,”
Will grinned when she flashed him a sharp glance. He knew how Mikayla felt
about legends and folk lore. “As I said, according to the people who have lived
here for generations, this was the sight of the original Secluded City. This
was where the treaty between the native Greek people and the Crusaders was
signed. Of course, that treaty is now housed in the Museum of History, but they
say it was once held by the head of the clans that founded this island until
the rebellion that pretty much decimated the entire island’s population except
for the Crusaders. Once the rebellion was quashed, the treaty went into the
hands of the king.”

Will gestured to the east. “You
can see some of the small fishing villages that dot the coast if you look over
there.”

Mikayla stepped through the
circle of stones to the edge of the cliff and looked over. A wave of dizziness
whirled in her belly from the drop before she forced it down and focused on the
sights. The land sloped away from her feet at a sharp angle and then leveled
out into tiny houses that dotted the sea coast. Small fishing boats bobbed in
the crystal blue water.

Will’s voice drifted through
the air to her. “The people who live there still speak Greek. They follow the
laws of Amor, but they claim to be Greek citizens. Many of them are direct
descendents from the original inhabitants.”

The villages were peaceful.
There were no electric or phone wires running to the houses. She could see
people moving about on the streets, going about their daily business, enjoying
their simple lives. A fishing boat set out to sea, ready to bring home the
days’ catch or to go without for another day. It cruised east, towards the
distant shore of Turkey that was just dark haze in the distance along the
horizon.

“When I was a child, I used to
play with some boys from those villages. We explored every inch of this island
together.” Will smiled up at Mikayla as she sat down beside him on the blanket.
She folded her legs beneath her and took the cup he handed her. She sipped the
brown liquid and was pleased to taste iced tea with lemon and a hint of
raspberry. She grinned at him.

“What happened to those boys
that you used to play with?” Mikayla asked as she popped a ripe strawberry in
her mouth from the Tupperware bowl open on the blanket. She had often wondered
about his past, who he was, what his life had been like other than being
educated in the United Kingdom. He had not talked about himself much, and
though she had tried not to, she had wondered.

Will frowned as he peeled an
apple with his knife. He focused his attention on his task and refused to meet
her eye. His voice was soft, wistful,…sad. “I went away to school in Britain at
the age of 14. When I returned, I was 22. I never saw them again. Some of them
fled to Greece for a better life, and others…well, they were fishermen and died
in accidents at sea.”

Will handed Mikayla a slice of
apple and then popped one in his own mouth. “Life here as a child isn’t as
great as it might seem. To become educated, you have to go elsewhere. To become
anything other than a fisherman or a member of the tourist bureau, you have to
have money. There are very few here who have the money needed to send a child
away to school.” He smiled slightly at her and looked through the veil of hair
that had fallen into his eyes. “I was lucky. Others are not so lucky, I guess.”

Mikayla, unconsciously, reached
out a hand and brushed his hair from his face. It was silky and flowed through
her fingers, caressing the toughened skin that had developed on her fingertips
from years of researching and typing. It was downy, ill-fitting of the man who
sat next to her and annoyed her daily. Her fingers itched to weave into the
rest of his hair and let it slip through like a lover’s touch.

 Will watched her through
hooded eyes, watched emotions flit across her face. Emotions he couldn’t read,
but emotions he knew she didn’t like feeling. It was obvious she was
uncomfortable with anything other than business. It was obvious that she was
going to remain closed to him. It was obvious that he wanted her and he wanted
to know her, but that want was going to remain far out of reach despite her
physical closeness.