The Heart of War (6 page)

“With your protection of gold, I have to wonder what it is about my bedroom that frightens you so much,” Ares returned, not wanting to let her out of the room.

Maggie’s hands dropped to her waist to feel the cold metal still in place. It was then she noticed the gown on her body and the bandages at her wrists. “You
undressed
me?”

“No, not me. I had one of my women do it, but I watched.” His eyes dropped from her gaze to sweet breasts. “Not bad,” Ares complimented, but it was easy to see that she did not take his words as such. “I have not harmed you,” Ares assured her even though that was not altogether true, however, he figured the scratches he’d left on her back did not really count under the circumstances. “So long as you don’t give me reason to do otherwise that will not change.” Those stormy eyes of hers told him that she did not believe him. “Have it your way, hmm? Go.” He opened the door and she bolted through it. Standing at the top of the stairs, he watched her rush down them holding up the hem of his shirt as she went. Feeling the pounding in his head returning, Ares began to descend the steps slowly behind her.

Maggie fled down the stone steps only to discover more stone and more rooms. For a moment she wondered what type of a house this was but then realized it was no house, it was a cave. Running hither and yon as she searched for a way out, she was met with room after room containing armor, weapons, animal skins, animal heads, full stuffed animals—including a polar bear—and stone. If she was sane, then she had stepped back in time two or three thousand years. There wasn’t a single lamp. Not a telephone. Not even what she would consider a bathroom, only a room with a hole carved in the stone that looked more like a port-o-potty than a proper toilet. Maggie was accustomed to harsh conditions having lived at the refugee camp so long, but even there some people did have cell phones and there were generators to run electric lights at night.

Finally she skittered around a corner and saw sunlight streaming through a large opening, the entrance, or in this case, the exit, to the world beyond. Head down, hem of her nightgown up, Maggie ran straight for it. Out of the mouth of the cave, past a huge boulder of equal size, a group of men at the entrance met her. Maggie shrieked and took a step back inside but then decided to chance it. She pushed the man nearest her as hard as she could and then ran as fast as she could, even though the gold between her thighs was beginning to slice the skin. She did not turn around to see the men behind her staring from one to the other as they wondered where she thought she was going.

A few moments later Ares sauntered out of the cave. “I don’t suppose you saw a woman, gray hair and eyes, run past here?” he asked his guards snidely. Nicco pointed off in the direction she had gone. “Perhaps you’re useful for something after all,” he said as he strolled down the path in front of him after her. Less than a mile down the path, he found her standing on the precipice looking out at the water. “I told you it’s an island,” he said softly as he walked up behind her.

“The wreck?” Ares inquired. “I told you that, too, there isn’t one. If I have to repeat everything two or three times this will take forever. Is there something wrong with your brain, woman? Does it not retain information?” He leaned forward and took another deep sniff. “You don’t smell diseased; salty, yes, but not diseased.”

Maggie looked up at him with cold gray eyes. “I may be crazy but I am not addled and I am not
diseased
.” She turned back to the water.
The ship. Where was the ship? Why wasn’t there any sign of it at all?
“You must have found something.”

“Just you, I’m afraid,” Ares returned. “No one else. Nothing else.” He gestured toward the open water with a large hand. “You can see that for yourself, can’t you? Wherever you came from, woman, you were not wrecked.”

“No,” Maggie muttered and wrapped her arms around her body. “No.” There
was
a ship.
There was…there was…
“A crash,” she told herself, “an…an…explosion.”
Then she was in the water.

“Explosion?” Ares asked. “I heard nothing and I have very good hearing. More than that, look at the water, woman.” Her head was up but she was not seeing what was in front of her. From behind, he put his hands on either side of her head and tilted it upward a bit. “Do you see that? The waves breaking so far from my shore? No ship comes near here because of the reefs surrounding this island making sailing treacherous. If you were on a ship and it exploded, it did so hundreds of miles from here.” Now he turned her around to look at him.

“I was on a ship,” Maggie asserted even though her voice was already weakening, “I was…I was going…”
Where? Where was I going? How did I get on the ship?

“What was the name of the ship?”

“Name? I…I...don’t know,” she stammered and tried to focus on what she knew was real. “Look, whoever you are…”

“Whoever I am?” Ares sneered and reached out quickly to snatch the necklace between her breasts. “You bend a knee to Cernunnos and I am the fable? I am not real?”

“I bend no knee to Cernunnos.” Maggie grabbed the medallion back from him. “I was in Africa,” she said trying to keep her voice under control and the jumbled thoughts straight in her head. “I am a missionary…”

“Missionary? You’re not even Christian,” Ares countered.

She ignored him. “I was helping in the refugee camp. I have been there many years; it is a terrible place, but I try to make things better for the children. I worked with Father Murphy and Sister Augustine,” she huffed, feeling her chest begin to tighten. Maggie put a hand over her heart to find it beating rapidly. It was hard to get air in her lungs; she felt as though she might pass out but she pressed onward. “I was going to…to….Rome.”

“Rome?”

“We…we…got on the ship, a cargo ship.”

Ares stood there listening and watching. He did not believe she was telling the truth but at least in her own mind, the story she was concocting was not a lie. She had been in Africa at a refugee camp but after that, behind those stormy eyes, her brain was scrambling to fill in the rather large and important missing piece of her life. Why was it missing? Who stole it?

“…people were shouting…there was a crash…then an explosion….”

“And who bound your hands? Why?”

Maggie looked down at her bandaged wrists and then her eyes began to dart around from the ocean to Ares to the bandages and the flora and fauna around her. She swam and it was hard with her hands bound. So very hard. Several times she had gone under, certain she was going to drown. “I don’t know,” she confessed in a hushed whisper. “Please, just let me off this island.”

Ares shook his dark head with a small amount of sympathy as he stared down at her. “I can’t do that, Alena. I can’t let you leave.”

“Alena?”

“I don’t like ‘Maggie’, and ‘Magdalena’ doesn’t roll off my tongue. Since you’re going to be here for, well, the rest of your life, I think I will call you Alena.”

Ares was not sure what it was going to take before she believed him. “Thirsty, Alena?” he asked snidely and held his empty hands in front of her eyes. “Nothing up my sleeve—oh, that’s right; I’m not wearing a shirt,” he said cheerily as he gazed down at his own torso. “Ready? Look closely now, I don’t want you to miss anything.”

Before her bewildered eyes in one of his hands, from thin air, appeared a crystal goblet, sweat running down the glass indicating the coldness of the contents within. “How did you do that?” She looked up at him with wide wonder as he held the cup out to her.

“I am Ares. This is my home. You are my guest for a long time to come.” He watched her take the cup from his hand and hold it to her lips. She drank deeply of the water inside. “You can wander around here all you like, although if I were you I’d stay away from the south end of the island. Dangerous and wild creatures reside there. When you’re ready, you come back to my cave. When you’re satisfied that this is all real, we will talk further.”

Right in front of her he simply disappeared. Maggie dropped the crystal goblet in her hand; it crashed to the rock at her feet, shattering to bits and pieces of sharp glass. “I
am
crazy,” she muttered and then began to cackle wildly until the sound filled her ears and her heart with dread.

Chapter Four

This Place Sucks

1

Maggie stood staring out at the endless blue sea, trying to be mindful of the broken glass at her bare feet. The boat had to be out there. Maybe the majority of it had sunk, but still there should be…well…something. Maybe she was on the wrong side of the island. Maybe she had washed ashore on the
other
side.

The man who thought he was Ares God of War told her stay away from the south end. It was his island. She had no reason to doubt his word. Looking up at the sun, knowing it rose in the east, set in the west, and remembering that when she awoke the strange man had said ‘good afternoon’, the sun was past its apex. Therefore, she should not go left, as that was south. She would go in a different direction and see what she could see. Maybe she would get lucky and discover where the man stashed his boat. If she found that then she would steal it, jump in and sail away from this crazy place.

Managing to step around the remains of the crystal goblet glittering on the rocks, she made her way from the precipice, thinking that she should have asked him for a pair of shoes. Holding up the hem of the gown in one hand, she followed a narrow beaten path that looked as though it was an animal trail.

The island was beautiful. Breathtaking scenes of deep blue water, small green islands dotting the horizon met her eye at every turn. Some of those islands looked close enough to swim to should it come to that. On her journey across Ares’ island, Maggie came upon a rushing waterfall and stopped to rest while taking a drink. The water was cold and pure as it quenched her parched throat. The taste was almost sweet; she couldn’t stop drinking it as she cupped her hands again and again, slurping down the icy goodness until her stomach began to ache.

First gazing down and then darting her eyes to be sure she was alone, Maggie thought a bath might be in order. She reeked of salt. It was stuck in her hair and made her skin itch. Deciding she was alone, Maggie stripped the gown off and walked into the clear water, hoping there weren’t any poisonous snakes, snapping turtles or other nipping biting things swimming around with her.

Submerged in the chilly water, Maggie finally came to the decision this was not a dream. It didn’t seem so bad; if she had gone mad then this seemed like a nice place to do it. Here, on this island, far away from the hustle and bustle of any city and cries of refugees, and overbearing warlords. Under other circumstances she would not mind being here at all. She would build herself a little hut and live happily away from the world for the rest of her days.

Happily Ever After would not happen here. Not with that giant of a man who thought he was a God towering over everything. He was a real problem and she had to get away from here as swiftly as she could.

Diving below the surface, she ran her hands through her gray hair vigorously as she tried to free it of the caked salt and sand. When she was satisfied that the caged area was as clean as it was going to get, she surfaced into the sunshine.

The waterfall looked inviting; Maggie floated over to it and found she could easily stand beneath it. Holding herself with her hands pressed to a nearby rock jutting from the water, she let the water wash over her, pounding away the tensions of sore muscles and joints.

Standing under the rushing water, she tried to think. The man asked her the name of the ship and she couldn’t remember. Why was that? Maggie concentrated on that one thought and soon drew a picture in her mind of the stern of a boat. There was writing but it was in a language she could not read. That was why she did not know its name. When Mr. Giant Ares asked again, that was what she would tell him. Father Murphy, Sister Augustine and she had traveled far by land to get to the water; the camp was at least two hundred miles from the nearest shore. The trip had been long and dusty. They boarded the boat and they sailed off to Rome. Why, she did not know. Or could not remember.

Think, Maggie, think.

Food would be good. That would help.

She leisurely swam back to the shore where the gown was waiting for her. Wringing the water from her long hair, she pushed it back over her slender shoulder and slid the gown over her head. The bandages at her wrists and back were all soaked through and peeling. Slowly she pulled the rest away. Not wanting to throw the trash to the ground, she shuffled her hands around the gown and found a pocket in an odd place—in front, just past her belly. Stuffing the wet gauze into it, she looked at the red rings on her wrists. They were very raw; she rubbed them lightly, trying to remember how her wrists came to be bound to begin with. Nothing came to her. It was maddening to feel as though she’d lost days from her life. Perhaps her ordeal in the ocean was simply so traumatic her mind wouldn’t let her remember. There had been a ship, there had been a wreck, and there had been an explosion.

Hadn’t there?

She wished she could be sure. The dreams that woke her in a cold sweat made her feel as though she was falling from the height of the Empire State Building, the wind whizzing by her, howling in her ears, making her heart quicken as she screamed, and made believing what her waking mind told her a bit difficult. Somehow the dreams were more real than what she believed was reality.