The Kissing Stars (10 page)

For months now she’d mapped the paths the Kissing Stars took as they bounced and hovered over the distant desert, and she’d come to suspect she’d uncovered a pattern to their movements. Tonight’s show had blown that theory to bits.

For the first hour, the lights played back and forth across the flats in their customary north-to-south, east-to-west pattern at a distance of approximately five to ten miles from Lookout Peak. An exact measurement remained impossible to obtain because whenever anyone went out onto the desert to track them, they acted like mirages, migrating farther away. Always moving in pairs, the lights had separated, then come together, fusing, then splitting again. Hence the name, the Kissing Stars.

But shortly after the second hour began, the lights acted in an altogether unusual manner. They moved close to Lookout Peak. Extremely close. Within half a mile, Tess would guess. And then they’d hovered. For seven straight hours they hovered, never moving, never once changing color, but slowly growing steadily bigger. Six individual stars, glowing an angry, orange color.

The effect on the Aurorians had been significant. Colonel Wilhoit charged his divining rods until his arms gave out. He left the mountain elated, certain that now his tools finally contained enough starpower to locate his dream. Twinkle had spent hours hovered over her glass globe, positive that this time enough energy flowed into the sphere to call the individual spirits she wanted to summon. And finally at half past one, Jack and Amy had dragged through camp on their way home, exhausted but hopeful that the night’s efforts had achieved the desired results—the conception of the gifted child Amy’s dreams foretold.

For her part, Tess spent the hours captivated by the stars’ unusual actions. She’d occupied her time by taking measurements and recording observations in her journal. And, despite her best intentions, wondering about Gabe. She didn’t know which to consider more of a puzzle—her husband or the Kissing Stars.

Why had Gabe stormed off after looking at the lights? Surely the sight of the lights hadn’t reminded him of Billy’s death. A sky full of stars had shined above them that night; strange balls of fire didn’t bounce above the horizon. It was ludicrous to think the lights might have frightened Gabe, but they obviously disturbed him in some way. He’d all but kicked up dust in his rush back down the hill.

His response proved to her how much her husband had changed. The Gabe Cameron she’d married would have stood and watched, enthralled, until the stars disappeared.

Having reached the bottom of the trail down Lookout Peak, Tess sighed and firmly turned her attention away from her husband and back toward the Kissing Stars as she made her way into Aurora Springs. Intent upon the mystery, she paid little note to the fact that lamplight lit up her house. “A three week absence, then this unusual appearance,” she murmured aloud as she climbed her front steps. “I’ll need to go back through my books and see if I can find a reference to a similar phenomena.”

Gabe’s gruff voice loomed from the porch swing. “First I want you to tell me about the lights.”

Tess tripped on one of the steps and teetered, almost falling. “Gabe Cameron, you scared the stuffing out of me!”

“Montana.”

“Did you change it legally?”

“Doesn’t matter. The name is Montana.”

Orion, Aries, and Gemini, I’m not up for that name fight tonig
ht. Tess smiled grimly and walked into her house. He followed her inside and right into her bedroom, something he’d never before dared.

“Sorry I surprised you, Tess. Now tell me about these lights. Tell me what people see, what your studies have shown.”

Tess lit her bedside lamp before turning to face him.
He looks tired
, she thought. Weariness shadowed his eyes and the slight slump to his shoulders was unusual.
What was wrong with Gabe?

He shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at her. “Talk to me. I want to know about these damned lights of yours.”

The impatience reverberating through his voice reassured her, and a small seed of hope blossomed. He’d shown little interest in her work up until now and it had hurt her.

“Tess?”

“I’m trying to decide where to start.”

“Try the beginning.”

She smiled. “You’ll need to speak with the Apaches if you want to go that far back. I’m told their legends concerning the lights have been repeated for generations.”

“You followed an Indian legend here?”

“No.” She smiled. “Actually a friend sent a newspaper article about the lights to me. I had just finished my studies with Dr. Pierce, so it was perfect timing to begin a new project. We made the trip to this canyon after interviewing the rancher who first reported the lights. After seeing them for ourselves, we decided to settle here. We made the rancher an offer for his land and Aurora Springs was born.”

“We? Who’s we? You and Twinkle?”

She cursed her choice of pronouns and sidestepped the question. “Twinkle owns a large section. She was attracted by more than just the stars. Twinkle suffers respiratory difficulties and the climate here is good for her.”

Gabe obviously didn’t want to hear about Twinkle’s health. “This rancher. What was it he saw?”

“It was back in ‘83. Mr. Henderson was moving two thousand head of cattle through Snakeater Pass which is just south of here. One of his hands riding herd brought the lights to his attention. When I interviewed him he told me he saw strange, starlike flickers of light, and he assumed they were Apache campfires burning at the base of the distant mountains. But when he and his men went to investigate, they didn’t find a single sign of any Apache. For months afterward the stars appeared every night.”

“But what was it that he saw? Just flickers?”

Tess shook her head. “He saw the same thing then that we see now.”

“Which is…?”

“Usually something different than what I saw tonight,” she replied, her brow dipping in a perplexed frown as she recalled the evening’s entertainment. “It was after you were gone, Gabe. You saw the Kissing Light as colored spheres, like slow-bouncing balls, right? The tones were soft, more like distant stars than brilliant balls of fire. That’s what we see most often. But after you left, one of them did something I’d never seen before. It started swinging in an arc.” She made a motion with her hand like the rocker on a rocking chair to illustrate.

Gabe walked over to her bed and sat down. He appeared attentive, but not at all pleased with her explanation.

Her imagination caught with the retelling of the puzzle, Tess didn’t stop to wonder why. “Next it did a whole loop and another half loop, and then it stopped. It hung suspended for a moment before bursting into six small stars. Those stars in turn flashed a brilliant white and moved in close. They started growing and turned orange and hovered. They just hung there, Gabe, for hours. Growing bigger and brighter by the minute. It was truly the strangest thing, and it completely ruins a hypothesis I had developed about the phenomena.”

Gabe dragged his hand down his jawline. “And the others. They saw the same thing?”

She nodded. “All except for Andrew, of course. He came up the hill—against my instructions, I might add, since he’s still recovering. But Andrew never sees the lights.”

Gabe’s hand fell back into his lap and he leaned forward. “He doesn’t?”

“No. He only sees the horses. When the lights shine a herd of wild horses led by a beautiful white stallion sometimes comes out of the hills into the flats. It’s the only time any of us has ever seen the stallion. Andrew wants to catch the horse. He feels an affinity with it; some sort of connection. He’s determined to at least get close enough to touch it, even if they decide he shouldn’t try to keep it.”

“They?”

“He and the horse.”

Gabe shook his head. “I’ll leave that be for now, but don’t you think the other is strange? That he doesn’t see these stars that the rest of you see, I mean.”

Tess shrugged. “I think everything about these lights is strange. We don’t know what they are, Gabe. At this point we can’t say they’re not some type of optical trick that our eyes see when atmospheric conditions are a certain way. If that’s the answer, maybe Andrew and the others who don’t see them have a different eye shape or lens dimension that prevents their seeing the illusion we see. That’s something I’m attempting to study.”

“But you’re an astronomer, not a physician.”

“I know,” she replied almost ruefully. “The entire phenomena is fascinating and quite frankly, has captured my interest like no other work I’ve ever done. For instance, Amy Baker sees the stars, but she never sees the colors. They are always white to her. Why is that?”

Gabe let out a breath, and she detected a sense of relief in the action. He reached around and propped her pillows behind him against the headboard, then he swung his legs up on the bed and leaned back, his hands linked behind his head, elbows outstretched. “I didn’t see them, either.”

Tess swallowed her demand he get his boots off her bed “What?”

“I didn’t see the spooklights.”

She felt a wrench of sorrow as she recalled what he’d said about stargazing in the aftermath of the explosion. “Oh, Gabe. You couldn’t look at them?”

“Oh, I looked. I just couldn’t see them.”

Her eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“I’m saying something now. So, Amy isn’t color blind in other areas?”

“No.”

“This is all very curious.” He focused his gaze upon her, and the intrigue glowing in their steel gray depths caused her breath to catch. This was the Gabe she remembered.

He slowly nodded “You might be onto something by considering differences in eye shape. This group of yours is a small sampling of the population, and if two of them see the events differently than others, it lends credence to the hypothesis of a physical anomaly.”

“It could just mean they are nearsighted and need spectacles,” Tess replied “But I do see something out there, Gabe. The Kissing Stars exist. And I want an explanation for it.”

He stared vacantly at a spot over her shoulder, his lips twisted in a contemplative frown, one foot rhythmically tapping the air.

Watching him, Tess melted. This was the Gabe she fell in love with. She’d seen him sit exactly that same way so many times while he pondered the possibility of life on Mars or the number of galaxies in the universe. He was a man whose mind lent itself to puzzles, and for the first time she recognized the connection between his current occupation of railroad investigator and his previous interest. He’d abandoned celestial enigmas for earthly riddles.

“You considered St. Elmo’s fire?”

Tess shook her head. “Of course. I don’t think that’s it. The flat has no obvious source of such electricity.”

“Wouldn’t be swamp gas in this part of the world. What about minerals? Could it be moonlight reflecting off large veins of mica?”

“This region doesn’t have large veins of mica. Besides, I personally have seen the lights on cloudy and moonless nights. I’ve documented such conditions in my journals. Let me show you.” She walked over to her desk and removed a trio of bound books. Returning to the bed she sat beside him, feeling like a child at Christmas for having Gabe join her in an intellectual discussion again. She had missed this so much.

Opening the earliest volume, she said, “I’ve kept a daily journal since moving to Aurora Springs. Perhaps you’ll see a pattern I have missed.” Sighing, she added, “For all the facts I’ve gathered, I’ve not come up with a theory any better than Twinkle’s belief in the supernatural.”

Gabe pinned her with a gaze. “You believe they’re spooklights?”

“No, not really. I don’t believe in ghosts.” She gave a half-smile as emotion stabbed like a dirk at her heart. Softly, she added, “Now, angels are another matter.”

His eyes narrowed, but thankfully he didn’t pursue that question. He took the journal from her hands and resettled back against the pillows. “Let’s take a look at your journal.”

He absently patted the space beside him, and Tess didn’t hesitate to settle in there. They’d always studied this way, side by side. It felt natural. It felt…
wonderful
.

They sat for some time flipping through the pages. Tess drew his attention to the notations she considered interesting, and he paused over some others all on his own. In answer to his queries, she went into some detail about the beliefs of the other Aurora Springs residents concerning the stars.

“And what about this Doc fella? What does he think?”

Shrugging, Tess replied, “He is undecided. That’s one reason he’s so intent to study the pictographs in the cave. He hopes they will yield new evidence.”

Gabe nodded. “And what about the boy? What does he think? You know, you hardly ever mention him.”

Tess took a moment to answer, licking her dry lips and swallowing hard. “Will wants to believe in ghosts like Twinkle, but he needs proof. Will is big on proof.”

Thankfully, he went on to another subject. As they talked Tess found herself leaning toward him. He smelled woodsy and familiar and ever so appealing. She filled her lungs and sank into die scent, floated in it. She remembered and she yearned. And she leaned a little bit closer.

“Have you heard of a similar phenomena occurring in other parts of the world?”

“Hmm…?”

“Surely you’ve looked into that.”

She blinked back to attention and mentally reviewed his question. “Yes, I have. So far I haven’t found anything. Just last month, though, I hired a librarian based in Boston to do a periodical research study.”

His hand reached out to turn the page.
Big hands
, she thought. Soft in places, rough and calloused in others. Scars both new and old. Talented hands. He’d always known just how to touch her.

She shuddered as his finger skimmed down the journal page. All thoughts of the Kissing Stars and scientific research evaporated as she recalled how that same finger used to skim down her breast. Her throat tightened against a little whimper of need.

His movement froze. A dozen seconds dragged by. Had he heard her? Had she given herself away? Did he sense the tension that hummed in her veins? Did he feel it too?