I was a little jealous of that love, but not in the way you might think. I was happy for Alacrity, happy that she had a close friend. But that meant I could rarely see Nesta alone. And being alone with Nesta was what I dreamed about every night.
A few days after she’d arrived in Treaty, Nesta and I took a long walk in the woods together. She was full of stories about places she’d been and times she’d read about. And she was accomplished in dozens of disciplines, arts, and sciences. One was the Chinese medicine called acupuncture. She said that the Chinese needle-and-flame doctors could cure many symptoms that the drug-and-knife doctors of the West couldn’t begin to treat.
“You mean these guys could treat with a pin one of the headaches I get listening to Bones?”
“Give me your left arm” was her answer.
She took me by the upper half of my left arm and applied pressure to two nerve points. It started off by tingling like flesh receiving blood after the circulation had been cut off for a while. I wasn’t even aware of my erection until I looked down and noticed the bulge in my pants.
Nesta smiled while keeping the tingly pressure constant.
“You like that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, really trying to answer her question. “It’s like I don’t really feel it.”
Nesta then released the pressure from one point, touching me lightly with her free hand somewhere on the right side of my neck.
“Do you want to feel it?”
When I nodded she pinched a nerve on my neck, which caused a great deal of pain. I thought that I was going to scream when the ejaculation started. She didn’t keep the pressure on my neck constant. After a painful pinch she’d release for a second or so, then pinch again. And every time, I tensed and ejaculated more.
After the seventh or eighth time I stammered, half laughing, “S-stop. I can’t—”
She gave my neck one more hard nip and then released me with both hands. This left me quivering on the ground at her feet.
Nesta got down on her knees next to me and put her lips near my ear. “Those are pressure points doctors give to women who have not conceived or whose husbands are impotent. It drains the man. Do you feel drained, Chance?”
I nodded, grinning like a fool.
“Then come by and see me night after next and I’ll show you some points that you can pinch on me.”
I spent as many evenings as I could under the tutelage of Nesta Vine. There was never what I’d call love between us, not like the love between either of us and Alacrity. We were more symbiotic in an intellectual and physical way. To be blunt, I needed sex and I needed her knowledge to write my History.
Nesta wanted children and she loved to talk and tell stories. I wasn’t much help, but it wasn’t from a lack of trying. She was childless in the years we were acquainted, and I learned more about blue light from her than from any other source.
“In one sense,” she once told me, “the light is the motivation while blood is the machine. Like gasoline and a car engine. That’s one way to look at it. Bones says that light is more like the chemical reaction needed to motivate a seed, which is the blood. At this point you and I are the root jutting down from the seed.”
“But Bones also told me that blue light is like disease,” I said.
“Or maybe it’s just magic,” Nesta replied; then she kissed me.
I liked her kisses very much. The kisses and pinches. It was a sorrow to me that we never conceived a child. I also lamented the days on end that she and Alacrity would go off together. Sometimes I would catch glimpses of them running naked in the woods or sitting on opposite sides of a small stream from each other speaking in low tones and gazing into each other’s eyes across the distance.
I wasn’t the only one who was disturbed by the friendship between the two young women. Wanita had been Alacrity’s closest friend before Nesta showed up. They had been girls together. When Alacrity had been miraculously transformed into a woman, she still shared her deepest secrets with the Dreamer. But after Nesta showed up, Alacrity either ignored Wanita or treated her as an adult would a child.
Often when I’d be looking after Nesta and Alacrity, I’d see Wanita watching them too. I found myself searching her out sometimes just to say hi to someone who shared my bruised feelings.
This self-pitying concern for Wanita is what made me aware of the threat to Treaty’s only child.
Often when I’d find Wanita I’d also see Mackie Allitar somewhere in the vicinity. I began to worry about her safety and so made it my business to always be aware of the whereabouts of either Mackie or Wanita.
But whenever I stalked Mackie I found Bones there too. Once when I was watching Mackie watch Wanita playing down by the stream, I looked up and saw Bones high in the branches of a tree.
It comforted me to know that Bones was guarding her, but I was afraid that one day he’d be off with his bears or stone pots, that one day I’d wake up late and Mackie Allitar would have raped and murdered my last charge.
I was sure that Mackie wanted to kill Wanita. We all knew that he’d been a convict under ex-Warden Reed.
I followed him all day long. Reluctantly Addy promised to keep Wanita with them at night. She didn’t think there was any threat. I guess she figured that keeping Wanita with her would help my sleep.
Mackie looked old and withered, but I saw him as a threat as great as Gray Man.
No one would listen to me. Reggie and Trini couldn’t see past their own love for each other, and Addy trusted in Bones. Miles Barber was morose and sad most of the time, and when he wasn’t he was in terrible pain that was both physical and in his soul.
“If he breaks the law, I’ll take him in,” the ex-detective told me once. “But until then it’s a free country.”
Nesta sympathized, even worried a little, but she wasn’t a woman of action, at least not the offensive action I thought it would take to save Wanita.
I finally decided to tell Alacrity my fears. I knew that if she thought her little friend was in trouble, she’d kill the offender. There was no law in Treaty. Juan Thrombone for the most part made no judgments over our moral behavior. And even if he did, I didn’t think he would have wanted to go up against Alacrity.
By that time she was an amazon. More than six feet tall and as strong as the bears she ran with. Alacrity practiced with weapons and in hand-to-claw combat continually. She was an excellent archer, and her ability at throwing the wooden knives she made was frightening.
I was sure that Alacrity was the greatest warrior in the history of the world. She was bold and kindhearted, savage and ruthless. The killing stroke was her caress, but her smile could break your heart.
Alacrity had become a hero — no heroine she — and I found myself thinking of her as the solution to the problem I faced. But then I thought that I should be looking out for her, not the other way around. So I hesitated for a few days more, following Allitar while he shadowed Wanita. Juan Thrombone was always somewhere nearby.
One morning Wanita was sitting under a big rock, watching water cascade into a stream. It was a glittering bright day and warm, almost hot. Mackie sat in the shadows, watching her. I sat in deeper shadow, watching them both.
We stayed that way for hours.
The day grew hotter and I started to nod. I worried that I’d wake up to find Wanita’s small body floating in the stream, so I got up and strolled down to where the child sat.