„Yes,“ he whispered. „Aren’t they beautiful? Everything man has ever wanted shimmering and dancing just beyond his reach.“
Janna couldn’t answer. The eerie, compelling illusions twisted and changed like pale rose flames, whispering to her soundlessly, haunting her. The rational, educated part of her mind calmly told her that the gently seething apparitions were simply a trick of light and atmosphere, like the mirages that had led so many desert explorers to madness and death; but the most primitive part of Janna looked at the illusions and saw pieces of her own soul calling soundlessly to her, telling her that everything she had ever dreamed of beckoned just beyond her fingertips.
The visions were drawn in flames of transparent silver and luminous rose, a world both dreamed and real. It was the sea and a deserted inlet and a single tree that was unique upon the face of the earth. It was a raven’s song sung in silence and answered in the beauty of a smile. It was a man and a woman created for this radiant instant that knew no time, created for this beautiful and savage Eden, created each for the other. They glimmered and intertwined between sky and sea, time and timelessness, being and dreaming.
Raven saw Janna’s face both haunted and radiant, sadness and ecstasy combined. He wanted to ask her what she was seeing in the enigmatic sky but knew that he had no right. Visions could only be shared, not demanded, a gift from one mind to another, one soul to another. He had taken too much from her already, more than he had any right to take. And he would pay for it in the torment of his memories when he touched again each moment of his days in Eden and thereby measured the immensity of his loss when he lived in Eden no longer.
Raven looked at the heartless, haunting mirages shimmering over the water; and he saw a time years ago, when he had been alone.
„The summer I built the cabin in Totem Inlet,“ Raven said quietly, „I was restless, lonely, a bird without wings, a fish without fins, nothing fit and nothing was right. I had been alone before, but never lonely.“ He hesitated, seeing again the summer that had begun so like this one and had ended so differently. „A few days after I finished the cabin I was restless again. I prowled through the forest, trying to wear myself out enough to sleep at night.“
For an instant Raven closed his eyes, remembering, seeing a green Eden that at the time had looked more like hell.
„I found a young doe trapped in a moss-covered deadfall. She was half dead from thirst and terror and pain. When I freed her, I saw that one of her legs was injured. If I let her go, she would die. Yet if I kept her, tamed her, made her dependent on me, then I would be dooming her to a different, even more cruel death when I abandoned her. Because I knew the summer would end, the winter would come and I would go. I knew this, but the doe did not. She only knew each moment as it came.“
Janna waited, feeling silence gathering like cold mist around her, chilling her. She sensed that she didn’t want to know the end of the story Raven was telling.
And she had no choice but to know it, to understand the man she loved no matter what the cost.
„What did you do?“ she whispered, forcing the words past the ache in her throat.
„I carried the doe to the cabin, bound her leg and wove cedar boughs into a fence upwind of the cabin. There was natural food, clean water and no bears to feed on her helplessness.“ Raven paused, seeing again the fragile, shivering doe who had calmed so quickly beneath his voice and hands. „It would have been very easy to win her trust. She was gentle, intelligent, adaptable as all young things are. She would have learned to run toward my voice, making me smile. She would have been company, and I was… lonely.“
Janna started to ask why Raven had been so lonely, but he was talking again.
„I left the doe alone behind the cedar fence. When I checked on her I made sure that she neither saw nor scented me. In time she didn’t limp anymore. She even chewed off the shirt I had used to bind her wound. The fence was high enough to restrain an injured doe, but not too high for a healthy one to jump. One day I came to check on her and found nothing there but silence and cedar.“
Wind breathed across Janna’s cheeks, cooling the tears that welled in her eyes. Raven saw the silver gleam and smoothed his palm very gently over Janna’s hair.
„There was nothing sad in her leaving,“ he said. „My reward for helping the doe didn’t come from winning her trust. My reward came when I saw her last graceful leap as she fled into the forest where she had been born. She never looked back. She never returned to the clearing or the cabin.“ Raven lifted his hand from Janna’s hair. „And that was the way it had to be. To have taken anything more from the doe in her helplessness would have made me less of a man.“
Janna bowed her head as she fought against tears and the realization that in some way Raven thought of her as he had the doe – something wounded, helpless, given into his care only long enough to be rescued, healed and then freed.
Like Angel. She had been another gift to be healed and freed. That was what Raven had meant when he said that he had finally realized Angel’s life was more valuable than his chance to win her love. He had gone to her, pulled her out of the trap of her rage and despair, shown her the way to heal herself… and then watched her slip from his hands without a backward look.
At least Angel had finally returned. But did that make it better for Raven, or worse?
„It was Angel, wasn’t it?“ Janna whispered. „That’s why you were restless the summer you built the cabin.“
The slight trembling of Janna’s voice made Raven wish that he had never brought her to this beach, this instant, tearing her illusions from her and leaving her nothing in their place. Yet illusions could be very cruel. Then they had to be taken away. Janna had to realize that she was free, that she owed nothing to the man who had pulled her from the sea, certainly not the love that she thought she felt.
„I don’t feel that way now,“ Raven said quietly. „Seeing Angel and Hawk together brings me a feeling very close to joy.“
„Now. But not then. Not the summer you built the cabin.“
The slight flinching of Raven’s eyelids told Janna that she was right.
„Angel had just married Hawk,“ Raven said, his voice rough with restraint. „I loved both of them, but seeing them together sometimes made me feel…“ He hesitated.
„Terribly lonely,“ Janna whispered.
„It was nothing they did deliberately. It was just…“ again Raven paused, searching for words to describe the feelings he had never before tried to articulate.
„Seeing them made you wonder if you would ever love and be loved like that,“ Janna said.
Raven closed his eyes and wondered how Janna saw so easily, so clearly, into his soul. „Yes,“ he said simply.
„I love you like that, Raven.“
„Hush, small warrior,“ he whispered, brushing the back of his fingers across Janna’s cheek.
„Why?“ Janna asked, her voice trembling. „Why won’t you let me say that I love you?“
Raven breathed Janna’s name against her hair as his hands closed around her shoulders with a force that he could barely control. He didn’t let her turn toward him. He was afraid that if he saw her eyes he would be lost again, he would close his hands and keep her for himself because he had never felt so alive as he had when he was with her.
„What you feel is gratitude and passion, not love,“ Raven said, his voice so tightly held that it rasped harshly on his own ears. „You would have felt those things for any man who saved your life and then lacked the self-control and common decency to keep from seducing you while you were so vulnerable.“
The bitterness and self-recrimination in Raven’s voice shocked Janna. „That’s not – “ she began.