Chapter 2~

Elena de la Vega sat down under the big old tree to wait until Alejandro would come to meet her in their trysting place beside the waterfall. She idly plucked a buttercup and smiled to herself, picturing him riding up on Tornado in his close-fitting trousers and open-chested shirt, smiling at her, his incredibly handsome features lighting as they always did at the sight of her with pure adoration she never felt she deserved…her smile faded. What could be keeping him? He should have been here by now…

Suddenly a noise startled her to her feet, a sound like thunder and yet not quite-more like a very loud explosive buzzing, as though a beehive had erupted, then what appeared to be a fireball shot from the clouds and fell in the meadow. She screamed and covered her eyes as another fireball shot out, thinking either the woods were on fire or the world was coming to an end.

Then all was still. She crouched trembling, fearing to open her eyes, as though she believed she would not find herself in the same place if she did so. Finally, when she could hear the birds singing again, she dared to open her eyes. And she heard voices, although she could not understand their words.

One of them was Alejandro's!

She whirled about but could not see him for all the trees. Then she heard the other voice, which sounded female.

She pressed her lips together. Perhaps, she thought, I fell asleep and just dreamed those fireballs. Or are they another of Alejandro's conjuring tricks?

But that woman was certainly not something he conjured!

She went into the cave, and came quickly back out with a long sword.

Then she slipped through the trees, and saw the man and the woman, who was lying flat on her back, the man nearby her. Elena did not recognize her at all. But without a doubt the man was Alejandro, although his hair was a bit shorter and his skin seemed somehow darker.

And he was just as naked as the day he was born.

~O~O~

Ahmed, not realizing that he was naked, looked down at the woman lying at his feet. She appeared much younger and slimmer than in his dream, her hair a lighter brown, verging on blonde. She wore a very colorful garment, something like a caftan, that was much too big for her, and a Japanese kimono over that. Her feet were bare.

She lay blinking up at him. Her eyes were as green as in his dreams, and her face was the same face, but surely this couldn't be the same woman. She looked not much out of girlhood. Perhaps it was her daughter or a much younger sister, and the magician had made a mistake with the potion. Ahmed was greatly dismayed. All he needed was some giggling adolescent simpering after him-he could have stayed in Baghdad for that.

But that wasn't the strangest thing. She did not seem to recognize him at all!

"Where am I?" she gasped. "Who are you? How did I get here? I - I..."

Her eyes swept downward, and Ahmed realized that he had nothing on. He backed off, blushing, then made a ridiculous attempt to cover himself with his hands. His loincloth must have been torn off by the impact of the ball of light that had engulfed him as he knelt chanting the spell. Then he spied a large tree branch that must also have been knocked down by the fireball, with many leaves still attached, and he snatched that up and held it in front of himself. A bit too late, she had seen all there was to see. But she did not look at all displeased.

"You…do not know me?" He was surprised to hear himself speaking perfect albeit accented English, and understanding what he was saying.

"No, I'm afraid not," said the young woman, sitting up and glancing all around. Then she looked up at him again. "Am I supposed to?"

"You watched my Viking story on your magic box so often. You do not remember at all?" He wondered if the magician's potion had perhaps destroyed her memory, along with knocking twenty years off her age. If so, it would certainly complicate things.

"Sir," she said, looking straight up at him, "if I had ever even seen you before, believe you me, I would remember!" She glanced aside blushing a little, then looked sideways at him, with a little smile that was half shy and half flirtatious. "That's a compliment," she added.

He reached a hand down to help her up, somewhat relieved to see that at least she was about a hand's breadth shorter than himself. He could look down at the top of her head without having to step up on a rock.

"I get it!" she said, snapping her fingers. "I've died and gone to heaven, right? And you're an angel maybe?" She looked all round at the beautiful, verdant countryside, at the waterfall in the distance, the huge trees, the meadow of golden poppies and blue lupine and romania. Then back at him. Then down at herself.

"Oh my god," she gasped, plucking at the outsized caftan. "Where on earth this thing come from? It's miles too big! I bet I look like an absolute blob in it - I must look a mess! Would you please tell me what is going on here?"

"I am not certain myself," Ahmed said truthfully. He wondered just what he had let himself in for, and if there was anyway of undoing the spell...

~O~O~

Alejandro had to stop the horse and get off, feeling as though he would fall off otherwise. His head was spinning and he felt he would throw up. He had never felt like this before except when drunk, and he had not been drunk in many months.

He pulled Tornado to the side of the road and dismounted, then knelt down until the dizziness passed. What is wrong with me, he thought. I should not have come...but what would my Elena think? He had sent his manservant, Ernesto, to her house earlier with a note saying that he was ill, but Ernesto had returned saying she had gone. So Alejandro had set out for their secret place, and now he was beginning to think he had made a huge mistake.

"Perhaps," he said to Tornado-he had developed the habit of talking to his horse when they were alone, not as one usually talked to a horse, but rather as he might have talked to another human being, "perhaps there was something in my breakfast that disagreed with my constitution. Perhaps my cook is trying to poison me? A hero cannot be too careful. One has enemies from every quarter. It is never safe, always having to watch one's back, it is almost like being a bandit, only people do not expect a bandit to save the world..."

He plucked a poppy from the roadside and twirled it between his fingers. He thought of Elena with a mixture of pain and ecstasy: her flashing eyes, her creamy skin, her flowing jet-black hair, her soft body lying next to his on the very first day they had made love...he was overcome with dizziness once more. He did not even know how far he was from the waterfall. Suddenly a wave of nausea gripped him and he lurched over and vomited in some manzanita bushes. Then he knelt down once more, feeling faint.

"Well, at least I shall not die of poison now," he said to Tornado when he had regained a measure of his strength. "But I should not have come. My dear one will think me a fool. If only I had stayed home she would have come to me, and would have taken care of me at my house. As it is, I may die here out on the road!"

He experienced a flash of self-pity. Confronted with a villain he would have known what to do, perhaps. But in the face of his own illness he was nearly as helpless as a year-old baby. All men are children when they are sick and Alejandro was no different in that respect.

"Tornado," he said fretfully, "it does seem as though she would get worried when I did not show and come to see about me, yes? So why does she not come? If she loved me she would, surely?"

He knew he was being foolish even as he spoke. But he felt so alone and abandoned here on the road. Like a sick and dying dog. Not like a fox at all.

Tornado looked down at him with eyes that seemed to hold sympathy and concern, and that was comforting. Alejandro had always felt a special bond with horses. Once, when he was a boy, someone had made fun of his Indian pony yelling, "Why don't you swap that overgrown jack rabbit for a REAL hoss so yer heels won't drag the ground!" then bellowed with derisive laughter. Alejandro had made the pony jump right over his tormenter and knock him into the mud, which put an end to all jokes about the animal's size. That, and the fact that Alejandro managed to steal his tormenter's fine new leather boots, which were too big for Alejandro but fit his brother Joaquin just fine . . ..

He stood up once more and draped an arm around Tornado's glossy black neck. "Help me to walk," he pleaded, "then when we get there, Elena will take care of me in our cave. Just the way I took care of my dear master, Don Diego, when he was ill that one time, remember? I am so glad that I had the chance to help him then, after he did so much for me. Where would I be now if not for him, I wonder? I only wish I could have helped him to forget all those dreadful years in that awful prison, and given him the will to live again."

A wave of sadness washed over him and tears filled his eyes. Childishly he rubbed a hand over them, wishing for Elena to come and comfort him, and plodded on. His legs felt wobbly but he managed to keep upright. And soon he realized that the road was not deserted. He could hear the clop-clop-crunch of hooves. This, he knew, could be either friend or foe, so he reached for his sword, willing his strength to come back to him. Then suddenly a gunshot rang out, startling the always-excitable Tornado, who reared up with a frightened whinny, knocking Alejandro over to the side of the road. Alejandro dropped the sword as a multitude of men came springing at him in every direction...