~A Wild Heart~
Chapter Four
~~~ooooo~~~
A couple of days later, unable to help herself, Aeris took her sheep to a large meadow overgrown with grass and leaving Daisy and Lucy to keep watch, retraced her steps back until she came to a herd of cows grazing in a nearby field. The sound of cattle lowing could be heard far behind her as she climbed the hills and passed a farm on her way to the abandoned well.
On the dirt road again, she stood for a time lost in thought, her face turned toward the black forest where she'd first heard a rustling in the bushes that had led to a moment in her life that she would never forget. Her eyes moved to the right, following the path of the main road which she knew took it to a natural divide in the woods a few miles from where the first farmhouses were located, halving the forest. From there, man had continued the path into the hills, cutting out a road that ran alongside the forest line for a bit before splitting and becoming two paths near where she was standing, one path following the curve of the stream south into the open hills and the other leading back up north into the forest. The wilderness had all but reclaimed the forest trail; vines and tendrils from the undergrowth had crept back over the surface, and plants and roots had forced their way through the topsoil, crowding the surface, covering and hiding it from the unsuspecting traveler.
Aeris felt the back of her neck prickle.
"You're here, aren't you?" she asked softly, not sure if she should turn to look.
He moved so silently she didn't hear him, but he was suddenly standing beside her. She knew it was him, the one called Cloud, by the way her skin was tingling everywhere and all her senses seemed to come alive. She turned to face him and was again hypnotized by his very being, so unlike anything she'd ever known, raw, earthy, yet otherworldly. It was hard to believe that he had a form other than the one she beheld, so breathtaking was it.
"You were waiting for me." It was a statement, made quietly and with the certainty of one who already knew the answer.
"Yes." Perhaps she'd presumed too much. The thought made her hesitate. "Cloud."
His eyes were on her face, regarding her in that quiet, penetrating way of his. He held his hand out. "Come."
"My sheep, my dogs. I left them…"
"Nothing will happen to them."
She didn't have to think anymore about it. She slipped her hand into his and let him lead her down the hidden path that no human feet tread anymore, into the dark, mysterious woods.
~~~ooooo~~~
"If you'll go pick the berries, I'll see what I can do about it," Tifa said. "Now."
"Here I am, thinking I'll get one day to relax a bit but you keep giving me things to do," Zack grumbled good-naturedly. He had come home early and was helping to put the remaining chickens back into the coop. "Can't a man go one day without having to do any heavy work?"
"Be glad I'm not making you split firewood for next year's stockpile or you'll really have something to complain about," she replied, referring to the stack of wood sitting in the yard that she'd been nagging him about on the days he was home working on the farm. "To hear you tell it, you boys have had it easy with the ground being so hard up at the Lewises place anyway. Didn't you say there are days when no work seems to get done?"
He frowned. "We might not have much to show for it but we're still working. Having to be so careful when digging can be very difficult and tiring on us, as well as frustrating."
"As it is for all of us," Tifa sighed and wiped her arm across her forehead in an effort to brush the midnight-black strands of hair out of her eyes. "I just hope this new run of good luck holds up." She shut the door after the last squawking hen and threw the bolt. "Pray the gods keep looking down on us with favor. And fairies."
"Sometimes, I don't think I believe in them. Or if I do, not the good ones anyway." He walked with her to the side of the yard where the well hand pump was installed.
"Bite your tongue." Tifa removed the wooden bowl hanging over the spout and set it aside before picking up the soap from the base as Zack took hold of the handle and worked it up and down to fill the bucket for them to wash up. "That's all we need, a fairy angry at us. What are you going to do if you go back to the farm tomorrow and find a hole with nothing but rocks waiting for you again?" she asked, passing him the soap scented with lemon zest she'd bought on her last trip to town.
"You know," he said thoughtfully as he lathered his hands. "Something funny's going on around here."
"Funny business always means fairies are about."
"I'm serious. Ivan brought up fairy trickery too but he was probably just repeating what his wife and all the other women say." He poured a cup of water over one hand then the other while Tifa dried her hands on her apron. "I doubt he believed it. But I wonder if he's not onto something."
"You just said you don't believe in fairies."
"I don't believe it's fairies but something is definitely—" Zack began but two furry animals leaped on them, almost throwing them off their balance. "Hey, whoa! What's all of this today? Has Aeris been sneaking you treats again?"
"You mean like you do?" Tifa asked, trying to fend Daisy off before the dog's paws ruined another dress. "Don't think I didn't see you slipping them the bones from your plate the other night."
"It's their favorite treat," he said indulgently, scratching both dogs' ears.
"And you thought we spoiled Cait Sith," she said in a reproachful tone. "Come to think of it, the dogs have been coming home excited quite a bit, haven't they?"
"I'm telling you there's something—"
"Tifa? Zack? We're home!" Aeris came around from the back of the house with her basket, and smiled at the sight of the dogs running in circles around them. "I see the girls sniffed you out. What are you doing out here?"
"Tifa's baking a raspberry cake for dinner," Zack announced, ignoring the brown eyes narrowing at him to smile at the other ones lit a bright, happy green. "We hit pay dirt today."
"Zack, that's wonderful!" Aeris exclaimed. "What a relief! The Lewises must be so happy. We should celebrate—"
"That's what I've been trying to tell someone here," he grinned unrepentantly. "Megan and Philip were particularly thrilled to know they won't have to haul water from the neighbors for much longer. They were singing and dancing around the hole when we left. I think I even saw the baby doing cartwheels."
"Those poor children," Aeris chuckled. "I don't blame them. And now, we'll have one more new well soon and another family we don't have to worry about for a few years."
"Unfortunately we will not be having cake tonight unless someone here goes and picks the berries for it as he knows he ought to have done as soon as he got home," Tifa said with a meaningful look at Zack.
"But it's getting late." He gave his best frightened-little-boy look. "You're going to send me into the woods all by myself when it will be getting dark soon?"
"Then maybe you should stop putting it off and get to it. No berries, no cake."
"Speaking of the woods, we were just talking about the strange goings-on around here," Zack said as Aeris set her basket and the wooden bowl on the base beside the bucket and proceeded to wash the plants she'd found. "Tifa thinks it's fairies."
"I didn't say it was fairies for sure," Tifa protested. "I just think…it's a possibility."
"Oh?" Aeris busied herself cleaning a small bundle of wild garlic as Zack quickly took up the handle on the well again and pumped more water into the bucket for her. "What strange things?"
"Well, for one, how is it that the hills stay green but the wells keep going dry?" Zack, rather predictably, going by the looks on both girls' faces, had settled on the problem foremost in all their minds.
"You know why." Tifa's tone was that of an adult who'd explained the same thing a hundred times to a dull-witted child. "It rains almost every night."
"So how come it's like we have a drought and the wells dry up so quickly?"
"That's because as often as it rains, it's just enough to get the ground wet. We hardly ever even see a puddle. The grass can grow on that but that doesn't mean there's enough to reach deep underground to feed the wells.
"Huh." Zack wasn't convinced. "What do you think, Aeris?"
Aeris' brows knitted in a frown. "I think Tifa's right," she said at length. "It's more of a sprinkle and it never lasts for more than a few minutes. There's not enough rain to get down to the wells." She placed the last plants in the basket and wiped her hands on her skirt. "Shall we go, Zack?"
"Go?" he asked blankly.
"To pick some raspberries." A delicately winged eyebrow arched upward. "You still want that cake, don't you?"
He brightened. "Really?"
"I have to," she said with a little laugh. "We all know you're not going to stop whining until you get that cake."
"Whining!" He gave her a hurt look.
"Oh, please, anything but that." Tifa pretended to shudder at the thought as she took the basket from Aeris. "You two go pick the berries and I'll get dinner started. Just make sure you stay near the perimeters of the forest!" she called after them as they hurried away.
~~~ooooo~~~
The next time Aeris saw him, she didn't have to wait for him.
She'd been back to the old well several times but had left each time, alone and dejected. On her fourth visit by the well in as many days since their last meeting, she knew as she came up the path that her trip this time would not be met with disappointment. He was at the fork by the stream where she'd first found him, and again, he led her into the forest. He didn't take her back to the grove of ash trees as he had before but deeper into the forest until the sound of rushing water became a loud cacophony of trickles and splashes. As she stepped out from behind the giant leaves of an arrowhead plant, Aeris saw that he'd brought her to a clearing where the stream's current was slowed by huge, massive rocks sunk into the streambed and mounted atop each other like great stepping stones. Water cascaded over, around, and under the stones, creating a series of miniature waterfalls and white misty foam that made Aeris' mouth fall open in wonderment.
Inside the haven of the woods, safe from any prying human eyes, they stood face to face on a moss-covered boulder in the middle of the stream, staring into each other's eyes as the sun's rays shone down upon them through the opening in the forest canopy and water trickled under the stones beneath their feet. A faint blush crept up Aeris' cheeks as she rose up on her toes, lifted her face to his, and held her breath.
His eyes roved over her face, reading the message there. The unearthly beauty of the man before her held her spellbound, and made her heart pound faster and her breath hitch in her throat as she waited for him to decipher her intention, her offering…wondering what he would do.
"Cloud."
His name was a whisper.
The fairy bent his head and touched his lips to hers.
The world split open.