~A Wild Heart~
Chapter Eight
~~~ooooo~~~
"A gil for your thoughts?"
She'd found Zack inside the garden, elbows resting on top of the fence as he gazed out over the hills. He turned now at the sound of her voice, a broad smile on his handsome face under the twilight sky.
"One day," he said as he made a wide sweeping arc with his arm that encompassed the land at his back. "All of this will be farmland. When more people begin coming out here, we will have better equipment for drilling."
"That would be wonderful." Aeris moved to stand beside him at the fence and laced her fingers behind her back. From their vantage point they could see barns and farmhouses scattered across the hills on both sides of the stream, plumes of smoke coming from the chimneys. A brown dot hovered over the landscape in the distance—a paper kite flying over the Franklins' farm, the end of its string in all likelihood wrapped around a small fist belonging to the youngest boy who'd just been let out from his lessons or chores by his mother, accompanied by the faint barking of a dog trailing his heels. Much farther down the dirt road Aeris traveled every day, a cloud of dust was slowly moving toward the bridge—a farmer coming home late with his cattle. "We won't have to worry about digging when drills can go so much deeper."
"So you've finally come 'round to my way of thinking, I see," he teased.
She shook her head, smiling. "I wouldn't go that far."
Zack's face turned somber. "I can see it now. The land settled by people as it was meant to be. You and me together. Along with Tifa, with all of us working together," he looked back out at the hills, his voice softening, "these hills will finally fulfill the promise our folks first saw in them. The promise we still see in them."
Aeris felt the first fluttering of unease stir in the pit of her stomach. "The hills don't owe us anything," she admonished him gently.
"No," he said. "I only mean to say that we will never give up on them."
She knew of his devotion to the hills all too well, a sentiment echoed by many other farmers, and which defined all those who chose to remain behind. "It's time to come in for dinner. Tifa has fresh squeezed orange juice and she says she'll drink the whole jug if we're not back by the time she counts to ten."
"Ten!" He looked aghast. "Aeris, why didn't you say anything!"
He grabbed her hand and made for the house.
~~~ooooo~~~
"It's nice here," Aeris sighed in contentment, tracing circles on his chest. She could feel the heat of his body through the thin material of her blouse, and under her ear, the rhythm of his heart beating loud and strong as the rushing water near where they lay under the branches of a giant ash tree. Her hand drifted downward, but all she felt was warm, smooth skin and sleek, powerful muscles. It was as if the flesh there had never been punctured by sharp metal and torn open, and she gave a silent prayer of thanks that the hunter hadn't been using a rifle.
"Enjoy it while you can." His voice was a low murmur just above her ear. "The stream may not be this way for much longer."
"What do you mean?" She brought her head up to look at him. "Surely, you're not saying that it's going to dry up?"
"In the east, the river is changing. If the humans building their new towns up north continue to migrate westward and dump their wastes into the water, it soon won't be fit for anything to live in."
"You mean it will become like the river?" she asked fearfully. "It will get dirty and murky, and everything that lives in it will die?"
Cloud's gaze did not waver. Very slowly he gave a nod.
"We're to blame, aren't we? The river dying, the wells drying up. That's what you meant when you said your kind watch us to protect the earth. We're the ones destroying it."
His lack of a reply was answer enough.
"It's not that bad, is it? The stream's still clean...there's still hope."
He shifted beside her and she moved a little to take some of her weight from his chest. "The stream is clean because it enters the forest directly from the mountains and no humans come into touch with it until it comes out into the hills. Few people these days would probably know it, but the path through the forest goes northeast, not due north as it's often said in the towns and cities along the coast." He hesitated, and she nodded quickly to show she was following him. "The people who first came out here were also from the east. South of where we are, the stream is not like it is up here."
Hearing him speak of regions beyond the hills and forests raised other questions. "How do you know what it's like so far down south?"
"Fairies don't just live in these parts. We have kin in the hills and mountains far from here. And like humans, we move and travel too."
"You've seen the ocean," she breathed, momentarily forgetting what they'd been discussing. Like fairies, she'd only heard about it in stories and had never thought she would see either one. "You've been there. Is it really as big as they say it is? Bigger than the hills?"
"Much, much bigger. Almost as big as the sky. It looks like it touches the sky all around. Picture the hills but replace it with water."
To her, the hills were endless, so much so that a body of water even bigger than them seemed an impossibility when water was the one thing that was always in limited supply.
His eyes appeared an equally endless blue, and were filled with all the things she'd always thought were impossible, things that somehow seemed possible when she looked into those infinite blue pools looking back at her at that very moment. "You should also see the mountains. They're so tall they disappear into the sky," he said, his eyes practically glowing. Aeris' breath caught in her throat; inasmuch as she'd thought Zack's love for the hills defined him, she sensed that the same was true for the fairy, but on a larger scale. There was something about the way he often spoke of the world that told her clearly of the significance it held for him, and how integral it was to who he was. "Or at least they look like they do. I've never seen anything to rival them. I wish you could see them too."
As quickly as the awe had come, it evaporated. Aeris dropped her gaze. "Of course you've been to many different places."
There was a pause. "That's not the only way we learn about other places. We also find out a lot about what's going on from the forest itself—the trees, the plants, the animals, they're all alive." He tipped his head slightly toward the branches of the ash tree that hung low all about them, nearly enclosing them, as they had done for him once when he'd been wounded.
"You can communicate with nature." She had heard him mention their ties to the planet before but hadn't understood exactly what that entailed, and this new information only underscored the differences between them.
"That's as good a word as any to describe it, I suppose," Cloud said. "But it's a little more complicated than that. There is a connection between all living things and the planet. The connection between fairies and the world around us is on a much deeper level than others, almost like a sacred trust, or pact. We think of it as being part of a mutually beneficial relationship, where it provides us with everything we need to survive and gives us the gift of the fairies which humans call 'immortality', and we, in turn, take care of it. We do what we can to help it but we try not to interfere with other forms of life."
"Even if it means nothing will be able to live in the river anymore?" Aeris asked carefully, bringing the conversation back around to her more immediate concern. But there was nothing in his face that revealed if her words had had any effect on him. She looked away again, feeling disconsolate. "So there is no hope then."
"I didn't say that," his voice came, unexpected but welcomed, and putting her mind at ease. "There is always hope."
~~~ooooo~~~
"…they delight in mischief. It is the only emotion they're capable of experiencing on their own." Letty paused, her eyes lighting upon a pair of ewes nibbling at the same patch of clover. Lucy and Daisy hovered close by, hackles raised, distrustful of the new stranger in their midst, but doing their best not to give in to their natural instinct and go on the attack. "When the world of fairy intersects with ours, it is always through the doing of a fairy bent on mischief. You can bet your sheep on that."
Aeris glanced up from admiring the fine purple needles of the thistle she'd plucked from the path of a young lamb as she listened to her neighbor giving various accounts of fairies doing what they did best, which, in Letty's opinion, was making mischief. Ivan's wife had a reputation for being a fountain of knowledge when it came to anything to do with the hills, and had a tendency to want to share all she knew with any acquaintance lucky enough to pass her way. As it had happened, she'd been outside hanging the wash when she'd spotted Aeris' flock and had decided to come visit with her for a bit and maybe soak up some sun while they enjoyed a nice little chat.
"Always?" she asked cautiously.
"Always," the older woman informed her tartly. "And there is nothing they like more than stealing little ones from their cradles and replacing them with changelings. Why, if you take your eyes off a young'un for even a moment, they'll snatch 'em from your doorstep!"
"Surely they're not all like that."
"It's in the stories. Why else are they still being told and we still hear of it happening now and then?"
Perhaps the reason why the stories were abound with fairies stealing babies was because humans were so fascinated with them, Aeris thought silently. But she held her tongue and decided to humor the other woman. "I am neither a babe nor a young child. I hold no temptation for them."
"Don't be too sure about that." The stout, blond Letty's cheeks were flushed a rosy pink at having such an attentive audience on this fine day. "Fairies are unpredictable and uncivilized. They don't have feelings the way humans do and covet them. It's best we be careful not to become too caught up in the magic of their existence lest they snatch ours."
"Our feelings?" she asked.
"Our ability to feel," Letty said, a speculative gleam in her eyes. "And us." She let out a sigh and said heavily, "I worry about those of you out in the fields on your own all day."
Aeris smiled. "We're safe enough out here. I don't think I've ever heard of a child that went missing in these hills."
"Can't say I've heard it myself but that don't mean it can't happen," Letty replied. "Your young man is proof of that."
She stiffened. "Excuse me?"
"Zack." Pale brows rose in inquiry. "As my Anna tells it, he has a soft spot for you and Tifa, does he not? The poor dear. She was flabbergasted when she found out. Flabbergasted, I tell you."
Aeris was at a loss for words.
Letty's warm brown eyes twinkled. "But that's not what we were talking about. Zack's been telling the men that he thinks there's something to the stories."
"Oh," she said, flustered. "Has he?"
Letty's head bobbed up and down enthusiastically. "Ivan himself has been talking about finding a fairy." Among the farmers, Ivan was the last man that anybody would expect to find taking part in a serious conversation about fairies or the rest of their ilk. He was as levelheaded and practical as his wife was superstitious, and didn't put much stock in the tales that all his neighbors seemed to live by. Despite that, Ivan had always indulged his wife's love of talking a person's ears off, particularly his ears, although he rarely paid any mind to what was being said. But judging from what Letty was now telling Aeris, it appeared she may have finally gotten through to her husband. "He thinks we can probably get it to work with us if we can just catch it," she confessed.
Aeris eyed her warily. "Letty, you're not serious? Ivan wouldn't really try to find a fairy, would he?"
"Of course not, dearie," Letty laughed. "But we should always keep our eyes and ears open, and be on the lookout for things that might be of a...shall we say, suspicious nature, when we're out here by ourselves. You never know who, or what, might be watching us."
"Right," Aeris murmured. "I'll remember that.