A masquerade party-costumed people whirling on a dance floor.
Tinkling notes of a harpsichord drifting down a grand hall.
Climbing inside a horse-drawn carriage on a busy cobblestone street.
Racing in a Model T along a dirt road in pursuit of another car.
Rain falling in sheets beyond a French window.
Fighting off the images, Madeline managed to speak. “No, I don’t remember any dreams.” She wasn’t about to go into detail about her wonderful “gift” with this stranger. Her head hurt too much to concentrate on those elusive visions, and they slipped away. “How bad is it?” she asked him tentatively.
“I don’t think you’ll need stitches. Just rest and someone to watch over you. Your pupils are a little dilated. Can you focus?” He held up a hand. She nodded. “Do you feel sick to your stomach?”
“Hard to tell. I just generally feel terrible.” She struggled to sit up then, suddenly aware of how uncomfortable the ground was. Once up, she realized she was lying on a vast stretch of bleached white driftwood, stripped of its bark over time by the river, jumbles upon jumbles of it carried down over the years and distributed along the bank by the same river that had brought her there. A particularly sharp limb had been under her back. The man watched her sit up, readying to grab her if she got dizzy.
“I spotted your green shirt in the white branches. You were in the water, tangled in those logs,” he told her. “I was a little afraid to approach you. Thought you might have been…”
“What?” she said, unsteadily getting to her feet. “Dead?” Her legs were positively numb, and she wobbled, barely maintaining her balance.
He nodded.
“And you pulled me out of the water?”
“Yes.”
Madeline crinkled her brow. She remembered hands grabbing at her in the water, pulling her down. Perhaps she’d dreamed it. Or maybe it had just been the limbs of a tree. She also remembered the dark visions that had accompanied them.
“When I got closer, I heard you gasping.”
“And talking.”
“Yeah, that, too, after I picked you up.” He smiled. It was a lovely smile.
“I said something embarrassing, didn’t I?”
“No, no,” he assured her. “Nothing like that. Just stuff about picking your nose.”
“Oh, no,” she mumbled.
“No, seriously.”
He touched her then, and a stream of visions came to her.
Weeping before a flower-strewn casket.
A covered wagon on fire.
Sunset over a meadow ablaze with vibrant wildflowers.
He was a source of powerful images, and she did her best to block any more input from him. It was rare for her to even pick up visions from touching people. Usually only objects gave her images.
One of the only other people she could remember picking up images from was Mrs. Ferrington, her neighbor, whose sister had been hit by a car in 1917. Mrs. Ferrington, all of six at the time, had been standing not more than ten feet away when it happened. Her sister had lived, with no permanent injury, but the incident itself had traumatized Mrs. Ferrington-left powerful pictures Madeline had picked up on suddenly one afternoon while helping the elderly lady in her garden.
But that was the only person. Except… that day in the forest when Ellie…
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look a million miles away.”
She came back to the present. “Yeah.”
“Anyway, you started talking when I pulled you out of the water.”
She tried to steady her mind. What if the terrible visions she’d received earlier were from this helpful stranger, as well? But no-those visions came from hands dragging her under, not out of, the water. Maybe she’d just been delirious.
Still, glancing away from him casually, she tried to see how tough the terrain was, if she’d be able to run from him if she had to. There was a lot of jagged-limbed driftwood and big glacial boulders in the way. It’d be a tough run.
But even if she could somehow manage to get away, she didn’t have any supplies. She had no way to purify backcountry water and knew she could catch some pretty nasty bugs from drinking it straight. She could survive long enough without food, but she’d be weak. And what if she had a concussion?
No-it would be best for now to stay with the stranger, she decided. Besides, if he did do those terrible things she’d seen, he certainly didn’t realize she knew. He had no way to know of her “gift.”
“Are you thirsty?” he asked.
Unless that is what she had been talking about while unconscious.
“Hungry at all?”
Unless she’d given a play-by-play account of his past crimes while lying half-conscious on the riverbank. That would explain why he was so anxious to see if she remembered what her “dreams” had been about.
“Hello?” he said.
“What?” she asked, forcing a smile.
“I asked if you needed something to drink.”
“Thanks, no,” she said, making herself talk evenly, calmly. She hooked a thumb at the river. “Had enough to drink today.”
He laughed at that. It was a good-natured laugh. “I guess so. Anyway, I’m Noah.” He held out his hand, and she shook it. “Noah Percival Lanchester.”
A ballroom. Dancing. Candles gleaming in the chandeliers. Warm laughter. No danger. No fear.
She pushed the images away. “That’s not a name you hear often,” she said, pulling her hand back.
“Yeah. Unless you’re building arks or something.” He smiled, and it was positively infectious. “The middle one’s because my parents are English professors. You know, as in King Arthur’s knight.” He smiled again.
“Right, but you’re missing your armor.”
He looked down, as if surprised. “So I am.”
“I’m Madeline. And thanks for helping me before I became an ice sculpture.”
“My pleasure, m’lady.” He bowed graciously, and she laughed. “Well,” he said, looking around judiciously, “we’ve got to get you into some warm clothes. It’s amazing you don’t have hypothermia. You must not have been in the water for very long. But that cut on your head-we need to get that looked at as soon as we get to the ranger’s station.”
“How far is that?” she asked.
“About ten miles, I think,” he responded. “But the good news is that it’s all downhill.”
Instantly she thought of her cell phone, of getting the ranger to meet them instead. But it had been in her pack. “Do you have a cell?” she asked him.
“No, though now I wish I did.” He regarded her, his smile falling away. “We are going to get you safely out of here.”
Noah suddenly glanced toward the river’s edge, then bent his head down in a furtive movement that was eerily quick, as if she didn’t actually see him move-suddenly he was just in a different position.
“What?” she asked, turning to follow his gaze.
Noah continued to stare in that direction. “Nothing. I thought I saw someone.”
“Out here?”
“Well,” he straightened up and looked back at her. “I’m traveling with someone else. He left camp this morning to go to a site higher up on the mountain. He’s a photographer-wanted to go get some sunset pictures. We’re supposed to meet back here in two days.”
She turned to regard the river, suddenly feeling scared and a long way from home. She thought about the icy water that had brought her there, shuddering at the memory. “I had just gone over Swiftcurrent Pass. The river just flooded so fast!” she said aloud. “I’d never seen anything like that before.” She watched it churn past now, overflowing its usual banks with roaring white turbulence.
“I know! I heard the boom and then bam! All this water and logs come tumbling down the mountainside. I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s a glacial lake up there,” he said, pointing at the snow-laden peak. “I think all this heat must have caused it to melt completely and break through its ice barrier.”