Even in Her Darkest Dreams

This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters are completely fictitious and do not represent any persons living or dead. Product- business- location names used remain the property of any and all trademark holders and do not represent an endorsement or association of any kind, either expressed or implied.

EVEN IN HER DARKEST DREAMS

BY

MERABETH JAMES

Smashwords Edition

(Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Repka All Rights Reserved)

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PROLOGUE - THE DARK STRANGER IN THE WOODS

She sighed heavily and shifted her position to ease the nagging pain in her legs. Hours had passed since she’d first taken refuge in the old church...hours spend kneeling in prayer, asking for protection from him. She had loved him once...may God forgive her, she loved him still...but above all else she feared him. Desperately. He had changed her life forever in a way she couldn’t have imagined even in her darkest dreams.

She had been so vulnerable when it all began…fertile ground for the seeds of trust and love he planted…a lonely, awkward child foisted off on her paternal grandparents every summer by parents too involved with their political ambitions to have room in their lives for their unexpected child.

Briefly, a smile flickered, as she remembered the grandparents who had loved her despite her sometimes outrageous behavior. She had been like a small wounded animal...often hostile and rebellious, bolting out the door at every opportunity, seeking the solace and freedom of the woods where she had found a deep-seated peace her restless, seeking spirit had never experienced before. Soon she was as wild as anything that lived there...a feral child...a woods bunny her grandma had called her and she had liked that name. Woods bunny. She smiled again and let her mind drift back to when she first met him, the dark stranger, who had rented the lake cottage nestled deep in the woods. It had been the summer of her eighth year.

Crosshatched with scratches, dirty and sweaty, she was picking blackberries along the lake for a promised pie, when she saw a glint of metal through the trees at the old Mullin’s cottage. Curiosity aroused, she crept stealthily forward. A sleek black sports car was parked in front of the house that nobody ever rented. It was supposed to be haunted. She had heard that a grizzly axe murder had occurred there, though her grandpa had laughed and told her it was just a story made up by folks with nothing better to do.

She moved closer to the cottage, threading her way through the trees. Her pulse raced, her mouth felt as dry as yesterday’s toast, and then she saw him, standing on the rickety porch, looking out over the lake. He was tall...very tall ...and dressed all in black. A sudden gust of wind flapped his long black coat against his legs and teased his dark hair over his forehead. He brushed it back impatiently and sighed...a sigh she could hear all the way to her hiding place or maybe she only felt it in her heart. He was sad...lost...lonely and she understood only too well how each of those things hurt.

He turned then and looked right at her, though she knew she was well hidden. He couldn’t possibly see her, could he? Then he smiled. It was a beautiful smile...beguiling...angelic even. Don’t be afraid it seemed to say, but she was.

It took all of a week for him to earn her trust...or some part of it. At first, he tried luring her closer with buttered biscuits and honey, which she ate greedily, after he had gone back inside. Then one morning she made it all the way to the bottom of the front steps, while he leaned against the porch post. A swirl of steam rose from the blue china mug he held in his hand. It’s hot chocolate. Would you like some? he asked with his smile.

In reply, she asked him bluntly, Why are you here?

I’m taking a vacation...of sorts...from my usual routine. How about you? What is your name and why are you here?

She shrugged her too thin shoulders. Lealynn...my name is Lealynn and my parents make me come. I spend the summer with my grandparents, over there through the woods. There’s a trail if you know where to look. The deer made it to get to the lake. They’ve got lots of trails to all kinds of places.

I see. And you keep coming by just to visit me or are you a foreign spy trying to ferret out my blackest secrets? he asked with a perfectly straight face, though there was laughter in his eyes.

She stammered awkwardly, then blurted out, I wasn’t spying. I was looking and you happened to be in the way of where I looked!

Touché, my little one. I can see that you are more than a match for old Nick here.

She squinted up at him in surprise, her hand shading her eyes from the bright sun that haloed his dark hair. Nick? There had been something about the way he said that, that had not rung true even to her young ears. Something more that licked along the edges of his smile.

But she soon forgot her initial wariness, as they became fast friends in the summers that followed. She would run to look for him as soon as she could get away from her grandparents’ welcome and he was always there. The loneliness...the painful shyness, the awkwardness that she had always worn like a thick suffocating garment...was, miraculously, shed in his presence. She felt light and free and the laughter that came so easily for others now bubbled up from a new well of happiness.

Bit by bit...ever so gently...he drew from her the painful stories of her neglected childhood and plucked them from her like thorns buried deep in her soul. He cried with her afterwards, as he pulled her into his arms and rocked her back and forth until her sobs turned to hiccups and then into giggles at something silly he'd said. Slowly, he seemed to shed his own dark mantle...a shadowy something that clung to him like smoke.

Often they would dance in the meadow, scattering the cloud of butterflies that sipped the nectar there, while the deer watched, unafraid, from the deep shade of the forest. They made up a song together about it. Come dance with me...come dance and play…twirling and whirling all through the day.... As time passed, there were more verses some of which she didn’t understand, but they made him smile a secretive kind of smile, as though he knew a very funny joke he couldn’t or wouldn’t tell.

Sometimes they would lie on their backs watching the clouds, laughing together as they put names to their shapes. Lions...bears...whales...she had never seen such clouds before...and never would again. And on the rare times she slipped out at night, they would look up at the stars and he would tell her about the constellations. One night they talked about Heaven and the possibility of angels and he smiled at her strangely, then said, What if I told you I was an angel. Would you believe me?

She poked at his back and giggled. You can’t be because you got no wings. All angels have wings and haloes and blonde hair not black like yours.

His smile grew darker. Of course, you are right. Whatever was I thinking? Just having a little fun with you I guess. He had been quiet the rest of the night and she remembered wondering if she had hurt his feelings somehow.

Often he told her about places he’d been...fabulous places that surely couldn’t really exist...and about people...famous people she had read about in school. He told her funny stories...sad stories about them, as though he had known each and every one personally and they came alive before her mind’s eye. She grew to love him then above all others. Being with him was...well...magical. That was the only word for it. Magical!

She blurted that out to him on the bright morning of her twelfth birthday, as they sat together at the edge of the lake. That’s because I am a magician...or sort of, he told her with his angel’s smile. Do you want to see a trick? She nodded eagerly and he continued. Okay. Nothing up my sleeve, he said peeking up his shirt sleeve and giving it a shake, which made her laugh until her bare toes wriggled. I don’t seem to have my magic wand with me just now, but let’s see what I can conjure up. Hmmmmm. I think I will summon the frogs to do homage to the birthday queen. Would you like that? She nodded...her eyes widening in anticipation. Hocus pocus whoisthemostos gillymanduhowaboutyou...or something like that...from the dark waters...the sunlit shores...come as I command thee.

And they did come...swimming, hopping, climbing...they came. At first just a dozen or so and then more...much more. She became rather frightened and begged him to stop, though he seemed to be enjoying the whole thing immensely. Maybe this will serve as a reminder now that you are almost a woman, that you must kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince. Or maybe I’d rather you wouldn’t and with that he waved his hand and the frogs vanished, leaving little wisps of smoke or fog where they had been.

Suddenly nervous, she twisted the end of the long braid her grandmother wove every morning from her unruly red hair and told him what was in her heart. I already found my prince. You. You are my prince and when I’m all grown up I will marry you and.... She stopped, blushing furiously, wishing herself a million miles away in any direction.