Angela’s Wolves
by
Maria Isabel Pita
Copyright 2009 Maria Isabel Pita
Smashwords Edition
Angela’s Wolves
Angela’s father was in town for a month. When he called her one Sunday morning and invited her to the local Renaissance Fair that afternoon she agreed to go. He picked her up in a rental car with Rose, his third wife, sitting dutifully by his side.
Peter said, “So, how are you my dear?” as he backed out of the driveway of what Angela secretly thought of as her doll’s house, because it was small and she was playing at being grown up there.
“I’m fine,” she replied shortly. His casual tone always put her on the defensive. Her life was worth a bit more passion than that. She sat in the back seat snacking on Cuban crackers. Normally she avoided refined carbohydrates, not to mention anything containing lard, but she hadn’t eaten lunch and she was, as usual, starving.
He adopted a more serious tone. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“Nope. It’s still as hard as it ever was to meet any decent men, either online or at old-fashioned meat markets.”
“You have a butcher?” Rose said innocently. “Where we live I have to buy all our meat at grocery stores and it’s really not as fresh.”
Angela laughed and brushed white crumbs off her black shorts.
“My love,” Peter sighed condescendingly, “she meant bars.”
He met his daughter’s eyes in the rearview mirror and added, “Eat some more crackers. You’re as thin as a skeleton. And who cut your hair anyway? You look like you just walked out of an Egyptian tomb, for God’s sake.”
She grinned. “Thanks dad!” He knew she loved everything Egyptian so she decided to take his remark as a compliment and she certainly didn’t mind being told she was thin. She had long ago determined there was no point getting angry with the person who had given her half her genes. It was entirely up to her to improve on them, as if her blood was a finely aging wine, and not let their emotionally watered down encounters make her bitter.
The Renaissance Fair was being held at Viscaya Palace. Parking was a problem. The rental car was eventually deposited in front of a private home several blocks from their destination. Emerging from the comfortably air conditioned interior, they were greeted by the vicious barking of a large dog. Its thick white coat and ice-blue eyes made it look incongruously like an Alaskan wolf surrounded by palm trees.
Because a chain link fence safely separated them, Angela felt free to admire the gorgeous animal. “Meow,” she taunted him sweetly.
“He’d rip your heart out if he could,” her father remarked as he slipped an affectionate arm over her shoulders.
It was a hot afternoon. Summer was definitely on its way. She had lived in Miami all her life but she would never like its oppressive humidity. The clinging heat made her think of a lover she was already tired of but couldn’t shake off. Strolling leisurely down a black asphalt walkway, half shaded by trees with thick long serpentine limbs all growing close to the ground she vowed not to let summer get her down that year.
The Fair was crowded. After a while, bored by Rose’s inane chatter, Angela wandered off by herself. She stepped into the shade offered by a particularly large pavilion and found herself listening to a lecture on knights and their weaponry. On the display table lay vests made of chain-mail, two metal helmets divorced from their suits of armor and an assortment of knives, swords and axes.
A few yards beyond the pavilion, directly in her line of sight, stood a narrow wooden storage shed. A tall man with shoulder-length blond hair stepped out from behind it and suddenly her boredom evaporated. The sleeveless form-fitting brown leather vest he was wearing afforded her a very nice view of his broad shoulders, and a short leather loincloth exposed most of his muscular thighs. The sight of him literally made her stop breathing for a moment. He looked too beautiful to be real and yet he was walking straight toward her pavilion. He stopped only a few feet away from her, too close for her to keep admiring him without being afraid he would notice. Every cell in her body longed to meet his eyes but all her life she had suffered from a social shyness not in keeping with what she considered to be her true passionate nature. Hating herself for it, she focused on the actor who was demonstrating the dubious effectiveness of chain-mail by placing the edge of a sword over one of his arms and attempting to slice through it. Grimacing and laughing along with the rest of the crowd, she dared to glance at the man who was truly captivating her without saying a word.
He was staring at her.
Her heart took off like an Olympic sprinter. She glanced away shyly but then simply couldn’t resist looking at him again. She needed to make absolutely sure she hadn’t merely imagined his interest in her.
His striking light-blue eyes gripped hers and made it impossible for her to look away again.
She had been enjoying the sight of men clad in colorful tights, embroidered doublets worn over white shirts with romantically full sleeves, feathered hats and long black velvet capes but nothing compared to the vision of this half naked Celtic warrior. There was no other way to describe him. He seemed completely out of place in a Renaissance Fair. The belt around his waist was hung with a leather sheathe containing a dagger and his sandals were strapped in place by leather cords that wound halfway up his strong calves. The defined muscles of his thighs made her ache to lick his golden-brown skin, and his smooth chest seemed to be begging her nails to scratch it just for the pleasure of experiencing his anger. When she finally made it up to his face again the soft smile on his lips—his promising reaction to her open appraisal of his physique—filled her with an intense, almost overwhelming relief. Then in the corner of her eye she saw the distant figure of her father gesturing toward her impatiently. Looking back at him, she held up her right hand to indicate she needed five more minutes. Shrugging, he turned away and vanished along with Rose around a bend in the path over which Viscaya Palace loomed in all its spectacular bad taste.
Her stubborn shyness reasserting itself, she pretended to once more be interested in the sword the actor was holding up as he described the process by which it was forged. She caught the words “hot” “beaten” “plunged” but for the most part didn’t hear a thing. Her heart was pounding so fast she thought she could actually hear the blood rushing through her body—a faint ringing in her ears that made it strangely impossible for her to think straight. It was killing her not to look at him. Her timidity, the insecurities she hid even from herself—she suddenly hated them all. When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she demurely shifted her gaze in his direction.
Catching her eye, he made a slight gesture with his head as he turned away and began walking in the direction from which he had come.
She stood rooted to the spot. Had he actually beckoned her to follow him? Impossible! No man would dare to behave in such a splendidly arrogant fashion, not in the twenty-first century! But he was leaving, striding purposefully past the storage shed and heading for the trees. Viscaya Palace was surrounded by a narrow stretch of woodland on three sides and on the fourth a flight of stone steps led down into the ocean. He had to look back. If he looked back she would… She would what? She would not follow him! She glanced around her. There were only a handful of women standing in the pavilion but not one of them, unbelievably enough, seemed to have noticed his departure. When he reached the edge of the trees he turned back toward the fairgrounds and this time there was no mistaking the beckoning gesture he made. Fully extending his right arm he bent it slowly toward his chest as though embracing someone… her!
Angela felt her legs moving and couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t really about to follow some cocky actor into the woods, was she? She had never done anything so stupid, so exciting, so dangerous! Her body moved purposefully forward, ignoring her mental consternation as if a whole new set of electrical synapses had sparked to life in her brain. She followed a narrow path through the weedy grass to where he waited for her. The sun was high in the sky and the day was so hot and humid the air around him seemed to shimmer. Every step she took set her nerves off like automatic alarms as her mind screamed for her to turn back. Instead she quickened her pace in an effort to outrun the cowardly impulse. The only truly important thing was the fact that he was still there waiting for her.
When she reached him he grasped her right hand and pulled her into the refreshingly cool shade beneath the low-lying branches. His skin was surprisingly hot and his possessive grip was not gentle. She reassured herself with the thought that he couldn’t take her very far since there was only a thin strip of trees between the palace grounds and Brickell Avenue. Then he started running and she couldn’t believe what she was doing. Her dad would kill her if he knew she was following a total stranger into the woods. Her cell-phone was in her purse but it was turned off. As soon as she could she would call Peter and let him know where she was… Where was she? The broad tall tree trunks thrusting up around her didn’t look familiar anymore. Neither did the way their branches entwined so far overhead that only faint shafts of sunlight reached a ground cushioned by pine needles and dead leaves. Most of Viscaya Palace and everything in it had been shipped over from Europe but you couldn’t do that to a whole forest could you?
She gasped, “Where are we going!?”
He glanced back at her. “We must hurry!” He didn’t bother telling her toward where.
She had no idea what was happening and yet she did know that, despite all the reasons she should be, she wasn’t actually frightened. Maybe it was all the endorphins flooding her blood from the exercise of running as fast as she could over tree roots constantly threatening to trip her up. She was proud of her physical condition but the treadmill at the gym hadn’t prepared her for what could only be described as their headlong flight.
“Stop!” she cried. “I can’t go on!”
He said harshly “You must!” and tugged her behind him in yet another direction.
They were not following a well-worn path between the trees, on the contrary. She probably wouldn’t be able to find her way back alone, which meant she was lost without him. At some point she had stopped expecting to run into Brickell Avenue and the relative safety of traffic. At least she was wearing sneakers and not high heels.
He stopped abruptly, in the same instant turning to face her, and she ran straight into him. The impact would have knocked over any normal man but beneath his surprisingly tender skin his body felt hard as a rock. While she gasped for air he exuded such implacable strength she couldn’t resist slipping her arms around his chest and clinging to him. An intoxicating aura of pure testosterone surrounded him, and mingled with the oxygen molecules she struggled to gulp down as a wicked stitch in her side made it impossible for her to take a deep breath. Fortunately he seemed to be as patient now as he had been in a hurry before. Holding her against him, he waited silently for her to recover.
As her heart stopped beating against her ribcage like a prisoner demanding freedom, she backed away from him and looked around them. To her right loomed a cliff-face half concealed by lush green vines blooming tiny violet flowers. For a moment she was astonished by how much beauty existed beyond the safely paved path she and most everyone else normally followed, then a sinking feeling in her belly deepened her irrational suspicion they were no longer in south Florida. Her brain, however, kept refusing to acknowledge the impossible fact in order to keep her emotions from panicking.
He said, “We will be safe here for now.”
She heard herself ask almost calmly, “Safe from what?”
He shot a brief, derisive glance over one of his magnificent shoulders. “From them.”
He was insane, of course, and she had followed him all the way out to… wherever they were of her own free will, which made her a little crazy too. “Are you going to hurt me?” she blurted.
“Hurt you?” He sounded genuinely astonished by the question. “Surely you know in your heart that you are perfectly safe with me, my lady.”
She gaped at him. Was it possible he was playacting? Maybe this was his unique idea of foreplay? God he was good to look at! She had followed him into the woods of her own free will and now she was going to ruin all the fun they might have together by being paranoid. The voice of her intuition insisted she had nothing to fear but it was as difficult to hear as a whisper over her mind’s paranoid screams of “Psycho! Rapist! Murderer!” and yet somehow, deep in her heart and soul, she knew he was none of those things.
Tentatively, a part of her still hesitating, she offered him the gift of her trust as she whispered, “I believe you.”
He smiled and glanced up at the sky. “It will be dark soon. We should see about some food.”
She laughed.
His eyes narrowed. “What is it you find so amusing about hunger, my lady?”
“Um… nothing.” She had to admit he definitely knew how to stay in character. “I’m just so happy you… rescued me.”
“I fear your father will not let you go so easily.”
He was still following an invisible script but his words reassured her. They seemed to say he had seen her wave at her dad and knew someone would come looking for her if she stayed away too long. Everything was going to be all right and, meanwhile, she might just have the time of her life if she didn’t ruin it by being afraid.
“I feel safe with you,” she said truthfully, cleverly addressing both the actor and the character he was playing. “And I am hungry.”
“Then I had better go kill us something.” He drew his weapon with an artistry that affected her like a blow behind the knees. One second his hand was empty and the next it held a very realistic looking dagger. The blade was tarnished with age but the edges looked sharp. It was certainly no prop that had collected dust in an old costume shop.
He turned away. “I will be back as soon as I can.”
“Wait!” She grabbed his arm. It was so broad she had to use both hands. “You can’t leave me here all alone!”
“I will not go far,” he promised. “But we must eat. While I am gone see if you can find mushrooms and onions for the stuffing. Also, a small underground stream emerges from behind those bushes.”
He removed the leather flask hanging next to his scabbard and handed it to her. “Prop this under it. We also need kindling to start a fire. Pile the wood on that stone.” Pointing briefly, as though he had every confidence in her, he left.
He was taking the scene just a bit too far! She stared at his retreating back until he disappeared amidst the trees but then she couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just hiding behind one of them laughing to himself as he watched her reaction. If she actually began searching for mushrooms she would look like a fool but if she just stood there even she would consider herself no fun.
Well, why not? She approached the bushes he had indicated, behind which she would supposedly find the mouth of a stream. She was thirsty after running so fast. They both needed water if they were going to be out here for a while. Obviously he didn’t plan on rushing the fantasy and while part of her found his determination to stay in character frustrating she also admired him for it.
The “stream” proved to be a mere trickle emerging from between a cleft in the rock but the water looked perfectly clean and she succeeded in propping the flaccid leather pouch beneath it. Leaving it there she searched the area he had chosen as their stage for anything recognizably edible. She wasn’t sure she would know a wild onion if it slapped her in the face and made her cry. Collecting kindling for a fire, however, was not beyond her ken. It made her nervous to think he really intended to keep her here until after dark but she was getting bored of trying to be nervous when she really wasn’t. The strap of her purse was draped securely across her chest. As she lifted it off—intending to set it down beside the relatively flat stone he had indicated—she remembered her cell phone.
Feeling inexplicably guilty, she looked around and listened carefully. All she could hear were birds chirping high up in the trees. The otherwise absolute silence stretching all around her felt miles deep. She hesitated, then quickly reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. She had to call her dad. It wasn’t right to let him worry.
She couldn’t get a signal.
“That’s impossible!” she hissed. “This is Miami!” The phone was completely dead even though she had charged it that morning before she left.
She shoved it back into her purse. The truth was she had no desire to call her father or anyone else. Turning resolutely away from the evidence of her real life lying in the grass, she left the small glade and began collecting kindling. It was more work than she would have imagined. It was necessary to untangle branches, and then snap them into manageable pieces she tossed into a pile. By the time her stash looked big enough she’d broken two of her freshly manicured nails and a scratch on her palm was bleeding a little. Cursing beneath her breath, she gathered the load up in her arms, surprised and grateful it held together as she hurried back to the stone he had indicated. Well, that task was nicely done, now it was time to find some mushrooms. It didn’t take her long. At the base of a mighty oak she spotted a mystical looking congregation of the edible fungus. They looked exactly like the kind she bought in plastic-wrapped cardboard boxes except that they were still alive. It gave her a strange thrill to touch them wondering if they might appear edible but really be poisonous. Saving the impressively large patriarch for last, she picked the smallest ones first almost feeling as if she was murdering an entire family. Who said vegetarians didn’t kill for their food?
She was so engrossed in her allotted chores she completely forgot about the rental car parked somewhere nearby waiting to take her home to her doll’s house. The thought annoyed her when it inevitably resurfaced and she shoved it away. She was, she admitted, enjoying the fact that she was lost and had no idea how long this strikingly realistic fantasy would last. But her growing thirst and hunger were no act and deep down she hoped he wasn’t only pretending to hunt.
Returning to the small glade Angela gently deposited her mushroom harvest in a pile beside her purse. The flat stone seemed to be blackened by previous fires. He must have camped there before. It impressed her he had been able to find his way back through the maze of trees. She looked around her again fighting a vague sense of panic. No matter how hard she listened she still couldn’t distinguish even a subliminal whisper of distant traffic. Then she noticed a patch of grass that looked different. Welcoming the distraction, she approached it curiously. Sinking to her knees, she gripped a handful of the long vivid green stalks and pulled on them, rocking the roots gently back and forth and from side to side.