Page 60 of Due North
“Oh my god,” she hissed. “How? Just how?”
“I wish I could answer that,” I admitted. “I can’t, but I was terrified I was going to watch a tragedy unfold before my eyes again. Poppy couldn’t hear me call to her, but the bison would. I couldn’t make the hole bigger to climb through, or the bison might stampede and run down the ridge or over the other searchers on horseback. All I could do was stand there and witness whatever was unfolding in front of me. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t change it. It was just like last time,” I whispered, a tear falling over my lash. “I was powerless to the universe, and I was going to lose another piece of my heart. I was so scared,” I said, swallowing around the terror in my throat.
She slipped her hand into mine, leaving Poppy on my chest and my hand in hers over the pillow. “You saved her, though. You brought her back to me.”
My head rolled on the pillow again. “No, I just witnessed this strange, unexplainable communication between Poppy and a giant being. They had nothing in common, yet they were both at peace in the pasture. Now comes the strange part.”
“Now comes the strange part?” she asked, a brow raised.
I chuckled and kissed her forehead. “That’s fair. I guess what I’m trying to say is, what I saw out there in the pasture with Poppy, I don’t think it was a bison.”
“I don’t understand, Caleb,” she said, her grip tightening on my hand.
“I don’t know that I do either other than to say it was like another entity took over that bison to give Poppy a message. There was a connection between them that I could feel as strong as my own heartbeat. That was how I knew she was on the ridge. It was pulling me there to witness their interaction. That other being wanted me to see something that went against everything I knew to be the truth, so I could no longer question what or who had control of my life. I can tell you right now that it’s not me. I remember closing my eyes so I didn’t have to watch Poppy die, and this white light exploded behind them. It was so bright it forced my lids open. It was physically painful for a moment, but then it cleared, and I watched Poppy turn her back to a bison. She turned her back to a thousand-pound animal and just stared at me. It was dark. I shouldn’t have been able to see into her eyes, but I could. They were filled with the same white light. I saw it all in her eyes, Cece,” I said, a shiver racking my body. “I saw the barn burning, the animals running, and the beams falling. I heard the whooshing of the fire as it took control. Do you know what I didn’t hear? Screaming. I never heard my babies screaming or crying for me to help them. For ten years, I couldn’t remember those moments in the barn, and I pictured them burning alive like sacrificial lambs.”
“Caleb,” she said, taking my face with her hands. “Stop. Just stop.”
“I can’t,” I whispered, tears on my face. “I can’t stop. I was supposed to see all of that tonight. Don’t you understand? I was supposed to see that I have no power in this universe, and I must stop fighting against that if I ever want to be happy. This ability that I was born with has always been a curse to me, but tonight I learned it could be a gift. If I could harness it the way Poppy has at just three years old, I could learn to use it differently, too.”
“Wait. Poppy?” she asked, and I nodded, my hand splayed across the little girl’s back. “That one finger I hold up to her?” I asked, and she nodded. “That’s because I know she will hold up two, and not because I taught her to, that was a lie. I told you I did, but I didn’t. She taught me. God, how do I even explain this.”
“You’re doing fine,” she promised, my face still in her hands, so I opened myself to the honesty of what I had experienced. “When we played together, she’d force me to hold up one finger, and then she’d hold up two. I thought she was just counting or repeating something she learned, but then she’d point at herself and hold up two fingers. She’d have a meltdown almost instantly the first few times I didn’t do the same thing. The third time she did it, I held up my finger and pointed at myself, then she did the same thing with her two fingers. The blue in her eyes would blind me, and suddenly we could communicate. Not with words, but with our emotions.”
“I can sense the same thing when you’re together,” she said on a nod. “She needs you every day now to fill a hunger that didn’t develop until I brought her here. I can’t explain it any other way. There is a thread between you two that can’t be broken.”
“Yes,” I said on a breath. “That thread is what drew me to the ridge tonight. What I saw in her eyes knocked me to my knees. I had to watch those moments of horror play out again. The moments I’d tried to bury because I was too afraid that I was the reason everyone died. I wasn’t, Cece. I wasn’t!”
“Shhh,” she soothed, kissing my lips to calm me. “You weren’t, babe. You did everything you could for those babies.”
“I know that now,” I said on a nod, my voice cracking from the pain of that admittance. “It was like the being protected Poppy to prove to me I don’t have any power, only the spirits do. Poppy was stock still with her back to that bison, and the bison raised her head and tapped Poppy’s bottom, urging her back to the fence. It was then that I noticed a bull coming from the left. I grabbed her, pulled her through the opening, and just rode like the wind. The weirdest part was when Poppy sat in front of me and giggled like she was having the time of her life. She should have been dead of exposure by then.”
“I know,” she promised, kissing my lips, my salty tears coating her lips with honesty. “The EMT said the same thing. Her body temperature was almost normal. I can’t explain it, but now I can. Callie and Wicapiwakan had a message and picked a terrifying way to give it to us. They wanted us to listen. Are we listening?”
“I am, are you?” I asked, my tears stopping almost instantly at the realization that she got it. She got me. “Oh, God, my heart,” I said, shifting the baby slightly so I could rub it.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, fear back in her eyes as she pulled Poppy off my chest and settled her in the playpen. She ran back over and climbed up onto the bed, rubbing the spot where my hand was. “What’s wrong? Do we need to call the doctor?”
“No,” I said, holding her face and pulling her lips down to mine, kissing her with the passion of a man in love. There was no way she could deny how I felt about her after I had my tongue down her throat in a desperate attempt to be as close to her as possible. When she tore her lips from mine, her gaze was still worried. “It’s just that for the first time in a decade, I can’t feel my heart.”
“You can’t feel it?” she asked, her head cocked in confusion.
I rested my hand against her chest, nestled between her breasts, to feel hers. “I’ve carried around a lead weight there for ten years, but it’s gone. My chest feels like it has a feather inside it again.”
“Again?” Her confusion was so evident that I had to laugh.
“Yes! Again,” I whispered, drawing her down to me. “I always carried a feather in my chest until I was sixteen when it turned to a lead ball. That feather was my spirit, but my spirit was broken. Tonight, it’s been repaired by a little girl who, without being able to hear me or speak to me, still spoke my language. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to you, but that’s my truth.”
Her thumb caressed my cheek as she gazed into my eyes, and what I saw there was the only thing I’d ever need in my life—her love.
I checked Poppy and ensured her temperature was still normal before I slipped back into bed with Caleb. The sun would come up soon, and we’d have to face the day, but I still needed to tell him the truth about how I felt.
“I talked to Tobi tonight,” I said, resting my hand on his chest comfortably.
His right eye opened, and he pinned me with a look that said more than any words could.
“She started it,” I said to pacify him. “She explained to me what happened in the ring.”
“As did I,” he said pointedly. “You didn’t believe me.”
