“Please.”
They rode silently over rolling land until the ground grew rocky and the grass sparse and brown. The sun went behind clouds; a cool breeze ruffled Sarah’s hair and Lethe’s mane. At last Sarah saw a black iron fence in the distance with a large double gate. They went closer and she saw that the fence was quite high, with evenly spaced bars that came to sharp points at the top. Mist and gloom rolled just outside the fence. Lethe pranced sideways, straining against her bridle as they approached. “How come it’s so foggy on the other side?”
“Sometimes the fog hangs around for hours,” Heath said. “Just the climate around here.”
“What’s on the other side of your property?” Sarah asked. Lethe neighed nervously.
“Unfriendly neighbors.”
Sarah was shocked. “Like who?”
“People who want to steal our property. Sometimes they stand at the fence for hours and howl like wolves.”
The hair on her arms rose and the back of her neck tingled. She imagined an angry mob reaching through the fence bars. “Are you in danger?”
“This fence goes into a stone wall that surrounds my family’s estate. It’s high and impregnable. No one can get in.”
Sarah squinted into the gloom, but could see nothing beyond the fence barrier. She was also feeling anxious, as if the fog wasn’t friendly. “Where did you find me?”
“Over here, by the gate,” Heath said.
She urged Lethe toward the gate, but the animal shied away. Heath spoke to Lethe and she calmed, walked to the gate, where Sarah stared down at the hard rock-strewn ground. She saw no clues, no hint about her identity, and couldn’t imagine how she had ever ended up there. “Is the gate locked?”
“Always.”
“But how—?”
“A mystery,” Heath said, coming alongside her. “Accept that you just came to be here and that now you’re safe.”
Perhaps it was the gloom, but when Sarah looked into his face she saw that his pale gray eyes had darkened. It was difficult for her to accept his explanation the way he wanted her to. She had come from somewhere, but where? And how had she breached the impregnable gates?
“Come back,” he said. “Let me show you the gardens, the creek and the woods.”
She nodded, unwilling to press an argument with him. She would have to figure it out on her own. Maybe the voices would return that night and tell her something. As they rode away from the gate, Sarah glanced back one time only to see the fence holding back the soupy mist like a wall. It looked freaky, and she wondered—if nothing could get in, did that also mean nothing could get out?
As they rode back over the grounds, Sarah noted that the sun was setting and long shadows were being cast on the rolling grass. “Is it late?” she asked above the sound of the horses’ hooves.
“Night’s coming,” Heath said.
“Are you serious? We just got outside.”
“No. We’ve been out here for hours.”
“No way.” She felt profound disappointment. To her, it seemed that almost no time had passed since they’d left the stables.
“Look at the lather on our horses’ necks. They’re tired and want to return to the stables.”
Heath was right. Lethe’s neck was sweaty.
Sarah felt a twinge of guilt. She hadn’t meant to push the horse hard, but she couldn’t get over the feeling that little time had passed since they’d saddled up.
At the stable she and Heath dismounted and Heath said, “Let’s walk back to the house while we still have light.”
“But the horses—don’t you have to take off their saddles and put them back in their stalls?”
“They’ll be fed and watered, then groomed and put away.”
She craned her neck, searching for any other people, but saw no one. “Are your grooms invisible?”
“No, just busy with other things.” Heath slipped his hand over Sarah’s, his touch cool and firm. “Time for dinner. I’m hungry.”
Sarah felt as if they’d just eaten breakfast, but her stomach growled in anticipation. She found Heath’s world both strange and enticing. Of course, she had no memory of her own time and place, so how could she criticize his? One thing was certain, though—his world had an amazing way of measuring time.
5
Sarah awoke in the dark, her heart hammering like a drum. A whispering voice was calling to her. “Sarah … Sarah … I love you. Come back.…” She sat upright in the bed. The room was wrapped in darkness. The fireplace, stacked with burning logs when she’d gone to bed, was now cold. She scooted from under the warm covers and, shivering, wrapped herself in a heavy coverlet and edged her way around the room’s perimeter. “Who are you?” she whispered to the walls. “Where are you?”
A male voice said, “If you can hear me, baby, take my hand.” His voice sounded hauntingly familiar.
She reached into the void but could feel nothing. “I’m right here,” she said.
“They say you might be able to hear me, so I’m going to keep talking to you.”
“I can hear you!”
“Your mom and dad are at dinner, so it’s just me and you now,” he said.
Parents? Why couldn’t she remember them? “Who are you?” she called out. Her voice reverberated in the silence of the room. She clamped a hand across her mouth. She should keep her voice down. What if she woke Heath?
The male voice said, “Remember when we met? I plowed into you in the hall and knocked you flat. I felt like an idiot. You were so pretty and I was a klutz—and still am. You could have yelled at me, but you laughed and made me feel like it was your fault too. But it wasn’t.”
Her head was beginning to hurt from the strain of trying to remember. The voice was soft and comforting. She wanted to go into it so much. “I—I don’t remember …,” she whispered, brokenhearted.
“Then when we found ourselves sitting next to each other in Chem One, I told myself, ‘Justin, you lucked out. Don’t mess this up by saying something stupid.’ ”
Justin. Sarah had another name. She tried to find a face to put with it, but the strain was too much. “I want to remember! I—I can’t …,” she said to the darkness.
“Your friends call every day asking about you. I tell them nothing’s changed. I won’t give up, Sarah. None of us will. I love you.”
The voice receded and she was again alone and feeling lost. She made her way to the window, pushed against the glass. It was hard and unyielding beneath her palms. The voice, this Justin, must be a hallucination, her imagination gone wild in the night. She recalled no family, no friends, no Justin who said he loved her. She crumpled to the floor and wept.
“You look tired,” Heath said as they walked to the stables after breakfast. “Aren’t you sleeping well?”
A golden sun shone down from a cerulean sky and warmed Sarah’s head and shoulders. “I had a strange dream and couldn’t get back to sleep,” she said.
He stopped. “A dream? Are you sure?”
She didn’t want to tell him, “Actually, I’m probably going crazy—I hear voices all night long.” Instead, she waved her hand dismissively. “Just a weird dream. No biggie.”
“People don’t usually dream when they’re here.”
She puzzled over his statement. “Why wouldn’t someone dream when they’re here?”
His eyes, so pale moments before, darkened. “It’s the air, I think. Very pure, so sleep is pure too.”
She tried to recall whether she’d had other dreams during her nights on his estate, but couldn’t. He touched her forehead, and whatever questions she had grew fuzzy. What had she and Heath been discussing? She shook her head to clear it.
Heath had quickly moved ahead of her on the path to the stable, and she had to jog to catch up to him. He led the horses out of their stalls, saddled both and helped her mount Lethe. “I want to show you the grounds.”
They rode in silence, the horses prancing and straining at their bits. Heath’s horse, Tita
n, seemed especially ready to run. But Sarah was in no hurry. The strangeness of the night before had faded and she felt content in the sun and air and with Heath’s company. Again she struggled to remember what they’d been talking about minutes before. It had been important to her, but now, under the lulling sun and sky, with the horse moving and the rhythmic sound of hooves hitting the ground, Sarah couldn’t dredge up what the conversation had been about.
They crested a hill and Heath reined in Titan. “Look,” he said.
Below, Sarah saw gardens with fields of flowers. The beauty took her breath away.
Heath said, “Let’s walk. The horses can graze.”
He dismounted, came to her and reached up. She swung her leg over the back of her horse and he grasped her waist. His hands tightened as he lowered her. She slid slowly down the length of his hard muscled body, her pulse throbbing and her heart thudding. He pressed against her. Caught between him and the horse, Sarah had neither will nor desire to move aside. His eyes, riveted on hers, were clear as water, the pupils small and jet-black. She felt as if she might drown in those eyes.
“Touch me,” he whispered.
Slowly she raised her arms to settle them around his neck. With one hand she toyed with the curls at the nape of his neck, then smoothed the curls spilling across his forehead. Soft as silk … His skin was pale and smooth and cool in spite of the sun’s heat. Time stood still.
Behind her, Lethe shifted, ambled off to graze near Titan. In that moment, Sarah gasped like a swimmer coming up for air, breaking the spell and Heath’s hold on her waist. Flustered, she said, “W-we should walk.”
Heath’s eyes darkened slightly, but he grinned and said, “All right.”
Her legs were rubbery, but she headed down the hill toward the blooming gardens. Footpaths meandered every which way beside flower beds, each bed more gorgeous than the one before. When they came to endless beds of roses, Sarah stopped. Each rose looked luminescent in the sunlight, every bush full and every flower perfect. Colors of every shade and hue stretched as far as she could see. The heady perfumed air made her dizzy.
“You like?” Heath asked.
“They’re so beautiful. I—I don’t know what to say.”
“Some of these bushes have been here a hundred years,” he said.
“Are you kidding? That’s so long. Who takes care of them?”
“We have gardeners whose only job is to keep the flowers and trees healthy.”
Sarah turned in a circle, searching for the gardeners who kept such perfect roses. “Where are they?”
“They come in the early morning and the evening. Too hot in the middle of the day,” Heath said.
“You know, I’ve been here for days and I’ve never seen any other people.” She started walking along the paths between the beds as she spoke.
“Is that so bad? To only be with me?” Heath kept step beside her.
“Of course not. I just think it would be nice to talk to other people. Maybe someone might have a clue about me—who I am or where I came from.”
“You’re Sarah and you came from outside,” Heath said. “It was the happiest day of my life when I found you.”
His words made her pause. Finally she said, “I’m not complaining … just wondering. When I try and remember stuff about myself, my head hurts and I get sad.”
“Sarah, what does the past matter? You’re here now with me.”
“But you know who you are. You’re proud of your home and your past. I hear it in your voice when you talk about it.”
He pulled her closer. Lifting her chin with his forefinger, he said, “I haven’t given up searching for your home. I’ve sent out inquiries, but I just haven’t heard anything yet.”
“You have?” Her heart leapt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’ll tell you when I hear something. If you had known, as you do now, you’d be asking me every day for news. Wouldn’t you?” he teased.
He was right about that. “Every other day,” she fudged, making him laugh.
She smiled too, and he traced the corner of her lips with his finger. “That’s better. You have a pretty smile.”
She didn’t want to get caught in his gaze again, so she turned and continued down the path. She hadn’t gone far when off to one side she saw an enormous hedge of thick bushes, perfectly clipped and maintained, every leaf neat and trimmed. The hedge was easily fifteen feet high. It looked solid, but she spied an opening, a boxlike door cut into the branches. “What’s that?” she called to Heath, who had fallen back, letting her go ahead.
“A maze,” he said. “But don’t—”
Sarah laughed and darted like a rabbit toward the opening. “Catch me!”
She never made it through the hole. Heath seemed to arrive instantly at her side. He seized her elbow and spun her around. “Don’t go in there!” he commanded. “Don’t ever go in there.”
6
Sarah shrank from him, terrified by the look on his face and the steel in his voice. His eyes had turned dark and foreboding, like thunder clouds ready to storm. “You’re hurting my arm,” she squeaked.
Instantly he let go and closed his eyes. He rocked back on his heels. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You scared me, that’s all.”
“How?” She rubbed her elbow.
“I didn’t want you to go into the maze.” His eyes opened and they were a lighter shade of gray. “It’s dangerous.”
He reached out to touch her, but she shrugged him off. “Dangerous … how?”
“It’s a very old maze. See how tall and thick the boxwood are?”
“I see that.”
“Many years ago, some ancestor constructed it for people to play in. A master maze maker was hired to create it in the fourteenth century. He was the best my family’s money could buy. The boxwood were shorter then, and you could see over the tops of the bushes. Lots of light came in. Now it’s grown too tall and it’s dark along the inside paths. The maze is a giant puzzle, almost impossible to navigate and treacherous with dead ends. People have gotten lost in it.”
“People get lost in it?” Sarah repeated.
“True story. They can’t find their way out and the bushes muffle their cries when we search for them.”
“How do you find them?” The idea was frightening. Lost inside a maze like a trapped mouse.
“We only find them when buzzards begin to circle.”
She shivered. “Really?”
He nodded. “The very brave tie a rope around their waist and wander through it. We always have to pull them out, though.”
“So no one gets out by themselves?”
“Perhaps some have, but not for a long time. It’s easier to make it off-limits.”
She peered at the opening. It did look dark and unfriendly. “You should put a chain up. And a sign.”
Heath nodded. “Yes, we should. I’ll speak to the head gardener.” He flipped her hair. She didn’t draw away this time. “We should be getting back. I’m sure the horses have stuffed their bellies with grass by now. Almost time for supper for us too. Aren’t you hungry?”
Supper! Sarah could hardly believe so much time had passed, but she saw long shadows stretching across the path. The hedge maze looked even more ominous in the shadows. “Yes,” she answered, thinking that time was an oddity on Heath’s estate. It either passed too quickly or stretched beyond belief.
They retraced their steps along the pathway, past beds of flowers growing dim in the gathering darkness. “Why don’t you cut it down?” she asked. “The maze, I mean. What good is it if it can hurt people?”
“I’ve wondered that too. I was told because it’s very old. It would be wrong to destroy plants that have weathered several hundred years of survival. So we allow it to stand and grow older and warn visitors away from it.”
She didn’t say it, but she had plainly seen that the great maze was well cared for. It was groomed and cut and nurtured, and perfectly manicured. Why would gardene
rs waste their time on keeping up a thing considered so dangerous and deadly?
The voices came at night. Long nights that Sarah lost track of in a jumble of days and riding with Heath. Sarah gave up answering the voices—she couldn’t make herself heard—and just lay in the bed listening to them, to the cadences and the sincerity in their tone. She wasn’t afraid of hearing them anymore. To the contrary, the voices soothed and comforted her. The one called Mother shared all kinds of stories about family that Sarah wished she could connect to, but no matter how she tried, her memory door was shut and locked. The voice called Dad read to her—charming fairy tales and stories about princesses being rescued by handsome knights. But it was the Justin voice that touched her the most. His voice was soft, gentle. He told her things about a place called school and about people whose names she didn’t know. Mostly he told her how he missed her and how much he loved her and how much he wanted to hold her and kiss her and touch her the way he once did. She cried when the voices faded, usually when the sun rose and gleamed through the window of her room on Heath’s estate.
Strangely, she was never tired in the mornings, and was always ready to face a day of riding with Heath, of slipping through endless forests, of watching the falcon that Heath had trained to ride on his gloved hand. “Sharp talons,” Heath had explained to Sarah. She thought the bird majestic. It wore a leather hood decorated with a single white plume.
Morning followed night, and days melted into one another. On one gleaming morning, Heath reined in Titan on the crest of a hill overlooking an open field. Sarah stopped beside him on Lethe. The sun bounced off the droplets of dew, making it look as if jewels had been sprinkled across the grass. The air smelled sharp and sweet with wildflowers. The feathers of the falcon on Heath’s glove shimmered.
Heath stroked the bird and said, “He needs to hunt.” He pulled off the hood and the great bird blinked. Heath held up his arm and the bird took flight.
Sarah watched it soar into the blue sky, circling, spiraling ever higher, until she lost sight of him against the sun. “Will he come back?”