AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No.” She turned, smiling at the sight of Teo, still sleepy and tousled. He’d tried to tame his hair by tying it back, but it was still kind of a mess. He’d obviously spent a ve
ry rough night. She wondered if he’d spent it thinking of her.
“Wanna watch the sun come up?” she asked.
When he didn’t move she offered her hand, and as if he’d been doing it all his life he took it. He seemed to understand the need for silence. He seemed to share her awe of the almost mystical beauty in this daily birth of the sun.
People could fail you—parents, friends, lovers, employers, employees. Hell, you could fail yourself.
Banks failed. Crops failed. Marriages failed.
But the sun … that never failed. Even if the sky was shrouded in cobalt-colored clouds, the sun was always there, just beneath, waiting to burst free. The least Gina could do was greet it.
Together they stood—hands clasped, reverent silence shared—until the show ended. Gina drew a breath as Teo released one.
“Thank you,” he said, the wonder in his voice revealing that she hadn’t been mistaken. He’d understood exactly what this was.
The sharing of a part of her few others ever saw.
She nodded, acknowledging his thanks, for a moment unable to speak. They still held hands. She didn’t want to let go. There was just something about him that called to her.
“The sun,” she finally managed, “it’s—”
“Magic,” he finished. “Brilliant and beautiful, different but always the same. A mystery and an anchor.”
Could he read her mind, her heart and soul? No wonder she couldn’t let go of him.
Teo squeezed her hand, lips curving, eyes behind the lenses of his glasses almost catlike in the morning light. “You know the Aztecs worshiped the sun.” He turned his face back to its glow. “I can see why.”
Aztecs. What was it about the Aztecs that made her kind of squirrelly?
A howl split the morning stillness, pulling their attention from both the sky and each other. Any question about long-dead sun-worshiping Indians fled Gina’s mind as she tilted her head and listened.
Giiiiiiii-naaaaaaa!
“I thought wolves stopped howling at dawn,” Teo murmured.
She started, removing her hand from his, then shaking her head in an attempt to make her ears stop hearing what it was not possible to hear. If that howl had actually sounded like her name, Teo would have said so.
“They … uh…” She paused, took a breath, pleased when it didn’t quiver, then continued. “They howl to find one another, announce a kill, freak people out. The time has little to do with it.”
“What about howling at the moon?”
“Myth. Since they’re nocturnal hunters, most of their howling’s done at night, under that moon, which is probably where the idea came from. Sure, you hear them less in the daylight, but you see them less, too. They gotta sleep sometime.”
“You got a big wolf problem here?”
Gina glanced at him. There was no reason not to tell the truth.
“There aren’t any wolves here at all,” she said.
He laughed. “Sure there aren’t. Wink.” He winked. “Wink. Don’t worry, Gina; I won’t go running back to Arizona if I see a wolf, or even a bear.”
“You won’t see a wolf.” She glanced over her shoulder at the camp. “No one ever has.”
“But—” His eyes clouded with confusion, darkening them to the shade of last year’s moss. “I just heard them.”
“Those howls are some weird phenomenon. The wind through the rocks, the mountains, the trees. No one knows. We’ve looked for wolves; we’ve never found them.”
