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Duncan returned much refreshed after his shower. Bless the Powers for the new hot water heater he'd installed on their return from Paris--he just stood for a very long time beneath the womb-warm spray, letting Ram and the night wash over him and off him and down the drain to the sea.To the living water that Ram was always going on about, the Source of All Things, the Mother of Life Itself, and God's true medium of expression. Well, he didn't buy the entire gospel, but he did indeed feel baptized anew and ready for more...a little more...
...and nothing too strenuous in the next few days, if it pleases you, Lord.
As Duncan entered the loft, it was to see all the men dressed in the MacLeod, one-size-fits-all, sweat suits. It didn't look too bad on Joe, but the disparity in body type made Adam's borrowed togs a scream. "You know," Duncan leaned over Adam, "the difference between you and me..." he pinched a piece of the shirt between thumb and finger.
Adam twisted around, "Yes?"
"Is I make this look good," Duncan smiled.
Adam just shook his head. The allusion was too current for the old man, but Joe and Lucille went off, so the wit was not entirely wasted on the breakfast crew sorted around the kitchen table like family.
Duncan went over to the couch to check on his son, out like a light. What a sweet child he was. Then he pulled up a chair and joined the breakfast club. Joe was spinning something--a coin?--on the table, spinning and then slapping it down flat and then spinning it again. Evidently he'd been doing this for some time as the other two paid no attention to the tic whatsoever.
Duncan poured himself a large juice, some apple-bran-natural mess--Lucille was so health conscious-- and dug through the paper bags for an Egg MacLeod. Well, it would be as soon as he swallowed. There was only one left. "Buzzards," he grumbled.
"Mac?" Joe said distantly.
Duncan angled his head down to peer into the shadow over Dawson's face. "Yes, Joe?"
One more spin, one more slap, then, "Hold out your hand."
"Okay," Mac put down his breakfast, wiped his hands on his thighs and reached his right one out to Joe.
Joe's hand closed over his and then retreated slightly to curl Duncan's fingers over the tiny object he had left there.
For certain Duncan's hands were those of a warrior, but they were also the hands of a healer born out of various battle field necessities, and he knew immediately what he held, what Joe had been spinning there on the table. "Are you sure?" he asked the Watcher.
"I have thought about it a great deal," Joe said softly, "and yes, yes I am certain."
Duncan said nothing for a long moment, then he put the object in his shirt pocket. He reached for the sandwich, but changed his mind and picked up the juice instead. "You're staring at me," he noted after a large swallow.
"Well, yes, now that you mention it," Adam agreed. "It's just we had a drawing while you were gone so long soaking downstairs."
Duncan's right eyebrow lifted and he looked sideways at the pesky elder son of Chaos.
Lucille chimed in, "You lost, by the way, Honey Dunk."
Duncan's cinnamon eyes rolled, "and don't you even say a word, Adam Cheeks."
"Don't you want to know what the drawing was for?" Adam warbled cheaply.
"Oh, hell," Duncan grinned. "Hit me."
"Ram needs a bath," they all said in unison.
"And the world needs peace," Duncan's head dropped to his chest, "but I don't see either happening anytime soon."
"Look," Duncan sputtered in abject exasperation, "I'm not any happier about this than you are, Ram, but not to put too fine a point on it...You stink."
"How charming of you to have noticed," Ram grinned. This was not a friendly expression.
The group at the table were all in various states of coming undone over the scene playing out at MacLeod's wide bed.
He ignored them. "Ram, I think two such rational adults as we are could come to a civilized arrangement here," he suggested.
"Ah, Warmeat," Ram smirked, "they have taught you some new words, eh? Touch me one more time and I'll be only too happy to show you their meanings, if only by the opposite example."
"I won't hurt you, Ram."
"Listen, Warmeat," she tried to raise her hands, but they made it only as far as her lap. "If you never say that to me again it will be too soon."
But it was too late, MacLeod had caught the limit of her strength in the hand gesture. He scooped her up, sheets and all, and toted her, frothing like a mad dog, into the bathroom and the warm tub awaiting them.
Where he laid her into the warm bubbles as gently as he could without any cooperation on her part. "For God's Sake, Ram! It's only water!"
"Fine!" Ram spit, making it perfectly clear everything was anything but. "Get out, I can do this myself."
Duncan reminded himself that Ram's will was ever outdistancing her flesh and he should not be fooled by the bravado, but sometimes it was just hard to remember. "Ram, this just doesn't make any sense. Surely you are not uncomfortable about...Well, I heard about your striptease in the limo."
He had draped Ram's arms along either side of the old-fashioned porcelain and steel tub, the only one big enough to fit him, with, of course, dragon-and-pearl feet. Her elbows propped her up in a roughly sitting posture.
"That was different," Ram grumbled, "I wasn't so--"
Duncan heard her screeching halt. "Helpless?" he supplied.
"I hate you," Ram sulked.
"You must be worn out, Ram. You usually don't waste time stating the obvious."
"I really hate you."
"Well, as long as we're feeling all warm and fuzzy towards one another, I suppose I should get this out of the way," Duncan reached in his pocket and drew forth the piece which Joe had given him earlier.
"Here," he said, opening his hand so she could see it, "I shouldn't have this. Where do you want me to put it?"
She didn't take advantage of such a glorious straight line, just stared at his hand as if it held an adder. "You can flush it down the toilet, for all I care."
Duncan shrugged and walked over to comply.
"Wait," she said. "Put it somewhere safe. It used to be important. It deserves to be remembered."
"Okay, Ram," Duncan put it back in his pocket. "I'll take it to the bank and put it in a safe deposit box first thing next week."
"Why do you think he gave it to you?" she asked.
Duncan picked up the softest sponge in the collection and started soaping her back. "Why did Joe Dawson give me his wedding ring? Why do you think?"
"Because, in his mind, his wife is dead," she suggested. "Because, by rights, I belong to the Lord Victorious as spoils and he means to give me to you."
Which was not an answer that had occurred to Duncan. "The Lord Victorious?"
"Yes," Ram continued, lifting her chin as he began on the mess of her hair, "we had a prophecy that a foundling born near the winter solstice would grow into a man to meet us on the Fields of the Millennium. That despite our every effort, he and his minions would defeat us, and we would vanish utterly from the face of the world, save for the Last."
"And that Last, the vanquished King, would be the bonded slave of the Lord Victorious."
"You're making this up," Duncan rinsed her hair and started soaping again.
"I wish," Ram murmured. "Shiiit!" Her elbows gave and she sank beneath the bubbles.
Duncan plunged his arms after her, but she was soaped and slippery as an eel. There were a few anxious seconds passed before he could gain a purchase behind her back and deliver her into the air, gasping and more afraid than he had ever seen her....
"God, I hate you!" she said as soon as she could breathe.
"We do seem to be stuck on that point," Duncan observed. "Maybe a little cream rinse..."
"Cream rinse this, you sorry..." with that she managed to get a hand just high enough to snag his hair and pull him over the side of the tub.
Outside, at the breakfast table, the three diners decidedly ignored the sploosh and wake beyond the bathroom door that sounded for all the world like a whale in full breach.
"Another bagel?" Adam asked before he had another go at the computer. Still no go. "Joe?"
"Yes? Adam?" Joe shook out of his daydream. "What?"
"They haven't reconfigured the entire Network at Watchers HQ lately, have they?"
"What are you talking about?" Joe took the laptop and keyed in his password and the pass for the day and three other number sets. "Huh?" He tried again. "What in hell? Something must be wrong with the link." Joe picked up the cellular and tried to contact Paris directly. The lines were down or busy, perhaps that explained it.
Thaadump-bump, crash echoed from the general direction of the bathroom.
"They're awfully good with cream cheese and these little fish thingees," Adam started in on another bagel.
"You think they're all right?" Lucille asked.
"Oh, yeah," Adam mumbled around a bagel, "Ram, sure. Duncan...not so much."
Joe shook his head. "I gotta go. There are a lot of people will be very unhappy about cancelling the Messiah tonight and we should try to contact Anne before she comes into town for the concert. And--" he put his hand on Adam's arm. "I could sure use some help at the bar now that Mike's gone. Just temporary till I can hire someone. You understand."
Adam shrugged, "How hard could it be? Except Sean--"
"I'll take Sean with me," Lucille offered, "Duncan's going to be, umm, busy--"
"As a toad in the ninth annual hot griddle-jumping finals?" Adam offered his hand at a Lucille-ism. It was close.
Just then a loud, booming Ka Thunkkk and a whole chorus of artful, if testy, descriptions of Duncan's shortcomings reminded them how very late in the morning it had gotten and how much they really had to do.
...and if they didn't leave right now, they'd never get them done.
Just as the lift door closed, a Salaaap echoed after them.
"Sounds like Mother's arm strength is returning," Adam smiled.
Sean woke up and started crying.
"It's all right, Brother," Adam crooned and rocked the infant. "Knowing those two, maybe there's a baby sister in the offing for you."
Dr. Piersen never saw Dawson's hand rise behind the crown of his head to give him such a smack.
"Well?" Duncan asked for yet another time.
"Well, what?" Ram kicked his shins, the fifth time, for good measure. She was in an excellent position to do so, wrapped in Duncan's arms on his lap, facing forward, her arms pinned at her sides. "Oh, all right then, I agree to behave."
"Swear on something you care about," Duncan thought a certain amount of verification was required given the situation.
"On my sons' lives," Ram said without thinking.
That convinced him and he let the disagreeable Danaan go.
She went over to what could have been considered a neutral corner of the bathroom, picked a white T-shirt out of the laundry basket and pulled it on over her head. It made an ample, mid-thigh dress.
"Now," Duncan pointed to the door, "I need to get out of these wet things and put on some dry clothes."
Ram tilted her head.
"Out!"
She tilted her head the other way.
"Just take it as my feeling helpless. Okay, Ram?"
Ram left laughing and tapping her chin with the tips of her fingers.
Some ancient gesture, he thought. He didn't know what it meant. He didn't care to speculate.
The door opened a crack and Ram threw in his last clean sweat suit. Oh, life was going to get really interesting now. He just thought it Chaotic with only her sons to stir things up. Damn! His lip was split. He was missing a handful of hair at his neckline and his shins would be all kinds of lovely shades from blue to purple to yellow for the rest of the afternoon. He knew he would never miss Set the way Dawson did, but he was beginning to see Joe's point.
After shaving and fitting in the ragged spot in his hair, Duncan donned the sweats, squared his shoulder and exited the bathroom for round two with Ram.
But the loft apartment was empty. Lucille and Joe and Adam and Sean had probably left while they were splashing around and rough-housing in the bathroom. He had sent Ram out to an empty, unguarded..
And she'd taken advantage, after giving him the sweats so he wouldn't be out soon to check.
Damn! He didn't relish another Ram hunt. He didn't look forward to what the others would say when they found he'd let her slip away. What an idiot he was!
"Hello? Joe?" Duncan cradled the cellular between his shoulder and his ear as he laced up his sneaks. "Yeah, uh, you don't happen to know where Ram is?" He pulled the phone away from his ear and grimaced. After a bit, he put it closer, "Yeah, Joe. I know, Joe...Only about ten, fifteen minutes, max... Yes, help would be good. No, I don't have any idea. No, nothing out of the ordinary......."
"On, my honor, Joe. NO, I DID NOT! No, I know what happened before...Nothing at all like that! I swear!"
It was almost Good Friday when Adam and Joe and Mac returned to the dojo, ill in humor and mood and heart. Ram could not be found. With Crane gone and the NW Territories switch out of commission they'd had to go get the Watchers who helped in the search, one-by-one, face-to-face, which took an inordinate amount of time and energy that none of them had. All Joe could do by phone without the security systems in place was to verify Duncan and Adam as his agents.
What a mess! They hadn't really rested for going on forty-eight hours and not one of them was fit to be in decent company let alone with each other. They said things to each other they would all three of them regret for a long while to come.
But their friendships were enduring even in times like these and a coffee and cheesecake all around had them in better spirits by the time the clock struck midnight and the day of Christian mourning began.
"Joe?" Duncan sat on the floor by the couch where the Watcher was encamped.
"Yeah, Buddy," Joe leaned forward.
"When Ram disappeared from Lucille's last year, after the Knacker business--"
Across the room, lounged sideways on the bed, Adam's ears pricked, to the tone, if not the words.
"Yes, go on," Joe replied.
"I had the feeling you knew where she was, but that you wouldn't say," Duncan finished.
Joe suggested a bit of brandy might suit.
Duncan hesitated. Oh, hell, they might all be dead tomorrow at this rate. He got the brandy and poured three snifters' worth.
Joe lifted his glass, "To the very best man I never barfed on," he toasted. "Yet."
"Where was Ram, Joe?" Duncan turned the conversation back to his track.
"She was hiding on top of the closet thingee. She never left Lucille's apartment. She just made you think she did," Joe let the cognac...Duncan had not stinted...rest lightly on his palate, savouring all its splendor.
"But how did you know?" Adam called from the bed, not quite interested enough in the conversation to actually get up and walk over.
Joe shook his head, "I don't know how I knew. I just knew. It seemed like what she'd do, I guess."
"Well, we've torn this place apart, we've canvassed the town, we've turned over every stone in 'Couver. Where do you think she'd go, Joe? Now, Joe?"
Adam sat up and sipped at his drink.
Joe thought a moment, then a smile broke across his face like an epiphany.
"You know, don't you, you old dog," Adam had walked over and was standing in front of him when the revelation surfaced.
Joe's smile widened and he nodded his head.
"Well?" Duncan asked.
Joe shifted the brandy from his right hand to his left and pointed towards the ceiling.
Duncan slapped his hand down on the floor. Of course, she hadn't had time to go very far, so she didn't. "The roof! The frigging roof!"
This was his responsibility Duncan told them, his fault she had gotten away in the first place. He dug out the halogen flashlight, grabbed his jacket and headed up the spiral stair to the utility shack and the roof entrance.
And an odd thought followed him up. Except for last night, Ram didn't actually go to ground, she was more the sort to head for a perch, higher the better.
He couldn't say why, but the notion disturbed him quite a bit.
The metal door creaked on its hinges as Duncan opened it and stepped into the dark shadows of the dojo roof. She would have known he was coming in any case, he thought, even if he weren't making all this crunching noise on the gravel. He left the flashlight off and let his eyes accomodate. The last time he'd been up here it was to check on the duct work for the new heater system. That was two, no three, years ago.
It had all the appeal of a junkyard. A stand of metal debris, mismatched and poorly arranged. Where else would Chaos go? Too appropriate.
As Duncan's eyes adjusted, he began to make out the forms against the dim light of the waning moon. There was the fan housing and the electrical box and the plumbing vent.
A strange sound, like a broom or a palsied limb being dragged across the gravel jerked his gaze to his right where he saw the object of their day's long quest, kneeling on the gravel and humming or mumbling. Duncan could just barely distinguish her from the shadows of the high, pale wall behind her, one of the roof partitions he thought.
"Ram?" Duncan called out softly.
The humming stopped and she looked suddenly his direction. He had snuck up on her after all, when he would have thought that was impossible.
And again he heard the whisking, dragging sound, this time ending with a scurrying claw noise, like a rat scrabbling over the gravel of the roof. It stood his hair on end and made the missing patch at the back tingle. What thing was up here on the roof with them?
"Duncan, this is not for you," Ram's voice carried, melodious and clear through the night air.
"Ram," he began.
"This is not for you to see, Duncan. This is not for you to know. Go back down the way you came and I will return within the hour."
"No, Ram," Duncan clicked on the light but kept it pointed at his feet. Something was very wrong here. He heard again the scrabbling claws, the whisking, shifting noise across the gravel. There was danger here. He would not leave her.
"It is your choice, Lord Victorious," no little rue laced her acquiescence.
"What is this about, Ram? Why did you run? What are you----"
Suddenly, a much louder version of the scratching, scurrying sound, as if something, things, were trapped and struggling to scramble free. Bloody hell!
"What is up here, Ram? What is that?" Try as he might he could hardly keep the terror from his voice. Something wrong, something very wrong....all his battle instincts came to the fore, though he'd left his sword in the loft.
"Go back the way that you came and no harm will befall you, Duncan," Ram urged again.
"No. Ram, come forward into the light. I need to see you. I need to know you are all right."
"Then wait not one hour and I will be down and show you," Ram answered.
He watched her rising from her knees in front of the grey wall. She'd tied the T-shirt around her waist, leaving her chest bare except for some sort of light shawl around her shoulders. Odd.
"You are in peril if you refuse to leave," she said ominously.
"How so?"
"I will ravage you," Ram said in that way she had of making truth and jest indistinguishable.
Duncan was old enough and handsome enough to have heard just about every line in the book, but this one was entirely original. "I am flattered," he bowed.
"I am not joking, Duncan. I have been all this day singing threnody and saying eulogy for all my poor dead subjects and I am in no mood to be charitable. If you do not leave, I will take you as my people have taken yours since the beginning of time, because your life calls to us for sport and sustenance and pleasure."
Duncan shifted things around in his jeans and began to wonder how he might best tell Dawson and Adam to get lost, in a friendly way, of course. "I will take whatever you deem my just deserts," Duncan said with just a little less avowed seriousness than Ram had shown.
Ram started walking towards him, but an optical illusion, a trick of light, momentarily disoriented the Highlander. It seemed the white wall behind her followed her as she came, giving the effect that he was gliding towards her, even though he wasn't moving.
The effect was so stunning, it made him stagger a little. Then Duncan heard the vermin claws, the dragging scratch across the gravel, advancing with Ram, louder and more clearly than before, heading straight for him. He flipped up the halogen lamp.
And then, though he wouldn't have done so for all the world, he screamed.
Not a long, nor a very loud sound, but it escaped Duncan before his battle wits kicked in and he went silent and ready.
"If it makes you feel any safer," Ram's clear tones cut straight to his thoughts like a flame in the fog. "My bones are so light in this form that you could break them with just a squeeze."
Duncan couldn't speak. He concentrated on breathing and held onto the sound of her words as if they were a pathway out of this madness.
"I refer, of course, to the secondary arms, Duncan, not the wings."
She came closer and Duncan moved back. "Well, I told you, but you had to stay, you had to see. Hold your ground, Warmeat. See it all. What did you bring that torch for anyway?"
"Duncan!" her calling of his name hit him like a slap.
He lifted the light and tried to understand what he saw there in its ghastly circle.
Ram stood there. That much made sense. Her face was younger and almost a boy's face, but it was still Ram, a bit more birdlike, pale eyes and raptor's nose, more eagle and beak these. But still Ram, the face and the neck. Below that, the only familiar landmark was the T-shirt ripped at the neck and now tied around her waist. What he had taken to be a soft shawl over her shoulders was down and tiny feathers overlying a muscular extension, upwards, of her pectorals and shoulder girdle which led into...
No, last...he would consider the rest first. Ram's sternum pushed forward in a sharp keel down the middle of her chest to mid-abdomen. Her arms were slender and nearly devoid of the definition and muscling he was used to seeing there. Below the T-shirt she was much as before, except her legs were perhaps a little shorter, her thighs more thickly muscled, the lower leg more slender. Her feet were her feet, for which he was somehow supremely grateful. They had not made the strange sound across the roof. Ram was, at least, not clawed.
All right, Duncan, he said to himself, the rest...
His eyes traveled up beyond the "feather shawl" at her shoulders to what he had taken to be a white wall behind her. It topped in two arches six feet above her head, white or grey and soft along its edges. He re-aimed the light downward. The largest pinions he had ever seen, some of them nearly a foot in width, their ends grazing the gravel.
...and that was what he had heard--fluttering.
Her wings, furled, fluttering on the loose pebbles of the roof.
Wings.
"Duncan," she called more gently. "Brace yourself."
He widened his stance. Did she mean to pummel him? To beat him to death? Suddenly, ravaging did not seem such an enticing idea.
"Duncan, I wish you had never said this to me, because it will mean nothing when I say it to you," Ram sighed, "Nonetheless, I will not hurt you, Duncan."
With that she lifted the enormous carriage of those great, white wings and extended them in painful grace and aching majesty to their full width, from one edge of the roof all the way to the other, and then in the same liquid arc of motion, like a dancer doing arm positions, second to fifth, she brought them high over her head, twenty feet above them.
And the entire display saw Duncan take not one single breath.
"Duncan? Brother?"
Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod was raised in a culture which abounded with the Alfaeryn, later to be elven lords and the realm of faerie, the glamorye, the various Sidhe, Bean and others. This encounter should not have shaken him so. He could not reason how his wits had fled him so swiftly. "So this is what you are?" he heard himself saying, and he was struck by a memory of chasing after another woman through the Louvre.
"That is why Lucille had such a fit at the Winged Victory. She kept saying she had to find you, and then she got to the Victory of Samathrace and collapsed," Duncan found he could move again and he started forward toward Ram.
"I never meant to frighten her," Ram's eyes sparkled in the dim light. "I did not mean to frighten you. I tried to get away, to do this in private, but..." The wings snapped like the sails of a galleon and began to furl again.
"So," Duncan said, not quite as bravely as he might have wished, "when does the ravishing begin?"
With the wings tucked behind her like a cape, Ram preened her left shoulder with a hand much longer and more slender than her more familiar one. "I said ravage, Duncan. I think you have been, more than...or am I mistaken about that aching in your head which even now remains?"
She was right. Duncan's head still pounded. "Well, then don't I deserve some compensation?"
Ram laughed softly, "You deserve to be tossed off this roof for interrupting holy liturgy."
"Is that any way to address the Lord Victorious?" Duncan stood not an arm's length from her now. His palms tingled with an electric sensation and all he could think about was how he longed to touch her.
Ram moved towards him one step, but he did not back away this time. "This is not a convenient form for trysting, Lord, whatever you may think to the contrary."
Duncan reached his hand out carefully and touched the down and the feathers at her shoulder. He felt the muscle beneath shiver and his own flesh set up a harmonic tremor with the contact.
"You are not listening, Brother," Ram chided him.
"You said your bones are fragile," Duncan encircled her slender arms with his hands, pressing gently, "And," he glanced up at the arcs of her wings, "you can't lie down on your back. I understand." His hands traveled up again to the feathered shoulders and behind her long neck, drawing her closer to him.
"You won't think this," she pulled his right hand down from her neck and guided it along the sharp, jutting keel of her sternum, "is so sensuous if I plant it in the middle of your stomach. It would be like sleeping with a knife between us."
Duncan chuckled and pulled her close enough to touch forehead to forehead. "We will manage. There isn't anything under that T-shirt I should know about?" He traced the torn cotton at her waist.
Ram jerked back suddenly. The wings unfurled partly and swept into a nervous flutter.
"You're blushing!" Duncan laughed and his heart seized up in him like some ancient clockwork engine. He thought in all his years and years that he never had seen, nor would he ever see anything quite so touching as this angel before him, rose-flamed cheeks and neck, chin tilted down in a charming blend of embarrassment and fettered desire, a tender paradox of splendid serraph and lonely child.
Behind him, near the door, was a large metal chest, there since he bought the building, still there because...
Because it was waiting for just this moment, Duncan thought. And even if it wasn't, it is now. He walked backwards, leading Ram by her spidery hands, light as webs, slender as reeds. He sat down on the edge of the box and put his hands around her waist and started to lift her onto his lap.
Reflexively, Ram's unbalance forward shot her wings up behind her, flapping wildly and nearly flying her out of his grasp.
"Easy, Ram," Duncan said, leaning back against the strokes of her gigantic wings. She almost managed to lift his weight off the chest. "Relax," he added, making a soothing sound in his throat and trying mightily to remember anything Conner had taught him about falconry.
"Close your eyes," he said, in sudden inspiration, recalling a kestral who did much the same thing until it was hooded.
Ram obeyed and the great wings quieted and folded behind her and she "landed," floated lightly onto her knees on his thighs. Then she slid her knees each side of his legs and settled her full weight straddling his lap. She winced.
"What is it?" Duncan asked.
"My knees hurt," Ram apologized. "kneeling on the gravel all that time I suppose."
He adjusted her legs around his waist. "Better?"
"I suppose," she said awkwardly.
Duncan leaned back on his elbows. "I'm ready," he said.
Ram's head cocked to the side, and her eyes opened wide, blinking bird-like. "Ready?"
"Ravage or ravish, your choice. I'm ready. Have your way with me, Great Bird."
The long fingers curled together over the deep wing-keel and she threw her head back laughing like a curtain of silver bells blown in the wind. Then she leaned forward and began to unbutton his shirt.
Duncan noted that her left wing mirrored the movements of her left hand. He wondered if this were because she had to concentrate more completely on the hand that had been so crippled this past half year. It gave him an interesting perspective. Up till now he had thought of her wings as being a separate creature perched on her shoulders, but they were clearly her arms and hands. These others, opening his shirt, uncovering his heart, were newly-made shadows of the others, dream hands.
And they touched some shadow of his own flesh that was also born of dreaming.
Ram's face softened into reflective repose as her pale, attentive gaze followed her hands down the the buttons and under the edges as she slipped the shirt down off his shoulders and drew her fingertips over the creases of his deltoids. She crossed her index fingers in the hollow of his neck and traced sideways along his collarbones and then ran the flat of her palms down the broad plane of his chest, resting there and waiting.
Duncan's breathing slowed again, his heart stopped galloping. "Is there something wrong, Ram?" he said finally when she had remained still so long.
"You do know, Brother," her voice carried, clear and musical in the star-frosted night, "that I am all about The Great Lie, that nothing you believe about me is entirely true. I do not mean to be so false, but it is in the nature of Truth, wherein lies the Mystery which can never know that truth, but only speak it in the words of the artful falsehood, The Great Lie. I am Chaos. I am Legion. I am Damned."
Duncan could no wise understand what she had said. He knew better than to ask for an explanation. Instead, he asked, "Why are you telling me this?"
"I suppose for the same reason that you call out your name before you enter a Challenge," she replied. "Even though it is the baldest lie, it is still the greatest truth about yourself that you can say."
This stung Duncan. Being a bastard, he really had no name, but he was raised to be a Clan Chief, and so he was--more MacLeod than any born upon the earth, though he was no MacLeod at all. "Are you calling challenge, then, Ram?"
Behind her, the wings crested like the leading edge of some dire storm and she bent forward, arching her back to keep the keel away from his chest. Duncan watched the enormous pinions flare and climb far over his head, a great tent of soft darkness and downy sanctuary, completely covering them both. He felt her breath and lips against his chest and the dream hands moving down his belly to open the last separation between them as if the snap and zipper and canvas were some ephemeral veil and nothing more.
The wings uplifted and the reciprocal pressure drove Duncan onto his back. Then the pinions ruched out like a fan and Ram mounted him, swiftly and with no preparation. But there was none needed, she being as ready as he for this moment. While the abruptness startled him, Duncan had to admit they had worked a seduction on one another from the moment they had first met and a year's long foreplay was enough for anyone to bear.
Still, he would have wished a more orderly--as if, with Chaos--more elaborate congress to complete the exceeding complexities of their courtship.
Then her wings pulled forward in full yarak, like a braking hawk, and she began to move above him and Duncan drove his head back into the metal edge of the box trying not to howl like a beast of the field. Dear Lord! He thought himself experienced, but this was quite beyond anything he could remember, almost frightening in its intensity, almost beyond the limits of his ability to feel or even tolerate. He set his teeth against the weight and the pulse and the aching pain that flooded his belly and groin and rose to his throat, wracking his breath and tearing at his chest.
Duncan heard her breath race with his, her tiny cry and moan. He opened his eyes to see Ram's head thrown back, the pulse throbbing at her neck beneath the feather canopy. He would have called to her had he the breath to do so. Just when he thought the building pain would force him to throw her off, the great wings snapped once and she collapsed forward, driving the wing-keel hard against him.
And on that sharp and bony prow, Duncan sailed out of the night and into a realm where humans, even Immortals, rarely go, and which those blessed few have named, "Paradise."
 |
Duncan woke slowly, the chill night air frosting his bare shoulders with salt crystals where his sweat had dried. He rolled sideways to discover Ram lolled over on her side, sound asleep with her thumb in her mouth and her long fingers--her fingers, the wings were gone--curved over her nose. It was so reminiscent of his son, that it made Duncan sad for her.After a few adjustments to his jeans, Duncan removed his shirt and bent over the woman. "Ram," he called her name.
Ram's shoulders lifted and she stretched and yawned, running her fingers through her hair. "Just let me sleep here for a while. I won't bother anything."
Duncan might have argued that she had already bothered everything and there was no purpose to her spending any more time on the tar and gravel of the dojo roof, but he simply slipped his arm behind her shoulders and lifted her up to sitting. "Help me get this shirt on you, Ram."
She stuck an arm out and then her head slumped back and she fell sound asleep. It was like wrestling with Gumbee, Duncan thought. Even Sean was easier to dress. Duncan managed to get his shirt on her slender frame though it was a struggle. At the roof door, she woke up just long enough to laugh at his pathetic attempt at propriety, as if her wearing his shirt wasn't going to betray at least some of what had happened between them on the roof this night.
Ram had the bad grace--or the good timing--to be sound asleep again before Duncan had a chance to answer her back.
He might not have worried for appearances in any case since the loft was empty when he returned with Ram snoring in his arms. Duncan laid her on the bed and went to read the note that Adam had left him.
"Since you seem to be occupied, Honey Dunk," the letter began, "and Ram has been found and sounds if not happy, then at least hearty, Joe and I are off to Lucille's new apartment to speak with Dr. Lindsey and try to explain what has happened. We will doubtless be staying there the rest of the night. There's new coffee made and some (this was crossed out) a little (also crossed out)..."
"Alas, there is no cognac left. I hope you are still among the living when we return, but knowing Mother as I do, I'd set your odds about even money. Adam."
Well, Duncan thought, it wasn't exactly the blessings of the eldest male in the matter of Ram's hand, but it was probably as close as he was likely to come. He decided to make supper, in the spirit of celebration and the long-overdue dinner that he'd so rudely interrupted over a year ago. The larder was not stocked, not with Adam as house guest, but there was some roast beef and a fine mustard, french bread, and a passable wine. No, he thought, idiot! He'd drugged her with the wine that night. She'd probably never drink it in his presence again. He settled on coffee and sandwiches, oranges, apples, and cheese. Not a banquet, but something to offer and she was doubtless hungry.
Ram's comment about "her people" and how they'd long looked to "his people" as "sustenance," made him a little wary of letting her ever get too hungry. That, and the Knacker business, of which he would gladly remain ignorant for the rest of his life.
"Ram?" Duncan cleared one of the bedside tables and set it by the bed again with the dinner tray on top. "Wake up, Ram."
Ram pulled the sheets over her head and rolled over on her side, facing away from him.
Duncan took a big bite of one of the sandwiches and started chewing noisily, mmm-mmming, and commenting on how delicious everything was.
"Look," Ram said from under the covers, "If you promise not to start in with the 'here comes the airplane, make like a hangar' routine, I'll get up and eat something."
"Sounds reasonable," Duncan thought he'd have to start keeping a list of the dates he'd won a battle against the Danaan. He didn't think there would be many such times.
Ram threw back the sheets and sat on the side of the bed. She looked so fetching in his shirt, Duncan could hardly keep his mind on the meal.
"Are you all right," she asked him when she was done with the sandwich and most of her coffee.
"Fine, Ram. Why do you ask?"
"I just wanted to know I hadn't hurt you," Ram said quietly.
It was going to take him a long time to get used to her humor, Duncan thought. He was still not entirely sure when she was being serious or not.
"I suppose I wanted to find a way to tell you that won't happen again," Ram continued, "I wouldn't want you to be disappointed."
"What won't happen again?" Duncan could think of several answers to that question and he didn't like most of them.
"If we make love," Ram's voice hoarsened into a smoky whisper. "It won't be like that again."
"Would you think less of me if I said, 'Thank God!' Ram?'"
Ram's face dropped, "But you said I didn't hurt you!"
"Oh, Ram, no. No you didn't. It's just, just...that much, um," he cast about for a word, "Ecstasy," not wonderful, but it would work, "could be fatal, too much of a good thing...You understand?"
Her look was distrust, rather than confusion, but she nodded.
"Am I to understand," Duncan slid the table sideways and sat on the bed beside her, "that we are going to..."
"Have sex again?" Ram asked.
"It sounded like that's what you were saying, Ram." Duncan rubbed her back between her shoulders where she'd carried the major portion of the weighty wings.
Ram melted and leaned into his touch. "Is that how it sounded?"
"I thought so," he whispered close to her ear.
Ram's shoulders fluttered up as if the wings were still there and she shivered. "Did you?"
"Did I what?" Duncan asked and flopped down on the bed behind her.
"What you were saying," Ram looked behind her right shoulder and then her left. Then she twisted around and lay down on her side, facing him, propped up on her elbow.
Duncan folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. "And what was that, Ram?"
She walked her fingers up from his navel to the center of his chest, "Has anyone ever told you that you have a seriously wicked side to your noble personality, Lord Duncan?"
He scooped his arm under her and rolled them both to the center of the bed ending with himself on top. His turn, he thought, and no wings to accomodate.
"Just mean-spirited rumors, Woman. Petty pretenders."
Duncan wondered they had not known each other from the beginning of time. Surely in another life they were not two, but only one entity, floating in some primal sea. He felt, with pleasing certainty, that this current state of separation was merely an artifice of circumstance or time.
And each touch, or glance, or sound which led them into yet another reversion of that communion was only affirmation of the time when they had been one.
It made their loving more like play and they laughed more than they spoke, following some inborn knowledge that they carried of each other, even as they knew themselves. Duncan grew used to the abject lack of teasing and testing and waiting and wondering. He grew accustomed to how very easily they came together, how perfectly they fit in whichever fashion suited any moment, from violent to langorous. Moving from sleep to bath to breakfast and back to bed again, Duncan lost count of how many times they had made love. Even across the room from her there was that sense of lying in each others' arms.
As Duncan was now, standing at the stove making them a second breakfast and watching Ram curled up on the window sill by the rumpled bed. "So what is your pleasure this morning, Lady," he asked.
"You, of course," she laughed, looking out on the morning light and the old seaport.
"To eat, Ram," he tried again.
"Same answer, Lord."
It served him right, he thought, trying to pretend he didn't know she wanted only an orange and some milk. But he was still very hungry and he couldn't quite remember how to mix up the batter for those Malak pancakes he'd grown so fond of. Adam usually made them.
Duncan pulled down the flour and the bowl and...
A cool hand slid lightly down the back and onto the inner surface of his right thigh and took him down to the cold tile of the kitchen floor.
"Ram!" his counterfeit anger was in no way convincing.
Ram lay down beside him on her belly and elbows, kicking her feet in the air behind her. "I will make breakfast," she said. "I know how to make those silly faces Adam likes so much."
The mention of her eldest son, reminded Duncan, "Ram?"
"Yes?" She nuzzled his shoulder.
Duncan knew he would have to hurry, or he would forget again. "Ram, marry me."
"I am not with child again, Lord."
What kind of answer was that? "I didn't ask out of any sense of--"
"I know," she said.
"Well?"
"There are three truths about me that you do not know," Ram began, sitting up and facing away from him.
The sudden separation affected Duncan deeply and made him a little angry. "Yes," he hissed.
"Take me to that clearing across from your cabin and I will make these truths known to you."
"That's a three hour drive from here! Can't you just tell me?"
Ram continued as if he hadn't interrupted. "After you know these three things about me, if you still want to ask me to marry you, then I will say 'yes.'"
"Ram, there is nothing you can say to me, nothing at all which would change my mind about this..."
She stopped his protestation with her lips and her tongue and her constant heat, chasing all coherent thought right out of his skull...
...except for a disconnected last sentence which scurried round his brain saying, "This won't be one of those things to tell the grandchildren."
 |
It was nearly noon when the T pulled up to the boat dock across from the island. Ram had slept the entire ride which was only fair, since Duncan had napped while she packed the picnic and cleaned the loft. The silent ride gave him time to think about all the things which had happened and for which he had no particular feeling. Mark's death and Mike and Brandy, and Malak, whom he would never meet now, though he felt he knew the Danaan who had been Adam's favored teacher. Duncan might have felt guilty to let Anne suffer without him to give comfort, but the simple truth was: he did not care.Duncan knew he would, in some future time, be wracked by guilt for being so selfish now, but that would be then and there was nothing in the whole wide world would keep him from plighting troth to this very strange, very familiar, entirely unusual woman asleep beside him. The rest of the world and its miseries would just have to do without him today.
"We're there, Ram," he stroked her shoulder and kissed her forehead.
Ram sat up, "Already?" She looked around and got her bearings. "Come on, then," she leaned over to the back seat and pulled a sweat suit out of his duffel, the one he had worn yesterday, before he had to get dressed in more suitable attire for combing Seacouver for a lost elf. Retrieving an old pair of Richie's tennis shoes, many sizes too big for her, out of the same bag, she said, "Let's go."
They crossed the road and climbed up the embankment to the clearing where she had cured him of his demons and given him back Sean Byrnes....and cut his hair.
"Ram, can you tell me what we're doing here?"
"I already told you, Duncan," she laid down the sweats and shoes and walked to the center of the clearing.
Duncan started to follow her, but she waved him back, "Sit down and just watch."
So he sat down. If this was what she needed to do, then he would just watch. He had an idea what this was all about. His initial shock at seeing her in true form, or whatever that was, on the roof the night before, had made her uncertain as to his tolerance for her inhuman qualities.
Which to Duncan's way of thinking made her all the more human, but no matter, if she wanted this, then he could be patient. Ram had promised to say "yes," at that was really all that mattered.
When Ram reached the exact center of the clearing, she stopped, turned and shed her shirt and jeans and shoes, setting them in a pile on the dry pine needles from the winter before. She moved back to stand in the center again, paused, stared at him so sadly, Duncan was momentarily afraid.
Then the moment passed and she began to change.
She thinks I do not already know how this is done, Duncan thought, that I cannot have surmised that turning arms into wings must be an ugly, daunting business. No matter.
As he had suspected, the wings were a metamorphosis of her hands and arms. Making them involved disarticulating both shoulders upward as the new shoulder girdle formed to support them. While the new arms slithered forth from the old sockets and formed themselves into the spider hands that had touched him so profoundly that dark night.
Duncan set his teeth and made himself watch the first arms lengthen impossibly, the fingers grow out and feather as the muscles bunched and boiled over her shoulders to hold the forty-foot span of those awesome wings. A sound like bones breaking heralded the bursting forward of the wing-keel sternum and Duncan thought he would gag. He could not even imagine how painful this must be for her, but he wanted there to be no mistake about his reaction to this revelation.
Duncan held still and calm. Ram must not think him either distressed or disgusted by this.
There, she was done with this. He took a breath. Now she would come and tell him something really nasty about the Knacker or some other brutality born in her race, or out of the atrocity that was war, and he would forgive her the failings. Despite her conviction to the contrary, he would then ask for her hand and take her home to be part of the family she had, with him, created.
Duncan stood up.
She was still changing. The apotheosis was advancing. Her wings were becoming more shiny, darker and almost opalescent, flashing light across the park. The pinions withered as the spaces between the "fingers" webbed out their length. And she was growing taller, the molting wings wider and longer by half again and then double and more...
Something was going wrong here! Maybe she was too tired and.....
Oh, my God! Duncan's knees buckled and dumped him to the sharp needles. Ram was blackening as if she were being burned alive by some invisible flame, but this was not his undoing. As he had watched, her neck elongated like a snake, three, then five, then ten feet and more. Her face warped and swelled and blackened, her eyes closed briefly then opened all black and dead with no whites at all.
Duncan found his breath taken utterly from him. Her legs were gone, bunched and bloated into great haunches twice as high as he was tall. The wings were now entirely devoid of feathers, flashing...?
Scales, gilded onyx scales, the same that covered the body before him, larger than an elephant. Dear Lord, the wing tips grazed the clearings edge from side-to-side. He made himself look up again at Ram's face and was caught in the glory of the dragon's masque, the hypnotic, endless eyes, wherein whole galaxies of dark stars wound their endless orbs.
Around the clearing, sulfurous fumes filled the air and burned his eyes, but Duncan could not blink, nor look away. The great, winged serpent had taken him spirit and soul, pinned him on those black, black eyes.
The Beaste advanced on him slowly, tearing out chunks of sod with its gild claws as it came. It halted before him, lowered itself down on its belly and extended its neck out, resting the enormous head on the ground by his feet. Then it closed its eyes and Duncan was freed from that terrible fascination.
He could hardly breathe for the thick smell of brimstone, but he managed to force himself forward, to lay his hand on the mirrored scales of the masque, to say in the barest of voices, "That is enough, Ram, let us go home."
The great maw opened, in what he hoped was a smile. The ivory tusks within were bigger around than his forearm. Duncan was struck with the odd notion he had seen this face with just this expression somewhere before. It was so exceedingly familiar, but he could not think when or where that could have been.
Then the Beaste opened its eyes and curled its neck around, nuzzling its shoulder, above the wing, clearly indicating Duncan should mount.
"No, Ram," Duncan said a little more evenly, "If it is all the same to you, I'd rather drive home than fly."
Yesterday, he would not have believed any of this, but he knew this drake as he knew himself, and it really did not matter. She had played her strong suit first. Ram would not prevail. He yet would ask her to marry him. If he were going to be a Mr. Dragon, then so be it.
"I am going to get the picnic basket, Ram," he said to the dragon who was even now diminishing in size, returning to its original form. "I'll be back in a bit and we can eat lunch."
He turned back and called over his shoulder, "Unless you'd like to fetch us a cow and breathe us up a barbecue."
The blast from the snort behind him rolled Duncan down the embankment. "It was only a thought, Dear. No need to get your scales in a twist."
Duncan returned shortly with the basket and towels and blankets. Ram was already back to herself, lying on her side facing away from him, right knee bent over left, her muscled arms curved forward. The mottled light of mid-day was so strong it made her hair seem almost blond and set her muscling in high relief.
"Ram?" he was not surprised at her exhaustion. He was himself tired. They would have a nap together before the long drive home. Damn! Truly amazing how the most innocent thoughts....Well, he would have to relearn a modicum of restraint. Ram was going to be a very bad influence on him in matters of propriety.
He expected to see her, so even when she rolled gracefully onto her back, her arm crooked over her face, he still saw her for several moments, before he realized...
...and then Duncan took Joe's mournful cry in the ruined cathedral for his own, and the "NO!" of his denial shook the piney branches and shattered the glen, even as he was himself shattered.
The arm moved off the bright face, pale hair, cornflower blue eyes, and pushed the man up to sitting. "Lord Leod?" the tenor notes asked solicitously when Duncan had finally stopped howling.
Duncan wheeled and picked the man up roughly by his shoulders. "What have you done with her?"
The man mumbled something.
"What?"
"I said," the blond man repeated, "The polite thing to do would be to offer me some lunch before you pursue whatever dastardly course you have in mind."
Duncan dropped the man as if he were electrified.
"My name is Malak," the man said, reaching for the sweat suit and Richie's shoes. "We have not been formally introduced."
"Shut up. Let me think!" Duncan could not believe she had done this to him.
Malak finished dressing and sat down beside the basket, pulling out cold chicken and a loaf of bread. "Oh, this is very good," he exclaimed, "the little whore's gone quite domestic."
Duncan had him flat on his back, his strong hands round the blond man's neck before he could say another blessed thing. "Change back," he said.
Malak convulsed in laughter, "Oh, you are a prize, Warmeat! But--"
Without seeming to move at all, Malak had reversed their positions with Duncan now on his back and the blond man seated cross his middle, eating chicken and conversing, "Your manners could do with a basic review, though."
"Get Ram back," Duncan repeated.
"Oh, Lord Leod," Malak replied around his chicken filled mouth, "there isn't any Ram, any more than there is a Knacker. She was just an aberration, a breeding form. You might as well ask me to go through life as a dragon." He took another bite, "Now that hardly makes sense, does it?"
Duncan's eyes widened, "Malak? Adam's Malak?"
"At your service, Lord," Malak bowed and dismounted the Highlander. "I regret the rude introduction." His beautiful face twisted with a cheap smile, "Let me see, now, was there not a request you wished to make of me? Or would you like to hear the third truth first?"
Duncan moaned loudly. Ram had won. He could not ask this man to marry him. What did another truth matter?
"Well, I'll tell it to you anyway...just for completeness' sake," Malak smiled and patted the Scot's broad back. "Brother," he began, "Except there is a great span of time between us, we both began our lives in the very same place."
"Glenn Finnan?" Duncan asked.
Malak threw back his golden mane and roared. "No, and more's the pity, I am sure. No, Duncan, you and I share the same mother."
Duncan felt his jaw go numb. His stomach roiled and sent him down to his hands and knees, wretching so violently that he thought he would tear something inside of him.
As if the Lord MacLeod weren't already so badly torn that he would never be whole again.
 |
"Put this ice up against your neck," Malak suggested as he negotiated another switchback up the mountain to the pass that would take them over and down to Seacouver.Duncan MacLeod's reply was all but non-verbal. His abject dyspepsia had slowed their progress considerably and Malak hadn't been able to get the T more than ten miles down the road without stopping for the past two hours.
"If you would just let me touch you, Lord MacLeod," Malak suggested for perhaps the ninth time over, "I could stop that nausea for you."
Another Gaelic guttural flew his direction.
Undeterred, Malak continued, "It would be only fair, since you seem to think me responsible for this turn of events."
"No," Duncan breathed in raggedly. Malak was right about the ice. It did help...the nausea, if nothing else.
"Perhaps if you cursed at me some more," Malak suggested, his clear blue eyes never leaving the road. A decade since last he drove, some of the automatic nature involved in the skill still escaped him.
"I hate you," Duncan grumbled.
"Did you not say that was a sign of weariness? To speak the obvious?"
"Yes, Ram," Duncan sighed, moving the ice pack to the other side of his neck.
The T screeched to a halt and MacLeod was thrown up against the dash. Malak grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back, "Enough!"
Without asking again, Malak placed his hand on Duncan's abdomen and the Highlander gasped.
"There," said the blond man, "Now, get a grip, will you. And never call me that again!"
Malak threw the car into gear and screeched back onto the road. He was obviously enraged, the pale skin bright scarlet with his anger. As they crested the pass, his composure returned. "Lord MacLeod, forgive me my lapse, I can understand your dilemma, even if I do not entirely sympathize with it."
Duncan was damned if he would take comfort from this, this...creature.
"Tell me again how you perceived Watcher Dawson's false grief," Malak geared the T down to accomodate the steep descent.
As if he would be actually holding conversation with this usurper, Duncan thought. But the suggestion reminded him of his own coldness considering that Joe's loss of Set, while Ram still lived, was an illusion at best. Still, his own loss was a very different thing.
Malak said nothing to interfere with the Highlander's ruminations as they descended.
Duncan could not lead his thoughts in any reasonable direction. He was anxious about Sean and what this would mean, and how to keep the truth from him, or whether he should be told, ever. There was the problem of how to explain to them all what had happened to Ram, when he did not ken the thing himself. Probably similar to the situation between Adam and Joe and Anne. Poor Anne. Duncan saw before him a gaelic knot of generations complex as a letter in the Book of Kells. From solitary bastard to Uncle of the World, it seemed...for if he were brother to Malak, then according to the journal, he was not only uncle to Adam and Sean, but also to Mary, and God knew how many others.
And immediately he was reminded of the Lord Malak's story in Ram's journal and Duncan smiled grimly as he gathered in the new found weapon and considered how best to use it against this thing beside him.
"I am fully aware how irresistable the two trollops were to you and the Watcher, Duncan."
It was speaking again. "Two?" Duncan asked.
"Yes, Set and Ram, the Ladies of Questionable Virtue," Malak answered.
"And aren't you the one to talk," Duncan sent a testing blow across Malak's bow.
"I am. The very one," the blond man agreed. "Who better?"
"Well, I have heard differently," Duncan commented casually.
The car slowed as Malak turned to glance at the Scot.
"I have it on good authority that you were the palace catamite for over three years," Duncan said.
Malak hit the brakes so hard he spun the T clear around and it skidded onto the shoulder.
Kaboom, thought Duncan, feeling better than he had the previous three hours. "Must have been a dreary bit, servicing all the soldiers," he added.
"You have been misinformed, Lord," Malak's shoulders widened and his nostrils flared and his teeth bared, but not exactly in a smile.
Duncan was once again struck by the same feeling he'd had when the dragon smiled. Damnation! He knew that face, had seen it. Where? "You were not the Malak in the Tale of the Sothern Drifts?" he asked.
"I was the Field Marshall General in that campaign, yes," the blond man said with just a bit of lilting lisp, like a faulty steam valve. "but the rest involved the woman you call Ram and was no concern of mine."
Duncan's eyes narrowed, "You and she are not the same person?"
"Oh, God, no!" Malak answered immediately.
"Oh, right," Duncan offered to drive. "Adam said you don't indulge."
"Just so," Malak set the brake and got out of the car.
"Yeah, right," Duncan laughed, sliding over to sit behind the wheel. "Five thousand years of unbroken celibacy..."
"Well, actually," Malak got in on the passenger side and closed the door. "More like six, but who's counting?"
"I'd be counting every second," Duncan turned the car back onto the road.
Malak shrugged.
"Why?" Duncan hadn't intended an actual discussion, but he was weary of everything else that was bouncing around his skull and the new subject intrigued him, had done so since Adam first explained this aspect of Malak's personality. Well, frankly, he just hadn't believed it.
"By choice," Malak replied.
Well, that was surely speaking the obvious, if ever, Duncan thought. This man was comely enough to have been sought by both genders, enthusiastically. He was beautiful. "Why did you so choose?"
Malak slumped a little. It was clear this was not the first, nor the hundredth time he'd had to explain his chastity. Then a wicked sparkle lit his bright blue eyes and he took a deep breath. "Oh, where in the world?" he sang in a full, rich baritone, very unlike his soft tenor speaking voice.
"Is there, in the world?" he sang the second line, paused, and then waltzed into the break, "A knight so incredibly pure? C'est moi, c'est moi...."
Oh, dear, thought Duncan. It does show tunes. Malak was surely no Robert Goulet...
...and too bad for Bob.
Duncan punched on the radio. Once over the pass, they could usually get most of the 'Couver stations.
"I know you mean to shut me up," Malak observed, staring at the radio, "but you'll only encourage me." He leaned forward and dialed through the stations to something playing old Motown singles. "Yessss!" Malak raised his fists over his head. Then he punched Duncan to join in.
If the baritone had been different from his speaking voice, then this was something else altogether. If Duncan were to close his eyes, he might have truly believed Diana Ross was seated next to him.
"Baby, baaaby," Malak crooned. "Where did our love go?"
"Don't you leave me," Adam's teacher was a hoot, in Lucille's terms. "Don't you leave me this waaay."
And by some devious magic or another, Malak soon had Duncan--whose tastes ran to opera--doing the Baby, baby, backup lines.
When the song ended, Malak punched off the radio and continued it again from the beginning, and then again.
So it was that Duncan and the Danaan made it down the mountain, singing at the top of their considerable lungs an oldie, but definitely a goodie.
....and, oh, baby, baby,
Where did our love go?