Stormfeather Ch. 02

In the morning she remembered everything with absolute clarity and had a fierce hangover as well. She wasn't certain that he lived now, or ever had. Perhaps it really was some strange, twisted imagining that had come out as she slept. She'd never had any dream like this series, nothing as real to her or even remotely as powerful. But Amy found herself longing to see him again. She felt as though she'd been given a weird gift to have had the privilege to have seen him at all, for she'd seen for herself how most individuals who he'd been near never noticed his passage. She wondered about the dreams, but in the light of day it was easy to push them aside as she rode. She had other things to think about now.

Whenever she was in Santa Fe, Amy was a proper lady, and mostly acted the part. Here in Portales, there were no such constraints on her. Here, she was known to be a bit of a hellcat to those who tried to cross her. She minded her own business, but there had been a time or two where she'd come to the attention of the law.

The most notable had been the day last year when she'd stepped into the saloon to meet her Pa ahead of the appointed time and had put up with the unwanted amorous attentions of a drooling and persistent drunkard for as long as it had taken her to get untangled from his grasp. When he'd picked himself up clutching his injured privates, he'd loudly threatened to kill her.

Amy had run out the door into the street and he'd followed her. He was amazed to find her waiting calmly for him in the middle of it. He took a few steps toward her, but she loudly reminded him of his threat as she drew her father's Colt and held it at her side. He took one step more but stopped when she cocked the pistol.

By that point, the normal bustle of the square had fallen off to a breathless silence and the quiet click of the old Colt Dragoon's hammer being pulled back under Amy's thumb had mesmerized everyone present. She still hadn't drawn down on him, but stated that she wanted to be left alone and would defend herself if necessary.

Whether it was bruised male pride or the whiskey, no one could tell, but he drew his own gun and his last breath right afterward. Amy had been arrested, but the next day, the court ruled in favor of her plea of not guilty by reason of self-defense. The fact that she'd shot her assailant through the eye had not been lost on the bystanders and she was never bothered again, though she restricted her time in the place to broad daylight afterward.

This morning, Amy was in town to see her benefactor of that day. She nodded toward a few acquaintances on the wooden sidewalks and dismounted to tie up her mare up outside Judge Blake's office and stepped inside.

Judge Clayton Blake was an old friend of her father's and had always taken a kind interest in Amy's affairs. Seeing her in the waiting room, he ushered her into his office and expressed his deep condolences for her loss, though they'd seen each other at the funeral the day before.

Amy sat in some confusion as the will was read to her. Within a very few minutes it was clear to her that she'd be leaving with the title to a place that she had no idea what to do with for the moment and quite a sum of money. Until very recently, she'd never thought much about how they'd made ends meet. They'd farmed, sure, but it had never been a large operation. With her brother gone, her Pa had gone on alone working the place, and he'd hired on the occasional help as he needed it.

Judge Blake wasn't terribly forthcoming and Amy suspected that he had his own reasons for that, but putting things together in her mind, she concluded that her father had still had quite a bit of his "sailing money" left. She left instructions to have the money wired to her bank in Santa Fe. Amy withheld a bit of the cash and asked the judge if he thought it wise to arrange to have someone dependable and trustworthy look in on the place at intervals and write to her of any problems.

Judge Blake suggested the closest neighbor as that someone, and floated the idea that the lower half of the large pasture might be of use to him to graze his own cattle on for payment, if possible. Amy stated that she'd think about what to do with the place later, but she intended to come out once during the summer and then she doubted that she'd be back before the following spring.

Amy accepted the judge's offer of some Irish whiskey and they drank a small and quiet toast to the man who had been a true friend to the one-time unknown eastern lawyer who had come west at the suggestion of his old friend. Looking back, Clayton stated that taking her father's advice had been the best thing that he'd ever done, and that as long as he lived, he'd have Amy's best interests at heart.

At length, Amy stood up and kissed the judge's cheek and thanked him for everything that he'd done for her father until she'd arrived. She walked out and mounted up. With a smiling wave, she turned and began the ride back to the farm, wiping the occasional tear as she went.

On the way back, she stopped in at the neighbor's farm and they settled up over the few remaining cattle. In this part of the world, the term 'neighbor' applied, though the nearest one in this case was almost a mile distant. Amy paid the man for his care of her father's animals the previous week and he accepted the cattle as payment for looking in on the place on a fortnightly basis and writing her regularly on the state of things for the next two or three years.

Amy rode on to her farm and sat on the porch for a while before she put on her father's old gun belt and snugged it up to the holes that he'd made there for her to wear it without having to worry about gravity making her look like a fool. After tying the lower part to her leg, she sat down on the porch again with tears in her eyes and slowly loaded the old percussion Colt with patience and deliberation. The simple act of it calmed her and made her feel a little less alone in the world.

After her dinner, she started the fire and looked at her father's whiskey bottle on the mantle where she'd left it the evening before. As far as she could tell, she'd done what had needed to be done, and now had another evening and night alone here before she resumed her schoolmarm way of life for a time. Amy gazed into the flames for a moment lost in thought.

The question which now lay before her had nothing to do with her own affairs. She found her thoughts returning to the life of the man whom she'd seen in her dreams the night before. She found that she really hoped to dream of him again. The notion seemed impossible to her. Like most people, Amy had no control over the nature and direction of her dreams. They just came to her – or not. The idea of wishing to have a dream of a specific topic or individual seemed absurd to her, but it was what she now wanted.

She looked at the bottle again and wondered how much of what she'd dreamt had come from its contents. There wasn't even enough left to get her drunk. She decided that, given her loss and the scope and magnitude of the decisions which lay before her, she'd be justified in sipping her way slowly through the last of what was there. She guessed that there was no more than two shots left and for her that would last the whole evening, now that she wasn't specifically grieving. She didn't want to get drunk tonight any more than she'd wanted it the previous evening.

She walked out onto the porch and looked at what she'd inherited. She had no clue what to do with it and so she shrugged after a last look around at the warm glow of the setting sun and stepped back inside to bolt the door. She picked up the bottle and sat at the table before the hearth with the bottle, a shot glass, and her sketching materials.

"Well," she addressed the bottle as she began to draw a scene of the distant mountains from memory, "you sure had a strange genie in store for me last night. All I want tonight is to find that one dream again, my glass friend. I don't know if you can do that for me, but I'd appreciate it if you'd try."

Amy sketched out three works roughly and put them in her folder to finish in Santa Fe. Sitting back down, she stared into the gently roiling flames in the hearth and sat remembering what she'd seen the night before. It took the rest of the evening, but she finished the bottle and went to bed feeling hopeful to see him again and she found herself yearning to learn more of him.

In the early morning, Amy looked like the same young woman as she tied the scabbard for her father's Sharps rifle to her horse and saddled up for the long ride home. She looked like the same gangly youth as the miles passed beneath her horse's hooves on the dusty road. But she'd seen things in her dreams which had changed Amy very slightly and the nature of them forced her to consider them as she found herself picking her way through the afternoon heat for the last few miles on the last day's ride. There was something that Amy found both troubling and vaguely exciting.

Riding up the drive at Maeve's home, Amy's mood hadn't brightened, but her great aunt could do that. For an elderly woman, Maeve was still sprightly and spry. She considered every day that she woke up a blessing and treated each one that way, too. After getting her mare into the stable, she asked the hand there to make sure that she was well fettled. Amy took the rifle and her roll up to the house. She asked the housekeeper to tell Maeve that she was home, and for tea to be brought to the drawing room.

Amy's mood remained somber over her father's passing – that was true. But the revelations of her dreams required a fair bit of contemplation. If it weren't for the iron constraints of time and space, Amy would have been overjoyed. As it was, the overall effect on her was subdued by other recent events.

When she could spare a second for her own idle thoughts, she now often found herself with a very small smile, thankful for one tiny feeling within her breast, and she couldn't even tell herself why or how she knew it to be true. For no logical reason that she could fathom after the days of riding back to Santa Fe – and she'd spent those days sifting it in her mind – she felt a vague knowledge about the man whose life had invaded her dreams.

She didn't know where it was that he'd been born other than it was a place where the indigenous peoples had met savage fair-skinned European invaders long ago. The man whose life she'd glimpsed had been a by-product of that clash. Since she knew that it snowed there in winter, it contradicted what she'd learned about the first discovery of the New World. She didn't know how he could do the things that she'd watched him do in her dreams. She didn't know what he'd become after the visit of the other two-legged beast, or where he'd wandered to in the time after that. Amy knew only one thing.

Somehow, Amy knew almost without a doubt that he was alive. What had come to her was a lot of what she'd wanted to see. She just hadn't been at all prepared for the epiphany of how it related to her.

And it did relate to Amy Monaghan.

Very, very personally.