Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) (30 page)

CHAPTER
2

Battle Dream

There was so much blood. My senses reeled with the unfamiliar heat of it, the stench, the sticky weight of it.

It was more than a dream. It had to be. The images were real, but hadn’t come from my own thoughts. It wasn’t my bloodstained hand that gripped the slick hilt of a sword.

But I knew whose it was. He was perhaps twenty, a few years older than I, with deep brown eyes. I had seen him my entire life. We had grown together since I was a little girl, in dreams as clear as waking days.

Usually when I saw him, he was at peace. Not this time. His dark hair was pulled back from his sweat-streaked face, tied into a tail. His teeth were bared. He was weak with injuries and exhaustion, disheartened by the sight of an endless tide of red coats pushing toward him through a field of smoke. Muskets and cannons boomed in their wake.

Every one of his muscles ached. I rolled over in my bed, feeling the tension between my shoulders though I was cradled within my mattress. His head thrummed, echoing the drums in the field, the crack of guns, and his racing heartbeat.

I felt what he felt, but my body was miles away. My eyes burned with gritty tears. My limbs were heavy, weighted down by defeat. The stink of sulphur singed my nostrils, and my feet squelched through ice-cold muck while my body slept in my warm, safe bedroom, the air sweet with baking bread.

The sensations roaring through my veins were unlike anything I’d felt before. Fear forced the blood through my veins at an exhilarating speed, but I had to control the panic. He was in grave danger. He needed more than encouragement from me. He needed me to be a part of him. My senses were alive, my body untouched. I gave him all I had, despite the fact I couldn’t touch him. Where he felt pain, I brought a healing touch. Where there was dizziness, I gave him strength.

A grunt alerted me to someone approaching from behind. In my mind I thrust out an arm, and the body I inhabited followed. He jumped, reacting to my unexpected presence, and I felt his sense of surprise. But of course I was there. I would never let him die. He took the strength I offered and turned it to rage. He roared, fighting for his life, twisting and moving with the violent grace of a wolf. His sword blocked a strike, although the smoke was so thick I almost didn’t see it happen. Steel sliced through the air on his other side, and I turned to foil its attack, knowing he would turn with me. Again and again he blocked killing blows and struck out, cutting through the attacking soldiers. His strength was returning, his confidence back in place. I felt a surge of power as it filled his body and mind.

All the silent communication from our childhood had brought us to this point. I would never leave him. I would be wherever, whatever he needed me to be, if only in his thoughts. I would give him courage and strength and love. And he would give me the same whenever my mind called to him.

Close enough that our minds were like one, far enough that we never felt each other’s touch. We were what we had always been.

HISTORICAL NOTE

A Little Back Story . . .

Somewhere to Dream
is Adelaide’s story, but a small part of my own family history is entwined with hers. I would like to thank my first cousin once removed, Patricia Hanson, for her diligence in passing along the family’s stories. I am so pleased that I was able to incorporate this one into Adelaide’s tale, thanks to Wah-Li.

As the story goes, in the early 1800s our ancestors, Greenberry and Elizabeth Taylor, came to northern Alabama from Washington County Tennessee (which was definitely Cherokee country), and they befriended the local Cherokees. At some point the daughter of the Cherokee chief fell quite ill, and the medicine men didn’t seem able to do anything for her. Patricia’s great-great-great-grandmother treated the girl with some “white man” medicine and managed to cure her. The chief was exceedingly grateful, and when the Cherokee scouts found out at the last minute about an impending attack by the Choctaws, the chief brought the Taylor family into their compound for protection. Supposedly the other white settlers in the area were massacred. Unfortunately, Patricia has never been able to confirm exactly where the Cherokees and Choctaws would have been in such close contact, nor that there were any actual massacres in this time frame (about 1810 or 1811), but that’s the story. Anyway, the Taylors, obviously feeling beholden, asked the chief what they could do to thank him. His response? He wanted them to name their first daughter either Cherokee or Tennessee. Unfortunately, their first daughter had already been christened, but they promised to name the next one Cherokee. Priscilla Cherokee Taylor, born in April 1812, was Patricia’s great-great-grandmother.

Rumour has it the Cherokees may have camped on land owned by Priscilla Cherokee’s husband, Robert Jemison, Jr., when they passed through Tuscaloosa on the Trail of Tears. Patricia read that they were camped on Hargrove Creek (which runs through the Jemison plantation) when their chief gave an impassioned speech to the Alabama legislature.

The family name, “Cherokee,” has since been passed down from mother to daughter for seven generations.