Convicted Innocent(34)

“The magician will have his show,” Tipple’s face and voice back to their normal, reassuring mildness. “But at least we’ll be expecting his tricks and will see more than he expects of us.”

* * * * *

They hadn’t run like this since they were children.

Sunlight painted vivid splashes of gold on the forest floor. She leapt over the smaller ones as she sprinted, laughingly glancing over her shoulder at him as she wove through the trees. They moved with the grace of dreams – almost flying rather than touching the ground.

He finally caught up to her on the riverbank. She splashed into the shallows up to her ankles; he flopped down on the cool earth under a tree. They laughed to each other, at each other, but said nothing.

When she sat down next to him after a bit, he tossed her a flower the same brilliant purple-blue as her eyes, and which was her namesake as well. He felt his smile soften as she pressed the tiny blossom to her nose. His eyes went wide, though, when she then leaned over and gave him an impulsive peck on the cheek.

Time, the breeze rustling the leaves overhead, the gurgles of the river along the bank – all these seemed to slow as their eyes met and held. The laughter faded and a serious sort of anticipation budded in its place.

He reached out to brush away a stray, windblown chocolate lock curling down the side of her face, and couldn’t help but lean toward her. Their lips would meet in the middle; the idea filled him with joy and nervousness and boldness and shyness all at once.

An inch apart, he closed his eyes…

…and opened them again in the dim morning light of the clay dusted cell.

“A pleasant dream, I gather?”

Hearing that dry rasp, David Powell sat up in surprise.

There, not an arm’s reach away, sat his friend: awake, alive, breathing easily – alive.

“Lew!”

The other man smiled slightly at the priest’s obvious delight.

“A surgeon came?” Lewis gestured to the neat row of a dozen or so stitches on his side, pasted over with some yellowish ointment. The Chinaman hadn’t bandaged his work.

“A medicine man from the Orient. That gang leader – the fighter – brought him.”

“Ah.”

“Old fellow bled you like a stuck pig and plucked your ribs like a harp.”

The policeman grunted and poked at the surgeon’s handiwork for a moment, then looked back at the priest with a concerned frown.

“A good bit of work – I can barely feel a thing…but at what cost to you?”

“If you’re referring to the lovely state of my complexion—” David touched his bruised face gingerly, “—attribute it to my own wisdom and good fortune. I was rather angry last night and thought it only fair to spread the wrath around.”

“How poorly are you?”

“Compared to you? I’m rather well off: merely lumps and bruises. My head is harder than yours, I think.”

Lewis looked for a moment as though he weren’t sure whether David spoke in bravado or truth, but only asked, “Who’s that other fellow?”

The priest looked around and saw Innocent sleeping in a huddled heap not too far away, his back to them.

“Another soul caught up in this mess, picked up by the same chaps who nabbed us, though his lot seems different from ours.” David licked his cracked lips and looked back at his old friend. “Decent young fellow who saved me from the worst of their attentions last night. He’s been helping me tend to you. He also says you know each other. Name is Innocent.”