„It’s three miles to your cabin,“ Raven called. „Let Hawk take you home.“
„It’s all right, Raven,“ Janna said calmly, looking over her shoulder. „I’ll walk on the edge of the sea. When the tide turns, it will be like I never was.“
Raven closed his eyes, wanting to go to Janna, hold her, comfort her and himself. But it would be a cruelty, not a kindness. He had to be strong enough to be kind.
Janna watched Raven for a long moment before she turned away. She walked swiftly, cleanly, and she didn’t look back again.
Raven opened his eyes and watched her until he could stand it no longer. Then he closed his eyes against the agony twisting through his soul.
„Carlson?“
Raven flinched from the soft voice and softer touch on his arm. Deliberately he stepped aside, beyond Angel’s reach.
„Aren’t you going to go after her?“ Hawk asked.
„I never should have touched her.“ Raven’s eyes opened. They were black, wild, almost frightening in their intensity. „I couldn’t stop myself. I knew Janna was mine in some primitive, unspeakable way the first time I saw her.
„So did she,“ Hawk said. „She loves you, Carlson. It shows in every – “
„Gratitude,“ Raven interrupted in a harsh tone. „Not love.“
„How can you be so sure?“ Angel asked.
His sudden laughter was as dark and savage as his eyes. „Angel Eyes,“ he said gently. „Sweet, beautiful Angel Eyes. It’s so simple. I’m not the kind of man a woman loves. Of all people on earth, you should know that.“
Angel went pale. „Carlson,“ she said, throwing her arms around him, „I never meant to hurt you like that. It was my fault, not yours. There’s nothing wrong with you!“
„Don’t cry for me,“ Raven said quietly, stroking the burnished gold of Angel’s hair. „Even if I could, I wouldn’t change what happened in the past. I’m not the other half of your soul, and I never could have been. Hawk is. And,“ Raven murmured, „you aren’t the other half of mine. I know that now.“
„But Janna is,“ Angel said urgently. „She’s the other half of you.“
„I know,“ Raven said. „And I know that gratitude isn’t love.“
„You’re wrong about Janna,“ Hawk said quietly. „I was raised on gratitude, not love. I know what gratitude is and what it isn’t. It isn’t a woman’s eyes following you everywhere, her fingers touching you when there’s no need, her voice softening when she says your name, her smile more beautiful for you than for anyone else on earth.“
Raven couldn’t bear to hear any more words. He wanted to believe them too much. He no longer trusted himself to listen.
Abruptly he turned away and walked toward his car, letting his tracks mingle with the others, blurring all distinctions as to whom had gone out to the beach of illusions and who had returned. Yet still Hawk’s voice followed, carrying clearly on the wind.
„Janna looks at you the way Angel looks at me. The way I look at Angel. The way you look at Janna. Not gratitude, Carlson.
Overhead, gulls wheeled on a gust of wind, keening and crying to one another, and their calls became Janna’s name echoing in Raven’s mind. The breakers took up the cry, chanting in deeper tones, while the wind’s supple voice mourned in counterpoint. He saw Janna wherever he looked, tasted her on his lips, felt her in the heat of his own blood sliding through his veins. She was everywhere, a part of everything; but most of all she was part of his soul and he was crying her name within the silence that only she had ever touched.
Raven drove quickly to the
Slowly Raven pulled the book out. He had never looked at Janna’s sketches. She had never offered to show them to him, saying that after seeing Angel’s stained glass creations, anything else would be a disappointment.
The sketches were like Janna herself – direct, often humorous, honest, and with an underlying sensuality of line and shading that made Raven ache with memories. He could hear her rueful laughter in the drawing labeled „God’s Own Washing Machine,“ which showed jeans and shirts slung over any handy railing while rain poured down over them, washing away salt and sand. He could see Janna’s honesty in the sketch of a totem labeled simply „Before.“ She drew the Haida icons without embellishment or softening, accepting without evasion the Haidas’ comfortless view of man in relation to the universe.
Page after page turned beneath Raven’s careful fingers until there was only one page left. He turned it and felt his scalp tighten in primitive response. At first the sketch looked like the others, but there were aspects of it that teased his mind until realization came. There were shadows that suggested a man’s watchful eyes, a seemingly random collection of curves that became a face superimposed on the sea, a mist- wrapped mountain that evoked a man seated, thinking, a very powerful man with black hair and granite strength and eyes that flinched from nothing.
And all of the men were Raven.
Raven’s features in infinite variations, his eyes and mouth repeated in forest and mountain, ocean and totem, Raven smiling or intent, asleep or in the grip of passion, calm or at the instant of hottest ecstasy, gentle or fierce – Raven, always Raven. It was as though nothing lived, not even the sea itself, that wasn’t animated by Raven’s own breath, his own life flowing into everything, becoming part of it.
He looked at the drawing until he could no longer see it, and then he put his face in his hands and wept, knowing that he had finally heard a love song for a raven.
Mist condensed with the falling sun, giving the land a mysterious gloaming that was as haunted as the vanished rose illusions. Janna had stopped a hundred yards from her cabin and turned to look at the long, wandering trail she had left on her walk out of Eden. She didn’t know how long she had been standing there watching the ragged black stitches she had left behind in the sand, stitches that were being unraveled by the returning tide. Now there was nothing left but shadowy hollows where spindrift gathered. The next wave would wash away even that, leaving nothing at all.
„If I could, I would paint sky and mountains, sea and forest, and they would all be you.“
The soft, deep voice sent shivers over Janna’s skin and made her doubt her sanity in the instant before she spun around. Raven was standing within reach, as though he had condensed from the primal night and her own dreams.
„If I could,“ Raven said, „I would have the wind calling your name in all times and seasons, and the mist-veiled forests would have been created just to match your eyes. But I’m not an artist or a god. I’m only a harsh-voiced raven flying over an empty Eden, crying for what I wanted so much that I was afraid to believe that it was finally mine.“ His big hands came up, framing Janna’s face, trembling as they touched her softness and warmth, „I have no beautiful songs to fill your silences, no worlds to remake in your image, no special way to tell you that you’re the other half of my soul.“
„Raven – “ Janna’s voice broke. „I don’t need special gifts or songs or anything but you. Just you, Raven.
The words swept through Raven, transforming him.
He lifted her high in his arms and held her close, telling her with his strength and his gentleness and his whispered words how much he loved her, feeling his love returned with every touch, every breath, her vital warmth enveloping him as he held her.
Beyond them the last of the footprints leading from Eden dissolved into the mist and moon-silvered sea. Neither Janna nor Raven noticed. They had found the only Eden that mattered, and they would hold it forever in their arms.
