Written for the 2016 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.

Summary:  What if Ben hadn’t seen Adam pulling Kane through the desert just before abandoning the search? And what if the only thing keeping Adam going…stopped?

Rated:  T     Word count:  5403

Siren Song

This was the tenth day. They’d been riding since just before sunup, and if Ben was honest with himself, there were moments when he’d been so exhausted he’d forgotten exactly why they were out there. So Hoss’s plea took a minute to reach his ears: “Pa, it’s been two weeks since he left Eastgate.”

He thought it over, but he couldn’t concentrate long enough to come up with a good answer. Finally he settled for, “Yeah.” His voice came out raspy, little more than a whisper. “Yeah, I s’pose you’re right. All right, let’s go on back home.”

Joe nodded, looking around one last time. He only saw what they had seen for the last ten days: rocks, half-scorched shrubs. A couple of patches of dead grass. No sign of another human being. He rode alongside his father and reached out a hand to steady the older man. “Come on, Pa.”

They turned their horses back the way they had come.

**********

The dust they raised had not quite settled before a tall man appeared on the jagged horizon. Wearing a ripped-up, filthy white shirt and black pants, his hat long gone, he was dragging a travois. The ropes on the travois were cutting into his shoulders; the tall man stopped for a moment to adjust them, then he trudged forward again, mumbling to himself.

“…High over the full-toned sea/O hither, come hither and furl your sails/Come hither to me and to me…”

He seemed to see them, just as the just as the mariners of the poem did: sea fairies, spinning in the dust before his eyes. As he had conjured them, so had he conjured the water in which they frolicked: “Betwixt the green brink and the running foam/Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest/To little harps of gold…” His vision blurred. He blinked a few times, but still they swirled just in front of him, more energetically than before.

He crashed to the ground, the song still in his ears, and when the mule train found him a couple of hours later, the real world had been replaced in his mind by a world in which the sea fairies reigned.

**********

Inger’s store only carried five books, and they were all used; a few people coming through had offered them in trade for more urgent necessities, and Inger never had the heart to refuse them. People seldom bought books, though, so she was surprised when Ben Cartwright picked up one of them, looked through it, considered for a moment, and held out a coin, as he confided with a smile, “It’s for Adam.”

“Do you think he’ll like it?” Inger asked, looking doubtful. “I don’t understand some of the words. Will he?”

“Oh, I expect he will,” Ben said, looking back at the leather-bound volume. Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson. He’d never spent so much on a book before, especially not on a used book, but somehow he was certain that the dollar had been well-spent. “I’ve been reading him poetry since he was born.”

Within two days the boy had memorized “Nothing Will Die.” But it was “The Sea Fairies” that he asked Ben to read again and again, and somehow Tennyson’s poetry was inextricably entwined in Adam’s mind with his father’s courtship of the lady who became “Mama Inger” and later, simply “Mama.” She was not a great reader, but she tried, for Adam’s sake, to read the poetry to him too, and her lilting voice made up for any shortcomings in pronunciation. Adam found it nice to have a traveling partner after all those years of just him and Pa alone. There were some curious aspects to having her along—all those strange noises she and Pa would make sometimes when it was late and Adam was trying to sleep—but being a great cook covered a multitude of sins, and until Adam got sick again, he found the trip westward to be great fun.

When they were within sight of the Mississippi, though, the fever Adam had had before came upon him again. This time it was worse. Inger was fighting her own morning sickness; it did not help that Adam had just thrown up again, missing what he called the “puke bucket” and spattering her apron. She smiled weakly and cleaned his mouth with a wet rag, then dipped it in the other bucket and wrung it out before putting it back to his forehead. “Maybe you’ll feel better now,” she whispered.

“Yes’m,” he croaked. His eyes, reflected like gold in the flickering campfire, shone up at her, but he did not speak again.

“Your pa will be back soon, Adam.”

He nodded and the silence hung over them like a cloud.

“Do you know any sea stories?” Adam’s voice sounded like he had swallowed charcoal.

“I’m sorry, Adam, I don’t. I’ve never seen the sea.”

“But Pa said you came from…”

“My father came from over the sea.” She had never quite got the hang of some sounds, though, so it came out like “My faddr came from over da tzee.” She sighed, resolving to work on her accent; she wanted her sons to be able to understand her. “I vas born here, Adam.”

The boy was smiling faintly. “I like the way you talk…Mama Inger. Would you tell me a story from over the sea? A fairy tale?”

Inger knew a few Swedish fairy tales. Most of them were not very nice, though: the devil and the Smalanders; those elves who killed nice young preachers…Swedish fairies were a little more sinister than the gentle English ones. She cleared her throat and finally smiled. “I will tell you a Svedish fairy tale, Ad’m…about a princess who married a lame dog.”

He listened, enraptured as she described the toad, the wolf, and the lion who had tried to coax the princess away from her lame dog, and how she remained faithful through each temptation until at last the spell was broken and the lame dog became a handsome prince. He was asleep before she got to the “happily ever after,” and for a change, he slept through the night.

**********

They were a group of Mormon traders on their way from Salt Lake City to Sacramento. “One’s dead, and one’s halfway there,” Lehigh Fitch pronounced, looking up from the two men they’d discovered.

“We’ll take care of them accordingly,” Joe Wright said.

They buried the one and nursed the other as best they could: water and beef broth for nourishment, and ginger syrup for the stomach upset…but when he finally came round, they had no idea what to do with him, for he could not tell them who he was. In fact, he could tell them little of anything. He was sun-blind, unable to see much of anything. While he spoke English, his words were all a frenzied jumble about gold and games, fairies and frogs, slaves, beasts, and the need to kill and the need not to kill. Everything he said was punctuated by wild-eyed stares directed at some beast or frog or fairy they could not see. The mule team they were driving seemed to make him even more frantic—every mule he saw rated the scream “Epicene!” and an attempt to shield it from something, whether whip or gunfire or flying dragon, they could not tell. As Joe Wright declared, “Nothing the man says makes a lick of sense.”

Although their caravan had come through Eastgate—they had even heard the story a few towns over, of the two outlaws who arrived in Salt Flats with a large sum of cash, who had shot up the town before in turn being shot up themselves—nobody had heard about the man they had robbed and left horseless in the midst of nowhere. So the Mormons had nodded sympathetically to the townspeople and murmured about the wages of sin; then they had gone on their way. But when they found the man in the desert, and tried to do right by him, he was clearly not right in the head, and all they could see was that he was slowing them down.

“He’s skittish,” Moroni Smith observed. “Worse than a yearling colt. Always trying to escape. He’s stealing water every chance he gets. And why does he insist on eating with his hands?”

“And that business about the fairies,” muttered Joe Wright. “Whither away, whither away? Where’s he getting that from?”

“Forget the poetry,” Lehigh Fitch said. “Forget his own nerves—he’s makin’ the mules as skittish as he is. It’s the mules that worry me. He’s always trying to set them free—and that’s going to get us all killed. We’ve got to get shed of him.”

As it happened, they were passing through the land of a young man named Michael Fallon, who was the sole resident within nearly fifty miles in any direction. Fallon had offered them his hospitality—he also owned the only water for nearly fifty miles in any direction—and shelter, but after their quick meeting, the Mormon leaders decided there was only one thing they really wanted from him. “You need a farmhand?” they asked innocently. “Brother, the Lord has provided. Our friend John, the big fellow yonder asleep so peaceful, is in need of occupation.”

With that, they left the stranger with Fallon. Four days later, they arrived in Carson City, where the big news was that one Adam Cartwright, eldest son of the most prominent rancher in the area, had disappeared and was presumed dead. But the Adam Cartwright they heard described—quiet, bookish, even-tempered, perhaps a little moody, but generally a well-respected fellow—was so little like the raving stranger they had found in the desert that it never occurred to them to make the connection.

**********

The snow had barely melted when they joined the wagon train, and the ground was a gloppy mess of boot-sucking, viciously cold mud. But the fires still needed wood, and all the men and boys remaining were assigned to bringing it in. Three men, the leaders of the wagon train, had gone off to scout the trail for the upcoming day’s ride; Ben Cartwright was among them. When enough firewood had been brought in that the boys were released, Inger found Adam huddled under the wagon, rubbing his stiff fingers.

“Will you sit with me by the fire, Adam?”

“I will if you tell me a story, Mama,” Adam said with the bargaining tone of a horse trader. “I’ve been helping the other boys chop firewood. See my hands?”

“Yes, you are a giant icicle,” Inger muttered, rubbing Adam’s red, rigid fingers with hers. “Come and sit by the campfire before you’re frostbitten, and I will tell you the story of Crow-Cloak.”

They sat down near the blessed warmth and Inger told Adam about the poor girl forced by her family to live in the ash bin until she was befriended by a mountain troll. The troll dressed Crow-Cloak in fancy dresses of gold and silver and sent her off to church each week, but she always had to hurry home before her wicked people came back. One day she left the church in such a hurry that she stepped in tar and left a shoe behind…

“I’ve heard this one,” Adam said. “But you’re wrong, Mama; her name wasn’t Crow-Cloak. It was Cinderella. And it wasn’t church—it was a ball. And it wasn’t a mountain troll—it was a fairy.”

“I think the fairies in England must be much nicer than the ones in Sweden.” Inger pulled Adam onto her lap. “Did you get your feet wet?”

“Not very much.”

She sighed—Adam’s “not very much” usually meant “yes, a lot”—and untied his boots, removing his socks and laying them across a couple of the stones that ringed the fire. Then she began to rub his half-frozen, clammy feet. Adam watched with detached interest, but after a moment he looked up at her.

“Mama, I’ve seen you do this for Pa, but how come you’re doing it for me?”

“Because it’s what mamas do,” she said.

“I remember Pa used to rub my feet sometimes when I was little and they were cold,” Adam said thoughtfully. “But I’m five now. Nearly six. He doesn’t do it anymore.”

“He would if he was here. He’s off with the men right now, though.”

“I know. He’s gone a lot. But don’t worry, Mama, I’ll take care of you when he’s not here. Pa’s always been gone a lot, so I’m used to it.”

“Adam…” There was a gentle reproach in Inger’s tone. “Your papa doesn’t want to be gone from you. And he’s always with you, even when you can’t see him.”

The boy’s dark eyes flicked away from her. “Maybe.”

“You don’t believe me?”

One shoulder moved. “Pa told me that too. Now you’re gonna have a baby soon, and what if Pa tells that baby the same things he tells me? Then how can he be with both of us at the same time?”

“Your papa has a big heart. If he had a dozen boys, there would still be enough of him to be with all of you. And…” she smiled. “It’s true with me, also.”

He looked back at her. “His heart’s with you too?”

“That, yes, but also, my heart is with you even when you can’t see me.”

Adam said nothing, but his hazel eyes stayed on her for a long time. When his socks were dry, she forced the stiff wool back over his feet and tied his boots back on.

“’member the Sea Fairies?” he asked suddenly.

“How can I forget?” She smiled. “You make your father recite it all the time.”

“Do you know it too?”

“I certainly ought to; I’ve heard it enough.”

“Say it to me, Mama.”

Adam wasn’t really a cuddly boy; Inger was always half-surprised when he allowed her to hold him on her lap, but now he leaned against her, his head against her shoulder, and put his hand in hers as she began, “Slow sail’d the weary mariners and saw/Betwixt the green brink and the running foam/Sweet faces, rounded arms…”

**********

“Whither away, whither away…” the man mumbled as he worked. He was chained to the millstone he and Fallon were working on, not because Fallon wanted to keep him enslaved so much as Fallon’s discovery, shortly after the Mormons left—which had been while “John” was still asleep—that the man was as nutty as a pecan tree. On waking, he had loosed both Fallon’s mules and shouted “Epicene, you must flee!” Fortunately for Fallon, the mules were more afraid of the stranger than they were eager to take advantage of their freedom. They trotted to Fallon’s house and brayed until he came out to get them. While returning them to the barn, Fallon had discovered John stealing his rifle and canteen.

“Mister, are you plain crazy?” Fallon demanded. “Ain’t nothing but desert in any direction, and if you don’t know where you’re goin’, you’ll die sure as shoes pinch.”

But John only looked at him, said, “No civilized man would kill you”—and headed west. Fallon found him the next morning, not having made a mile before stopping to draw funny-looking winged harpists in the sand.

After a day of wrestling with the strange man called John, Fallon let him go free, but then found him pounding round pegs into the cracks in the barn wall and murmuring, “boom.”

“That does it,” he muttered, taking a chunk of firewood and walloping the man across the back with it, then sitting atop him to tie his hands and feet together.

**********

“Out of the live-green heart of the dells/They freshen the silvery-crimson shells/ And thick with white bells the clover-hill swells/High over the full-toned sea…” Adam mumbled. He was walking alongside the wagon, his little brother strapped to his chest in an Indian-like papoose carrier, which hurt his back. His shoulders felt as if they were coming out of the sockets—Hoss was not a particularly little little brother. But Mrs. Friedman was driving the wagon, and loaded as it was, there was no way for him and Hoss to ride inside; at least, not after Pa rode off and left them and Mrs. Friedman put her own children in. She said Adam made her nervous to ride with them. Mrs. Friedman had three little girls, and they didn’t make her nervous, so they rode with her instead, even though they could have ridden with Mr. Friedman, whose wagon had room enough for all of them. But Mr. Friedman was usually half soused (that’s what Mrs. Friedman said), so maybe that explained it.

But it wasn’t fair. If Inger hadn’t gotten hit by that arrow, she’d be driving the wagon, and she would let Adam sit on the seat with Hoss in his lap. And she would tell him stories, and smile at him, and rub his cold feet and hands. They seemed to stay cold nowadays. Like his heart. Pa didn’t like it when Adam cried. He said Hoss cried enough for them all. And besides, Hoss was a baby, and it was all right for babies to cry. Not for big boys, though. At six, Adam didn’t feel that big anymore, though, and the burning in his eyes began to liquefy and overflow. A fat tear slid down his face, followed by another, and as Hoss looked up with Inger’s blue eyes, Adam whispered, “She said her heart would be with us, Hoss. Do you feel it? ’Cause I sure don’t.”

Hoss did not reply. Mrs. Friedman looked back and snapped, “Can’t you keep up? We’re barely moving faster than an oxcart as it is!”

Adam choked back the tears and walked faster.

**********

Once again he was trussed like a roasting hen, but this time there seemed to be a purpose to it. With great difficulty, Fallon hoisted him into the small wagon and hitched up the mule.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked Fallon as they drove deep into the desert.

“Fort Churchill,” came the terse reply. “I sure’s sin can’t keep yer.”

It came over him then: “It was all a game, you know, just a game. Kane, he made me play it, and somehow I just didn’t know how to stop playing.”

“I don’t know who or what you’re talkin’ about, John, but you tried to blow my barn up usin’ wooden pegs. What kinder sane guy does that?”

“Did I do that?” he racked his brain and the memory sledge-hammered into him. “He made me. Kane. He made me put dynamite in the crevices…”

“You keep sayin’ Kane like he’s yer own personal Satan.”

“I think he is. What happened to him?”

“I dunno, I keep tellin’ ya. You came to my place with a bunch of Latter Day Saints, not Satan. They said you wanted a job. But from the time you woke up you been tryin’ to make off with my mule or—”

“But that was Kane! He killed Epicene…”

“Mister, I dunno what yer talkin’ about, so do me a kindness and just quitcher talkin’.”

“Fort Churchill’s an army post.”

“It is that,” Fallon said. Of course, he didn’t say that the post hospital—a big one—also contained a ward for people who were sick in the head. He had a feeling that John wouldn’t start making more sense if he knew he was headed for a madhouse.

**********

“Adam…” the voice was whispered, but well remembered. He looked up through his own blurred vision and saw eyes as blue and bright as Lake Tahoe.

“Mama?”

“Adam…” the apparition seemed hesitant. “Be careful, son. Do you remember what I told you about Swedish fairies?”

“They’re not nice…”

“Not all fairies are nice, Adam. Some of them are worse than Kane.”

**********

“Kane! Kane!”

Sergeant O’Malley’s eyes widened as the man continued to shout out in his sleep.

“What’s he all worked up about?” O’Malley asked.

“Beats me,” Fallon said. “But if it ain’t been fairies, it’s been Kane, ever since he come to. He ain’t right in the head. He’s been trying to hurt himself or my mules from the time he woke up.”

“Well, I reckon we’d best take him.”

The sergeant directed two burly privates to take the unwilling passenger out of the wagon and hustle him up to the hospital. But the man awoke, so it ended up taking four.

**********

“Adam…” Again the soft voice in his head. Better than the ones all around him, at least: in this big room were at least twenty people, their feet stumbling, their hands fumbling, their mouths mumbling. Some of them drooled; some laughed or cried unaccountably. A few tried to take their clothes off, but the men in dirty white uniforms were always there to beat them when they did such things.

“Mama? Mama, I’m in a bad place…”

“I know, son. I’m going to stay with you, and keep you safe.”

“How can you do that? You died…”

“And I told you I’d still be with you even then. Remember?”

“You have a big heart…”

“Yes. But listen to me. If they see you talking to me, they’ll keep you in this place. And if you keep talking to Kane, they’ll keep you here, too.”

“But he’s after me!”

“I won’t let him hurt you.”

He closed his eyes. Ghosts didn’t protect people from other ghosts, did they? Ghosts didn’t exist, right? So he was only imagining Inger. And he was a man, right? Or was he still a boy, tearfully following after Mrs. Friedman?

He retreated to the safety of the sea fairies. “For here are the blissful downs and dales/And merrily, merrily carol the gales…”

“Adam…”

“And the spangle dances in bight and bay/And the rainbow forms and flies on the land/Over the islands free;”

“Adam, don’t talk to them—”

“And the rainbow lives in the curve of the sand/Hither, come hither and see…”

“Adam, stop!”

“But Mama, the sea fairies always—”

“They always kept you from going home, Adam. They’re not nice. They’ll always keep you here, if you let them.”

“What?”

It was more than a fellow—even one who’d already been crushed by time and chance—could take.

**********

“Why’s that one feller sitting off in the corner hugging himself?” the doctor asked.

“Dunno,” said the orderly. “They brought him in yesterday, all feisty and yellin’ about somebody named Kane. But this mornin’ he wouldn’t say a word, and he’s bin like’at ever since.”

**********

“I’m more sorry’n I can say, Ben.” Roy Coffee blinked and looked away. “Allus liked Adam, y’know. More’n once he was a help to me. Occasionally a hindrance too.” He smiled a little. “One a’ the smartest fellers I ever knowed.”

Ben Cartwright shrugged. “Roy, you didn’t come all the way out here to tell me this; you said you didn’t know about it until you met Little Joe outside. So what are you here for?”

“It don’t hardly seem to matter now.”

“I’d still like to know.”

“Well…” Roy sighed. “I’m goin’ out on a prisoner detail, and I was hopin’ to get a couple of strong, hefty fellers to go along with me.”

“You want Hoss to go with you?”

“Well, I did. Obviously I ain’t gonna ask that now.”

“No…no,” Ben said. “You might as well take him. We’re none of us any good right now, but moping around here won’t do anything. I have business to conduct and a memorial service to plan; Joe’s busy too, but right now Hoss doesn’t have anything to do, and he’s spending too much time brooding.”

“You sure, Ben?”

“Yes—I think it would be best for Hoss. I’ll talk to him. How long will you be gone?”

“About four days. Goin’ out to Fort Churchill.”

**********

On the way back to Virginia City, Roy provided an explanation. “His wife wrote him that she’d lost the baby they was gonna have. Now he woulda got leave if he’d asked, I’m pretty sure. But he didn’t ask. Plumb went out of his head with grief; knocked his platoon commander on his hindermost, and grabbed a horse and rode off. And to make matters worse, he never went back. Not only that, but when I tried to talk him into goin’ back nicely, he knocked me on my hindermost, too. The girl’s father done wrote a letter explainin’ what happened, but he’s in bad health and can’t ride so he can’t go back with him. The girl nearly died, so she ain’t fit to go nowhere either. And Cooper—Tom Cooper’s the feller’s name—don’t wanna leave her. He’s in trouble already, and if he’s gone over thirty days, they’ll have him for desertion—and that is a hangin’ offense if they decide he’s guilty. But I’m hopin’ between me and the father-in-law’s letter we’ll be able to convince ’em to take the mitigatin’ circumstances into account. Only I’m pretty sure he’s gonna get rowdy and try to leave before we can get him back—and that’s why I need you and Bo Hansen.”

“Don’t think I ever heard you make such a long speech before,” Hoss said with a weak smile.

“Huh,” said Roy, but getting the notion that Hoss wasn’t in the mood for speeches right now anyway, he said nothing else.

**********

The man they called John was sitting on the straw-covered floor, his knees drawn up to his chest, his back pressed back into the corner of his cell. They’d put him in isolation after he’d gotten into a fight—they knew the other fellow had hit him first, but the other fellow had also stopped when the orderlies ordered them to break it up. This fellow hadn’t stopped, so he’d gotten a beating and a five-day isolation sentence. The bowl next to him, half-full of some unidentifiable brown glop, was untouched.

“Still not talking?” the orderly asked, coming in. “Nor eating, neither? You’ve gotta be hungry by now.”

John just looked up at him with an air of dismissal.

“You won’t talk to me either? You’re pretty uppity for a guy that don’t know what a chair’s for. Well, come on, get up—it’s your lucky day. We need the cell for a new idiot, so you get to go back with the rowdies.”

John dropped his chin back to his knees and wrapped his arms around his legs, his eyes shut.

“Hey, fella, I know you understand me. Come on, get up. You may be crazy, but you’re not too stupid to know I can bring in four other fellas and move you someplace even dirtier than this one.”

Never taking his eyes off the orderly, John came to his feet, but stayed in the corner.

“Come on, I ain’t got all day. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“I told you—back to the common room. Don’t start any fights this time, and you might not have to come back here again.” He took John’s arm and tugged. “Let’s go.”

John allowed himself to be pulled to the door, but something stopped him there. “Don’t make me take a stick to you!” the orderly snapped.

And then a voice behind him said, “You try, and it’ll be the last time you take a stick to anybody.”

The orderly whirled to see a sheriff and two fellows, each the size of a bull, looking at him. “Mister, I don’t ordinarily tell a man how to do his job,” said the sheriff. “But this here feller ain’t fightin’ you, so there ain’t no need to get…” his voice trailed off and he stared at John. Then one of the bull-sized fellows behind him gasped.

“Adam?”

**********

“I don’t care who you say he is,” the hospital commander said. “He doesn’t know who he is, and he can’t interact with other people except by fighting. He was brought here—”

“By a next-of-kin?” Roy asked sweetly. “’Cause as I understand it, you can’t commit a fellow as insane unless the next-of-kin does it.”

A somewhat raspy voice spoke up for the first time. “I know who I am.” All eyes turned to the speaker, and he swallowed. “My name is Adam Cartwright. That…” he pointed. “That’s my baby brother. Hoss.”

“I told him you knew me,” Hoss said, Inger’s bright blue eyes shining from his round face. “I told him.”

“Of course I know you.” Adam’s voice was faint. “I carried you halfway across the country.”

Hoss threw his arms around his “big” brother and lifted him off the floor.

**********

Ben was staring, unfocused, at a half-full sheet of paper. In uncharacteristically shaky handwriting was the list:

Psalm 23

See Gentle Patience Smiles on Pain

Amazing Grace

Eulogy by Roy Coffee

Eulogy by Joseph F Cartwright

Eulogy by

He grunted and laid the pen aside, then crumpled the sheet of paper and began again just as the door burst open.

**********

Late that night Hoss and Joe finally gave up and went to bed; conversation had run out a while back anyway, and emotional peaks like the ones from that day were exhausting. But Adam and Ben were still sitting in their chairs next to the low-burning fire, the room still lit by six powerful oil lamps. So different, Adam reflected, from the utter blackness of the nights on the trail with Ben and Inger, when the campfire provided the only light.

Adam cleared his throat. “Pa, do you remember that Tennyson poem I used to recite all the time?”

Ben smiled. “Which one? You had books full.”

“The Sea Fairies.”

“Oh, my.” Ben took out his pipe and began packing it thoughtfully. “Haven’t heard that one in more than twenty years.”

“But you remember it.”

“It’s not likely I’d forget, not when you had Inger and me recite it all the time.”

“But…” Adam drew one knee up to his chest, half in thought, half in protection. “You never told me. The fairies…they were like the Sirens in the Odyssey, weren’t they? They never wanted the sailors to go home. They never let them go. You must have known that.”

“I don’t know that I did.” Ben reached for a match. “I never gave it that much thought. Besides, you wouldn’t have believed it anyway.”

“Maybe not then. But I know it now. And they nearly did keep me from coming ho—I mean, reciting that poem nearly did keep me from coming home. Not all fairies are nice, Pa.”

Ben chuckled. “That’s a different perspective than I’m used to. How did you come up with that?”

“Just something…Inger told me once. A long, long time ago,” Adam said, remembering Kane, who had been something of a siren himself—promising rescue, but only keeping him from going home. One of Inger’s evil Scandinavian fairies, he supposed.

“I still can’t believe they put you in that…that madhouse.” Looking at his pipe rather than at Adam, Ben went on in a faintly puzzled tone, “I’ve always wondered what I’d do if ever I were…institutionalized. After all, how does a man prove he isn’t mad?”

Adam briefly considered telling Ben about Inger’s help, but decided that might only land him back at Fort Churchill. He looked at his hands instead. “In my case, I couldn’t prove it. I think I did go off my head…for a time, at least. I’m still not sure what happened to Kane, the man who captured me; I think he must have finally died, but at least I didn’t kill him. But as for me…all I could think of was the Sea Fairies. I must have recited that poem a thousand times as a child walking westward; somehow I started reciting it again carrying Kane through the desert. But the state I was in, the fairies became too real, and so did the dangers of Kane. It wasn’t until I recognized Hoss that I even remembered who I was and where I belonged.”

“Thank God for that,” Ben murmured, puffing his pipe.

“For seeing Hoss?”

Ben smiled. “For remembering where you belong.”

 

The End

 

Words drawn:  skittish, Inger, campfire, fairy, madhouse

 

Tags:  Adam Cartwright, Angst,