Summary: A follow-up to The Crucible.\u00a0 An unexpected visitor helps Adam Cartwright heal his broken heart before breaking it again.\u00a0 A story for Valentine’s Day.<\/p>\n
Word count: 3296<\/p>\n
Rated: G<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It surprised him, the depth of his emotions.\u00a0 After all, wasn\u2019t he known as a man without emotions \u2013 cool, calculated?<\/p>\n
Cold.<\/p>\n
The man in black chuckled under his breath and ran a hand across his face.\u00a0 It was two in the morning. He had just ridden hell-bent for leather through driving rain to Virginia City.\u00a0 The look Sport gave him as he dismounted said it all.\u00a0 Those keen black eyes reflected his own madness and asked in no uncertain terms, \u2018What the Hell do you think you\u2019re doing?\u2019<\/p>\n
What the Hell did<\/em> he think he was doing?<\/p>\n It had started out innocently enough – if such a word as \u2018innocent\u2019 could be applied to the genesis of such a situation.\u00a0 He\u2019d known darkness in his life; much of it had been experienced firsthand on the journey to the West.\u00a0 He\u2019d witnessed actions and participated in events that challenged the most seasoned adult to make sense of them.\u00a0 Loss, grief, death, anger, terror \u2013 betrayal.\u00a0 All of these and more <\/em>were a part of the small community of wagons that journeyed together, seeking the Promised Land. \u00a0He\u2019d grown from a boy to a man in a few short years, avoiding \u2013 or perhaps being denied<\/em> \u2013 the pangs of adolescence his younger brothers were still going through.\u00a0 God, Joe was only twenty!\u00a0 Just a babe, really, in the greater scheme of things.<\/p>\n Adam drew a deep breath and straightened up.\u00a0 He looked at the older man he shared the small cramped room with. That breath drew in all of the scents and smells associated with him. \u00a0The first was soap, and then fairly strong cologne.\u00a0 Second came the underlying smells; ones he associated more with the room than the man.\u00a0 Some were faint; others pungent.\u00a0 Comingled, the result was a heady brew of bittersweet blossoms, herbs, and ether.<\/p>\n Paul Martin glanced over his shoulder.\u00a0 The older man\u2019s face was grave.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t shake his head, but he sighed before going back to his work.<\/p>\n That was another thing he associated with the doctor.<\/p>\n Optimism amidst despair.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will take a bit,\u201d Paul said.\u00a0 \u201cNo offense, Adam, but I will be able to assess the situation better without your doubt breathing down my neck.\u00a0 Perhaps you should take a walk?\u201d<\/p>\n He knew a dismissal when he heard one.\u00a0 \u201cSure.\u00a0 I can use some air.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGive me twenty minutes or so.\u201d<\/p>\n He nodded and turned toward the door.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, and Adam?\u201d<\/p>\n The man in black turned on his heel.\u00a0 \u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGod works in mysterious ways.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adam stepped off of the building\u2019s stoop, shoved his hands in his pockets to ward off the chill, and began to walk the icy pavement of Virginia City\u2019s main street. It was three in the morning.\u00a0 The poker games had ended. Those who drank too much the night before were sleeping it off.\u00a0 Anyone with illicit intentions was long gone in expectation of sunrise.\u00a0 The more upstanding citizens of the city were still abed. The laborers \u2013 honest hardworking men like Hop Sing\u2019s father \u2013 wouldn\u2019t be for long.\u00a0 They were, perhaps, wiping their eyes and shoving their feet into their slippers in preparation for the start of another day, but it would be hours before they raised their shutters and hung out their shingles.<\/p>\n He was alone.<\/p>\n Other than his thoughts.<\/p>\n Time was an ephemeral thing.\u00a0 \u2018Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.\u2019\u00a0 That was Henry David Thoreau.\u00a0 Two months.\u00a0 It had been almost two months.\u00a0 Less than sixty days since\u2026.<\/p>\n Everything had changed.<\/p>\n Adam sucked in a breath like a drowning man as the memory of what he had been through struck him with the power of a hydraulic mudflow, nearly driving him to his knees. That face \u2013 like a grotesque from a medieval cathedral, the palpable insanity; the vitriolic hatred<\/em> of him and everything he was.\u00a0 Yes, he had been abused physically, but those scars had begun to heal the moment his family found him.\u00a0 He shook his head.\u00a0 Well, at least the moment he recognized<\/em> that his family had found him.\u00a0 At first, he was sure the three familiar forms were yet another delusion; a enticing mirage brought on by lack of both food and water and his own desperate need.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until he felt his father\u2019s arms around him, that he knew<\/em> they were real.<\/p>\n That he was able to acknowledge it was all<\/em> real.<\/p>\n Blackness followed.\u00a0 At first it was blessed.\u00a0 On the way back to the ranch he fell into what Paul Martin called a coma vigil.\u00a0 The coma was his, but the vigil belonged to his family.\u00a0 For one solid week he lay as one dead.\u00a0 Upon waking the blackness deepened into a darkness from which he feared he would never emerge.\u00a0 It mattered little that the sun rose each day to light the waking world beyond the room he occupied.\u00a0 He did not see it. \u00a0All he could see what that face.<\/p>\n That face and his shame,<\/p>\n The family came to visit his sickroom regularly.\u00a0 Pa would sit beside the bed and read. \u00a0Every now and then he would look up and ask a question \u2013 \u2018Son, how are you feeling? \u00a0Is there anything I can do?\u2019\u00a0 He knew the older man was hurting, in some ways as deeply as he was, but he had no answers to ease his father\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n Or his own.<\/p>\n Next it was Hoss\u2019 turn.\u00a0 Hoss asked him nothing.\u00a0 The big man would sit by the bed or stand by the window and tell him all about his day and the world outside the window.\u00a0 Then he would come to the bed, pat his hand, and leave.<\/p>\n It was Joe that surprised him; gregarious, dynamic, irrepressible Joe.\u00a0 He supposed, in the end, he shouldn\u2019t have been surprised.\u00a0 It was Joseph Francis Cartwright who, among them all, had experienced some of the deepest wounds.\u00a0 Joe would enter his room and sit by the bed.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t say anything.\u00a0 He was just\u2026there<\/p>\n That was the deepest comfort of all.<\/p>\n Adam halted outside the mercantile.\u00a0 He chuckled again as he took a seat on the bench that butted up against its facade.<\/p>\n Well, perhaps not the deepest<\/em>.<\/p>\n That would be Serenity.<\/p>\n The man in black blinked as unanticipated tears flooded his eyes.\u00a0 The way he met her was, to put it mildly, unexpected.\u00a0 She had shown up in his room one day without invitation.\u00a0 It had been a gloomy spring \u2013 suited to his mood.\u00a0 To say that his recovery from the ordeal in the desert was slow bordered on the absurd.\u00a0 Languid, plodding\u2026crawling<\/em>, those were the words that fit.\u00a0 When someone cajoled him to move from his bed, he did so \u2013 grudgingly \u2013 taking occupancy of a wooden chair by the window where he sat cocooned in blankets, brooding over his fate.\u00a0 On that particular day Hop Sing entered early bearing a tray with food that he knew would remain untouched, to announce cheerfully that summer had arrived. The Asian man walked past him to the window, pulled the curtains back, and raised the sash.<\/p>\n \u201cThe journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,\u201d he said with a bow.<\/p>\n Then, he was gone.<\/p>\n \u2018Vexed\u2019 pretty much summed up his reaction.<\/p>\n He could have gotten up and closed the window.\u00a0 He thought about it, but lacked\u2026well\u2026everything.\u00a0 What little vigor he\u2019d regained in the month or so since he had dropped the filthy travois that bore Peter Kane\u2019s lifeless form was reserved for the rage that consumed him.\u00a0 So, when she appeared, he ignored her.<\/p>\n That was when, well, the miracle began.<\/p>\n He\u2019d never forget the first time he saw the little bird perched on the window stool; her petite brown head turning this way and that as though she marveled at what she was seeing.\u00a0 He\u2019d grunted and made a feeble attempt to shoo her away.\u00a0 She misinterpreted the action \u2013 perhaps, being female, deliberately <\/em>so \u2013 and drew closer, moving from the back edge of the stool to the portion of it closest to him. \u00a0Her eyes were dark as if dipped in death\u2019s shadow and wise as Minerva\u2019s.\u00a0 A band of pale feathers, the same color as her tawny throat, highlighted them.\u00a0 As was common with her species, they progressed from light brown to yellow and back again before ending in a speckled burst on her chest.\u00a0 Unbidden, he\u2019d mentally thumbed through the pages of the book on ornithology he\u2019d retained from college and classed her as \u2018eremophila\u2019 or a horned lark.<\/p>\n \u201cShoo,\u201d he\u2019d said as he wiggled his fingers.<\/p>\n A cheerful chirp was his reply.<\/p>\n \u201cGo on.\u00a0 Go away.\u201d\u00a0 His voice was rusty; unused.\u00a0 It groaned like wagon wheels in need of grease.\u00a0 \u201cCertainly you have something better to do than perch on my window and annoy me.\u201d<\/p>\n Her head cocked first one away and then the other.\u00a0 Those eyes \u2013 so brown, so profound \u2013 fastened on him and then she began to do the one thing he thought unforgivable.<\/p>\n The lark began to sing a jaunty tune.<\/p>\n He couldn\u2019t say to this day why that sound ignited in him a rage so immense that it could not be contained within his cocoon of blankets or that hard wood chair.\u00a0 He burst from both like that mudflow, startling the lark so it flew out the window, which was a good thing because he caught the sash and brought it down so hard behind her that two of the panes of glass cracked.<\/p>\n The next day the window was open again.\u00a0 When he protested, Hop Sing quietly remarked \u2018dripping water can penetrate the hardest stone\u2019 as he exited the room.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t five minutes later the lark appeared to take up her perch \u2013 after turning her head to regard the crack in the glass.<\/p>\n He could swear he heard her sigh.<\/p>\n This time he was in bed.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s episode had taken from him everything that remained.\u00a0 He\u2019d stood at that window a long time considering the broken glass.\u00a0 One push and it would shatter. \u00a0One little push would give him everything <\/em>he needed.\u00a0 After all, who could question a man accidentally slicing his wrist while he sought to remove the shards from the frame? \u00a0The inherent weakness in<\/em> that thought plunged him into a deep depression.\u00a0 How had he allowed Peter Kane to take from him the one thing he was sure <\/em>he would not \u2013 could<\/em> not give?\u00a0 Who had he been before?\u00a0 Who was he now?\u00a0 How could he go on when he didn\u2019t know?<\/em>\u00a0 Despairing, despondent, disconsolate, he had fallen to the floor and lain there sobbing until Hop Sing came in with his supper tray and helped him into bed as if he were still a little boy.<\/p>\n \u201cGo away,\u201d he tried again.<\/p>\n Ever a female, the little lark did the exact opposite, pushing off the stool and entering the room.\u00a0 A short flight brought her to the bed where she alighted delicately on top of the coverlet.\u00a0 Her small head turned this way and that as she walked up to him and then, she began to sing. The song was a fast, high-pitched sequence of sharp, tinkling notes.\u00a0 He knew from his studies that larks songs usually lasted no more than a few seconds.\u00a0 She sang for a full minute and, as she sang, something happened \u2013 a spark was lit deep within his soul which only the night before had seemed to be forever extinguished, and an unexpected thing rose up within him that he could only name \u2018hope\u2019.<\/p>\n He just as quickly beat it down.<\/p>\n The angry man struck out with his hand, driving her back.\u00a0 When she did not go, he took hold of his covers and created his own mudflow, the force of which caused the lark to take flight.\u00a0 She hesitated at the open window for a moment, as if with regret, before winging off into the rising morn.<\/p>\n Again, he asked Hop Sing to close the window and, again, the Asian man refused citing his need for \u2018fresh air which is the source of good health\u2019.\u00a0 After a few days of the ritual being repeated, Adam began to wonder if the lark and their housekeeper were involved in some sort of unspoken conspiracy.<\/p>\n Eventually, between the two of them, they wore him down.\u00a0 He stopped shooing the bird away and, in time, began to anticipate her arrival.\u00a0 The little lark always came at dawn \u2013 at the break of day \u2013 to serenade him.\u00a0 He\u2019d lay completely still, listening to her song, letting the bright, happy tone of it flow over him.\u00a0 It was clear, clean, and in time began to wash away the viscous, cloying mud of Kane\u2019s unnatural hatred that had all but buried him.<\/p>\n One day she was late in her arrival.\u00a0 The fact disturbed him more than he cared to admit.\u00a0 Her absence roused him from his bed and drove him to the window so he could look out.\u00a0 Summer had indeed arrived.\u00a0 The yard was bustling and bursting with men going about their ordinary business, including his brothers who were standing near the stable, talking.\u00a0 Still, that was not what took his attention \u2013 or his breath away.\u00a0 Outside was\u2026beautiful.\u00a0 A brilliant light washed over everything; the rosy tint of dawn turning the mundane magical.\u00a0 There was a scent on the breeze beyond that of horse-flesh and field.\u00a0 He felt it strike him, ruffle his hair \u2013 felt it stir something new <\/em>in him.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t place it for the longest time; he only knew it was the one thing that had been denied him for so long.<\/p>\n He cried again that day, even as his little friend appeared to serenade him.\u00a0 He cried as a river of relief cleansed him, taking him away from the dry desert and the darkness and the grief and the unrelenting shame \u2013 and Peter Kane.\u00a0 It was on the day he found it, that he found her name.<\/p>\n Serenity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adam stood outside the doctor\u2019s office, gazing in the window.\u00a0 He\u2019d walked not for twenty minutes, but for an hour, knowing even as his footsteps brought him back what he would find upon his return. Two hours earlier he\u2019d arrived at this place; cage in hand and his heart in his throat.\u00a0 He\u2019d banged on the door of the surgery with such frantic energy he feared it might break.<\/p>\n The doctor was seated at his desk.\u00a0 Beside him, with a linen cloth draped over it, was the cage he had taken from among Hop Sing\u2019s things to carry Serenity into town.\u00a0 It had been quite some time since he\u2019d seen her.\u00a0 As his recovery progressed, her visits became less frequent, so he had not been too worried at first.\u00a0 The family chided him, of course \u2013 Hop Sing chief among them \u2013 for leaving his window open as autumn turned to winter but he did, anxious for her return.\u00a0 Finally, when she did appear, he knew instantly that something was wrong.\u00a0 Her feathers had lost their luster as had her wise, brown eyes, which were dull and narrowed with pain. The first thing he did was take her to Hop Sing.\u00a0 He carried the precious cargo in his hands, feeling her small heart hammer out a staccato beat against his flesh all the way to the kitchen.\u00a0 In the time he had been with them, Hop Sing had kept canaries.\u00a0 Their bright song often floated through the ranch house when he was a boy.\u00a0 The Asian man\u2019s prognosis was not good.\u00a0 Hop Sing explained that most birds, even in captivity, lived only a few years. \u00a0His face must have given away his feelings.\u00a0 In a rare moment, this man who had helped to raise him, reached out and placed a hand on his chest.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is good Mistah Adam can feel again.\u201d<\/p>\n To this day he had no idea what possessed him to take Serenity to Paul Martin \u2013 and especially at two in the morning!\u00a0 He knew the doctor would think he was mad.\u00a0 To his amazement, after explaining just who <\/em>his patient would be, the older man had taken the cage with its little inhabitant into the surgery to examine her.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s still with us,\u201d the doctor remarked upon Adam\u2019s entry.\u00a0 He spoke gently, as if to the father of a gravely ill child.\u00a0 \u201cBut not for long.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s worn out.\u00a0 If I didn\u2019t know better, I would say she\u2019s been on a long journey and, now that the journey is at an end, she\u2019s chosen to move on.\u201d\u00a0 He paused.\u00a0 \u201cHave you, Adam?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHave I what?\u2019<\/p>\n Paul pinned him with eyes nearly as wise as Serenity\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cChosen to move on?\u201d<\/p>\n He had no words.\u00a0 The doctor had seen his tears before, so he did nothing to hide them.\u00a0 He nodded, picked up the cage, and headed out the door.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Adam rode for a few hours with the draped cage balanced on his saddle.\u00a0 There was a place where he was going.\u00a0 Joe and Hoss had their \u2018happy\u2019 place.\u00a0 He had one where he retreated that, due to his own melancholy nature, he called his place of \u2018repose\u2019.\u00a0 He\u2019d found it shortly after Marie passed.\u00a0 During the long months when his father was away, it was here he came to escape from everything \u2013 from the sympathetic faces of neighbors who dropped by, from disgruntled ranch hands who resented a teenager telling them what to do, and from an inconsolable baby brother whose tears he did not have the power to stop.\u00a0 It was about a third of the way out from the ranch. \u00a0The foreman knew the location \u2013 just in case \u2013 but he also knew there had better be a very good reason to disturb him.\u00a0 It was a green hill, and on that green hill was a brace of Aspens.\u00a0 As he dismounted he noted their whispery branches still held a hint of the color of their golden leaves.\u00a0 Between them was a kind of natural seat comprised of two boulders that leaned one on the other. He sat down and took a deep breath before removing the linen cover from the cage.<\/p>\n Serenity was still breathing.\u00a0 He could see her little chest rising and falling, ruffling the speckled feathers that covered it.\u00a0 He placed the cage on the ground, opened it, and lifted her petite body from its confines.\u00a0 As she gathered warmth in his hands, the little lark opened her eyes and looked at him.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I know,\u201d he said as he stroked her breast, \u201cyou can\u2019t sing for me today.\u00a0 You\u2019re tired and spent and I know why.\u201d\u00a0 A single tear trailed down his cheek.\u00a0 \u201cYou gave everything <\/em>you had for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Serenity had literally sung her heart out.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you,\u201d he breathed.\u00a0 \u201cThank you for everything; for your friendship, for your refusal to give up on me\u2026for your song.\u00a0 It\u2019s mine now.\u201d<\/p>\n And then he sang to her, a song both cheerful and tearful.\u00a0 It had no words, just notes, and as they fell upon her quiescent form Serenity passed.<\/p>\n Breaking his.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Later that night, Adam sat by his window staring out at the risen moon.\u00a0 The book on ornithology lay open on his lap.\u00a0 He\u2019d finally remembered to retrieve it from the library so he could read the page about the horned lark, particularly the female of the species.\u00a0 What he found there humbled him.\u00a0 It was the male<\/em> of the species that was known for its song.\u00a0 The female only sang under certain circumstances, namely during breeding season and when attempting to attract a mate.\u00a0 The singing would begin at dawn and sometimes continue long into the night, driven not by need but by love.<\/p>\n Just like Serenity\u2019s song.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n