Page 22 of So Close To Heaven (Far From Home #11)

He’d held his silence this morning when Ivy had worked with Mathar’s destrier, though every instinct had urged him to step closer.

For a brief moment, as he’d first come upon the scene, he’d had some irrational fear that she was placing a curse on the horse.

Watching her inspect the huge beast and listening to her assured analysis, he’d been quickly disabused of that notion. Concern was her only motivation.

The scene lingered with him now as they marched, the rhythm of hooves steady over a broad stretch of grassland. His gaze strayed to her where she rode a few paces ahead as he returned to the vanguard, her hair glinting like burnished copper under the pale sun.

Before he could think better of it, Alaric guided his horse toward hers, closing the gap until they rode abreast. He felt her startle a little, her posture stiffening before she glanced sidelong at him.

“Ye ken horses well,” he said, keeping his tone even, almost casual.

A faint flush rose on her cheeks. To his watchful eye, she seemed less guarded today—her shoulders looser, her mouth less pinched, as if the jauntier hum of the army had lightened her mood as well.

She leaned the smallest bit toward him, as if she meant her answer only for his ears.

“In my time, I went to school to be a veterinarian.”

The word was unknown to him. His brow furrowed. “And what is that?”

“Oh, it’s a kind of healer. But for animals. Horses, cattle, dogs. Not people.”

“And ye—a woman—went to university to study such?”

She nodded. “Yes.” Again, she lowered her voice and said for his ears alone, “In the future, women go to school as well. The veterinarian program is difficult, years of training. That’s why I was—or am—in Scotland.

I was studying abroad for a semester. Well, and that turned out to be more than a year.

But anyway, we learned all about anatomy, diseases, treatments—not that I ever expected to use it in the fourteenth century, mind you.

” She gave a small huff of laughter, quick to fade, though it tugged at something deep in his chest.

Alaric studied her profile, the curve of her cheek, the set of her mouth.

She spoke easily, freely, as if indeed she spoke the truth, but Alaric could not fathom either a time or a place where lasses were instructed in the humors of beasts and the tending of their ailments.

Madness, the very idea. And yet, he could not wholly dismiss it—not after watching her earlier.

Mathar’s destrier had improved, just as she’d said he might; simply getting the animal moving had eased the worst of the colic.

Not a quarter hour past, Mathar himself had grumbled that the beast was near his usual temper again.

“And in this...future of yers,” he pressed, with rare awkwardness, “what else is different? Do all lasses tend beasts? Ride with men? Speak as ye do?”

Her lips parted, then closed again, as if she weighed how much to say.

At length she tilted her head toward him, her hazel eyes shining.

“Some things are different, yes. Women go to school. They work. Some even lead armies—though not often, and not like you think. But some things...” she paused and shrugged, “...some things are always the same.”

Recalling that she claimed to have come from a future seven hundred years away, he kept his expression purposefully neutral and heard himself ask, “What remains the same between now and then?”

She blinked, surprised by the question—mayhap surprised that he engaged her even this much. Certainly, he was surprising himself.

Ivy tilted her head, considering his question.

“Um...well,” she began slowly, her gaze drifting out over the rolling land as if searching for the right words, “parents still want their children to have a better life than they did.” She worried at her lower lip for a moment, then went on.

“People still fall in love and do stupid things for it. People still work from dawn to dusk just to feed themselves, behind a plow or behind a desk.” Her hands shifted on the reins, thumbs brushing the leather straps.

“We still drink ale—we call it beer. Different names, same product essentially. People still wonder where they fit, whether they belong.” She paused, her voice softer now.

“Hope looks the same, no matter what century you’re in.

” At last her mouth curved, the briefest glint of humor lighting her eyes.

“Men still snore. Women still complain about it.”

Alaric’s brow arched slightly, though he said nothing.

She chuckled under her breath, her eyes lighting.

“That reminds me of this boy in my class, back when I was in high school. His name was Patrick O’Connor.

Big, broad-shouldered guy, a football player—well, you wouldn’t know what football is, but trust me, he was built like one of your soldiers.

Every day, like clockwork, he’d fall asleep in Mr. Dawkins’s history class.

Head on his desk, out cold. And oh my God, the snoring.

Like...like someone sawing through logs in the dead of night. It used to drive me nuts.”

A few of the soldiers riding just ahead glanced back at her laughter, but Ivy went on, caught up in the memory.

“At first, at the beginning of the year, Mr. Dawkins tried waking him, rapping a ruler on the desk, calling his name. But Patrick never stirred—but man, did he snore loud. We had fun with that all year long. Once, my friend Jess painted his nails pink—I heard he didn’t even realize it until like three periods later.

” She laughed a little louder now. “One time, he snorted so loud, startling himself awake, but so dramatically that he toppled straight out of his chair, hit the floor like a sack of bricks. The whole class burst out laughing. Even Mr. Dawkins laughed, though he tried not to.” Ivy’s smile lingered.

“He was called Sleepy—after one of the seven dwarfs—but honestly, Patrick wasn’t fazed at all, not embarrassed by his narcolepsy one bit. ”

She seemed to catch herself then, and her cheeks brightened with a pink stain. She glanced at Alaric with a now-stiff smile. “You probably didn’t understand half of what I just said,” she supposed.

Rapping a ruler? Painted nails pink? Seven dwarfs? Narcolepsy? Aye, she was correct—half her words were strange as sorcery. But he had watched her face as she spoke, the way her laughter rose, unguarded and light. He had understood that well enough.

“I ken the core of it,” he managed, his tone even.

Mayhap his response was too spare, mayhap unconvincing, that Ivy shrank a little in the saddle next to him. And for reasons not entirely known, Alaric wasn’t ready to depart, wanted to hear more from her.

“What of yer parents, then?” he asked. “Do they dwell in this strange world ye left? Would they nae be seeking ye?”

Her brow knitted. “Um, my parents...I don’t even know if my mom has or will realize I’m gone.

I’m not close with my mom and my father’s been out of the picture for.

..forever. I was closest with my grandparents—I like to think they raised me, really.

” Warming to the subject, she continued, “That’s where my happiest childhood memories are, on their farm. ”

Alaric caught the undercurrent of longing and prompted, when she quieted again, “They are gone, I presume, and ye long for them.”

Her gaze wasn’t on him but somewhere far ahead, past the road, past the ridges that hemmed them in, as if she could see another place altogether. She nodded slowly.

“Oh, God, yes. I miss them every day,” she revealed.

She tilted her head thoughtfully. “But I guess I should be thankful they’re gone now—at this time.

They’d be worried sick if they knew I was.

..lost.” Another quiet moment passed before she smiled sweetly, still staring straight ahead, as if warmed by memories.

“Every Saturday morning,” she said, “my grandmother would fry up eggs and biscuits with gravy thick enough to stand a spoon upright. My grandfather would sit at the table, rattling the newspaper and arguing with the editorials out loud, as if they’d written them just to provoke him.

And I—” she laughed softly “—I’d sneak biscuits into this fuzzy purple bag I had—to feed to the horses and cows—as many as I could before Grandma caught me.

Sometimes, she’d smack my hand, grumbling about wasting food on a girl who never put any meat on her bones, but I think more often than not, she simply pretended she didn’t see. ”

Her eyes had softened with recollection, her mouth curved in a wistful smile. Alaric found himself listening more intently than he meant to, his hand loose on the reins, his destrier plodding easily beside hers.

“I remember when I was about six or seven,” she continued, her voice warm yet, “Gramps let me help bottle-feed a calf once. My arms were barely strong enough to hold him, and it seemed I had to wrestle with him to get him to drink. I was giving him something he needed—wanted—and I didn’t understand why he fussed so much.

He ended up knocking me flat—milk everywhere, and me dumped in the mud and muck of the barn.

Gramps laughed until his pipe slipped from his teeth.

I was mad and embarrassed and covered in mud, and Gramps told me it was a baptism—‘nobody gets out of raising cattle without being covered head to toe in something,’ he said. ”

The men around them rode silent, but Alaric could see some were listening too, ears tilted back. Her voice carried easy on the air, not boastful, not showy, but full of color.

She shook her head faintly, her smile dimming.

“Those were the good weekends. The best, really. But then my mom found husband number four, and that was the end of it. No more weekends at the farm. She wanted me at home, part of her new family. Which—” a shrug, careless on the surface, but her tone thinned with something harder beneath “—wasn’t really a family at all.

Just another man she tried on, like a pair of shoes.

Junior—that was his name. Fitting, since he was a small man in every way that mattered. ”

Alaric studied her carefully. She spoke quickly now, as if hurrying over the jagged places, smoothing them with dark humor. But he heard the change in her voice, the way the warmth drained when she spoke of her mother, and he understood the contrast without her needing to say it outright.

Again, he wasn’t sure he comprehended all the particulars of which she spoke, but he forged out an idea that she’d been a lass dropped between two worlds—one solid, rooted in earth and routine, the other shifting and uncertain, where the only constant was disappointment, mayhap outright unhappiness.

Her grandparents gone, and her mother and father naught but shadows in her life. Alaric’s mouth tightened. Whether her tale of coming through time were truth or madness, it mattered little—there would be none searching after her, none to mourn her absence.

As though reaching for the brighter side again, she turned to another memory from her grandparents’ farm, recalling an instance of what seemed a fantastic storm, and her fright, but how her grandmother had made it all a game, she said.

He shifted in the saddle, his gaze lingering on her face as she spoke.

She liked conversation, that much was plain.

Perhaps she always had, but ten days in near silence and suspicion had corked it tight inside her.

Now it spilled out in a steady stream, and against all reason, he found himself wanting her to go on.

She carried on, with little instigation, speaking of people and places he could not fathom, names and customs that meant nothing to him, and yet the joy in her voice needed no translation.

He found himself listening, not for the strangeness of her tale, but for the music of it.

He’d told himself he did not believe her, and yet for these moments, he almost forgot to doubt.

And then, for a stretch they rode in silence, but it was not an awkward one. The road unwound before them, the men’s voices drifting in front and behind them.

By the time the sun hung high overhead, Alaric realized their talk had drifted far across many subjects.

He could not recall the last time he had listened so long, so willingly, to another’s voice.

With Ivy, it seemed, he found no weariness in it.

Her words came like a stream, and he let them wash over him, surprised by the ease of it.

At times, he nearly forgot the men marching around them, the war ahead, the weight that ever pressed on his shoulders.