Free Wild Wind by Patricia Ryan Page A

continues that way.”
    They followed a sort of narrow, meandering corridor until they reached the apex of another downslope, steeper than the last, and peered into the vast darkness beyond. From somewhere up ahead came the gentle slapping of water against stone—the source of the cool airstream that had drawn the sheep, and which was raising goose bumps on his sweat-soaked body.
    “How far in do you think it goes?” Her soft inquiry resonated in the great empty space. He could barely see her, the light from the small opening through which they had entered having almost exhausted itself.
    “I don’t know.” Wild to go exploring, but mindful of her feminine limitations, he said, “I suppose we should go back.”
    She chuckled. “You want to search further.”
    “I’m thinking of you. It’s so dark, and we don’t know what the footing’s like. I’m wearing boots, but you’ve just got your slippers, and your skirts might get in the way...”
    “Here.” Kicking off her kid slippers, she lifted her skirt above her ankles, holding it with one hand as if she were about to dance the tourdoin. Something about her girlish smile and those pale, bare feet on the cavern floor touched him deep inside his chest. She was so different this afternoon, not the pale, enigmatic beauty he’d adored from afar all these weeks, but a real human being, lively and vital and full of childlike wonder.
    “All right,” he said quietly. And then he tentatively reached out and took her free hand in his. “In case you fall.”
    She contemplated him for a moment, and he feared she would pull away from him. But presently her lips curved in a slow, sweet smile, and she murmured her thanks.
    Alex guided her with careful steps down the slope, grateful when it leveled out. He could barely manage to put one foot in front of the other. The very rock seemed to shift beneath him, so overwhelmed was he to be touching her. Her hand felt like the cheek of a baby, inconceivably soft, and it was warm, and it was hers, and she was letting him hold it. Nothing that had happened to him in his seventeen years had given him such dizzying joy.
    The darker it got, the more cautiously they trod, until at last they stood in near total blackness in the midst of what felt like a great fathomless void. The soft sloshing of water was closer now.
    “Must be an underground stream,” he said.
    “Aye.”
    The absence of light was so complete that he couldn’t see Nicolette standing right in front of him, although he sensed her gaze searching for him through the darkness, as his searched for her.
    “We’d best go no farther for now,” he said. “We can come back tomorrow with a lantern.”
    “Aye.” Her voice had a shivery quality he’d never heard in it before.
    “Are you afraid?” he whispered.
    Her breathing quickened. “I don’t know.”
    “I’m right here.” He reached for her other hand, and held both; they felt wonderfully warm in this cool abyss. The ragged rhythm of their breathing echoed off unseen walls of rock, until the sound of the stream faded away and it was all he could hear. He didn’t know which breaths were his and which were Nicolette’s.
    “Do you want to go back?” he asked her.
    “Nay. Not yet.”
    The coupling of their hands felt like his tether to earth. Should she release her grip on him, he might fly off into the infinite blackness, lost for all eternity.
    But she didn’t release him. Indeed, she chose that moment to tighten her grasp, her fingers achingly soft against his callused flesh. A drop of water rang in the darkness.
    They stood for some time in breathless silence, in this cool, dark, strangely hallowed place, indifferent to the slow and steady passage of time in the mortal world above them, just being there, together.
    Something was happening, Alex realized, inside of him—inside both of them. Their souls were splintering apart and merging together into a new and marvelous pattern, like ice crystals melting