A Little Magic(2)

He climbed into the rented car, then simply sat in the murky light wondering what to do, where to go. He was thirty, a successful photographer who could name his own price, call his own shots. He still considered it a wild twist of fate that he’d been able to make a living doing something he loved. Using what he saw in a landscape, in a face, in light and shadow and texture, and translating that into a photograph.

It was true that the last few years had been hectic and he’d worked almost nonstop. Even now the trunk of the Volvo he’d rented was loaded with equipment, and his favored Nikon rested in its case on the seat beside him. He couldn’t get away from it—didn’t want to run away from what he loved.

Suddenly an odd chill raced through him, and he thought, for just a moment, that he heard a woman weeping.

Just the rain, he told himself and scrubbed his hands over his handsome face. It was long, narrow, with the high, strong cheekbones of his Celtic forefathers. His nose was straight, his mouth firm and well formed. It smiled often—or it had until recently.

His eyes were gray—a deep, pure gray without a hint of green or blue. The brows over them were strongly arched and tended to draw together in concentration. His hair was black and thick and flowed over his collar. An artistic touch that a number of women had enjoyed.

Again, until recently.

He brooded over the fact that it had been months since he’d been with a woman—since he’d wanted to. Overwork again? he wondered. A byproduct of stress? Why would he be stressed when his career was advancing by leaps and bounds? He was healthy. He’d had a complete physical only weeks before.

But you didn’t tell the doctor about the dreams, did you? he reminded himself. The dreams you can’t quite remember when you wake up. The dreams, he admitted, that had pulled him three thousand miles over the ocean.

No, damn it, he hadn’t told the doctor. He wasn’t going that route again. There had been enough psychiatrists in his youth, poking and prodding into his mind, making him feel foolish, exposed, helpless. He was a grown man now and could handle his own dreams.

If he was having a breakdown, it was a perfectly normal one and could be cured by rest, relaxation, and a change of scene.

That’s what he’d come to Ireland for. Only that.

He started the car and began to drive aimlessly.

He’d had dreams before, when he was a boy. Very clear, too realistic dreams. Castles and witches and a woman with tumbling red hair. She’d spoken to him with that lilt of Ireland in her voice. And sometimes she’d spoken in a language he didn’t know—but had understood nonetheless.

There’d been a young girl—that same waterfall of hair, the same blue eyes. They’d laughed together in his dreams. Played together—innocent childhood games. He remembered that his parents had been amused when he’d spoken of his friend. They had passed it off, he thought, as the natural imagination of a sociable only child.

But they’d been concerned when he seemed to know things, to see things, to speak of places and people he couldn’t have had knowledge of. They’d worried over him when his sleep was disturbed night after night—when he began to walk and talk while glazed in dreams.

So, after the doctors, the therapists, the endless sessions, and those quick, searching looks that adults thought children couldn’t interpret, he’d stopped speaking of them.

And as he’d grown older, the young girl had grown as well. Tall and slim and lovely—young breasts, narrow waist, long legs. Feelings and needs for her that weren’t so innocent had begun to stir.

It had frightened him, and it had angered him. Until he’d blocked out that soft voice that came in the night. Until he’d turned away from the image that haunted his dreams. Finally, it had stopped. The dreams stopped. The little flickers in his mind that told him where to find lost keys or had him reaching for the phone an instant before it rang ceased.

He was comfortable with reality, Cal told himself. Had chosen it. And would choose it again. He was here only to prove to himself that he was an ordinary man suffering from overwork. He would soak up the atmosphere of Ireland, take the pictures that pleased him. And, if necessary, take the pills his doctor had prescribed to help him sleep undisturbed.

He drove along the storm-battered coast, where wind roared in over the sea and held encroaching summer at bay with chilly breath.

Rain pattered the windshield, and fog slithered over the ground. It was hardly a warm welcome, yet he felt at home. As if something, or someone, was waiting to take him in from the storm. He made himself laugh at that. It was just the pleasure of being in a new place, he decided. It was the anticipation of finding new images to capture on film.