Amanda Ashley - Midnight Pleasures

"Be still, lass," Dugald warned softly. "Ronin has gone for his bow."

"Nay!" Channa Leigh cried. "Nay, Papa, you must not kill it!"

"Are you daft, girl? 'Tis a wild beastie, not a pet."

Slowly, her hand resting firmly on the wolf's head, she stood and turned toward the sound of her father's voice. "Papa? Papa, I can see you."

Dugald stared at his daughter in astonishment. "Channa Leigh, what are you saying?"

"I can see you."

"Channa Leigh?" A woman stepped out of the crowd, her pale blue eyes shining with tears.

"Mama? Oh, Mama, I can see."

Mara stared at her daughter. "But… but… how is that possible?"

"I dinna know." Slowly, Channa Leigh glanced around, and she could see them all, the people she had lived with all her life, some whom she had never seen. " 'Tis a miracle."

A miracle that ended when Ronin ran forward, his longbow clutched in his hand. Ronin, who was the best hunter in the village, who provided the village folk with meat summer and winter, who found game when no one else could.

She shouted, "Nay, you must not!" as he put arrow to string and sighted down the shaft.

With a graceful leap and a roar that seemed to shake the very pillars of the earth, the big black wolf disappeared into the night, leaving her in darkness once more.

He stood once again on the pinnacle of the mountain, shaken to the very foundation of his soul. Her spirit, as pure and clean as the light of dawn, had brushed his, and as their souls collided, the fetters of blindness had melted away and she had seen the world through his eyes. He had felt her joy as she looked upon the faces of her father and mother for the first time since an illness in childhood had stolen her sight. In those few moments, he had felt all of her pain, her sense of being shut off from the rest of the world, her yearning for a home and a family of her own.

How was this possible? In three hundred years, he had performed countless miracles, healed the sick, coaxed rain from the heavens, but never had he plumbed the depths of another soul, nor had another see the world through his eyes.

He gazed down at the villagers. They stood subdued after the incident with the wolf. Had he willed it, he could have heard their voices, read their thoughts, but he closed his mind against them, his whole being focused on the young woman who gazed sightlessly into the distance, her heart silently beseeching the great black wolf to return to her side.

He paced through the empty rooms of the great stone castle all that night, his mind in turmoil.

He knew so much, and yet he knew so little.

He had performed wondrous feats of magic, yet could not explain why a blind peasant girl had been able to see when she touched him.

He paused in front of the looking glass that adorned one wall of his chamber, stared at the reflection before him as though it could give him the answers he sought, but he saw only what he had always seen: a tall man, broad of chest and long of limb. His hair fell past his shoulders, long and straight and black save for a narrow streak of gray at his left temple. His eyes changed color with the seasons—cold gray in winter, pale green in spring, deep brown in the fall. This night, they were the warm blue of a summer sky.

She had touched him and seen the world through his eyes. How was that possible? Were he to touch her while in his human form, would the same miracle occur?

He walked slowly through the great stone castle that was his domain. He had lived here alone all his adult life, watching the world change, watching the people in the village below as they went through the endless cycle of life and death.

He had watched Channa Leigh grow from being a plump, pink-cheeked babe, to a long-legged girl, to a beautiful young woman. It seemed he had always watched Channa Leigh, that he had ever been drawn to the beautiful green-eyed girl who now stared at the world through sightless eyes.

He paused in the great hall to stare up at the painting of his parents. His mother was as fair as his father was dark. She had been a pale, slender creature with light brown hair and eyes as blue as a deep mountain lake. His father had been darkness itself—dark of skin and hair and eyes. Dark of soul, some had said. The people of the village had called him the Dragon Lord of Darkfest Keep.

Darkfest left the castle and wandered through the quiet night, bedeviled by questions for which he had no answers, knowing only that should he surrender to the darkness that dwelled deep within him, he would be forever lost, forever damned.

In the days that followed, he tried to put Channa Leigh out of his mind, but it was impossible. Like the ache from an old wound, she came back again and again to torment him. He felt anew the touch of her small, gentle hand on his head, relived her wonder as she saw the world through his eyes. And because he had ever been selfish when it came to satisfying his own wants, a fortnight later he again changed into the guise of a mountain wolf and made his way down the mountainside to the village.

He knew which house was hers, knew in what room she slept. But even had he not known, her warm, familiar scent would have beckoned him as surely as candlelight drew the tiny white moths.

He hesitated a moment, weighing the risk of being discovered against the prize, and then dismissed the danger. He was Darkfest, more than a match for a few lowly peasants.

Her window was open and he leaped effortlessly over the low sill, then padded soundlessly toward her narrow bed. She slept on her side, facing the window, one hand tucked, childlike, beneath her cheek. Her eyes were closed, but he knew them well, wide and innocent beneath delicately shaped brows, as green as the leaves of the pine trees that grew close together along the river. Her rich golden hair fell in a long braid over her shoulder. He lifted the heavy braid with his paw, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. Her scent filled his nostrils, warmed every nerve.

Would she wake if he dared to lie beside her? It was a temptation he could not resist. Lightly he jumped onto her bed and stretched out beside her, his back to her front. A low growl of satisfaction rambled in his throat as she snuggled against him.

A sigh, soft as a summer breeze, whispered past her lips, ruffling his fur.

Of what do ye dream, my Channa Leigh ? he wondered, and closing his eyes, he covered her hand with his paw and let his mind meld with hers…

At first there was only darkness, and then, gradually, the world brightened and he saw her walking along the river-bank, one hand resting on the head of a huge wolf. And she saw the world through his eyes. He experienced her wonder as she watched a gray squirrel run up a tree. She stopped to touch the soft pink petals of a brier rose, stooped to run her hands over the green velvet grass. Now and then she paused and gazed up at the sky, and then she moved on, her head turning slowly from side to side, examining everything she passed—flowers, leaves, rocks, a fat brown caterpillar.

He felt her fingers in his hair as her hand stroked the dream wolf's head. He had thought to change into his true form but decided against it now, afraid she might sense the change and awaken.

In her dream, she sat down in the shade of a flowering oak, and the big wolf stretched out beside her, his head in her lap.

As she stroked the dream wolf, he felt his own body tingle, his skin ripple with pleasure, as though she were caressing him and not the wolf in her dream.

"Isn't the world a wondrous place, my dark one?" she said. "I had forgotten how beautiful it all was." She ran one hand over the grass. "This is green. 'Tis a glorious color.

And the earth. 'Tis brown, like Papa's cow. Oh, and look at the sky. "Its a wondrous shade of blue. As blue as your eyes."