Susan Johnson - Golden Paradise

Even the horses' progress was slow as they struggled through the drifts, and Lisaveta watched Nikki and his partner laboriously close the distance between themselves and the burkah-wrapped figures on foot. Requesting the use of binoculars from one of Nikki's men, she raised them to her eyes and focused on the horsemen, then moving the glasses upward, she caught the native men in the small perimeters of the lenses.

The man helping his companion to walk was unusually tall, she thought, and felt her stomach tighten reflexively… an unconscious reaction she immediately suppressed. The Kurdish tribesmen were often tall, she reminded herself with quelling logic. But still she continued to peer through the binoculars, her heart rate noticeably heightened. The tall man's hands were-

No! She vehemently denied her sentence's conclusion. She wouldn't allow herself to become irrational. The certainty of disappointment would be brutal. Stefan had burned along with thousands of other bodies at Kars. The rumors were simply that-an indication of his soldiers' desperate wish he were still alive. Like hers.

Putting the glasses down, she folded her gloved hands over the leather-covered metal. Cautioning herself to prudent thought, she inhaled slowly to still her agitation and thought with a forced calmness how glad she was Nikki was going to the men's aid. The smaller one appeared seriously incapacitated, the larger man supporting his weight as they struggled through the snow.

No more than a minute passed before prudent caution was cast aside, the glasses were back at her eyes, and she was dreaming impossible dreams even while her rational sensibilities were chastising her insanity. She was hopelessly mad, absurd, unreasonable; she was a dizzy fool. Tears freeze on your face out here, she reminded herself, so be sensible enough not to knowingly seek misery.

But the binoculars were still at her eyes and the tall man's shoulders were a certain span and his dark face even in the shadow of his fur cap and burkah hood was aquiline. Like all the Kurdish natives, she coolly prompted her memory.

But then he brushed one hand over his face in a gesture of fatigue, or perhaps a simple wiping away of the flurry of windswept snow swirling around him, and Lisaveta caught a transient glimpse of luminous green and gold on one finger.

And she knew the Kurds didn't wear jewelry.

And Stefan had always worn a gold-and-emerald signet ring. Which hand, which hand? she wondered frantically, but the gesture was past, the jeweled glimmer disappearing into the burkah folds of his companion's robe. She almost cried then of frustration. She was expecting too much, wanting too much She was totally irrational for want of Stefan. But irrational or not, she kept the glasses to her eyes, monitoring through a film of unshed tears the two men's progress. Each step was laborious and halting; with sheer physical power the taller man half lifted the smaller man so he could navigate through the deep snow.

Nikki and his trooper were moving toward the men at a pace far exceeding the walking men's advance, the horses plowing through the snow with all the power and strength mountain-bred ponies possessed. They had covered almost two-thirds of the distance to the native men when the tall man lifted his arm, pushed aside his hood and hat and waved his arm in a sweeping arc against the dove-gray sky.

"Stefan!" Lisaveta screamed, and dropped the binoculars. Hauling on her reins, she dug in her heels and whipped her pony off the road, lashing him into a struggling gallop.

Stefan hadn't seen her until then; he'd only just distinguished Nikki, but even faint and faraway and buffeted by the wind, he recognized Lisaveta's voice. Gently lowering the man he'd been helping through the snow, he broke into a stumbling run.

Nikki, too, had forced his mount into a gallop when he saw Stefan, and they reached each other after what seemed endless minutes. Stefan was breathing in great gasping pants but he managed a smile, said, "Get Haci-he has to be carried," and motioned them past with a wave of his arm. Stefan was so winded the last words were too faint to hear, but Nikki understood his message and with a wide smile of acknowledgment swept past him to aid his friend.

Stefan took two steps more and fell to his knees.

No, God, no, Lisaveta pleaded, and she bargained her soul in the following seconds as she urged her pony to more speed. Don't let him die… I'll do anything. She offered up every sacrifice and overture and resolution for the future if the gods would only heed her cry.

And then Stefan slowly came to his feet.

"Thank you," she whispered, her throat thick with tears.

Stefan stood absolutely still and waited, his breathing ragged, drawing in great gulps of air to his gasping lungs, not capable at the moment of taking another step. His saber wound on his shoulder had opened again with the effort required to transport Haci through the snow, and he could feel the warm blood seeping through his shirt. But he was smiling. He was gaunt and bone-weary and bearded and weak but smiling, because a miracle had occurred and Lisaveta was here.

It took nearly five full minutes for Lisaveta to reach him- five motionless minutes, five windswept, snow-gusting minutes of thankfulness and joy.

She threw herself off her horse at the end as though she had wings, and crashed through the last short distance of drifted snow in great swooping leaps, despite the weight of Stefan's heavy fur coat.

Stefan's arms opened in welcome, his black burkah flaring out in dark winged folds, and she fell into his embrace, her hat toppling into the snow, her tears freezing on her cheeks, laughing and crying and wordless against the splendor of her feelings. They held each other in flushed and trembling silence for long moments, afraid to speak lest they break the spell and the fantasy disappear, wanting only to preserve the spell if it were an illusion.

They were sweetly warm, engulfed in a heated enchantment as if they alone with their utter joy could melt the snows of Kurdistan. But at last, Stefan tentatively touched Lisaveta's face, felt the corporeal reality of its silky texture, brushed his roughened fingertips across the soft curve of her mouth and dared to say, "You're real."

Her face was lifted to his, flushed and rosy-cheeked, snow-flakes clinging to her lashes, her golden eyes as sunshine beautiful as he'd remembered, her smile more perfect than memory. "I was afraid, too." And her arms tightened around his waist.

Concealing his wince of pain he smiled back. "I'd dreamed so often the past weeks of precisely this, I thought I'd hallucinated."

"Kiss me, please," Lisaveta whispered, her simple plea underscored with fear and uncertainty. Could she be imagining all this in the desperation of her longing? If he kissed her, if she felt the coolness of his lips on hers, could she in safety know he was real?

"I'll kiss you for a lifetime," Stefan murmured, and touched her lips gently, a sweet aching tenderness filling his heart and soul. The snow blew past them and around them, sparkling crystals falling and melting on their faces, the darkening twilight of the storm surrounding them, and they were complete and whole.

"In all the world…" Lisaveta whispered, the reality of their kiss lingering breath-warm on each other's mouth.

"I was coming home," Stefan answered, his voice husky. He understood her cryptic phrase, knowing that while they both lived, they would have found each other through distance and time and adversity. "But, thank you," he murmured, a small smile creasing his wind-chapped cheek, "for shortening the journey."

"Nikki let me come," Lisaveta replied, her voice still tremulous with emotion.

"Let?" Stefan teased in familiar mocking irony.

And she thought how relentlessly strong he was and seemingly indomitable, holding her against the buffeting wind, chaffing her with his habitual impudence as though they weren't standing knee-deep in the desolate snow-swept landscape of Kurdistan, as if he hadn't been lost to the world for weeks, as though he weren't so debilitated he'd only raised himself from his knees moments ago.