The Five Dollar Mail (Book 1: The Green & Book 2: Lynch's Boys)

31: Slipknot

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. All graphics by yours truly. Picture of Fiona is an ambrotype-look photo I made in Photoshop out of found images.

Fiona's fingers slid gently between the tight bandages swathing Storm's chest and his skin, tugging carefully as she pulled the end loose. He tried to raise his elbows, but stopped, wincing in pain. She reached under his arms, pulling the taping away. The masculine scent of him filled her senses, sweet smoke and hay and leather. It was comforting to her that that, at least, was back to normal.

"Alright, then, can you take a deep breath?" Fiona wadded the wrappings into a ball. The parlor was dimly lit, but she could see that the blues and purples sprawling like paint spatters across his torso were now a kaleidoscope of ugly greens and yellows as well. She felt another wave of helpless outrage wash over her and she forced it away.

Storm drew in a deep, hitching breath, his face twisting in discomfort. Fiona frowned in sympathy.

"Are you alright?" She asked quietly.

"Ask me when Bender wraps me up again." he groaned, taking another reluctant breath and forcing it down into his bruised lungs. "I don't know whether to hope Levi Yawl dies so we can be rid of him, or hope he doesn't so I can repay the favor."

"No." She shook her head. "The fighting stops here. Next time you'll end up dead."

"Fiona...they ambushed me" His hand flew involuntarily to a stitch in his side as he breathed against the ache. "That won't happen again."

"No! So what if it doesn't? This thing gets worse every time there's an incident, doesn't it? Maybe next time you'll kill one of them, then what do you suppose would happen?" Then, instead of getting to see you delirious and bleeding after being nearly killed, I get to see you die horribly at the end of a rope. Over my dead body, Lights the Storm.

She looked hard at the young man sitting on the edge of the sofa, a dusky shadow in the dim light of the fireplace embers. His skin was almost bronze in this light, his hair a lightless midnight shroud. White hairpipe and silver pony beads gleamed at his throat. It was his strangeness that had first drawn her to him, and it was also what had kept her at a distance. They had nothing in common, nothing at all, beyond the fascination with each other's worlds and this strange set of circumstances that had brought them both to this beautiful, dangerous place.

Why could she not tell him she was leaving? Why would it even matter? She knew in her heart that the only reason she had avoided telling any of the boys was because she knew they'd go and tell Storm.

Don't get too close to an American man, Aunt Genny's voice was inside her head, her oft-repeated warning sounding in Fiona's ears. Not if you ever want to go home. And her Aunt, Uncle Erastus' English wife, should know.

She looked away, staring at the wall.

"So..." she said finally. "What do you think happened at the Yarl's place? You didn't...I mean, surely you..."

"No, Fiona, I swear. If that becosse was set up, then I swear I don't know anything about it. And it's hardly Saint's style, either. Like you said, I'm sure we aren't the Yarl's only enemies."

Fiona nodded, frowning in exasperation at the dimple deepening on Storm's cheek.

"It's funny, though." he quipped.

"Not if they think you did it, it's not." She gestured to him to lean forward so she could inspect his scalp wound. It appeared to be healing nicely.

He tilted his head up, black eyes twinkling, and looked at her. "It doesn't matter if they go so far as to hang me for it, it's still hilarious. Funny's funny."

"Don't even joke about that. Here." Fiona held up his shirt and helped him ease his arms into it. He grimaced, unable to raise his hands to free the hair trapped under the garment. She gently pushed his arms down and slid her hands inside his collar, behind his neck, pulling his hair out and over the back of his shirt.

His fingers fumbled at the buttons and she pushed them away, carefully straightening his shirtfront.

"You overdid it today." She said, a crack in her voice betraying her attempt to sound casual. Her hands still tingled from the heat of his skin and the clinging softness of his hair. She wished she hadn't done that, hadn't been so forward as to touch him the way a lover might, her hands around his neck inside his shirt. He might get the wrong notion in his head. She might get the wrong notion in hers.

She heard him inhale as if to speak, but then whatever thought he was about to voice apparently evaporated like smoke. And, she noticed with annoyance, so had her dexterity as she clumsily fastened the buttons over his chest.. She wasn't sure whether to chalk that up to the fact that men's shirts buttoned backwards or that this particular man's shirt, unbuttoned as it was, was displaying what it was intended to conceal in a way that was making her fingers tremble. This was taking much longer than she had intended.

The smile had faded from Storm's face. She didn't know what he was thinking, but she was pretty sure that whatever it was, she didn't really want to know anyway. She pointedly avoided meeting his eyes.

He flinched when she accidentally grazed his skin with her fingers. She jerked her hands away, relieved to be finished.

"Alright, then." She croaked hoarsely, hastily turning away. "We're done." She forced a smile she didn't feel. I have to go home, she thought. I have to leave here as soon as I can...as soon as Aunt Genny returns. If I don't, I never will.

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