Welcome To Red Cloud

Chapter Five - Flora Fair

I was back in the lake. I didn't know how long I'd been sleeping, but it came upon me that things weren't right, and I was stuck half-awake in a dream. I couldn't see the sorry sight of Room Four, where I knew I'd collapsed not long after dinner, only the thick black waves of water that surrounded me, tugging me back down into the deep. I was too heavy to stretch or swim, sinking further and further as the colourless void took me in.

And then she came. The vision I'd seen when I thought I'd met my end. She offered me no smiles or kisses this time, for she stood upright in the watery black as though the waves were floors to her feet. She was dressed in flowing white, her blonde ringlets expanding and floating into the water all about her too-pale face. The china-white drew me in, my body drifting closer to hers without my having any say to it.

"Are you rested, child?"

I tried to open my mouth, but no answer came. The lady of the lake cradled my face in her hands, and from the corner of my eye I caught her long white nails tracing shapes above my ears.

"Not yet it seems. But time will bring you back."

She let me go, and I fell with a crash into the full force of the waves. The nightmare broke and I was back in Room Four with a start, my eyes bursting open to the darkness. I gasped for air, clutching my sore throat, and sat up amid my sweat-damp sheets. I was set to swear it out and say some prayers when my eyes caught a shift at the far end of my room. There was a click, and when my eyes came to focus, I was not alone.

She had a gun on me, and it took a fair moment of noticing that before I even dared to see beyond it to her face. The intruder was a young woman of about my age, with wild brown hair thrown about her shoulders. She wore nothing but a thin chemise that showed me a lot more of a woman's shape than I'd ever seen, and I shuffled back in my bed and gathered up the heavy covers. I raised my hands, eyes so wide it hurt.

"Who are you, and what are you doing in my room?"

The girl shrugged. She had a lazy expression, her eyes floating off me as she took my wallet up off the bureau. She shook it roughly, and two pieces of paper came fluttering out. The gun was trained hard on my head. Had it not been, I might have leaped out to stop her going through my things.

"Name's Flora Hays, how ya doin' sweet Sir." She picked up the folded page, my deed of land, and shook it out to look at it. Her eyes did not travel over the words like Marley Barrett's had. "I work over at the Emerald, but there was word told of the dude from New York. I like a man of money, so I come to see if ya might be interested in my services for the evening."

Her chemise made sense to her services, and the thought made me shiver in a way I rarely felt. Flora dropped the deed back onto the bureau and moved to the other paper. It was one I hadn't unearthed in all the time I'd been travelling. The urge to leap up and stop her grew, and I clutched the sheets with balled fists.

"So, what? You found me asleep and decided you'd go through my things instead?"

Flora settled herself into the chair beside the bureau, readjusting her gun before she eyed the new paper. My jacket was resting on the back of that chair, and one good feel would tell her where all the money I had in the world was hiding. But Flora was more interested in the page, chewing her lip as she heaved a chesty chuckle out.

"I was gonna take a buck or two for my wasted journey, sure. By the look of this pitcher, y'all ain't the type gonna be coming to me right now." She turned the small paper so that I could see it too. "Ain't she a sweetheart? All purty with her red curls. That's New York for ya. Skin that fair don't come to Red Cloud for love nor money."