Chapter 20

Impossible to Forget

"Now, you are trespassing, and I'm about sick of this." Christy kept her voice low and threatening.

"He is guilty of serious-" David began nervously, but was cut off as Christy cocked the rifle.

"Explain your charges." She said between clenched teeth. Now, more than ever, she felt like the fool. When was she ever going to stop being so naive about people? Neil had been right about David, right all the way through. And she had not believed him.

But she believed him now, and she found herself despising the man who had first proposed to her.

"Years ago, before I met you in fact, I became acquainted with a certain man - Hank, was his name - who told me that he was searching for a 'golden bird cage' that was stolen from his grandfather by a man with the last name of MacNeill." Christy risked a quick glance over at her husband as David continued telling his tale. Neil's face was an impossible sheet of impassivity.

"So I asked him for more information, and he told me that Neil's father had stolen the golden cage, which by the way is worth a fortune in today's standards, killed Hank's grandfather when he had tried to stop him, and took it back to his cabin, which is now your cabin. It had never been seen or heard of since. Which leads me to my first question; where is it?"

"I honestly can tell you I don't know! Who do you think you are, barging in here and demanding something that I couldn't possibly know about!" Neil said angrily.

"Get away from him" She advised the other man, still glued to his place beside Neil. He looked once at David, who nodded in the affirmative, and stepped back.

"Now, let's begin this all over more civilized, shall we?" Christy said sarcastically, though still angrily.

"It'll start when you lower the gun" David tightened his jaw in defiance. Christy slowly lowered the rifle though she still kept her finger on the trigger.

Just as she lowered the head to the ground, however, David's arm shot up to grab hers and keep them still. The sudden jolt caused her to raised her arms, and therefore the weapon, to defend herself. As Christy raised the weapon she squeezed the trigger, and after that everything went black.

When she next awoke, she was lying on the floor where she had fallen with Neil above her. He held a rag in his hand and was dabbing her forehead gently. His worried expression showed her that something bad had happened. Why was she there on the floor to begin with?

"W-what happened?" She asked softly as she tried to sit up. A wave of dizziness followed by a tipping world made her rethink her decision. Neil gently but firmly put a strong arm on his wife's shoulder.

"Stay down, you shouldn't try to sit up just yet. You took a nasty tumble." He said, trying to be light hearted. But the way his blue eyes had changed tint, becoming darker, and the way his pupils were dilated betrayed his true feelings. She had scared him. Scared him, obviously, because he thought she might have done something serious enough to hurt herself. What had happened?

"Neil" She spoke again, this time stronger. "What happened? Where's David and the other man?" As she asked these questions, a cold dread slowly crept upward to her heart, wrapping itself around her firmly. The feeling of cold was so literal that she looked around quickly at her surroundings to see if a wind were blowing. She could see the still cabin air, the bright sunlight outside the cabin filtering through the windows and hitting the floor. Where the rays of the sun sliced through the air she could see the dust flying freely. And it was, quiet. Much too quiet.

"What happened?" She asked a third time, starting to become annoyed. Neil avoided her gaze as he spoke, sitting cross legged beside her on the floor. By this time she was feeling much better and sat up, to which her husband did not protest.

"When, when the gun went off, after he grabbed you... it, it shot him through his chest as you were wrestling to get him to let go." He looked into her eyes, and she found it next to impossible to read the expression in his handsome eyes. Sorrow? Pity? Loss? Pain? Or was it some kind of relief? She could not tell, she could only guess at what lay beyond those fathomless blue eyes.

"He's dead, Christy." He said those words so calmly, so matter of factly, yet his expression changed as he spoke, betraying... sorrow? nShe stared at her husband in horror for a moment, the tension-filled air suddenly so thick that she could slice it with a knife.

Dead... I killed him. He's dead because I killed him. It was an odd sensation that followed after that - nothingness. It was almost as if though her brain had heard the words, she did not think they were true. Christy blinked a few times and felt her head swimming again.

"You must have lost your footing and fell, hitting your head on the floor." He finished, and suddenly, like a rain shower turning on without warning, she knew. All the pieces of the puzzle fit, and fit well. They all worked. David had tried to get the rifle from her hands. She had fought back, all the while her hand on the trigger, then her hands went instinctively up as if to cover her face and she accidentally squeezed the trigger. Then she knew Neil was right... she knew, and she felt like crying with that knowledge. Quick tears came to her eyes as she focused on an invisible point in her lap.

"I didn't mean too" She said softly, intertwining her fingers as she kept her head bent. Then she felt strong arms around her, and she knew who it was.

"Of course you didn't." Neil said gently, rubbing small circles in her back with his free hand. He sounded genuine, like he really did want to completely change the situation, and for that she was grateful. Neither said anything for several moments.

"What of the other man?" She asked finally. She heard another sharp intake of breath from Neil, and she knew this story wasn't going to be much prettier.

"He turned the gun on himself, and before I could stop him, he fired it. Clean shot to the head, he probably didn't even feel much." Neil said, trying to sound confident and courageous. But she could hear the little boy inside him, in his very voice as it quavered slightly.

"That's good." She mused out loud. "It's good he wasn't in any pain... we've had too much of that recently -" She said, unable to finish the sentence as huge sobs racked her body. It was as if the entire past few months since her kidnap were now being condensed into a single time, and all the pain and fear she had been holding in was now being released. It felt good to cry, to wash away a world that was so wrong...

"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you - unless, of course, you fail the test...?" Miss Alice continued reading steadily from the passage of scripture she had selected for the funeral services. They had decided to give both men a proper burial, especially David.

Christy stood by her husband's side and wept silently throughout the entire service. She still could not get over the fact that she had killed him. As she looked periodically into Miss Alice's eyes throughout the day, she could see the profound sadness hidden in the gray depths. Sadness, she would later discover, over the fact that David had attempted something so awful and also over the fact that Christy was feeling so guilty.

"Mrs. MacNeill" Miss Alice gently admonished one day while leaving for Low Gap.

"Thee must think about what David and the other man might have done to thy husband, had this not happened. It is a tragedy in the greatest, but we can no longer dwell on the past... you must look to the future if you are to be the wife and mother that God has called you to be."

"But how?" She had asked desperately. Miss Alice's eyes glimmered with the truth of the aged, shining brightly like the wildflowers covered in dew, when the sun catches the water droplets and sends prismatic gleams of light into the air.

"Prayer, Mrs. MacNeill, changes things. I've seen that at work." She said fondly. She then blew Christy a kiss and left, the kiss lingering in the air warm and sweet like the older woman's presence.

Maybe, just maybe, she thought as she watched the woman leave, I can grow up to be like her.

The End!

Author's Note: I'm sort of embarrassed about this chapter... I think it's written awfully. I'm sorry guys, but I had to end it, wanted to end it tonight so I could move on, yet waitressing tonight I guess made me sorta tired. Probably shouldn't have written this, but here it is.

And, now for the good part. I've got a great idea for the 2nd book, (below). Oh and don't worry, everything about the golden cage will be fully explored and explained in the BEGINNING of "Wing Under My Wings". Enjoy this snippet and forgive my lousy chapter tonight!

(Don't stone me... here's previews for "Wind Under My Wings" book 2 in my Salvation trilogy.)

CUTTER GAP was always full of change. The long, drab winters would slowly, slowly release their holds on the rugged mountains, and new life for a new year would begin to appear. The maples and wild cherries, always the first to spring to life, would shoot out red and bright chartreuse colored buds, announcing their arrival with glee. A brown doe with her big, cautious liquid eyes would bring another fawn, perhaps two, into the world, and they would sniff the air as carefully and instinctively as their mother does and would welcome this new environment. Yes, change would take place and often, as in the cove's circumstance, would bring about more beauty, more love, and more wonder.

But it would also bring about more hardship, especially when the outside world began to intrude upon God's creation. World War 1 had officially begun several months prior, and now the outside world that the mountain folk dreaded was beginning to force itself to the top of everyone's minds.

Whispers, rumors, known facts of the brutality of this war were beginning to make themselves known in Cutter Gap. The men folk were even beginning to succumb to it, talking of the war as they worked at the mill or plowed or worked their bees. Even in the schoolhouse, at least by the younger men, WW1 had become a favorite topic. Everyone speculated about what they did not know, and cringed at what they did.

But the war had not claimed anyone, at least not yet. And it was so distant a thing in the Cove's opinion, something that was going on "o'er yan" that nobody really dwelled on any one aspect of it for too long.

Christy MacNeill pondered all this one morning, as she did nearly every morning, as she sat in a homemade rocker on the front porch of her cabin. It was one of those rare moments where she had nothing to do at the present and so she had taken the time to let her feet rest quietly as she prayed and reflected. A hand dropped unconsciously to her ever-growing stomach and that all too familiar smile lined her fair features. Neil often told her that motherhood looked incredibly gorgeous on her... a compliment that she was all too willing to take, because frankly, some mornings she just didn't feel pretty at all.

She was also having to grow accustomed to the aches and pains her body was now experiencing as the life within her grew more and more each day. She was now almost half way into her seventh month, and she could hardly contain her excitement at being a parent. She was also excited to see Neil as a father. She knew he had been one, once - but it had not been for very long. She looked forward to the idea of being able to give him another opportunity.