THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART TWENTY-TWO:

Marshall and Eden were standing close together just outside her door. He kissed her, a long, tender kiss, then stepped back, intending to go to his own room.

"Marshall," she said, her voice halting his movement. "Are we going somewhere?"

He knew what she meant. "I want to."

"Will you come in for a moment?"

"That's the problem, darling. I want to do that, too."

He heard her opening her door. "Please."

Licking his lip thoughtfully, he said, "Eden...."

"Please."

He blew out a breath and followed her into her bedroom.  As he didn't know the arrangement

of her furniture and Wadsworth was not in harness, she led him to her bed. "Sit with me? Talk

to me?" she asked.

His right hand rested on his lap and she lifted it in hers, liking some physical point of contact between them since he couldn't see her. He smiled slightly, very aware of his own breathing,

of the faster rhythm of his heart. "Eden," he tried again, "please don't ever think I don't want you, darling. I literally ache with the wanting of you. I just want...," he blew out another long breath, "I just...want...everything, absolutely everything, especially me, to be...right."

"I know," she said, her voice very low, "but I can hardly bear lying in this bed now without

you beside me."

An odd little sound escaped his throat. "I don't think I could bear lying beside you and not...."

"Just a little," she urged. "I just need to feel the length of you alongside me...just a little."

"Oh, Eden," he said, shaking his head.

"Just a little," she repeated, sliding off the bed and slipping his shoes off. "I'll be gentle."

A half-strangled laugh burst out of him. "Isn't that supposed to be my line?"

"It doesn't matter whose line it is, my darling. I think I'm going to die on the spot if you don't

lie beside me...just a little."

He pushed himself back and around on the bed so his right side would be next to her.  He couldn't do this properly, not like he wanted, not with his top left half trussed like a turkey

for roasting.  He was accustomed to a grace and flow of movement, but not now. Now he felt inept, clumsy. He simply could not let her first experience of him be...awkward. So as he lay back, he said, "Just lie with me a while, darling. Just be close and...."

"It's all right," she smiled, still sitting, looking down at him, entirely filled with her longing

for him. "I do understand." She lay carefully beside him on his right side, sliding her right

arm across his chest. "Just let me listen to your heart beating."  She rested her cheek atop
him and closed her eyes.  Ah, there it was and it had become to her the most beloved sound in the world.

Her hand slipped inside the front of his shirt, her fingers lightly playing with the hair on his chest. His whole body reacted and he began to breathe through his mouth in a desperate effort to make himself relax.  He couldn't do it. His body had a mind of its own and it wanted hers.

If he had been whole, he would have rolled up on his right elbow and his left hand would have done, would have touched, would have found....  But he couldn't and it was killing him that he couldn't.  His right arm was under her shoulders and as she leaned up on him a little more, he used his arm to lift her closer to his face where he could find her mouth.  One small, still-functioning corner of his brain kept reminding him not to attempt curving his left side up, the memory of what had happened not long before on the parlor couch still fresh in his nerve endings. So he let his mouth, his tongue, show her mouth what he would do if he could with

the rest of him. His hand was fisted in the back of her hair, pressing her rather desperately to him.

Then he became fully aware that the reins he was keeping on himself, the reins that in their reasonableness told him certain movements would result in exquisite pain, those reins were slipping from his fingers. He pulled his mouth away from hers, sucking in gasping breaths
of air. Not like this. He wanted to love her freely, completely, not with teeth gritted against agony.

She lifted her face, looking down at him, seeing his struggle plainly writ on his features. "You were right, weren't you?" she whispered.

He nodded, not quite able to speak, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, rolling onto her back, his arm still under her.

He let out one more long, fairly ragged breath. "Don't be sorry for wanting to love me," he said. His hand curved up, its fingers combing through her hair. "I think there's just too much... wanting...from both of us to be able to lie together like this."

"I just want...need...to be close to you," she sighed.

"I know," he said. "I really know."  He scooped her back against him. "Maybe if we lie...very still," he almost chuckled.

She nestled her head against him, not putting her hand on his chest. "Let's try," she said. "Like this...let's just try...for a while."

His breathing and pulse had begun to calm. He lay flat on his back, the only movement he allowed being his fingers in her hair. After a long, long while, even that stopped and they both slept.  Wadsworth woke up somewhere in the wee hours, changed his position, flopped down again with rather much of a thud. Not used to dog sounds in the night, Eden roused, realized

the lights were still on and Marshall still lay beside her. She moved her head just enough to watch his face as he slept. "I love you, you beautiful, wonderful man," she whispered. "I love

you so much I almost scare myself." 

As she settled back, she knew that was because of Miles in the snow.  She'd read somewhere

that when you love, you offer hostages to fate. She'd loved Miles as completely as she knew how
at that stage of her life, and fate had taken him brutally away.  Now, lying there, listening to the steady beat of Marshall's heart, she was truly somewhat frightened that she'd not only let herself love again, but let herself love...more.

Thank God, she comforted herself, that he was a college professor and not a cop. Thank God for that much!  And he'd already fallen off his cliff and she'd been there, been in time to save him. Not like Miles, whose blood had poured out of his neck, soaking the snow in its redness until he
was white and cold and...gone. For the next half hour she listened to the beating of Marshall's heart then finally slept, warm against his side.

In the morning she woke again, smiled because he was there, and asked softly, "You awake?"

"Umm hmm," he murmured.

"I can't tell. Your eyes are shut."

He smiled, opening them. "It's not instinct for blind people to open their eyes. Sometimes we forget and just keep them closed."

"I love your eyes," she said. "You have really long lashes, you know."

He laughed. "Not once in my life have I ever thought about my eyelashes."

"Well, I like them! So there! And when your eyes are closed, they fan out across your cheeks

and make me want to kiss them."

"Kissable eyelashes?" He chuckled again, closing his lids. "I'm waiting."

Now she laughed and leaned over him, kissing each eye in turn.

Wadsworth got up, coming to Marshall's side of the bed and whuffing softly. "He probably needs to go out," Marshall said. Since they'd both slept in their clothes, all they had to do was slip on their shoes, go quietly down the stairs, grab their coats and and step out on the porch. Marshall hadn't bothered with a leash and let Wadsworth run free in the large area between the inn and
the lake.

"It snowed last night," Eden remarked. "I'd say about 3 inches or so." She tipped her face up toward his. "Is snow at all like rain for you?"

"Not in the least, I'm afraid. Almost the exact opposite."

"How do you mean? Doesn't it fall out of the clouds just like rain?"

"It muffles, Eden, it lays itself over all the sounds I need, over all the textures of path or grass

or road, so all my points of reference are gone. It's not so bad if Wadsworth's in harness with me, but when I'm on my own, it's like being packed in cotton wool and I can't tell where I am

or where I need to go.  When I was a boy, I'd go anyway, blundering my way through the drifts, falling over things I would have known were there but for their total obliteration for me by the snow. If the snow if deep enough, there is no way to tell where the curbs are, where the sidewalk ends and the road begins.  Any sureness I have of where I am going disappears."

He stopped, smiled. "But I don't want you to think it's all grim. I still make a fairly decent snowman."

She was silent, thinking. There was so much she'd never thought of, so much she didn't realize about what his world was like. She ran her hand along the top of the railing, scooping off some

of the snow into her palm. "It's really light and fluffy today. I don't think it'd pack well at all

or I'd make you prove that, mister."

Wadsworth barked happily as he dashed about. "He's having a good time," Marshall said. "It's good for him to run like this without his harness."

"He does look happy," she agreed. "He seems to have uncovered a pine cone and is tossing it up in the air."

"That you know that...." he said softly. "I can't even imagine how you know that." He shook his head wonderingly. "I know he's happy and he's playing in the snow, yes, but how you know about the pine cone...it's just...unimaginable. What is it that eyes do that lets you gather such detailed information at such a distance?"

She bit her lip. There was simply no way to describe seeing to someone who'd never seen.

"You know," he continued, "there was this two-year study dealing with the near-death experiences of born-blind people. And what's interesting is that 80% of them had some sort of visual perception during it. They had a hard time describing it because born-blind people don't have the early developmental process of making sense of  perceived objects."

"I've heard of born-blind people sometimes getting their sight through some sort of surgery or something and then being all confused because nothing makes sense to them," she added.

"Umm hmm," he nodded. "From what I understand, that's the way it is. So these people who saw during NDE's were hard- pressed to explain, but from what they were able to do, the doctors were astounded."

"It's quite a thought," she murmured. "Dying to see."

"What is says to me, Eden, is that sight is an integrated part of the essence of our spirit and it's only the physical body that may be blind, but never the spirit. So when the spirit is free, even

for a moment, from the physical...it sees. It's actually rather simple in concept."

"Did...did...you see anything, Marshall...there in the mud?"

"Nothing. I think I didn't get that far, close, but not quite that far. I sort of recall something like, well, coming loose, almost a beginning of a drifting away. But then you beat on my back and cleared my airway and stopped me dead in my tracks, so to speak."

"Live in your tracks," she amended. "I definitely need you live in your tracks."

He bent, kissing her cheekbone. "That makes two of us."

ON TO PART 23

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