Page 39 of Javier

“Come on, buddy,” I tugged on the rope, urging the amiable little beast into a faster pace.

I jogged beside the donkey, leading by example. The little beast didn’t exactly give me a burst of speed, but it did go into a lazy trot. Under the downpour, Sister Elsa sat stiff and very straight, bouncing on the animal’s back like a pogo stick. Or a lightning rod.

Oh, shoot. Don’t think that way.

She held on to the donkey’s mane, her long face dripping with rain. Sister Janet rode behind her, brick-faced and soaked, her short salt-and-pepper hair plastered around her round face. Holding on to Sister Elsa for dear life, she looked like a basketball attached to her hoop.

How long had we been gone? Ten minutes? Twenty? Thirty?

I had no idea.

Lightning streaked the sky. The memory of a nightmare flashed in my mind.

Droplets pounded on flat stones. Rivulets ran between the rocks. Snakes, some coiled, some slithering, some hissing. A viper, rearing up to strike. The flash of fangs. A thin streak of blood on skin. “We’re running out of time,” a familiar voice yelled. “Please don’t go.” Someone whispered a soul-wrenching plea. “Stay with me.”

The nightmare had been terrifying, and yet only a few details lingered in my head, phantom snippets robbing me of context.

The dream has nothing to do with today.I tried calming myself.Nothing at all.

The nightmare had been intertwined with my other dreams, some good, some bad, some puzzling. The ones I remembered the best were the good ones, especially the erotic ones about Javier. I also recalled the pre-sentient ones about the Sisters of Charity being evicted out of Nicaragua and the orphanage on fire.

There had also been the small, short ones that had me bolting out of my rickety cot in the morning and jumping into action. Like the one last week where I’d dreamed there was a poison dart frog in a bucket. I’d ran out screaming like a crazy woman and stopped Sister Janet right before she tipped the bucket over the three-year-old undergoing his daily bath. Sure enough, the poisonous frog, capable of stopping someone’s heart upon contact, had been happily enjoying a swim in the bucket’s water.

Dreams like these always left me feeling uneasy.

Some of my dreams felt like warnings. Others, like the ones about Javier, had been semi-realized. Why and how, I couldn’t even begin to explain. Brain malfunction? Disease? Mental condition?

Whatever was happening in my scrambled head, it was terrifying. Who on earth wanted to know the future? Who wanted the awful responsibility of preventing bad things from happening? How could I recognize which dreams were babblings of my imagination, which ones were warnings, and which ones would become reality? And finally, who the heck wanted their nightmares to come true?

Not me, that’s for sure.

I tugged on the lead rope, but the donkey refused to trot again. Like me, it didn’t wanna move forward. My belly roiled. What if the nightmare about the snakes was about to happen? Worse, what if it was happening right now, even as I tried to make sense of stuff that made no sense at all?

Thunder rumbled above. It echoed through me as if it were a disembodied voice cautioning me of danger. Or perhaps it was a warning to listen to my gut. Javier had come all the way here to find me. Now, I was leaving him behind to face off with my fate. Sure, he was strong, competent, resourceful, and he’d sent me away for my safety, but he’d also said the boat carried five mercs. He wasoneman taking onfiveviolent brutes.

What if he got hurt or killed because of me? Why should he value my life over his?

Maybe I was a scaredy cat at heart, but I had principles. My father used people all the time. He squeezed them like lemons only to toss them out when they ran out of juice. Well, I wasn’t like my father. I’d spent the last three years proving that to myself.

“Here.” I gave Sister Janet the lead rope. “Don’t stop. Keep going that way.”

“Butcailín,” Sister Janet protested. “The fella said—”

“I have to go back.” I didn’t have time to explain.

As the first weak rays of dawn began to pierce through the darkness, I turned around, and edging the road, racedtoward the camp. Drawing from my track and field days, I kept my upper body tall, pumped my arms, and planting each foot under my hip, widened my stride. Splashing over puddles, I vaulted over rocks, ravines, fallen trees, and the gushing streams growing under the downpour.

We’re running out of time.The words echoed in my head.

I had to get to Javier before my nightmare came true.

***

Javier

“Last chance.” Snake grinned, an awful grimace that animated his tattoos, making all the snakes on his face writhe at once.

“Neat trick.” I waved a hand over my face. “You look evil, but I’m not gonna shit my pants if that’s what you wanted. Has anyone told you that you look like a fucking cartoon?”

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