Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) Read Free

The rising sun turned to flaming red rusty streaks in the bare rock where the tree stood. Stark difference between light and shadow exposed to view the expense of empty sand, uninhabited except for one lone black oyster-catcher on a row of rocks jutting outward. The bird hopped away as the sound of approaching aircraft filled the morning air.
    Circling the beach, the helicopter searched, then landed. Two men emerged, watched only by a bald eagle in a tall silver snag a quarter-mile away. Presently the men return to their craft and it left, to be joined in the distance by others, quartering the sea, back and forth, each to his own sector until at last the clatter died to a whisper and then nothing as the aircraft made their way east toward the other side of the island, flying into the rising sun.
    ~ * ~
    Kevin climbed from his untidy bunk, pulled on muddy, tattered jeans and rubbed at his eyes with balled up fists. He tiptoed from the cabin, careful not to disturb the other occupant. He stood for a moment watching the sunbeams cut down through the overhanging boughs of a cedar tree at the corner of the hut, then ran to the creek where he knelt and drank thirstily before digging his already grimy fingers into the mud at the edge. He counted laboriously as each worm was, literally, unearthed and then stuffed the wriggling mass into a pocket. He followed the path of the creek through the shady forest, now and then sucking in his cheeks as one foot slipped into the water. He wasn’t allowed to get his shoes muddy or wet! But Auntie Lorraine wasn’t there, he reminded himself, and once, just once, deliberately stuck his foot into the water, swishing it back and forth. Daddy wouldn’t care. Daddy wouldn’t even notice.
    Beside a gravel bar where the creek widened as it left the woods and ran through a sunlit glade, he knelt once more. Shading his eyes with one hand, he peered intently into the water. “Come on,” he called softly. “Breakfast’s ready. Come on fish.” By lucky accident, although in Kevin’s estimation, by dint of careful training, two small trout chose that moment to swim into view from under the shade of a large devils-club plant which hung over the small pool. One by one the worms plinked into the water. There, the greedy fish gobbled them up. “That’s good fishies,” he told them. “Now you’ll grow up and be big and swim far, far away and get to be salmon. I’ll be back.”
    After a silent breakfast of his own, eaten with eyes downcast to obliterate anything but his cereal bowl, the child slipped away to a solitary play, leaving his father to the privacy of the cabin.
    ~ * ~
    Lance failed to notice his son’s silence. In fact, Lance frequently failed to notice his child at all. It was much easier that way for both of them.
    Picking up his sketchbook, Lance drifted slowly through the forest until he found a suitable subject. He crouched on one knee while his deft fingers made the charcoal fly across the page, capturing the fluid lines, the impudence of the grin and cheeky eyes of a squirrel perched upon a moss covered stump, making chips fly from a pine cone.
    As page after page was filled with the same animal, catching it in different poses, Lance’s face lost its taut lines, his eyes, too often bleak and introspective, took on a warmth, a glow. His usually grim mouth curved in a slight smile. All this was wiped out as his son came tearing through the bush, not expecting to find his father at work in this place.
    Kevin yelped like a stepped-on pup, his face becoming pinched, white, his eyes round and staring. His lip quivered. “I didn’t see you, Daddy, I didn’t,” he whispered, backing away, clenched fists held tightly by his sides.
    Lance felt the rage he was scarcely able to control building in him. His teeth snapped shut as he clenched his jaw in order not to roar at the boy. But why? In God’s name why did the kid have to be such a namby-pamby little thing? Why did he have to cower