Three Wishes Read Free Page B

leather, inlaid with gold and red in an old-Mexico feel. Everything about him and his horse said Old Mexico, when I thought about it.
    Maybe they’re shooting a movie. Maybe this isn’t my beach. Maybe I passed out, the waves moved my unconscious body to another beach … one I haven’t ever been to.
    But I’d been on every beach within twenty miles. I looked up the bluff again. This was my cove. Tainter Cove. It had to be. It had to be, but…
    I sank back an inch further, wishing I could become one with the rock as the others finally passed by me, in pursuit of the first man. There were four of them, and as they passed, they were shouting in Spanish. “¡Cerrémosle el paso! ¡Separémonos! Debemos matarlo antes que llegue al límite del rancho.”
    Cut him off, I translated in my head. Divide up. We must kill him before he reaches the rancho border.
    Rancho? There hadn’t been ranchos in this part of California for more than a century. I remembered that much from my state history class. Sure, there was Rancho Cucamonga, and Rancho Santa Margarita and Rancho Palos Verdes, but those were just nods to the past…a developer’s romantic name for sprawling subdivisions of suburban houses. Right?
    But their Spanish had sounded odd to my ears. Crisp. Formal. Not anything like our slurred, local Spanglish. Not even like the Spanish they spoke down across the border, in Tijuana. More like Spanish-Spanish. Old Spanish.
    And they had been in odd clothing too. Tight pants, worn boots, cropped jackets, and trim hats like the vaqueros used to wear. And one had passed near enough for me to take in more finely tooled stirrups and another saddle like I’d never seen—not that I’d seen a ton of variation when I worked at camp one summer and hung out with the girls who ran the trail rides. The saddle hadn’t been as elegant and elaborate as the first man’s, the one they pursued. But old.
    Movie. I have to be on a movie set. The director dude is going to be so pissed when he finds me here. They’ll have to crop me out, or shoot this whole scene again …
    But then where were the cameras? The track running alongside the horses to catch the shot? The sound guys with those long sticks and microphones?
    On shaking legs, I rose and dared to edge out again, looking up the beach, where the four in pursuit were just urging the horses up the dunes and over the edge, never looking back. I had to figure this out. Maybe I was dreaming.
    I gathered up Abuela’s shawl, shook it out, and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was like she was with me now, giving me courage, comfort. I grabbed the golden lamp and, crouching over, scurried away from the rocks and toward the nearest dune. There I hunkered down, panting, my heart thundering in my chest, waiting. But there was no sound other than waves on the shore and wind rustling the summer-dry grasses by my head. Except for…the lowing of cows?
    No honking of horns or traffic.
    No thunder of a train racing down the tracks that bordered the beach.
    Cows .
    I swallowed hard, then forced myself to scurry up the next dune and the next, until I reached the top and peered over toward the PCH.
    I gasped and blinked.
    There was no Pacific Coast Highway. No buildings. No railroad track. Just miles and miles of grass and trees. A herd of cattle, not too far off.
    In the distance, I could see the men, still in pursuit of the other. But now more men were riding toward him, down from another hill, as if to meet them. In battle? To defend the first? Or to finish him off?
    I turned in a slow circle, letting the shawl fall, trying to make sense of what was all around me. It felt like home, but it was all so very different.
    So wrong. So foreign…and yet so familiar, too.
    My knees gave way, and I collapsed to the sand and rocks, cutting my hand as I fell. But I gave it little notice, grabbing hold of the golden lamp and staring furiously at it. Intuitively, I knew that all of this …around me…had something