The Lone Star Collection Read online

  The map app on my cell phone brings me right to the convention center where the Lone Star Lesfic Festival is taking place. The drive there was not as bad as I’d expected. Austin’s growing pains often made driving around the city and its surrounding area intimidating. I sit in the car for a few minutes watching the women filter into the convention center.

  I feel a slight tingling in my fingertips and realize I am caressing the goddess pendant hanging around my neck. A spark of courage drives me out of the car and propels me across the parking lot. I sign in, giving my email address for future festival correspondence, and follow a couple holding hands into the vendor area. They are cute together, and I push down thoughts of when Bethany cared enough about me to want to hold my hand. It feels like such a long time ago, long before the inevitable, “We’ve just grown so far apart. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”

  The first vendor I approach has several women standing on the opposite side, books stacked on every inch of the table. I read the banner, smiling at how the name Affinity Rainbow Publications feels joyous, for lack of a better word. The logo is rainbow colors in the shape of a… what is it? A kiwi. The bird, not the fruit, I think to myself. I love it.

  I feel several sets of eyes on me.

  “Good morning,” one of the women says. “How are you today?”

  I smile and say hello. My fingertips graze the bright colors of a few book covers. I pick up one or two, glance at the back and then wonder who I think I’m kidding. I know I will choose books today based solely on how the covers speak to me. I note a few to come back to after I’ve looked around the other tables.

  There is an announcement that the first reading will be taking place in just three minutes and that a panel on something I don’t quite hear will be starting in the other room. I advance toward the room for the readings without knowing why. Yes, I do know why. I want to be around creative people who are putting themselves out there, making themselves vulnerable while simultaneously giving them the power to hold someone’s imagination captive. Yes, I want to watch them do with words what I once could do with paint.

  I sit in the back of the room. The moderator introduces the four women who will be reading their work. The first author begins to read. I can feel her nerves and will her to relax. I am caressing the length of the goddess around my neck, sending the reader peaceful energy when she looks up at me. I smile. Her words halt while she takes a deep breath, and when she resumes she is more relaxed, less rushed. I clap loudly, along with the others in the audience, when she finishes.

  It feels good to be sitting here among these women.

  The next author is introduced. Kenzie Nova tells us she will be reading the short story she wrote for the Lone Star anthology. She seems more relaxed than the other author was, but I feel an undercurrent of anxiety that tells me she isn’t more comfortable reading than the first author, just better at masking her unease.

  The second she begins reading I am spellbound. After several seconds, I catch my breath and relax into her words.

  “Nadia’s hand flew to her chest, and her heart pounded. It was gone. Her goddess, her muse, wasn’t tied around her neck. She closed her eyes and tried to remember when she was last aware of her. After so many years with her she couldn’t remember. She checked Facebook and saw the goddess in pictures from the Lone Star Lesfic Festival. Okay, so it was after Saturday that she disappeared. Sunday she’d gone to Enchanted Rock and then to the Congress Avenue Bridge.

  “Nadia closed her eyes and tried to remember. If she’d lost her at either attraction, she’d never find her. What about the airport? Did she vaguely recall thinking she’d dropped something while rushing from one end of the Atlanta airport to the other? Why hadn’t she paid closer attention?”

  Kenzie Nova glances up to the opposite side of the room from where I sit. My hand goes to the goddess tied around my neck. Kenzie resumes reading.

  “Nadia thought about buying her goddess from a street vendor in Key West. She’d just received her eighteenth rejection from a mainstream publisher for her manuscript and had been dumped by her girlfriend of three years. This trip was her friends’ idea of helping her to move on. The man approached her and her friends as they walked down Duval Street. The others kept going and tried to encourage her to do the same. Ashley had whispered, ‘He’s probably selling stolen merchandise.’ Nadia was about to follow their retreat when the man held up the goddess, dangling her from her black cord as he spoke. ‘For you, twenty dollars. You need her, don’t you?’ In an instant she knew that she did. So, she bought the goddess, tied her around her neck, and went about partying to make her friends happy.”

  I close my eyes and try to envision the author and her goddess pendant in Key West. I think of the images from my dream, and my pulse quickens.

  “On the drive back to Ft. Myers, Nadia saw an image in her mind of a woman sitting in a diner, staring at her best friend’s wedding announcement. She pulled out her notebook, and sitting in the backseat behind Ashley, she started recording the scene.

  “From that image came her first lesbian romance and first published novel. She’d gone on to write five more novels with her goddess. Nadia swallowed hard. What if she couldn’t write without her muse? What if this was it, the magic was gone, and no new ideas or images would come to her?”

  I stare at Kenzie Nova as she falters, as her hand goes to the place on her chest where her goddess once nestled.

  “Nadia knew that she could not give in to this despair. She closed her eyes and imagined a woman picking up the goddess pendant from the floor at the airport. She imagined that woman clutching at the goddess, pressing it against her chest, tears of unexplained relief coursing down her face.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “Yes, that was it. The woman who found the goddess needed her more than Nadia did.” Kenzie nods her head slightly, appearing far away. “Nadia’s mind flashed on another woman, a musician, as she loses her beloved goddess pendant. That woman knows immediately that she no longer needs a physical manifestation of her muse.”

  I clutch at the goddess around my neck and feel tears building. The rest of the reading is a blur. I stare at Kenzie Nova and watch as she concentrates on the readings from the next two authors. She’s reacting appropriately, smiling at parts, nodding at others, but there is a lingering sadness to her that I can feel more than see.

  The moderator announces the Q&A portion of the session, and I sit, stunned that I hadn’t registered the other readings. I wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts-covered thighs. I ache to ask Kenzie if the story is based on a real goddess pendant. I know immediately that I won’t ask, not in a crowd, not me who in school would have a mini-panic attack at the impending “here” to having my name read in rollcall.

  Someone asks the authors where they get their story ideas. I hold my breath waiting for Kenzie to answer as the authors respond one at a time.

  “My short story is based on a real occurrence from last year,” Kenzie says.

  “So you lost your muse?”

  Kenzie smiles. I grip the goddess, feeling her cool against the palm of my hand. Kenzie’s eyes flick my way, and a jolt of heat surges through me. “I lost my goddess, but not my muse.”

  My relief is so intense that I release a small gasp. Kenzie looks at me; this time her eyes linger.

  “We are out of time for this session,” the moderator announces. “Please feel free to seek out the authors’ work in the vendor room. All of the writers will be available to sign books in the afternoon autograph session. Take fifteen minutes and then rejoin us for the next readings, or go on over and catch the panel on…” she glances at her notes, “on creating fictional worlds. Let’s give a hand to all of our authors.”

  The applause is sincere as I sit there, staring at Kenzie Nova. Everyone is filing out of the room, but I sit, paralyzed, wanting to approach Kenzie who is the last writer to leave the table. I force myself out of my chair and feel my legs weaken slightly as I walk in
her direction.

  She looks at me, and I wonder if she thinks she knows me from somewhere. She’d caught me staring enough. Her gaze lowers, and I know she is looking at my hand as it clutches the goddess—her goddess. I swipe at a tear and stand still as she comes to me.

  I glance down as I present the goddess to her between my thumb and forefinger. I can’t bring myself to look at her. When she is just inches away, I feel a gentle touch beneath my chin as she lifts my face. Finally, I look in her eyes and see so much warmth and understanding that I can’t help but sob.

  She embraces me, and I cry into her neck. “It’s okay,” she whispers. After several moments she asks, “Where was she?”

  “At the base of the bat bridge.”

  Kenzie chuckles.

  I step back and move to untie the cord.

  “No. Leave it on,” she says.

  “But she’s yours.”

  “No,” Kenzie says. “No, she’s yours now. I know you will give her a great home until you no longer need her.”

  People drift past us, but I pay them no attention as my fingers tingle. I am struck with the urge to mix paint, to manipulate the medium until the image screams to be created. I smell the oil paint and see the bridge engulfed in the fierce colors of a Texas sunset, alive with the undulating mass of bats as they stream out from under it.

  Kenzie pulls away. “You’re okay now?”

  I nod. She takes me by the hand and leads me out into the main corridor, away from the literary festival activities. She pulls out a card and jots something onto it. “Here’s my phone number and email address. Call me if you’d like to talk.” She glances toward the door to the vendor area. “I need to go.”

  I nod.

  “Are you coming back in?”

  I think about it briefly, but the tingle in my fingertips grows too strong to ignore. “No, I should get going.”

  “Good luck,” she says. “Oh, we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Kenzie.” She extends her hand.

  “I’m Addison—Addy.” I shake her hand. “Thank you. For everything.”

  “It’s nice meeting you, Addy.”

  As she walks away, she glances back at me, and then disappears into the vendor room. I look at her business card in my hand and wonder if I will get the courage to reach out to her. Maybe when I finish the painting I can call for an address to ship it to.

  I know I will give her the painting of the bridge, but I will keep the one I plan to paint after that, the up-close image of a bat, right down to its dark eyes, tiny claws, and the veins visible in its nearly translucent wings.

  I head toward the hotel to gather my things to take with me to Mother’s. The firm coolness of the goddess against my chest reassures me. “I’m back,” I say with a smile.

  About the Author

  Renee MacKenzie

  As a Navy brat, Renee MacKenzie lived on three continents before her family settled in Virginia. She currently resides in Naples, Florida with her partner and their poodle. Renee works for the National Park Service at Big Cypress National Preserve and enjoys wildlife photography, pickleball, reading, and hiking. Even though Renee has been paid to do all sorts of jobs, ranging from dental assistant to bartender, field sampler to pet-sitter, and maintenance worker to property officer, she insists she’s only had one job—writer—and all the rest has just been research.

  Renee is the author of seven novels–Confined Spaces, Flight, Nesting, 23 Miles, and Anywhere, Everywhere, Pausing, and Kai’s Heart (Book 1 in the Karst Stories) all available at Affinity Rainbow Publications.

  Contact Renee at [email protected].

  The Last Roundup

  Julie Cannon

  Chapter One

  Cabe slowed her horse to a walk when the last glance over her shoulder confirmed that they’d given up chasing her. She wasn’t naïve enough to think she was free of the threat. History had proven that.

  “God dang, Mercury,” Cabe said, the ears on her big horse twitching at the sound of his name. “Why does it always have to be like this? Why can’t folks just let folks be?” Cabe had asked herself that question before and still didn’t have an answer.

  She loosened the reins so Mercury could find his way to their next waterhole. He was a fine specimen, a pure-bred quarter horse standing fifteen hands high, a buckskin with a jet-black mane and tail that he didn’t hesitate to use to swat flies, or Cabe, if he felt ornery. It was a good hour until nightfall, the sun already casting shadows at the base of the foothills around her.

  As the miles passed by, Cabe took stock of her remaining supplies. She had the clothes she was wearing, an extra two sets, and her duster rolled up in her bedroll. Her Colt 45 had six rounds in the chamber, another twenty in her gun belt buckled around her slim waist and another fifty in each saddlebag. Her Winchester was snug in the scabbard under her right thigh, two boxes of cartridges rolled in with her clothes. She had an additional twenty rounds for each weapon in a leather pouch hanging from her neck by a wide leather strap.

  Cabe was never without one of her firearms and always carried both whenever she was out on the range. She didn’t go looking for trouble, but this was Texas in 1865, and trouble could be found anywhere. She’d seen too many good people die because they weren’t prepared. She wasn’t going to be one of them, which is why she lit out in the middle of the night two days ago.

  The sun was tickling the horizon when Mercury picked up his pace, indicating water was nearby. Mercury had the stamina of an iron horse, the temperament of a beautiful woman, and could sniff out water within ten miles. She’d bought the big horse five years ago shortly after she fled an arranged marriage. More exactly, an arranged almost-marriage. Her parents had bullied her into marrying a man she barely knew, but the night before her wedding she regained her senses and climbed out her bedroom window. She shortened her name from Cabernet to Cabe, sent her parents a letter that she was well, and had been on her own ever since.

  “Good boy.” Cabe patted him on the neck several times. She was rewarded with a snort, and Mercury kicked into a gallop. They were both tired and thirsty and could use fresh water and a good night’s sleep. There’d be no fire for the second night in a row, but the hard tack and biscuits in the pouch jostling her left knee didn’t need one.

  The moon was full, guiding them to a pond glimmering in the distance. Cabe quickly found level ground and swung out of the saddle. She untied her gear and pulled her rifle from its scabbard.

  “You saved my life again, big boy.” She unbuckled the cinch and pulled the saddle and thick blanket from Mercury’s wide, solid back. She spent a few minutes rubbing him down as best she could. She didn’t have a brush, but he was used to her touch even through her thick leather gloves. As she ran her hands over his back, neck, and haunches, she felt his muscles relax.

  “Okay, big guy, you’re done for the day. You’ve done a heck of a job.” She patted him on the rump, and he walked towards the pond. She didn’t have to worry about him wandering off; she’d trained him to come to her with just a whistle. She unrolled her bedroll, put her gear next to her saddle, and followed Mercury to the water.

  Cabe quickly stripped and with her Colt still in her hand, walked into the cool water. Less than two minutes later, she was back on solid ground and dressed in the clothes she’d been wearing for the past two days. She had no interest in changing until she got wherever she was going. At that point, she’d clean up properly.

  She whistled for Mercury and in the reflection of the moon off the water, she saw him before she heard him. Mercury had soft feet, which on more than one occasion had been to her advantage.

  “Come on, boy. Time to bed down.” Cabe lay on her back, her boots on, her gun holstered at her waist, her rifle in her hands across her chest. Mercury nudged her hand and snorted. Cabe rubbed his wet nose. “Good night, boy. We’ll see where we end up tomorrow.” Mercury wouldn’t stray during the night. He’d alert Cabe to any danger long before she would detect it herself. An inst
ant later, she dropped to sleep.

  Cabe woke before the sun, Mercury nuzzling her hands. She washed her hands and face in the creek, filled up her canteens, and swung into the saddle. It was mid-day when she saw a dozen head of cattle grazing in the thick grass. She was an experienced ranch hand and knew these cattle were too well fed to be wild, and they bore the same brand. There must be a fence line down on one of the nearby ranches. She’d gather them up and drop them off at the first ranch she came to, hopeful they would eventually get back to their rightful owner.

  There were twelve head, which would be a fine starting point for any new rancher. But she wasn’t a thief. She knew how hard it was to work for something you wanted, and she wasn’t going to deprive someone of what was rightfully theirs. She glanced at her map and determined the nearest town was about a day’s ride away. She’d come across a homestead much sooner than that.

  Chapter Two

  Alice swooned under the midday sun, sweat pouring off her brow and running in rivulets down the center of her back and in between her breasts. She knew this wasn’t the smartest time to be outside, the heat of the west Texas sun pounding down on her. But if she didn’t get this fence line repaired, more cattle would find their way to freedom through this gaping hole.

  Alice had been riding the fence line for two days making minor repairs and resetting several posts. Her tools and supplies were in the back of her buckboard, the horses grazing on the grass at their feet. Her horse Freedom was saddled and tied to the rear. She always brought Freedom when she was out on her land, the two draught horses only capable of pulling the rickety wagon or a plow. She’d been meaning to saddle break them, but like most things that were absolutely required to survive, she hadn’t had the time.