The Cobra & The Lion

By WE Kelton

Wendy Waters traveled to the Middle East for a horse race, not to become a woman displaced in time. During a rest stop she and her horse traveled from their time to another. Once she was returned to civilization, her scientific mind was forced to accept the evidence of the world around her. She was alive in 1906 Cairo. Through the kindness of an elderly woman Wendy is presented to Cairo Society as an unfortunate relative.

A 21st century veterinarian by training and an independent woman by birth, Wendy is determined to earn, win, purchase or steal the right to determine her own future. Her escape from a cobra infested oasis unexpectedly provides her the means to reclaim her independence. To her surprise, only her encounters with Mr. Arthur Doyle are more confusing than the results of a reckless encounter with a Sheikh of the Bedouin and her accidental purchase of a native family.

Arthur Doyle was banished to Egypt by his father, an event that allowed him to dedicate his life to his beloved field of Anthropology. For thirteen years he has observed and noted the daily interactions of the native Egyptian, earning himself the title of Watching Lion. He is a man driven by rational detachment and a thirst for knowledge, not by passion. His first encounter with the unusually bold Mrs. Waters leaves him growling and in need of liquid fortification.

Despite his intention to observe without interaction, Arthur finds himself drawn to Mrs. Waters managing ways and her bold speech. After Wendy’s elderly benefactress is taken ill, she finds herself consistently ambushed by Mr. Arthur Doyle. To her surprise his kiss curls her toes and his touch burns like the midday sun. What is a modern woman supposed to do with a Victorian man?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pandora's Press
• Release date: Jul 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452451619

WE Kelton

You would think a person with an advanced degree in a science discipline would have more sense than to be a fiction writer. Alas, I apparently skipped that session of course work and ran full bore at the Science Fiction and Fantasy wall. If you heard a teeth rattling sound a while back, pay it no mind - it was just me trying to knock sense back into my own head. Apparently all it did was knock a couple more story lines loose. Go figure.

Book preview

The Cobra & The Lion

Published by Pandora’s Press at Smashwords

Digital Edition

Copyright WE Kelton 2011

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Chapter 1

Wendy made no sound as she moved away from the warm fire of the camp. Riding boots protected her feet from the sharp rocks of the desert floor. She covered her hair with the hood of a stolen robe carefully keeping her back to the tent she was escaping. She heard the sounds of the desert around her, but only saw what moonlight illuminated of the landscape. Tears spilled from her eyes as she slowly gained distance between herself and her rescuers turned captors.

She walked until she had consecutively stumbled three times. The third stumble took her to her knees and she winced as rocks imbedded themselves in her knees and palms. Exhausted, she whistled into the night.

Nasur’s ears perked when they caught the familiar sound. He tossed his head and snorted in the cool evening air. When he heard the sound again, he bit down on the rope holding him in place and pulled. As the rope hung slack, he slipped away into the moonlight headed for the source of the sound. A third soft whistle teased his ears and he broke out into a run. He stopped suddenly as he approached his favorite rider. He stuck his nose close to her face and snorted.

Wendy relaxed a fraction when she felt Nasur’s warm breath on her barely clad skin. She shivered as she climbed to her feet and leaned against the horse’s warm body. She absorbed his warmth for a moment. When she heard a distant cry her eyes widened with panic and she stood frozen, for a moment, before she launched herself onto his back.

She wrapped one hand in his mane and caught his halter rope with the other. She dug her heels into his side as she tucked herself against his body and whispered, Run Nasur!

Nasur bolted into action and soon the only sound Wendy heard was the sound of his hooves on packed earth. She was thankful that he was trained to obey leg commands without the use of reins. He continued his ground eating gallop as they headed west, toward the Suez Canal. Their only chance to escape was this moment.

Her eyes fluttered closed as she felt the power of Nasur under her. The chill night air pressed around her, suffocating in its silence. Her eyes snapped open when she heard the sounds of other hooves racing across the moonlit desert. She glanced behind her. Though she couldn’t see anything, she knew her escape would not be allowed to go unchallenged. If she’d learned anything about Rashidi al Bani Rasheed over the past weeks, it was that he was as proud as they came.

She returned her gaze to the landscape before her and rested her cheek against Nasur’s neck. Rashidi and the others rode horses equal to Nasur’s majesty. Like Nasur all of them were pure blood Arabians, desert horses. The only edge she had, was Nasur’s competative spirit. Their horses lacked the drive to win and Nasur loved to race. He loved to race even more than he loved peppermint.

A small smiled flittered over her face as she watched the desert floor blur beneath them. He was a menace for the minty treat, he’d once stuck his nose in through the window of a Landrover and eaten an entire bag of them. He could smell them in pockets and had scared more than a few people by clamping down on their clothing and pulling. Her smile widened a little more.

That was how she’d known he was the horse for her. He’d been one of over a dozen mounts in a pen for her and five others to choose from. Nasur smelled the mints in Gabriel’s pocket and clamped down and pulled. He pantsed Gabe and no matter what they did, Nasur wouldn’t release his grip on the pants and the ever elusive mints. She’d been further in the herd examining the horses when the ruckus started. Their host, Darbi al Bani Rasheed, had been mortified and ended up chasing the stallion, with pants firmly clutched in his teeth, around the pen.

Wendy once had an equine patient with the same fondness for mints. She made a habit of always carrying a small tin of them in a pocket of her pants. She removed the tin from her pocket and popped open the lid. She saw the stallion’s ears twist in her direction as he continued his game of keep away. She tossed a couple of the small mints into her mouth and crunched down.

Normally she wasn’t a mint cruncher, but the horse needed to hear a sound he was curious about. A moment later he was trotting toward her and stopped directly in front of her. He dropped the pants and snuffed the tin of mints. When his lips tried to grab the tin from her hands she thwacked him on the nose and told him to behave. Three times he tried to take the mints from her hand and three times she thwacked his nose and told him to mind his manners.

After the fourth light smack, he pawed the ground and shook his head at her. She palmed two of the mints and held them out for the horse. His lips brushed over her hand and a moment after she heard the crunch of the mints. He snorted at her and she gave him two more mints, then closed the tin. She slipped the tin into her pocket and walked away.

He followed her.

When she felt lips pulling at the material of her pants, she paused and tapped him on the nose once more. He rubbed his head against her shoulder and exhaled his minty breath into her face, causing her to laugh at him. He followed her to the side of the pen. They’d been a pair since that first day of the desert race in mid March. Over the long days of riding, she had continued to train him. Wendy was thankful now more than ever that she had, or she would still be traveling with the three Bedouin and in great danger of being abducted into the desert. She shivered once more in the cold night air as the events of the past four months caught up with her. Memories flooded into her head and she was forced to remember surviving alone at the snake infested oasis, she’d only just escaped

..

Chapter 2

She remembered feeling an insistent prodding at her right hip, as she slowly returned to consciousness. Stop poking me, she growled before she opened her eyes. With the next insistent nudge she sat up and irritation turned to surprise. The annoyance was Nasur trying to push the mints from her pocket out onto the grass beneath her. She sat up and her hand crushed a wrapped mint that had fallen under her hip. She absently handed the horse the treat as she looked around noting that he had once again managed to send his saddle askew. She sighed mentally, the horse was a menace, he hated saddles. He only tolerated one, because he liked peppermint more.

A heavily burdened date palm towered over her, providing shelter from the direct rays of the sun. She watched the sun glitter over the edge of the leaves. She didn’t remember this, she thoughas she looked around. She remembered riding out into the desert with the others as they traveled from camp to camp, watching the race. She stretched as she tried to remember how she had ended up in this place. She had no idea and she heard absolutely nothing that could help her identify where the others were.

She jumped to her feet as she realized she was hearing nothing. Nothing but nature, not the sounds of a generator or the sounds of a large group of people or the more subtle sounds of the animals they traveled with. She listened more intently and heard only birds and the soft splash of water.

When she had fallen asleep she’d heard the familiar chugging groan of a generator. She had in fact appreciated the break in the silence of the desert and unexpectedly craved the mechanized sound of civilization. She caught Nasur’s reins and unbelted the saddle. It dropped to the soft ground of the oasis. She launched herself up onto his back and guided him toward the drier edges of the oasis. She heeled him into a canter. Together they circled the oasis four times.

There was no one around. There wasn’t even trash left around the area she was certain had been the camp. She guided Nasur back into the Oasis and looked for the saddle that she’d dropped. She righted it and removed the single bag that she’d tied onto it. She carried the saddle up the slope and set it down near the remains of an over grown fire pit she’d spotted when canvassing.

She cleared what she could out of the circle of rocks and gathered the closest dried palm fronds. They wouldn’t last long, but should keep her warm through part of the night. She searched her cargo pockets and exhaled loudly as she felt David’s spare lighter, hiding in the pocket she kept Nasur’s treats in. The dried frond caught fire quickly. She leaned against the saddle and stared into the fire as her fingers played with lighter.

Even if the camp had moved and left her accidently at the Oasis, at some point they would figure out the last place they’d seen her. If not them, then certainly someone would come to the oasis. She was in a lush oasis in the middle of the desert for Pete’s sake, it was only a matter of time before she was missed or someone stopped by.

She closed her eyes and sank down closer to the saddle as she thought about the horse race she’d been traveling with since the middle of March. This last rest stop hadn’t come fast enough for her. It not only gave her a chance to check the condition of horse and rider, but a chance to sleep in the same place for three nights. This encampment really was an oasis, compared to previous rest stops. She and Nasur had been allowed to explore the area surrounding the camp. The morning they were to leave, she and Nasur were out early. He was a competitive creature and when the actual racers left the camp each morning, he liked to burst into a ground eating run and flick his tail at them as he ran by.

That morning he’d run longer than she anticipated and by the time they returned to camp, her friend David had left her a note with the camp officials, saying that they couldn’t delay and he’d return in a couple of days. She hadn’t been particularly upset with David for leaving, they’d been riding and camping for five weeks.

David bribed her to travel with him from California to Saudi Arabia and into Egypt, for the express purpose of watching and filming ‘The Great Race’ as he called it. The horses raced from Anaza Ruwala, Saudi Arabia, through Jordan and Israel, and into Egypt.where it ended in Ismailia, just south of the Bitter Great Lake.. It started on the morning of the vernal equinox and ended when the last rider crossed the finish line or was otherwise accounted for. They had flown from San Francisco to Mecca in mid March, taken a series of smaller planes to finally arrive in Gabouk and then travel by bus out into the desert, arriving at their destination Anaza Ruwala five days later. The Sheikh of the Bani Rasheed Clan had given David permission to film as they travel through his lands with a guide. She’d been permitted to attend because of her veterinary background.

She drifted off and it wasn’t until Nasur snorted in her hair that she realized she hadn’t moved. She had in fact sat in the same place all through the night. She glanced at the embers of her fire, they didn’t even emit warmth. She massaged feeling into her legs and slowly made her way to her feet. She removed Nasur’s bridle and rubbed the stallions head as she watched the sun rise.

As the sun moved overhead she stopped thinking about where she was and how she got there and started to focus upon finding shelter, water and food. Her stomach had been complaining since Nasur roused her and it was stupid to venture out into the desert, when she had no idea where the next water would be found for both of them.

She glanced toward the opposite side of the fire pit. Curious she moved around the fire and pulled the brush from an oddly slanted structure. She stared at what had to be the wooden support structure for a tent that was hidden under the half dead growth. At one time the two palms had held the roof of the tent. Now all that was left was the tattered remains of rugs, under her feet. Curious she removed the rugs and found a ceramic jug and an oddly shaped pan.

With a shrug she ventured down to the water and dipped the jug into it. She swirled the water around the ancient pottery. After she was content she had killed what ever lived in it and washed the dirt from inside of the jug, she poured the water out over the roots of one of the trees farther away from her and returned to the clean water.

With her need for a water container resolved, she returned to the fire and set the jug on a flat rock. She shifted the least of the destroyed rugs and hung it over the wooden supports. The other two she returned to the floor of her lean-to. Satisfied with her makeshift shelter, she left the ragged tent and searched the surrounding area again. She found an ancient shovel a hundred yards from the tent. Relieved that she wouldn’t have to dig with her hands, she returned.

She was just about back to her camp when a cobra rose up before her. It struck so fast she had no time to defend herself. However, before it had time to strike again she caught it behind the head and held on for dear life. The serpents body tried to coil around her arm and squeeze for its release. The more it constricted her arm the more she squeezed its head. She had been warned about the sand snakes and both she and David had been supplied with anti-venom and syringes, just in case.

As the cobra continued its constrictor assault on her arm, she lowered it to the ground and using the sharp edge of the shovel cut its head and part of its neck from the rest of its body. She moved carefully back to the fire pit before she searched her pockets for the anti-venom she carried. With a sigh of relief she found the bottles and the protected syringe in the large cargo pocket of her thigh. She stared at the bleeding hole in her pants for a moment. then ripped open the packaging, filled the syringe and stabbed herself in the leg. After she caught her breath, she slowly injected the anti-venom into the bite and cursed. She wrapped a torn bit of her shirt around her leg as a bandage before she draped the body of the cobra between two tall rocks on either side of the fire. Once the snake’s body was settled over the fire she collapsed.

It wasn’t until well after the moon rose that the flesh of the snake peeled away from its bones. She moved it from the fire and let the cooked meat cool on the flat rock that held the water jug. She didn’t sleep until she’d eaten her fill of snake and with a snort mumbled, ‘It tastes nothing like chicken.’

She lost track of the days after the first week, by the end of the second week she’d figured out how to sharpen the rusted dagger she’d found near a pile of bones at the edge of the desert. By the end of the third week she’d mastered skinning snakes and had arranged a network of drying racks. By the fourth week she could climb the date palms and hang their bounty on her drying racks. By the ninth week she’d received over eleven snake bites, on her legs, arms and one on her cheek. She’d used all but a single dose of both anti-venom bottles. By the eleventh week, her cloths were ragged and rapidly disintegrating. Her formerly lightly tanned skin had turned golden bronze and her dark blond hair was streaked with gold. By the end of the fourth month she feared nothing that lived or hunted in her oasis.

She was resting from her early morning swim, in the soft grass that grew next to the gently flowing water of the upper level of the oasis. The sun was blocked from warming her body. She allowed her eyes to open. It took some time for her to recognize that it was the face of a human man that she was looking upon. Unbelieving that she was actually seeing a person, she said nothing and closed her eyes. This had happened several times before. It was an illusion of shadows. When the feel of the sun did not return to warm her skin, her eyes opened and beheld the same view.

Her eyes narrowed when the apparition began to speak and she felt only irritation at the break in the calming sounds of her oasis. When the apparition touched her she jumped to her feet and unknowingly hissed at it as her eyes flashed in surprise.

The man stared at her, unable to understand how a foreign woman was here at the cobra oasis, unclothed, unattended and unafraid. When she hissed at him and moved quickly to her feet, the green of her eyes flashing in anger he fell to his knees as he said, ‘Wadjet, I mean no harm!"

At the sound of the unfamiliar speech Wendy stared at the now kneeling man and waited. She did not recognize all the words, so she waited for him to speak again.

When he was not struck down by a serpent the man sighed in relief, and chanced another glance at the woman. Please, he said softly, my prince has been kissed by one of your children, as we traveled through the desert. Please, his line is ancient and honorable, will you not save him?

Wendy had understood only the man’s final words, ‘save him?’ She stared at the man unblinkingly for a moment longer, before she nodded her head.

Relieved the man climbed to his feet and bowed once to her and led her down to the lower part of the oasis.

Wendy frowned, this area was not hers and they all risked illness staying here. She whistled to Nasur and mounted him quickly once she heard the distinctive sounds of mosquitoes. Come! she called out as she returned to her part of the oasis.

The man had jumped at the scratchy sound of her voice and the single command. He watched as she retreated from their camp, back toward where he had stumbled upon her. When she stopped the horse and stared at him with glittering green eyes he prayed to Allah and bowed once more.

Wendy watched as two men helped a third mount a fine Arabian and guide him toward the area where she waited. When at last they reached her part of the oasis, she led them to her camp. She opened the hanging cover of skins and pointed to her bed.

With muttered prayers the two alert men gently settled their prince upon the soft bed and prayed for his forgiveness for bringing him to the den of an ancient goddess. When she entered still unclothed, they made a hasty retreat and set up their own tent across from hers.

Wendy watched the men retreat and sighed with relief when she was alone with the injured man. She stared at the robed man for a moment, he was handsome. He wore a neatly trimmed black beard, had a proud jaw and sharply featured nose. His skin was grey in pallor. When she touched his face, his eyes fluttered open and she found herself smiling comfortingly into amber hued eyes, Where? she asked.

The man touched his hip before he asked, Are you a spirit or a woman?

Wendy did not understand the question so she smiled and focused her attention on opening the man’s robe and touching the swollen area with her fingers.

At his indrawn breath, she glanced at his face and noticed the beading sweat. She moved quickly as she cut the cloth from the area, exposing the site of the bite. With a quick turn, she pulled the syringe and the bottle of anti-venom out from the bowl she kept near the bed. After drawing almost the last of the anti-venom from the bottle into the syringe, she injected it into the man. Then she began kneading the injection area to spread the anti-venom faster into his system. She had no idea how long ago he’d been bitten, but there was a small area on his hip that caused her concern. The skin between the puncture marks and surrounding them was highly inflamed.

She continued to knead the area around the injection sight. When she could no longer feel the injected material as a bump she stood and exited her tent.

The injured man’s companions watched as she moved confidently around them, gathering herbs, water and mud. She crushed the herbs in her hands, mixed the mud into them and returned to her tent. Once inside, she smeared the mud over the bite marks as well as the prick of the injection site.

The man sighed as he felt the cool radiating into his side, his eyes fluttered closed as a healing sleep over came him.

Wendy scraped the dried mud off three times during the night, each time recoating the inflamed bite with mud and herbs. When at last the sun rose she could see the wound clearly, she smiled, pleased with decreased infection. She glanced at the man’s face and said, Ten days.

The man inclined his head, acknowledging to his mind what was an order. Even as his blood pulsed at the sight of the woman’s tanned skin and nearness of her nakedness, he said only, You have the thanks of a Prince of the Bani Rasheed.

Wendy stared at him for a moment, trying to decipher his words, she recognized only thanks and Bani Rasheed. She smiled politely and nodded. Her and David’s guide was a member of the Bani Rasheed tribe. She moved quickly and silently out of the tent, she needed to swim.

The men that had accompanied their prince watched as the human manifestation of the Goddess Wadjet, slipped unconcerned into the waters of the oasis. Neither could help the pulsing of the blood that coursed through them as they watched her attend to her bath without consideration of their nearness. They were so entranced at the sight of her they missed the arrival of their prince.

Does she have a name? asked the baritone voice from beside them.

They fell to their knees and exclaimed, Wadjet has spared you my prince!

The Prince considered Bubu as he replied, She is no goddess, her touch is not that of the divine; but of a woman.

Both men glanced at their prince in surprised shock, though they dared not question him.

Rashidi al Bani Rasheed stared at his guards for a moment before his gaze returned to the figure of the woman swimming in the pool of the Cobra Oasis. Her long hair was that of the Effendi, the foreigners that had come to rule this land. It was the color of sand and gold, her skin was lighter than his but also golden, her teeth white, her fingers long and strong, but her eyes. Her eyes burned into a man’s soul, they watched without fear or judgment. Something he had never seen in the face of a foreigner or a woman. He moved quietly away from his guards and toward the woman as she moved from the pool of water.

Wendy watched the man approach her carefully. He moved gracefully as he disrobed before her. Her pulsed jumped as he revealed tanned flesh and a muscular body. When he removed his loose fitting pants and started toward the water, she placed her hand over the still mud covered area and she hissed, No.

Rashidi al Bani Rasheed stared into glittering green eyes as he listened to the woman before him as she touched his mud covered hip. The flesh of his stomach quivered, he had never craved the touch of a woman as he did now. I must bathe, he said simply as he stood proudly before her.

Wendy understood the word bath, she shook her head as she replied, Ten days.

Rashidi stared into the woman’s unflinching eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.

Wendy sighed, he would not be deterred it seemed, but he could not enter the pool while he was still at risk for infection, Wait, she said. She returned to her tent and was back a moment later with a cloth. She took his hand and led him up to his knees in the pool of water.

Rashidi followed the woman when she slipped her hand into his and pulled him into the water, just high enough to cover his knees. When she dipped her arm down into the water and soaked the cloth, his brows knit together; until she raised the cloth up onto his shoulders and wiped the sand and sweat from his skin. Once he realized that she meant to bathe him, his knees almost gave out from under him.

As soon as the strange woman returned with a cloth to their Prince and led him into the water, the two guards faced away from the pair with wide eyes. They could no more watch what happened next than they could visit their king’s harem. What she was doing was more intimate than relations between a man and a woman.

Wendy lost herself to the feel of the man’s skin under her hands as she washed away the dirt and sweat that covered his body. She allowed her hands to roam and smiled when his breath caught, or his muscles quivered under her ministrations. She was careful to avoid touching his member until after she had bathed the rest of him. She was as turned on as he obviously was. A quick glance revealed that his companions had disappeared as had the horses.

A moment after the cloth touched him for the final time, Rashidi pulled the woman into his arms and collapsed with her onto the soft grasses of the oasis. Rashidi knew time passed, he remembered touching her under the pale light of the stars, the way her skin glistened in moonlight and the way the sunlight caught in her hair. Since the first time he kissed her, his mind lived in a pleasurable haze. She was rarely out of touching distance and his guards had kept themselves invisible, as only sons of the desert could.

The morning she led him all the way into the cool water, he realized that he was healed. She bathed him one last time and for the first time, washed his hair with a smile. After he was rinsed he pulled her into his arms and rested his forehead against hers as he asked, What is your name?

Wendy was surprised when she recognized the entire sentence and the weight of civilization came crashing back down into her psyche, I am called Wendy.

Rashidi al Bani Rasheed sighed, Wedyt, Daughter of the Green One, daughter of Wadjet. He stared into her eyes, I must return to my people, you will come and be my chief wife, first honored among women, the mother of strong Bedouin sons.

Wendy recognized the words of the wedding vows of the Bedouin that