The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,13

Hobo leapt back from my hand with a full-throated bark. What was in the water? Wet fur? Skin? I thought I saw a bubble of air rise through the puddle, but it was difficult to tell as the rain pocked its surface harder now. Hobo ignored my commands to quiet.

I pulled my hat down more firmly against a gust of wind and pushed my sleeves up. Kneeling, I used the flat of my arm to rake the water away, clearing the odd lump. Hobo barked and whined, pacing. I pushed more mud away. For a second, I didn’t recognize what I was looking at: a shoulder and the slope of an arm. I jerked my hand away and tried to scramble sideways, but my knee, sunken in the mud, hit something—a hip. I’d been straddling it.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” I scooted back farther. I glanced over my shoulder down the hill. No one would hear me shout from there. I motioned violently for Hobo to shut up. He dropped to a loud whimper.

What was a dead man doing here?

I forced myself to look again. Judging from the hip-to-shoulder distance, he was about my height. I followed the line of his shoulder down to the muck. Stretching forward, my belly almost touching the ground, I pressed my fingers into the mud where his hand would be. There it was, solid. I felt it twitch and saw my own fingertip rise with it. I lurched back and set Hobo barking again. The rain picked up.

I took a deep breath and reached forward again. The wet clay gave easily. I held the arm aloft by the wrist. The mud-caked mitt of a hand hung limp. Then it flexed, turning in my clay-slick grip.

I froze. Blood rushed to my head.

He was alive!

I dug into the slurry, following shoulder and neck to the roundness of his head. I scooped him up, straining to gain leverage on the wet ground. There was a loud sucking sound as the soil released him from its grip. Mud encased him completely, obscuring his features. I tried to hold him with one arm and wipe his face, but he slipped, tilting in my arms, his face turned away.

Rain spat down harder. I jerked off my hat and used it to shield the head I cradled. The rain battered my bared head. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?” I shouted. A low mutter of thunder erupted behind me. The wind flared, whipping my hair across my face.

He hung limp, heavy in my arms, entirely covered in clay. No sign of clothes. I twisted out of my coat and threw it over him, tucking it quickly across his chest and over his body. I tried to hold the hat with one hand and use the other to wipe his face, but that only seemed to make things worse.

I hunkered over with his head against my waist and glanced under the hat, my wet face inches from his. Under the shadow of the hat, he seemed to have no face and no hair, just a muddy round head. I drew back, slung my hair out of my eyes, and tried to blink away the gray-white curtain of rain.

“Are you okay?” I yelled, my voice drowned by Hobo’s barks and the deafening rain. I tried to focus, squinting at the form slumped against me. The pelting rain exposed the lower half of his mud-caked head. I touched his jaw. His warm skin felt gritty, not the stubble of beard. His face cracked, and a small, lipless mouth opened. His chest expanded, a long, ragged breath. Then expanded again. He was breathing!

A strange sensation rose again from my belly to my chest. Hobo went silent. Under the white noise of rain pounding my head, I heard a tone like a large bell. It rushed up, sweet and soothing, through the bones of my chest. Rising and rising until it came out the top of me, clearing my head—through me or from me, I could not tell. Hobo leapt into the puddle, wagging his tail, licking at me and the man in the mud. The man’s hand flexed again. His arm jerked.

Suddenly, I felt the frigid water soaking my clothes. I had to get him inside. I grabbed him under the arms, dragged him out of the puddle to firmer ground. I could barely see for the blowing rain and my drenched hair, but he seemed caked with mud. Every inch of him covered. I