"His vitals just keep going down, Doctor," the nurse said.
The doctor had turned from the now-closed door and was looking at Doyle's chart. "We've treated the burns. He should be improving."
"But he's not," the nurse said.
The doctor snapped at her. "I can see that."
The uniformed policeman was still looking at the door. "Are you saying that someone's using magic to kill Captain Doyle?"
"I don't know," the doctor said, "and I don't say that often."
"I know," I said.
They all turned toward my voice, frowning but still seeing nothing. If it had been my glamour hiding us, my speaking would have been enough to break the spell and reveal us, but Sholto's power was stouter stuff.
"Did you hear that, Doctor?" the nurse asked.
"I'm not sure."
"I heard it," the cop said.
"I can save him," I said.
"Who's there?" the cop asked, and he was standing, with his hand going for his gun.
"I am Princess Meredith NicEssus, and I have come to save the captain of my guard."
"Show yourself," the cop said.
Sholto did two things: he made his tentacles back into their lifelike tattoo, and he dropped the glamour. To the humans in the room, we simply appeared.
The cop started to raise his gun, then stopped in mid-motion. He blinked and shook his head, as if to clear his vision.
"So beautiful," the nurse said, and she looked at us with wonderment on her face.
The doctor looked frightened. He backed away from us until the bed was against him. He clutched Doyle's chart as if it were a shield.
I tried to think how we must look to them, crowned with living flowers, covered in the magic of the Goddess, but in the end, I couldn't imagine. I would never be able to see what they saw.
We moved toward the bed, and the policeman recovered himself enough to try to point his gun again. But the gun eased toward the floor once more. "I can't," he said in a strangled voice.
"Take the needles and tubes out of Doyle. You're using man-made medicine on him, and it's killing him," I said.
"Why?" the doctor managed to ask.
"He is a creature of faerie, and there is no mortal blood in him to help ease him around such modern wonders." I touched Doyle's arm, and his skin was cool to the touch. "We must hurry, Doctor, and remove him from this artificial place, or he will die." I reached for the IV in Doyle's arm. "Help me."
The doctor looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head, a frightening one. But the nurse moved to help me. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.
"Disconnect him from all of it. We need to take him back to faerie with us."
"I can't let you take an injured man out of my hospital," the doctor said, his voice regaining the ring of authority it had started with, as if now that he had a concrete fact, he felt better. Sick people didn't get taken from the hospital; it was a rule.
I looked at the policeman. "Can you please help the nurse free Captain Doyle of these machines?"
He holstered his gun, and moved to the other side of the bed to help.
"You're a cop," the doctor said. "You're not qualified to disconnect him from anything."
The cop looked at the doctor. "You just said that he wasn't improving, and that you didn't know why. Look at them, Doc, they're dripping magic all over the place. If the captain is used to living like that, then what is all the machinery doing to him?"
"There are channels to go through. You can't just walk in here and take my patient." He was looking at us.
"He is the captain of my guard, my lover, and the father of my children. Do you truly believe I would do anything to endanger him?"
The nurse and the cop were already ignoring the doctor. The nurse directed the cop, and between the two of them they turned everything off and left Doyle lying in the bed free of it all.
Now we could touch him; it was as if the magic knew that he needed to be free of all that was hurting him before we could heal him.
I touched his shoulder, and Sholto touched his leg. His body reacted as if we had shocked him, spine bowing, eyes wide, breath coming in a gasp. He reacted to pain a second later, but he looked at me. He saw me.
He smiled, and whispered, "My Merry."
I smiled back and felt the bite of happy tears. "Yes," I said. "Yes, I am."
His eyes lost focus, then fluttered closed. The doctor checked his pulse from his side of the bed. He was afraid of us, but not so afraid that he wouldn't do his job. I liked him better for that.
"His pulse is stronger." He looked at Sholto and me on the other side of the bed. "What did you do to him?"
"We shared some of the magic of faerie," I said.
"Would it work on humans?" he asked.
I shook my head, and the crown of roses and mistletoe moved in my hair, like some serpentine pet settling more comfortably. "Your medicine would have helped a human with the same injuries."
"Did your crown just move?" the nurse asked.
I ignored the question, because the sidhe are not allowed to lie, but the truth would not help her. She was already staring at us like we were amazing. The look on her face and to a lesser extent the policeman's reminded me why President Thomas Jefferson had made certain that we agreed to never be worshipped as deities on American soil. Neither of us wanted to be worshipped, Sholto and I, but how do you keep that look off someone's face when you stand before them crowned by the Goddess herself?
I expected the roses that bound our hands to uncurl so we could pick Doyle up, but they seemed perfectly happy where they were.
"Let us pick him up from the other side of the bed," Sholto said. "That way you will be carrying his legs, which are lighter."
I didn't argue; we simply moved to the other side of the bed. The doctor moved back from us as if he didn't want us to touch him. I couldn't really blame him. It had been so long since the Goddess had blessed us to this degree that I wasn't certain what would happen to a human who touched us in this moment.
Sholto bent over, putting his arms under Doyle's shoulders. I did the same at his legs, though I didn't have to bend nearly as far. It took some maneuvering, like an arm version of a three-legged race, but we picked Doyle up. He seemed to fill our arms as if he were meant to be there, or maybe that was just how I felt about touching him. As if he filled my arms, filled my body and my heart. How could I have left him to human medicine without another guard watching over him?
Where were the other guards? That policeman shouldn't have been on his own.
"Meredith," Sholto said, "you are thinking too hard, and we must move together to get him home."
I nodded. "Sorry, I was just wondering where the other guards are. Someone should have stayed with him."
The policeman answered. "They went with Rhys, and the one who's called Falen, no, Galen. They took the body of your – " and he looked hesitant, as if he'd already said too much.
"My grandmother," I finished for him.
"There were horses with them," the cop said. "Horses in the hospital, and no one cared."
"They were shining and white," the nurse said. "So beautiful."
"Every guard who they passed seemed to have a horse, and they rode out of the hospital," the cop said.
"The magic took them," Sholto said, "and they forgot their other duties."
I hugged Doyle to me, and gazed at his face cuddled against Sholto's body. "I'd heard that a faerie radhe could make the sidhe forget themselves, but I didn't know what it meant."
"It is a type of wild hunt, Meredith, except it is gentle, or even joyous. This one was for grief, and taking your grandmother home, but if it had been one of singing and celebration, they might have carried the entire hospital with them."
"They were too solemn in their grief," the nurse said.
"Yes," Sholto said, "and good for your sakes."
I looked at the nurse, gazing up at Sholto. She looked damn near elfstruck, a term for when mortals bec
ome so enamored of one of us that they will do anything to be near their obsession. It can happen about faerie in general, but we didn't have glorious underground places to give the mortals now. So that wasn't such a problem, but Sholto's face was as fair as any in faerie, and, crowned with the blooming herbs, in their haze of colored blossoms, he was like something out of the old fairy stories. I supposed we both were.
"We need to go, Sholto."
He nodded, as if he knew that it wasn't just Doyle's health we were attending to. We needed to get away from the humans before they became any more bemused by us.
We started for the door, having to use our bound hands to steady Doyle's body in our arms. The thin gown moved, and we were suddenly touching the bareness of his body. The thorns must have pierced his body because he made a small sound, moving in our arms like a child disturbed by a dream.
"You're bleeding," the nurse said. She was staring at the floor. Blood drops had formed a pattern beneath us. What was it about touching Doyle with the roses that had made her see the blood? I left the thought for later; we needed to get back to faerie. I suddenly felt like Cinderella hearing the clock begin to strike midnight.
"We must get back to the garden and the bed now."
Sholto didn't argue, only moved us toward the door. He asked the policeman to get the door for us, and he did without complaint.
The doctor called from the open door, "You melted the walls in the room you were in, Princess Meredith."
Did I say I was sorry? I was, but I'd had no control over what the wild magic did to the room I'd woken in earlier this night. It seemed like days ago that I'd woken in the maternity ward.
The doctor's call to us had made others turn. We walked through a world of stares and gasps. It was too late to hide now.
"Find us another patient who is betwixt and between," I said.
He led us to a patient who was housed in an oxygen tent. A woman beside the bed looked up at us with a tearstained face. "Are you angels?"
"Not exactly," I said.
"Please, can you help him?"
I exchanged a glance with Sholto. I started to say no, but one of the white roses fell from my crown onto the bed. It lay there, shining and terribly alive. The woman took the rose in her shaking hands. She started to cry again. "Thank you," she said.
"Take us home," I whispered to Sholto. He led us around the bed, and the next moment we were back in the edge of the garden, outside the gate of bone. We were back, and we had saved Mistral and Doyle, but the woman's face haunted me. Why had the rose fallen onto her bed, and why had it seemed to make her feel better? Why had she thanked us?
It was the humpbacked doctor, Henry, who opened the bone gate. We had to turn sideways to ease through with Doyle in our arms. The gate closed behind us without Henry touching it. The message was clear: none but we were allowed inside.
I was suddenly tired, very tired. We laid Doyle beside the still-sleeping Mistral. We took off Doyle's hospital gown, and crawled up on the bed. Our hands were still bound tightly, so it was awkward, but we seemed to know that we needed to be on either side of the two men. I expected to be unable to sleep with the thorns still in our hands and the bulky crown on my head, but sleep came over me in a wave. I had a moment to see Sholto on the far side of Mistral, still wearing his blooming crown. I snuggled in tightly against Doyle's body, and sleep washed over me. One moment awake, the next asleep. Asleep and dreaming.
Chapter Fifteen
The dream began as many dreams inside Faerie began for me, on a hill. I knew it wasn't a real hill. It was more the idea of a green gently sloping hill. I was never certain whether the hill had never existed outside of dream and vision, or whether it was the first hill from which all others were copied. The plain that stretched below the hill was green and full of cultivated fields. I'd stood on this hill and watched war come to faerie, and seen the plain dry and dead. Now it was so alive. Its wheat was golden, as if autumn harvest was just about to begin. But there were other fields with vegetables, where the plants were small, just breaking above the surface of the rich earth. The plain, like the hill, represented an ideal. The fact that it was solid underfoot – and I knew that if I walked down I'd be able to touch the plants, rub the grain between my hands, and see the kernels free of the dry husks, all of it real – didn't change the fact that it was both real and not.
There was a tree beside me on top of the hill, a huge spreading oak. Part of the tree had the first green leaves of spring, another had bigger leaves with the tiny green beginnings of acorns, then the leaves of late summer with the acorns green but much larger, then the brilliance of autumn and the brown acorns ready to be picked, all the way to a section that was winter-bare with only a few acorns and a few dried brown leaves clinging to the branches. I stared up at the dark lace of branches and knew they were not dead, but only resting. When I'd first seen the tree it had been dead and lifeless; now it was what it was meant to be.
I touched the bark of the tree, and it had that deep, thrumming energy that old trees have. It was as if if you listened hard enough you could hear it, but not with your ears. You heard it with your hands, or your face where you pressed it against the cool roughness of the bark. You felt the life of the tree beating against your body as you pressed yourself to its hard sides. It was like a slow, deep heartbeat that started as the tree, then you realized that it was the earth itself, as if the planet had a heartbeat of its own.
For a moment I felt the turn of the planet, and held on to the tree as if it were my anchor to so much reality. Then I was back on the hilltop, and I could no longer feel the pulse of the earth. It had been an amazing gift to sense the hum and flow of the planet itself, but I was mortal, and we are not meant to hear planets' heartbeats. We can have glimpses of the divine, but to live with such knowledge every moment takes holy men or mad men, or both.
I smelled roses before I turned to find the cloaked figure of the Goddess. She hid her face from me always, so that I got only glimpses of her hands, or a line of mouth, and every glimpse was different, as if she went back and forth in age, color, everything. She was the Goddess, she was every woman, the ideal of what it is to be female. Looking at that tall cloaked figure, I realized that she was like the heartbeat of the planet. You couldn't see her too clearly, or hold her too starkly in your mind, not without becoming too holy to live, or too mad to function. The touch of Deity is a wondrous thing, but it carries weight.
"If this place had died it would not have been just faerie that died, Meredith." Her voice was like the glimpses of her body, many voices melding into one another so you would never be able to tell what Her voice was, not exactly.
"You mean reality is tied to this place too?" I asked.
"And is this not real?" She asked.
"Yes, it is real, but it is not reality. It is neither faerie nor the mortal world."
She nodded, and I got a glimpse of a smile, as if I'd said something smart. It made me smile to see Her smile. It was as if your mother had smiled at you when you were very small, and you smile back because her smile is everything to you, and all is right with the world when she smiles at you. For me as a child, it had been my father's smile and Gran's.
The sorrow hit me like a blow through my heart. Revenge and the wild hunt had put the grief aside, but it was there, waiting for me. You cannot hide from grief, only postpone when it will find you.
"I cannot stop my people from choosing to do harm."
"You helped me save Doyle and Mistral. Why couldn't we save Gran?"
"That is a child's question, Meredith."
"No, Goddess, it is a human question. Once I wanted to be sidhe more than anything else, but it is my human blood, my brownie blood, that gives me strength."
"Do you believe that I would be able to come to you like this if you were not the daughter of Essus?"
"No, but if I was not also the granddaughter of Hettie, and the great-granddaughter of Donald, then I could not walk through the human hospital to sav
e Doyle. It is not just my sidhe blood that makes me the tool you need."
She stood there, Her hands drawn back into Her cloak, so that all of Her was in shadow. "You are angry with me."
I started to deny it, then realized She was right. "So much death, Goddess, so many plots. Doyle has nearly been killed twice in just a few days. Frost is lost to me. I would protect my people and myself." I touched my stomach, but it was flat, and I did not feel that first swelling of pregnancy. I had a moment of fear.
"No fear, Meredith. You do not see yourself as pregnant yet, so your dream image is how you see yourself."
I tried to quiet the sudden racing of my pulse. "Thank you."
"Yes, there is death and danger, but there are also children. You will know joy."
"I have too many enemies, Mother."
"Your allies grow in number with each magic you perform."
"Are you certain that I will survive to sit the dark throne?"
Her silence was like the wind, howling across the plain. It had an edge of coldness to it that made me shiver in the light of that sun.
"You are not certain."
"I can see many paths, and many choices being made. Some of those choices lead you to the throne. Some do not. Your own heart has debated whether the throne is even what you want."
I remembered moments when I would have traded all of faerie for a lifetime with Doyle and Frost. But that dream was already gone. "If I was willing to leave all of faerie behind and go with Doyle and my men, Cel would hunt me down and slaughter us. I have no choice but to take the throne or die."
She stood with aged hands on a cane now. "I am sorry, Meredith. I thought better of my sidhe. I thought they would rally around you when they saw my grace return. They are more lost than even I could have imagined." Sorrow was thick in Her voice so that it made me want to cry with Her.
She continued. "Perhaps it is time to take my blessings to the humans."
"What do you mean?"
"When you wake, you will all be healed, but there are too many in faerie who would do you and yours harm. Go back to the Western lands, Meredith. Go back to your other people, for you are right, you are not just sidhe. Perhaps if they see that my blessings can pass them by and be given to others, it will make them more careful of them."
Laurell K Hamilton - Meredith Gentry 07 - Swallowing Darkness Page 14