by Terry Madden
“Connor Connor, nice to meet you. What’s the prognosis for teach? They think he’ll come to?”
Connor couldn’t read Ned’s eyes behind the girlie sunglasses. Probably a druggie. Why should he care what happened to Dish?
“They don’t know.”
But Connor’s mind was still stumbling over what he’d just seen. He jumped into a fishpond and came up in the cave on the beach. At least, it sure looked like the cave on the beach. He glanced out at the ocean, lit by the last pink of twilight. He must have swum through some underground channel and come up down there. But that was insane. The beach was a good mile from here, maybe more. And even if it was the same cave, what was Dish doing in there? He was in the hospital for chrissake.
Images started to strobe through his mind—the tattoo on Dish’s wrist, the same as the one on the woman’s wrist, the look in Dish’s eyes, like he knew Connor was there, but was blind. Dish’s eyes… Connor was certain the man was Dish. He had seen a man and the man had seen him. The recognition was mutual. But in spite of that, Connor had to admit it wasn’t physically Dish. It was just his eyes that gave him away. What was it the woman said? Give him time. Time for what?
“Ya know,” Ned said, leaning forward in the plastic chair. “Your teacher could use some help about now.”
“He’s in a coma.” Connor said it with all the conviction of a sane person.
“A coma, shit, your body’s breathin’ and pissin’ and you’re a million miles away. That would suck ass. All I’m saying, ya know. Sometimes people decide to pull the plug, don’t give ‘em a chance. Ya know what I mean?”
But give him time was all Connor heard in his head. “Even if he wakes up, the chance that he’ll be a vegetable is 68.7 percent. Even higher if he sleeps longer.” He wiped his nose on the inside of his wet T-shirt.
“I’m just saying, we’re always playin’ god with people like that—”
“You don’t know anything about it.” It came out more sarcastic than Connor intended. “It’s just… I got to go.”
“See ya around.” Ned took a drag from the cigarette and snuffed it on the pool deck.
Connor limped to the chain-link and slipped through. Maybe Dish was already dead or his soul had moved on, to that other place where Connor could hear fire sing.
It was getting dark, so he forced his legs to jog, but the downhill slope carried him faster. Water squished from his shoes as he picked up speed. He stumbled a few times and finally fell. His chest grated over the ground, and he lay there, smelling dirt. It felt good to cry. The ground didn’t try to comfort him; it just took his tears like it takes the rain.
Connor decided to be sick the next day and spent the morning searching the Internet for people who had had the same experience he had—near-death drowning. At least, he figured he must have been near death to see the stuff he’d seen. Other people had seen weird shit too: mermaids, subs made of shells, aliens. So Connor was a nutcase just like the rest of them and his appointment with his shrink wasn’t till Friday, not that Dr. Adelman ever helped anyway.
Give him time. Dish and the woman were running from something. She was bleeding.
His cell phone rang. “Hello?”
It was Holly, the nice nurse from I.C.U. “Mr. Cavendish can see a limited number of visitors. I’m not sure how long—”
“I’ll be right there.”
Connor couldn’t wait for Brother Mike to take him. He tucked a wad of binder paper in the fire escape jamb, then walked the quarter mile down to the school gates and met the cab there.
“You can pay, kid?” the driver asked.
Connor waved his mom’s Visa card and eased himself into the back seat.
In the waiting room on the third floor of the hospital, the TV was playing infomercials to no one. In the corner, a large woman slept in a chair made for average humans. Her mouth hung open and her thick legs were splayed in a disturbing way.
Connor buzzed the intercom on the wall and waited. Finally, a female voice said, “I.C.U.”
“It’s Connor Quinn. You called me. I’m here to see Hugh Cavendish.”
“He has two visitors right now. We’ll let you know when you can come in.”
Two visitors? Connor slumped into a chair in front of the TV. The lady in the infomercial was selling a face exerciser while the large lady in the corner had slid further down, hiking her flowery muumuu way too far up her thighs.
He flipped the channel to Oprah. Flipped again.
The electric doors finally buzzed and swung open.
A younger woman blew her nose and walked beside a tiny old lady pushing a walker. She was no more than five feet tall, with a hunch in her back that forced her to look straight down when she walked.
“I can’t bear to see him this way.” The British accent set off an alarm in Connor’s brain. Dish’s relatives. Shit. What could he possibly say? Maybe he wouldn’t have to. Just let them go by.
They inched their way toward Connor. A black nylon pouch hung in the front of the old lady’s walker, overflowing with scraps of paper and a few wilted flowers. A faded bumper sticker plastered on the front announced, I brake for gnomes. The garden gnome in his green jumper and red cone hat was almost worn off.
As they walked by, the old lady turned and looked at Connor with eyes that were so young, eyes that didn’t fit the body they were in. She wore a purple- and white-checked blouse with bees embroidered on the front. The trail of their buzzy path from one flowered pocket to the other was stitched in black dot-dot-dots.
“You’re a fine lad,” she said, and patted Connor’s shoulder. “I’ve missed you.”
“Forgive us,” the younger woman said. “My aunt’s confused, she’s had a bit of a shock—” Her eyes went from Connor’s sling to his swollen, stitched face.
The old lady had taken Connor’s one free hand in hers, the heat from his hand radiating into her cold, papery skin. To pull his hand away would be rude, and she was smiling at him with her eyes.
A voice came over the intercom behind them. “Mr. Quinn, you may come in now.”
“Mr. Quinn? Connor Quinn?” The younger woman extended her hand. “My name is Bronwyn Cavendish, Hugh’s sister. This is my aunt, Merryn Penhallow. My, you are just a lad.”
Connor couldn’t shake her hand because of his sling, and the old lady had a death grip on his left hand, so Bronwyn recovered with an awkward laugh.
“I—I’m, uh, sorry,” he said.
The sister’s eyes welled up and she daubed at her nose with a tissue. She looked like a female Dish, model-ish with the same dark brown hair and green eyes.
“I’m sure you are…” Her words carried a hint of bitterness. She took her aunt’s hand and gently freed Connor. “You’d best go see him,” she said, “but Mr. Quinn? Could I bother you with a few questions after? We can wait here?” She nodded toward the waiting room.
Questions? He’d already told the cops everything he knew in the hospital. “Yeah. Okay.”
The women inched toward the waiting room like two snails.
“Mr. Quinn?” said the impatient voice over the intercom.
He went to the wall and pushed the button. “Ready.”
There was a pause and the door buzzed. Connor pushed.
“The room on the left.” The nurse indicated an alcove with a window that opened onto the nurse’s station. “Ten minutes,” she said. She must be Holly. She glanced at his sling and bruised face saying, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.” He tried to smile back, but failed.
Dish lay in the darkened room, hooked up to six monitors that registered in colorful blips and sine waves. There was a tube down his throat, just like Connor’s brother had had. Dish’s face was so swollen and bruised that the guy in the cave looked more like him than this.
Connor fought tears and crept to the chair beside the bed.
“Dish,” he whispered. “You know you can’t go—” But his throat closed around the word. “You just can’t.”
Except for the tube, Dish looked like he was asleep. What was the difference between a coma and sleep? Just that you can’t wake up? He was alive, so he had to be somewhere. As Connor watched his chest artificially rise and fall, he wanted to believe that Dish was in that cave with the pretty woman. But that was insane.
He got up and paced to the other side of the room to find a row of cards sitting on a high shelf. From the same art class, apparently. Probably more heartfelt than the ones they had sent Connor. Hidden behind them he found a small bottle. It looked like one of those miniature booze bottles people collect because they think they’re cute or something.
When he picked it up, he bowled over a row of cards and had to set them up again. The label on the bottle read, Two Blind Dogs. In small print at the bottom: Single Malt Scotch Whiskey, since 1607. Sure, that’s what Dish needed right now, a belt of Scotch. But the seal was broken and the liquid inside was clear, like water.
He opened the cap and sniffed. Didn’t smell like alcohol, didn’t smell like anything, really. It looked like water. There was a tiny gift card taped to the bottom. Inside, Happy Birthday, Merryn was crossed out. In a spidery hand two words filled the remaining white space: From Madron’s. Was that some kind of liquor store? He put it back on the shelf.
Aunt Merryn had brought Dish a bottle of water? The old lady did seem pretty nuts.
Connor forced himself to sit back in the chair, to really look at what was left of Dish. His gaze travelled to Dish’s arm. The tattoo was still there, half-covered with an I.V. bandage. The memory of the woman he had seen in the pool blinded Connor. Why would she have the same tattoo? And how did Dish get this one in the first place?
He reached for Dish’s hand. It was cold. He couldn’t stop the tears any longer. But with them came the distant echo of Dish’s voice. There’s another world out there. That’s what he’d said just before the accident.
“There’s another world out there,” Connor told Dish. “Where?” He wiped his nose on his sleeve and pleaded, “Where are you?”
Connor looked for a flutter of his eyelids. Something, anything. Give him time.
“It’s time,” Holly the nurse said.
“Yeah.”
He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and headed out. When he went through the electric doors, he saw Dish’s sister and aunt huddled in a corner of the waiting room across the hall. He looked down at the design in the carpet and tried to walk on by, but Bronwyn intercepted him before he got to the elevator.
“I hate to trouble you, I know you’ve been through so much,” Bronwyn said. “But the insurance investigator would like to talk to you.”
She guided him back to the waiting room and motioned to a chair beside Dish’s aunt.
Connor sat.
“He’s just a lad,” the old lady said.
“I know, auntie, but it’s necessary—”
“I told the cops everything.” Connor was sure he was going to throw up.
“I understand, but Mr. Kline, the investigator, has a few questions,” Bronwyn said. “Once some paperwork is settled he’d like to ring you up, if it’s not a bother. Might I get a number where you can be reached?”
Connor’s eyes met Aunt Merryn’s. “You left a bottle of water in Dish’s room. Why?”
“Oh yes. From Madron’s. A holy well.”
“What’s it supposed to do for him?”
Bronwyn took her aunt’s hand and gave it a pat. “My auntie holds to some old superstitions.”
But Connor’s eyes searched Aunt Merryn’s. “A well is a place where water just comes up out of the ground, right?”
“Yes.”
“What’s so holy about them?”
“Water from certain wells possesses healing properties—”
“You think well water can heal Dish?”
The two women exchanged a look.
“Anything is possible,” Aunt Merryn said at last.
Was that what Dish found on the beach? A holy well? Something magical? “There’s another world out there. And it shapes us no less than this one.” Dish’s words just tumbled from Connor’s lips.
“Yes…” Merryn replied, and her smile unfolded the soft wrinkles around her mouth.
“It was raining,” Connor said to Bronwyn. “I lost control. That’s what happened.”
The two women were staring at him. Bronwyn’s hand went to his shoulder. He pulled away.
“You’ve been traumatized no less than my brother,” Bronwyn said. “I understand.”
“310-599-9057.”
Bronwyn looked puzzled.
“My number. For your investigator.”
But Aunt Merryn struggled to the edge of her chair and put a bony hand on his. “Tell me, lad. What did you see?”
The familiar look in Merryn’s eyes unstoppered everything. It came out too fast for his tongue. He proceeded to upchuck everything he remembered about the pool and Dish’s tattoo, but couldn’t bring himself to confess his near-drowning vision of Dish and the woman.
Bronwyn gave a chortle and crossed her arms. “It would be like Hugh to get a tattoo of that thing.”
“I watched it appear!” Connor drew an uncomfortable stare from the large woman, now awake.
He thrust his bare wrist out to Bronwyn. “His skin was as tattoo-less as mine right now. I watched it—grow.”
Merryn’s eyes said she believed him.
“Let me show you,” he said.
Bronwyn’s face glazed over with a mocking smile. “We have things to tend to here,” she said, “serious things—”
“This is serious. Let me show you. I think Dish thought it was a well, like the well you’re talking about.”
Bronwyn turned to Merryn with a scowl, saying, “You think Hugh was looking for his threshold on Malibu Beach?”
Connor didn’t remember anyone saying anything about a threshold. “Threshold of night. That’s what he said.”
The way Bronwyn’s eyes flitted from him to Merryn said that she’d let something slip. Bronwyn knew exactly what Dish was doing in that cave, and Connor would find a way to get it out of her.
“Let me show you,” he said again.
Aunt Merryn’s eyes twinkled brightly. “Take me there.”
Chapter 12
Lyleth had only felt the boy’s presence in the pool, but Nechtan had seen him—thin with copper eyes, he told her. This boy was no specter of a soul lost in the crossing, nor was he the wandering consciousness of a dreamer so often seen staggering between worlds by those with eyes to see them. No, the fact that Nechtan could see him and Lyleth could not meant that the boy had crossed the well by some means unknown to her. Lyleth would be quick to say it was impossible. Yet, three months earlier, she would have said calling Nechtan back from that world was equally impossible.
But there were other, living men in this maze of river-cut caverns. Their torchlight and voices echoed off the cavern walls.
Lyleth dropped the rushlight in the pool and the cave went black.
“We’ve nowhere to hide,” she whispered to Nechtan.
“Then we prepare to fight.”
From the darkness came the sound of the pony’s hooves scrabbling for purchase in the gravel. Brixia was pulling herself out of the water. Had she been in the pool this whole time? Hadn’t she pulled Nechtan out of the torrent? Brixia gave a shake and started to walk away. With her arms out before her, Lyleth followed the chatter of hooves in gravel. Her eyes finally adjusted to the dark and she saw the pony was headed for a weak light seeping from the far end of the chamber.
“Brixia knows,” she said.
Nechtan took her hand and they crept after the sound of the pony and the dim shaft of light.
“The path may drop from under us,” he said. “Stay close to the wall.”
The damp stone chilled her even more, and she fought a sudden shudder of bone cold. The water had soaked through her makeshift bandages and reopened her wounds, and in spite of her cloak,
her bowstring dug deeply.
The path grew narrow, but Brixia plowed the deep scree and slid backward. Nechtan planted both palms on the pony’s haunches and pushed. Brixia fell forward on her knees then leapt like a fawn to the opening.
From the other side of the pool muffled voices became words, then laughter, and the torchlight swelled.
“It’s Gwylym,” Nechtan said.
Gwylym had been like an uncle to Nechtan after his father died. He’d taught Nechtan how to fight, how to lead men to their deaths and how to live with himself the next day. Lyleth knew Nechtan had failed to learn this last lesson, and it was this failing that shaped him into the king who had brought peace to the land.
“Gwylym will know you as well as I,” she said, “but—”
“We’ll go back with him to Caer Ys.” She could hear the hope in his voice.
“We’ll go back to Caer Ys,” she said, “where Ava commands five hundred retainers. Your retainers. Will they believe it’s really you, or say you’re a conjuring of mine? Ava’s offered a price for my head and she’ll likely give a bit more for yours.”
The voices grew louder and torchlight danced on the skin of the pool. Men clustered on the far side, about ten of them.
“Ava has slain a guardian, Nechtan,” she whispered. “When you face her, you’ll need men at your back. More than ten.”
He drew a weary breath and exhaled. “Aye,” he said at last, “that I will.”
The light of day beckoned from the narrow opening behind them.
Nechtan lifted Lyleth to the rocky ledge as if he were tossing her on a horse’s back. She caught the edge of the opening with her fingertips and pulled herself up, then reached down for his hand.
“Lyleth!” Gwylym called from across the water. “Come with me now and I’ll see that no harm comes to ye.”
“The harm’s done, Gwylym,” she called back to him. “This she-king you serve killed your king. She’ll let me live? I think not.”
Nechtan scrambled onto the ledge beside her. Below, a rope slapped the surface of the water and squealed as it drew taut. They were crossing the water.