From Dana’s cold hands, came a heat of the kind that spewed lava from a volcano. Beth was powerless to stop Dana getting what she wanted. Beth felt she could not breathe, as if her airways were blocked. A few moments later, they unblocked, as blood gushed from Beth’s mouth.
The expelled blood even splattered on Dana, who laughed, because she knew, that once Beth was dead, she could live. The Zeryths thought that by placing it on someone else, someone who could unwittingly play the host, that they could finally be rid of Dana. All it served to do was assist Dana. It was like a homing device for her.
God, the pain. It was like someone placed a hot iron over her bare chest. Somewhere, in all the chaos, Beth could hear a voice, but it was not Dana’s. It was a male voice.
“Again.”
“We have tried twice already.”
“Again. Do it again,” said the voice, although much more sterner.
“Doctor!”
“Again. She is too young to die from a cardiac arrest. It will not happen on my watch. Now follow my orders. Again.”
Beth came out of it. She had gone into a cardiac arrest. She rested on the pillow. Someone was mopping her brow.
“Stabilising,” said another voice. “Stabilising,” she repeated.
“Good,” said the male voice. “Don’t ever question my orders ever again.” Beth thought she could feel a gloved hand squeeze her wrist. “Good girl, Beth. You really gave us a fright there.”
There was a lot of commotion around her bed. There was the sound of liquid being mopped up, followed by a popping sound as a needle or some kind of medical tube entered her arm. Blood was being pumped into her. Beth would have been correct in thinking that the liquid being mopped up was her own blood.
Whatever had caused her to suffer a cardiac episode had now left her.
***
A few more days had passed. Nurses came by, gave Beth her medicine, and she began her journey to a full recovery. One day, a doctor passed by her, only to stop by her bed. Beth looked bored, disinterested, and distant.
The doctor picked up the clipboard at the foot of her bed.
“How are you feeling, Beth?”
“I’m good, thank you.”
“I’ve seen that look before. The look that says ‘when will they let me out of here?’
“Yes,” said Beth honestly. “That’s part of it. I do wonder when I can go home.”
“I was the surgeon in theatre when you had your cardiac arrest. You do need more time to rest. Your body is weak, even if you don’t think so.” He paused for a moment, before adding, “You said part of it. Anything else I can do for you?”
Beth sat herself up. The pain she had suffered seemed to have subsided a little.
“The nurses wouldn’t let me see my friend Romilly. Romilly Winter. Will you let me see her?”
The doctor sighed. “You know she’s in a coma, don’t you?”
“At least she is alive, Doctor. Someone can wheel me there if you’re concerned about my health. But you have to understand, I am concerned about her. I am not leaving this hospital without her.”
“The nurses said you were a spirited one. I have to say I thought so myself. That’s why I didn’t give up on you. It was on the fourth occasion that we got you back. Do me a favour and don’t have another cardiac when you see your friend. In all seriousness, she’s in a bad way.”
“I have to be with her.”
“On the day you had your cardiac episode, the priest was giving Romilly the last rites. I don’t want to see two young women with their whole lives in front of them die on my watch.”
“We won’t. Where is she?”
“Straight through the double doors, turn to your right, third bed on the left.”
“Thanks Doctor.”
Beth waved away the doctor’s protestations of a wheel chair and a porter to push it. Instead, she walked steadily, following the directions he had given her. It was the feeling of wanting to see me, but not see me struck down, that prohibited Beth from walking any faster.
Beth pushed through the double doors, and turned to her right, just like he had directed. She sighed heavily as she approached bed one, who had a heavily bandaged woman in it, who had been in a road accident. The next bed, the curtain was drawn, but through the narrowest of splits Beth could see a woman who had been heavily beaten by her partner. I was in the next bed.
Dear God, thought Beth. I didn’t know it would be this bad.
My head lay to the side. One large tube had been inserted into my mouth, and both of my wrists had thick bandages on them. My eyes were almost closed, but still flickered, showing the whiteness of my eyeballs underneath.
Beth gaped open mouthed for a moment, and belatedly used a hand to cover her lips. My hair look mottled, more wavy than usual. Zeryth-like. Beth didn’t like what she was seeing, but at least there was the reassuring beep-beep of the machine monitoring my life signs.
Alive? Yes? Aware? To some extent. I could make out a shadow. That was all.
Beth ran a bit too quick to the side of my bed. Given her current delicate condition, I would have cautioned her against that. But I was in little mood to reprimand anyone. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I was unable to squeeze back. How I wanted to. It was so difficult to describe my condition, so I would leave that to the doctors.
“Oh Milly. Oh my God,” Beth exclaimed. “I’m not leaving you until you are better. Then, we’re never spending another night in a hospital again.”
Right on, Beth, right on.
She tended to me, even when nurses came around and told her to return to her own ward. Beth resisted the temptation to scream an expletive in Gaelic, and stayed in her seat beside my bed.
“Don’t they say a reassuring voice helps with coma patients?”
“That would be fine, if you weren’t a patient yourself,” replied the nurse. “Now you should really return to your bed.”
“No!” said Beth. “I stay. Make me go back, go on!”
Great. Just what I need, another row going on about me. If the hospital staff knew anything about Beth, they would understand she was not the kind to back down. Beth stared at the nurse, who stared back.
There could only be one outcome - Beth winning, so the nurse left, and over the next few hours, she repositioned my pillows, kept on talking to me, and maintained contact by holding my hand. She even ran her fingers over my arms, wizened from the ravages of blackened veins. They had repulsed her the first time she had seen them. I could not blame her for that. I kind of did at the time, but shrugged it off as if to say, what did you expect her to do, Romilly? Weird stuff freaks people out.
At school, with Troy being the exception, I was used to being the wallflower. Beth, Jacinta and Toril were a group, no matter what Toril said. People looked up to them, and everyone wanted to be in that group, if only for the fact that Toril could be very intimidating.
I thought she was rather stuck up, and being Troy’s girlfriend hardly endeared her towards me. Beth, like a honeybee, would flitter around to the next flower. I often saw her looking a bit lost when Toril and Jacinta were deep in conversation, and later she had confided in me that she had felt a bit like the third wheel on a bike.
All the same, she felt unable to pull herself away from them, so any friendship I had with her was fleeting at best.
Sometimes, we actually were in the same class, with Toril and Jacinta elsewhere. We’d chat, she’d smile, but it always seemed like she would prefer to talk with someone else. This is not the Beth that sits by my bedside now. She’s changed. Things have changed for her.
We need each other.
We needed each other back then too. We just were too immature to see it.
Beth refused to give up on me, and strangely, in my incapacitated state, she brought me back to a time I did not remember.
“We were six years old, Milly. There was a sandpit, and a swing. Three of them, actually. I would sit on one, and Troy – yes it was him, doesn’t that
beat Banagher – would push me sometimes. I’d squeal as he was pushed the swing, making me go too high. He was strong, even back then. You would tut-tut, stamp your foot at him, and he would smile. Then you would sit on the swing next to me, and would hold onto my chain so that Troy wouldn’t swing us too high. They were happy times, Milly. We need those times again.”
I could hear her, but it was like I was in a bath submerged by water. The words were garbled. But Beth’s gentle County Clare accent still brought the words to me – brought her kindness to me. She was trying to make up to me, and make up for lost time. I had been hard on her, but sometimes, her behaviour warranted that response.
She was coming through for me now.
Keep on talking, Beth.
And she did. She left nothing out, telling me about the school discos. I would bring music that I would later be embarrassed
about. Beth would admit to doing the same. She would tend to me, even to the point of sending the nurses away, apart from the general checks that they said they had to do.
The nurses would tell Beth to rest too, but she flatly refused, stating that she would not leave my side until I had come out of the coma.
One of the nurses could not help but say it.
“You may be waiting a long time. Even then, your friend may not be the same, think the same, behave the same. She probably won’t even recognise who you are.”
Beth paused before answering. I knew what was coming. Then, to my surprise, she changed it.
“Yes, I may have to wait a long time, and you’re right – Milly may not be the same. Perhaps she won’t know or care who I am. But I will wait. I will be the same, and I will recognise her. I’ll tell you who she is – she’s my friend, and I am not leaving her.”
The nurse about-turned, having giving up on trying to tell Beth what to do. For her part, Beth continued our trip down memory lane. A time before the Mirror. Before Dana. Before the time of Curie.
“You were getting your hair cut, Romilly. The hairdresser pumped the chair up, and you scowled at him for cutting off too much. You scolded your mum for not giving the hairdresser enough instructions beyond ‘she has a double crown.’ You were very forthright, even back then Milly.”
Beth trailed off. It was late. I didn’t know that of course. The minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, all merged into one another. I imagine that for many people; retirement - without a plan, is like this. Like a demon sucking the life and the joy out of you.
I still had some feeling. Some sensory impact. Then I realised what it was. I could smell something. The scent was unmistakable. Beth had fallen asleep, her head propped up against my own. Her hair dangled over my cheekbone. She had used rapeseed oil on her skin for years, and the scent filled my nostrils.
In these small ways, Beth was keeping me in touch with the real world. She was not giving up on me. I could not give up on her. Besides, I had to retrieve the Mirror. Whatever her reason for taking it, be it her own actions or through coercion, Toril Withers should not possess that which was bequeathed to me. To me.
Okay, let’s work this. Before I could even think about getting even with Toril, destroying Dana…and yes…doing whatever was necessary to rid the world of Curie, I had to start small.
I was unsure where my hand was, but I willed it into action. My eyes flickered. Was it my imagination, or was I really seeing, what I was seeing? My hand was close to Beth’s, but she was out cold.
I observed my wizened fingers. I looked at just one of them, and kept my focus, just like in kung fu class.
Come on, little finger, come on.
Hours must have passed, because the darkness turned into the early morning light.
Tap-tap-tap, went my finger on Beth’s hand. The touch must have been so feeble, so faint, because she did not waken.
I must have tapped fifty times. The effort required was extraordinary. I was exhausted, and felt dizzy from the exertion.
The next thing I knew, a great commotion was around my bed. A throng of doctors and nurses surrounded me. I could hear Beth screaming – but this time, with delight.
“She moved! She touched me! She’s coming back!”
Not quite, Beth, but it was a start. We had lost the summer in that hospital. Three whole months in a coma. But over the next three months, I made the kind of recovery often reported in the media as miraculous.
Beth was my constant companion over this time. Unreliable? Flaky? A let down? If this was Beth of the past, she was no more.
Whatever happens in the end, I know one thing. I will not be on my own.
The Blood Runs Deep:
Chapter 2
Toril’s pace had slowed to a crawl. Her arms hurt. She understood, finally, the extreme pain I had endured for the last four years. Her heart beat rapidly, uncomfortably, threatening to burst from her chest. But it would not do that, not until her mission was complete.
In her head, the flashbacks came thick and fast.
She had stabbed Beth.
She had stolen the Mirror of Souls.
She had set Rosewinter alight.
She had left me to my fate.
She had left me to die.
This contradicted everything I knew about Toril Withers. She was a good girl, a decent girl, and I had no real reason to dislike her. She had been Troy Jackson’s high school sweetheart. I knew that, but in my dreams he belonged to me.
Toril was a straight A student, and liked by pretty much everyone. Her sassy disposition was alluring to both boys and girls. She always wanted to help where she could. Yes, she was abrupt at times, and perhaps had a mild case of a superiority complex. But a killer? No. I would not believe Toril was capable of that. She was one of the good ones.
Logic. That’s what Toril would employ here. What creates a killer? There was nothing that I knew of Toril’s background that suggested she would ever do, what she did to me and Beth, but the evidence told its own story, so even if I wanted to absolve Toril from this, I could not. Beth and I deserved answers.
Had Toril found out about the episode between Troy and me? Had she heard anything he had said about ‘moving on’?
That could push a nice girl over the edge, but not into crazy killer mode. Not Toril.
All the evidence suggested otherwise, and Toril could not hide her feelings. Not this time. The flashbacks of what she had done pricked at her, like a thousand stabbing blades.
The Mirror felt heavy in her bag. It had consumed so much blood over the course of its existence. Had it drunk its fill?
Toril was not given to outbursts of emotion. The last time she had cried was in Gorswood Forest when Jacinta had just been killed.
This was too much. She did not feel able to carry this burden, but she had to. The prophecy demanded that she carry on. But the wishes of the Circle, and her own, were in conflict. None of this seemed right.
With all her heart, she hoped that the wound inflicted on Beth was not fatal. But knowing Beth, she had to be stopped going to Rosewinter, otherwise Toril had no doubt that in his delirious state that Michael Dean would have killed her. Some elements of the prophecy were right; with others, questions continued to nag at Toril.
The tears rolled freely from her eyes. There was no-one around to see her break down, so that was fine with her. Toril shook a little with the crying. It was a strangely comforting feeling. This was not self-pity, but she was feeling pangs of remorse. How she would tell the demon Dana this, were she to appear in her path?
No sign of Dana. Good, thought Toril, and she also hoped she was rotting in Hell, and was in a part of it from which she could not escape.
The world has enough evil on its own. Humans have seen to that.
Toril did not want to play her part in this, but she was already too far involved. As much as she tried to expel visions from her head, she was taunted of images of myself, Beth and Jacinta.
It would be too far to walk, that much was for certain. Toril set her bag down on the ground, wiped tears from h
er face, and raised her wand. She pointed it at a tree, and blasted a sizeable chunk of wood from it, enough to fashion a broomstick.
Portal transfers were exhausting and dangerous. Besides, flight was often pleasant. Toril wondered why she had never taken to it before.
A figure loomed behind her. She could make out the shape. Even though shadows distort one’s true image, there was no mistaking who it was. Toril turned around to face him.
“Going somewhere?” growled Curie.
“It’s not your business, where I choose to go.”
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