“We’ll be fast,” Julie promised. “Just keep him alive until we get back.”
She nodded. “I plan on it.”
She didn’t watch them go.
She turned her attention to her brother. “Okay, Josh, stay with me, okay? I know you’re in there, so listen to my voice. We’re going to get through this, you and me. You aren’t leaving me now.”
He didn’t answer her.
Working quickly, and trying not to think about what she was doing, Alex peeled away Josh’s coat, using the knife to cut it off his shoulders and pull it out from beneath him. She wadded up part of the back tail to fashion a pillow for his head, and make him as comfortable as she could, then cut the shirt away in strips. She used the knife to make the wadding she would use to pack the wounds when the others got back. Scrunching one of the strips up, she used it to press down on the worst of the wounds and kept applying pressure while the cloth soaked up the blood.
Without water to clean the cuts up, and a needle and thread to suture it, anything she did was only ever going to be a temporary fix, but temporary was better than no fix at all.
She kept applying pressure, willing the others to return.
Every minute seemed to drag on forever.
She started filling the silence with anything and everything that occurred to her, starting with the fact she was really glad he wouldn’t be wearing that ratty old coat of Boone’s anymore, but even as she cursed the old man’s fashion taste, she thanked God for the fact he smoked like a chimney right up until his dying day, because without that lighter of his, her brother would be joining him in the great working men’s club in the sky.
Ellie was the first back; her arms filled with thin kindling, stuff small enough and brittle enough to get a fire going. Julie was a couple of minutes behind her, his arms overflowing with bark and thicker deadfall, even something that looked a little like hawthorn with those spiky needlelike thorns. “Will this do?” he asked dumping it all out on the floor.
She nodded. It would. Or more precisely, it would have to. That was a different thing.
“There’s a lighter in the coat pocket. Use it to get the fire going.”
“I flunked out of Boy Scouts,” Julie said, trying to lighten the mood as he fumbled around in the ruined coat for the fixings of a fire whilst Ellie banked up the kindling and added a couple of the strips of cloth beneath to help get the blaze going.
It took a few minutes, and a couple of times it threatened to go out before it got started, but eventually they got a small fire burning, and began to add a couple of the bigger logs to it, so that it generated some proper heat.
“Put the knife in the fire. Only the blade. I’ve got to be able to hold it. I’m going to use it to cauterize the blood vessels before I pack the wound up.”
“Jesus,” Julie said. “Are you sure he can take that?”
Out loud the idea of burning the damaged vessels sounded barbaric, but she knew what she was doing. And it wasn’t like they had a lot of choice in the matter.
“Next best thing. I’m sure that he can’t live without it. The knife’s got to be hot. Really hot. It’s got to burn the center of the wound until the skin crusts over.”
Julie nodded.
She kept on pressing down on the wound; desperately enough that she was surprised the bones beneath didn’t crack.
Finally, Julie handed her the knife.
“This is going to hurt,” Alex told her brother, even though he couldn’t hear her. She pressed the blade down flat across the two-inch cut, charring the edges of the gash, and trying not to gag at the sweet reek of burning flesh that emanated from it. She didn’t flinch even as Josh came back screaming as the pain seared through him. She kept on pressing the blade down, reheating it, and pressing it down again until it stopped bleeding and a thick black crust had formed across the wound. He blacked out somewhere around the fourth or fifth time, and for a moment she thought she’d killed him, but his pulse was there, thready, but there when she felt for it at his neck. The other wounds were still bleeding, but none of them were deep or particularly threatening so she left them.
Everything about the next couple of minutes was filled with urgency as she set about packing the wounds and binding them. Without tape to hold the layer of bark in place, she improvised, using the long thin vines that Julie had stripped from a willow tree and tying them off as best she could. They wouldn’t hold up against any sort of exertion, but in terms of the difference between life and death they were definitely tilting the scale the right way.
None of it would do much good in the long-term. They needed to get Josh to a hospital, which meant they needed to get out of here one way or another.
Suddenly all thoughts of ancient swords and fabled towers were a million miles away. She didn’t care about the Sleepers or the fate of the world she called home, because the only home she really had these days was right here in her arms clinging on to life.
When she looked up again the ghost light on the horizon was so much closer than it had been even a few minutes before.
She could just make out the silhouette of what looked like a flat-bottomed boat, and realized what she’d taken to be smooth rolling fields was actually becalmed water, and the light, a torch burning in the hand of the boatman guiding it toward their shore.
A flicker of movement off to the left caught her eye, but before Alex could focus on it, whatever it was, was gone. “Did you see that?” she asked.
“What?” Julie asked, meaning obviously he hadn’t.
“I don’t know. Something over in the trees.” Even as she said it, Alex felt the peculiar creeping sensation of being watched. “There’s someone over there.”
“I don’t see anyone,” Ellie said, but she was up on her feet and walking toward the trees before either of them could stop her.
Alex heard a rustling in the trees, a rush of movement that presaged a huge dark muscular blur bursting out of cover. It took a moment to process what she was seeing, and refocus that blur into an enormous emerald-colored dog barreling toward Ellie at incredible speed. Huge didn’t cut it; the dog was bigger than any beast Alex had ever seen, more like a panther than a hound as it ran at Ellie. The sheer power behind it was awe-inspiring. There was no mistaking it for any creature’s prey. This was an alpha predator. Ellie saw it too late, and couldn’t run. She had no way of getting out of its path as the beast’s powerful gait devoured the distance between them in seconds.
At the last, its gait changed, the muscles of its hindquarters tensing, ready to spring, then launched itself at Ellie.
There was enough power behind its leap that the impact would have snapped Ellie’s spine in two, but as the green dog launched itself at her, she hurled herself to the ground, and rolled as the beast’s momentum carried it over her.
It hit the ground with the natural grace of a hunter and kept on running.
Julie snatched up a brand from the fire and rushed the dog, flailing around with the burning wood, sweeping it around in great wide arcs that had the flame guttering and threatening to blow out. He lunged toward the animal, using its momentum against it to steer it out wide, away from Ellie as she struggled to rise. It looked for one sickening second as though the beast was about to give up on him and set its sights on easier prey—the kneeling Alex and her brother in her arms—but Julie wasn’t about to let that happen. He yelled, making enough noise to raise the dead, and charged the huge dog head-on, slashing the torch across its face again and again, driving it back toward the water’s edge.
Alex hadn’t realized how cold the air in this place was until that moment, with the beast only feet away. She saw something in the green dog’s rage-filled eyes she couldn’t explain. The fire burning in them went beyond cunning. It was recognition.
It knew her.
This wasn’t some dumb animal. It had sought her out.
And now it had found her.
There was no wind. The air between them was absolutely still.
Julie drove the green dog back three paces, dancing forward and back like a fencer, the burning branch his rapier.
It gave ground reluctantly; its fear of the fire in his hand the only thing preventing it from tearing out his throat.
The beast growled deep in its belly. It was caught between rage, hate, and fear; its entire body absolutely still, heckles risen, jowls curled back. Julie slashed the burning branch through the air again, risking a step closer.
The animal didn’t move.
Ellie raced across to the fire to grab a second burning branch while Julie kept the beast at bay.
Out on the flat gray sea the fire drew closer still.
Alex could make out the boatman’s hood and the deep shadow obscuring his face. There were others in the boat, six women dressed in white. She could just make out their mumbled prayers as the boat drifted closer.
The beast on the shore wasn’t giving ground.
Ellie stood side by side with Julie, the fire in their hands giving the great dog no avenue of escape.
Ellie stepped to the left and back half a pace, opening up an escape route for the animal even as Julie lunged forward again, jabbing the burning end of his branch into the beast’s muzzle.
It snapped and snarled, nearly taking his hand off with its powerful jaws. The bite left ragged tears in the sleeve of his coat. Even from where she was, Alex could see blood on the dog’s yellow teeth. It tensed to launch another savage attack on Julie, but Ellie stepped in, shrieking at the animal and slashing wildly at its face. The fire seared away a great swathe of fur along the side of its muzzle. The dog growled deep in its throat, and clawed at the ground, raking five deep gouges in the gray grass. Alex thought it was about to launch another ferocious attack on her friends, but with more fire approaching from the sea the beast knew when it was beaten—at least temporarily—and took the escape offered. It darted between Julie and Ellie, splashing along the skirt of the water. It left deep prints in the ground, the pad of each paw bigger than her hand, fingers outstretched. She watched it go, bounding away with a burst of speed they couldn’t have matched if they had wanted to.
The dog disappeared into the trees.
Alex hadn’t thought once about using the knife against it. She wasn’t sure it would have had the slightest effect on the beast’s thick emerald-colored hide, hot or not.
Julie reached down to put his hand there beside one of the prints, and pressed his fingers down into the soft ground, and like grains of sand it parted around them to accommodate him.
Ellie Taylor was the first to say anything. “What the fuck was that?”
“A devil dog,” Julie said, and for just a moment she couldn’t be sure if he was joking or not—but of course he wasn’t. Devil dogs were deeply rooted in the mythology of the Isles. “A fucking Hellhound. Did you see its eyes? They were burning. I mean like fire. Properly burning.” A Hellhound was exactly what it was. And, she knew what its presence signified. The green dog had another name, one that Alex knew because of the old woman’s invasion in her mind: Cù Sìth. They were harbingers of death that came to bear souls away to the afterlife.
It hadn’t been hunting her; it had come for Josh.
Alex looked down at her brother, and realized somewhere between the dog breaking free of the trees and being driven off he had stopped breathing.
When she looked up again, she saw that the boat had brushed up against the shore and the six women were in the process of disembarking one by one, their ethereally thin white gowns soaked up to the knees where they stood in the dead calm water. Each one bore an uncanny resemblance to the other, marking them all as sisters. They each possessed the same fine-boned features, the same long raven-black hair, the same piercing blue eyes, and the same empty expression.
Alex didn’t care how creepily similar they were. She only had eyes for the boatman standing on the prow with the tiller in his hand. In his free hand he held a blazing torch that burned brighter than she could bear to look directly at. She’d been wrong, his face wasn’t lost in the shadows beneath his hood; his face was the stuff of shadows.
The Sisters came up the gray beach two by two; heads bowed.
As they drew nearer the words of their singsong prayer became more distinct. There was incredible beauty in their song. Each voice rose and fell in perfect counterpoint to the others. The words, she knew, came together to weave a spell of life around her brother. She was witnessing her first glimpse of the earth magic that her world had lost, and it was enchanting.
“Save him,” she begged, but they did not break their song.
They chanted the creeping presence of death down, driving it out of his flesh in a treaclelike tar that seeped out of the side of the willow bark compress, and kept on chanting as they gathered around Josh to take him in their arms and lift him slowly. They made it look effortless. Her brother lay lifeless in their arms as the six Sisters waded into the water. The surf lapped soundlessly around their legs as they bore him back to the flat-bottomed boat and laid him down on the timbers. One by one the Sisters climbed back into the boat until the final one turned and offered her hand to Alex.
She looked back toward the trees and the lurking presence of the Cù Sìth she knew was still there, and mouthed the words, “Not today,” before she took the Sister’s hand and joined them in the boat.
43
“We will restore him,” Sister Mazoe assured her as they drifted effortlessly through the still sea. The boatman manned the tiller; his deep voice singing a haunting threnody that guided them home. There were no oars. No one rowed the boat. Alex caught snatches of words and phrases she almost understood in the boatman’s ancient song. One phrase, Ynys Afallach, stood out from the rest because it meant something to the old woman. The Sisters were taking them to the Isle of Apples. It had been the home of Manannan mac Lir, the bearer of the legendary blade, Freagarthach. She felt the knot of fate weaving around them, bringing them to exactly where they needed to be. Alex knew other names for that place thanks to Emmaline Barnes’s meddling in her mind: some called it the Fortunate Isle, others Paradise, and in the old tongue Insula Avalonia. The most familiar of all named it Avalon.
She didn’t say heal, or save, Alex noticed.
Restore.
Alex didn’t know whether that was a significant word choice or if she was reading too much into things.
She wasn’t sure she could ever read too much into anything now.
“Where are we going?” she asked instead.
“To the Orchard,” Mazoe said, as though that explained everything.
“How long will the journey take?”
“Time has little meaning, Sister, but by your reckoning, two, perhaps three days shall pass in the land you have come from. In that way, it is a long journey. In other ways, it is just over the horizon, though you cannot see it for the enchantments that weave a thick mist around the high tower to keep it safe from accidental travelers.”
“He’ll not live that long.”
Sister Mazoe’s smile was gentle, not patronizing but full of certainty. “Rest easy, Sister, he is in our care now. He will come back to you; you have my promise.”
One of the other women, Sister Thiten, moved away from her wooden seat to kneel at Josh’s side, and placed her hand over the willow bark. Her voice separated from the chorus, lifting above the whisper of the waves to swell all around him. For just a moment, less time than it took for the singer to draw in fresh breath, Alex saw a ghost of bluish light spark between the singer and her brother, a crackle of life moving from one to the other. The boat rocked slightly as the woman moved back to her seat. A moment later the third Sister, Glitonea, took her place at Josh’s side. The soft cotton of her diaphanous dress fell across Josh as she leaned forward to place a tender kiss on his lips, breathing her song into him. The fourth Sister placed her hand atop Josh’s heart and raised her head to the sky; her voice a delicate susurrus as it called out to the wind to hurry them home. One by one each of the
Sisters knelt beside her brother, weaving their ancient magic around him.
At one point Josh opened his eyes, but they were like glass, simply reflecting the gray sky back at her.
He drifted in and out of consciousness as the boat sailed on.
Without thinking, Alex reached over the side and trailed her fingers in the still water. She couldn’t understand how they were moving without anyone rowing, but had faith they would arrive at their miraculous destination as the Sister promised. A thoughtful hush settled over the boat as the Sisters’ song lulled to a gentle wash of sound no louder than the splash of the prow as it cut through the water.
Alex reached out for Julie’s hand.
They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Sometimes something as simple as human contact was enough. It spoke so much more intimately than words ever could. He squeezed her fingers.
And the boat drifted on.
Looking back, she could no longer see the shore.
Looking forward there was nothing to see.
She had no idea how long they’d been adrift, hours possibly. The mist gathered around them, thickening as they sailed into it, until it was impossible to see anything beyond the boatman’s torch.
It was a light that would never go out, she realized.
“How did you know to come for us?” Julie asked, breaking the silence. It was a reasonable question. They must have disembarked the island long before the four of them had walked into Coldfall Wood.
“Our lord told us you would come,” Sister Mazoe said. At least she thought it was Mazoe, the voice came from her direction but the mist was so thick now it was impossible to make out the details of her face. “It was foretold.”
Julie didn’t say anything to that.
Ellie hadn’t said a word since the attack on the water’s edge.
Another hour passed with only the gentle song of the Sisters for company. Visibility dwindled further still, until Alex couldn’t see more than two feet in front of her face, beyond that was only shadow and indistinct shapes. She could no longer see if Josh was breathing, but as long as the Sisters sang she had to believe he was still with them. She had no choice but to trust their old ways, which she did far more than her own makeshift medicine.
Coldfall Wood Page 26