The Weeping Books of Blinney Lane

by Drea Damara

  DAUNDECORT HALL

  HENRY RACED up the stairwell as soon as he and Ranthrop’s healer had cleaned and dressed the combatants’ wounds. He saw Varmeer pacing outside of Vasimus’s bedroom door. Henry strode up to him, letting his expression ask the question on his mind.

  Varmeer shook his head. “The healer is in there with them now. No change as of yet.”

  Henry inhaled sharply and pursed his lips. He looked to the door and walked toward it, fully intent on bursting in. Varmeer pressed a hand against his chest, blocking his path.

  “I tried that already. Vasimus slammed it in my face as soon as the healer went in, and I heard the lock click behind him.”

  “That man,” Henry said, grumbling and glared at the door. He turned and brushed his fingers through his hair at the thought of Vasimus’s brutish ways around Sarah in her most delicate of conditions. He took up pacing in the opposite direction of Varmeer, and they began to cross paths with the ritual.

  After a while, when Henry had calmed himself, he stopped and rested his hands on his hips. “You can go if you’d like. I won’t break the door down and start another war. Ranthrop’s down below with Ricky.”

  Varmeer gave him an appreciative smile. “Well, only because you’re not from the South. Let us know how she does,” he said and went down the stairs.

  DOWN IN the great room, Ranthrop leaned back in a chair next to Ricky by an open window. The cool afternoon air wafted in over their sweaty skin and each sat holding a goblet of beetleburry ale.

  A plate of fruit and cheeses had been brought out by the kitchen staff and placed on the small table between them. Several of Ranthrop’s guards, along with some of Vasimus’s, lingered together at a similarly dressed table in the corner of the room, speaking lowly over their goblets to avoid disrespect for the current situation.

  Bandaged leg outstretched before him, much like Ricky’s, he glanced over at the men when he heard some quiet laughter. The sound was quickly followed by silence, when they saw him looking in their direction. He let his head turn back to stare at the floor in front of him with a thoughtful smile.

  “So, this is what peace sounds like?” he said matter-of-factly and took a drink.

  “It sounds good,” Ricky said, wincing as he shifted in his seat and brought his free hand down to his ribs.

  Ranthrop looked over and saw that a spot of blood had crept through the bandage. He reached over to the bottle on the table and tugged the cork out with his teeth.

  “Here,” he said and gestured for Ricky’s goblet, “this’ll take the sting away.”

  “The leg is worse, but any time I move, my side stabs me.” Ricky brought the goblet back up to take a drink once it was refilled.

  Ranthrop refilled his own then and said, “Ha. You sliced me deeper above the knee, you little half-pint. Plus, I’m old enough to be your father.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ve earned the right to complain more than you.” He raised his glass.

  “Fair enough.” Ricky toasted him.

  UPSTAIRS, HENRY had been racking his mind with worry during the two hours that had passed since he’d begun pacing outside Vasimus’s chamber door. He’d walked up and down the entire expanse of the lengthy hallway several times, and then he'd sat on the bench outside the door until he could stand the immobility no longer. He whirled around at the creaking sound of the door and saw an old man in a long dark robe walk out; he figured this must be the healer. The door closed behind him and latched again, infuriating Henry with the sound.

  He stepped closer to the healer who walked toward the stairwell. “How is she? Will she be all right?”

  The healer sighed and started down the stairs, Henry right alongside him with each step. “She had a mighty fall. It is difficult to say.”

  “Did she break anything?”

  “There’s no sign of a break from what I saw. Her compression is minimal, considering how far she fell and how she landed, but only time will tell. If her brain swells too much, well, there’s no telling if the body will recover from that on its own. I have given her a remedy to prevent it, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

  Henry grimaced at the glum diagnosis. Clearly this man wasn’t used to giving the most hopeful version of a story like the medical professionals in Henry’s world did. He continued to walk down the stairs with the healer to create some distance between himself and the dismal hallway he’d been pacing. He found Ricky lazily leaning his head against a chair. Ranthrop sat in a similar manner next to him. The two of them chuckled about something and then stopped when they saw him approach.

  “How is Aunt Sarah?” Ricky asked, followed by a loud hiccup.

  “She’s the same,” Henry said and eyed the glasses in their hands. He didn’t mind the apparent intoxication settling into the two of them and preferred that there was something to distract Ricky from Sarah’s condition. “We just have to wait and see if she wakes up.”

  “Wakes up?” Hiccup! “Wakes up? I’m sick of waiting for her to wake up! That’s why we came here.” Ricky pounded a fist on the arm of his chair. Ranthrop cast the boy a confused look but then looked back to his goblet.

  “I know, Ricky,” Henry muttered.

  “What if she never wakes up?”

  “Don’t think like that,” Henry responded a little too harshly.

  Ricky sat back again. “Even if she does wake up, she’s still stuck here,” he mumbled dejectedly. “She’s stuck searching for some stupid ribbon or one of those tiny little charms from that crazy bracelet she always wears.” Ricky held his thumb and index finger close together right before his eye and peered through the space. When he dropped his hand, Henry was gone.

  “Hey, where’d he go?” Hiccup!

  HENRY DASHED up the stairs and into Sarah’s empty room. If he found her bracelet he could examine it. He’d eyed every little bauble on that leather cuff over the last five years. If he found what was missing, could he send her home in her current state? Better she was in a coma in Salem than in Farwin Wood. At least there were doctors with access to electricity in Salem!

  Through the soft orange light that flooded in from the balcony doorway, Henry opened anything with a drawer or door. His breath caught when he saw a New York Giants sweatshirt folded up in the bottom of a clothing bureau. He lifted it out carefully and heard a scrape underneath it as he did. He stared down at the leather cuff and set the clothing off to his side.

  Picking up the bracelet with his thumb and index finger, Henry looked at the dangling charms. He saw several tiny pearls that he recognized and flicked them aside. The little silver key that he’d seen so many times before was also there. He slowly rotated the bracelet and mentally discarded each charm and trinket as he recognized them. When he came to the end of the leather, he closed his eyes. Something was missing. He was sure of it. He tried to picture Sarah in her shop, when her hand would reach out to sign his invoices. He knew it wasn’t just wishful thinking at the remark Ricky had made; something wasn’t there.

  Henry carried the bracelet with him out into the hallway and took a seat back on the bench. Under the dim candlelight he turned over the bracelet again and watched each of the trinkets fall onto one another with the motion. There was nothing gold in the mix, he thought.

  “The ring!”

  Henry stared at the bracelet and saw where a tiny piece of the leather braiding was broken. He laughed softly, proud of his discovery. The ring. He remembered it clearly now. How many times he’d wanted to ask Sarah if it held significance but had thought better of the inquiry.

  As the minutes passed with no sound from Vasimus’s room, Henry consoled himself that, if Sarah did awake, at least he could tell her what she needed to look for to go home. He hated that Vasimus so presumptuously locked himself in his bedroom with Sarah while he was left to sit like an outcast in the hallway. He thought about who would take a ring or whom he’d seen wearing a ring in Farwin Wood to take his mind off his stewing and worry. Sarah never wore
a ring. Why did she even have a ring? Was it a family heirloom? Who else would give a woman a ring if not family? He stopped fidgeting with the bracelet and looked up at the wall across from him. A man would give a woman a ring. And a bitter man might take one back!

  He bolted off the bench and pounded on the door to Vasimus’s room. When no one answered, he began to beat even harder on the solid wood. “Vasimus, you open this damned door now! I want to see her!”

  The door jerked open, and just as Henry latched eyes with Vasimus, a strong hand reached out and grasped the front of his shirt about the neck. Vasimus pushed him back as he clenched the fabric tighter, but Henry dug his feet in to keep from losing any ground.

  “Why are you here?” Vasimus growled and shook the place where he held Henry.

  Henry instinctively lowered his head and dropped the bracelet. He gathered handfuls of Vasimus’s shirt and charged the most forceful defensive push back he could remember since his college days, sending the towering man back into the room.

  As they clawed at each other, Henry’s forceful push sent them crashing into a table. It rocked and tipped over with a crash to the floor. The force of the impact halted Vasimus, sending Henry forward. Vasimus took the advantage and swung Henry off him. Still grasping at Henry’s neck, Vasimus held him down by the neck with a firm grip, which allowed him to lock his elbow in place so he could hold Henry out at arm’s breadth.

  “You impetuous man! Who are you? A guard or a lover?” Vasimus questioned, wrestling to keep him hunched over and choking him in the process.

  Henry twisted beneath Vasimus’s grip and swung his fists to land them wherever he could. “Give it back to her! Give us back the ring!” He choked out as he continued to pummel and writhe.

  “Arrrrgh!” Vasimus snarled and slipped him into a headlock. He dragged him kicking and swinging out onto the balcony. “Leave us alone! Just go home! Go back to where you came from!” Vasimus slammed Henry’s ribs into the edge of a rain barrel on the balcony.

  Henry moaned at the cracking sound his bones made when he impacted the wooden barrel. The jarring motion was enough for him to break free from Vasimus’s headlock, and he drove a tightly clenched fist into the man’s nose. Henry winced at the pain in his side as he tried to take another swing and couldn’t, but he reveled in the victorious sound of Vasimus’s broken nose and growl of pain. “You can’t keep her here!” Henry yelled and leaned against the barrel, hoping for a second of reason. “Give it back to her!”

  Vasimus spat the dripping blood away from his lips and lunged at him again. The man pushed his hands onto Henry’s face and pressed his chest down against where Henry held his arm across his broken ribs to trap it there. Vasimus forced Henry’s head back toward the water and leaned all of his weight onto him. Henry lost his footing and arched back, causing his head to dunk into the water.

  “Go home!” Vasimus screamed as bubbles surfaced where Henry was submerged.

  Henry scraped and grasped at Vasimus’s chest to try and pull himself upward. He managed to pull Vasimus in enough that the man had to take a step back. Henry’s hold was tight enough that it brought him up out of the barrel with Vasimus’s retreat. They scuffled a few seconds more, and Henry looked to his hand when something sharp entangled his fingers as he tried to grab for Vasimus’s neck. In his grasp, he saw Sarah’s small gold ring laced through a thin chain.

  Vasimus ceased his onslaught once he discovered that Henry had ahold of the necklace. Vasimus let go of his collar and tried to knock his hand away from the chain, but Henry tightened his grip on it.

  “Let her go home,” he said, pleading.

  “Then I will never see her again.” Vasimus gritted the words between breaths.

  “If you love her, you’ll let her go, not hold her prisoner,” Henry said, jerking the chain.

  Vasimus stared at him in silence as they panted for air, still braced in their standoff. After a moment, Henry saw him look away out into the landscape. With a frustrated grunt, Vasimus pushed hard off Henry’s chest, releasing him from his grasp. The force brought Vasimus back so abruptly that the chain snapped from behind his neck as though he’d intended it. Henry saw that he now held the necklace in his hand. He looked up to see Vasimus take a deep breath, staring at the ring like it pained him. After a pause, Vasimus gave him a blank look and walked dejectedly from the balcony and out of the bedroom.

  Henry watched him go and then looked to where Sarah lay. He walked out into the hallway and picked up the discarded bracelet, then went across the hall into Sarah’s room. He came back with Sarah’s sweat suit in his hands and shut the door to Vasimus’s room behind him. He locked it without second-guessing himself and then came to a chair next to the bed. He dropped the clothing down on the seat and then sat on top of it. Someone would have to pry those clothes from his lifeless fingers if they wanted them. He fastened the ring back onto the bracelet and then fixed it onto Sarah’s limp wrist.

  He sighed and looked at her. He grasped her cold hand and watched as her chest rose slightly up and down under the blanket.

  “I promised you that I’d go home. Now wake up so you can come with me.”

  THE WEIGHT of Ricky’s head intensified as he woke from his deep sleep. Somewhere near him the sound of a chain saw stung his sensitive eardrums. There weren’t chain saws in Farwin Wood. He swallowed at the dryness in his mouth and tasted remnants of beetleburry ale. He peeled his eyes open to see the ceiling of the great room come into focus while the reverberating snorting sound beside him grew louder. There was only one thing in Farwin Wood that made that awful sound.

  “Wickrits!” he screamed, jolting upright in his chair but stopped and clasped his head.

  “Wha— Huh? Wickrit? Where?” Ranthrop broke from his deep snoring and shot his head up. He ceased his rapid movements and put a hand to his head; he brought the other up to his nose and wondered why it hurt so painfully as though he had snorted in all the dirt in the North.

  “Ugh,” Ricky moaned while every sensation of the previous day’s injuries awoke in his body. “Beetle—”

  “—burry,” Ranthrop grumbled after him. “I’m getting too old for this.”

  SARAH MOANED and turned her head on the pillow, feeling the sensation of its plushness behind her aching skull. She opened her eyes and blinked at the rays of light cascading above her. She felt the urge to touch the place where her forehead throbbed, but something held her hand in place. When she glanced down to investigate, she saw Henry stirring from his sleep, his head on her blanket, and his hand clasped around hers. She squeezed his fingers and smiled.

  “Henry?”

  Henry lifted his head. “Sarah! You’re awake!”

  She moaned, and feeling her hand freed, she brought it up to her hairline. “Oooh,” she said and winced on finding a sizable lump there. “What happened?”

  “You tried climbing over the wall to stop the duel and fell.”

  Sarah sat up quickly but slowed with the pain it brought her aching head. “Ricky? What happened to Ricky?”

  “He’s fine. They stopped the duel when you fell.” Henry stood and helped to guide her back against the headboard.

  “Will they fight again?” Her eyes tried to focus.

  “No, don’t worry. I don’t think Ranthrop’s heart was in it any longer, and he’s even upheld his declaration of peace,” Henry said with a smile.

  Sarah sat awestruck, staring down at the bed. “I never would have imagined it could turn out so fortunately.”

  “Well, don’t go doing anything crazy like that again, but I think you might have had a hand in it.”

  She laughed weakly. Ricky was alive. Thank heavens. Her next thought was that today started the rest of her life in Farwin Wood, and then she noticed where she was.

  “Why am I in Vasimus’s room?” She blushed on admitting to him she was familiar with the room, but then she noticed marks on his neck. She gasped. “What happened to you?”

  “Vasimus carried you from t
he arena and brought you here.” He ran a hand across the front of his neck. The skin there looked raw and swollen. “I ran out of patience when he kept you locked in here half the day. He wasn’t too happy when I finally beat on the door.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. But…did he do that to you?”

  Henry leaned in. “I provoked it, in a way. I found out what you lost…and who had it.” He hesitated and held up her bracelet.

  She watched as he thumbed through the charms and held up her ring. She stared at it for a moment and noticed very different feelings than when she had used to look at it. She reached and grasped the bracelet, rather than the ring, when she took it from him. She held it in her lap and stared at it.

  “I reattached the ring. You can go home now,” Henry whispered and stood up. He picked up her sweat suit and set it next to her on the bed.

  “Yes,” she finally responded. Vasimus had had her ring. He’d had it all along, even after she told him she couldn’t go home until she found what she’d lost. The realization left her speechless in a sea of emotions. She wanted to pity him, wanted to hit him, and wanted to scream at him for nearly getting her nephew killed when Ricky wouldn’t go home without her. They could all go home now, though.

  “Henry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Get Ricky, please. We’re going home,” she said without taking her eyes off her bracelet.

  RICKY AWOKE and winced when he brought his head up off the kitchen table. He reached down and felt the pain in his side and leg remained. Aunt Sarah! Would she make it through without any residual problems from her head injury? He got up and noticed Henry still lay motionless on the opposite side of the table. Ricky hobbled into the living room and turned to see Mary knitting on the couch. She roused herself when he opened the door to Sarah’s room with a creak.

  “My word! You need to go to the hospital!” Mary said upon seeing him. There was blood seeping through his pant leg.