Lucy at Last

by Mary E. Twomey

  When they were all ready to go, Jens drew the short straw and was tasked with breaking the bad news to me. His hand on my shoulder was patronizing, like so many had been when Linus had died so long ago – and yet what sometimes felt like just yesterday. “Honey, we’re going to bury Linus now. This is a nice place for him to rest. Right beside the Salmon Seesaw. He would’ve cracked up about that.”

  My words came out through gritted teeth. “Touch. My. Brother. And. Die.” I was more than tired, but my brain couldn’t really feel it. My body sure could, though. I was gripping the box like it held a bucket of gold, which, for argument’s sake, to me, it did. My knuckles were white and I shook with rage when Jens started giving instructions on who was to lift which part.

  As if I hadn’t spoken. As if Jens wanted me to put him in the box when my brother for sure popped out and proved them all wrong with two middle fingers hoisted in the air in triumphant defiance of the grave that claimed him prematurely.

  When Tucker moved to lift the lid off the ground, I snapped. I flew up from the dirt and tackled him around the waist, knocking him to the grass. That’s the thing about being too tall for your own good; you’re an easy tackle from a shorter girl. With punches Foss had taught me how to deliver, I socked Tucker across the face while my knees gripped his hips.

  Tucker flung me off, surprised and pissed when he spat out a small amount of blood. “Lucy, he’s dead! We can’t leave his body out like this for just anyone to stumble across!”

  “You want another?!” I shouted, lunging for him again. Jamie caught me around the middle and yanked me back before I could claw Tucker’s eyes out. “I’ve been without my brother for two years! You can wait a whole twenty-four hours before calling it.”

  Jens looked on me with that wretched pity that made me rage. “Linus is dead, Loos. I wanted to believe it more than anything, but it would’ve happened by now.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I snarled. “Who have you known that was brought back from the dead by pouring his soul back inside? And how long did it take them? Show me the recipe in your cookbook.”

  Jens closed his eyes. “This magic was a long shot your parents took. I love them for taking this chance, but it didn’t pan out.”

  “So, what? My brother gets buried again, and what happens when he wakes up in two more hours? Or twenty minutes?! He’s buried alive, Jens!” The visual scraped at my guts and strangled my throat. “Linus would have no idea what happened! He’d try to claw his way out, but he wouldn’t be able to! He’d die again, Jens!” I wriggled free of Jamie’s hold on me. Then without thinking of how my words would hurt the man I loved, I screamed, “I won’t let you murder my brother!”

  Jens looked like he’d been the one who’d taken my punch. He rolled his shoulders back and finally stared me down. “Put the lid on the box, Foss.”

  There was no time. I had nothing on my side, but I also had nothing left to lose. Before Foss could bring the lid down on Linus, I threw my body into the box.

  Jamie and Jens shouted their shock at my appalling action. Tucker was so grossed out, he turned away from the sight, his hand covering over his horrified howl. Foss was the only one who met my determined glare with sad eyes that made me want to strangle him for pitying me. “Lucy, get out of the coffin.”

  When I didn’t comply, Foss set the lid down on the grass and reached for me, grimacing as his hand brushed against Linus. I burrowed under Linus’s pliable, yet still dead body, knowing Foss wouldn’t get me out now.

  I was screaming in my mind, but only Jamie heard the horror. Jens felt my anxiety, mingling it with his own as he moved with leaden feet to the dirt-crusted box. “Lucy, don’t do this! Linus is dead! You can’t bring him back!” He turned away, stumbling toward Jamie like he’d had too much Gar. “I can’t do this! She’s under his body, Jamie!” He fell on his knees, nearing on hyperventilating.

  It had come to this. I was hiding under a carcass, willing this lifeless puppet to Pinocchio himself into being a real boy I could laugh with again. In that moment, I knew I had gone crazy.

  And I’d do it all over again if it gave me even the slightest chance at getting my brother back. Without a second thought. Without an apology for my nine levels of insanity.

  Foss had dealt with plenty of dead bodies in his day, so he tasked himself with prying me from the bottom of the coffin. I wrapped my arms and legs around Linus in a wrestling hold I’d seen plenty of times on WWE. I was The Rock. I was a tower of strength. I was terrifying.

  I was… I was Vin Diesel.

  Foss’s frustration was mixed with utter sadness for the buckets of crazy I’d consumed and begged for more of. “I’m sorry,” he muttered before dumping the coffin on its side. Linus and I tumbled out together, as if we’d been wrestling to kill time.

  We spilled out from under the shade of the giant tree and rolled into the morning sun. The beams glistened on my brother’s skin, turning his pallor from sickly gray to a more normal shade. My arms flew around his hospital robe-covered body, shielding him from Foss. “Don’t touch him! I swear to you, Foss, if you ever loved me, you’ll keep your hands off my brother! If you ever cared for me at all, you’ll wait this out for me!”

  Foss hesitated, which was a tribute to his respect for what we shared. “Lucy, I can’t let you hold onto a carcass like that.”

  My words came like venom, spitting out through my teeth up at him. “When your mother died, didn’t you search for every piece of her you could get your hands on? If there was a chance to save her, wouldn’t you take it? How long would you have waited to get her back?” Foss was angry I was hitting him where it hurt, but I didn’t much care. I snarled at them all like the wild animal I was. “You think I’m crazy now? You have no idea the damage I’ll do if any of you touches Linus again. He’s mine! It was my mother who told me where he was buried. You let me lead you here. Trust me in this!”

  After several seconds of tense silence, Jamie took the first steps forward, his hands raised in surrender. “Sweetheart—”

  “Don’t you call me sweetheart! I will end you if you come any closer!”

  In his folly, Jamie assumed I could be reasoned with. He kept moving forward, so I made sure our mental door was open and shoved graphic images of Britta, brand spankin’ dead, in his face. They were all replicas from his night terrors. Britta with half her face missing. Britta with blood pouring from her neck. Britta’s head falling off like a creepy mannequin after Jamie kissed her. Britta choking to death and dying in his arms. Britta with a fresh stab wound through her heart. Then I went for the groin and flooded him with images of Britta weeping over a lifeless baby.

  I brought Jamie to his knees without remorse. He held his temples and let out a cry of agony. “Stop it! Stop it!”

  “I warned you! I have no limits when it comes to Linus. Nothing is too far! No fight is too big! Now back up, all of you!”

  It was a side of me only Jens had seen, and he’d witnessed the PG version of what I was capable of. Getting a teacher fired for messing with my brother was nothing. That was all just for insulting Linus. This was quite literally life or death.

  Tucker moved to Jamie’s side. “You can’t mess with him, Lucy! I have to keep him safe, but I can’t if you’re the one in his head. Leave him be!”

  “My brother. My terms. No one touches Linus except for me.”

  Foss glanced behind him toward the village. “What are you going to do when the Nøkken go about their day and come out here to find Queen Lucy holding a dead body? What then? Threaten us all you want, but you can’t ignore that.”

  Foss had a fair point, so he earned a vicious glare. “We can rent a room at the nearest tavern and take Linus inside to wait it out. Know this: where I go, Linus goes, so don’t even think about separating us.”

  Jens couldn’t even look at me clutching the lifeless Linus, so Foss took charge. “Fine. Let’s put him on the lid. We can use it like a stretcher to carry him back. One of the Toms’ll have to vanish him, th
ough. We can’t just walk around Nøkken with a dead body.”

  “Fine. But only the Tom touches him. No one else. And they vanish me, too, so I can see his body no matter what.”

  Foss nodded. “Are you going to put him on the lid, or do you want me to?”

  “Touch Linus and die,” I seethed, standing up to drag Linus to the lid that lay on the grass a few feet away. He was taller than me – a solid six feet. His dark blond hair was still short around the sides and the back, but had just enough on top to look messy if he wore a baseball cap. He’d refused chemo toward the end, causing his hair to start growing back.

  When I’d affixed Linus in place, I took a moment to really look at him. Laid out like this, he looked merely asleep, his cheeks almost rosy under the sun’s glow.

  A slight breeze sifted through his dirty hair.

  There was a twitch. I’d been so focused on his face that I’d only caught it in my periphery, so I couldn’t tell where exactly the movement originated.

  “Nobody move!” I stopped breathing when something base and soul-like inside of me shifted.

  I knew that feeling.

  Linus was lit by the full glow of the morning sun, and for the life of me, I couldn’t explain the fullness in his face that seemed to be growing in millimeters every minute I stared, transfixed. “Jens!” I gasped, waving him forward. Jens was by my side in the next second, willing Linus back to life right along with me. “Look at his face. It was gray and thin before, right?”

  Jens studied Linus’s cheeks just as they plumped out by another degree. “I… Did you see that?” He went from Doubting Thomas to a kid on Christmas Eve in a hot second, pawing at me and shaking my shoulder in fearful excitement as he refused to take his eyes off Linus. “I saw something! I saw something move! Lucy!”

  I nodded, too afraid to say anything more, lest I scare the progress away. When something that looked unmistakably like a breath moved through Linus’s chest, Jens fell to his knees and gripped my hand. “Linus? Can you hear me?”

  The others approached cautiously and crowded above him, taking turns making noises of shock as they pointed out stark differences that were slowly morphing Linus back into my brother.

  Then the progress slowed before it came to a stop. I connected the dots with alarm in my tone. “It’s the sun! You’re blocking the sun! He started to regenerate after the sun came out! Move! Everyone, back up!”

  They fell away like bowling pins clattering to the ground. The mirrored look of shock painted each of their faces as Linus’s chest began to move in a steady rhythm that could only be described as breathing. “Linus!” Jens called, now frantic.

  I watched my brother’s ankles thicken with strength that had been stolen from him toward the end of things. This wasn’t just Linus back from the dead; this was Linus as he would’ve been without the cancer.

  I shrieked when the ankles I’d been studying shifted downward as his head moved upward. Linus was… growing? “What’s happening? Did anyone just see that?”

  Jamie’s mouth was agape. “Did he just get taller? Am I imagining things?”

  A whimper escaped my lips when his dark blond hair mutated with the grace of a painter’s brush to a light chestnut color. It was now closer to my dad’s shade than anything else.

  Jens clutched my hand, and I honestly thought I might faint right at the good part. Just when I thought my heart might implode in my chest, the impossible happened.

  Linus turned his head toward me and opened his hazel eyes.

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  Finish the series with Linus at Large.

  Other books by Mary E. Twomey

  The Saga of the Spheres

  The Silence of Lir

  Secrets

  The Sword

  Sacrifice

  The Volumes of the Vemreaux

  The Way

  The Truth

  The Lie

  Jack and Yani Love Harry Potter

  Undraland

  Undraland

  Nøkken

  Fossegrim

  Elvage

  The Other Side

  Undraland: Blood Novels

  Lucy at Peace

  Lucy at War

  Lucy at Last

  Linus at Large

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