by Terry Madden
“What will you do,” he asked her, “if you meet the she-king’s men on the road with that harp of mine?”
“I’m just a robber, as ye said.”
“And a fine one, at that.” He gave the horse a gentle slap to the rump and Elowen was gone, with nothing but the rising moon to guide her.
Nechtan waded into the stream, then disappeared between the rocks. Lyleth heard him splashing in a cavern below.
“It’s not deep,” he called. “Come.”
She handed down the bag of food, her bow and quiver, and slid through. He caught her ankles, then her waist and eased her into the frigid water.
Elowen’s pony, Brixia, was indeed coming with them. The size of a wolfhound, she got on her knees and kicked through the opening until she splashed through the shallows. The pony gave a wet shake, and hooves and feet churned up mud that smelled of roots and worms and silt deposited for millennia.
The cleft in the rock let in the moonlight, but Lyleth couldn’t see farther than a spear’s length. Beyond that, she heard the sound of falling water. The pony walked past them as if she’d come through here a hundred times, then vanished up a dark embankment.
“It’s unfortunate you brought no ball of string,” Nechtan said.
“Ponies in the tin mines know the paths in the dark.”
“You looked into the girl,” he said. “Does she send us to our death?”
“She told us true, this cave leads out.”
“If she told us true,” he said, “then Ava’s men are right behind us.”
“They’re your men,” she said, fumbling in her pouch for a rushlight.
She struck the rush on a wet stone. It sputtered alight to reveal a cavern that sparkled with a moist golden sheen. Water dripped from fingers of stone that reached from the ceiling. The air was sodden and ancient, like the last sigh of a forgotten past.
“Brixia’s gone ahead. Come.” Nechtan took the rushlight and led the way after the pony.
Lyleth couldn’t take her eyes from the man who walked before her. The rhythm of his gait was perfect, the breadth of his shoulders exact, even the unconscious dance of his right eyebrow when he argued was just as she remembered. Yet he lacked the mark that bound him to Lyleth as king to solás, as body is bound to soul. Why would the green gods give him back to her without his mark?
“Tell me what you remember,” she said as they walked, “of our time on the Isle of Glass.”
“So I can remember who am I, is that what you mean?” A glance over his shoulder said his fury at her had ebbed. Some. Maybe it was the quieting of the stream that calmed him as they moved deeper into the cavern.
“Do you remember the time we were caught in the storm?” he said.
For a moment she wondered which storm he referred to, there were many. “We’d caught at least five perch when the wind came up,” she said.
“The sky opened to swallow us.” His voice had a tender, sentimental tone. “We couldn’t row against it, neither you nor I, and I think you were the stronger between us then. We let go.” He looked over his shoulder again, as if reassuring himself she was still there. “The wind took us and we landed on some strange headland leagues from Dechtire’s hive.”
“So many years ago,” she said.
“We turned the coracle over on the sand and slept under it.”
“It rained so hard, it was like sleeping inside a drum,” she said.
“I can sleep through anything.”
“I remember.” She found herself smiling, and when the darkness disoriented her, she reached for the cavern wall to steady herself.
Nechtan turned. The rushlight cast a warm veil over his features as he placed a cool palm on her forehead.
“You’re fevered. Come,” he said, taking her hand, “the little horse leads on.”
But a rush of warm air touched the fine down on Lyleth’s face. She laid her palm again on the wall of the cave and felt the scrape of steel on stone, felt the tremor that had traveled for miles through the earth’s skin to her fingertips.
“We must hurry.”
Chapter 8
Connor opened his eyes to find his arm in a nurse’s firm grip. He tried to pull away, but she held on and never took her eyes from her watch.
“Eighty-three. Nice to see you, son.” Her voice was a tired monotone as she planted a hand on his forehead and flicked a penlight in his eyes. “You’ve been out longer than I thought you would.”
He was in a hospital, by the smell. The skin on the right side of his face was stretched tight and his eye was almost swollen shut. He reached up to feel the stiff tails of stitches over his cheek. There was blood under his fingernails.
“Just relax now,” the nurse said, and fiddled with the tubes coming from an I.V. bag to his arm.
His head cleared enough to hear his mom and dad arguing in the hall, Mom blaming Dad for giving Connor the car, Dad blaming Dish for letting Connor drive in the rain.
He bolted upright, and the room tumbled.
“Where’s Dish?” he asked the nurse, “Mr. Cavendish? The man who was with me?”
“He’s getting the best care possible.” She eased him back to his pillow and gave his arm a warm pat. His other arm was in a sling and he felt a sharp pain shoot from his collarbone to his fingertips.
“I need to see him.”
“He can’t have visitors just yet, and you need rest,” she said. “I’ll get your momma.”
Before he could protest, his mom was storming through the door. She sniffed back tears and gave him a quick air kiss, sat down on the bed and stroked Connor’s hair.
“Thank God.” The crying started, followed by a string of sentences that made no sense, something about tires and rain and irresponsibility, interspersed with stink-eye looks at Dad.
Dad thumbed his smart phone.
“I should have kept you home this year.” Mom sniffed. “You could have gone to San Marino High.” There was something about insurance, calls from lawyers, and Connor stopped listening.
Dad slipped his phone into his pants pocket, crossed his arms and opened his mouth once as if to add something, but changed his mind.
“We’ll be back in the morning,” Mom said. “Get some rest.”
“What about Dish?” Connor managed to ask.
His parents shared a look.
“We’ll know more tomorrow,” Dad said. “Your job is to get well.” He held out a fist for a knuckle-bump and Connor hesitantly offered his sore fist.
Then they were gone, and it felt like someone had pulled the plug on his soul.
He slept.
When he opened his eyes, Brother Mike was coming through the door, hiking up the skirt of his Friar Tuck outfit to position his bulk on a chair. Brother Mike was in charge of the dorm, which he liked to think of as the Von Trapp house, but he wasn’t humming any show tunes today. Connor could see the worry bubbling underneath all those freckles.
“Such a relief to see you awake,” he said.
“What about Dish?”
Brother Mike took a deep breath. “Mr. Cavendish was badly injured, Connor.”
“The nurse says he’s getting the ‘best care possible.’ That usually means it’s bad.”
“Dish is in intensive care.” Brother Mike paused, letting the full weight of it sink in. “The doctors here are top notch. You need to focus on getting back on your feet, so you can go home and heal up.”
“Go home?”
He felt his foot on the gas, felt the tires leave the road.
“But, Dish…” Connor said.
“Mr. Cavendish won’t be leaving the hospital for some time.” Brother Mike’s look said what his mouth didn’t.
“He’s going to live, though, right?”
“They’re doing tests now. I can keep you informed while you’re at home—”
“I want to go back to school.” The words were loose before he could take them back. What was that Dish had said? Running away won’t fill the emptiness… Connor couldn’t be em
ptier than he was at this moment.
“I thought you wanted out. Planned your whole escape—”
“I did.” How could he possibly explain? “But—”
“It can happen to anyone, Connor. It wasn’t your fault.”
Connor knew better.
Mike pursed his lips and poked his glasses back up his nose. “I’ll talk to your parents about it. And Father Owens.”
“When can I see Dish?”
“Just as soon as the doctors give the okay.”
On his way out, Brother Mike left a stack of cards from Connor’s classmates who were probably forced to make them in art class. Iris McCreary had drawn a bunch of smiley suns all over hers. When he turned it over, he found a microscopic F.U. written in the center of one of the suns. What a bitch.
He flung the stack of cards upward. They sailed back to his bed and the vinyl floor like oversized confetti. For the rest of the afternoon, he timed the I.V. drip. One drop every 3.5 seconds. Running away won’t fill the emptiness…
When the hospital was quiet, which was in the middle of the night, he got up and dragged his I.V. pole to the elevator and rode it to the third floor where the directory said I.C.U. was located. The halls were deserted. Cold air rushed under his hospital gown. Beside double doors that warned “Intensive Care Unit—authorized staff only,” he punched an intercom and talked to someone on the other side.
“I’m here to see Mr. Cavendish.”
“I’m sorry, he can’t have visitors.”
“But it’s really important. I have to talk to him.”
There was a long pause, then the voice said, “Mr. Cavendish is in a coma. I’m sorry.”
“A coma?” That couldn’t be right. “But you don’t understand. I need to see him.”
“I’m sorry.”
He pressed the button again. “You have to let me see him.”
Static hissed in reply.
He collapsed into a chair in the waiting room and stared at the glow of a muted TV. It was dawn when the nurses from his own floor finally found him.
Brother Mike told Connor he could skip class those first days, but sitting in his room playing Plants vs. Zombies didn’t help the waiting, so he went back to class. During break and lunch, he called the nurse’s desk at I.C.U. One of them was really nice. Holly was her name. She must have thought Connor’s calls were pathetic because she finally took his number and promised to call as soon as the doctor gave the okay for visitors.
The first day back to school was like standing in front of a firing squad. People actually stared at him when they passed in the hall. He couldn’t blame them. One eye was almost swollen shut and the bruises under the stitches were starting to turn green. He looked like one of the undead.
The looks they gave him weren’t pity, but blame. A teacher everyone admired was lying in a coma because of Connor.
He fell asleep in chemistry and made spit wads to shoot at the sub who’d taken over Dish’s class.
From across the aisle, Iris McCreary cast a predatory stare. Her uniform blouse looked like she’d slept in it and all the empty holes from her collection of facial piercings made her look naked. With or without hardware, she looked like a cocker spaniel. When Mr. Cavendish had first started teaching at St. Thom’s, it was Iris who started calling him “Dish.” She pointed out that “dish” meant a person was hot, back in the day. How she knew this, Connor couldn’t guess; she probably lap-danced a baby boomer or something.
Iris had strange taste in guys; she hooked up with the stoners and anarchists and even dated a guy who was into the cult of Cthulhu. The fact that she was leering at Connor from across the aisle confirmed that he’d sunk to a new low.
She licked her lips. While the sub wrote on the board, Iris folded up a scrap of paper and sailed it over to Connor.
The miniature printing read, you look hot with those stitches. When can we see Dish?
Connor just flipped her off.
She blew him a silent kiss. Her red lip gloss was perfect.
That afternoon, he called the I.C.U. one more time. Holly sounded a little ticked off and he realized he was making a pest of himself. But he couldn’t stand it anymore; he had to do something. He pulled on his shorts and running shoes and slipped his cell phone in his pocket just in case Holly called.
Dish would go for a run if he could, so Connor would run for both of them.
He had about an hour until dinner. Steep cliffs dropped off the school drive to patches of prickly pear and sagebrush, and far below, he could see Malibu Creek snaking black toward the ocean. On the other side of the creek, the walled and guarded fortress of Don Ziegler, the writer/producer/director of Avalanche and Falls the Night sat like some medieval castle. His guards made regular visits to the school on the occasion of potato cannon test runs. In general, the boys aimed for his swimming pool/lagoon/ waterfall.
The air was cool and fog rolled up the canyon from the beach far below, beading on Connor’s face and hair. From Ziegler’s castle a trail crossed the canyon and hooked up to a fire road that wound up the far ridge. It was a tough run, just perfect.
The sling yanked at his neck, so he took it off and tossed it in the bushes. His collarbone ached, his arm felt like it weighed a ton, and the skin on his legs turned blotchy with cold.
A crescent moon brightened as the sun dove into the Pacific. Threshold of night, Dish had called it. In between day and night, dusk was both and neither. Connor had replayed that day on the beach a million times. Dish had looked at the pool, then out at the setting sun. Connor recalled the look on his face. It wasn’t wonder exactly, but a fear-laced adrenaline rush. Dish didn’t know exactly what that tattoo was all about, but it had something to do with the pool, the beach and dusk.
The trail looped back and forth up the ridge.
Connor’s lungs burned, but he forced his rubber legs into a mechanical rhythm until he accepted that they were long gone a quarter mile back. He let himself walk, hands on hips, each breath a searing reminder of his broken ribs and collarbone.
Stray cactus grew onto the trail, past a fallen chain-link fence that had once contained the garden of a deserted mansion. Built in the thirties for some film starlet, the Spanish hacienda had started sliding down the hill on a gentle slalom to Pacific Coast Highway. Whoever owned it when the ground gave way just boarded it up and left it to rot.
He planted one hand on his knee, bent over and huffed. He was studying his sweat as it dripped from his chin and splashed into the powdery dirt when he heard a loud hum overhead. He looked up, and there, hanging from a huge white yucca bloom, was the biggest swarm of bees he’d ever seen. They bent the bloom over and hung from it like a dark, boiling sack.
They moved together like one thing, forming a shape, then unforming, like clouds building. Connor backed away slowly, watching the bees’ hypnotic motion. First they formed a spiral, then an ogre’s face. Then… he stepped on a rock and stumbled.
And the bees were on him.
“Shit!”
He plowed through cactus, swatting at bees. They were caught in his hair, down his shirt. He peeled it off.
Finding the break in the chain-link fence, he hopped it and ran through the remains of landscaping to reach a patio of tumbleweeds and broken plastic garden furniture. In the fading light, he saw the swimming pool was empty, but the dark water of the fishpond he remembered lay just past it.
A burst of stings pierced his scalp, then his back and neck, and his calves burned with cactus stickers.
He ran straight off the edge of the deck and went under. He flailed, shaking off the remaining bees. Remembering his phone, he pulled it from his pocket and tossed it on the deck.
His broken collarbone resisted his attempts to stay afloat so he kicked harder. At least a dozen bees treaded water beside him.
“Shit!”
He pushed the bees away to the edge, and went under again, letting the water wash the bees from his hair.
But when he surfaced again
, the water was crystal clear, not murky with carp crap and algae. It soothed his stings and felt cold, tingly, like a bathtub filled with Perrier. Weeds dangled from the edge of the cracked deck and bubbles streamed from somewhere at the bottom, drifting up with a distant light.
If this is a fishpond, it’s freaking deep. And where’s that light coming from? His feet found no bottom, just a swirling current. Just like the pool on the beach.
Taking a breath, he dives under and swims straight down, but still finds no bottom. He stops swimming, thinking he’ll float back up to the surface, but a whirlpool takes hold of him and pulls him deeper. He forces his eyes open to see streamers of bubbles trail from his skin. The tingling thrill possesses him with a weightless euphoria. All desire is bleeding from him, even the need to breathe.
He sinks straight down, leaving the last glow of twilight behind.
I must be dead already. The conviction fills him with the deepest relief.
Spears of moonlight pierce the water, but the light isn’t silver, as moonlight would be, but gold. He has no sense of direction and swims toward the yellow light.
But maybe it isn’t really light at all, for the water is alive with a million silver minnows. They circle left, and he surrenders to them, countless flashing points of fish, their scales reflecting, magnifying this new light. They are the vortex taking him down. Or maybe it’s up.
They move like the bees, like they have one mind. No, not a mind; they share something else entirely.
He holds out his arms and the fish flow around him like water around a snag. He feels eddies, the cold snap of a tiny fin and there is nothing left to existence but this, for he is one of them, and all of them.
The fish pack tight as armor, lifting him toward the new light.
He breaks the surface.
His breath spews forth in colors he’s never seen before.
It’s the cave on the beach. Or is it? Did he swim through some underground channel from the hills? That’s impossible.
He squints against a blaze clutched in a woman’s fist that lights up the bowl of the cave. She thrusts it out before her, dropping embers in the pool, but the flame is something more. He can hear the fire speak.