A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [262]
I stood up and took the mask from Malva’s hand, setting it aside.
“You did a wonderful job,” I told her, speaking quietly. “Thank you.”
She shook her head, face glowing.
“Oh, ma’am! It was . . . I’ve never seen the like. It’s such a feeling, is it not? Like as we killed him, and brought him alive again.” She spread her hands out, looking at them half-unconsciously, as though wondering how she had done such a marvel, then closed them into small fists, and smiled at me, conspiratorially.
“I think I see why my faither says it’s devil’s work. Were he to see what it’s like”—she glanced at Bobby, who was beginning to stir—“he’d say no one but God has a right to do such things.”
“Really,” I said, rather dryly. From the gleam in her eye, her father’s likely reaction to what we had been doing was one of the chief attractions of the experiment. For an instant, I rather pitied Tom Christie.
“Um . . . perhaps you’d better not tell your father, then,” I suggested. She smiled, showing small, sharp white teeth, and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t you think it, ma’am,” she assured me. “He’d stop me coming, as quick as—”
Bobby opened his eyes, turned his head to one side, and threw up, putting a stop to the discussion. Lizzie gave a cry and hurried to his side, fussing over him, wiping his face and fetching him brandy to drink. Malva, looking slightly superior, stood aside and let her.
“Oh, that’s queer,” Bobby repeated, for perhaps the tenth time, rubbing a hand across his mouth. “I saw the most terrible thing—just for a moment, there—and then I felt sick, and here it was all over.”
“What sort of terrible thing?” Malva asked, interested. He glanced at her, looking wary and uncertain.
“I scarcely know, tell ’ee true, miss. Only as it was . . . dark, like. A form, as you might say; I thought ’twas a woman’s. But . . . terrible,” he finished, helpless.
Well, that was too bad. Hallucination wasn’t an uncommon side effect, but I hadn’t expected it with such a brief dose.
“Well, I imagine it was just a bit of nightmare,” I said soothingly. “You know, it’s a form of sleep, so it’s not surprising that you might get the odd bit of dreaming now and then.”
To my surprise, Lizzie shook her head at this.
“Oh, no, ma’am,” she said. “It’s no sleep at all. When ye sleep, ken, ye give your soul up to the angels’ keeping, so as no ghoulies shall come near. But this . . .” Frowning, she eyed the bottle of ether, now safely corked again, then looked at me.
“I did wonder,” she said, “where does your soul go?”
“Er . . .” I said. “Well, I should think it simply stays with your body. It must. I mean—you aren’t dead.”
Both Lizzie and Bobby were shaking their heads decidedly.
“No, it doesn’t,” Lizzie said. “When ye’re sleepin’, ye’re still there. When ye do that”—she gestured toward the mask, a faint uneasiness on her small features—“ye’re not.”
“That’s true, mum,” Bobby assured me. “You’re not.”
“D’ye think maybe ye go to limbo, wi’ the unbaptized babes and all?” Lizzie asked anxiously.
Malva gave an unladylike snort.
“Limbo’s no real place,” she said. “It’s only a notion thought up by the Pope.”
Lizzie’s mouth dropped open in shock at this blasphemy, but Bobby luckily distracted her by feeling dizzy and requiring to lie down.
Malva seemed inclined to go on with the argument, but beyond repeating, “The Pope . . .” once or twice, simply stood, swaying to and fro with her mouth open, blinking a little. I glanced at Lizzie, only to find her glassy-eyed as well. She gave an enormous yawn and blinked at me, eyes watering.
It occurred to me that I was beginning to feel a trifle light-headed myself.
“Goodness!” I snatched the ether mask from Malva’s hand, and guided her hastily to a stool. “Let me get rid of this, or we’ll all be giddy.”
I flipped open the mask, pulled the damp wad of cotton wool out of it, and carried it outside at arm’s length. I’d opened both the surgery windows, to provide