Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls - Jane Lindskold [73]
“I want to go home,” I reply, the longing in my voice stronger than I’d intended. “Look!”
I point dramatically overhead where a miracle has taken place. Gone is the ceiling, gone the light. Athena is sweeping up into the rope-webbed spaces within curving grey metal walls. A rope ladder drops and swings slightly, alluringly, in front of us.
“It’s the Jungle, Jersey,” I say, “the best place I’ve ever lived. The Free People are away, I see, so it must be night. C’mon, let’s go. If we anchor the ladder, the climb won’t be so bad.”
Jersey hesitates and I sense him trying to overcome my reordering of our reality, but he has no power over my homesick and guilt-torn heart. What had started as a ploy is becoming only too real and I can barely keep from climbing away.
I pick Betwixt and Between up, brushing chip crumbs from my shirt, feeling their claws anchoring them firmly to my side. Athena swoops and circles to my left shoulder. Jersey seems insubstantial, the Jungle more and more real by the moment.
“Coming?” I say, my foot on the ladder’s first rung.
“Sarey, I…” Jersey is saying when a shrill voice from the table screams, “Up left! Down right! Again! Again! Again! Up right! Down left! Again! End.”
I quickly repeat the code. Jersey grabs his computer pad and hammers in the instructions.
Then suddenly the world is torn away from me and I slump in the annex, crying wildly, my hands still curled to grasp the ladder and climb away.
Fifteen
DR. HAAS TRIES TO KILL ME THE NEXT MORNING. I GO OUT TO the fountain to sit with Dylan’s too-silent presence as has become my custom. I am sitting there, trying yet again to make sense of why all I get from this spot is a sensation of pain, when I notice something sparkling among the pebbles on the fountain bottom.
Idly, I dip my fingers into the water to fish it out.
A strong, humming jolt comes from the water. My arm bones quiver as if suddenly the bone has been stripped away and only the marrow remains. Leaping back, I stumble, crashing into my guard, who has rushed from her customary place in the cooler doorway.
“Sarah, what’s wrong!” she cries, catching me before I fall.
“He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,” I reply, cursing inwardly that I cannot be more precise.
“What?” she says, setting me on my feet and going to look at the water. “Something cut you? Hey, what’s that?”
“No!” I grab her arm back from the water’s edge and she stares at me as if recalling that I am mad.
“Easy, Sarah, take it easy. I just wanted to see what was shining down there in the water, that bright silver thing.”
I continue shaking my head, refusing to release her arm. “I do not see the hanged man, fear death by water.”
She wrinkles her brows. “You’re saying the water’s dangerous, amiga? Not something in it?”
I nod. She is close enough to the truth and won’t just dip her hand in. Still, I try to clarify.
“The fateful lightning,” I repeat.
“Lightning?”
I nod eagerly and she puzzles for a moment.
“Lightning’s in the water?”
“Bingo!” I cheer, trying to applaud, but finding my right hand still trembles deep within.
“Jesu Domine! You could have gotten electrocuted!” she exclaims, realization spreading across her square, dark features. “Me, too. Come on, amiga. I’ll make a call, then take you to see the infirmary and check that hand.”
Dr. Aldrich himself tends me. Miraculously, there is no serious damage, but he decides that I should not go on the interchange that day.
“Take her to her room and make certain that she rests.” He hands Margarita a paper envelope. “If she won’t—or can’t—give her these. Oh, and she’d better keep clear of that fountain. We don’t want any other accidents.”
Margarita nods and escorts me back to my cell. While she is helping me to change, a report comes over her radio. Much of the technical babble is meaningless to me, but I follow enough to understand that my “accident” is being explained as a result of corroded insulation on