Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [293]
A vague feeling of wrongness intruded on his sense of peace. Sensation prodded at his mind, rousing tiny, painful sparks of confusion. He fought back feeling, wanting only to stay afloat in starlight, but the act of resistance woke him. All of a sudden, he had a body again, and it hurt.
“ROGER!” The star’s voice blared in his ear, and he jerked. Searing pain shot through his chest, and he clapped a hand to the wound. Something seized his wrist and pulled it away, but not before he had felt wetness, and the silky roughness of ash on his breast. Was he bleeding?
“Oh, ye’re wakin’, thank God! Aye, there, that’s a good lad. Easy, aye?” It was the cloud talking, not the star. He blinked, confused, and the cloud resolved itself into the curly silhouette of Fiona’s head, dark against the sky. He jerked upright, more a convulsion than a conscious movement.
His body had come back with a vengeance. He felt desperately ill, and there was a horrible smell of coffee and burnt flesh in his nostrils. He rolled onto all fours, retching, then collapsed onto the grass. It was wet, and the coolness felt good on his scorched face.
Fiona’s hands were on him, soothing, wiping his face and mouth.
“Are ye all right?” she said, for what he knew must be the hundredth time. This time, he summoned enough strength to answer.
“Aye,” he whispered. “All right. Why—?”
Her head moved back and forth, wiping out half a sky of stars.
“I don’t know. Ye went—ye were gone—and then there was a burst o’ fire, and ye were lyin’ in the circle, wi’ your coat ablaze. I had to put ye out with the thermos bottle.”
That accounted for the coffee, then, and the soggy feeling over his chest. He lifted a hand, groping, and this time she let him. There was a burnt patch on the wet cloth of his coat, maybe three inches across. The flesh of his chest was seared; he could feel the queer cushioned numbness of blisters through the hole in the cloth, and the nagging pain of a burn spread through his breast. His mother’s locket was gone entirely.
“What happened, Rog?” Fiona was crouching by him, her face dim but visible; he could see the shiny tracks of tears on her face. What he had thought a Midsummer’s Eve fire was the flame of her candle, burned down now to the last half inch. God, how long had he been out?
“I—” He had begun to say that he didn’t know, but broke off. “Let me think a bit, aye?” He put his head on his knees, breathing in the smell of wet grass and scorched cloth.
He concentrated on breathing, let it come back. He had no real need to think—it was all there, distinct in his mind. But how did one describe such things? There was no sight—and yet he had the image of his father. No sound, no touch—and yet he had both heard and felt. The body seemed to make its own sense of things, translating the numinous phenomena of time into concretions.
He raised his head from his knees, and breathed deep, settling himself slowly back in his body.
“I was thinking of my father,” he said. “When I stepped through the rock, I had just thought, if it works, could I go back and find him? And I … did.”
“You did? Your dad? Was he a ghost, d’ye mean?” He felt, more than saw, the flicker of her hand as she made the horns against evil.
“No. Not exactly. I—I can’t explain, Fiona. But I met him; I knew him.” The feeling of peace had not left him altogether; it hovered there, fluttering gently in the back of his mind. “Then there was—sort of an explosion, is all I can describe it as. Something hit me, here.” His fingers touched the burnt place on his chest. “The force of it pushed me … out, and that’s all I knew till I woke.” He touched her face gently. “Thanks, Fee; you saved me burning.”
“Och, get on wi’ ye.” She made an impatient gesture, dismissing him. She sat back on her heels, rubbing her chin as she thought.
“I’m thinking, Rog—what it said