Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [61]
“We need to go, Sholto.”
He nodded, as if he knew that it wasn’t just Doyle’s health we were attending to. We needed to get away from the humans before they became any more bemused by us.
We started for the door, having to use our bound hands to steady Doyle’s body in our arms. The thin gown moved, and we were suddenly touching the bareness of his body. The thorns must have pierced his body because he made a small sound, moving in our arms like a child disturbed by a dream.
“You’re bleeding,” the nurse said. She was staring at the floor. Blood drops had formed a pattern beneath us. What was it about touching Doyle with the roses that had made her see the blood? I left the thought for later; we needed to get back to faerie. I suddenly felt like Cinderella hearing the clock begin to strike midnight.
“We must get back to the garden and the bed now.”
Sholto didn’t argue, only moved us toward the door. He asked the policeman to get the door for us, and he did without complaint.
The doctor called from the open door, “You melted the walls in the room you were in, Princess Meredith.”
Did I say I was sorry? I was, but I’d had no control over what the wild magic did to the room I’d woken in earlier this night. It seemed like days ago that I’d woken in the maternity ward.
The doctor’s call to us had made others turn. We walked through a world of stares and gasps. It was too late to hide now.
“Find us another patient who is betwixt and between,” I said.
He led us to a patient who was housed in an oxygen tent. A woman beside the bed looked up at us with a tearstained face. “Are you angels?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Please, can you help him?”
I exchanged a glance with Sholto. I started to say no, but one of the white roses fell from my crown onto the bed. It lay there, shining and terribly alive. The woman took the rose in her shaking hands. She started to cry again. “Thank you,” she said.
“Take us home,” I whispered to Sholto. He led us around the bed, and the next moment we were back in the edge of the garden, outside the gate of bone. We were back, and we had saved Mistral and Doyle, but the woman’s face haunted me. Why had the rose fallen onto her bed, and why had it seemed to make her feel better? Why had she thanked us?
It was the humpbacked doctor, Henry, who opened the bone gate. We had to turn sideways to ease through with Doyle in our arms. The gate closed behind us without Henry touching it. The message was clear: none but we were allowed inside.
I was suddenly tired, very tired. We laid Doyle beside the still-sleeping Mistral. We took off Doyle’s hospital gown, and crawled up on the bed. Our hands were still bound tightly, so it was awkward, but we seemed to know that we needed to be on either side of the two men. I expected to be unable to sleep with the thorns still in our hands and the bulky crown on my head, but sleep came over me in a wave. I had a moment to see Sholto on the far side of Mistral, still wearing his blooming crown. I snuggled in tightly against Doyle’s body, and sleep washed over me. One moment awake, the next asleep. Asleep and dreaming.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE DREAM BEGAN AS MANY DREAMS INSIDE FAERIE BEGAN FOR me, on a hill. I knew it wasn’t a real hill. It was more the idea of a green gently sloping hill. I was never certain whether the hill had never existed outside of dream and vision, or whether it was the first hill from which all others were copied. The plain that stretched below the hill was green and full of cultivated fields. I’d stood on this hill and watched war come to faerie, and seen the plain dry and dead. Now it was so alive. Its wheat was golden, as if autumn harvest was just about to begin. But there were