To the Eternal (Away From Whipplethorn Book Five)

by Hartoin, A. W.

  I grabbed Ruffiano’s arm. “You’re at war.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  RUFFIANO AND ALLURA gazed out over the patients. He spoke, but since he wasn’t facing me, I couldn’t understand what he said. Iris squeezed my hand and mouthed, “It isn’t our war.”

  “These aren’t your people?” I asked.

  Allura sighed and faced me. “They will be, if they survive.”

  “Much like the galen,” said Ruffiano.

  “Yes,” she said with a gentle smile. “You gave us refuge. Now we are Veronese.”

  “Where did they come from?” asked Iris.

  “France,” I said without thinking.

  Allura nodded. “Our young visitor is wise. Most came from France to escape the horrors of the revolution. But now The Reich’s Fae have invaded the Sudetenland and we have a few from there.”

  “So the invasion has been confirmed?” asked Ruffiano.

  “I’m afraid so. And the revolutionaries have taken control of Marseilles. Our latest influx of refugees comes from the port city.”

  “There are so many,” I said.

  “And many more to come, I fear,” said Allura. “It’s been like this for months.”

  “Can you handle them all?”

  “We are doing the best that we can.”

  “How come they end up here? You’re not that close, are you?”

  Gerald puffed up. “I know why. The galen were driven out when the French revolution started. I read about it in the emperor’s History of Healing, but I didn’t get through the whole book. It was really big.”

  “Why would anyone kick out healers?” I asked. “That’s crazy.”

  “The History of Healing wasn’t quite accurate. The Jacobins didn’t drive us out. They captured us so that we would only treat their people. It was a brutal insistence. We escaped during one of the many times that the royal family returned to power.”

  That must’ve been why the people wanted the help of the vermillion so bad. The galen were gone. But then the king wouldn’t let them see the vermillion, so he looked bad instead of the revolutionaries, who got rid of the galen. Or something like that. No wonder the revolution had been going on for so long.

  “We settled in Germany and stayed there happily for many years until The Reich’s Fae took power. They oppressed all but a select few species. We were not among the few. So we came here. The climate is good for healing and has a good growing season for our herbs and flowers.”

  “So it worked out,” I said.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Allura.

  Iris couldn’t wait any longer. She pushed past us and headed out into the hall, touching the foreheads of the patients and speaking to them softly. She gave them her gift, her love, so completely that faces relaxed and fists unclenched. She was so good at it, I was afraid she’d reveal herself. I didn’t know if the cardinal had sent out a message saying that Iris was his replacement, but if he did, she wouldn’t be hard to spot.

  My little sister stopped at the foot of a bed in the fifth row and gazed down.

  “What is your sister doing?” asked Allura.

  I couldn’t hide what Iris was. Her nature was too strong. Like my fire, it was impossible to contain. “Her gift is love,” I said. “She can’t help herself.”

  “We can use all the love we can get,” said Ruffiano. “And what is your gift?”

  “I don’t know yet. My mom says it’s stubbornness. But I keep telling her she’s wrong.”

  His mouth twitched as he tried not to grin. “I’d like to meet your parents. They’ve raised interesting children.”

  Gerald got in front of us. “I am interesting. My mom said I’m a genius.”

  Ruffiano raised an eyebrow at me and I said, “Mom thinks you’re special.”

  “I am special, aren’t I? I could be the most special. It’s important to be special.” Gerald stopped and frowned. “You meant special, right? Not special.”

  “Um…”

  Ruffiano saved me by asking, “What’s she doing now?”

  Iris was kneeling beside the same fairy’s bed. She had her back to us so we couldn’t see what she was up to. I went in, although it was hard for me to do. The misery and pain seeped into my soul and hurt me. I could sense the injuries, even the internal ones, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Iris was already a clue to who we were and I couldn’t give away another. They already knew my name and that was bad enough.

  I picked up my wings so they wouldn’t drag across the faces of the wounded and tiptoed my way past mothers and their children, grimacing in pain. My wing ached in sympathy for them. “Iris, what are you doing?”

  My sister had the fairy’s hand clasped between hers. She kissed it before saying, “I think we know him.”

  Allura went to the other side of the bed. “Really? He was brought here unconscious. We have no idea who he is. What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know,” said Iris. “I just know that we know him.”

  I leaned on the wooden footboard to stare at the ashen face. He was probably ten years older than me and would’ve been handsome if his skin wasn’t grey. He was plump with rounded cheeks that were probably rosy when he was well. His curly blond hair was matted and crusted with dried blood.

  “Don’t you think so, Matilda?” asked Iris, her sweet face hopeful.

  “He seems familiar, but I don’t know him,” I said.

  “Come,” she said. “Hold his hand. Smell him. You’ll know, I swear.”

  I really didn’t want to smell him. The smell of the hospital itself was bad enough already, but the look on my sister’s face made me do it.

  Apparently, it made Gerald do it, too. He dashed over, grabbed the fairy’s hand, and gave it a good sniff. “He smells like bad vegetables.”

  “What’s a bad vegetable?” I asked.

  “You know, one that’s rotting.”

  Ew. Didn’t need to know that.

  Iris held the hand up. “Beneath that stuff. What else do you smell?”

  To his credit, Gerald sniffed the hand again, long and hard. “Oh yeah. He smells like…flowers. Like us.”

  Whipplethorns did smell like flowers and happiness or so I’d been told. Nobody could explain exactly what happiness smelled like, so I had to take their word for it. Gerald was not a Whipplethorn. He was an Ogle who’d adopted the Whipplethorn name when his family moved into Whipplethorn Manor. Gerald smelled like fresh spinach. It wasn’t bad, but definitely not flowers either.

  “Which flower?” asked Ruffiano. He made no move to sniff the fairy himself. I didn’t blame him.

  “I can’t tell with the vegetable stink,” said Gerald.

  “Sunflowers,” said Allura. “I noticed that, too. I believe him to be French. He has the face of an aristocrat and the clothes.” She pointed to the clothes hanging on the head board. They were pretty fancy and well-made, not as fancy as the clothes that Delphine and Roberto had worn in Paris when we met them, but expensive.

  “How long has he been here?” I asked.

  “Two days. A couple of fishermen, seers, found him in a boat off the Cinque Terre and they brought him to us.”

  “He was alone.”

  She shook her head sadly. “No, but the others were dead.” Allura leaned over and put her cheek to his forehead. “He’s still in there, but I’m not sure he will survive.”

  Iris took his hand from Gerald. “But he has to make it. We know him. We do.”

  Gerald shrugged at me. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Me, either,” I said.

  “We do. The smell. I can tell that we know him,” said Iris.

  “Many wood fairies smell like flowers.” Allura waved her thin arm across the room. “Many in this room.”

  “But this one is special. Can you fix him? What’s wrong with him?”

  Allura picked up a rolled-up parchment lying on his chest and read it. “Slug cough, necrotizing flea fungus, infectious wing mange, and severe
blood loss. If I had to guess, I would say he was imprisoned for some period of time. Those are things that are easily transferred in prison, except for the blood loss.”

  “How’d he lose the blood?” I asked.

  Allura hesitated, but then she looked in my eyes. I don’t know what she saw there, but she folded back the blanket, which had been drawn up to his chin. He had a thick bandage on his neck. She lifted it for me to see and revealed a razor-thin slit across his entire neck. It looked pretty deep and was being held together by spiderwebs.

  I glanced at Iris, who’d gone pale. Gerald looked confused at her reaction, but he came to Paris late.

  “I believe he was nearly executed,” said Allura.

  “By what?” asked Ruffiano. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “It’s a spell used by the French phalanx to behead prisoners.” She watched me carefully and I kept my face curious, though I already knew what she would say. “They use it to force prisoners to confess or perform acts of terrorism. It’s a thin red line on the neck that can behead them at any time if they don’t obey.”

  “He didn’t obey,” said Iris. “I’m sure of it. I know.”

  “And something stopped the line,” I said. “What can do that?”

  “The performer of the spell must’ve been killed as he was being beheaded. It’s the only way that I know of,” said Allura.

  Gerald tapped his chin. “The phalanx might’ve changed his mind.”

  “They’re not known for changing their minds.”

  “What are his chances?” asked Ruffiano.

  Allura’s face said it all. She expected him to die. Iris didn’t see it though. She kept looking at Allura, yearning for good news.

  “Iris, he’s pretty sick,” I said.

  “But you—”

  Gerald grabbed her arm. “Allura’s the healer.”

  Allura looked like she was going to question me when the doors way at the other end of the hall were flung open. A crowd of fairies rushed in, bearing stretchers with no place to put them.

  The other galen moving between patients looked to Allura. She raised her hand to wave before rushing off to help them.

  “I think we should leave the galen to their work,” said Ruffiano.

  Iris shook her head and her curls bounced against her cheeks. “I can’t leave. There’s so much pain. I’m supposed to be here.”

  Ruffiano gazed on my little sister, unsure what to make of her.

  “We haven’t seen Rickard yet,” I said. “We’ll stay and you can take Gerald to see that thingy.”

  “Thingy?” scoffed Gerald. “You’re talking about plans that are almost two thousand years old.”

  “Whatever. You go check it out.”

  He looked at Ruffiano. “Can we?”

  “Certainly. You don’t mind being on your own, Matilda?” asked Ruffiano.

  Not hardly.

  “No, I’m good,” I said. “I just want to see Rickard. I thought he might die.”

  “I believe he’s down at the end of this row,” he said. “I will collect you in an hour.”

  I thanked him and Gerald practically dragged him out of the hospital. I had to pry Iris’s hands off the unknown fairy’s hand.

  “But you can help him,” she whispered up at me.

  “No, I can’t, for lots of reasons,” I said, half pushing, half pulling her through the maze of patients. We found Rickard at the end of the row next to the door. Iris picked up his hand and he groaned, opening his eyes a bit. “Your Grace.”

  “Shush,” Iris said. “Don’t call me that. I’m Iris.”

  “Iris,” he whispered and his eyes closed.

  She grabbed my sleeve. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  “He’s okay.” I bent over and sniffed. “They’ve given him white willow and valerian. Maybe something else…skullcap, I think. He’s going to sleep for a while on that combo.”

  Iris heaved a sigh. “Thank goodness.”

  “You stay here. I’m going to see what’s happening outside.”

  Iris nodded and I went into the hall, where Allura was bending over a stretcher. She shook her head and pulled the blanket up over the face of a green sidhe. Allura’s hair fought to escape the netting she’d contained it in. Tendrils lashed out. I imagined that they made a snapping noise. I wandered through the rows of stretchers, feeling both guilty and helpless. But there wasn’t much I could do. The galen were great healers and I didn’t even know what fungus Rickard had. Another galen looked at me, he was much older than Allura about Lucien Galen’s age. He also had the waist-length hair, but his was calm and had only gentle waves running down its length.

  “Welcome to Verona,” he said. “Is it what you expected?”

  “I never expected anything, for once. We got lost. We’re supposed to be in Rome, touring the Colosseum,” I said.

  “You are lost. You’re in the wrong part of Italy.”

  “I know, believe me. How many incoming wounded are you expecting?” I asked.

  “You say that like you’ve seen wounded before.”

  I decided to stick to the truth as much as I could. Then I wouldn’t have to remember a lie. “We were in France. There was a lot of fighting.”

  He offered his hand, a grizzled one missing two fingers. “Hercule, Allure’s grandfather.”

  “Matilda. My sister, Iris, is in there with our dad’s friend.”

  I shook his hand and he tilted his head, not letting go. “You smell like flowers and happiness.”

  A prickle of fear went up my back. Others had sensed my fire before. Victory’s father knew the second he saw me. “It’s common enough.”

  “I don’t believe it is.”

  “It’s a wood fairy thing.”

  “Flowers, perhaps.” He spun around as a pair of galen carrying a small litter rushed in. “Hercule! Come quick.”

  Hercule glided over, being fast without seeming to move much. I followed and sucked in a sharp breath when I saw the patient. A little hobgoblin like Maraleeza, no more than two. She was ghostly pale and blood soaked the thick bandage on her little chest.

  “It wasn’t bleeding, but the Capulets…they tried to take her,” said a young galen about my age. His short hair coiled into springs and then straightened out with a zing.

  “She got dropped,” said the other galen, a young woman with her hair netted like Allura’s. “I’m so sorry, Grandfather.”

  “The Capulets,” hissed Hercule as he pulled powders out of the silk bags he had on his waist. He peeled back the bandage and a deep slashing on her small chest instantly pooled with blood. Hercule sprinkled it with several powders. I tried to get a whiff. Agrimony, maybe, but it wasn’t used for bleeding that I knew of.

  Hercule said some kind of incantation. I think it was in Latin. Victory had tried to educate me on the dead language, but I couldn’t work up the interest. I had a hard enough time with living languages.

  Blood ran over the hobgoblin’s side, spilling onto the stretcher. She was so small. So much like Maraleeza. I didn’t think. I did it and it was easy. I didn’t even have to close my eyes. I saw her torn vessels and stopped the bleeding. It was instant, but the galen didn’t know for a second.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” said Hercule. “Her injuries are too grievous and when reopened—”

  “Grandfather,” said the boy. “It stopped.”

  The three galen stared at her chest. The blood stopped running over and wasn’t pooling at all.

  What did I do?

  The galen bent over the hobgoblin, talking with sharp, confusing gestures. I took a step back. No. I couldn’t leave. That would be suspicious.

  Allura ran over. “What’s happened?”

  “The bleeding stopped,” said Hercule.

  “Stopped?”

  “Yes.”

  “What combination of herbs did you use?” asked Allura.

  “Nothing unusual,” he said.

  They examined the hobgoblin, taking her pul
se and temperature. Hercule declared her desperately injured, but oddly stable. He looked at me and I looked back with my best innocent look. He didn’t buy it.

  He mouthed, “Flowers and happiness.”

  “Well, I guess I’d better go,” I said. “You don’t need me getting in the way.”

  I trotted back into the hospital hall and found Iris kneeled in prayer next to Rickard. I grabbed her arm. “We’ve got to go.”

  “I’m staying here. They need me,” she said.

  “I don’t think so.” I pulled her away and she fought me. Iris never fights me. I was so astonished, I let go and she fell against the bed. “Sorry. But Iris, we have to.”

  Hercule came around the bed and eyed me with Allure at his side. She looked between the two of us, somewhat bewildered. “Grandfather, we have patients.”

  “Indeed, we do,” he said. “Tell me about this one.”

  “He’s our father’s friend, Rickard,” offered Iris.

  “And what is wrong with Rickard?”

  Allura picked up Rickard’s parchment. “I didn’t treat him. That was Bellamy.”

  “We’ll just get out of your way,” I said, tugging on Iris’s arm.

  “I told you I’m not leaving. The cardinal would be here,” said Iris.

  Iris!

  “What cardinal do you speak of?” asked Hercule.

  “Uh…the cardinal of Venice. We met him.”

  Hercule snorted and his hair went into zigzags. “That pedantic fool? He wouldn’t be anywhere near here.”

  “No one said you’d been to Venice,” said Allura.

  Oops.

  “Just for a day or two. To see St. Mark’s,” I said.

  “I didn’t see St. Mark’s,” said my sister with a pout.

  Iris, for crying out loud.

  “You had that cold, remember?”

  Iris got stiff. “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  Hercule pointed at the parchment in Allura’s hands. “Let’s see what the trouble is.”

  She untied the roll and read out, “Large amount of contusions, burns and cuts to the abdomen, chest, and legs.” Allura looked at me with horror.