I looked up into his gray blue eyes with shock. Sinclair shrugged crookedly. “I have a way with the minor pains. I was always trying to heal my pets when I was kid. Then I got to work on my dad’s back. He said I had extraordinary hands. I think that was what got me started into medicine. Right up until my dad died of a heart attack in the nineties, he swore my hands were pure magic. Helped his lumbago every time.”
Then the young man at the door said, “Yes.” It wasn’t an agreement to what the doctor had said, but to what the newcomer was reading in my eyes.
The red headed teenager was standing just inside the room, looking at me. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. His eyes were bright sky blue and a spray of freckles wandered over his nose and cheekbones. He was tall and gangly, nearly a stick with his teenager’s build. He had a coke in one hand and he was rubbing the bridge of his nose with the other hand. I looked back at him and vaguely remembered him from the first blurred moments I had woken in the hospital room.
My head came up and Sinclair stepped back. I said, “You’re Gideon. The leader.”
Chapter Fourteen – Three’s a Crowd. So is Four, Five, and Six.
When the firefly pixies came a little while later, Gideon, Sinclair, and Kara were still sitting with me. It was just as well; the conversation had become stilted. The tiny flying swarm made their own entrance into the hospital and crowded into the room just as the sun fell beneath the horizon in the west. Sinclair was lighting a candle near my bed to which I had returned, and then a green cloud of flying pixies rolled into the room like an invulnerable force. The only sounds were the doctor gasping and the buzzing of the pixies.
I smiled. So did Kara. Gideon held very still. Sinclair started to freak out, waving his hands as if shooing them away. I said sharply, “Don’t hit them! They won’t hurt you. And they’ve never stung or bitten us.” Of course, I didn’t know that they wouldn’t, but the doctor was twitching as if he had stepped on a bee’s hive. At any second he was going to bolt for the door. He froze into place and his apprehensive eyes watched the circling multitude. I decided that he had never played catch and release with bugs as a child.
The pixies came about me and prattled anxiously. One came to rest on my arm and warbled at me in an edifying sort of tone. I said consolingly, “It’s all better now. Look, they fixed me.”
Prancing down the length of my forearm, she seemed to be saying, ‘We’ll just see about that, Missy.’
More of them were circling Kara and she was laughing a little as she held up a palm for one of them. Interestingly, several were hovering by Gideon and staring at him intently. The remainder were avidly inspecting me and the room and largely ignoring the doctor.
“If you want to leave, Sinclair,” I said carefully, “then go slowly to the door. They won’t hurt you.”
“What are they?” he whispered, not moving. The fear he felt had dispersed into keen attention.
“They’re the firefly pixies I was talking about,” I said.
Kara laughed. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“They left that mark on your cheek?” Sinclair asked numbly.
“Yes,” I said. “They healed me, too. Guess they were otherwise occupied this time.”
“You weren’t dying,” Gideon said. His teenager’s voice unnerved me. “That’s why they didn’t come to you. However, they were concerned. They had little watchers with you the whole time. I’ve seen them. I don’t think anyone else noticed. But you weren’t dying.”
“She wasn’t dying,” Kara said flatly. “She was dead.”
“They brought you back to life,” Sinclair said, awestricken.
“That was Zach and Kara,” I put in, irritated at the admiration in the doctor’s tone. He kept looking at the pixies and then at me as though I was somehow something new and extraterrestrial. “CPR classes did them a lot of good. Thank you, Kara and Zach.”
Kara shrugged cordially. “Nice to know some of the old training still is rattling around in my head.”
The pixie on my arm jumped up and down demandingly. I looked down at her and she tilted her head at me expectantly. “Oh, no,” I said with a wry smile.
“What is it?” Sinclair asked.
“Do you like to sing, Doc?” I asked.
“I can sing,” he said with the unsaid part being, ‘Why would you ask that?’
“Good,” I said. “They like ‘Jingle Bells.’”
♦
As it turned out the firefly pixies liked the doctor’s voice almost as much as they liked mine. They also didn’t mind Gideon’s off-key tenor or that Ethan and Calida came to listen at the door and watch with unspoken wonder. Zach peeked in and smiled at the pixies when they quickly buzzed him. Then he vanished into the darkness of the hallway without meeting my eyes.
I fell asleep after three versions of ‘Jingle Bells’ and a variety of sixties hits like ‘You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling,’ ‘Wooly Bully,’ ‘I Got You Babe, ‘My Girl,’ and ‘Wild Thing.’ I think ‘Wild Thing’ might have supplanted ‘Jingle Bells’ in pixie popularity. Before I drifted off I made a mental note to make myself learn the lyrics.
When I woke up the pixies were buzzing around genially and the room was mostly dark. The windows were open and a breeze was wafting in. It was getting a little chilly but I liked the feeling. The stars were out in full force and someone was sitting next to the bed, looking at me.
My hand reached for the dagger and I nearly panicked when I couldn’t find it immediately.
“It’s all right, Sophie,” Zach said.
I closed my eyes briefly. I don’t know exactly what I had been dreaming about but I didn’t think it was something pleasant. I had been fighting again. The image of the long sword in my hand, flashing as it struck its deadly path was all that was left in my mind’s eye. I had woken up expecting the worst. I was helpless in a hospital bed and the burned man was next to me, waiting to see the fright on my face before he pounced.
“Zach,” I muttered. “You like to scare me, don’t you?”
“Just about as much as you like to scare me,” he stated softly.
“You’re still angry,” I said. Well, thank you, Captain Obvious.
“Yes.”
I swallowed. “Can I have something to drink?” Can I get out of this conversation by prevaricating?
Zach gave me a glass of water with a straw and watched me struggle to position myself to be able to drink it. Finally, he helped me with one arm and an aggrieved grunt. When I was done I handed the glass back to him and he put it on the table next to my bed.
“I miss ice,” I said plaintively. Also iPods, hot water, and normal conversations.
“There are a lot of things to miss,” Zach said contemplatively. He folded his arms over his chest and looked at me. His face was in the shadows but I could feel the weight of his gaze. “Why, Sophie?”
I frowned. Should I explain? Would he get it? He was so angry, I could feel it radiating off him in surges of fury. He wanted to punish me for doing something so extreme, for putting myself in danger. He wanted me to know this was not only unacceptable, but something he would have a hard time forgiving me, if he ever did.
Would the real explanation placate him? Or would he always disbelieve me?
“Do you trust me, Zach?” I asked, forcing my voice to be neutral.
“No,” he said immediately. “Not anymore. Not without a reasonable explanation.”
“And if my explanation isn’t reasonable, then you’ll continue to mistrust me?”
Zach took his arms off his chest and leaned forward. I could see the glitter of his eyes; the meager light from the stars reflected off them. “I have to know,” he said.
“Why do you have to know?” I asked, suddenly angry. Why did I have to prove myself to him? Why did I have to say that I had a good reason for doing what I did? What if all I had was a reason and it wasn’t good enough to suit Zach’s sensibilities? Suddenly I felt doggedly resistant. I didn’t want to tell hi
m anything. “Will it make it easier to contemplate? I did something that I felt I had to do, and you wouldn’t have let me do it. That’s why I did what I did. Because I knew you wouldn’t allow me to go.”
“You led yourself to a slaughter!” he suddenly bellowed at me. Jerking back in the seat, he went as far as he could from me without physically leaving the room. His tone lowered. “He might have killed you. He was so close to killing you that death was breathing on your flesh!”
No, he would have killed you, Zach. I didn’t know why but it hadn’t been my time. It didn’t mean I didn’t get hurt. But I didn’t say that. Instead I glowered at his shadow filled face.
“If Kara hadn’t been sick because of the painkillers you gave us,” he stopped as I jerked. He saw the action and explained acrimoniously, “Yes, it turns out she doesn’t do well with codeine based medications, something you might want to remember before you drug us again. If she hadn’t been sick, we wouldn’t have awakened in time. The pixies were there, trying like hell to wake us up.”
Well, there was something to feel guilty about. I owed Kara a big apology. Actually I owed Zach one too, but he was less likely to get one while he was so infuriated with me.
“And these others? Gideon, Sinclair, and the rest? Did you trip over them on the way?” Oh, that was wrong. It came out suspicious and slightly sarcastic. Inwardly I groaned and grappled for better control.
“Sinclair saved your life,” Zach said coldly. “They were on the highway as we were making our way back to Crescent City. Ethan gave me his bike so I could go ahead. The others followed behind. Somehow they knew something was wrong. Something they needed to be a part of.”
That certainly clicked into place. “Gideon knew, right?”
Zach stilled. “How did you know?”
“Remember what I said about what people had in common?” I asked slowly.
Zach nodded. “Healthy people. Maybe it was because they were healthy that they, that we survived.”
“I think it was something else,” I stated as plainly as I could. “Your dreams, the doctor’s magic hands, Gideon’s foreknowledge. Kara smells cinnamon when something significant is about to happen around her. I bet all of us have that in common.”
Zach took in a deep breath as he considered it. “Selective survival of people with psychic abilities? The ones who have a certain extra oomph? That’s why we woke the next morning and all those others didn’t?”
I shrugged. “It’s a theory.”
Silent for a long time, Zach finally asked, “And what about you? If you’ve put this hypothesis together, that means you’ve got something going on as well. What’s your…ability?”
If I said what it was, would it bite me on the tushie? Probably. So I lied instead, “I’m not exactly sure.”
“And why hasn’t Kara said anything about hers?”
“She has mentioned it,” I said. “I don’t think she realizes what it is that she has exactly. Maybe I don’t have all the answers.”
“And you’re not going to give me the one I really want,” Zach acknowledged resentfully.
“No.” There wasn’t anything else to say. I hadn’t trusted him. He doesn’t trust me. Yikes. What a way to cement a relationship.
Zach shot to his feet and bent over me in the bed, stopping inches away from my face.
To my favor I didn’t cringe away, although he’d startled me. The firefly pixies briefly entered the air in a concerned flurry but they settled down quickly. His face was in shade and I was afraid mine was all too visible in the starlight coming in the windows. I wondered what he was seeing in my expression.
Excruciatingly slowly Zach lowered his face until his warm lips touched mine. I was frozen. So was he for a long moment. Then it was fire and heat and enchantment. His mouth moved on mine, encouraging me to feel what he was feeling. His hands reached up and tenderly bracketed my face, his thumbs caressing my skin. Every silent message he could send to me came through the pressure of his mouth, the movement of his lips, and the stroke of his fingers of my flesh.
And then I knew why Nate, the boy I had dated twice before the change, never would have been enough for me. I knew it and I didn’t want to admit it to anyone.
There was an embarrassed cough from the door and Zach jerked himself away from me. I was panting. So was Zach, for that matter.
Sinclair stood just inside the room holding a lit candle in his hands. The pixies warbled protestingly at him. I wasn’t certain what they were protesting, that the doctor had come in or that Zach had stopped kissing me.
“Sorry,” Sinclair offered insincerely. “I heard someone yell.”
Zach stalked out of the room with an abrupt, “Sorry I woke you, Doc.” Then he vanished into the darkness.
I heard his footsteps stomping down the hallway.
Sinclair moved to my side and said, “You all right, Sophie?”
“He wasn’t assaulting me,” I replied morosely. I wasn’t sure what he’d been doing. Well, of course I knew what he had been doing, but I wasn’t sure what his intent had been. Somehow I just didn’t see my enfeebled self as an irresistible bombshell that Zach just had to smooch on. Maybe it was his way of proving a point. Oh, heck, what did I know about anything, much less the private thoughts of a man? All I really knew was that if Zach knew that I couldn’t have let him died, he might realize that I was falling for him. If I could keep that from happening, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt me so much when inevitably he left me, just as everyone else had done in my life.
Sinclair sighed. “I didn’t think he was,” he said carefully.
Kara stumbled into the room. “Everything okay?” she said sleepily.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Did you yell?” she said tiredly.
“No, that was Zach.”
“Zach yelled?”
“Must have stubbed his toe.”
Kara looked at me incredulously. “I was having the best dream, you dodo. There were these great trees, huge trees that grew up in the skies like miles. There were flowers everywhere, and these neat log cabins all painted yellow. And I felt good, for the first time since…the change. And Zach stubbed his toe and yelled and woke me up thinking someone was in here trying to kill you again?”
“It must have hurt a lot,” I explained petulantly.
“That’s funny,” Sinclair said oddly. “It sounds like you were dreaming about the place we live, Kara. We simply call it the Redwoods because it’s in the middle of the Redwood National Park. It used be a campground for city kids.”
Kara’s face twisted strangely. “You guys been eating something with cinnamon on it?”
I sighed.
♦
Two days later I was there. It was exactly like Kara had described it. As a matter of fact, she was stunned when first she saw it. She rode her bicycle into a tree, but it was all right because she hadn’t been going very fast. I was glad because she wasn’t pulling me in a makeshift trailer that Ethan and Zach had made for me. It had more room in it so that I could recline a little and it would have hurt when Kara made us fall over sideways because she was stupefied by the reality of her dream.
The trip had taken longer than they had planned. I had to get out often and stretch my legs. I had terrible leg cramps and the place where the doctor had repaired my rib ached. I could take some pain killers but every time I did I caught Kara and/or Zach looking at me oddly. I supposed I deserved that.
Before we left Crescent City I had Kara run me two errands. She hit the library for me and she picked something up in a specialty store. I said I didn’t care what kind she got, but she brought me one that was obviously made for a man. So I stuck it in the trailer next to me and ignored the peculiar looks I gathered from the small group of people. The oversized book from the library garnered some other funny glances that I similarly ignored.
All bets are off people, I wanted to yell at them. Everyone’s got to figure that out one way or another. I had almost been killed by the s
ame man twice, or three times if I wanted to count ripping out the stitches on my wound while reacting to his strange provocation and running for our lives. I didn’t care to be ill prepared for a fourth attempt or for anything else that was going to happen for that matter.
The Japanese broadsword had protruded from the trailer like a little flag of defiance. It was still there in the trailer when we pedaled into the camp. Most oddly, it looked exactly like the one I had dreamed about. But I ignored it for the moment and looked at the camp instead. A pinewood sign announced it was no longer, ‘Camp Twegoh,’ but The Redwoods. The camp’s name had been crossed over and the new words inserted below. Sinclair informed me that ‘twegoh’ was a Yurok Indian word for raccoon, which explained the engraving on the sign of a large, enthusiastic looking raccoon.
I supposed I was looking at the sign to avoid looking at all the people. They had come out to greet us. A mass of people that made my mouth dry with shock. They had said twenty, but it seemed like it was forty, a hundred, a thousand, a million! I could hear their enthusiastic voices greeting everyone. More than a few gave excited hugs to the returning people. Of course, that didn’t include us. Zach, Kara and I received curious examinations and friendly smiles as the reunions went on.
I slid a sideways glance to the wall of redwoods to the side, wondering if anyone would notice if I slipped off into the green shadows. Kara touched my arm and squeezed comfortingly. I think she noticed my discomfort immediately. “It’ll be all right, hon,” she said softly.
“What is it?” Zach said from my other side. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing,” Kara sighed. “She’s a little gun shy, kiddo. How long has it been since we’ve seen more than us around?”
Sea of Dreams Page 14
