Jay plucked a piece of moss out of my hair, and smiled at me. “My willow,” he murmured, sweetly. My chest swelled with pride, with love, with all the things that make breathing a painful, beautiful, alive experience. The fondness swelled in his eyes, and his fingers wove themselves into my hair, clutching it at the back of my skull in a heartfelt, desperate fist. It was then that the fondness was poisoned by pain, some choking pain, and my brow creased, not understanding.
“What is it, Jay?” I asked, clutching his wrist gently in encouragement. He only tilted his head, as if to get a good look at me, to etch my appearance into memory.
“My Willow...” he murmured again, quieter this time and with more finality.
A strange desperation bottled up inside me, not understanding. What was wrong? Why wouldn't he tell me? For he wasn't, I could see, going to tell me.
“Jay...?”
He pressed his forehead to mine, closing his eyes, and fear soured my fantasy. He held me there, close, scaring me with the rare, heartfelt display of affection. Jay would never act that way, unless...
His eyes opened, wrought with the most heartbreaking mix of fondness and sorrow, agony and resignation. Then he rose, his fingers trailing out of my hair, over my forehead, and he backed away.
“Jay, what are you doing?” My voice cracked, ever so slightly, wanting answers that I knew he was not going to give. He backed up another step, relentless, and then did the awful deed and turned away, presenting his back, and walked away up the hill.
I stared after him, shocked and betrayed, helpless to do a thing to stop this fantasy from unraveling. Why was he doing this?
It was only as he was almost to the top of the hill, arms swinging at his sides, that I noticed the large, black mark that wrapped around his forearm where his sleeve was rolled up to elbow height. My heart fell into the pit of my stomach, seeing it, and suddenly things began to make terrible sense, even though I could not say completely what they meant.
For, written across his arm in big, bold letters, in the honorary script I knew too well, was the name, Willow.
*
I had strange dreams, after that. Feverish fantasies. An awareness dawned on me in a tangle of crimson sheets, Jay's head bowed over my torso, kissing my bare stomach. A breath of pleasure turned to a breath of pain, as I raised my head and found he was doing no such thing, but in fact licking the wound that slashed me open there. He raised his own head, and met my eyes with bloodshot, dilated, hungry ones, licking blood off his lips.
I tried to scream, but then he was bending over me, concern etched into his ordinary, un-affected face, smoothing sweaty hair back from my clammy face. There were strange reflections in his eyes, though, weird shapes and scary faces, and I was wrought with frustration finding myself unable to turn to look, to identify what cast them nearby, my body stiff and unresponsive, unable to do anything but keep my eyes riveted to his.
His eyes were innocent, confused, wondering what my distress was about, but of course he couldn't see the reflections. I made some strangled noise, trying to tell him about them, to warn him that there were strange things in our vicinity, but my voice wouldn't work. There were gears broken inside me. Clock hands stuck in my throat. A doctor was working somewhere beside me, his motions shadowed and blurred, but I felt him insert some tool into my body, crank it.
The gears churned back to life inside me, like maggots deep under my skin, and the clock hands resumed ticking in my throat. The ticking increased, though, faster and faster, and my eyes grew wide with alarm only just before the bomb I sensed inside myself went off.
*
When I came to next, I was alone in a dusky field, the expanse glowing with the pearly sheen of moonlit clouds above me. About a million crickets chorused around me, making my awakening an eerie, ethereal experience. I lay there, blinking dew from my lashes. When I attempted to move, I found myself weighed down, gowned in a soaked white gown that sprawled all around me.
I lay my head back against the earth, resting, thinking. Where was this? This plane of solitude and pearly darkness? Of dew that drenched a dress like the ocean?
I was helpless to rise in such a dress, and so I didn't. My thoughts roved and ranged, coming up with nothing, and so finally I gave in to the natural calling of the night and dozed off there in the eerie field, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but whispery grass and chorusing crickets.
*
When dawn came, the sky was white. White and draping, and the whispery grass had turned to a hard slab of ground beneath me. My drenched dress was dry, and tucked neatly around my body. A sheet.
My eyes roved over what I realized was in fact a tent. I had a terrible headache, I found when I moved. My lips were cracked, my skin tight, my abdomen sore and flaming. A cool breeze was wafting through the tent flap, smelling of manure.
I weighed the factors carefully, calculating everything in my head, and concluded:
This.
This was the one that wasn't a dream.
Neck creaking, I carefully turned my head to one side. There was nothing to be seen in the tent, though. Only me, on some sanitary bed of recovery. I exhaled a pathetic sigh of effort, winced. Breathing anything but shallowly hurt.
Alright, I thought. I'm awake. Who was going to be the one to come check on me?
I twiddled my thumbs for the better part of a half hour, for lack of a better way to call someone to my bedside, before the ones on their own timing thought to stop in.
It was Lady Alejandra who poked her head in on me, entering when she saw me awake. Was I back in Safeguard?
“She lives,” she said optimistically, coming to my side. I didn't trust my voice yet, so I didn't speak. But my lethargic eyes tracked her in acknowledgment. “How do you feel?” she asked, looking me over as if she could see my wounds through the sheets and bandaging. “You don't have to answer that. I'll fetch Jeremiah and the medic.”
I gave what might have been a nod of my eyes, and then she was ducking back out into the crisp morning light to bring the others back to me. She returned with Jay and a medic that I didn't know – this one older with curly dark hair and a neat shadow of stubble.
“Alannis Wilde,” he greeted as he knelt at my side, resting back on his heels. He had a slight accent, but I was too wrecked to try to decipher it. “You put in a good fight.”
I could not tell if he meant on the battlefield or in my own struggle to pull through, and I wondered if I was normally this confused by things or if my state of being was actually making my mind a sluggish creature. And what was I to say – thank you? Thankfully, I wasn't readily able to speak, so I was spared having to figure out a proper response.
Jay knelt at my other side, but gave the medic the reins as far as conversation went.
“You also put in quite a scare, but you seem to be coming out of it nicely,” the older man informed me. “Let's just run you through a quick assessment, shall we?”
He tested my limbs and feeling, checked my eyes and asked me if I could speak. I cleared my throat to try, but pain from my middle stopped me.
“It's alright,” he said. “Don't strain. You broke a rib – a bit of a compound fracture. But we've got you fixed up, here, and you don't need to worry about a thing. Just rest, Miss Wilde. Someone will be along to bring you food and make sure you're comfortable.” With that, he pushed himself to his feet, and left the tent past Lady Alejandra. She stepped aside to let him pass, but lingered to get a few words in.
“You're the talk of the camp, Alannis,” she told me. “Some good, some bad – but we're all rooting for you. The horses especially.” She smiled. “They all threw a fit when you were brought through the camp in an unresponsive state. They'll be happy to sense your livelihood.” Giving me one last, encouraging smile, she took her leave as well, leaving only Jay and me.
I didn't want to look at him, at first, for fear of what he was thinking, but I couldn't avoid it forever. I pushed the dreams I had had about him to the bac
k of my mind, and turned my head. His eyes were shifting under his lashes as well, almost shyly, perhaps guilty for how he'd treated me before I'd gone under or not knowing how to address me in this fragile, half-naked state.
It was ridiculous, but an unanswered question bubbled to life on my lips before either of us could say anything else: “Char?”
He looked at me, then, and I couldn't tell if it was hurt or relief or amusement or some aghast quality that shown there at my insistence on the answer to that one question. But then it melted into relief – disapproving and disbelieving, perhaps, but relief. “The fool horse is alive, Alannis,” he said, and my own relief calmed the ill waves inside me. I lay back against my pillow, that weight off my shoulders.
Char was alive. We were both alive.
I remembered the fall, the way he rolled over me. Was that when my rib had snapped? How had I not suffered from it until Jay dragged me back to camp?
But I also recalled the euphoric state I had been in, thoroughly immersed in my own glorious world. What must I have looked like, all streaked in my substitute for war paint and blood, eyes wild and hungry and loving it? The Alannis he knew, gone wild. Timid horse girl turned eager warrior woman, savage and glorious and possessed before him? When had the whispers lost their charm, he must have wondered, and given way to that hunger for battle cries?
Shame-faced, I turned away from him, realizing how far things had gone. What must he think of me now? How was I to ever explain it?
All of the details came rushing back to me, each one a blow to the idea of my sanity. I recalled the radiant colors, the bursts of false confidence, the elation, the dancing, the fairies...
Imagine, I thought – war fairies. How ridiculous was that?
Jay had to be wondering what had come over me, but he didn't ask. Not yet, anyway. He gazed at me for a time – I could see it out of the corner of my eye. And of course – that was the only time he would gaze at me; when there wasn't a pair of eyes on the other end to gaze back.
“You owe Toby a stick,” he finally said.
I glanced at him. I didn't know whether to laugh or tell him Toby would never call his torches sticks, so I just let the first smile crack my face. I was glad to see him.
His face echoed the sentiment a moment, and for a short time we both sat in silent appreciation for what I could only assume was the chance to be alive and well in each other's company, but then he got to thinking. A moment later, he broached the subject;
“What...got into you, out there?”
The moment I had been dreading. Once again, I couldn't look at him. If only there was something else in the tent to look at.
“That's...just how it is, with me,” I told him, not sure how else to say it. I knew he was aware of the subtler things that had always stirred inside me – and all around me, for that matter. This was just the same thing, risen to greater heights, rooted to deeper depths. At least, I had to assume it was. I didn't really know what it was. Had I ever been able to tell someone where whispering to horses came from? “I whisper to horses. Other voices...do things to me.” It was the only way I could think to describe it.
“And make you do stupid things you can't control?” Things that leave you wild-eyed and blood-thirsty? I could almost hear the unspoken words, words he had to be thinking.
“There's this other place–” I began, thinking that perhaps if I just told him, if I just laid it all out, he would get it, or perhaps would be able to help me make sense of it, but it was as if he could see where I was going, and his desire to hear it froze over.
“Don't tell me,” he stopped me, closing his eyes with a subtle shake of his head, sorry he had asked. “You need to tell it to a psychologist.” It was too much for him.
I swallowed, unable to help but be disappointed. His eyes opened, rested on my face again.
“I can't believe you did that,” he said, calmer now than when he had dragged me off the battlefield, but the sentiment apparently still fresh in his mind. And, really, how could it not be? He shifted, but my eyes did not return to him. “What am I going to do with you, Willow?”
I swallowed. “Did we...win?” I asked.
“Aye. We're holding the territory.”
That was good. Then again, I probably wouldn't be here in recovery if we hadn't won. But I didn't know what else to talk about. “How long have I been...out?' I asked.
“About a week,” Jay replied. “There was fever and the scare of infection.”
The fever dreams were all too vivid – and disorienting – in my memory.
“But,” Jay went on, “you always were one to learn things the hard way. So if that's what it had to take...” He glanced down. “We can be glad that's one necessary ordeal out of the way.”
It was only then that the prospect of future battles and my potential participation in them occurred to me. Of course Jay assumed I would not be participating a second time, but implying how he felt about the issue made me consider how I felt about it, since we were two different people, which made me realize there was potential for differing feelings on the matter. Which, in turn, suggested there were potentially two differing conclusions to come to. Was I in agreement with him – could I not imagine ever pulling such a brainless stunt again? Or had I tapped into something, brainless or not?
The thought was entirely too treacherous, so I quickly tucked it into a crevice where it couldn't dream of surfacing – not in Jay's presence, certainly. I glanced down as well, though, unable to curb the guilt that stirred in his presence just for the thought existing.
Fortunately, Jay's social timer kicked in, telling him he'd over-stayed his habitual allotment, and he shifted with a sense of finality. “Have to feed,” he announced, and I nodded. He looked me over once more, assuring there was nothing more to be done for me, and then rose to see to his duties. “Rest up,” he bade quietly, and then slipped out of the tent.
I heard a horse whinny in the camp, and it was maddening – being stuck shut away from them, only able to catch the tantalizing horsey smells that drifted through the tent flap where I stared up at the white ceiling. I supposed it was intended as a peaceful, sanitary cocoon, but couldn't they have put me in one of Lady Alejandra's get-ups so I could at least pass the time studying the myriad of paintings all around?
But I was sure they all had better things to do than see to my amusement.
An adrenaline-rush stirring of hope fluttered inside me when signs of another human being shuffled at the tent entrance. Of what I was hoping I could not say, but anything would suffice. Of course, once the figure was revealed I found myself revoking that sentiment, for it was none other than Brie. She came laden with a tray of food, though, so I allowed her entry. That I was in no state to send her packing had nothing to do with it, at least the way I justified it in my mind.
To her credit, she at least had the decency to look awkward in my grossly humbled presence, instead of sustaining indifference or any victorious attitude of superiority. She faltered for a moment at the entrance, knuckles steadfast gripping the tray, before moving to lay it beside me.
“They told me to bring this to you,” she gave an excuse – unnecessary – for her presence as she stooped.
Of course they did, I thought. What else are you good for, around here?
Blood-red, dangly earrings lapped against her cheeks as she arranged the tray. I didn't want to thank her. The notion that I was a terrible human being for such only served as further annoyance where persuasion was concerned. I almost did it, grudgingly, just for good measure, but in the end I decided I had every excuse not to, seeing as I was the weary invalid of the two of us, back from the dead and entitled to spare myself some effort.
When she had arranged the offering, Brie could no longer avoid direct interaction. She sort of glanced me over with her peripheral vision before venturing to attempt small talk. “Does it...hurt you to eat?” she asked.
And suddenly I couldn't resist opening my mouth any longer. “Did they t
ell you that I had woken up and required food?”
“Yes.”
“Then obviously I haven't determined what it feels like to eat for over a week.”
Her lips parted, sensing the slap. But then an exquisite little dimple of determination deepened between her brows. “Well, then who am I to keep you waiting any longer?” she said, and the next thing I knew she was cramming the spoon into my mouth with a stern, “Swallow.”
And of course I had to chide myself for goading her while she had the upper hand. Now I was stuck suffering whatever insufferable twists on charity she wanted to throw at me.
She had just better be careful cramming that spoon into my mouth, I thought, or I just might have to go to the extreme of biting down on her delicate, spiteful little fingers when they found themselves foolishly so close to my teeth.
Eighteen –
Recovery was a slow beast. I was positive there was some kind of demon sloth inside me, making my body sluggish in all it aspired to accomplish. I couldn't sit up at all while it was necessary to let the initial healing fuse inside me, and after that I required assistance because I found I could not do it on my own anyway. It was so stupid – I could ride wild animals unlike anybody's business; I shouldn't need help sitting on the ground. But I did, and it was either that or stay flat on my back for days – weeks – on end, and so I opted to humble myself just enough to let Jay help me, because the latter was something I could not withstand with my sanity intact.
Jay didn't say much, beyond what he got out the first day. But he was loyal as ever, silently appearing to see to my needs on a daily basis. Of course I could not like that he had to see me this way, and see so much of me this way, but the fact that he never referenced it made him a much more bearable – and therefore preferable – presence of aid, so I let him do as much as he volunteered to do lest someone else get the impression that I needed help.
There were some unforeseen effects, though, that manifested from the grudging bonding that inevitably took place between us during that time. I went to sleep at night – or drifted off during the day – and the familiar shores of fantasy that had been my beloved, deserted island, my personal paradise, for so long seemed to have made room for someone else. Jay was there, in my dreams – and not simply my deranged fever dreams anymore. My much more personable fantasies. The ones I had sheltered for so long, where the horses lived.
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