He peeled away the moss covering and replaced it with Jude’s quilt. “This ought to be cleaner, and warmer,” he said softly.
She pushed the quilt back with a weak hand and looked at her chest—at the green and yellow compress. She touched it lightly. It felt warm. “I don’t understand,” she said, frowning. “Arcane—”
Swamp Thing nodded, smiling, his eyes moist. “Arcane with his terrible swift sword. Leave that there a while. It’s healing.”
“You killed him?” she asked.
“Yes, I certainly did. Chopped him in two.” He laughed.
“Is that what’s got you in such a good mood?”
He was lying beside her, his head propped by an elbow. A tear ran sideways down his cheek, traveling slowly like molasses, and touched his hand. “No,” he said, wiping it away. He noticed that her smiling eyes were studying his face—his hideous overblown burned-out green face—and he sat up to turn away from her.
“What did I say? What’s wrong?” she asked.
His mind foraged for alternatives. He would have given his life to find something that would change things, something he had overlooked in his hours of thinking and dreaming.
“It’s over,” he said.
By his tone of voice she knew he was not referring to Arcane. “Alec—no. Let me stay with you. We’ll find a way to start your work again.”
He spun around on his knees and faced her, holding out his giant hands. “With these?” he asked angrily. Then he calmed himself and sat back on his heels. “With these?” he asked again, matter-of-factly.
She raised herself to one elbow. “I’ll be your hands.”
He smiled sadly and shook his head. His big right hand reached out and touched her hair.
“Alec—please!”
He said, “You need . . . you need to heal. You need to look at the world again.”
Tears came to her eyes. “I can’t leave you alone.”
“I won’t be alone,” he said. “Not the way I was—never again, thanks to you.”
He got to his feet and did not look down at her.
“Alec!” she cried.
“I’ll see you again,” he said, still riveted to the spot.
Cable felt desperate, but she could not think what to say. In her mind’s eye she saw the handsome man in the blue boat who had taken her out to show her his world.
The huge, vine-entangled creature who stood over her, his back to her, ran a hand across his face and then walked quickly away toward the edge of the domed clearing.
She sat up and watched him moving through the shadowy trunks and into the gathering late-afternoon mist.
There was a sound nearby; something was moving in the underbrush. Cable’s heart raced; it would take her a long time to rid herself of jumpiness and sudden terrors.
Jude stepped into the clearing. With his tool box in one hand and a blue box of bandages in the other, he looked a little like a small doctor.
Cable smiled at him. “Jude,” she said simply.
The boy opened his box and extracted a Coke. He snapped off the cap and handed it to her. “The big guy tol’ me to come get you.” His eyes widened at the sight of blood dried all over her dress. “You okay?”
Cable’s nod was all she could manage for him. She was staring out into the mist.
Alec was part of the life of the wilderness now and almost immune to its dangers. Man was the danger to him, as man was the danger to the swamp. He would study the songs of birds and the cycles of ferns and the habits of dragonflies.
He would learn to read the wind.
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