There was no hope on Earth for us.
20. Fever Dreams and Shadows
Emily
“Time. Distance. No matter.”
I heard Madame Wong’s voice, but it sounded far off. I opened my eyes, and the silvery-grey mist of the Netherworld surrounded me on all sides.
I began to walk, slowly at first, unsure if I had the strength to even move. But I was light on my feet, my energy restored. I picked up the pace to a run, and the cool air created by my motion felt good on my face.
“Mainly empty space.” The voice was muffled, but it was definitely Madame Wong.
“Madame Wong?” I called.
No answer. I couldn’t orient myself to the direction I should go to find her.
I didn’t stop to think how I’d gotten to the Netherworld. My heart leapt with joy to be back to a place that had been like a home to me. Back to my teacher.
“Madame Wong, where are you? I must speak to you. You have to help me.”
There was no answer, just more of the insubstantial fog of that virtually nonexistent place. I’d run for a long time, and my legs should have felt tired, but they weren’t. “The Netherworld is like that,” I told myself and continued to run.
“Choose where you want to be, and be there now,” I heard her say.
Ahead of me a small dark spot poked out of the mist. It was there, then gone. I turned to my right and thought I saw something, but as soon as it began to come into focus, it was gone.
“Madame Wong, please don’t play tricks on me,” I pled. “I must speak with you. It’s urgent. I’ll lose them all.”
“No think. No do. Just breathe,” she said.
I stopped in my tracks and did as she said. I closed my eyes, and I breathed.
“Please, Madame Wong. Please come to me.”
I opened my eyes, and there she was less than five feet away. She sat in meditation under a huge tree, her face old and withered and crinkly. But her face was so calm that she looked almost dead. Like I remember her.
“Madame Wong! Thank you,” I said. I began to walk toward her, my heart filled with such hope. Now I’ll find the answers. Now I can save Jake and my dad and Fanny.
I walked and walked, but my feet felt like they were in pudding. Each step I took got me no closer to her. I burned with heat. Sweat dripped down my neck, and my armpits were wet. Once again I ran, my legs pumping and my heart racing, but I got no closer to Madame Wong.
“Please! I must speak with you!”
She slowly opened her eyes, and they were entirely black like Ciardha’s.
“No!” I screamed.
I stopped running and stood still, my legs shaky. In an instant, a huge wave of turquoise-blue water swept over her, and Madame Wong and her tree were gone.
Tears welled in my eyes, and rain pelted down on me. My legs were once again in motion. They carried me forward, but to where I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to run to him. I had to save him.
“Emily!” he called.
“I’m here, Jake. I’m coming for you.”
“Hurry,” he cried.
The rain came down hard. It pelted me in the face and stung my eyes.
“I’m trying to find you. Where are you?”
“Reach for me,” he said. “Reach for me with your heart, and you’ll find me.”
I tried to do what he said, but I didn’t know how to reach with my heart. I was so tired of puzzles and games. I wanted him to hold me in his arms and let me cry out my pain onto his shoulder.
“I can’t find you,” I sobbed. “I’m trying, but I can’t.”
I was in the middle of a dark street. The asphalt shone like wet, black sealskin from the rain. I looked around and realized I was on my own street, standing in front of my house.
Home. I was home at last.
I began to run again. I was eager to lock myself inside and know the peace and warmth that you feel only in your own house. But my feet were again in pudding. My legs moved, but I got no closer to my door.
My heart pounded in my chest. Or was it the sound of the ocean? Was it salty tears I tasted or the wet of the sea? Was it the sound of my blood rushing in my ears or the deafening roar of a monstrous wave breaking?
I looked to my right and saw the wave, but it was too late. My legs were stuck in place by the glue that had prevented them from running. I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound escaped as I was swallowed by the pounding wave.
I felt my lungs fill with liquid, and it burned. I tried to gasp for air, but all I got was a mouth full of water. At first I felt myself flail and fight, but it made me so tired.
Jake is gone. Taken from you like all the others. Why fight?
“Emily! Come on, open your eyes,” a voice said.
It’ll hurt. It all hurts so much. Leave me be. Let me sleep.
“Stay with us, Red. Come on, girl. Open those pretty green eyes of yours,” he said.
I’m tired. Just let me rest.
I felt hands on my shoulders, and someone was shaking me.
“Leave off,” I said. That time the words didn’t get stuck inside my throat.
The shaking stopped, and the hands left my shoulders. But then I felt someone’s hand in mine.
“Stay with us,” she said.
“I’m so tired,” I said.
“I know. We all are. But you’ve still got work to do.”
I was wet and surrounded by water. I thought I’d had my eyes open, but when I blinked, I realized they had been closed. As soon as my eyes opened, a sharp pain shot through them from the bright light of the room.
I closed them up again and held them tightly shut. “Where am I?”
“You’re at your house and in your bathtub,” Greta said.
I gingerly opened one eye a sliver and tried to see around me. As I focused, I saw that what she said was true. I was, indeed, in my bathtub. I’d been stripped down to my underwear, and I could see my own pale, pink legs floating in the water.
“What the … Are you trying to drown me?”
“You were burning with fever,” Tristan said. “We had to dunk you in the cold water to get your fever down before you went into a coma or something.”
I tried to open my eyes again, but as I opened them, my eyes seared with pain.
“What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“It’s just the fever,” Greta said. “Keep your eyes closed, and try to rest. I’m going down to the kitchen to get you fresh water and maybe some broth or something. Tristan, talk to her, and keep her awake until I get back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
I did as she said and closed my eyes. The pain receded as I heard the wooden floor in the hallway creak when Greta walked on it.
“Just rest, Red. You took care of everybody else. Now it’s time we take care of you,” Tristan said.
“I just want … want sleep.”
“Stay awake now. You been sleeping enough.”
“So … tired.”
I felt myself drifting off to sleep, but Tristan wasn’t going to allow it. I felt a splash of cold water in my face that pulled me back from the brink of the dreamland I longed for.
“Stop,” I protested.
“Sorry to do that to ya, but ya gotta stay awake. Tell me what you dreamed in that long sleep of yours.”
“There was water and rain. I saw Jake, and I couldn’t reach him, and there was …”
“Yeah? There was what?”
“Madame Wong.”
“She that old lady in the Netherworld you talked about?”
“Yeah. And she was telling me things that puzzled me, and I got frustrated. But I felt like maybe if I could figure out what she was telling me, that maybe I’d get an answer to how to save Jake, my dad, and Fanny and the rest.”
Between the cold water and trying to think about what Madame Wong had said, I was less sleepy than I had been before. I wracked my brain trying to remember what Madame Wong had said. Her words didn’t make sense in
the dream, but maybe it would make sense if I could say it out loud while I was awake.
Tristan kept at me, asking me questions and trying to keep me awake. I appreciated what he was doing, but I just wanted to be alone so I could think about what Madame Wong had said.
I heard the steps creak as Greta came up. She had a tray in her hands, and on it were a bowl that steamed and a cup of watered-down juice. She set the tray down on the vanity, then came over to the tub, leaned down, and felt my forehead.
“You’re still burning up, but not as bad as before. Let’s get her out of the tub and dried off. Then you need to get some liquids inside you.”
“Look at that. Nurse Hoffman,” Tristan said.
Greta swatted his shoulder with the back of her hand, but I noticed she smiled back at him.
Tristan put his hand out to help me up. I was going to protest that I didn’t need his help, but as soon as I tried to stand up, it felt like my legs would give out on me. I leaned heavily on him as he put a hand around my waist, and Greta held onto my elbow to help me out of the tub. Greta wrapped me in a fluffy bathrobe that I didn’t know I had. I walked a few steps and almost fell. My legs were weak beneath me. Tristan picked me up and carried me to my bed.
“You need to get out of those wet underclothes before you catch pneumonia on top of everything else,” Greta said.
“No,” I protested. “The cold feels good against my skin.”
“But–” Greta began to say.
“Leave her be,” Tristan said. “Her skin’s so hot, it will dry those clothes out in no time. ’Sides, you’ve got her wrapped in that grandma-lookin’ robe thing. Looks like she’s in a cocoon.”
“It’s hot,” I said.
“You need to be hot. You need to sweat the fever out. And eat. Here, I found an old can of soup buried at the back of your pantry. Eat and drink the juice too.”
I didn’t want to eat the watered-down sodium that came out of the soup can, and I didn’t want to drink juice either. I wanted to strip off that stupid robe and sleep some more. But Greta wasn’t taking no for an answer. I lifted the spoon to my mouth and grudgingly sucked in a bite. All the noodles had settled to the bottom like they always do, so the bite was all broth. It tasted surprisingly good. I reached for another bite, then another. The small bit of food hitting my stomach reminded it to be hungry, and it began to growl so loud, I figured Fanny could hear it in the Umbra Perdita.
“See. You were hungry,” Greta said.
I didn’t say anything and kept eating. Finally my reward for eating all the broth was the cache of noodles at the bottom of the bowl.
After I ate all my soup and forced down the watery juice, I lay back and hoped that they’d leave me to rest and try to remember what Madame Wong had said. But neither Tristan nor Greta made any move to go. They’d taken care of me, maybe even saved my life. It felt rude to shoo them away.
Greta thrust a thermometer in my mouth, took the reading, and declared, “Good. One hundred and two point four.”
“That’s good?” I asked. “What was it before?”
“Over a hundred and four. We didn’t wait to see how high it would go. We just got you into the cold bath,” she said.
“Look, I’m fine now. You two don’t have to hover at my bedside. It looks like I’ll live.”
“You in a hurry to get rid of us?” asked Greta.
“No, it’s just that I’ve got some thinking to do.”
“Thinking is overrated,” said Tristan.
Greta rolled her eyes at him.
“Usually I’d agree with you, T,” I said. “But I’ve got to try to remember what happened in that dream.”
“Why?” asked Greta. “It was just a fever dream. They’re always weird and seem full of meaning when you’re dreaming it, but then you wake up, and it’s just your brain combining a bunch of random stuff. They have no meaning.”
“Yeah,” said Tristan. “Like in your dream you be trippin’ on something and smokin’ with caterpillars and shit; then you wake up, and you’re just all wrapped up in your sheets.”
“Exactly,” said Greta.
“But this dream … it wasn’t like that. I mean, it was, especially at the end. But Madame Wong. She was there, and she was talking to me and trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t make sense of it, and if I could only talk to her, she’d help us through this mess and–”
“And what?” asked Greta.
“That’s it!”
“What’s it?” asked Tristan. He and Greta exchanged a look that said, “Uh oh, maybe the fever has scrambled her brain.”
“I’ve got to go to Ireland.” I threw off the covers and began to get up. “I’ve got to open the portal at the Sacred Well and go to the Netherworld and see Madame Wong and …”
As I began to get up, Tristan put out a meaty club of a hand and pushed me back to my bed. “Whoa, hold up there, Red. You’re not going anywhere right now.”
“Yeah, and you sure as hell aren’t going to Ireland.”
“Yes, I am. That’s where I opened the portal the first time. I’ve got to get to the Sacred Well and open the portal again so I can get to the Netherworld and talk to Madame Wong.”
“Well, maybe you should go to the Netherworld – when you’re better. But you can’t get there by going to Ireland. You’ll have to find another way.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you watch the news?” asked Tristan.
I shook my head. I hadn’t watched the news for months. Even before the Apocalypse, the evening news was like a half-hour parade of horrors that I rarely tuned into. But after we came back from the Umbra Perdita, it got worse. And because I could see auras, it became increasingly frightening because each day it was like more and more people were haloed in black. Finally I shut the television off and stopped opening the paper.
“Ireland closed its borders,” Greta said. “No one gets out or in.”
“Since when?”
“About a month ago,” answered Greta.
I thought about it for a minute. “I can go by boat. Stowaway on a cargo ship or something. They’ve gotta allow cargo shipments, right?”
Tristan shook his head.
“Not even cargo?”
“Nope,” Tristan said.
“So unless one of your magical powers is the ability to swim across the Atlantic Ocean, you need to put Ireland out of your head,” said Greta.
I couldn’t blame Ireland for closing its borders. Since Ciardha planted himself in Chicago, the spread of the dark virus was worst there. If we could have plotted it on a map, we’d probably have seen a big, black smudge centered around Chicago, with dark fingers spreading out from there across the globe. America had seen the worst of it, but it would continue to spread until the map would be entirely dark.
The Irish probably thought that if they closed their country to outsiders, they could keep the black virus out. But it didn’t work that way. The Dark Energy didn’t respect borders. It didn’t travel by plane or boat. The darkness was already with them, they just didn’t know it yet.
“There for a minute, I had some hope,” I said. I woke from my long sleep still exhausted and aching in every inch of me, but my dream had given me hope that maybe, if I could just talk with my old master, she could help me find the way. But if I couldn’t even get to her …
“Don’t lose hope, Red,” Tristan said.
“Too late,” I replied.
“Now, don’t go bein’ like that, all pouty. That’s Blondie’s job.”
Greta didn’t say anything to that. I can’t believe she’s letting that one fly by her.
“Why do you need to be in Ireland to go to another dimension anyway? That can’t be the only place you can catch a train to la-la land, is it?”
“No,” said Greta, “it’s not.”
“How do you know?” I asked. My voice came out with more bite to it than I’d intended.
“I’m no priestess, but I’m not stupid. And I recall tha
t you opened a portal here. Don’t you?”
“The cemetery,” I said.
“Yes.”
“But that was a disaster. I don’t want a repeat.”
“It was a disaster because you opened the portal in the cemetery and you were with Owen, who was under Ciardha’s spell. That’s why we ended up in the Umbra Perdita.”
“True, but–”
“But nothing. If you created a portal in our neighborhood before, you can do it again.”
“But that was before Ciardha’s shadow haunted us. That was when I had Fanny and Jake with me. I remember that I had a lot of trouble trying to open a portal, and it wasn’t working. But then they showed up, and it was like their energy fed into me, and I was able to do it. It’s like without them, I’m …”
Hot tears came to my eyes, but I forced myself not to let them loose. I am a Priestess of Brighid. I have to show them I’m strong.
Tristan sat at the foot of the bed, his large body covering my feet. It was making them roast, but I didn’t complain about it. Tristan reached for one of my hands and held it in his. “I’ll be there with you. You can use some of my energy.”
Greta moved closer to the side of the bed and took my other hand. “Me too,” she said.
“Greta, you’ve been mean to me since the first grade. Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?”
Her face got a wounded look on it, and she began to open her mouth to protest, but I cut her off.
“Don’t look offended or deny it. You’re the one who started the whole ‘freak girl’ thing.”
“I know. And I’m sorry about that. Truly, I am.”
Greta Hoffman sorry?
I looked at Tristan. “Did an alien take over her body while I was asleep?”
Tristan chuckled. “Nah.”
“Look, I’m trying to make amends with you, but you’re making it hard not to fall back into bitch mode.”
I had a tendency to do that with Greta. It was like we’d been playing our roles so long, it was hard to try on a different role with each other.
“Sorry. I’ll try to not be so defensive with you. It’s just …”
The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series Page 65
