A/N: Thanks for the reviews ShiningxXxShadowxXxThief and ShearViscosity! I really appreciate everyone who reads and takes the time to review :) Also, I wanted to let you guys know ShearViscosity and I started a Hollow Kingdom forum called the Hallow Hill Lodge. We hope to have activities like challenges, ficship competitions, discussions, etc. If you're interested participating and giving imput, please be sure to check out the forum.
Chapter 9
Helen opened her eyes expecting to be awake in her bedroom. She was only half right.
This part of the dream felt different. It was darker. The only source of light came in the form of a moonbeam that shined through the window and onto the masked man. Instead of the blurry and disjointedness from just a few seconds ago, everything seemed so crisp and real, particularly the feel of Mr. Aganir's hand on her face, his breath against her skin, and the heady scent of trees and earth that filled her nose.
It didn't begin to take on the dream aspect again until he used the green cloak as a doorway into the Hollow Lake village.
After stepping into a pair of slippers, Helen walked right through the hanging garment and out onto the street outside the hospital where she volunteered as a nurse's aide. The early November snow crunched under her slippers and sparkled in the orange glow of the street lights. Mr. Aganir took the cloak down from where it hung in the air and wrapped it around Helen. Then he pulled a small leather bag out of his tunic. From it, he drew out a long piece of green clothe like a magician performing a magic trick. The cloth turned out to be another cloak, which he wrapped around his shoulders and lifted the hood over his head, covering his already masked face in shadow.
"Are you ready?" he asked.
Helen led the way into the hospital. Like in any dream, no doors were locked for them. The building was quiet. Only a few lights shined here and there so the small night staff could see as they changed bandages and administered medication.
"May I help you?" a nurse asked as they walked into one of the large rooms with rows and rows of beds filled with wounded. This woman seemed to be in charge of the whole lot of sleeping or dozing patients.
Before Helen could speak, her companion stepped forward.
"Our being here isn't a problem," Mr. Aganir said. "You think it's the most natural thing in the world. In fact, this is so mundane, you don't want to waste the energy remembering us at all in the morning. You want to go about your business just like this was any other night."
The nurse smiled and nodded, returning to her tasks.
The sea of broken bodies and bandages had become a familiar sight to Helen. It was the cloaked figure beside her who seemed troubled and agitated, asking question after question as they walked down the rows.
"Miss Kirk." The girl turned to see Freddie Hayter calling to her from his bed a few rows down.
Helen hurried to the side of the man and inspected his bandages. "How is your arm?" she asked. "Your wound hasn't reopened again, has it?"
"Not since you checked it this morning," Mr. Hayter said with a wince. "I've never seen you here this late before."
"Are you complaining?" Mr. Aganir asked.
"No, just curious is all," he said. "I've never seen you here before."
"You still haven't. I'm not really here. Just a dream. But why don't you tell me how you got here."
"After I get some water in me, I'm parched."
Helen was about to move to get the pitcher from across the room, only to find it already in her hands.
Mr. Hayter had been in the hospital just as long as she had been in the area. His family died in a bombing over Finchley. Only he survived. The war had taken his son, his wife, and most of his right arm.
Helen moved on from patient to patient, changing bloody bandages, providing water, and listening to war stories she had heard quite a few times before. Mr. Aganir followed her through the trail of sickness and pain, sometimes helping with injuries and sometimes making the patients laugh with some silly joke that did them just as much good.
The pair soon reached Henry Doyle, a boy the same age as Helen. His youth reminded her painfully of her brother, Edmund, who had run away intending to enlist. She hoped her brother hadn't met with the same fate as her patient, or one worse.
A month after Henry ran away to war, the war sent Henry right back home. At least, most of him. The boy left half his leg behind. But he seemed much more concerned that he contributed so little time to the cause.
"I'm telling you, if I'd had another week, or another full month," Henry said, "it all would have been different. I would have known what I was about and they never would've gotten me. I would've been a hero, let me tell you."
"Or you could've stayed home," Helen said, helping the patient sit up to drink some water. She wished to God Edmund had just stayed home.
"But 'civil defense is the duty of the citizen,'" he quoted one of the war posters with a wry smile.
"What do you have to say about, 'Leave it to us sonny'?"
"'Mother England needs you. Enlist here now!'" The boy's laugh turned into a hacking cough.
Helen was about to admonish him even further, but Mr. Aganir interrupted her.
"You're weak, my friend," the hooded man said, sitting on a low stool beside Helen and placing his hand on the boy's forehead.
In an instant, Henry's eyes closed.
"Why chastise him now?" Aganir asked. "I would say he has paid for his choice enough."
"He needs to face reality," she replied.
"He'll be facing a reality without his leg soon enough. He's too fresh from this war to truly realize his situation. Let him be as happy as he can be until that reality comes crashing down on him. It looks like fantasies of a stolen glory that was almost his are the only things keeping his spirits up."
"Fantasies don't do anyone any good." Helen felt another round of drowsiness fall over her. Strange, since this was a dream. "If we all frittered our lives away on fantasies, nothing would get done."
He nodded, lowering the green hood and studying her. "You're very hardened for someone so young."
Those dark eyes looked serious for once, for which Helen was grateful.
"I haven't heard from Mum since we all got here and that was more than a month ago. I'm trying not to say anything to the boys, but I'm scared. What if the reason we're not hearing anything is because she's dead? Dad and Edmund too? And here I am, trapped in the country with not one thing I can do about any of it."
Helen found that her head was now learning against his shoulder and Aganir's arm was wrapped around the girl. Her eyes struggled not to close.
"What could beauty offer this poor girl?" he whispered almost to himself. "Nothing but a distraction, just some fun."
Aganir clasped one of Helen's hands in his.
"There is something beauty can do for you," he said.
"Beauty," the girl repeated remembering Mr. Marak's words to her the first night they met about power and beauty fighting over her. Helen's tired brain tried to turn it all over to figure it out but all she could think was her dream must be picking up the cue from there.
"Good health and happiness make life beautiful," he said. "I will give you the power to bestow those gifts on others."
The hand he held began to tingle and Helen looked up at him questioningly. But before she could speak, her eyelids lost the struggle and fell shut.
