Oblivion is slow to unravel. Sensation trickles into me like drops of moisture down the threads of a spider web. A hard surface pushes relentlessly against my back, the ends of my (I think) broken ribs ticking the outside of my lungs. I can't pull my hands apart. Everything hurts.
Open your eyes.
Can't. Hurts.
Trust me. You need. To open. Your eyes.
Formless shadow and light swirl above me, sharp claws dragging over my skin and weighing my limbs down with a dull, toxic ache. Pinpricks of light dance like fairies on the periphery of my blurry vision. I chase them with heavy eyes, trying in vain to separate them from the hood-and-lantern heads circling above me.
Focus. FOCUS—
"Sleep, pet. It will be over soon."
A cotton-ball blackness stitches over my head like a shroud. I flail without moving; my screams of protest are stolen from my lips and silenced. Oh God—no, no, no no nononononono—
Fenris—
The nightmare is waiting for me. I barely feel the gritty shingles through the sleeping bag and extra blanket. The red-and-green plaid flannel pajamas are itchy against my skin with surplus heat and exposed elastic, but it's Christmas Eve. I'm gonna wear my red-and-green plaid flannel pajamas. Half-asleep and sweaty, I roll the wrong way. I scrape my hand against the shingles trying to catch myself, too late. No one's going to catch me. No one's coming to save me. All that's left is the plunge, and—
Something arrests my instinctive flailing, and I jerk into full consciousness. Tension pulls insistently against my repeated attempts to tug myself into a sitting position. My wrists and ankles are wrapped in strong leather cuffs, attached by nylon straps to rails on either side of me. The twin mattress barely has enough room for me, and I can feel the coarse thread of the stiff sheets against my bare calves, through the thin cotton nightgown.
"I apologize for the restraints, but I am afraid they are necessary for your safety."
From the corner of my eye I catch movement. A pale, humanoid shape slowly resolves into a woman, white coat snapping smartly around her knees. She approaches with deliberate calm, the way you're supposed to with a wild animal. Her hands are cool as she slides my glasses crookedly onto my face. I awkwardly contort myself so I can straighten them with one hand, still chained to the bed rail.
My companion isn't a pretty woman, now that I can see her clearly. Her sharp, narrow features are framed by hair the color of dead leaves. Blue-white eyes assess my bound prostration with cool interest, and something ugly flashes over her mouth, thin-lipped and concealed beneath a dark layer of lipstick. I'd call it a smile, except it reminds me too much of something forgotten and monstrous at the bottom of a cold ocean. "You may call me Dr. H," she continues. "I'm here to oversee your rehabilitation."
Slow tears spring from the cracks in my inner bedrock like tar. There has to be a benign explanation, some other reason for why I'm chained to a bed for my own safety. For why I'm being rehabilitated. I'm not—I can't be—
But there is only one reason for this woman-this woman to be here, exuding about as much human warmth and professional compassion as did the glacier that sank the Titanic. I've been flirting with it for almost six months now. I've let it swirl around my feet like an undertow, believing myself safe as long as I don't stray too far from shore. But I've stumbled. I've been dragged under.
I am drowning.
A keening, white-capped wail begins to build in my throat. I tug futilely against my restraints; there isn't enough give for me to pull inwards, to bury my face in the privacy of my knees and howl. I yank. I roll. I pitch to and fro on the mattress like a ship in a screaming gale. Except it's me screaming. A quick sting of pressure squeezes into my right arm, somewhere above my elbow. The edges begin to blur, and I sag limply against the mattress. The darkness pours over me, and I slip beneath it gratefully, tasting salt and copper.
Fen—
Time is useless; any attempt to measure its passage is futile. My body finds a new rhythm, veering erratically on a cycle of extremes. The narrow bed quakes with the force of my weeping. The sound invariably attracts attention; hood-and-lantern shadows seem to undulate across the floor, and I am quickly silenced by swift needles bearing gifts. This must be how gods grieve: the violent upheaval in the natural current and flow of me feels too big for any mere human to endure. I learn to pray again: I pray for the numbing slumber, for the crush of oblivion. My hand sometimes is pinched between the rail and the mattress, caught reaching for a lean, warm body. I wake myself with a yelp. I remember where I am. I remember the reason I'm here. That lean, warm body-it never was. And the whole cycle starts over.
Weep. Submit to the needle. Sleep.
Dr. H. makes a noise from her corner. Chains rattle, and the tension holding me in place on the mattress is abruptly released. My eyes fill with a stinging mist of tears as pins and needles tease sensation back into my numbed extremities. Dr. H offers me a set of clean hospital pajamas as a swap for the crumpled nightgown. Two orderlies stare through me with professional detachment, and I self-consciously turn toward the wall in a pitiful bid for privacy. The creases in the lightweight cotton pants smooth into obscurity as I shake my legs into them.
Dr. H. pulls phrases out of the heavy fog still clouding my senses: I stare fixedly at her dark lips and try put "risk", "formula", and "dependency" in the right order. She beckons me closer, and I shuffle forward, shying away like a horse when she attempts to loop her arm through mine. The orderlies stand to attention behind me, but Dr. H. soothes them with a lazy flick of her manicured fingers. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder a few paces behind, trailing us like watchdogs as Dr. H. leads me into the hallway.
All my tiny separate worlds have collided like dying planets. They're all the same place, now. They're white tile hallways and fluorescent lights. They're sea-foam green paint and the sterile reek of potent disinfectant.
A dagger-sharp pain twists through my chest, and I drop to my knees, gasping. The sting is familiar by now, as the orderlies flank me and lift me with hands that are neither gentle nor painful. Dr. H. blows a sigh through her nose and stares at my limp form with half-lidded disinterest. "We'll try again later," she decides.
My toes drag across the tile floor as the orderlies escort me back the way we came. My head lolls like a rag doll's from shoulder to shoulder; my senses warp and turn everything upside down. The twin mattress feels as yielding as wood, unfamiliar sheets abrasive against my skin. The bars in the south-facing window keep shadows and light in their places; I can't get the thought out of my mind that if I let those black bars touch me, I'll never be able to leave. The sights and sounds and smells of this place—they aren't mine. They aren't home.
For that alone, I hate them.
Consciousness is floating atop a tar-black surface, spinning in slow circles as if caught in a gentle current. Dr. H. watches me from the bedside; she sends me under and pulls me back up gasping. The air squeezes in and out of my lungs, as though breathing against a vice around my ribs, until I weep tears that burn and my mouth fills with the acidic tang of copper.
Once. I dare to ask her once if perhaps I should be moved, to someplace with different beds and machines that beep with my pulse to let me know I'm still alive. She only smiles that cold-thing smile, vicious underneath her dark lipstick. One of the orderlies moves. The needles dig beneath my skin, and I slip under once again. The pain in my chest fades-it doesn't go away; it just stops being so important.
I think—I think nothing is important. Not anymore.
Dr. H. stops trying to walk the halls with me; I can't take more than a few steps before I double over in agony. Even when supine, all but the shallowest inhalations burn and scream. She reclines in the chair beside my narrow bed, just watching me. We don't talk, we don't interact at all. This feels less like rehab and more like a vigil. I surface long enough to tell her as much. "Gallows humor," I explain, smiling wanly through the familiar knives-and-corset ache.
She stands calmly and motions for the orderlies to follow. "It's time," she sighs resignedly.
I can't acknowledge their departure with anything more active than confused blinking. Dr. H. glances over her shoulder at my prone, hurting shell, silhouetted by the sheet. "A pity," she remarks as she closes the door behind her. A lock slides into place with a resonant click, and I am alone.
That can't mean anything good.
This? This is why I'm here in the first place. I gingerly roll off the bed and find a spot on the floor where the shadow bars won't touch me. Sweat beads on my forehead, and I collapse onto the cool floor in gratitude. I stare at the door, waiting for Dr. H. to realize her orderlies didn't dose me before they left. I glance warily at the shadow bars, reassured when I realize they're moving away from me. I tap my fingertip against the grayish flecks embedded in the white tile, counting them like upside-down stars until my eyelids grow heavy.
Emmett was thirteen that year. Much too old to still believe in Santa, but he was a good enough brother to let Helena and me cling to the childish dream without too much grumbling. He even read The Night Before Christmas to us. The sleeping bag-that was my idea, even though Emmett got in big trouble for it later no matter what I said later to exonerate him. I wanted to see him first.
My palm stings where I scraped it trying to steady myself. The sleeping bag twists around me, trapping my leg in the absolute worst possible position. White-hot shock ripples through my immature bone, and I snap. Poppy's deck is cold, and gritty with sand blown from the nearby shore. I can't move. I can't even breathe.
I've landed. I NEVER land.
The wooden planks creak under the weight of an urgent stride. I find my voice—a wordless cry of fright, confusion and pain—and two slippered feet sniff me out like faithful hounds. Leather and hand-rolled cigarettes bathe me in safety, calloused hands gently untangling me from the sleeping bag and lifting me in arms not yet wasted by disease.
"I f-fell," I hiccup, well on my way to full-fledged, heaving sobs. "Poppy, I fell."
"I know, baby," he soothes me. "You're safe now-I've got you."
The tile under my cheek is clammy with the heat of my body; my skin pulls and sticks to the flat surface as I struggle to a sitting position. The shadow bars climb the wall above the bed, black against ghostly blue moonlight. Everything else is dark, an oil-slick of night poured into sharp-edged molds of walls, floor and ceiling. My chest almost—almost—doesn't hurt, for the moment. But there are dark spots peppering the white tile, spots that smear when I brush them with my fingers.
That's—"Not good," I murmur. I am afraid to try standing; cautiously I slide onto my hands and knees and crawl forward. The crown of my head gently bumps against the door, and I lift my hand to the knob. The cold metal crumbles in my fingers like sand gone too long without the kiss of the sun, and the door swings open.
Brilliant sunlight spills across the floor in a wash of gold. The reading chair beside the window is surrounded by stacks of books, high enough so a child can easily reach what she wants. A pair of crutches rests forgotten on the floor next to the bed, where a small shape rises and falls with the regularity of painless breathing beneath the butter-and-lavender quilt—
Jesus H. tap-dancing Christ. Now I know I've lost it.
"Hi," the little girl greets me from behind a pair of round glasses too large for her face. Green eyes peek curiously through a tousled fringe of reddish-brown bangs. God I hated that haircut. "Hand me—please hand me my crutches," she remembers her manners. "I have to show you something."
Metal and foam stay solid in my hand as I pass her (me) the child-sized crutches. She throws back the quilt, revealing one normal left leg, and a right leg encased in a heavy cast from the knee down. One name is scrawled in black sharpie down the length of her shin; I know it was important because she practiced all three parts on scrap paper before Mom let her have the marker.
Helena Grace Cambell. My baby sister wanted to be the first one to sign my cast. So she was. And I will never ever tell her she spelled her own last name wrong.
The Girl (I can't call her by my own name; I'm barely holding it together as it is) hops in an awkward circle, until she can sit on the floor beside the bed with her legs stuck straight out in front of her. She pulls a black case from underneath the bed and nudges it toward me with her uninjured leg. "I can't reach the zippers all the way around," she admits, scowling at her cast. I tug on the tabs obligingly, even though she (I) didn't say please. At her (my) direction I hold open the top of the case so she can reach the bow more easily. She frowns in deep concentration as she tightens the stainless steel nut at the end, small fingers brushing a web of white lines that look like a dragon, wings outstretched. She strokes the taut horsehair over the resin block, insisting, "You have to do it like this, or it won't sound right. Poppy said." She lifts the compact, curving body to her shoulder, and gently pulls the bow across the strings.
It's like listening to whales sing from above the ocean's surface. Tears spill over my lashes unbidden, and there's a bonfire ache in my chest I don't understand. It's just noise—incomprehensible, strange, beautiful noise. Why do I want nothing more than to cry until I am empty, of everything but this sound? The top of the case flops into my lap as I wrap my arms around my chest and squeeze until it hurts. Jesus God I've MISSED this—where did this GO—?
An incongruous splash of white glares against the dark plush at the bottom of the case, pages bound together by a spiral of wire. My heart drops into my stomach like a lump of ash as I lift it, fingers trembling. It wasn't real. It wasn't. This cannot be.
And yet—
I thumb through the pages, breath coming in short, panicky gasps. Each page is a sketch, and each sketch is a moment. I stop at random, and I live it again. Every second, every smile, every impossible rushes to patch the ragged holes in my self. I remember. But they can't both be real—that place and him too—
No. They can't.
But my chest—I was coughing up—
Blood. Exactly. Remember why.
"Now you try."
I curl my fingers around the neck of the violin. My violin. A dark, frenetic melody burns against the pads of my fingers as I slice the dragon bow over the strings. One name howls through me, composing its own song of love and rage and danger—
Fenris.
Oh God—Fenris!
With a rip and a crash, and a sound you'd feel if every cell in your body were made of crystal, the song screams across fact and fiction, and shatters them both.
