Jet was carried grimly back to Baskar Colony. A stretcher was crudely constructed of long tree branches and strong linen under Gallows' direction and four strong Baskar men were assigned to carry it, even though the task did not require much strength at all. It was one of the physical ways that the colony was willing to show their gratitude to Jet. Jenny's father, Leo, was one of the men that carried him home.

The boy spent the time in travel either asleep, or resting in a state of semi-consciousness. It was understandable, regarding all that he had gone through. They walked back the entire way, because if the Maxwell Gang would have chosen to use their horses, Jet and the others would have invariably been left behind. Virginia was always at the stretcher's side, sometimes holding Jet's hand. Clive and Gallows lagged behind, bringing up the company's rear. Jenny was forced to stay in the middle of the entourage, so she could be watched at all times. They didn't want her disappearing all over again.

The pool of larval insects had been taken care of before they left the Zenom mountains. Virginia had not hesitated to tell the others about it, particularly how disgusting it was. She discovered that Jet had been drenched because he had swum through that dark moving waters, and she could not conceive of how he had done such a thing. It was just so gross. In any case, the Baskar rescue team made short work of those leech-like cretins, pouring a nice strong layer of flammable lamp oil over the pool and the setting it aflame with a fire arcana. The larvae did not stand a chance. No second generation of giant blood-seeking mosquito would ever rise again.

Virginia had managed to traverse the deepest darkest tunnels of the monster's lair without a torch in a very ingenious and inventive way. Like Jet, she had stumbled blindly in the pitch blackness for what seemed like a huge expanse of time, the only thing giving her minute flashes of the ground beneath her feet was her faithful tinder crest. It was all a matter of trial and error, and slow, careful movement.

When she had reached the pool of water the girl had thrown some small elemental gems right before the dip of the earth crept into the pond, and had turned them into large clear buoyant blocks, using her change crest. She had pushed them into the blindness before her and used them like a rickety bridge, sailing over it on her wind crest. Her tools had helped her in a way that the torch couldn't have.

The two men in her team spoke softly about their wasted time in the tunnels. Clive and Gallows had chosen paths that had appeared to lead away from one another, but in actuality had been the beginning and ending of one long circular path. It had arched around the main monster den in a perfect circle. The two had met each other in the expansive dark, the light of their torches giving each other's location away. Despite this, they met face to face with their ARMs drawn at each other's head, in case they were an enemy. Knowing that their selection had been a failure, Clive with his sharp ears had heard voices coming from one of the tunnel walls, and so had done the one thing that seemed sensible. He blew it up.

It had all been so perfectly timed, almost as if a Guardian had had a hand in the making. Because they had all been together as one, Jet's life had been spared. Any less and they would not have been able to save him. Virginia hoped that Jet would have a kind word to say to them once he had become fully conscious.

Along the way a trained medicine woman performed a quick diagnostic of Jet's condition. She could not do much more until they got back to the colony. As she checked the boy over, her expression grew ever more serious. From that point, she left Jet alone. Virginia didn't like that very much, although she spied the woman speaking to Leo at one point in their soft and musical native tongue, whispering so she could not hear.

A lot had happened. By the time they reached the boundary of the colony the morning had become the hot afternoon, the large Filgaian sun burning like a bright orb in the sky. No time was wasted, as soon as their procession came to a stand still in the middle of the village, Jet was confiscated by a small team of tribal doctors and was taken away. The medicine woman from before joined them. When Virginia tried to follow, two of the men who had been carrying the stretcher reached out and restrained her.

"Hey!" She cried, trying to rip her arms away from their strong grip. "Let me go! I have to go see Jet!" Shane approached the group gracefully from his home, looking particularly worried. Virginia glanced towards him desperately, hoping for salvation. "Shane, please! Make them let me go!"

Shane raised a hand and offered her a wan little smile, trying to calm her down. "Leo sent a carrier hawk and contacted us ahead of time, about Jet's condition. I'm sorry to hear what has happened to him. He seemed to be doing so well before." He paused for a moment and then frowned, seeing his older brother and Clive loitering about the council stone. They knew they had done all that they could do. How could he explain to Virginia the same thing? "The doctors need to have their time with him, and they cannot be disturbed. I'm sorry Virginia, but for now you have to consider Jet typically off-limits. Grandmother is in there too, heading the secondary diagnostic and treatment, so don't think of it as total strangers taking care of him."

Virginia had stopped struggling a little while earlier, so the two Baskars had let go. She stepped away from him, towards Shane. Slowly she brought her arm back, rolling the joint in its socket. Suddenly she looked incredibly, innumerably exhausted, many years older than her beautiful nineteen year old self. She didn't need a doctor to tell her just how sick Jet was, she had seen it in his haunted stares, had felt it in the weight of his tiring body, and more than any of that, she had been there when Jet had first tried to give up his ghost.

She just wanted to be there for him while she still could.

Her words were the total opposite of her inner feelings. "I understand." She said quietly, looking the boy in the face, her eyes hard. The very way she looked at him seemed to be some kind of veiled attack. "I shouldn't let how I feel get in the way of what you need to do. Jet's tough, he should be able to pull through just fine, even if I am not there. In fact, I bet he'd prefer it this way."

Slowly, in the way that an innocent bystander reaches out to pet a wild animal, Shane extended his hand and tentatively grasped Virginia's. He really did look sincere to her, and she felt bad about holding such abrupt negative feelings towards him, just because he had separated Jet from her. There was a perfectly good reason for it. "I'm sure that he'd prefer to have you by his side." The youth soothed, the dark skin tone of his hand a contrast to Virginia's pristine white glove. "As soon as Grandmother says it's alright for him to have visitors, or, as soon as he asks for you, I'll come get you right away. Is that okay?"

The hurt look in Virginia's eyes had faded, now all that was left seemed to be tiredness, and within that, a sense of gratitude. She squeezed Shane's hand. "Thanks." She whispered, her throat feeling tight. "Come call me at any time. I don't mind."

"I'll do that." Shane replied, bowing respectfully to her. As he straightened up again, he let go of her hand. "I have to go. Grandmother will get upset if her assistant isn't around to hand her tools and things. She can be like that sometimes. You should go get some rest, you look tired. Gallows will let you all use our house." He turned to leave.

He was almost at the door when Virginia called out Shane's name, from seemingly a long distance away. It felt like a hundred miles. "Shane!" She called, this time without a waver in her tone. She seemed to be in control again. "Take good care of him!"

The young Baskar priest tilted his head back and smiled at her, nodding once before opening the door and slipping inside. When the door slid to a close Virginia could see that a note had been tacked to the outside, written in esoteric Baskar hieroglyphs. Later on in the evening Gallows had told her what it had said over dinner, a hastily put together meal of maize and other vegetables. Virginia had hardly eaten a bite.

"It's… it's like a special prayer." He tried to say, rubbing his chin. It was hard for him to find the right english words in order to describe something so innately Baskarian. It lets everybody in the colony know that somebody of importance and virtue is in dire need, somebody like Jet. You gotta know that saving Jenny's life is an incredibly big thing. Why, if Granny were to kick the bucket tomorrow, Leo would be a popular candidate for Chieftain, other than Shane, 'o course. He's still a little too young for that kind of responsibility, though. Where was I?"

"The special prayer." Clive answered him, nursing a mug of beer.

"Right. Well, the prayer. It's bigger than a regular prayer. The whole colony will pray as one, for Jet. It's one of the ways we're going to repay him for risking his life like that, selflessly, even though he knew that he was sick. I talked to a few of my other buds, they all reckon what he did was pretty damn amazing." Gallows took a bite out of his food, chewing thoughtfully. "Who'da thunk it?"

Virginia had thought about it. She did not believe it, not that much. Jet had not rushed out to save Jenny just because she was a fair maiden in distress and the daughter of a major figure in the colony, that just wasn't him. The word 'virtue' had never really figured much into Jet's vocabulary. More likely, Jet had risked his life because that was what he had become used to doing. It was old habit. When that habit had begun to slip out of his hands and his last chance at grabbing it again had come up, he did not let it get away. The fact that this time his risk-taking would certainly claim his life was a mere footnote in his scope of things.

Jet was such an idiot.

The grip on her glass of water tightened considerably. Idiot! She would write the words 'idiot' all over his grave. How could he have thrown himself to the wolves when he knew, he knew that she loved him so? Was he trying to leave her life in ruin?

She got a hold of herself quickly. Jet had not planned this. None of them had. He had acted in the only way he knew how, he had acted like a drifter. She was a drifter too, so she should have been able to understand. If Virginia had been in Jet's position, would she have done the same? Well, she admitted to herself that she probably would have, albeit in a more level-headed way. It all boiled down to something savagely simple; Jet had saved somebody, and now they were going to try and save him in return.

She wondered how he was doing, if he was awake.

xxx

In the night Virginia dreamed of Jet.

It had been like that night three weeks ago, when Jet had tried to pull the three tall spears out of the ground with one hand, humming a faintly childlike tune. She had been sitting down on the council stone absent-mindedly brushing her long, chestnut hair. Instead of her drifting outfit she was wearing only her thin laced nightgown, apparel far too flimsy for a chilly Midland night. As if to remind her of this fact, a nippy wind attacked her side, causing her to fold her arms about herself and shiver.

Several yards before her, in the junction of pathway that led up to the council stone where Virginia was sitting, Jet was on his knees in the dewy grass, his legs splayed slightly beneath him. His left arm looked a little bruised from several hasty injections. He was wearing strange clothes, possibly something he had borrowed after he had lost most of his original set of clothing in the Zenom mountains. His head was bowed, perhaps in soft prayer for his own soul. She could almost catch some snippets of his verse.

"You can really have no notion of how delightful it will be, when they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea. But the snail replied 'Too far, too far!' and gave a look askance - said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance."

Virginia stood up, dropping her hairbrush onto the stone. She could hear Jet's words but they made absolutely no sense, like a kind of nonsensical poem. He was muttering it quickly and without hesitation, like the song was second-nature to him. Silver hair obscured his eyes, but below that, she could see that he was sporting a mad smile. "Jet…" Virginia breathed unsteadily, taking a step towards him. "What are you…"

Jet looked up. Eyes as milky white and as blind as cataracts peered up at her, the skin across his face bubbled and peeling, blackened underneath, like a rotting corpse. He was missing an ear, it must have been lost somewhere. His smile grew wider, revealing mossy teeth, most of which had fallen away long ago. Through a strangled throat Virginia squeaked and backed away, recoiling. Even still the creature continued to sing. Some of it came from his mouth, coarse and scratchy like papyrus from a millennia ago, a horrid snarl, but the rest was beamed directly into her head, where it could not be blocked out. It echoed within her skull, almost driving her insane.

"'What matters is how far we go?' His scaly friend replied,

There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.

The further off from England, the nearer is to France -

Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance!

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance!"

Somehow she knew that the poem held some meaning for her. Jet, this evil specter of Jet, it wanted to take her away to some far off place, to dance to the other side. Virginia screamed and edged away from him, her calves bumping into the stone behind her. Without thinking about it she fell upon the rock and began to slide backwards, pushing with the heels of her hands and her feet.

This ghoulish variation of Jet did not blink. It didn't have to, it was totally blind. And yet it could see her perfectly. Leaning forward, Jet fell onto his hands and knees like an animal and hacked out a gravelly, spiritual laugh. "Something funny, honey? Don't you want to join the dance?"

His legs were nothing but dead flesh beneath him. He started to crawl towards her, groping at the grass with bony skeletal hands, still with that mad smile on his face. "No!" Virginia screamed, blocking her sight away by covering up her eyes. She held her breath, absolutely sure that the ghoul would get her, for this was none other than the object of her deepest darkness nightmares. Her true hell. The hell of knowing that Jet was dead.

Nothing came.

When she opened her eyes again she got a face full of pillow. She leant away from it and sat up groggily, rubbing at her eyes. It was dark all around her and quite cold, still the middle of the night. She was wearing the nightgown she had worn within her dream. Elsewhere in the room, Clive and Gallows were silent in sleep.

Still half confused about her whereabouts and lightly soaked in a mixture of cold and fear sweat, Virginia looked towards the door on the floor below her, closed tightly to keep the warmer air inside. Her hair was a mess. If she were to go outside for a breath of fresh air, would she see Jet sitting all alone in the middle of the colony, wrapped in a set of Shane's old clothes, his head down and chanting, chanting that chilling song that filled her full of dread? She didn't want to find out.

Tears filled her eyes. "It can't be…" She whimpered, clutching the blankets tightly. "Jet can't be dying. Jet can't be… dead…"

But it was oh so possible.

Holding her head in her hands, Virginia broke down and cried.