Fic: Tantalus (Highlander - PG-13) [2/7]
Header, warnings and links to original posts are in Part 1/7.
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"Myrtle! Elliott! Iselin! Come quick! There's a naked man on the porch, bleeding on the mat!" Dorcas had a voice on her, Iselin had to give her that. She also had an imagination, but something had certainly hit the front door with a thump.
Iselin grabbed her bathrobe and shoved her feet into her slippers, tying the sash as she poked her head out into the hall. Myrtle was fluttering down the stairs and she could hear Elliott rumbling and grumbling to life in the parlor, where he no doubt had been napping in front of the fire. Iselin followed Myrtle down the stairs at a less breakneck pace, and looked out of the window onto the porch. Myrtle was clinging to Dorcas and peering over her shoulder out the window on the other side of the door. A long white foot, bloodied and cut, lay in the square of light cast by the hall lamp through the fanlight. The rest of him was in shadow, but it certainly seemed as though Dorcas had reported the situation accurately. There was a naked man bleeding on their porch.
Well. Leaving him to bleed there wasn't going to help anyone, now, was it? Iselin shooed the others away from the door and opened it. Elliott had finally taken down the summer screen door just last week, so the light spilled onto the porch unimpeded. Chill night air curled around her ankles, and in the distance beyond the orchard the sky was stained with a faint red glow. The Seifert place was over that way, nearly at the end of the Valley, the estate that had been bought by those unpleasant city-folk - called themselves 'the Sons of Balor' or somesuch. Had he come from there? She knelt down to get a better look at the man. There was a faint whiff of char mixed in with the human smells of sweat and blood and fear, as well as a bitter note she did not recognize. But his brutally short hair was unsinged and there were no burns that she could see in the light that was available to her.
"Elliott," Iselin called over her shoulder to the knot of people hovering in the hall, "Go get a lantern, and somebody tell Caroline to heat some water and get a bath going." She knelt down near his head and put a gentle hand to the vein at his neck. He twitched at the touch, but did not wake. His skin was papery, dry under her fingers, the pulse quick and thready. He had good bones, though too visible even in the awkward light. Wherever he had come from, they hadn't been feeding him right. If it was the Seifert place he'd escaped from - blood on his feet, blood on his back, not to mention actually stark naked, not even a stitch for his privates, skin too pale to have seen the sun anytime recently; escaped from something, that was sure - he'd come miles over rough ground, barefoot in the dark. It was truly astonishing that he had found them.
The light grew stronger, the shadows swinging wildly. Elliott had the big barn-lantern lit and turned up high. "Here you are Isey," Elliott's voice was rough and soft in her ear. "An' I brought 'm a blanket. Cold out."
"Thank you," Iselin said, almost absently as the better light revealed more of their unexpected guest. "Hold the light up so I can see if he is still bleeding." The blood on his back was old, brown and dry, and there seemed to be layers of it, streaks and stripes that crossed each other, but nothing glistened fresh. She couldn't tell scab from skin beneath the grime, but a light brush of her fingers along the bumps of his spine found nothing to alarm. His feet and hands were something else again. Black smudges on the planks showed his progress across the wide porch, and his hands curled limp at the ends of his outflung arms. He had not even tried to catch himself in his fall. A deep scratch at his wrist beaded and dripped a single fat drop as she watched. He had come cross-country, judging by the stains and scratches, and the bloody dirt on his palms, his knees, showed he had fallen more than once.
Not just escape, but determined escape. Iselin did not even want to think of how badly damaged his feet must be. Or what kind of horror it was that he had been running from. "You're safe now," she found herself murmuring, "you're safe here." He couldn't hear her, she knew, but she felt better speaking as if he could. She cupped a hand to his sharp-boned face; even deeply unconscious his jaw was tense. "We'll take care of you. They can't get you here."
Anger burned in Iselin's breast and determination narrowed her eyes. How could anyone countenance doing the kinds of things that would reduce a fellow human being to this kind of strait? Well, he was safe now, and they would take care of him. If this was what was going on - and there were goings on, they'd known that ever since those people had moved in several years past and put up walls, not just fences - then it was time and past time they did something about it. She sat back on her heels and looked up at Elliott. Myrtle had ventured as far as the doorframe, and even Jameth had crept out, his little black nose quivering at the unusual smells. "Myrtle, take the lantern. Elliott, help me get him inside. Nothing seems broken, so I think it's safe to move him. He certainly can't stay on the porch."
The blanket was one of the horse-blankets, prickly wool stout enough to carry a man. Between them Iselin and Elliott got him shifted to the cloth while Dorcas fetched Toby and Lane from their cottage (glorified shed, really, but it wasn't as though they did more than sleep in it, if you could call it sleep) out back. His feet were as bad as she had feared: cuts scored deep, skin in tatters, blood still welling sticky and slow through the plaster of leaves and mud. But his back looked better - scrapes and scratches more than actual cuts it seemed. She was still careful to make sure the fabric wouldn't shift along his shoulders when they lifted him. He was a tall man, and the blanket short. His feet would have to stick out over the edge because it was more important that his head be supported. They'd just have to be careful, that was all.
The boys came promptly, pants loose around their hips and feet shoved sockless into boots, the color in their faces and disorder of their hair saying clear as anything that they hadn't been sleeping in the bed Dorcas had roused them out of. Well, they could get back to it once they'd helped settle their guest in the house. Iselin directed them to the blanket corners at the man's feet while she and Elliott took up the ones at his head. Between them they got him through the door. The corner by the kitchen was more tricky, but he didn't stir even when his feet jostled against the step going down, leaving a long red smear on the pale wood. Iselin winced for him, but didn't let her grip falter. He was heavier than he looked, but not as heavy as he ought to be.
Caroline was standing by the door to the back rooms that had been Georg's, eyes wide and hands to her mouth. But she'd drawn the bath and brought in a heap of clean rags along with the house first-aid kit and towels, and spread an old sheet on the broad window seat near the bathroom. Under the anger that still fizzed in Iselin's veins at the monsters who had caused the damage they were dealing with was an equally fierce love for the people, the family - misfits and characters all - who had taken her in when she had been in need. Iselin looked down at the drawn and dirty face of the man in the blanket, all angles and nose. It was the least she could do to give that same care in return to this person who needed it even more than she had. Whether he was with them for a day or a year or the rest of their lives, he would be safe here.
It wasn't until she heard the rumble of assent from Elliott and saw the nods - sharp, determined, shy - from everyone else that Iselin realized she had spoken aloud. She nodded in return. Her wrists were beginning to feel the strain of gripping the cloth. He was theirs now, and they had a job to do.
"Well," Caroline said softly, "let's get him clean, and settled. Not much more we can do until he wakes up."
With a word and a glance, the four of them lifted the blanket-stretcher the necessary few inches and lowered the man gently onto the window seat. Caroline drifted after them. She tucked a rolled towel under his head, supporting his neck. Her hand hovered a moment before lighting briefly on his forehead. The shape of his skull was a hard curve, unsoftened by the dark fuzz of shorn hair. Caroline's hand was small and pale against it, but Iselin knew the strength that was hidden there. She hoped there was still strength under that hair, too. There must have been, for him to make it to them.
"Thank you," Iselin said, looking back up at the others. They nodded back as they left the room. Lane and Toby's hands were laced together, shoulder's brushing. Iselin smiled fondly after them, and turned her attention to the job before her. Best start with the feet first, as they were the most damaged.
A man looked terribly defenseless, lying naked on a rough brown blanket, a towel for a pillow and his ankles propped up on the rolled remains of what had once been a fuzzy pink bathrobe. Before Iselin could ask, Caroline laid another towel across his middle. They would have to wash there too, but until then, it gave him a bit of dignity. She was avoiding what was needful. She took a deep breath and sat down at the end of the window seat, spreading a towel over her lap and dipping a rag into the basin Caroline had set ready. Feet were awkward, and as she cleaned the dirt and blood from the lacerated soles she was glad he was unconscious, and hoped - hard - that he hadn't done himself permanent injury. At least the blood ran clean once the dirt was gone, and even that was slowing. They were very raw, though she had done her best to salvage what skin she could, and the water in the bowl had needed to be changed more than once. She applied peroxide with a generous hand, wincing in sympathy for the stinging, and then soothed on some of Myrtle's ointment, daubing the green-smelling stuff carefully over the whole surface. He had beautiful bones, long and elegant.
Caroline took over with the gauze and the tape. Her bandages were always the neatest, and they never fell off at awkward moments.
Iselin watched her layer and wind the gauze with firm competence, binding the torn flesh snug and tight: pressure to halt the bleeding, support to help encourage healing, protection from the dust and dog-hair and the rough weave of the blanket. Jameth was nosing at his hand where it lay at the edge of the cushion. The long fingers twitched at the tickle of whiskers. His nails were as black as the little dog's nose. Iselin took that as a cue to get on with the job at hand. She took up a fresh cloth and began working on his hands and arms.
He wasn't - quite - as injured as he had looked or as Iselin had feared, in the lantern light on the porch. She and Caroline worked in silence for a time, and the water in the basin again grew dark and murky as they sponged and wiped the rest of him clean. Until he woke, they could have no real idea of who he was, or what other hurts he might have that they could do anything about. That there was hurt to his spirit was a certainty, and the bitter edge to his sweat, the odd raw patches - round and angry and on-purpose looking - that marked him at wrist and breast, neck and groin, hinted at dangerous substances brutally applied under duress, invoked images of sinister, faceless tormenters in lab-coats from tales of horror. Mysteries beyond their eclectic pool of book and farm learned skills, most likely. But those were worries for the morning.
By the time they had turned him and attended to his shoulders and back, Dorcas had made up the high, long bed that had been Georg's pride with fresh sheets and blankets as well as a down comforter and one of her quilts. When she bustled back in (Dorcas was the only person Iselin knew who could bustle quietly, but bustle she did) with a tray of warm milk and buttered bread, Iselin was just finishing patting dry his cropped hair and he was stirring vaguely in her arms.
He wasn't awake enough for speech, though he responded a little to their voices, and Caroline was able to coax him into taking a sip or two of water. They didn't quite dare try the toast, and he'd turned his head from the milk. Between the three of them, they got him into the bed without incident, and Dorcas refrained from commenting on his 'generous endowments' while she tucked him in, though the corner of her mouth twitched with the effort of restraint. Fed and healthy, it was obvious he would be a lithe and well-built man, but there was far too little flesh on his long bones. He was asleep again almost before Dorcas finished. Iselin thanked her and promised to drink the posset. Caroline said she would see Dorcas to her bed, and left Iselin with a sympathetic smile and a gentle touch.
Quietly, Iselin folded the horse-blanket and tidied the few things Caroline had not. She might be able to get Elliott's socks done while she sat up.
It wasn't until some time later that it occurred to her that they knew nothing about him, and just because he had been hurt, held, misused, didn't mean he wasn't dangerous. Could be dangerous to them. Even so, Iselin stood by her instincts, the decision she had made on the spot and the feeling that they were doing the right and good thing. She propped herself in the corner of the window seat under one of the afghans that lived there, knees up and chin in hand, gazing out at the spangle of stars visible through the not-quite-closed curtains. It was very late now, and the sound of his breath was soft in the deep quiet. She would just rest her eyes for a moment, then get going again on her handwork.
When Iselin woke, it was just rising morning, motes of dust dancing in the streak of light that peered through the gap in the curtains and the usual commotion of poultry in the yard. Her first thought was for her patient, their refugee. She'd only meant to nap, not actually sleep - what if he woke and needed something? - But sleep she had, and soundly too. The crease in the throw-pillow in the armchair and the second afghan tucked around her shoulders told her that Dorcas or Caroline had sat watch, though. He hadn't been unattended.
Unaccountably self-conscious, Iselin looked over at the bed and the man in it. He was watching her from eyes deeper than a well, still as a lizard watching a hawk. No telling how long he'd been awake. No telling if he even knew who he was or remembered what had happened to him.
Iselin scrambled off the window seat, tugging her robe back in order and letting the afghans slide in a heap. His eyes tracked her movement. That was a good sign. She took the few steps to the bed, moving slowly until she was at his side. A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he held her glance and didn't shift back to the wall, which was another good sign, she hoped. His eyes were green and gold, clouded with what might be pain, or confusion, or both, his knuckles white on the edge of the coverlet.
"I'm Iselin. This is Hallowdell, west of Hope and not far from Harrison Hot Springs. And you're safe here." She held her breath.
He blinked, a sweep of ridiculously long, dark lashes, and his mouth opened but for a moment nothing came out. "I'm … A..Adam? … Alun?" His breath quickened and his brows drew down. "Ben? No. M..Matthew?" No, not that one." He stopped again, swallowing. There was a water jug on the bedside table, one of Myrtle's squat pottery cups beside it. Iselin filled the cup part way and helped him take a few small sips. She didn't have to tell him to go slowly.
Iselin had the oddest sense that the difficulty was not remembering his name, but trying to find the right one among too many choices. She found herself breaking in before he could stumble any further down the list. "We don't need to know who you were, just what to call you. Adam's good."
"Alun," he tried again, tasting the syllables. He closed his eyes, pondering. "Alun Adams. That works." He gave a little nod, as if settling the idea, then looked up at her again. "Do you know … how I got here?"
"We found you on our porch last night. You'd run your feet to ribbons and you didn't have a stitch on." If he was aware that he was still naked under the covers, he gave no sign of it. "Is there anything you can tell us? We want to help, if we can."
His fingers moved against the surface of the quilt - a cheerful, garish thing in lime and dandelion with pink and orange accents - and his eyes dropped to follow the pattern of spirals that were also cats. His voice was low, and now his words came measured, as if he were testing the air to see if it would hold them, his breath carry them. "I don't know. I was running from the hounds. There was a break, in the power, the gate was open. I…" He squeezed his eyes shut and groped at the air with one hand. The deep scratch on his wrist was now only a faint pink line. His breath was coming short and hard, and there was a look of intolerable strain in his drawn face, desperation in his voice. "Is this real? Are you really real? Am I really here, and not …?" His voice broke, and Iselin folded his gaunt and searching hand between her own warm palms. The touch seemed to give him an anchor, a measure of ease to his distress.
Iselin felt the coal of outrage at the monsters who had caused that distress reignite in her breast, but she didn't allow it to enter her voice, keeping her tone gentle and assured. "I'm real. I'm Iselin Elaine Farris-Faraday, and that's a name I'm sure you couldn't make up. You are really here, safe at Hallowdell, and we don't have a gate - well, we do, but it's to the cow-pasture, and one to the hen-yard, - but not one like they put in at the old Seifert place, no walls around the orchard or anything." She took a breath and slowed down. He was starting to shiver, or maybe it was tremble, but he'd opened his eyes again, and seemed to be seeing her and not a nightmare. "We're - well, I suppose you could call us a kind of a retreat, a sanctuary, an artist's colony or something, only none of the art is really traditional, though Georg came closest, but he's gone now. And we don't even have a fence on the property line, because when we finally got the deed, Myrtle and Dorcas and Caroline and Elliott cast a circle around the whole place, and took down the wire fencing (except in a few places, like the cow-pasture), though they left the posts, so they could tell where the line was, and we walk the bounds every Equinox. Um." She stumbled to a stop. Why on earth was she telling him all this? But he wasn't shaking any more, and his hand was beginning to warm up a little.
"And we won't let anything get you. You're safe here." Though if someone really came after him with guns she didn't know what they would do. But they would do something. Alun was one of them now, for as long as he wanted to be.
"Sanctuary," he said softly, almost wonderingly. "Holy Ground." The relief in his voice broke her heart. Abruptly he slumped back down against the pillows, the rigid tension draining out of him like water, and he was asleep almost before Iselin could let go of his hand.
"Yes. Yes, it is." She murmured as she tucked the quilt warmly around his angular shoulders. Then she straightened her own and marched into the kitchen to get a head-start on the day's work. Dorcas already had the kettle on.
'Alun' slept on and off all day, sometimes nearly unconscious, at others dreaming and restless, though he never cried out, and whenever he woke it was with the same wary, watching stillness Iselin had already seen. Not even Caroline could get him to eat anything, though he was polite about refusing. Toby, oddly enough, had more luck coaxing liquid into him - herb-honey tea and barley-water for the most part - a few sips at a time and a sturdy hand on his back when he coughed trying to keep it down. He seemed to enjoy being read to, though he flinched from Elliott's heavy step and cold-roughened voice. When Elliott realized that, he tried to walk and speak more softly, with indifferent results, but it was the thought that counted, and Iselin loved him for it.
When she and Caroline changed the bandages on his feet after the noon meal, Iselin was pleased to see improvement. Though they were obviously still painful, raw and red, there was no sign of infection and the salvaged bits of skin seemed to be adhering as they should. He bore the process remarkably well, she thought, considering how much it had to hurt. The other cuts and scratches were much better in the warm afternoon sunlight, making Iselin wonder for a moment if they really had been as extensive as she had thought. Not that it mattered. If his skin healed quickly it was all to the good.
But damage to his skin aside, by evening it was apparent he was very ill indeed.
As night fell his temperature climbed, and he hardly seemed to see them, much less recognize any of them, though he'd been calling them all by name since morning. He cringed from any sound of shod feet on the wooden floor. One moment he was drenched in sweat, the next shivering uncontrollably. Not even water would stay down, and long after they stopped trying he was racked with dry heaves. Myrtle dug deep into her herbal pharmacopeia and at last concocted a faintly aromatic mixture that brought him some ease when used to bathe his temples, throat, the back of his neck. Toward morning he fell Into a heavy sleep, and Iselin and Caroline, again the last ones up, breathed a sigh of relief. This time Iselin sent Caroline to bed and sat herself in the comfortable (but not too comfortable) chair to watch over his sleep. She wished there was more they could do to ease his suffering.
Iselin had nearly finished Elliott's second sock when she heard the quiet rasp of his voice.
"Oh gods and little green apples."
She glanced up; he was awake. She put her knitting aside.
"Why won't you just kill me and have done with it?" He had pushed the covers back, revealing pale skin damp with sweat. He wasn't speaking to her; she wasn't certain he knew she was there.
Iselin reached for the towel and the herb-soaked cloth. She heard herself ask equally quietly, "Is that what you want? To be dead?" She turned to look at his face, trying to read his eyes. He was watching the stars out the window. There was frost at the corners of the panes.
"What? Oh, no. And unfortunately it wouldn't do any good. I'd just wake up again in the same place in the cycle." His eyes turned to her, heavy but unclouded.
She felt a surprising rush of relief at his immediate answer, though the second half of it made her wonder if he was really as lucid as he sounded. Well, if that were the case, she could play along. Flights of fancy were no stranger to her, living as she did with gamers and writers and people who talked to trees. "I suppose you are immortal, then, and have lived for millions of years." She said lightly as she blotted gently at the sweat beading his skin.
A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, turning the shadows of pain to lines of laughter. "Only thousands, not millions. Humans haven't been on the planet for millions." His banter sounded perfectly sincere, even matter of fact.
Iselin smiled back, a note half teasing, half serious entering her voice, "Well, if you are so old and wise, how did you get yourself in this predicament?" If his face and chest were this wet, the rest of him probably was too. She lifted the covers all the way off and ventured further with towel and cloth. He really was beautifully made, despite the gauntness of privation and illness.
The smile faded a little, but did not vanish. His gaze was again on the ceiling beams. "I didn't look where I was going, and I didn't move fast enough; thus Eidyn Llawgad slew Aneiron. Only it was capture, not kill. And he only thought he was a great lord of men. He went to great effort to bend those he considered his followers and inferiors to his will. It even worked. For a while. But lightning is a chancy servant, and no-one's toothless hound. Fire set me free, but his poison, being also fire, does not burn, and must be sweated out."
She had reached his groin. He neither flinched nor looked as she took his privates in hand and washed them with gentle care. "Who was Aneiron?" Iselin asked into the little silence. He was uncut; cleaning him a more delicate process. One could almost believe he had known the attentive skill of the fabled Roman body-servants, he was so easy to bathe. Awake, anyway. (Mika Waltari and Victor Mature had a lot to answer for, not to mention Auntie Pru's collection of sword and sandal epics.) She didn't like to think it was because he had been this ill and helpless before - and long enough to have learned how to be stoically attended to by orderlies and over-worked nurses.
"A bard and the son of a bard, a warrior and a leader of warriors, a lover and one well beloved. In other words, a man with a quick mind, a fast blade and a truly talented mouth. But enough of legend. What brings so dedicated a votary of Hygeia and Asklepios to this fair northern valley?" The Greek was as effortless on his tongue as whatever the previous language had been.
She laid his privates back in their nest of dark curls and moved on to his thighs. A very faint tremor moved under the skin. His respite was coming to an end. It was the dark hour before dawn. If he could be thousands of years old and laugh at the face of death, she could speak the naked truth. Perhaps it would heal her. "I was running away. From, oh, all kinds of things: expectations I couldn't live up to, survivor's guilt, grief, loss, loneliness. I thought I wanted to die, just to make the pain stop, and I was looking for death. I found Caroline and Hallowdell instead." She'd reached his ankles. Best to leave his feet alone in their tidy Caroline-wrappings. She put the towel and cloth aside and settled the covers back over him before looking up at his face. The tremors were going to turn into shivers any time now.
He had brought his eyes down from the beams and was looking back at her with a bottomless gaze. For a moment she was caught, paralyzed and terrified, falling in limitless darkness, an unimaginable weight of time and grief and distance, then he blinked, her heart thudded, and his eyes were no more wild than the orchard out back. He said, very gently, "And now? Are you still looking for Death?"
"No," Iselin said slowly, tidying away the basin and used cloths "I'm not." But was she? And what would happen if she said (admitted) that she was? The sheer surreality of the whole conversation struck her and she turned to him with hands on hips and demanded in a low, intent voice thick with conflict and tinged with despair, "All right, mister 'thousands-not-millions of years old,' how do you do it? How do you keep going when everything dies? When nothing stays the same, when you can't be what anyone wants you to be? How do you stay yourself and still go on?"
He was starting to shiver in earnest now, but his eyes were still bright and present. Daring her to keep going because she wasn't done yet, she hadn't asked the real question yet. She felt like she was shouting, if you could shout in a whisper.
"Maybe you really are thousands of years old, and maybe you aren't and maybe you're just some guy who fell into bad company and got out again and landed on our porch, but how do you keep going? What makes you fight and not just give in? And don't" abruptly she wound down and sat with a thump in the bedside chair, "tell me 'it's a mystery' or you don't have an answer. I don't want 'the' answer. I want your answer."
He chuffed a rueful laugh that set him coughing, choking on air. Fever-flush was mounting high in his face again, and his thin arms were wrapped over his cramping, traitorous stomach. His throat had to still be raw from nausea. But his attention never wavered and the expression he gave her was one she would never forget: there was exhaustion in it, and pain, lonely endurance and age-old knowledge, his eyes ancient in a deceptively young face; but there was hope, too, humor and love, resolve and a deep, unshakeable desire for life. "No. No, Iselin Elaine Farris-Faraday, it's not a mystery. You find a way to live. Long or short, bright or dark, up and down, little moments and big. It's living that matters. Life and the people you meet along the way. And love. Never forget love." He held her eyes even as chills began to shake his frame again, and the color drain from his face. "Remember that. I charge you to live, in the names of Aneiron and Asklepios, and I will do the same." And he drew her head down with trembling but oddly sure hands and brushed his lips against her forehead, a kiss that tingled on her skin.
His fever mounted then, riding him like the Hunter his mare at the head of the Wild Hunt, fierce and all-consuming. Then the sky brightened, light tearing through the clouds, and it was as if that hour of clarity and calm had never been.
The day followed the previous night's pattern: waves of hot and cold building to a peak of fever, disorientation and hypersensitivity that would then break, leaving him limp but lucid. Running not quite in synch was a cycle of acute cramping and nausea followed by a period of unresponsiveness more akin to unconsciousness than sleep, from which he would wake thirsty, aching and increasingly weak. Lane was trying to plot the two cycles, but he didn't have enough data. They all took turns sitting with him. When the sun started climbing down the sky again, Iselin took over from Dorcas after a quiet but forceful conversation.
"Dorcas says you should be in hospital. And that you agree." Iselin sat down in the chair at the side of the bed and possessed herself of one of his hands. His fingers were cold. He looked fragile and pale under the bright quilt, and the overhead light picked out every ridge and shadow in his face. His mouth was pinched with pain. It made her heart hurt.
His hand turned until he was holding her, his thumb resting softly on the thin skin of her wrist. "I do," he said quietly.
"I don't understand. I thought…" For a moment, Iselin was twelve again, at her great-aunt's bedside, beseeching her (the woman who loved her, who was a mother to her, who had picked her up and dusted her off and seen to it that she had food and clothes and shelter and so much more when things 'hadn't worked out' with the whole 'family thing' and the people who had birthed her disappeared from her life) not to go to the hospital, not to leave her. Auntie Pru had died in that hospital. Was that why the idea so upset her? "I thought you felt safe here, that we could keep you safe and take care of you."
"I am safe here. You gave me that. But I can't stay. I can't …." He closed his eyes and grimaced as another wave of fevered pain began to rise. "… say the same." His chest heaved with the effort to speak. "I know … some of … what's coming. Don't .…" His hand tightened around hers and he curled into the pillow, breathing hard and short, muscles locked and trembling with tension for a long moment as the pain crested. Then the spasm began to ease and he caught another breath. "Don't let me …." He forced his fingers to unclench, letting go with difficulty. Her wrist ached and her hand was white from the unconscious violence of his grip. His eyes widened with fear and his words came in a rush when he saw the marks. "Don't make me do that to you." His voice shook and he pulled his hands to his chest, huddling away from her, facing the wall. "Don't. Please."
"But, I'm fine. This is nothing."
His head moved on the pillow, eyes returning to her wrist. "It's only the beginning." There was a tired finality in his voice, a resolve that was not at all resigned. "And it's my battle. You cannot fight it for me. I'm sorry." With an effort he turned on his side, facing the wall.
Iselin felt Elliott's hand on her shoulder. The tense curve of Alun's back, the bent angle of his head, his defenseless nape bared to her gaze made her want to cry. She turned to look up at Elliott's craggy, sympathetic face, her chin trembling, and then stood, stepping restlessly away from the bed. "Can't we …?" Tears threatened and she dashed them away with a jerky swipe of her unbruised hand. "I promised him!" burst out of her tight chest. She was tired. It had been a long couple of days. She was not going to cry. She was not twelve.
Elliott folded her into his arms. He smelled of woodsmoke and flannel and the coming winter wind.
"I said we'd take care of him. I promised" She said into his shirtfront.
"Isey, we may of picked him up, but we can't put him back together. We done what we could, an you know he's grateful for it. You 'n Caro fixed his feet right smart. But we don't have what he needs for what's hurtn' him now. He needs medicine an' all them things what hospitals can do. He said so. You heard 'im." Elliott's embrace was clumsy but comforting. "Let 'im go, Isey. Hope'll keep 'im safe too."
Elliott was right. Alun was right. She nodded, sniffed, and said in a muffled voice "I know. I just…" She lifted her head again. "I promised."
"And you've held that promise. We'll get him safe to where he can get taken care of. It's alright not to like it."
Iselin heaved a sigh and hugged Elliott back before stepping out of the circle of his arms. She returned to the bed, where it seemed sleep had give Alun a brief respite from distress. She arranged the quilt more warmly around his shoulders and let her hand rest a moment on the side of his face. He didn't stir. "It's okay. And I'll remember what you said. But I want you to remember too." She bent down and brushed a kiss to his temple. "Live" she whispered. "You keep on fighting for that. And I will too."
Then Iselin straightened up and made herself go get the seldom-used telephone to call for the county health services to send the mobile paramedics with the transport van. It would be better than trying to drive him to Hope themselves in Lane's jalopy or the household truck.
***
Iselin watched the ambulance bump its way down the rutted drive with slow care and sent her thought out after the suffering man it was carrying away out of their life almost as abruptly as he had entered it. The swift evening of late autumn was making the last red and gold leaves on the trees burn in the low light, and she could hear Dorcas bustling behind her, setting out the candles. Iselin had looked on Dorcas' insistence on putting candle-shaped lights (Myrtle and Dorcas had had a long and obscure debate on shape and brightness and several other points that Iselin had not followed when Caroline - who had a horror of unattended flame - had insisted on electric candles) in at least one window of every side of the house as something to be tolerated, indulged, looked on and smiled over fondly.
But that silly electric candle had led that man - Adam, Alun, Ben, so many names, all real, all somehow him but equally not quite entirely him, none the deepest truest name that Iselin knew he must have - to the safety of their doorstep. Iselin would never look on or take that little ritual so lightly again. She knew, watching the glimmer of tail-lights finally vanish into the trees, that every evening going forward, she would not only think of all the lost ones seeking safe harbor, but she would think of him, and while she might or might not believe everything he had said in that strange, surreal conversation in the cold hour before dawn, she would remember what he had said about living, the charge he had given them both. She would remember him, sending light and hope out to him wherever he might go or be.
*** *** ***
*** *** ***
"Myrtle! Elliott! Iselin! Come quick! There's a naked man on the porch, bleeding on the mat!" Dorcas had a voice on her, Iselin had to give her that. She also had an imagination, but something had certainly hit the front door with a thump.
Iselin grabbed her bathrobe and shoved her feet into her slippers, tying the sash as she poked her head out into the hall. Myrtle was fluttering down the stairs and she could hear Elliott rumbling and grumbling to life in the parlor, where he no doubt had been napping in front of the fire. Iselin followed Myrtle down the stairs at a less breakneck pace, and looked out of the window onto the porch. Myrtle was clinging to Dorcas and peering over her shoulder out the window on the other side of the door. A long white foot, bloodied and cut, lay in the square of light cast by the hall lamp through the fanlight. The rest of him was in shadow, but it certainly seemed as though Dorcas had reported the situation accurately. There was a naked man bleeding on their porch.
Well. Leaving him to bleed there wasn't going to help anyone, now, was it? Iselin shooed the others away from the door and opened it. Elliott had finally taken down the summer screen door just last week, so the light spilled onto the porch unimpeded. Chill night air curled around her ankles, and in the distance beyond the orchard the sky was stained with a faint red glow. The Seifert place was over that way, nearly at the end of the Valley, the estate that had been bought by those unpleasant city-folk - called themselves 'the Sons of Balor' or somesuch. Had he come from there? She knelt down to get a better look at the man. There was a faint whiff of char mixed in with the human smells of sweat and blood and fear, as well as a bitter note she did not recognize. But his brutally short hair was unsinged and there were no burns that she could see in the light that was available to her.
"Elliott," Iselin called over her shoulder to the knot of people hovering in the hall, "Go get a lantern, and somebody tell Caroline to heat some water and get a bath going." She knelt down near his head and put a gentle hand to the vein at his neck. He twitched at the touch, but did not wake. His skin was papery, dry under her fingers, the pulse quick and thready. He had good bones, though too visible even in the awkward light. Wherever he had come from, they hadn't been feeding him right. If it was the Seifert place he'd escaped from - blood on his feet, blood on his back, not to mention actually stark naked, not even a stitch for his privates, skin too pale to have seen the sun anytime recently; escaped from something, that was sure - he'd come miles over rough ground, barefoot in the dark. It was truly astonishing that he had found them.
The light grew stronger, the shadows swinging wildly. Elliott had the big barn-lantern lit and turned up high. "Here you are Isey," Elliott's voice was rough and soft in her ear. "An' I brought 'm a blanket. Cold out."
"Thank you," Iselin said, almost absently as the better light revealed more of their unexpected guest. "Hold the light up so I can see if he is still bleeding." The blood on his back was old, brown and dry, and there seemed to be layers of it, streaks and stripes that crossed each other, but nothing glistened fresh. She couldn't tell scab from skin beneath the grime, but a light brush of her fingers along the bumps of his spine found nothing to alarm. His feet and hands were something else again. Black smudges on the planks showed his progress across the wide porch, and his hands curled limp at the ends of his outflung arms. He had not even tried to catch himself in his fall. A deep scratch at his wrist beaded and dripped a single fat drop as she watched. He had come cross-country, judging by the stains and scratches, and the bloody dirt on his palms, his knees, showed he had fallen more than once.
Not just escape, but determined escape. Iselin did not even want to think of how badly damaged his feet must be. Or what kind of horror it was that he had been running from. "You're safe now," she found herself murmuring, "you're safe here." He couldn't hear her, she knew, but she felt better speaking as if he could. She cupped a hand to his sharp-boned face; even deeply unconscious his jaw was tense. "We'll take care of you. They can't get you here."
Anger burned in Iselin's breast and determination narrowed her eyes. How could anyone countenance doing the kinds of things that would reduce a fellow human being to this kind of strait? Well, he was safe now, and they would take care of him. If this was what was going on - and there were goings on, they'd known that ever since those people had moved in several years past and put up walls, not just fences - then it was time and past time they did something about it. She sat back on her heels and looked up at Elliott. Myrtle had ventured as far as the doorframe, and even Jameth had crept out, his little black nose quivering at the unusual smells. "Myrtle, take the lantern. Elliott, help me get him inside. Nothing seems broken, so I think it's safe to move him. He certainly can't stay on the porch."
The blanket was one of the horse-blankets, prickly wool stout enough to carry a man. Between them Iselin and Elliott got him shifted to the cloth while Dorcas fetched Toby and Lane from their cottage (glorified shed, really, but it wasn't as though they did more than sleep in it, if you could call it sleep) out back. His feet were as bad as she had feared: cuts scored deep, skin in tatters, blood still welling sticky and slow through the plaster of leaves and mud. But his back looked better - scrapes and scratches more than actual cuts it seemed. She was still careful to make sure the fabric wouldn't shift along his shoulders when they lifted him. He was a tall man, and the blanket short. His feet would have to stick out over the edge because it was more important that his head be supported. They'd just have to be careful, that was all.
The boys came promptly, pants loose around their hips and feet shoved sockless into boots, the color in their faces and disorder of their hair saying clear as anything that they hadn't been sleeping in the bed Dorcas had roused them out of. Well, they could get back to it once they'd helped settle their guest in the house. Iselin directed them to the blanket corners at the man's feet while she and Elliott took up the ones at his head. Between them they got him through the door. The corner by the kitchen was more tricky, but he didn't stir even when his feet jostled against the step going down, leaving a long red smear on the pale wood. Iselin winced for him, but didn't let her grip falter. He was heavier than he looked, but not as heavy as he ought to be.
Caroline was standing by the door to the back rooms that had been Georg's, eyes wide and hands to her mouth. But she'd drawn the bath and brought in a heap of clean rags along with the house first-aid kit and towels, and spread an old sheet on the broad window seat near the bathroom. Under the anger that still fizzed in Iselin's veins at the monsters who had caused the damage they were dealing with was an equally fierce love for the people, the family - misfits and characters all - who had taken her in when she had been in need. Iselin looked down at the drawn and dirty face of the man in the blanket, all angles and nose. It was the least she could do to give that same care in return to this person who needed it even more than she had. Whether he was with them for a day or a year or the rest of their lives, he would be safe here.
It wasn't until she heard the rumble of assent from Elliott and saw the nods - sharp, determined, shy - from everyone else that Iselin realized she had spoken aloud. She nodded in return. Her wrists were beginning to feel the strain of gripping the cloth. He was theirs now, and they had a job to do.
"Well," Caroline said softly, "let's get him clean, and settled. Not much more we can do until he wakes up."
With a word and a glance, the four of them lifted the blanket-stretcher the necessary few inches and lowered the man gently onto the window seat. Caroline drifted after them. She tucked a rolled towel under his head, supporting his neck. Her hand hovered a moment before lighting briefly on his forehead. The shape of his skull was a hard curve, unsoftened by the dark fuzz of shorn hair. Caroline's hand was small and pale against it, but Iselin knew the strength that was hidden there. She hoped there was still strength under that hair, too. There must have been, for him to make it to them.
"Thank you," Iselin said, looking back up at the others. They nodded back as they left the room. Lane and Toby's hands were laced together, shoulder's brushing. Iselin smiled fondly after them, and turned her attention to the job before her. Best start with the feet first, as they were the most damaged.
A man looked terribly defenseless, lying naked on a rough brown blanket, a towel for a pillow and his ankles propped up on the rolled remains of what had once been a fuzzy pink bathrobe. Before Iselin could ask, Caroline laid another towel across his middle. They would have to wash there too, but until then, it gave him a bit of dignity. She was avoiding what was needful. She took a deep breath and sat down at the end of the window seat, spreading a towel over her lap and dipping a rag into the basin Caroline had set ready. Feet were awkward, and as she cleaned the dirt and blood from the lacerated soles she was glad he was unconscious, and hoped - hard - that he hadn't done himself permanent injury. At least the blood ran clean once the dirt was gone, and even that was slowing. They were very raw, though she had done her best to salvage what skin she could, and the water in the bowl had needed to be changed more than once. She applied peroxide with a generous hand, wincing in sympathy for the stinging, and then soothed on some of Myrtle's ointment, daubing the green-smelling stuff carefully over the whole surface. He had beautiful bones, long and elegant.
Caroline took over with the gauze and the tape. Her bandages were always the neatest, and they never fell off at awkward moments.
Iselin watched her layer and wind the gauze with firm competence, binding the torn flesh snug and tight: pressure to halt the bleeding, support to help encourage healing, protection from the dust and dog-hair and the rough weave of the blanket. Jameth was nosing at his hand where it lay at the edge of the cushion. The long fingers twitched at the tickle of whiskers. His nails were as black as the little dog's nose. Iselin took that as a cue to get on with the job at hand. She took up a fresh cloth and began working on his hands and arms.
He wasn't - quite - as injured as he had looked or as Iselin had feared, in the lantern light on the porch. She and Caroline worked in silence for a time, and the water in the basin again grew dark and murky as they sponged and wiped the rest of him clean. Until he woke, they could have no real idea of who he was, or what other hurts he might have that they could do anything about. That there was hurt to his spirit was a certainty, and the bitter edge to his sweat, the odd raw patches - round and angry and on-purpose looking - that marked him at wrist and breast, neck and groin, hinted at dangerous substances brutally applied under duress, invoked images of sinister, faceless tormenters in lab-coats from tales of horror. Mysteries beyond their eclectic pool of book and farm learned skills, most likely. But those were worries for the morning.
By the time they had turned him and attended to his shoulders and back, Dorcas had made up the high, long bed that had been Georg's pride with fresh sheets and blankets as well as a down comforter and one of her quilts. When she bustled back in (Dorcas was the only person Iselin knew who could bustle quietly, but bustle she did) with a tray of warm milk and buttered bread, Iselin was just finishing patting dry his cropped hair and he was stirring vaguely in her arms.
He wasn't awake enough for speech, though he responded a little to their voices, and Caroline was able to coax him into taking a sip or two of water. They didn't quite dare try the toast, and he'd turned his head from the milk. Between the three of them, they got him into the bed without incident, and Dorcas refrained from commenting on his 'generous endowments' while she tucked him in, though the corner of her mouth twitched with the effort of restraint. Fed and healthy, it was obvious he would be a lithe and well-built man, but there was far too little flesh on his long bones. He was asleep again almost before Dorcas finished. Iselin thanked her and promised to drink the posset. Caroline said she would see Dorcas to her bed, and left Iselin with a sympathetic smile and a gentle touch.
Quietly, Iselin folded the horse-blanket and tidied the few things Caroline had not. She might be able to get Elliott's socks done while she sat up.
It wasn't until some time later that it occurred to her that they knew nothing about him, and just because he had been hurt, held, misused, didn't mean he wasn't dangerous. Could be dangerous to them. Even so, Iselin stood by her instincts, the decision she had made on the spot and the feeling that they were doing the right and good thing. She propped herself in the corner of the window seat under one of the afghans that lived there, knees up and chin in hand, gazing out at the spangle of stars visible through the not-quite-closed curtains. It was very late now, and the sound of his breath was soft in the deep quiet. She would just rest her eyes for a moment, then get going again on her handwork.
When Iselin woke, it was just rising morning, motes of dust dancing in the streak of light that peered through the gap in the curtains and the usual commotion of poultry in the yard. Her first thought was for her patient, their refugee. She'd only meant to nap, not actually sleep - what if he woke and needed something? - But sleep she had, and soundly too. The crease in the throw-pillow in the armchair and the second afghan tucked around her shoulders told her that Dorcas or Caroline had sat watch, though. He hadn't been unattended.
Unaccountably self-conscious, Iselin looked over at the bed and the man in it. He was watching her from eyes deeper than a well, still as a lizard watching a hawk. No telling how long he'd been awake. No telling if he even knew who he was or remembered what had happened to him.
Iselin scrambled off the window seat, tugging her robe back in order and letting the afghans slide in a heap. His eyes tracked her movement. That was a good sign. She took the few steps to the bed, moving slowly until she was at his side. A muscle jumped in his jaw, but he held her glance and didn't shift back to the wall, which was another good sign, she hoped. His eyes were green and gold, clouded with what might be pain, or confusion, or both, his knuckles white on the edge of the coverlet.
"I'm Iselin. This is Hallowdell, west of Hope and not far from Harrison Hot Springs. And you're safe here." She held her breath.
He blinked, a sweep of ridiculously long, dark lashes, and his mouth opened but for a moment nothing came out. "I'm … A..Adam? … Alun?" His breath quickened and his brows drew down. "Ben? No. M..Matthew?" No, not that one." He stopped again, swallowing. There was a water jug on the bedside table, one of Myrtle's squat pottery cups beside it. Iselin filled the cup part way and helped him take a few small sips. She didn't have to tell him to go slowly.
Iselin had the oddest sense that the difficulty was not remembering his name, but trying to find the right one among too many choices. She found herself breaking in before he could stumble any further down the list. "We don't need to know who you were, just what to call you. Adam's good."
"Alun," he tried again, tasting the syllables. He closed his eyes, pondering. "Alun Adams. That works." He gave a little nod, as if settling the idea, then looked up at her again. "Do you know … how I got here?"
"We found you on our porch last night. You'd run your feet to ribbons and you didn't have a stitch on." If he was aware that he was still naked under the covers, he gave no sign of it. "Is there anything you can tell us? We want to help, if we can."
His fingers moved against the surface of the quilt - a cheerful, garish thing in lime and dandelion with pink and orange accents - and his eyes dropped to follow the pattern of spirals that were also cats. His voice was low, and now his words came measured, as if he were testing the air to see if it would hold them, his breath carry them. "I don't know. I was running from the hounds. There was a break, in the power, the gate was open. I…" He squeezed his eyes shut and groped at the air with one hand. The deep scratch on his wrist was now only a faint pink line. His breath was coming short and hard, and there was a look of intolerable strain in his drawn face, desperation in his voice. "Is this real? Are you really real? Am I really here, and not …?" His voice broke, and Iselin folded his gaunt and searching hand between her own warm palms. The touch seemed to give him an anchor, a measure of ease to his distress.
Iselin felt the coal of outrage at the monsters who had caused that distress reignite in her breast, but she didn't allow it to enter her voice, keeping her tone gentle and assured. "I'm real. I'm Iselin Elaine Farris-Faraday, and that's a name I'm sure you couldn't make up. You are really here, safe at Hallowdell, and we don't have a gate - well, we do, but it's to the cow-pasture, and one to the hen-yard, - but not one like they put in at the old Seifert place, no walls around the orchard or anything." She took a breath and slowed down. He was starting to shiver, or maybe it was tremble, but he'd opened his eyes again, and seemed to be seeing her and not a nightmare. "We're - well, I suppose you could call us a kind of a retreat, a sanctuary, an artist's colony or something, only none of the art is really traditional, though Georg came closest, but he's gone now. And we don't even have a fence on the property line, because when we finally got the deed, Myrtle and Dorcas and Caroline and Elliott cast a circle around the whole place, and took down the wire fencing (except in a few places, like the cow-pasture), though they left the posts, so they could tell where the line was, and we walk the bounds every Equinox. Um." She stumbled to a stop. Why on earth was she telling him all this? But he wasn't shaking any more, and his hand was beginning to warm up a little.
"And we won't let anything get you. You're safe here." Though if someone really came after him with guns she didn't know what they would do. But they would do something. Alun was one of them now, for as long as he wanted to be.
"Sanctuary," he said softly, almost wonderingly. "Holy Ground." The relief in his voice broke her heart. Abruptly he slumped back down against the pillows, the rigid tension draining out of him like water, and he was asleep almost before Iselin could let go of his hand.
"Yes. Yes, it is." She murmured as she tucked the quilt warmly around his angular shoulders. Then she straightened her own and marched into the kitchen to get a head-start on the day's work. Dorcas already had the kettle on.
'Alun' slept on and off all day, sometimes nearly unconscious, at others dreaming and restless, though he never cried out, and whenever he woke it was with the same wary, watching stillness Iselin had already seen. Not even Caroline could get him to eat anything, though he was polite about refusing. Toby, oddly enough, had more luck coaxing liquid into him - herb-honey tea and barley-water for the most part - a few sips at a time and a sturdy hand on his back when he coughed trying to keep it down. He seemed to enjoy being read to, though he flinched from Elliott's heavy step and cold-roughened voice. When Elliott realized that, he tried to walk and speak more softly, with indifferent results, but it was the thought that counted, and Iselin loved him for it.
When she and Caroline changed the bandages on his feet after the noon meal, Iselin was pleased to see improvement. Though they were obviously still painful, raw and red, there was no sign of infection and the salvaged bits of skin seemed to be adhering as they should. He bore the process remarkably well, she thought, considering how much it had to hurt. The other cuts and scratches were much better in the warm afternoon sunlight, making Iselin wonder for a moment if they really had been as extensive as she had thought. Not that it mattered. If his skin healed quickly it was all to the good.
But damage to his skin aside, by evening it was apparent he was very ill indeed.
As night fell his temperature climbed, and he hardly seemed to see them, much less recognize any of them, though he'd been calling them all by name since morning. He cringed from any sound of shod feet on the wooden floor. One moment he was drenched in sweat, the next shivering uncontrollably. Not even water would stay down, and long after they stopped trying he was racked with dry heaves. Myrtle dug deep into her herbal pharmacopeia and at last concocted a faintly aromatic mixture that brought him some ease when used to bathe his temples, throat, the back of his neck. Toward morning he fell Into a heavy sleep, and Iselin and Caroline, again the last ones up, breathed a sigh of relief. This time Iselin sent Caroline to bed and sat herself in the comfortable (but not too comfortable) chair to watch over his sleep. She wished there was more they could do to ease his suffering.
Iselin had nearly finished Elliott's second sock when she heard the quiet rasp of his voice.
"Oh gods and little green apples."
She glanced up; he was awake. She put her knitting aside.
"Why won't you just kill me and have done with it?" He had pushed the covers back, revealing pale skin damp with sweat. He wasn't speaking to her; she wasn't certain he knew she was there.
Iselin reached for the towel and the herb-soaked cloth. She heard herself ask equally quietly, "Is that what you want? To be dead?" She turned to look at his face, trying to read his eyes. He was watching the stars out the window. There was frost at the corners of the panes.
"What? Oh, no. And unfortunately it wouldn't do any good. I'd just wake up again in the same place in the cycle." His eyes turned to her, heavy but unclouded.
She felt a surprising rush of relief at his immediate answer, though the second half of it made her wonder if he was really as lucid as he sounded. Well, if that were the case, she could play along. Flights of fancy were no stranger to her, living as she did with gamers and writers and people who talked to trees. "I suppose you are immortal, then, and have lived for millions of years." She said lightly as she blotted gently at the sweat beading his skin.
A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, turning the shadows of pain to lines of laughter. "Only thousands, not millions. Humans haven't been on the planet for millions." His banter sounded perfectly sincere, even matter of fact.
Iselin smiled back, a note half teasing, half serious entering her voice, "Well, if you are so old and wise, how did you get yourself in this predicament?" If his face and chest were this wet, the rest of him probably was too. She lifted the covers all the way off and ventured further with towel and cloth. He really was beautifully made, despite the gauntness of privation and illness.
The smile faded a little, but did not vanish. His gaze was again on the ceiling beams. "I didn't look where I was going, and I didn't move fast enough; thus Eidyn Llawgad slew Aneiron. Only it was capture, not kill. And he only thought he was a great lord of men. He went to great effort to bend those he considered his followers and inferiors to his will. It even worked. For a while. But lightning is a chancy servant, and no-one's toothless hound. Fire set me free, but his poison, being also fire, does not burn, and must be sweated out."
She had reached his groin. He neither flinched nor looked as she took his privates in hand and washed them with gentle care. "Who was Aneiron?" Iselin asked into the little silence. He was uncut; cleaning him a more delicate process. One could almost believe he had known the attentive skill of the fabled Roman body-servants, he was so easy to bathe. Awake, anyway. (Mika Waltari and Victor Mature had a lot to answer for, not to mention Auntie Pru's collection of sword and sandal epics.) She didn't like to think it was because he had been this ill and helpless before - and long enough to have learned how to be stoically attended to by orderlies and over-worked nurses.
"A bard and the son of a bard, a warrior and a leader of warriors, a lover and one well beloved. In other words, a man with a quick mind, a fast blade and a truly talented mouth. But enough of legend. What brings so dedicated a votary of Hygeia and Asklepios to this fair northern valley?" The Greek was as effortless on his tongue as whatever the previous language had been.
She laid his privates back in their nest of dark curls and moved on to his thighs. A very faint tremor moved under the skin. His respite was coming to an end. It was the dark hour before dawn. If he could be thousands of years old and laugh at the face of death, she could speak the naked truth. Perhaps it would heal her. "I was running away. From, oh, all kinds of things: expectations I couldn't live up to, survivor's guilt, grief, loss, loneliness. I thought I wanted to die, just to make the pain stop, and I was looking for death. I found Caroline and Hallowdell instead." She'd reached his ankles. Best to leave his feet alone in their tidy Caroline-wrappings. She put the towel and cloth aside and settled the covers back over him before looking up at his face. The tremors were going to turn into shivers any time now.
He had brought his eyes down from the beams and was looking back at her with a bottomless gaze. For a moment she was caught, paralyzed and terrified, falling in limitless darkness, an unimaginable weight of time and grief and distance, then he blinked, her heart thudded, and his eyes were no more wild than the orchard out back. He said, very gently, "And now? Are you still looking for Death?"
"No," Iselin said slowly, tidying away the basin and used cloths "I'm not." But was she? And what would happen if she said (admitted) that she was? The sheer surreality of the whole conversation struck her and she turned to him with hands on hips and demanded in a low, intent voice thick with conflict and tinged with despair, "All right, mister 'thousands-not-millions of years old,' how do you do it? How do you keep going when everything dies? When nothing stays the same, when you can't be what anyone wants you to be? How do you stay yourself and still go on?"
He was starting to shiver in earnest now, but his eyes were still bright and present. Daring her to keep going because she wasn't done yet, she hadn't asked the real question yet. She felt like she was shouting, if you could shout in a whisper.
"Maybe you really are thousands of years old, and maybe you aren't and maybe you're just some guy who fell into bad company and got out again and landed on our porch, but how do you keep going? What makes you fight and not just give in? And don't" abruptly she wound down and sat with a thump in the bedside chair, "tell me 'it's a mystery' or you don't have an answer. I don't want 'the' answer. I want your answer."
He chuffed a rueful laugh that set him coughing, choking on air. Fever-flush was mounting high in his face again, and his thin arms were wrapped over his cramping, traitorous stomach. His throat had to still be raw from nausea. But his attention never wavered and the expression he gave her was one she would never forget: there was exhaustion in it, and pain, lonely endurance and age-old knowledge, his eyes ancient in a deceptively young face; but there was hope, too, humor and love, resolve and a deep, unshakeable desire for life. "No. No, Iselin Elaine Farris-Faraday, it's not a mystery. You find a way to live. Long or short, bright or dark, up and down, little moments and big. It's living that matters. Life and the people you meet along the way. And love. Never forget love." He held her eyes even as chills began to shake his frame again, and the color drain from his face. "Remember that. I charge you to live, in the names of Aneiron and Asklepios, and I will do the same." And he drew her head down with trembling but oddly sure hands and brushed his lips against her forehead, a kiss that tingled on her skin.
His fever mounted then, riding him like the Hunter his mare at the head of the Wild Hunt, fierce and all-consuming. Then the sky brightened, light tearing through the clouds, and it was as if that hour of clarity and calm had never been.
The day followed the previous night's pattern: waves of hot and cold building to a peak of fever, disorientation and hypersensitivity that would then break, leaving him limp but lucid. Running not quite in synch was a cycle of acute cramping and nausea followed by a period of unresponsiveness more akin to unconsciousness than sleep, from which he would wake thirsty, aching and increasingly weak. Lane was trying to plot the two cycles, but he didn't have enough data. They all took turns sitting with him. When the sun started climbing down the sky again, Iselin took over from Dorcas after a quiet but forceful conversation.
"Dorcas says you should be in hospital. And that you agree." Iselin sat down in the chair at the side of the bed and possessed herself of one of his hands. His fingers were cold. He looked fragile and pale under the bright quilt, and the overhead light picked out every ridge and shadow in his face. His mouth was pinched with pain. It made her heart hurt.
His hand turned until he was holding her, his thumb resting softly on the thin skin of her wrist. "I do," he said quietly.
"I don't understand. I thought…" For a moment, Iselin was twelve again, at her great-aunt's bedside, beseeching her (the woman who loved her, who was a mother to her, who had picked her up and dusted her off and seen to it that she had food and clothes and shelter and so much more when things 'hadn't worked out' with the whole 'family thing' and the people who had birthed her disappeared from her life) not to go to the hospital, not to leave her. Auntie Pru had died in that hospital. Was that why the idea so upset her? "I thought you felt safe here, that we could keep you safe and take care of you."
"I am safe here. You gave me that. But I can't stay. I can't …." He closed his eyes and grimaced as another wave of fevered pain began to rise. "… say the same." His chest heaved with the effort to speak. "I know … some of … what's coming. Don't .…" His hand tightened around hers and he curled into the pillow, breathing hard and short, muscles locked and trembling with tension for a long moment as the pain crested. Then the spasm began to ease and he caught another breath. "Don't let me …." He forced his fingers to unclench, letting go with difficulty. Her wrist ached and her hand was white from the unconscious violence of his grip. His eyes widened with fear and his words came in a rush when he saw the marks. "Don't make me do that to you." His voice shook and he pulled his hands to his chest, huddling away from her, facing the wall. "Don't. Please."
"But, I'm fine. This is nothing."
His head moved on the pillow, eyes returning to her wrist. "It's only the beginning." There was a tired finality in his voice, a resolve that was not at all resigned. "And it's my battle. You cannot fight it for me. I'm sorry." With an effort he turned on his side, facing the wall.
Iselin felt Elliott's hand on her shoulder. The tense curve of Alun's back, the bent angle of his head, his defenseless nape bared to her gaze made her want to cry. She turned to look up at Elliott's craggy, sympathetic face, her chin trembling, and then stood, stepping restlessly away from the bed. "Can't we …?" Tears threatened and she dashed them away with a jerky swipe of her unbruised hand. "I promised him!" burst out of her tight chest. She was tired. It had been a long couple of days. She was not going to cry. She was not twelve.
Elliott folded her into his arms. He smelled of woodsmoke and flannel and the coming winter wind.
"I said we'd take care of him. I promised" She said into his shirtfront.
"Isey, we may of picked him up, but we can't put him back together. We done what we could, an you know he's grateful for it. You 'n Caro fixed his feet right smart. But we don't have what he needs for what's hurtn' him now. He needs medicine an' all them things what hospitals can do. He said so. You heard 'im." Elliott's embrace was clumsy but comforting. "Let 'im go, Isey. Hope'll keep 'im safe too."
Elliott was right. Alun was right. She nodded, sniffed, and said in a muffled voice "I know. I just…" She lifted her head again. "I promised."
"And you've held that promise. We'll get him safe to where he can get taken care of. It's alright not to like it."
Iselin heaved a sigh and hugged Elliott back before stepping out of the circle of his arms. She returned to the bed, where it seemed sleep had give Alun a brief respite from distress. She arranged the quilt more warmly around his shoulders and let her hand rest a moment on the side of his face. He didn't stir. "It's okay. And I'll remember what you said. But I want you to remember too." She bent down and brushed a kiss to his temple. "Live" she whispered. "You keep on fighting for that. And I will too."
Then Iselin straightened up and made herself go get the seldom-used telephone to call for the county health services to send the mobile paramedics with the transport van. It would be better than trying to drive him to Hope themselves in Lane's jalopy or the household truck.
***
Iselin watched the ambulance bump its way down the rutted drive with slow care and sent her thought out after the suffering man it was carrying away out of their life almost as abruptly as he had entered it. The swift evening of late autumn was making the last red and gold leaves on the trees burn in the low light, and she could hear Dorcas bustling behind her, setting out the candles. Iselin had looked on Dorcas' insistence on putting candle-shaped lights (Myrtle and Dorcas had had a long and obscure debate on shape and brightness and several other points that Iselin had not followed when Caroline - who had a horror of unattended flame - had insisted on electric candles) in at least one window of every side of the house as something to be tolerated, indulged, looked on and smiled over fondly.
But that silly electric candle had led that man - Adam, Alun, Ben, so many names, all real, all somehow him but equally not quite entirely him, none the deepest truest name that Iselin knew he must have - to the safety of their doorstep. Iselin would never look on or take that little ritual so lightly again. She knew, watching the glimmer of tail-lights finally vanish into the trees, that every evening going forward, she would not only think of all the lost ones seeking safe harbor, but she would think of him, and while she might or might not believe everything he had said in that strange, surreal conversation in the cold hour before dawn, she would remember what he had said about living, the charge he had given them both. She would remember him, sending light and hope out to him wherever he might go or be.
*** *** ***