Awakenings

“Jacqueline’s ready to kill you,” J.T. said to Phelan two days later as he peeled back the bandages protecting the wound in his side.  “I have no idea what you said to her, but she’s pissed.”

“Of course she is,” Phelan grumbled.  “I was stupid.    I’ll make it up to her somehow when I feel like I’m not going to fall over every time I get out of bed.  Has the weather broken?”

“Storm’s been letting up since last night,” J.T. said, pouring a little disinfectant across Phelan’s stitches.  Phelan hissed, tensing up.

“Stop whining,” Ériu’s spirit chided.  “It doesn’t suit you.”

J.T. winced, but had to cover a smirk as Phelan glared in the ghost’s direction.

“Be quiet,” Phelan ordered.  “You’ve said more than enough the past couple of days.”

One of J.T.’s brows arched.  “Has she?” he asked curiously.

Phelan winced, looking away.  “Don’t ask.”

“I’m asking anyway.  What’s going on?”

“He wants to leave to protect you lot,” Ériu said.  “She thinks it’s foolish.  I do, too, but he doesn’t want to listen to a ghost.”

“I never said that,” Phelan said, his voice a little more hoarse than it had been the moment before.

“Of course you did!  I heard you, Phelan.  Don’t pretend you didn’t say it and you certainly shouldn’t pretend you didn’t think it.”

J.T. arched a brow, gaze drifting between the ephemeral spirit and Phelan.  “Well,” he said after a moment, “I think it’s stupid, too.  You’re not going anywhere anytime soon.  Not with a hole the size of the one you’ve got in your side.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere until I was better,” he muttered, turning his face to the wall, every muscle tensed as J.T. resumed tending to the aforementioned hole in his side.  “I know I wouldn’t make it far and that wouldn’t do anyone any good, would it?”

“Neither would you leaving,” J.T. said.  “We care about you.”

“You decked me the first time we met.”

“You deserved it.  You said as much.”  J.T. grinned as he saw the corner of Phelan’s mouth twitch toward a smile.  “Now quit talking about crazy shit like leaving.  It’s a bad idea.”

“Even if it keeps you all safe?” Phelan asked softly.

“It wouldn’t,” J.T. said.  I can see ghosts.  Marin and Thom see the future.  Cameron and Neve are here, and you can’t tell me they’re not going to be drawing enemies here, too—Thordin’s the same.  There’s nowhere safe unless we’re all together.  “Trust me,” he said, his voice softer.  “It wouldn’t.”

Neve blinked rapidly, staring at her.  “Wait, what?  Why are you going to kill my cousin?”

“He’s absolutely impossible,” Jacqueline snapped.  “Did you know he wants to leave?  Just like that.  Leave us.  Vanish.  We wake up one day and poof!  No Phelan.”

Phelan wouldn’t do that.  Wanderer he may be, but he’d never just up and abandon everyone here just like that.  Not knowing how much he cares about everyone and how much they care about him.  Neve shook her head.  “You must be exaggerating.  Phelan wouldn’t leave.”

“He might,” Marin said softly, glancing up at her.  She closed the book, fingers curving around the covers so tightly her knuckles turned white.  “He might, if he thought it was the only way to keep s safe.”

Neve stared at her.  How does she know that?

“That’s exactly why he says he wants to,” Jacqueline said.  “And it’s idiotic.  I’ll kill him or I’ll tie him to a freaking bed if I have to.  He’s not going anywhere.”

“Of course not,” Marin soothed softly.  “We’ll talk him out of it.”

She could see the flickers of fear in her friend’s eyes.  Neve swallowed hard.  “I’ll talk to him,” she said quickly.  “I’ll knock some sense into him.  Maybe if I tell him if he leaves, I’m going with him, that’ll make him think twice about going anywhere.”

“He’ll just sneak,” Marin said, shaking her head.  “He’d find a way around that.  We have to convince him it’s a bad idea.”

“Well, the only person who doesn’t seem to know it’s a bad idea is him.”  Jacqueline crossed her arms, seething as she glared at nothing.  “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Neve said honestly, glancing at Marin.  “But we’ll think of something.”

The seer smiled weakly.  “We always do.”

“They’re hiding something from us, Marin.”

Marin glanced up from her book and toward Neve, who sat with one knee drawn to her chest against the wall of the shelter she still shared with Cameron—though Cameron had been sharing Thordin’s for the past few days.  “Who is?”

“You know who,” Neve said, sighing softly and tilting her head back to stare at the rough-hewn beams above her head.  “The boys.  They can feel there’s something about to happen but they’re staying mum about it because the last thing they want is for us to worry our pretty little heads about it.”

Marin snorted softly.  “Raising your voice to that pitch is a nice touch.”  She took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly.  “What do you actually expect from them, Neve?  Really, what do you want them to do, tell us every time they’ve got a bad feeling about something?  Of course they’re going to try to keep us from worrying right now—especially when there might not be anything to worry about.”

“So you don’t think that’s something’s about to happen?”

Marin sighed.  “I’m in a constant state of waiting for the other shoe to drop these days, Neve.  I have to hope that somehow we’ll get lucky and the ominous warning we’ve gotten is simply preemptive, a cautionary warning.”

Neve shuddered visibly.  If I believe there’s something actually wrong, does that mean I actually believe that Leinth showed up to warn us?  Or does that mean I think that she’s got something to do with whatever’s about to happen to us?  It was a question that had been on her mind for days, since their encounter.  She couldn’t blame Cameron for the accident of his lineage—she’d forgiven him that much, at least—but she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that there was far, far more happening than any of them realized.

She started to voice another concern to Marin when the door slammed open.

“I can’t take him anymore,” Jacqueline said.  “I just can’t do it.

“I think I’m going to kill Phelan, Neve.  I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to do it.”

“He’s right, you know,” Thordin said after a moment’s consideration.  “We probably need to let them know that something’s possibly about to happen.  If we don’t, they’ll just be angrier than wet hornets.”

“Nothing is about to happen!”  Thom protested, not quite flinging the sword he was sharpening into a corner.  “There’s nothing coming.  Nothing’s going to go sideways.  We’re just paranoid because we’re in a constant state of waiting for the other shoe to drop.  A fucking goddess of winter and death showing up with an ominous warning means nothing.”

Thordin arched a brow and glanced at Cameron, who winced and looked away.  J.T. just groaned, slumping onto a stool and burying his face in his hands.

“I was happier not knowing,” the paramedic said.  “I was absolutely happier not knowing.  Total fucking bliss.”

“Oh knock it off,” Thom growled.  “We don’t have anything to worry about.  If there was something to worry about, Cariocecus would be here trying to warn us and Phelan would be crawling out of his damned skin and neither’s happening.  Everything’s fine.”

“You sound incredibly confident,” Thordin said as he pumped the bellows and checked the half-formed hunk of metal Matt had left in the cherry-red coals.  “Got a reason for it?”

“Bad feelings aside, I haven’t seen anything lately,” Thom said, his tone dry.  “Sometimes, a storm’s just a storm and a bad feeling’s nothing to get bent out of shape over.”

“Sometimes,” J.T. said wryly, “but with us? That doesn’t happen often.”

“We have to bloody well hope that’s the case this time,” Thom said as he reclaimed his whetstone, flung aside during his brief outburst.  “And we have to find a way to convince the girl that there’s nothing going on.”

“And if they’ve got bad feelings and have seen things?”  Thordin asked softly.  “What then?”

Thom grimaced.  “Then we brace for the fucking worst and hope for the best.  What else can we do?”

What else indeed.

Thom’s voice carried on the wind as the pair drew closer to the forge.

“You can’t tell me that you’re not feeling it, too.”

“I am feeling it,” J.T. said as Cameron and Thordin ducked into the warmth of the forge.  “I’m just trying not to damn well think about it.  I’m not supposed to have intuitions and hunches like you and Marin.  Hell, I’m not even supposed to see ghosts.”

His face backlit by the flames of the forge, Matt snorted softly, the sound barely audible over the roar of the flames and the hiss of the bellows.  “Good luck wishing to stop see them, Jay,” he said.  “I don’t know that you’ll ever get it.”

“It’s not something I asked for,” J.T. said.

“None of you asked for the gifts that you have,” Thordin said as he pushed Cameron deeper into the dim warmth.  “But you’ve got it just the same and you’ve got it for a reason.  Are you two feeling as unsettled as I am?  I don’t like the sound of that wind.”

He almost regretted giving voice to the words, but the look on the faces of his companions told him it was undoubtedly the right thing to do.  Concern creased Thom’s brow and J.T. suddenly became very interested in his boot laces.  Matt snorted again and shook his head.

“The better question is, has anyone told the girls?”

“No,” Thom said firmly.  “And you’re not, either.  Not until we know whether or not we’re just being damned well paranoid.”

“And when has it ever been simple paranoia?”  Matt asked as he straightened from pumping the bellows.

“Once or twice,” Thom said.

Matt shook his head.  “I don’t believe you.  Thordin, take over, will you?”

Thordin frowned, but switched places with Matt.  “What are you going to do?”

“Round up Kellin and my sister,” he said.  “Maybe one or two of the others and bring them up here.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just go back down there?”  Cameron asked, glancing toward the door.  He shivered slightly, as if remembering the wind and thinking better of his suggestion.

“Possibly,” Matt said.  “But there’s also greater chance of being overheard, and nobody in this room wants that if we’re just—how did you put it, Thom?  Just being paranoid?”

“Marin was getting some extra sleep, Matt,” Thom growled.  “Don’t you dare wake her.”

“If something’s about to show up and eat us, I’m pretty sure she’d want to be awake for that.”  He shrugged into his coat and headed for the door.

“Nobody said anything’s coming to eat us,” J.T. said.

“Nobody said something isn’t, either, and when everyone in this room’s got a bad feeling, that gives me a bad feeling.  I’ll be back.”

With that, he ducked out into the driving wind and blinding snow.

“Has she forgiven you yet?”

Cameron winced at the question.  “Mostly, I think.  It’s hard to know what I’m being forgiven for, though.  It doesn’t make any sense.”

“She feels like you kept an awful secret from her, Cam,” Thordin said as he suppressed a sigh.  “Bloodlines that trace to Seamus and to Leinth?  Especially when she thought that Leinth was the enemy?  I wouldn’t be able to blame her for being upset.”

“And I don’t blame her for being upset,” Cameron said, turning his face aside to shield his eyes from the worst of a stinging gust of wind, “but I don’t understand why she blames me for it.”

“Who else is there for her to blame?”  Thordin asked.  “She can’t blame Seamus because he’s dead, she can’t really blame Leinth because she’s not here, I think she’s angry at Phelan, too, for not saying anything—”

“And you?”

Thordin snorted.  “How was I to know anything?  I was, for all intents and purposes, dead when your many times over great grandfather was born of their loins.”  He shivered in the wind as they trudged up the hill toward the dark heat of Matt’s forge.  The storms that had plagued them for three days hadn’t shown much sign of letting up, but the weather had eased enough that they could move short distances away from the main tents—up to the forge, to the makeshift smokehouse, even to the edge of the ravine in some places.  Marin and Kellin had been out once or twice in the blinding snow and cutting wind to check on the wardings that they’d set; Thom had gone out to check the walls and the watchtower, though they didn’t dare post anyone in the tower with the weather the way it was.

If anyone wanted to attack us, now would be the time to do it because we’d be caught completely unaware.

Thordin grimaced.  Of course, they’d have to brave this weather to get to us, which means it would be someone that’s likely got as big of a bone to pick with me as they would anyone else here.

That was the problem with being what he was—enemies both new and old had your number and the old ones had a very, very long time to nurse a grudge.

Another gust sent Cameron stumbling into him and almost toppled them both.  The wind moaned like a thing alive, something hungry and mean.

“Hellfire,” Thordin breathed as he straightened, grasping Cameron by the shoulder of his jacket.  “Move faster, my friend.  Let’s get under cover before the next blast hits.”

“Next blast?  Next blast of what?”

“Snow and ice,” Thordin said, guts twisting.  It was as if he could feel something’s eyes on him—something malevolent and as hungry as the wind sounded.  “Another wave of the worst part of these storms.  Better to be in that damned forge with Matt than elsewhere.”

Cameron shuddered and nodded.  “Right.  You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” Thordin muttered, squinting toward the steel-colored sky.

Something was out there.  He could feel it, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Hold still,” Jacqueline snarled.  “I’ve got work to do.”

Phelan almost jumped right out of his bed, wishing for a moment that he could take leave of his skin as well if only to quell the fiery pain in his side and the roiling of his stomach.  As it was, he crammed himself into the corner at the head of his bed, wide-eyed and staring at her.  She met his gaze with a baleful one of her own, her jaw tight with one muscle twitching in it and her pulse visibly pounding in her temple.

His mouth went dry.  “I—”

“Save it,” she snapped.  “Lie back down.  I’m not finished.”

“I—send Jay,” he said, swallowing the bile that suddenly rose in his throat.  “You’re in no state—”

“No,” she agreed.  “I’m not in any state to work on you.  Do you know why?  It’s because you’re being a damned idiot and I can’t take it.  I just can’t take it.  Do you have any idea what would happen to us if you left?  We wouldn’t survive.”

“Of course you would.”  You’re all too strong, too brave, too smart to just lay down and die.  You’re clever.  You’d outwit anything that came up against you.  Somehow, you’d all find a way to come out on top.

They’ll do that with or without you.  So why can’t you stay?

“No,” she said.  “No, we wouldn’t.  Even if we have Neve and Thordin, we all know that they don’t have half the knowledge that you do rattling around that thick skull of yours.  We need you and I can’t believe you’d think for a second of leaving us.”  She swiped angrily at the tears that were welling up, threatening to spill down her cheeks.  “If you left us, I think I’d hate you and I don’t hate anyone.”  She capped the bottle of rubbing alcohol and flung it back into her basket.  “I can’t even look at you right now.”

She spun, then, and marched out the door.  Phelan sagged into the corner, mouth dry and heart beating at twice its normal speed.

The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stirred and he smelled the scent he always associated with Ériu.

“I suppose you’ve come to scold me, too,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

Her voice was like bells.  “She fancies you, Uncle.  Don’t judge her too harshly.  She can’t help her heart any more than you can help yours.”

A shudder went through him as words failed.

For one of the very few times in his life, Phelan O’Credne didn’t know what to say.

The fire in his side began to spread a few minutes later and he grit his teeth against the pain, his jaw throbbing at counterpoint to his side.  It felt like she’d put her finger through the stitches, not just against them.

“Relax,” she said, her voice more soothing than it was sharp.  Phelan cracked an eye open to make eye contact with her.

“Relax,” he echoed.  “When you’re shoving your finger into my side like the stitches aren’t even there?”

She snorted a laugh.  “Settle.  The edges are actually starting to firm and nothing’s popped.  J.T. was worried that it’d end up infected like the last time something stabbed you.”

“I didn’t end up with an infection that time,” Phelan said, letting his eyes slide shut again.

“Jay was still worried.  Truth be told, so was I.”  She got up from the bed and walked over to his narrow dresser, rummaging around in the basket she’d left there when she’d come to his bedside.

“Everyone worries,” he said softly.  “That’s the problem.”  He opened his eyes and watched her as she dug out a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton swabs.  “I’m thinking about leaving, Jac.”

He wasn’t sure why he said it.  He hadn’t intended to, and watching the horror dawn on her face made him realize that giving voice to those words was a mistake.

“You can’t,” she said.  “You can’t go anywhere.  We need you.”

They were words he expected from Marin, not from Jacqueline.  His throat grew tight and his heart felt like a ball of lead in his chest.  The anger that had given fire to her eyes was gone, replaced by fear and alarm.

“How could you even think it?” she asked.

What do I say?  That my being here puts everyone I love at risk? That if I stay I could get them all killed?

That I have to go because I love them, not in spite of loving all of them?

He looked away, stared at the wall.

Jacqueline sighed.  “Phelan.”

“I don’t have an answer you’ll want to hear,” he murmured.  “Just do what you came here to do and leave me be.”

Silence stretched between them for a few long moments.

“Fine,” she said.

He yelped as she poured the rubbing alcohol right into the wound in his side.

We found the second cookfire abandoned except for J.T., who sat next to it with both hands wrapped around a mug of something steaming, a blanket pulled tight around his shoulders.  I blinked in surprise to see him and he glanced up toward us at our approach, looking tired and haggard with deep, bruise-colored shadows beneath his eyes.

“You look like shit,” I said.

“I feel like it, too.”  He stretched a little and watched as Neve and I settled down next to the fire across from him.  “What brings you ladies to my quiet corner of the tent?”

“What brings you all the way out here?  Usually you’re by the other fire.”

“Not today,” he said.  “I was out in the mess and this fire was closer to where I came back inside.  The rest are all off doing god knows what, which means I have a few minutes of peace.”

Take it when and where you can get it, I guess.

“You sound like you’re being pulled in as many directions as Thom and Marin,” Neve said as she settled in and gazed longingly at the kettle that sat near the fire.  I took pity on her and poured two cups of the hot, strong tea, one for each of us.  She took her mug and cradled it much like J.T., peering over the rim toward him.

“A little bit,” J.T. admitted, casting a wary glance in my direction.  “For all the ghosts keep telling me they can’t help us anymore, they’re certainly still around and chatty.”

I shivered slightly.  “Including Ériu, I’m guessing?”  I didn’t want to be hateful or be uncomfortable because I knew she was still lurking around.  That wasn’t what I wanted at all, especially because she had been so important to Phelan in the past and having her spirit near was such a comfort to him.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but get the shivers every time I thought about her, if only because I’d raised her from a child in another life, a life I could see in dreams and snatches of memory.

She’s not leaving until the children are born.  I glanced toward Neve.  Maybe not even for a long time after.

Can you handle that eventuality, Marin?  Can you do it?  I bit my lip.  I wasn’t sure that I could.

“Do you want me to lie and say no?”  J.T. asked, staring at me over the fire and the rim of his mug.  I managed to smile.

“No,” I said softly.  “There are just some things I have to accept and her presence, I guess, is just one of those things.  It’s just hard and strange.”

“She understands that,” J.T. said.  “That’s why she tries not to stay too near when you’re with him.  But she loves him and she wants to protect him, too.  Just like she wants to protect you and Thom an the children.”

“Of course,” I murmured, staring at the fire.  Neve reached over and squeezed my arm.

“Some things are still hard, huh?  Even for you.”

I laughed weakly.  “Yeah.  Even for me.”  Especially for me, since I can see some of the paths twisting, where they’ll go.

                Especially for me who dreams more of the past and the future than the present and fears what tomorrow may hold because of all I’ve seen and all I know.

I took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, looking toward Neve and trying to master my storming thoughts.  “So,” I said with a measure of forced cheer.  “Tell me about how Thordin came back from the dead.”

Neve looked stricken for a moment, then started to laugh.