36. Annani
ANNANI
A lena reached the clinic's front door first and held it open. "Something is going on. Look at Hildegard."
Through the glass, Annani could see the nurse emerging from the clinic's back door, smiling, which was unusual.
It was not that Hildegard was not a happy person.
The nurse loved her job and was happily mated, but she prided herself on her assertive personality and sarcastic humor, which she usually delivered with a straight face.
"Clan Mother." Hildegard rushed toward her and Alena. "You are going to want to go straight down."
Annani did not ask why. She went down the stairs to the clinic basement and tried not to run. The Clan Mother did not run, and especially not while wearing a floor-length gown she could trip over.
Hildegard pushed the double doors of the converted operating room open, and Annani immediately sensed the change in the air.
Julian stood next to the bed of patient John Doe One, as he had named him, moving his finger from side to side. The male's eyes were open, and he was tracking the movement.
"That's excellent," Julian said. "You're doing very well."
He had said that in English, so the male could not have understood it even if he had retained command of any spoken language, but his eyes followed Julian's movement long after the doctor had concluded his test.
Next, he took the male's hand. "Can you squeeze my fingers?" he asked again in English. "Like this."
Evidently the patient understood Julian's meaning from the gesture, and his fingers closed around the physician's palm.
"There it is." Julian grinned over his shoulder. "That's the fourth time this morning, and it doesn't get old."
Annani did not wait to hear the rest.
She crossed to Khiann's bed without stopping next to any of the others and looked down at her mate's face.
Khiann's eyes were closed.
His face was so beautiful, so familiar, and utterly at rest, and nothing in it had changed since yesterday, or the day before, or any day of the past week.
Four monitors in the converted ward had learned new tunes this morning, quickening and stumbling, filling the room with the busy irregular music of bodies whose souls were returning home. Khiann's still played the old one. Breath after identical breath. Heartbeat after identical heartbeat.
She took his hand between both of hers and held on.
"Good morning, my love," she said.
His fingers were warm and motionless in her palms. She stood there, trying hard not to let despair overwhelm her or allow a single sound to escape her.
"Annani." Bridget came to stand beside her, one hand braced beneath the curve of her belly. "I was going to call you this morning, and then Alena's cart pulled up outside and saved me the trouble."
"When did they wake?"
"Sometime before dawn. Hildegard was on shift. She says John Doe number two opened his eyes first, and then the others came up one after another. They track movements, and some can close their fingers, but none can talk yet."
Annani looked at the bed next to Khiann's, where a male lay with his mouth moving and nothing coming out.
"He's been at it on and off for nearly an hour," Bridget said. "I told him to rest and he ignored me, which I consider an excellent sign."
"Do you speak the old language?"
"Only a few words, but he understood my tone and my hand gesture." Bridget lifted her palm in the universal shape of enough.
Annani's fingers tightened around Khiann's.
"Why is Khiann not waking?"
"I don't know," Bridget said quietly. "His readings are the strongest of the five, and his regeneration is outpacing theirs. It must be his different physiology. He is a god."
"That means that he should have regenerated faster."
Bridget sighed. "I've delivered babies who took their time and babies who came early, and the ones who took their time were not any less healthy than those who hurried to be born.
Khiann is taking his time. I know that this is not much comfort for you, but it is what it is.
He will wake up just like the others. I promise. "
Bridget could not really promise that, but her words helped nonetheless.
Annani laid Khiann's hand down on the blanket. "Excuse me for a few moments, my love. I need to greet your friends."
She stopped next to each of the other four, saying good morning in the old tongue, enunciating slowly and clearly. They looked back at her, but there was no recognition in their gazes.
"They don't know who you are," Alena said quietly beside her.
"No, they do not."
"It is their first morning," her daughter said.
"I know that, and I hope they will regain their memories, but if they do not, I will tell them about the world they left behind. I never knew their names or their families, so I cannot fill all the gaps for them, but I will do my best."
Annani returned to Khiann's bed, sat down in the white plastic chair, and took his hand between hers again.
"Your guards are awake," she told him, in the old tongue, pitched low just for him.
"They do not know their own names, and they do not recognize me.
" She caressed the back of his hand. "They might still remember who they were before the stasis, and if they do not, they will have to build themselves anew in the world they have awakened to. "
His hand lay still.
"Two days ago, I made a bargain with the Fates," she whispered. "I will not tell you the terms, and if the Fates are merciful, you will never need to know them." She closed her eyes and matched her breathing to his, slow and deep, keeping him company wherever he was.
The pressure against her palm was so slight that she discarded it at first. It was her imagination playing tricks on her, her longing creating what was not there.
Then it came again, and it was not the loose aimless twitching of the other four that she had watched for days. This was slow and ordered.
Khiann's fingers curled beneath hers one after another, deliberately, and closed around her hand.
Annani did not move.
She sat with her mate's fingers wrapped around hers for the first time in five thousand years, and no sound came out of her.
Not a cry. Not a breath.
The ward hummed and the medical staff murmured behind her, unaware, and the only thing that had ever mattered was happening inside the small warm space between her palms, and she could not make a sound to tell anyone.
"Bridget." It came out as a thread. Cracked, thin, barely voiced.
Bridget heard it.
Her head came up and she turned toward Annani, her large belly leading the way as she moved between the beds surprisingly fast.
"What is it?"
"Khiann moved his fingers."
Annani lifted her hand a few inches off the bed, slowly, terrified of dislodging it, and turned her wrist so that Bridget could see.
Khiann's fingers were closed around hers, not collapsed against them. They were curled over her small hand, holding it, and the tendons stood out faintly on the back of his hand with the effort of the grip.
"Oh, dear merciful Fates," Bridget breathed.
"He is holding my hand." Annani's voice broke apart in the middle of it. "Bridget. He is holding my hand."
"Julian." Bridget did not raise her voice, but Julian heard and came with Hildegard behind him, and Alena's phone hit the floor somewhere in the room.
"Vitals," Bridget said. "Now. Somebody get me the log."
Annani did not look at any of them.
She was watching Khiann's face, which was no longer still.
It began beneath his eyelids, a flicker, the restless turning of eyes searching a lightless room for a door.
Then the lids twitched, straining upward against the weight of his lashes and the thousands of years of stasis that had held them shut.
His brow drew together. It was the smallest crease, barely noticeable.
The first expression to cross that face in five thousand years.
"Khiann." Annani leaned over him and held on with both hands. "I am here. Can you open your eyes and look at me?"
The room had gone silent around her.
"Come back to me, my love," she whispered. "You have climbed so far. Come the rest of the way."
His eyelids trembled.
Then opened.
COMING UP NEXT
The Children of the Gods Book 111
Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry