12. Radiobiology
The thin air howling past us ripped the scream from my throat, and I thought I might be suffocating as I spiraled downwards, still clutching Ciarán’s body.
The rotsbane hanging from my leg was too heavy. My wings couldn’t support the weight of all of us. A second pair of claws dug into my thigh, and I choked on another cry of pain.
“Drop the leg.” Ciarán’s voice was distant in my mind, and I focused on reabsorbing the Skal in my left leg and letting it turn to dust.
The rotsbane shrieked as it dropped, and we steadied in the air. A sudden updraft caught my wings, shooting us upwards and almost ripping Ciarán from my arms.
The lake spun below, and I risked drawing more Skal from Ciarán to reform my missing leg and redistribute my weight.
“Blue, I’m…” Ciarán’s voice gasped in my head, then faded before he finished the thought.
“You better stay awake, dammit.”
Wind buffeted me from the side, and my wings folded. We were falling again, faster this time, and sideways. I managed to force my wings back open, narrowly avoiding slamming into the rock face of a peak.
The lake glittered below, reflecting the brightening horizon back up at the sky. The shore along the mountainside all looked the same, and I wasn’t entirely sure where my body was with Fana, but I could get us close. Probably. Maybe.
I glided on an eddy until it dropped us, stealing the wind from beneath my wings. Another gale slammed into me from the side, but I managed to keep my wings extended this time.
“Are you still there?” I asked, but Ciarán was barely holding onto consciousness.
“Wren…”
He was using my real name. That had to be a bad sign.
I scanned the lakeshore for somewhere safe to land, but gray beach mixed with gray water, and tears, procured by cold, wind, and stress, made my vision blurry.
The water spiraled closer, and I let my wings expand, feeling air rush beneath the feathers. We were gliding, but I couldn’t control our descent.
“Hold on!” I yelled the words out loud as I held Ciarán tight and wrapped my wings inwards to shield him as I braced for the water.
It hit harder than I expected, punctuated by the sudden silencing of the wind that had been howling in my ears.
Under the water, everything was muted, and the world came to a standstill amid a flurry of bubbles.
My wings dissolved, floating up as glowing dust particles that wove between suspended strands of long blue hair, and for a quiet moment, I paused to look up at the orange of the rising sun filtering through the water’s surface.
The color matched the shade of Ciarán’s eyes as they fluttered open to glow softly in the water in front of me.
I wrapped my arms around him and kicked towards the rising sun.
The momentary peace broke with the water’s surface, and I craned my face away from Ciarán, trying to unstick his dark hair from my face.
“Stay awake, okay?” I gasped, trying to keep my mouth above water. The shore was farther than I’d like, but we weren’t dead yet. We still had time. Not much of it, I was sure, but I had to try.
If Ciarán passed out, I would dissolve into nothing. He would drown. Maybe I was coming to terms with the fact that Ciarán was Liam, or maybe the weight of his life felt so much heavier because of the number of times he’d now saved mine, but I could not let Ciarán die.
I begged my body to turn less dense and more buoyant, but I was pulling on dregs of Skal, and every drag of magick from the bond between us weakened Ciarán that much more.
“Come on,” I begged him through gritted teeth.
Webbed toes. I needed webbed toes.
Ciarán had to have enough consciousness left to at least give me webbed toes so I could get us to the shore faster.
But when I focused on my feet, I realized I didn’t have feet at all. Or legs. My form was dissolving as Ciarán passed into unconsciousness, and water filled my mouth and lungs just to then pass through my shifting shape.
I tried to scream as the lake sucked up and over my head, but I no longer had a mouth to scream with and I watched in horrified, stifled silence as Ciarán’s glowing eyes rolled back into his head and his body sank beneath me.
“Ciarán!” I bolted awake, ignoring the burning protest of my ribs. Dawn broke over the lake, and Fana jumped at my shout from where she stood at the shore.
“Wren!” She slipped over pebbles to reach me, clutching Jonquil in her arms, but I was already halfway standing.
“He’s in the lake,” I sobbed. “He’s drowning.”
Fana spun to face the water.
“That was you?” she asked. “Falling from the sky?”
“You saw us?” I grabbed her by her slight shoulders and spun her to face me. Jonquil fell from her arms with an indignant chirp. “Where, Fana? Where did we land?”
She shook her head, her eyes wide and frightened. “I don’t know. Maybe—”
She pulled away and traced a finger through the air, replaying our free fall, until her finger pointed to the east.
“There?” I asked. “How far out?”
“Maybe a mile? Far, but not too far. Is Ciarán dead?”
“Not yet. I can still feel him.” And I could. His presence in my head was faint, now a distant whisper as opposed to his usually buzzing. “The others are coming. Wait for them, but be ready to move!”
I grabbed a bottle of Skal from my pack, and I ran.
Lakeshore rocks shifted underfoot as I sprinted to the east. Adrenaline dulled the ache in my ribs, though a hot pain was spreading in my stomach.
He’d been sinking in the water when I’d last seen him, his dark hair curling up around his face, but the lake stretched for miles in every direction.
I looked up at the mountain peaks as I ran, trying to triangulate where we’d been when we’d plummeted into the water, but everything looked the same.
Panic hitched in my chest.
Ferrin had taken Liam from me again. Ferrin had killed him twice.
No, not yet.
There was still a chance. I just had to keep running. If I stopped running, if I gave up, those chances dropped to nothing. As long as I kept moving, I could still save Ciarán.
And he was still there, floating at the back of my mind. I clung to his presence, holding onto it with every running step. Maybe with enough will-power I could keep him alive through our tether.
I sipped at my Skal as I ran, ignoring that some of the liquid spilled down my chin. Any magick of mine was available to him, and maybe that was just what he needed to survive.
A ripple in the lake surface up ahead brought me to a staggering, disbelieving halt. Something moved across the water, though I was too far to see what it might be.
Maybe it was an animal, or maybe…
I took up my sprint again, not daring to call out Ciarán’s name, not when Ferrin might have soldiers out searching for us already. We’d be easy to find now that it was day, and the only shelters were the rocky outcroppings that jutted into the lake.
The disturbance on the lake disappeared behind one of these outcroppings, and I ignored the ulcer pains in my stomach to speed up and clamber over dew-stricken stone.
My heart lodged in my throat when I looked down at the beach below. Ciarán lay on his back with his head rolled to the side and water-logged hair stuck to his face, but as worried as I was about how limp and lifeless he looked, I only had eyes for the monster standing over him.
It had a face like a fox and a wolfish body and tail, but its coat was a soft, desaturated green that made it difficult to see against the backdrop of gray lakeshore.
The jade fur of its front legs gave way to rough gray scales, and massive talons kneaded at the rocks next to Ciarán where paws should have been.
“Get away from him!” A blue flail appeared in hand as I charged down the sloping rock.
The beast skittered backwards, sending up a spray of pebbles, but then stopped and pawed at the ground again. A soft whine whistled through its long snout, and its head bobbed between me and Ciarán where he lay beneath me.
I dropped to my knees, letting my flail turn to steam.
“Ciarán?” I shook him by his shoulders. When he remained unresponsive, the fox-wolf-bird monster gave another whine. “Come on, Ciarán, don’t do this to me.”
I bent over his lips, trying unsuccessfully to feel and listen for breathing. I tried to listen for him in my mind too, but the blood rushing in my ears was too loud.
Or maybe there was nothing left of Ciarán for me to hear. I tapped on his face. His head lolled to the side as his mouth hung open.
“Not again!” I hissed. “You can’t die again!”
I knew CPR. I’d learned it in Sports Medicine class. I’d never done it on a real person, just the dummy the instructor had dragged out of the supply closet, but how different could it be?
They’d told us to start with rescue breaths when the victim had drowned. Right. Just breathe directly into his mouth.
I could do that.
I held Ciarán’s nose closed with one shaking hand and used the other to angle his chin upwards and ensure a clear airway. I gave the monster one last glance, took a deep breath, and then bent in towards Ciarán to lock my mouth over his cold lips. His chest expanded under my elbow as I exhaled and—
Ciarán’s body heaved, and sour, regurgitated water forced its way down my throat. Ciarán gagged as he shoved me off him, still expelling lake water. I scrambled away, retching on Ciarán’s vomit until my own stomach heaved to add its content to the foul mix.
“What the hell, Wren!” Ciarán choked. His low Skal supply had left his eyes amber and white, and they glared at me through the hair that hung in his face.
“I thought you were dead!”
“So you kissed me?” His voice was a horrified hiss.
Mortification brought heat surging to my face.
“It was CPR! It was supposed to revive you!” I spit into the rocks, still unable to get rid of the taste of Ciarán’s bile.
“Oh, I’m certainly revived.” He gagged again, and his arms shook as he tried to hold himself up, but then his jaw went slack and his eyes wide. If he’d had any color left in his face, I was sure his cheeks would’ve drained of it.