22. Garrek
22
GARREK
I ’d never ridden so fast as I did then with Magnolia limp and burning in my arms. I pushed Shanti as hard as she could go, keeping pace with Oaken while Killian followed. I did not know where we were going. I did not even know why. All I knew was that Oaken seemed to have an idea and anything, anything was better than sitting there feeling Magnolia slip away from me on that beach.
Even if whatever Oaken wanted to do was some foolhardy waste of time. There was no cure for an ardu bite.
But doing something had always been more natural to me than doing nothing, and if I could do anything for her now, I would. I’d follow Oaken off the edge of a cliff for her if it would make any sort of difference.
We left everything else behind. The bracku, fenceless and defenceless. The tents. Our packs. The beautiful vest Magnolia had made for me. All of it.
I did not know how long we rode. I, who’d always had a good sense of direction – a skill sharpened by my life here – could not have recalled the path afterwards even if I’d tried. No landmarks served as records for me now. Only Magnolia gave me signs I paid any heed to. The temperature of her skin, the speed of her breathing were my only markers. Her body the only map that mattered.
I finally did notice when we passed fencing, though. Wooden enclosures nestled within a wide, grassy valley between soaring peaks. A clear stream burbled over rock nearby. And beyond that stream was a cabin.
I tightened my hold on Magnolia as I urged Shanti into a broad leap over the water. Oaken and Killian leaped, too, and Oaken shouted over the sound of pounding hooves, “We have to get her inside!”
Shanti had barely stopped moving when I was already jumping down with Magnolia in my arms. I landed in a heavy crouch and sprinted for the door. I kicked it hard, boot colliding, and wood splintered as I forced it open. I heard Oaken swear as he got awkwardly down from his mount, then he muttered something like, “Blast it all, Garrek, I have a key!”
I charged into Oaken’s home, coming through an entryway into a kitchen, then stopped. I had no idea what to do next. The mad dash here had given me some sense of purpose. Somewhere to go, something to run to.
But now, I had stopped running. And panic burned like acid.
I whirled around, clutching Magnolia tightly to me, as if merely by holding her hard enough I could make everything alright.
Through the hole of the damaged doorway I saw Oaken approach. In the clutching haze of my fear, I was startled to see that Killian was helping him. He’d tossed his lean, blue-green arm around Oaken’s bare green waist, letting my cousin use his smaller body as a sort of crutch. I dimly remembered Oaken shouting a hurried explanation at Killian as we’d taken off. Killian must have known that, at least in this moment of disaster, Oaken was someone to trust.
“Over to the cupboards,” Oaken grunted, hobbling and leaning heavily on Killian. Killian was so anxious to keep moving that he nearly left Oaken behind, leaving my cousin to hop frantically to catch up. When they reached a set of cupboards, Oaken released Killian and yanked the wooden doors open, shoving bottles and pots and plates aside, muttering madly under his breath. Then, a triumphant shout of, “Here! Here it is!” He tried to cross the kitchen back to me but quickly gave up. He pressed a small jar into Killian’s palm and Killian raced it to me without needing to be told.
My hands full, I grasped the jar with my tail and held it up to my face. Inside appeared to be a small collection of dried purple flowers.
“She has to eat them,” Oaken explained hurriedly. He grasped the wood-topped counter and used it to hop-haul himself over to me. Taking the jar, he snapped off the lid as I sat heavily in a chair. I adjusted Magnolia so that she was cradled in my left arm, my right hand free to claw a flower from the jar .
“Eat this,” I growled, hoping some part of her would respond to a stern command. She did not move. Did not open her eyes. Or her mouth. “Please,” I begged. “Sweet thing, you have to do it.”
“She has to,” Oaken reiterated gravely. In the corner of the room, Killian crouched, chewing viciously on a lock of his own hair. Something I had not seen him do in a long time.
I cursed and then shoved the flower into my own mouth. Then, I dumped the contents of the jar in my mouth, too, like I was draining the last large sip of a drink. Floral bitterness burst on my tongue as I ground the flowers to paste with my fangs.
I took Magnolia’s face in my hands, eased her lips apart, then pressed my mouth to hers.
I tried to strike the balance between slow enough that I would not make her cough or choke, and fast enough that I did not waste any precious time. I eased the paste and juice past her lips and flat teeth, palming her throat while I did it, massaging with a trembling hand.
“Come on…” Oaken murmured.
Beneath my hand, I felt it. The tiniest contraction. Once, and then again, a little stronger.
She swallowed.
I withdrew, keeping my gaze glued to her face. Her skin, usually so rich and warm, had taken on a lifeless tone. Her lips were paler, streaked with dark purple from the flowers. I probed those remnants with a tender thumb, trying to urge every last little bit into her mouth .
“She swallowed it. Now what?” I asked Oaken.
“Now, we wait,” he said. “We wait and hope it works.”
I leaned back in the chair, drawing Magnolia gingerly along with me until her little head was secured against the base of my throat. I rubbed my hands along her back, her legs. As if, as long as I kept touching her, she would keep breathing in return.
“What do the flowers do?” I asked. “Why do you even think they’ll work at all?”
Oaken raised his fist and brought his forearm close to my face. At first, I saw only the dark green of his hide stretched across corded muscles he’d not had when I’d last seen him. But then, I saw them. The twin pinprick scars of a bite.
“I think they’ll work,” he said, lowering his arm, “because they worked on me.”
“You… You were bitten by an ardu?”
Impossible that he could be standing before me now. And yet, he was. A breathless hope began to steal through me. I wanted so badly to latch onto it.
“Some cycles ago, yes. Just after I took over this property on my own and my warden left.” Oaken sat down in one of the other chairs with a pained grunt. His tail slithered across the floor, hooking onto a wooden crate and dragging it over. He lifted his right foot and propped it up on the crate with a restrained hiss.
“How did you…”
“How did I know to eat the flowers? I didn’t. No one knew about them.” He leaned back in the chair, removed his hat, and brushed hair the same black shade as mine out of his face. His eyes were a clear, calm green, a little paler than his hide.
“I was alone when I got bitten. The effects were swift. I don’t remember a lot, but I do remember feeling so sick, and feeling like if I didn’t eat something, I was going to die. I had collapsed in a meadow of those flowers. I think I was a little delirious. I started shoving them into my mouth.”
“And then?”
“And then I lost consciousness. When I woke up again, night had fallen. I felt like I’d just been trampled by a shuldu. But I was alive.”
My body shuddered violently as relief hit my bloodstream like a drug. I lowered my forehead to Magnolia’s and simply breathed with her, hoping for something that mere moments ago had not seemed possible.
That she might live.
“I’m just so glad that I could help,” Oaken was saying now. “I’ve missed you, cousin. And I’ve always wanted to repay you for what you’ve done for me.”
“Repay me?” I asked, lifting my head to regard him with startled scepticism. “I ruined your life.”
Oaken’s eyes flashed briefly white. A gentle smile pulled at his mouth.
“I always thought that you had saved it.”
“I got you exiled!” I said in disbelief. “You were convicted for a crime you did not commit! My crime!”
Oaken regarded me with his head cocked. His expression was smooth, no hint of the confused turmoil I was now feeling. Mildly, he asked, “Did you know I have not had an attack since coming here?”
“What?”
“My lungs. I think the air is different here. Or maybe I am different here.”
Oaken had always had weak lungs as a child. He was prone to the same attacks of breathlessness that had contributed to his mother’s death. It was after her death that he had been sent to live with my father and me.
“And you and I both know that I was smaller and weaker than you were. I was ill, Garrek. The beatings that you survived could very well have killed me.” He gazed at me steadily. “I think it’s very likely I would have died that day if you had not intervened.”
And all at once, I was a child again. A child coming home to find Oaken’s small body curled up on the floor while my father’s rage rained down upon him.
And then I was hauling my father away, fighting back for my younger cousin the way I’d never fought back for myself. And then I was hitting him. And then he was falling. The sound of his head hitting the stone mantel was as sickeningly clear now as it had been that day.
“You saved me,” Oaken said again. Simply. Bluntly. As if it were a fact he’d known and accepted all his life and not something that should upend my entire reality. “And really, Garrek, do you not think that we are safer here, even among the dangers of this world? So much better off than we would have been in that house with him? ”
This, I could not argue with. Even as a prisoner under the watch of the wardens of Zabria Prinar One, I was more free than I’d ever been in my own home.
“I am content, Garrek. And now that I know that I will meet my bride soon, I do not think any life could make me happier than this one.”
Blast. Blast it all. He did not know.
“And if I can repay you now by saving your bride’s life, then-”
“She’s not my bride,” I cut him off. Even as I said the words, I pulled her possessively against my chest, as if he might try to drag her from me. “She’s yours.”