Blood

Another week goes by and I only get worse.

I pass in and out of consciousness like foam being pushed underwater just to pop back up when the pressure’s released.

Someone comes in and then leaves.

A man. A woman. Who the hell cares?

And then there are the dreams.

In the most common one I’m at the cliffs with Reid and Sean, and they fall. The ocean swishes and swirls, as dark as the night sky, and I fall after my brothers.

But I don’t die. I don’t fall into an icy embrace.

Instead I land on a soft bed of grass in Wanderer’s Wood, and there’s a ring of blue lilies surrounding me. Each petal is covered in blood, my blood.

And Mallory Fionn is there, pushing a bronze chalice to my lips and feeding me blood. But I don’t choke on it. Instead, I hunger for it, taking every drop he offers me and still begging for more.

So he slits his wrist and empties his life blood into the chalice until he breathes no longer.

I still need the blood. So I rip the chalice from his cold hand and empty it.

But I still need more.

And then Sean is there, being roasted alive, and I don’t care. All I want is a taste of the warm flesh and blood.

And then I really am in the ocean, drowning and freezing and calling for everyone I’ve already killed.

Every time I wake up screaming and Reid or my father or Fletch or Mattie rushes into my room, but by the time they get there I’m trapped between wake and sleep.

One day, while I’m trapped in that state where I can see the world but I can’t speak or move Richard Hawthorne, the most accessible doctor on Faer, is there checking for a pulse and shit. I wish I could scream, because he tells my family I won’t wake up, and that I only had a day or two left.

And then the next day, when I wake up, I’m really awake.

Nothing hurts, not my head, not my stomach, not my ribs, not my legs. Everything is completely fine, except my clothing, the same as it was when I was young.

I sit up in my bed and test my legs. Finding them sound, I journey across the floor to my wardrobe and get dressed in real clothes, as in ones that aren’t covered in blood and other things I’d rather not name.

I walk across the squeaky floor to the bookshelf next and grab my carton of cigarettes from where it’s hidden inside a barely used jewellery box, next to my good lighter.

I open the window, and climb out into the cold air of December—probably—sitting on my window sill and breathing in the cold.

The sky is grey and the ground is white, covered in a thin layer of snow. The cars and trees and fences are dusted in the winter as well, all sparkling and pure. I long to climb down and just lie in the cold—feel the hard ground beneath me. I can’t of course, I’d freeze. Maybe in a minute I’ll grab my boots and jacket and climb down, back to my world.

I place the cancer stick between my lips and light the end, feeling the rush of calm followed immediately by the realization that if there had been a good time to quit, this would have been it.

“Lorna? What the hell are you doing?”

I glance straight down, and there stands my twin brother, looking like he’s seeing a ghost.

“What? You’re not happy to see me?”

Reid’s still squinting up at me as though he can’t tell whether or not I’m real. “You ain’t one of the Good Folk, are you?” he calls.

I smirk down at him. “Come up and see for yourself!”

Once he’s in the house I begin to frown and throw my cigarette out the window, hoping it will land in snow.

And so Reid does as I’d said—him and everyone else in the house, who at this time is just the Owens clan, excluding George, plus Gram.

Sean runs to me and throws his tiny arms around one of my legs, which I’ve twisted around so he doesn’t have to be outside to accomplish that feat. I lift Sean onto my knee and pull him to me, because it feels good to be able to hold the one thing you really care about.

“You’ll make him catch a cold!” calls my grandmother from the hall.

So I lift Sean up and sit back down on my bed, because I don’t need him sick after I’m finally better.

“It’s freezing in here!” cries Gram as she rushes in and slams the window shut, but she’s not frowning, so I figure that means she’s at least a little pleased that I’m alive.

“Gram and me prayed for you,” says Sean, “and Grammy said it wouldn’t work, ’cause you needed smiting, but I keeped praying and now you’re better!”

I grin because Sean would be upset if I didn’t, and because I find it completely hilarious that Gram really believes God has any place on Faer, a place ruled by spirits older than the Bible, older than Christ and older than God.

I wonder vaguely if thinking that gets you sent to Hell. I guess I’ll know when I really die.

A sudden wave of guilt washes over me for my dreams, even though they were nightmares and I had no say over them.

I hold Sean tighter and say, “I love you, little boy.”

He frowns and grumbles something about not being little.

“Of course not, I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” says my baby brother as he climbs down off my lap and walks away into the hall, because his attention span is comparable to that of a cow, meaning the only thing that holds it is food.

Gram follows Sean into the hall and my dad follows her, because I’m pretty sure he just wanted to check if I was alive or not.

It’s just Reid and me, so he comes and sits on the opposite side of my bed with his legs crossed.

“So you’re not gonna go and die all of a sudden, are you? This isn’t some kind of figment?”

“Well actually, it is—” I start but then stop. “You remember when we were little and I got lost in the woods, and I was sick after?”

He nods.

“It’s just like that, but I don’t know why. Before you ask, I ain’t been in Wanderer’s Wood. I was almost dead, at least according to the doctor, and now I’m fine.”

Reid glances around as though he’s really looking for something. “You remember that?” I nod. “What else?”

I shrug and think, but come up blank, except that I hadn’t taken my pills once. “Not much. Is there something I should remember?”

I get off my bed and grab the little pop out container-y thing off the bookshelf and pop out a non-sugar pill.

“What are those?” asks Reid.

“Birth control,” I say, because that’s the truth, it’s just not what I use them for.

The look of horror on my brothers’ face matches little else in this world for entertainment.

“God, it’s like you expect me to be a nun.”

“I—I didn’t…” he stutters, and I laugh.

“Relax, you fucking hypocrite. That’s not what they’re for.”

“What are they…?”

I laugh again. “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to. So what happened when I was out?”

Reid grins a little slyly, meaning he’s gotten over his shock. “Mallory Fionn came to see you.”

My eyes go wide and my face red. And I realize what Reid had been stuttering about.

When Hell freezes over, I think.

“What? They found him?”

Reid shakes his head. “Not really. I think he just kind of wandered back or something, says he hit his head and didn’t realize how long he was gone. It was just yesterday. He had a nasty face that Justin says he gave him.”

I add that to the archive that is my brain. “Why’d he come here?”

Reid grins again. “To see you. Don’t know why.”

“I don’t either…” I say, because I have no idea why Mallory Fionn would come here.

Reid continues grinning, but now he looks directly at me. “I really want to believe you.”

I cross my arms. “Oh, really? Well, if you’re so smart than what is it that someone as spineless as Mallory would want with me?”

“There are a few things I could think of, I mean, you are on the pill.”

I grab one of my pillows and throw it at his face.

“The truth hurts,” Reid says with a mock serious expression.

“Not as much as my fist,” I say with a sickly smile.

He raises his hands with the palms facing me. “Hey, I can take a threat. I’ll just back out slowly and I guess see you later.”

“Maybe!” I call as Reid backs out.

Why the hell would Mallory Fionn come to see me? I think over and over again. I also think about my creepy-ass dream. It made sense for him to be there, I had been thinking about him being dead and all, but the whole blood thing was freaky as hell.

My stomach cramps in a way that makes me clutch at it, forcing me to realize that, although I don’t have the faerie fever, I’m still me.

I walk around my bed and grab the pillow from where it lies on the floor.

I go to replace it, but stop when I notice the little pouch sitting where the pillow had been. I drop the pillow and pick up the little pouch.

It’s about two inches in width and about as tall. The cloth is a deep purple and tied shut with a piece of cord. I lift it to eye level and glance at the knot.

Or knots I should say, since there are several. No, not several the more I look at it, the more sure I am that it’s knotted exactly seven times.

I begin to unlace the little knots, and eventually the ties come loose, revealing seven little red stones and three four-leafed clovers.

The little stones look strange, like little jewels, and I don’t realize until I pick it up that it’s a piece of coarse salt, dyed red by something dark.

To me, it looks like faerie magick.

To me, it also looks like I may want to pay a visit to Mallory Fionn.