Blood

“Lorna? Is that you?”

“Dammit,” I mutter.

My head throbs from where I hit it against the top of the window as I was climbing in. Now that I think about it, there was no point to climbing through the window, especially since it came with a good chance of falling and breaking my neck, but my head ain’t too clear right now, and I hadn’t been thinking really.

“Jesus, Lorna!” says Reid. He’s gapping, which is never a good thing. Last time Reid was gapping at something, he ended up beating the shit out of our brother, now that I think about it, the time before that Fletch beat the shit out of him. Well, that’s bloody encouraging.

“Where in hell did you get off to?” he says.

I frown and glance towards the doorway. I don’t see anyone behind Reid, and I don’t hear anyone on the stairs either. “Uh, I was just at the pub with Mattie.”

Reid looks at the window and then back at me with angry eyes. “And that’d be a different Mattie than the one practically pulling his hair out in our kitchen, then?”

Dammit, Mattie!

“Well, I was at the pub…” I mutter. Really I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, and then I’d still have Reid pissed at me.

“What is wrong with you? You don’t think! God, Lorna! Seanie was up about an hour ago looking for you, and I couldn’t tell him anything since I still don’t have any fucking clue where you were! I thought you cared about him, Lorna!”

He runs his hands through his red hair, shaking his head. “I fucking give up. Do whatever you want, if Da’ll still take you, that’s his problem.” He stomps out of my room.

So that means that I really did scare him, but…it can’t be any later than ten…maybe he’s been drinking or summat. But Reid doesn’t drink.

“Reid,” I call after him, but he doesn’t stop or nothing.

I sigh and flop down onto my bed before realising that my back is wet because I decided to lie down in the fucking snow. Why’d I done that? Oh, right. I’m a moron, an ugly, stupid, bitchy moron. If I were Reid, I’d hate me, too. Mind you, I don’t think he actually hates me, he’s just angry.

I sit up and reach for a carton of cigarettes off my bookshelf, but I accidently knock it off instead of grabbing it. So I curse and stand, bending to get the carton and then standing and getting the half-full lighter.

I shake out a couple smokes, putting one between my lips and the other in my jacket pocket with the carton.

Someone knocks on my still open door just after I light it, so when I turn I almost choke, as I seem to forget to breathe.

“Heya,” says Mattie from the doorway.

“Hi,” I say hoarsely, coughing thoroughly.

He leans into the doorframe, watching me with a frown. He looks a lot more relieved than Reid had.

“I’m sorry, Mattie,” I mutter.

Mattie steps into my room, and then sits on the opposite side of my bed. “You are not.”

A frown spreads across my face, pulling at my muscles. “No. I guess I’m not. I just don’t get it! What is wrong with all of you?”

“What’s wrong with us?” he asks incredulously, “It’s two in the bloody morning, and you’re asking what’s wrong with us?”

Two? I think, and then ask, “Two?”

“Maybe 2:30 by now.”

I give him a look. “You’re exaggerating.”

“I am not!” he says in his cross voice.

I turn my back and throw my cigarette out the window, into the snow.

“You’re back is soaked.” He sounds puzzled. “Why is you’re…oh.”

I turn around as quickly as I can. Mattie looks disappointed. “Spend a lot of time on our back tonight, did we?”

“C’mon, Mattie. No. I mean, yeah. I lay in the snow, but I wasn’t laying with some guy!”

“To get in your pants, I’d expect he’d need to be a little more than just ‘some guy’”

Is it sad that I really want to throw something at him? I think they call that an anger issue on the Mainland…

“Mattie, you know me better than that,” I say.

He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I thought you’d at least find yourself a bed, but—”

“Get out,” I tell him.

“So who’d you go off with, Lorna? Who’d you decide to make a rich man?” His grey eyes are hard, almost cruel.

“I didn’t make anybody rich!”

Mattie laughs cruelly. I hadn’t thought he had it in him. “So he ain’t in that pool, then. Well, that would leave the family and then the old lads.”

I almost tell him that Mallory isn’t in the pool, but I don’t think Mattie would believe that I hadn’t slept with him if I said that. I wasn’t even really thinking about sleeping with Mallory. I can still recall telling Reid, when hell freezes over.

I walk around the bed before sitting on the edge, right next to Mattie.

“If…if I tell you who I took off with, you can’t let your head explode. And you have to let me explain. And you have to understand that I did not sleep with him.”

His eyes look down at mine. Without nodding or saying anything, he somehow says okay, I don’t know how, it’s just a feeling I have.

I sigh “And it wasn’t his fault.”

“Lorna.”

“Alright, when I was sick…Justin Fionn’s brother Mallory made this charm, and it made me better,”

“Mallory? Mallory…wait, Mallory Fionn? Tsk. So he says,” Mattie mutters.

“So I say. He helped me because he’s curious about the Wood, so he wanted to know how I escaped.”

“Selfish bastard.”

“Mattie, please.”

“Sorry,” he says, this time earnest.

“As I was saying, he wanted to know how I got out of the Wood…so I showed him this…”

Grabbing the little stone from my pocket, I hold it out for Mattie to see. I don’t know why I’d never shown it to him before, I just never really felt the need, but if Mallory knew…

“What is it?” Mattie asks, his eyes full of wonder.

I glance at the ceiling and then back at Mattie, whose gaze is still fixated on the stone.

“That’s where I was.”

“What?” he asks, tearing his eyes from the stone to look at me.

“I was supposed to be meeting Mallory so we could talk about the stone when you kidnapped me. So when I saw him at the pub, I got him to tell me about it.”

Mattie frowns and looks back at the stone. I don’t think it’s good for him, so I close my hands around and put it back in the pocket of my jacket.

He blinks once, twice. “So…why’s your back wet, then?”

“’Cause I was lying in the snow!” I say, a little annoyed. How many times do I have to say the same damn thing?

Mattie shakes his head. “Lorna, you scared your brother half to death.”

“I…lost track of time…I am sorry.”

And I think that was the truth. I’m pretty sure I really am sorry, if for nothing else, for scaring Reid so badly.

“How do you lose track of time for five-six hours?” he asks, a little incredulous.

I shrug and say I total earnest. “I have…no idea.”

Mattie sighs, and stands up to go somewhere.

“What about my Dad? What does he think?”

“He was asleep when I got here. Him and your Gram don’t know anything. I don’t know. You’ve got Reid in such a state that it might not stay like that…”

“I should talk to him,” I say.

Mattie smiles a little bit, not happily but as though he’s kind of amused. “Guess I’ll go and bail you out. Again.”

Great, thanks, Mattie. Try to make me feel like shit. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Tsk. It’s what I do.”

With that, he left me with my thoughts.

The most important being how in hell I lost four or five hours? That can’t be physically possible. Mallory and me couldn’t have been by the cliff for more than half an hour, so how is it two fucking thirty?

And then I actually had what Mallory told me…and then what I said to him. I’m such a moron. He’s telling me that my stone could end up getting my family murdered, and I ask him if he wants to fuck me? Like I’m some kind of desperate whore?

Oh and then there’s the whole the Good Folk want to kill me thing? That’s pretty damn huge.

What am I supposed to do?

On top of all of that, I accused Mallory of being a faerie, and I honestly feel pretty shitty about that. It’s one thing to call someone a whore or a bastard, but I had really asked him if he was one of the fey. Is there anything worse that someone could ask you? I can’t think of anything.

How is it possible that he doesn’t hate me?

“Lorna?”

I look up and see Sean at my door, clutching at an old square quilt that had been Reid’s when he was little. I remember because I used to always steal it, since it was warmer than mine.And because I was a brat…I guess I still kind of am…

“I can’t sleep. A faeries was talking at me again and Reid said you weren’t here.”

“Come here, Seanie,” I say, and he walks into my room, dragging the old quilt behind him.

I shed my jacket and throw it on the floor, lifting Sean into my lap after I do.

Petting his messy red hair, he cuddles up against me, like a little puppy. “Remember, love, we don’t call them by their name.”

Call them by their name, and they’ll come. That’s what we’d always been taught.

“Sorry, Lorna.”

“That’s okay,” I say.

He looks up at me with his big brown eyes. “Why’s Reid angry”

“I made a mistake.”

“Oh. He shouldn’t be angry with you,” he says.

As if by demand, Reid appears in my doorway.

Popular place tonight, I think.

Sean hears him, and looks up at him from my lap. “You shouldn’t be angry with Lorna.”

Reid smiles at him. “I’m not.”

But he is. I can tell by the way he’s leaning away from the doorframe, which he would normally lean against. I can tell by the way he seems to be purposefully looking at Sean, as though he wishes he wasn’t with me, like I’m bad for him.

“That’s nice,” says Seanie.

He crawls off my lap, mostly so that he can actually crawl up to my pillows and get under the covers.

“You know, Sean, sometimes I wonder if you actually like me or not,” Reid says.

Sean looks up at him, frowning as though hurt. “Our room has faer…” he looks at me, as though unsure what to say.

“Good Folk,” I tell him.

“Good Folks in it and Lorna’s has none.”

Reid frowns, looking to me, as though for help. Maybe he isn’t really angry, just upset.

“Baby, there ain’t any Wood Dwellers in your room.”

He looks at me, his little face angry. “Yes there is! And they’re mean!”

I frown, as does Reid. You’d think he’d get better as he got older, but he doesn’t seem to. If anything, he gets worse, and I don’t want to ask a doctor or anyone about it…but, I’m honestly afraid for him.

“Okay,” I say, hoping to soothe him at least a little.

He doesn’t look at all soothed, but he doesn’t look particularly angry either. He seems tired, if anything.

Which makes it unsurprising that when his eyes close they stay closed.

“Did Mattie go home?” I ask Reid once I’m pretty sure Sean is asleep.

It’s crazy how awake he’ll be one moment, and then totally asleep the next.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, and then he seems to snap. “He’s not alright, is he?”

“I…dunno.”

Reid’s eyes are focused on Sean. It’s kind of sad. Reid might as well be Sean’s father for the amount that Dad actually pays attention. I mean, I love my father, and he’s always been good to us, but, he’s never shown the same…well, not interest but, maybe care, for Sean that he did for Reid and me when we were little. I don’t really know how he treated George, since I didn’t really pay attention, but sometimes I feel like Dad kind of stopped paying as much attention after my mum died.

“I mean, all kids are imaginative, but, are they normally like this? Were we?” he asks, as though he actually expects me to have the answer.

“I don’t know, Reid.”

He frowns, but doesn’t leave the doorway. “What if he’s sick?” he asks, quietly.

Although it’s totally possible, and I was just thinking of it myself, Reid saying it out loud kind of flipped a switch.

“He is not sick,” I growl, making Reid frown.

“You don’t know that.”

I don’t know what they think of being sick on the Mainland, but here it’s a pretty good way to be scapegoated, and I don’t want that for Sean. He’s six. He has a big imagination. Even if I said it could be more than that, I’m not a doctor, I don’t know anything.

“And you don’t know that he is.”

“Lorna, it’s not like I want that for him,” he says.

I scowl at him. “Then don’t bring it up.”

“Lorna, you can’t let yourself get like this. You’ll make yourself crazy as well.”

“Fuck you, Reid.”

“Lorna,” he says.

But screw him. I laugh. “What’s it matter? The Island already considers me crazy. Better me than Sean.”

“Don’t be angry. I’m supposed to be angry.”

I roll my eyes and glance at Sean. “Be whatever the hell you want. I don’t care.”

I know I’m being unfair, likely unreasonable and definitely stupid, but I can’t help it. Maybe Reid’s wrong. Maybe I’m already crazy.