I Felt Something

Sound.

Darkness and sound.

The sound of wind playing through leaves and bending grass, the blades touching in light kisses. Water flowing. A man sobbing. Llew knew that voice. Alvaro.

Her neck ached.

A woman whimpered. Herself? She hadn’t felt herself make a noise, but she couldn’t feel anything beyond the burning ache through her neck. She needed to turn it. The crunch ripped through her ears. Pain fired up the back of her head, through her jaw and across her chest. She breathed and it hurt. Light blazed.

“Do you want to die?”

“No, I—”

“Then get off the ground.”

That voice. Flat and authoritative. She knew that one, too. Jonas.

Llew lay, aches easing. The light turned to the pale grays, whites, and hints of blue above.

“It was an accident, Llew. You gotta bring her back.” Al.

“Give her a minute.”

“But K doesn’t have a minute.” Alvaro’s voice was thick with withheld sobs.

Llew breathed deeply. All her aches and pains were gone. And she remembered what had happened.

“Can’t give back what I’ve taken. Besides, she’s Syakaran.” There. Simple. The woman who had helped kill her babies was dead and there was nothing Llew could do about it, even if she wanted to. She breathed again and turned her head enough to see Jonas and Alvaro standing near, only boot-covered feet and crutch tips touching the ground. She turned a little further to see the dead grass encircling her. Her hands were empty, clutching no flesh, resting in the grass. She raised them, placing them on her belly.

“Check her,” Jonas said. “She got a pulse?”

Alvaro crouched. “I think? I think— I don’t know. I haven’t done this before!”

Llew sat up to see Alvaro crouched by Karlani, who lay on her back, her hands raised to her belly, too, and her head and bare neck separated from the bare ground by Alvaro’s coat. She was almost certain that would be at Jonas’s suggestion, saving Karlani. But why?

“Please, Llew. You can’t let her go,” Alvaro said little above a whisper while their heads were close.

Shifting both crutches under one arm, Jonas reached down, pressed fingertips beneath Karlani’s jaw.

“Hold on, K,” Alvaro pleaded and moved back, giving Jonas space.

“She’s alive.” Jonas stood.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Llew held Jonas’s gaze, determinedly ignoring Alvaro. He’d kept his voice flat, but Llew was almost certain she’d caught a hint of relief.

“She’s Syakaran.”

“ So ?”

Jonas pressed his lips together. Yes. Llew had made the same argument, such as it was, but things had changed rather dramatically.

“Come on, Llew.” Alvaro placed himself between Llew and Jonas, as if that would make her listen to him. “It was supposed to be a joke. And after Cassidy …”

“Don’t say I owe you.” She did look at Alvaro then. “It’s not you I owe. And I can never pay Cassidy back.”

Jonas stepped in close to Alvaro. Despite his weakness and Alvaro’s added height, plus the attack moments earlier, he managed to don all his authority and a hint of menace. “You want her saved? Get her to the Ajnais. Llew can’t do nothin’ here.”

Alvaro looked between Llew and Jonas, pained. “It was a mistake. I swear. A stupid joke. Let her live, Llew.”

“If that was a joke, it was the worst.” Llew pushed herself to stand as Alvaro crouched and gathered Karlani in his arms.

“I know. I’m so sorry. I mean, we knew you’d live.”

“And Jonas would be on the ground!” Llew’s anger heated her core and filled her with the urge to hit someone as a full accounting of the situation took shape, yet somehow Jonas found the situation funny as he hissed out a single laugh.

“We train for years to face the Aenuk reflex. If you get the chance, remind Karlani she’s just a pup. She ain’t got no business messin’ with Aenuks, especially Llew. She’s lucky she’s alive.”

Alvaro paled and swallowed. “We didn’t … I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Then shut up and get her to the trees,” Jonas said. “We’ll follow.” When Alvaro was halfway to the first gate, Jonas turned to Llew. “He’s just a kid, Llew.”

“He’s older than me.”

“He hasn’t had to grow up like you did.” His lips twisted between a smile and a grimace. “I’m glad we didn’t meet when I was eighteen.” He re-positioned his crutches under each armpit.

“Would I have survived that meeting?”

Jonas paused a moment before responding, doing an accounting of his own training by the time he was eighteen. He would already have been in the Quaven army four years. And Llew would’ve been a rough-around-the-edges fourteen year old.

“Unlikely.” Jonas’s usual darkness settled back in place, then he put his growing proficiency with the crutches and prosthetic on display, setting a decent rhythm and pace back down the hill.

Llew followed, believing him, and still fuming. “I said once, and once only.”

“You can still say that. You don’t have to save her.” Jonas glanced over his shoulder, his locomotion unaffected, though Llew caught the pinch of his features before he turned away again. His leg must’ve been aching. The real part he still possessed or the phantom missing part she couldn’t guess.

“So, what did you go and stop her draining for?”

Jonas stopped. Llew’s momentum took her a few strides past him. She turned to face him but didn’t close the space.

“She’s Syakaran,” he said.

Llew flung her hands in the air in an aggressive shrug: So? A Syakaran who had suddenly proven herself to be more hindrance than help.

“I know she don’t deserve it. But if I got what I deserved, I’d be dead a hundred times over. I just wanted to give you the choice one more time before it’s gone. You said yourself—” He shifted his weight onto his remaining whole leg and crutches only. “I know how you feel about people as things, but sometimes we gotta use what, and who, we have. Karlani offered herself as a weapon to Aris once. We can ask the same of her. We’re still in the heart of Turhmos. We’ve still got a lot of enemies.”

“Not least of which is Karlani herself.”

Jonas acknowledged that with a wry nod. “I don’t think she’s picked a side, though. She’ll go wherever will take her on her terms.”

“What about my terms? Everyone seems to think I bleed for fun! It’s not fun. The needles hurt! Yes, I heal, but I still feel. I do it for you because you’re you. I can’t do it for everybody. I’m not a—” Hot tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Her body remembered being strapped in a chair, mechanical spiders crawling on her, extracting blood, while she was forced to drain the lives of children just like her. “I’m not some sack of blood you Kara can just … just …” She lost the words as her mind caught up with the rest of her. She could remember the sensations, but the mental strain of what Braph had forced on her shut her down. She wasn’t ready to revisit the experience, but it was too close to what she had to do for Karlani; it crashed through her unbidden. “And it’s hardly a choice, is it? What kind of person would I be if …?” The so-called choice had been living in her head since the moment Karlani had turned up on the farm. It had never been a choice. Not really. Not for Llew.

Jonas swung forward on his crutches, hooked them beneath one arm and brought his other around Llew, enveloping her in his strength. Strength he had because her blood coursed through his veins. Because needles. Because Ajnais. Because love.

Love. The missing ingredient when it came to giving blood to Karlani, or anyone else.

The smell of him and, yes, that strength calmed her. She breathed him in again and he squeezed her to him, seeming to sense that was what she needed.

“She killed our babies,” she whispered into his shoulder and she tensed again on the urge to lash out at Jonas for forgetting.

“I know.” Jonas’s voice cracked on the words. He hadn’t forgotten. “But she might be the only person who can save mine. I’m sorry.”

Llew stood back from him, meeting his glistening gaze. “Joelin?”

Jonas nodded.

“You’ll get him back yourself. You will walk right in there, grab him, bring him home—” She splayed her hands to indicate the farm. “—and live happily ever after. That’s how his story goes. And yours.”

Jonas’s smile was layered in humor, sadness, and doubt, and he shook his head. “I believe in you, Llew. You’re doin’ everythin’ to make that happen. I know .” He tapped his temple. “But we’re meddlin’ in things beyond anythin’ I understand. I do believe in you and what you’re doin’. I want to believe it’ll work. But this …” He placed his hand over his heart. “I got a hollow feelin’ when I think of the future I want. It’s not real enough for me. Karlani’s strength is real. Today. Or it was.”

“You don’t believe you’ll live?”

Jonas held out a hand and Llew placed hers in it. He covered it with this other, his crutches safely stowed against an armpit. “I want to, Llew. For you. For Joelin. I really hope I do.”

“We’ve talked about this. I’m not letting you die.”

“I know. I believe that part of all this. I just wish it didn’t cost you so much.”

“For you, it doesn’t.”

Jonas only closed his lips firmly on a response to that.

Llew sighed. “Well, let’s go and not let this so-called joke be Karlani’s last, I guess.”

***

Everyone was standing around Karlani when Llew and Jonas arrived. With so much of Jonas’s energy needed to focus on his footing and pushing through the bouts of pain that still assailed him, they hadn’t talked further, and Llew had grown numb. She had said no more blood. A part of her felt like her hand was being forced, while another insisted she could still say ‘no’ and damned Alvaro. He’d find another woman.

She met Elka’s gaze and any pigheadedness about giving Karlani more blood vanished. Well, most of it.

Still, she would never withhold blood from Jonas, and this was as much for him as Karlani. If nothing else, it would show them that Syakaran strength and speed could be healed through Aenuk blood transfers. Llew sure hoped so. If they failed here, then their future was even more in doubt.

Without a word, Llew sat beneath a tree, rolled up her sleeve and presented her arm to Eirian then Lyneth and focused on tuning out the hot burn each time a needle pierced her skin. Doing this for Jonas was one thing, but she fumed at each syringeful they pressed into Karlani. She’d said she’d do this once and once only. She understood Jonas’s doubts, and the need for a backup, but this felt far too much like being incapable of fighting back when Braph had used her. Karlani wasn’t restraining her this time, nor holding her captive through magic mind control, but her thoughtless action forced Llew’s hand, if they needed the Syakaran woman to live. And with Jonas still at the mercy of Braph’s bug, yes, it seemed keeping Karlani alive was a good idea.

This was what her life had come to: repeatedly convincing herself to let Karlani live. It took work.

And so there she sat, growing more determined to succeed at defeating the bug and returning Jonas’s Syakaran powers. While letting him die had never been an option, she might have been satisfied to have him live powerless, if only to have him live. But if they still needed Syakaran strength and speed, then it had to be contained in Jonas, not Karlani.

Alvaro crouched by her. “Thank you so much, Llew. I know—”

“No. You don’t.” Llew didn’t look at him; kept one arm extended, resting on a knee, and kept the other palm pressed to the tree. Sensations of being held down on cold stone floor washed through her, Karlani’s hands pressing down; that satisfied grin breaking through the grimace of effort. Llew had been strong then, and still not strong enough.

Jonas stepped in beside them, watching stonily until Alvaro reluctantly moved away, then eased himself beside Llew, laying his crutches beside him and folding his arms across his knee. “I hate it, too, but it’s the right thing to do.”

Llew took a breath against the urge to lash out. “Maybe.” She turned to him. “But if you were full strength, she’d be dead.”

“Dead dead.” He grinned, and paused as Edwyn and Lyneth returned for more blood, resuming when they returned to Karlani. “But I’m not, and she will be. And Syakaran power can still be a greater good.”

“Or evil.”

They sat in silence for several rounds of blood-letting. Llew understood why she sat there giving blood, and she was doing it almost willingly. No one physically or magically held her down, and given their situation she would say “yes” again, and yet it still felt defiling. She’d said no more, and she’d meant it. And so she seethed.

“How is she?” Jonas asked, when Edwyn returned once again.

“Breathing,” Lyneth said, lining up behind Edwyn, flexing her hands. “Little else, so far.”

“Here.” Llew kept one hand pressed to the tree and reached out with the other.

The price for muscle aches was the barest of tingles to Llew, but Lyneth and Edwyn went away much relieved.

“We’ll be here all day,” Llew whined, having no interest in politeness or decorum.

“Longer, if you want a Syakaran.”

“I didn’t want that one.”

Jonas didn’t dignify that with a response and they settled into a dull day of blood transfers.

They paused briefly to direct several syringes to Jonas, keeping his energy up in his battle with the micro-organism, but otherwise, the blood kept flowing into Karlani.

Llew grew sick of pressing a hand to the bark, so she lifted the back of her shirt, pressing her bare back to the tree instead. A cool breeze swept through, but at least she could relax some.

Edwyn and Lyneth trained the rest of the Turhmos soldiers – Garnoc, Delwynn, and Ianto – to draw and inject blood so they could take a break. A lunch was brought out.

And Llew’s blood kept flowing.

Eventually, Karlani was able to sit, though she still looked exhausted for several more syringefuls. Llew had no real concept of the damage done to a body drained by an Aenuk, but if the external burn marks she’d seen on Jonas were anything to go by, she didn’t even want to imagine the internal damage caused when she returned to life with a touch from Karlani, or … Anya. It must’ve been awful.

Alvaro sat cross-legged before Karlani, a hand resting on her knee. And Llew’s blood kept flowing.

The farm chores were carried out around them. The sun began to dip. A dinner was brought out. Llew had to relieve herself, and dearly wished she and Jonas had managed to bathe in the river. She returned to the trees, sat once more, and provided blood to Jonas again. And the blood kept flowing. Llew was aware of Karlani, who was starting to converse with Alvaro, her voice becoming more chipper, but she refused to look the Syakaran’s way.

Rowan got a small fire started near Llew and added to it log-by-log until its heat warmed Llew’s front in stark contrast to the chill caressing her back, then he retired for the night. Between needle jabs, Llew held her palms up to catch more heat, savoring the simple pleasure against the backdrop of her unwanted assignation. A log popped, making Llew jump and sending orange sparks up, soon caught in the air stream caused by the fire’s own heat, zigzagging into the dark. A moment of beauty. Fleeting.

Something bumped Llew’s back and she jolted. She looked around at the others. Alvaro still sat by Karlani, the two of them just outside of the fire’s warmth. Jonas sat near Llew, but his attention was inward, his chin resting on arms resting on knee. Garnoc and Delwynn were on blood transfer duty, while Ianto and Edwyn loitered nearby, listening into the night, stretching their senses to detect trouble before it struck. Rowan, Lyneth, and Samlet were indoors, catching sleep while they could. Elka sat near the fire, idly poking at it with a green stick.

No one seemed to have sensed anything, so Llew eased back into the tree cautiously. A sensation ran up and down her back; a vibration, almost as if the bark itself protruded and poked at her. She sat forward and glared at the tree, cautious not to twist the needle Delwynn had just pressed beneath her skin. It stood, as the trees always did.

“What?” Jonas asked.

“I felt something …” Llew shook her head – she was tired, imagining things – and eased back again, hooking her shirt up once more.

An alarming buzz rushed through her torso and an image of the Taither Ajnai filled her mind, distinctive with its rainbow ripples, though she’d never seen such a full array of colors in person. Probably an exaggeration so she would have no doubt as to the message. This tree knew about the Taither one.

Then warmth, like a soothing touch. A mother’s touch. Her mother’s face. This tree had never seen her mother. Had the one in Taither? Could her mother be there … now?

An evil visage merged through the tree in her mind’s eye until it resolved into a sneering—

Gasping, Llew waved her free hand at Garnoc, only able to make an inarticulate moan in plea to have the latest needle removed, and leaped away from the tree, spinning to face it, half expecting to see Braph somehow pull himself from within. A silly fear, and yet her whole body tensed and tingled.

The tree stood, as they always did.