I grit my teeth, steeling myself. At least this is something I can tell the doctor. I take off the top blanket and launder it. I can hardly keep my eyes open as I scrub it and hang it outside.
I check on my father once more. He slumbers, peaceful.
I drop onto my pallet and will myself to sleep.
Everything is red as candlelight inside a closed fist. It pulses. Far off, an inhuman shriek fills the air.
The smell of rotting eggs stirs around me. I try to move, but my feet are caught in something—the floor is like a giant, spongy tongue, sucking against my shoes. My breath is too fast as I try to pull free. I stumble. My hand hits the tongue and starts to sink.
I hear their giggle—the grinlers. They’re hungry. Their shadows blot out the red light.
I feel one sink its teeth into my neck.
I start awake, my throat aching as though I’ve been screaming. The sun is high; I didn’t sleep long.
My dress clings to the perspiration coating my body. I stare at the wall, trying to calm my breathing.
Never in my life have I had a nightmare like that. So foreign, so real.
I pick my heavy body off my pallet and find some bread and tea to settle my stomach.
Papa coughs again.
I speed to his side and beat his back. He gasps for air between spells. I will him to breathe. More mucous comes up—ugly brown slime. I catch it in a handkerchief. Papa settles down, but his breathing is harsher, uneven.
“Papa.” I sit on the bed beside him. Tears spill over my eyelashes. “Papa, please get well.”
Another attack. His whole body heaves. I roll him onto his side and slap him between his shoulder blades.
“Please!” I cry through the hard, wet sounds.
He settles down. I press my forehead into his shoulder.
“Please, Papa,” I plead. “Everyone I love has left. Don’t you leave, too. Please breathe.”
I clutch the Will Stone until my hand hurts, but I don’t think it hears me.
I wake up with tears streaming down my face, wetting the shoulder of my father’s shirt. I still see the muted red light. I hear the screams of creatures I can’t name. I shudder as the twisted images recede too slowly from my mind.
I wipe my nose and eyes on my sleeve. Evening now. My hands shake. I’m so tired.
My father needs me. I drag myself to the kitchen and get yesterday’s stew. Try to feed him. He gets perhaps two swallows down before refusing to take any more. The spoon shakes in my hand, like I’m trying to lift a horse instead of a utensil.
I start the fire, if only for the light. It takes too long. I cough as soot puffs into the air with my clumsiness. So tired. The flames build, and the rug before the hearth beckons to me. But even if I could sleep, I fear what sleep will bring.
Papa’s coughs echo through the house. I force strength into my legs and hurry to him, help him through the fit. Try to force tea down his throat with little success.
I collapse at his side, imagining this house empty of him, another stone placed in the yard beside my mother’s, grandfather’s, and grandmother’s. I take his clammy hand in mine and squeeze. “Please, Papa.”
I’m so tired. I rest my head on the edge of the bed and close my eyes. Sleep refuses me. I roll onto my pallet as the colors of sunset dance through the window. I’m weary enough to hurt, weary enough to risk more nightmares, but even that unquiet slumber evades me. I cannot rest.
I stumble out of my father’s room and toward the hearth. Stare at its patternless flames. I feel as though I could fall asleep standing up, but I know I will not.
The doctor. The doctor should come again. Maybe he’ll have something new for my father. Maybe then my mind will grant me slumber.
More coughing. My feet are unsteady when I return to my father. This time, he’s already finished when I reach him. I take another blanket to the wash, but can’t bring myself to scrub it.
How will I have the strength to dig his grave?
There’s a snap inside me, almost like the breaking of my soul, but this sensation is planted firmly in my chest, like my own heart has detached from the rest of me. I press the heel of my hand into it. The scar across my palm is pink.
Looking at that mark, I sense him. He’s nearby, in the wildwood. I stare at the flames, inching closer until the heat is almost unbearable. I close my hand around the scar. He’s coming. Nearer, nearer.
I move to the door, my tired feet scuffing against the floor. I open it. The night air feels cold compared to the hearth. Stars speckle the sky.
Hugging myself, I step onto the dirt path that leads away from the door. Suddenly, I’m at the ring of oon berry. Did I forget traveling here because of fatigue, or because my soul is too small?
I see him then, a shadow against the wildwood. I know it’s him, but I don’t know why he’s here. Boredom, worry . . . Would he worry?
The oon berry won’t hurt him. I know that instinctively. It’s not a plant that would hurt a soul, and he has most of one.
Starlight glimmers off his horn. He comes closer, closer. Eyes the oon berry, steps over it. Looks at me and pauses.
“Enna?” he asks.
New tears spring from my eyes. Tears of sorrow, of fatigue, of hopelessness. I take one heavy step toward him before I fall into his arms and cry against his naked chest.
CHAPTER 20
The differences between a male and a female gobler are slight. Females have lighter skin, larger eyes, and tend to be slightly smaller than their male counterparts.
“Enna.”
I blink, surprised to see the fire before me. I don’t remember coming into the house. I sit in my father’s chair, slouching, leaning toward the flames. Maekallus is near me, standing, hunched so his horn doesn’t scrape the ceiling. Is it shorter? If it changed after our last kiss, I didn’t notice.
I touch the side of my neck. Stare at the flames. “I can’t sleep.”
Maekallus is silent.
I drop my hand. “I can’t sleep, but when I do, I dream of a horrible place. There’s no sun, but everything glows dull red . . . and there are sounds I don’t know. Screams. Monsters.”
He shifts. “The Deep.”
I meet his eyes. They’re still amber, even more so in the firelight. I shiver, despite the heat. “That’s it? That’s the . . . other realm?”
I’ve always wondered what the monster realm is like. There’s no literature on the subject. At least, not that I’ve found with my limited means. Papa has never spoken of it willingly, only in occasional mumbles when he’s asleep. All I knew, until now, was vague and half-formed—that if the mortal realm is above, the monster realm is below.
If that is where they live, no wonder they come here. No wonder they visit our woods, our streams, even when lingering hurts them so. How they must long for relief from those sounds and smells.
I hug myself. “What an awful place.”
“For one unaccustomed, yes.”
His voice is soft. He stares past the floor for a moment, his thoughts elsewhere. I say, “Even accustomed, it’s a terrible place.”