Shaking his head, Gavin pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, and replied in a quiet voice. “Not a life she would have chosen, son.”
Lowell’s head dropped into his hands and he sobbed openly, broad shoulders shaking. “What can I do?” he gasped. “Oh god, what have I done? I promised her I’d never let anything hurt her, Father.”
Gavin’s jaw clenched and he cleared his throat. “Oh, son,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.” He wrapped his arms around Lowell and held him as he cried.
Paloma’s throat felt as dry as old bones. She swallowed with effort and looked down at the horribly burnt woman she held. Cradled in the foetal position, Dora was as weak as a kitten.
What’s she thinking?
Paloma wondered.
Does she understand what’s going on? Is she frightened?
She felt hot tears sting her eyes.
Is she hurting?
“Don’t worry, Dora,” she whispered. “I’m going to take care of you. It’s going to be okay. I’m not sure how yet.” Paloma raised the goblet of healing water to Dora’s lips and let a few drops trickle into her mouth. “But it will. I promise.”
* * * *
Hours later, Lowell, incoherent with sorrow, finally succumbed to Paloma’s repeated request that he sleep. He had refused to rest in the castle, but had agreed to lie down on a pallet near the mud bath. Paloma watched the huge man, racked by grief and remorse, stretch out. The improvised bed could hardly have been comfortable—just a thin pad on top of the hard stone floor, with a pillow and a blanket to soften it—but his body was depleted by strain. His red-rimmed eyes, fixed on Dora in Paloma’s arms, struggled to stay open, but fatigue won out. Within minutes, he was snoring lightly.
Carmen, bearing a couple of folded blankets, returned to take a shift holding Dora. She was surprised that the Living Earth hadn’t restored her friend yet, and Paloma didn’t have the heart to tell her that it wouldn’t. “It must just take longer to heal someone who is new to being one of the Fair Folk,” Carmen said. “Her injuries were really bad, after all.”
“Mm-hm,” Paloma hummed in reply. “Must be.” She rinsed herself in the creek and took a brief dip into the Healing Waters before drying and dressing herself. Uncorking a bottle of cider from her basket, she leant back against the cavern wall and drank.
“You can go, you know,” Carmen told her. “I’m sure you need some rest yourself.” She inclined her head towards Lowell and grinned slightly. “It does a body good.”
“Oh, thanks, but I think I’ll stay.” Paloma shrugged. “I know Dora’s your friend and all, but I feel rather protective of her. I…” Once more, Paloma felt a queer, painful dryness in her throat and a sharp stinging in her eyes. “I want to see her get better.” A noisy breath rattled from between Dora’s lips.
“You’re funny, you know that?” Carmen shook her head. “All prickles and thorns, but you’ve got a soft heart under there, don’t you?”
Paloma sighed. “Oh, I’m still a bitch, don’t you worry. It’s just that Dora’s a nice person.” She bit her lip. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
“Well, she’ll get better soon,” Carmen said. “And then she’ll be one of the Fair Folk. Might take some adjusting, but I’m guessing it will all work out beautifully.”
Paloma squeezed her eyes shut to hide the tears that sprang up in them. Thankfully, Carmen’s attention was on Dora and she didn’t see her expression.
Chapter Eleven
Running footsteps clattered into the bathing chamber. Korbin, platinum hair dishevelled, raced in with a heavy book in his hands. “She needs water,” he panted. “Healing Water. The Living Earth has brought her back, but now she needs to heal.”
Carmen drew her eyebrows together. “We’ve been giving her sips of water,” she said. “I thought the mud was more important right now.”
“No, no.” Korbin held aloft the battered tome. “This happened once before to a gnome. Well, to a gnome’s girlfriend. He fell in love with a human woman…” Korbin scanned the pages with his fingertip and read aloud from the book. “‘A human female of short stature, notable body fragrance, ample calluses and well-defined earlobes.’”
“A gnome pin-up girl,” Brock muttered.
“Indeed. Seems that he lured her into Prescott Woods and was just about to douse her with Healing Water and Living Earth when she stepped into a tangle of roots and broke both of her legs.” Korbin made a tsk-tsk sound.
“Damn dryads. Probably got jealous.” Lowell grunted as he sat up on his pallet, listening. He yawned and fluffed his beard.
“We’ll never know—perhaps it was a simple accident. At any rate, the gnome dumped her straight into this mud bath and, while it did awaken her senses and give her the rush of immortality, her legs were still twisted and unusable. Poured water over her head, too, to no effect.”
“Did her broken legs still hurt her?” Paloma asked quietly.
“Um”—Korbin squinted at the book in his hands—“doesn’t say. At any rate, the gnome had a flash of insight.”
“You’re kidding me,” Lowell muttered. “Gnomes don’t have insights.” He took an apple from Paloma’s picnic basket and crunched into it.
“This one did. He saw that the Healing Water had touched her too late to fix her legs—they were already broken when she’d been changed—so he needed to get some water that had passed by prior to her conversion.”
“Huh? It’s all the same water.” Carmen shook her head, confused. “I don’t understand.”
Korbin licked his lips. “There’s a lot we don’t know about Prescott Woods, Carmen. We’ve lived here for over two centuries, but the history books that the elves kept are practically indecipherable, and they’re the only ones who kept any records at all. It could be that there’s something intrinsic to this layer of Earth’s crust, something embedded in the topmost rock here, so that when the water and mud trickle through…” His eyes shone with interest. “You know,
my
theory is that—”
“Later!” Lowell bellowed. “Theories later, damn it. How can we help Dora?” He tossed the apple core back into the basket and sat at the edge of the mud bath next to his sister. Dora’s wheezing breaths continued, but she remained still in Paloma’s lap.
“The gnome grabbed his lady friend and jumped into the stream. He carried her downstream with him, where the stream winds through the rocks far underground, until he reached the water that had passed through the cavern at precisely the moment she’d been converted to a magical being,” Korbin said, his speech quickening. “The water that passed through magical layers of Prescott Wood’s floor at the exact time his girlfriend was injured was the only thing that could heal her, and it
did
.”
Carmen looked up at Brock with a pained expression. “Dora’s not healing right now?” He took her hand and kissed her knuckles.
“Not healing, just living,” Lowell answered grimly. “How did the gnome know when he’d gotten to the right water, Korbin?”
Korbin chuckled. “She started kicking the hell of out him. I’m guessing that the relationship was a little one-sided, at that point anyway.”
“Creepy little stalker gnome.” Paloma shuddered.
“Well then.” Lowell stood. “We don’t have any time to waste. I’ll take Dora into the underground stream, as far as I need to. When she gets better…” He glanced at her shrivelled, mud-coated form. “I’ll know it.”
“Not so fast,” Korbin said. “You’re too big, Lowell. Dora’s too big, too. This book said that the gnome and his lady friend had to squeeze through some places. ‘Wiggling like fish and writhing like snakes through the rocks. Only by exhaling all his breath and pushing on fearlessly through the bleak, lightless, watery path could the gnome proceed’. You’ll never fit.”
“We need a little person, tiny enough to negotiate those twists and turns for miles and miles.” Carmen looked down at Dora with a hopeless expression. “Someone brave and committed to the task. Someone who won’t turn around, no matter what.”
“We need a gnome,” Paloma stated.
Someone coughed lightly in the archway of the corridor, then emerged into the flickering torchlight. “You ones need
me
.” He thumped his chest with one gnarled finger and nodded. “Bufo’s your gnome.”
“You.” Lowell’s hands balled into fists and he took a step towards him.
Bufo stood, unwavering, and nodded. “Me. This one here is most special.” He indicated Dora with a tilt of his misshapen head. “Worth a splooshy plunge and twisty swim into the deep unknown.”
“But how will he get the right water to Dora?” Carmen wondered. “He can’t bottle it up to bring back when he doesn’t know where it’ll be.”
“With this he will!” a female voice cackled. Limax entered behind Bufo and held up a coiled tube. “Knew all this, we did, and how to fix it, so had those elves concoct a squirter on the hurry-up!” She caught Bufo’s eyes with hers and giggled. “Elves and trolls and us have been busy, uh-huh and sure enough.”
Korbin took the tube from her and examined it. He tugged the free end and stretched it to arm’s length. “Remarkable,” he whispered. “It doesn’t flatten or thin or anything, just grows in length.”
“Yuh-uh.” Limax agreed with a sniffle. “Clevery elves, eh? Told them to make it so it’ll scrapey-bump over rocks and no tearing, twisty-slide through tight spots and no trouble, gotsa keep the water flowing, no stops! Been busy, yah, creatin’ and suchlike.”
“Okay, then, Bufo,” Korbin told the gnome. “You’re going to have to go downstream holding this tube, for who knows how far.” He shook his head. “I just hope you don’t get blocked or stuck. When you’ve gone far enough, when we see Dora start to improve, we’ll tug on our end. Move at the same rate as the water for another ten minutes or so, then come on back when we tug again.”
The gnome took the end of the hose in his fist and strode into the rushing stream. “Best off then!” Bufo took a deep breath and disappeared into the rock tunnel.
“Ah, brave one, he.” Limax’s eyes welled with tears and she wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“Let’s move Dora into the water tub,” Korbin advised, “since it’s water she needs now.”
Lowell strode into the mud bath, kilt flopping in the silty ripples, and lifted Dora from Paloma’s arms, then walked with her to the tub. Paloma rinsed off in the stream and slipped her dress over her head, then followed. “The water’s going to wash the coating of mud away,” she said quietly. “She’s burnt badly, Lowell.”
“I know,” he answered. A cloud of fine clay spread from Dora’s form when Lowell lowered her into the tub. Still wrapped in her robe, her body was mercifully hidden, but her head and hands were uncovered and still caked with mud.
Korbin held the free end of the hose up to her neck and a rush of clear water revealed a strip of cracked, raw skin on her collarbone. “We’ll just keep the running water here for now. When her skin starts to heal, we’ll see it, and then we can cleanse the rest of her body.” He stared soberly at the damaged skin beneath the stream that ran from the hose.
Carmen, Paloma and Brock sat around the rim of the tub and dangled their feet in the water. “This will probably take a while, you know. Bufo will have to swim faster than the water is flowing. He’ll have to work his way through who-knows-what…” Lowell closed his eyes.
“Good swimmer, Bufo is,” Limax soothed. “Quick and slippery as a froggie in a pond, yes.”
“He’d better be,” Lowell said grimly. Dora’s breath rattled, then calmed. The water from the hose flowed over her tortured skin.
The Fair Folk sat in grim silence, their combined attention focused on Dora’s injured body and a slim trickle of water. They waited. Carmen shifted her weight from side to side and Brock gave her hand a squeeze.
From deep within the earth, splashes and shouts echoed up to the bathing cavern. Lowell ground his jaw until his teeth squeaked together.
“Hope he’s not hurt,” Paloma whispered. “Or stuck.”
Brock rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles. Lowell glared at him, then cradled Dora to his chest protectively.
Carmen glanced around the room at each tense face. She cleared her throat. “I know we can’t see the sky down here, but we can imagine the moon shining down on us, right? It’s a blue one tonight, you know. Second full moon this month. But then, the moon’s always blue in Kentucky, right?” Lowell’s brows lifted with interest. “I always loved this song—I think it helped me find my way to Charade.”
Carmen began to sing ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’, the rollicking bluegrass waltz made famous by Bill Monroe and, later, by a black-haired king from Memphis with a crooked smile. Paloma’s eyes shone. “I remember dancing to this with Calvin,” she whispered. “He stepped on my feet!”
Korbin hummed along, letting the hose end sway in time to the music. Brock and Carmen harmonised as Paloma snapped along. Lowell swayed in the bubbling tub, sending ripples across his siblings’ calves.
By the time they reached the end of the song, the mood of the room had lightened considerably. All the Fair Folk present—Brock, Carmen, Paloma, Korbin and Lowell—sang the last lines together.
“Look! Look, you guys!” Lowell shouted. “Oh my God, her skin! It’s healing!” Beneath the clear flow from the tube, Dora’s skin had changed from a charred, angry red-black to a blushing pink.
Korbin gave the hose three brisk yanks. “Stand up with her, Lowell, hold her steady!” Lowell, his face a mask of shock and joy, rose and held Dora in the bubbling pool. Korbin lifted the tube to her head first, letting the water stream over her head and face. The mud rinsed away, and for a gruesome split-second her burned flesh was visible, but within the span of a heartbeat the injured tissue mended and smoothed. Carmen wept and ran her hands over Dora’s scalp as her glossy black hair grew back—lustrous, thick and wavy.
Dora’s lips plumped and filled out beneath the healing rivulet, and her eyelashes sprouted as her eyelids fluttered open. “Wha…? Whazzit?” she slurred.
“Hush,” Paloma murmured, tears welling in her eyes. “Just hush and be still, Dora.”
Korbin rinsed her robe-shrouded body, then eased the sodden fabric from her skin. Naked, her exposed pink skin glowed with health. Carmen took the hose from Korbin as Lowell held Dora like a doll in his wide hands beneath the gentle flow. Moving slowly, Carmen directed the stream under Dora’s arms, beneath her breasts, under her feet, between her toes and fingers, and between her legs. “Good,” Lowell urged. “Be thorough, Carmen. I don’t want her to have any scars or pain from this.”