And all I could do was hang on and hope he tired himself out before I lost my grip.
And there I did get lucky, although it was a pretty near-run thing. But he didn't have much staying power, no matter how pissed off he was. And I kind of think there was something still working up top, because there was this moment where I realized he'd quit fighting to get away from me and was fighting to wrap himself around me like a vine or something. Whatever it was that made him scared of deep water, it wasn't nothing little.
So I fought him back to a grip that wouldn't strangle me—and, powers, that's hard in the dark and the water and with somebody who can't understand what you're saying and ain't listening if he could. But it was then that I realized the storm was dying down, because if he'd tried any of them stunts when we first went into the water, I'm pretty sure we both would've drowned.
So I hung on, with both my shoulders wanting to cramp and that nasty feeling like somebody was striking lucifers along my bones getting worse and worse, and Felix like this iron weight and his breath sobbing in my ear, and I waited and the sky got lighter and the rain calmed down and the ocean smoothed out some more, and then the sun pushed its way out of the clouds and I just about cried. Because there was east, and the horizon line was kind of dim and humped, and that had to be Troia. I really didn't think we could make it, but we were close enough that dying now would look like giving up.
"Keeper didn't raise no quitters," I said, and I could even hear myself say it. And then I started kicking me and Felix and the hatch cover toward land.
But that was a no-starter, as I figured out in about a minute. Because Felix wasn't being no help at all. I yelled at him to kick instead of trying to break my collarbones, but if he even heard me, he couldn't do nothing about it. I could feel it in his body. He'd got locked up in his own fear, like he'd been turned to stone right where he was. And I couldn't do a damn thing with him like that. I kept going under, and I could feel my grip on the hatch cover sliding out from my palms toward my fingertips. I couldn't do it. If I was going to keep us both from drowning, I couldn't carry him no longer.
I stopped kicking. I got my grip back on the hatch cover. And then I hung there and thought about my breathing and about sending the good air out to my muscles, the way Keeper'd taught me when I had two septads and one. And after a minute—and I didn't dare take longer—I was able to say,
"Felix," and have it come out loud and clear, but not angry or frightened or pone of the other things I was feeling. "Felix, can you hear me?"
He didn't say nothing, and I hadn't thought he would. I went on, keeping my voice nice and even, like I was talking to Devie again. "Felix, we're almost to land, and I can get us there, but I need you to get off me. Okay? You can hang on to the hatch cover. There's plenty of room, and you can see it's floating just fine. You don't have to swim or nothing, and I promise you won't drown, but you got to hang on to the hatch cover instead of me. Okay? Come on, Felix, it's safe as houses. Just move one hand. Just put it on the hatch cover." I kept talking, saying the same things over and over, praying that wherever Felix was inside his head, he could hear me and he was still somewhere he could be talked back from. At first I thought it wasn't going to work, and we were just going to be stuck here until I couldn't hang on no more and we both went down, but I kept talking, like I used to do with Devie, not getting angry or impatient, but not giving up, neither.
And after a chunk of time that can't have been as long as it felt like, Felix's hands kind of twitched a little, not actually moving but like they were kind of thinking about it. I kept talking, like I was a music box or something, because if I got excited, it would just throw him off. A little longer, and he started doing what I was telling him to. I mean, Kethe, he wasn't moving no faster than a turtle, but he was moving. One hand went out to the hatch cover and clamped on to it.
We stuck there for a second, and the arm still hooked over my shoulder dug in like he was afraid I was going to buck him off. I said, "That's great, Felix, that's just exactly right. But you got to get the other hand out there, too, and then I can duck under you, and it'll all be okay. It'll be okay, I promise, but you got to do it."
And he did it. He flung his right arm out and grabbed on to the hatch cover, and before he could change his mind about it, I dropped out from under him and came up as neat as you please just beside him. It ain't a trick I could've pulled more than once just then, and I kind of hung there for a minute myself, thinking about my breathing and about not cramping while the strength came back into my legs. Then I got my bearings and started kicking us toward Troia.
And, powers, that went on for about a million septads and a half. The land wasn't getting no closer and I wondered if it was a mirage like in the stories of Mark Polaris. So I just kicked and kicked and tried not to watch the land not getting closer and tried not to think about the hot, raspy feeling in my legs and tried not to think about what would happen if the curse started cramping me up again before we reached land. Felix wasn't helping or nothing, but he wasn't in my way, neither, and I figured that was the best I could hope for.
And then when I couldn't stand it no more and looked up, the land was closer, so I could actually see the green hills rising up behind the beach and this rickety wooden staircase that said maybe people used this beach and maybe we were going to be okay after all.
And that's when the cramps started. Just little ones, more like twitches in my fingers and toes, but I knew their big brothers wouldn't want to miss out on the fun, and they'd be along in a minute.
"Kick, you useless fuck!" I snarled at Felix, and for a wonder, he did. And I kicked, while the cramps got bigger and harder and my head started to pound, and the land came closer and closer. Just when I could reach the bottom with my feet, a big cramp got me. I lost Felix and the hatch cover and most of my air, and, Kethe, I was so fucking mad and scared that I clawed my way straight back out of it. I felt something go way fucking wrong in my leg, the kind of wrong there ain't no ifs about, and right then I didn't even care. I got my feet under me and grabbed Felix from where he was floundering and just dragged him straight up out of the water, swearing at him like a whole boatload of Simside dockworkers, calling him a motherfucker and shit-brained cocksucker and I don't know what all, anything to get him to move, to carry own his weight, to keep us both from going facedown in the surf and drowning less than ten feet from the land I'd fucking near killed myself to reach. And I could see on his face that he heard me and he understood me, and I wanted to scream because I knew he was never going to forget me yelling at him like this and he was never going to forgive it, neither, but I couldn't care. My right leg was dead. I couldn't feel it, and I only knew it was taking any of my weight because I wasn't quite falling down. And there was another big cramp coming, and I knew we had to get onto the beach before it got me. We had to, and so I yelled terrible things at my brother, some things Keeper'd called me one time, and I'd sworn, crying to myself in a corner, that I'd never say them to nobody else, no matter what. And here I was, saying them to Felix, who didn't even deserve them, just because it was that or let us both drown.
And then, somehow, we were out of the water, and my right leg couldn't take it, and I was going down, dragging Felix with me, and that was the last I knew for a good long while.
Chapter 12
Mildmay
I knew I was dreaming, but it didn't help.
There was this thing Keeper used to threaten us with—though far as I know she never actually used it on nobody—this old cooling well in a warehouse she owned down in Queensdock. You couldn't use it for keeping things cool no more, along of it having sprung a leak so there was always a couple inches of water in the bottom, but it was just the right size to shut a kid in. Like I said, she never did it, but she could've and we all knew it.
So in my dream, I'm shut in that old cooling well, and I'm pounding on the trap, begging to be let out, and there's people up top—I can hear 'em arguing over what to do with me. Every once in a while they shout a question at me, so I know they know I'm there. But they won't let me out.
And they're asking the weirdest fucking questions. They want to know why there's a death curse on me and why it hasn't killed me yet and what school of magic it's from and how I got here—wherever the fuck "here" is—and why I was with this other guy and on and on and on. And I'm trying to tell them—explain about Felix and Miriam and Cerberus Cresset and the Mirador—only I feel like I'm talking the wrong language or something. I sure as fuck ain't giving the right answers, 'cause, every time, there's this long, long pause, and then another fucking question. And I'm still begging them to let me out and the trap ain't budging.
And like I said, I knew I was dreaming, but it wasn't no good. I couldn't wake myself up. I could feel my body, but it was just this heavy
thing
, like a lead doorstop, like the trap of the cooling well, and I could only hope I was still breathing, 'cause from the way I felt, I wasn't. And, oh yeah, it hurt. It was like there were hornets swarming inside my bones—all of 'em, but most especially my right leg. There was something wrong there, something fucked to Hell and back, and I guess there was part of me that didn't even want to wake up and have to deal with this new, horrible thing that'd be waiting for me when I opened my eyes.
After a while, the dream did that thing dreams do where everything changes while you ain't looking, and I was back dreaming about Ginevra. And the people with all the questions had bailed. Which was good. In the dream, Ginevra was mad at me, and we were fighting about something, although I never did figure out what. But that actually felt familiar, because there'd been a lot of times Ginevra'd been mad at me and I hadn't had the first idea what I'd done. I tried to pretend I wasn't dreaming, that I'd just had a nightmare about her dying and the Mirador burning and all the rest of it, but the whole time my leg was hurting like nothing on earth, and I knew I was lying to myself. But even so, and even with Ginevra yelling like a banshee, it was better than being awake.
And then I thought, What about Felix?
I tried to bury that thought, but I'd got so used to worrying about Felix that I was already on to, I wonder if he's okay. And then I remembered the storm and the ocean and the beach, and thought, Kethe, what if he's dead?
And just like that, I was awake. I didn't know where I was or what day it was or how I'd gotten off the beach that was the last thing I remembered. Well, except my dreams, but they didn't help none.
I just lay there with my eyes closed for a while, taking stock. I was laying down, which was good, and it
was on something soft, which was better. There was a comforter or something over me, which suggested somebody cared enough not to want me to freeze my ass off. So that was okay.
On the other hand, I ached all over in that kind of feverish way that means it don't matter what you do, you ain't gonna be comfortable this side of tomorrow morning and maybe not then, neither. My head was throbbing like some kind of drum, and then my right leg had gone and lapped the field. The swarm of hornets hadn't gotten no smaller, they'd just packed themselves into my hip and thigh and knee like a jar of olives. It felt like if I tried to bend my knee at all, the whole thing would just squish to bits like rotten fruit, and then the hornets could get out and sting me to death. Oh powers, I was fucked and fucked bad.
There was a noise, out there somewhere beyond what I knew, a kind of little rustling noise, like somebody shifting position. I didn't let my body tense up, but inside I froze solid. And then I thought, Well, fuck. Whoever that is, I ain't getting away from them nohow. I opened my eyes.
And the bad news was, I didn't recognize a damn thing. It was a nice room—white walls, big window, a rug on the floor, a table with a chair, and two armchairs—but there wasn't a familiar thing in it. And I ain't talking like I was expecting to see my own couch or nothing. But, I mean, even the quilt on the bed had a pattern I'd never seen before, and the rug on the floor didn't even look real, it was that pretty. It hadn't been made on no factory loom, that was for sure.
And then there was the kid. He was sitting in the armchair near the door, like he wanted to be sure he could get away in a hurry. He had red hair and yellow eyes, and he was wearing this dark, quilted coat with a high, tight collar, which made him look white as flour. He was younger than me. I guessed him at two septads and three or thereabouts. He wasn't looking at me. He was staring out the window, so I could see the way his hair was braided into a knot at the base of his skull, like a woman's. He was wearing diamonds in his ears, just little chips, but enough to show this kid either had money or had somebody that liked to give him presents.
And even in profile he looked like a clockwork toy that'd been wound up too tight. This was already less than good.
I waited a while, but he hadn't noticed me wake up, and he looked like he was settling down for a good hard stare, and so finally I just said, "Where am I?"
Powers, he jumped like a foot and a half. Wound
way
too tight. Looked at head-on, he had a narrow, pointy little face and a soft, little mouth. He would've made a pretty girl.
"Wh-what?" he said, and I didn't blame him. Aside from him not expecting it and my scar fucking up my Kekropian, my voice was hoarse and thick and fucking ugly as a mud pie. So I said it again, slower and trying hard for clear, and he said, "Oh," in this prissy little voice, and then, in Midlander, "You are in the Gardens of Nephele."
"Well, fuck," I said in Midlander, "we got here after all," and he jumped again and turned bright, blotchy carnation pink.