The monstrous wyvern shrieks again, and Osbert releases Jasper and moves aside. When I see the great wyvern’s jaws open wide enough to swallow a horse, I squeeze my eyes shut. Cracking and crunching and gulping come from where Jasper once stood.
Shivering, I open my eyes. Jasper is gone. Vanished, as if he’d never existed. Not a scrap of clothing has been left behind. Not a shoe or a fingernail.
The big wyvern belches with satisfaction.
“Great gods above!” Dr. Phipps cries, cowering beside Soraya’s lifeless body. “It has come to pass!”
Both wyverns turn and eye him. Red drool drips from the big one’s bared fangs.
“Osbert, no,” I say. “Your friend must not eat the doctor. Please, Osbert. I have seen enough violence.”
Osbert nods at the beast and it whines in disappointment. It spreads its massive wings and lifts from the ground with a rush of wind.
“No!” Phipps cries as it circles above us. When the monster dives toward him and roars, Phipps clutches his heart and screams, “Have mercy!” And then his eyes roll back in his head and his mouth slackens. His body crumples onto Soraya’s, and I know that he has joined his wife in death.
Osbert scampers over and drenches my face with kisses. He kisses O’Neill until he awakens from his faint. And then our pet wyvern unfolds his wings and takes flight, following his fellow wyvern into the night with a happy waggling of his barbed tail.
I sink to the ground beside O’Neill, and he lays his head in my lap. “My brave Clara,” he says.
I do not feel brave. I feel a hundred years old and very, very tired—yet wide awake with worry. My mermaid sister sits in a shallow bucket, growing weaker by the minute, and O’Neill has been shot and can barely stand.
The smell of burnt wood and cloth and singed metal lurks about us as the wagons’ contents smolder and crackle. The smoke forms wispy clouds above us, obscuring the stars and dimming the moonlight.
“The horses,” O’Neill says. “I tethered them over there.” He points to the east. “Just beyond that hill, in a patch of grass. If you bring them, we can leave this place. We can finally take the road to the sea.” He speaks boldly, but his forehead is creased with pain.
“Yes,” I say. “But first I must tend to your wounds.”
With unsteady fingers, I unbutton his shirt and peel the blood-soaked fabric from his skin. “I need more light,” I say. “I cannot see the wound properly.” All I can see is dark blood oozing steadily from a hole in his chest. “Can you move closer to the fire?”
“If you will help me,” he says. His breathing is not right. Too much blood dampens my dress as I help him stumble to the fireside.
I kneel beside him. The firelight shows me what I do not wish to see. Far too much blood. His color is wrong, his breathing ragged.
“The bullet passed through, did it not?” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Yet I do not think I will live to see the sunrise, Clara,” he says. He grips my hand.
“You will,” I say.
“I must tell you some things before I go.”
“You are not going,” I say. I pull the dagger from my pocket and unsheathe it. “What it cuts, it mends,” I say, repeating Mrs. Smith’s words.
“It is a healing blade? I did not recognize it before. You must use it on Maren, not me,” O’Neill says. His skin is gray now, as gray as a corpse’s. “Make her a girl again. Save her for my sake. Keep my promise for me.”
“The blade can only be used once,” I say.
“Please, Clara. If you love me at all—if you love Maren, let her be the one to live.”
How can I choose between the two people I love most?
But if I choose healing for Maren, she would still be a mermaid, for there is no dagger in the universe that can make her a girl again. This is the truth I know and believe, although O’Neill continues to reject it again and again.
In choosing Maren, I would likely lose them both, for Maren would regain her size—and without O’Neill, how could I carry her and keep her concealed until we reach the sea?
There is no choice to be made. O’Neill must live or the mermaid will surely perish.
My hand trembles as I press the blade into his wound. What if Mrs. Smith was mistaken? What if I kill my dearest friend?
He coughs and wheezes. His eyes roll back and he shudders.
I cut him, tracing the bullet hole with the razor-sharp tip of the dagger.
O’Neill whimpers, and then he is quiet and absolutely still.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I am certain O’Neill is dead.
I have hastened his death, and Maren’s death will follow swiftly.
“I am sorry,” I say. I lift his hand to my lips and kiss his cold skin. There is so much I want to say, but I do not think he will ever hear another earthly thing.
I lay his hand upon his chest, inches from the ugly, seeping hole I helped create.
The wound hisses and glows. The skin stretches to cover the wound, and all traces of blood evaporate in a pink puff of air.
A crooked smile spreads across O’Neill’s face just as the moonlight breaks through the clouds of smoke.
If every joy of my life could be combined into one great joy, it would still be nothing but a shadow compared to this: my dearest O’Neill, living and breathing—and attempting to wipe away my flooding tears with his beautiful, filthy fingertips.
The dawn is dim and misty, holding all the promise of another stifling day. The horses whinny as I untie them from their posts. I am glad that O’Neill tethered them away from the camp last evening. I am glad they are not now cinders like the Phippses’ many treasures.
From the six horses, O’Neill chooses Plato and Cleopatra for our journey and sells the other four to a local farmer for much less than they are worth. We then return half the money to him in exchange for saddles, blankets, a sack of salt, and his promise to bury Soraya and Dr. Phipps, “victims of an unfortunate accident.”
With all of his former vim and vigor, O’Neill vaults onto the back of the piebald horse. I hand him a large bucket covered with a piece of burlap, and he receives it as the priceless gift it is. He ties a length of strong rope about his waist and the bucket and makes a good, tight knot.
“I will not lose Maren now,” he says. “Not after all we have been through.”
I force a smile and use the fence to climb into the saddle of the chestnut mare.
“Ready?” O’Neill asks. His face is so bright and eager that I wonder if the healing blade contained some kind of mood-lifting magic.
“Yes,” I say. It is half-true. I am ready to deliver Maren to her home, but I am not ready to part with her. I will never be ready to be parted from my sister.
O’Neill commands his horse to walk, and my horse follows.
We take the road to the east.