The Winter Long

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t pull away; I couldn’t breathe. So I bit her, and the cold strength of her blood filled my mouth, strangely devoid of memories. I swallowed it anyway, trying to use it to break free. It didn’t work. Black spots were beginning to swim in front of my eyes as I struggled ineffectually against her hold. I could hear Tybalt shouting something in the distance, but he was too far away to help me; only the ghosts of his hands could reach me where I was, scrabbling uselessly at the edges of the world. I shouldn’t still have been bleeding, but I was, and the Luidaeg was somehow taking it all.

There’s only so much blood a body can afford to lose, and the hammering pulse of my heart warned me that I was rapidly running out. Then, abruptly, the Luidaeg let me go, and I was shoved away, collapsing like a rag doll into Tybalt’s waiting arms.

“October?” He sounded closer now. That was a good thing, since he was holding me. I raised my head, and found him staring down at me. “What just happened?”

My headache, almost gone before, had blossomed anew like some perverse flower, spreading to fill my entire skull. I groaned as I forced myself to turn toward the bed, squinting against the candlelight. “I don’t know,” I said. “Hopefully, something good.” My vision cleared and I sighed, half from relief, and half from simple exhaustion.

The Luidaeg was sitting up.

Whatever force had cleaned up the blood that had been covering me had done the same for her; her clothing, while torn to the point of uselessness, was spotless, and her hair fell in its usual heavy curls, shining and unsnarled. She was staring in awe at her hands, looking at them like she’d never seen them before. Her wounds were gone. Even the bruise on her cheek had vanished.

“Hey,” I said, trying to pull away from Tybalt and stand on my own two feet. I stumbled, and he caught me, lending me the stability I needed. My head was pounding. I did my best to ignore it. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

The Luidaeg raised her head, focusing on me. Her eyes were a clear, simple driftglass green. “What did you do?” she asked.

“Do?” I echoed. There were still black spots dancing around the edges of my vision. I tried to shake them away. Bad move; shaking my head just made the black spots double while my headache throbbed.

“Do,” said the Luidaeg, holding her hands out to me like they were all the answer I could possibly need. There was a thin white line of scar tissue on her left arm, where the deepest of the cuts had been. I was willing to bet that, given time, even that would fade away.

“I . . . you weren’t responding, but I thought there was a chance you weren’t quite dead yet, and so I . . .”

“You brought me back.” There was no mistaking the quiet wonder in her tone. “I was dead.”

“Not quite.”

“Yeah, Toby, I was dead.” She shook her head. “I know what dead feels like. It’s cold there. It’s very cold. And I was dead.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering hard.

“I couldn’t let you go,” I said. It was a small statement, too awkward to encompass everything that it meant: I didn’t have the words to encompass everything that it meant. Then again, I had just brought her back from the dead, so she probably had some idea of what I was trying to say. “I just . . . I couldn’t let you be dead.”

“Thank you,” she said. She sagged backward on the bed. “I can’t . . . I didn’t stay dead long enough. The geas still holds.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t . . . I wanted you to be okay not because you could help, but because you’re my friend. I couldn’t just let you die.”

“There are people who won’t be very happy with you for this.” The Luidaeg closed her eyes. “You have to hide me. I can’t stay where I am.”

“Okay, Luidaeg. Just rest, okay?” I was saying “okay” so much that the word was losing all meaning. Maybe that was more accurate than I liked to think. It felt like the world was never really going to be “okay” again.

The Luidaeg sighed. “I can’t tell you what’s coming, Toby, even though I want to. But I can tell you one thing that might help.”

“What is it?” I pulled away from Tybalt, moving to stand closer to her. Everything still smelled like my blood. That helped, a little, even if it wasn’t enough to chase the black spots entirely away.

“Your mother,” said the Luidaeg. “She told you to beware the Lady of the Lake, but to be more afraid of Morgane. Do you remember?”