Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Thirteen

The stones of the garden path moved under my bare feet. I was suddenly aware that I had small cuts on my feet. The stones seemed to be touching the cuts.

I clutched Sholto's arm more tightly, and looked down at what we walked upon. The stones were shades of black, but there were images in them. It was as if pieces of the formless part of the wild hunt were inside the stones, but it wasn't just visuals. They reached out to the surface of the stones with tentacles and too many limbs, and they could touch us. The miniature pieces of the wild magic seemed particularly interested in anywhere that I was scraped or bleeding.

I jumped, nearly pulling Sholto off the path. "What is wrong?" he asked.

"I think the stones are feeding on the cuts on my feet."

"Then I need a place to lay the Storm Lord down, so I can carry you." At his words, the center of the knot garden spread wide like a mouth, or a piece of cloth that you open to make room for a sleeve.

There was the sound of plants moving at speeds that no natural plant was ever meant to move, a dry, slithering rustling that made me look around. Sometimes when plants moved like that it was to simply make a new piece of faerie, but sometimes it was to attack. I'd been bled by the roses in the Unseelie antechamber. My blood had awoken them, but it had still hurt, and it had still been frightening. Plants don't think like people, and making them able to move doesn't change that. Plants don't understand how animals think and feel. I suppose the same is true in reverse, but I wasn't going to hurt the plants by accident, and I wasn't so sure that the whispering, hurrying plants would grant me the same safety.

Normally I felt safe when the magic of the Goddess was moving this strongly, but there was just something about this garden that made me nervous. Maybe it was the feel of the stones moving under my feet, using small mouths to lick and drink from the minute cuts in my feet. Maybe it was the knotted herbs that made it almost dizzying if you looked at their patterns too long.

I looked behind us and found that the rose hedge had knitted itself completely around the garden. No, there was a gate in the hedge. It looked like a white picket fence gate with a wooden arch that curved gracefully over it. Then I realized that there were images in the pale wood. Then I knew it wasn't wood. The gate was formed of bone.

There were four small trees in the center of the garden now, where the herbs and stones had moved aside. Vines curved up them, and the wood formed to the curving lines of the vines, the way that trees will when they've had the vines shaping them their entire lives. The vines interlaced above the trees, and the limbs and leaves of the trees interwove into a canopy. The vines formed a lacework lower down, and new herbs grew under the vines, forming a cushion of vegetation under them. The garden was growing a bed for Mistral.

Flower petals began to rain down upon the bed. Not just the rose petals that sometimes fell around me, but flowers of all colors and kinds. They formed four pillows that went across the width of the bed's head. They formed a blanket, which pulled itself down to the foot of the bed, turning itself down for the night.

Sholto looked at me. His look was a question. I answered it as best as I could. "Your sithen has prepared a place for us to sleep and to heal Mistral."

"And to heal you, Meredith."

I squeezed his arm. "To heal us all."

Sholto walked to the bed on a spill of green grasses so bright that it looked too green to be grass. The moment I stepped from the stone to the grass, I realized that it was small stones too. I gazed down at what we walked upon, and knew that it was formed of emeralds. It crunched underfoot, but it wasn't sharp or hurtful. I had no words for the texture of the emeralds. It was almost as if they were real grass, but just happened to be formed of precious stones.

Sholto laid Mistral in the center of the bed. It was as if he knew what needed to be done to heal him. Deity wasn't talking just to me tonight.

The bed was tall enough that I had to climb, rather than step, onto it. Vines in the bed frame curled around me, lifting me. It was actually a little more help than was comforting. The bed was a marvelous thing, but the thought of vines that could move that much curling around me while I slept wasn't a completely good thought.

Sholto knelt on the other side of Mistral from where I was crawling up beside him. "Who is the fourth pillow for?" he asked.

I knelt in the surprising softness of herbs, vines, and petals, and stared at the pillow. I started to say, "I don't know," but in the middle of the breath to say it, another word came. "Doyle."

Sholto looked at me. "He is in the human hospital miles away, surrounded by metal and technology."

I said, "You are right," but the moment I said it, I knew we had to get Doyle. We had to rescue him. Rescue him? I said it out loud. "We have to rescue him."

Sholto frowned at me. "Rescue him from what?"

I had that moment of panic that I'd felt before. It wasn't words but a feeling. It was fear. I'd only felt it twice before: once when Galen had been attacked by assassins, and the other time when Barinthus, our strongest ally in the Unseelie Court, had been at the wrong end of a magical plot in which our enemies had maneuvered the queen to kill him.

I gripped Sholto's arm tightly. "There is no time to explain. Mistral can rest here in the magic of faerie. We will return and give our magic to him, but for now, Doyle's life hangs in the balance. I feel it, and this feeling has never been wrong before, Sholto."

He didn't argue again, which was one of the qualities I valued about Sholto. The petal blanket slid over Mistral where Sholto had laid him without the aid of any hands we could see or sense. Magic touched every wound that the iron had made; it was the best we could do until we returned to him.

Sholto turned to me. Without Mistral's body to block the view, the tentacles looked like some sort of clothing, and they were the only thing he was wearing above the waist. "How do we reach Doyle in time?" he asked.

"You are the Lord of That Which Passes Between, Sholto. You took us where a field met woods, and where the shore met ocean. Isn't there anything in a hospital that is a place between?"

He thought for a second, then nodded. "Life and death. A hospital is full of people who hover between. But there is too much metal and technology for me, Meredith. I have no human blood in me to help me work major magic around such things."

I took one of his hands and wrapped my much smaller fingers around his. "I do."

He frowned at me. "But this is not your magic. It is mine."

I prayed. "Goddess guide me. Show me the way."

"Your hair," Sholto whispered. "There is mistletoe in your hair again."

I turned my head and could feel the waxy green leaves. A touch found the white berries. I gazed up at Sholto, and he had a crown of woven herbs. They bloomed with tiny stars of lavender, white, and blue. He raised his free hand and there again was a tendril of green like a living ring on his finger. It burst into white bloom, like the most delicate of gemstones.

I felt movement around one ankle, and raised my gown to find an anklet of green and yellow leaves, lemon thyme wrapped around me. Except for the mistletoe in my hair, this was what we had gained the night that Sholto and I had first made love. The mistletoe had been from a night when I was with other of my men.

A vine rose from the bed like a thorny green serpent. It moved toward our clasped hands. "Why is it always thorns?" I asked, but this was one moment when my wishes would not change faerie.

Sholto said it, "Because everything worth having hurts." His hand tensed against mine, then the vine found our hands and began to wind around us. Thorns bit into our skin with small biting pains. Blood began to trickle down our hands, mingling our blood as our hands were pressed more and more tightly by the thorns. It should have simply hurt, but the summer sunshine fell upon us, and the perfume of herbs and roses, warmed by the life-giving sun, was all around us.

The vine around our hands burst into flowers. Pink roses covered the vine, hiding the pain, and giving us a bouquet more intimate than any ever made by man.

I felt my hair move, and as Sholto leaned in to kiss me, he said, "You wear a crown of mistletoe and white roses."

We kissed, and his free hand with its ring of flowers cradled my face. We drew apart just enough to speak. "By our mingled blood," I whispered.

"By the power of the Goddess," he said.

"Let us join our power," I said.

"And our kingdoms," he replied.

"Let it be so," I said, and there was a sound like some great bell being rung, as if the universe had been waiting for us to say those words. I should have been afraid of what it meant. I should have had doubts, but in that moment, there was no room for such things. There were only Sholto's eyes gazing into mine, his hand on my face, our hands tied together by the very magic of faerie itself.

"So mote it be," he answered. "Now let us save our Darkness."

I'd traveled with Sholto to the between places, but I'd never been able to feel his power stretching outward. It was surprisingly similar to a hand reaching outward in the dark until it finds what it needs and draws it near.

One moment we were in the heart of faerie, the next we were in an emergency room surrounded by doctors, nurses, and screaming monitors. There was a strange man on the gurney, and a doctor was trying to restart his heart.

They stared at us for a moment, then we simply walked away, leaving them to save the man if they could. "Where is he, Meredith?" Sholto asked.

Sholto had gotten us here. Now it was up to me to find Doyle in time.