Trapped

Chapter 8

Some moments are pregnant with epiphany.

The moment just before you take your first successful bike ride. That bit where the lights go out at your very first concert and people scream because other people who play rock and roll are walking onstage. The doubtful glare at a shiny can seconds before you chug it, choke on it, and realize that you’re a beer snob after all. That moment, sometime after the honeymoon is over, when it dawns on you that the honeymoon really is over and marriage will require a bit of work. And then that moment before your first child is born. They are the moments during which we are briefly, acutely, conscious that our lives will be changed forever … in the next moment.

Granuaile was having one of those moments. Her muscles were tense and she was holding her breath, because I held her right heel cupped in my left hand and pointed a sharp thorn at the sole of her foot with my other hand. Said thorn was hardened and sharpened and still attached to a living thornbush, which was of course in contact with the earth and thus with Gaia. The ink was ground lapis lazuli, mined in Colorado, mixed with alcohol.

Both of us were in a trancelike fugue, though only I was in contact with Gaia; Granuaile was being helped by Olympia, via the marble clutched tightly in her hand. We would pause occasionally to eat and sleep and keep our bodies functioning, but, once established, the connection with Gaia would have to stay open for three months. We’d be extremely vulnerable and less-than-sterling conversationalists.

Oberon understood this. It was to be a long, lonely time for him. And he also understood that, should it be warranted, he would snap us out of it, whether Granuaile was completely bound or not.

I hadn’t told Granuaile what would happen when I first pierced her sole with the thorn and the consciousness of Gaia rushed in. There were no words to prepare someone for that. So I simply jabbed her where Gaia said I should, then held on as she spasmed, screamed, and passed out.