Past Midnight: Part II

“I’m sorry.” he said again.

I stroked his soft, black hair since he seemed so distressed. “You don’t have to apologize. You did save me after all.”

He was quiet for a bit. “I almost didn’t.”

My hand froze.

The faery lifted his head. “I told myself I wasn’t going to see you anymore, that whatever happened to you after that night was none of my business, but, I saw them take you. I saw their shadows swallow you out of sight, and I wasn’t supposed to interfere. As I told you, goblins have to eat something. You might have escaped on your own; you’re clever, after all. But you didn’t, and I couldn’t stand by and watch, so I... I broke another rule.”

I felt paralyzed until he swayed suddenly and I had to hold him up. “Let’s keep walking.” I said, pulling his hood back up and supporting him again.

“Can you forgive me?” he asked.

“For what? Breaking the rules, or for trying to follow them?” I started walking faster. “What kind of rules are these, anyway? Some kind of animal treatment laws? Is that what humans are to you?”

“No! Not at all! To us humanity is more like an unfriendly foreign country.”

That worked for me. “And that would make you a spy? That means I’m aiding an enemy spy!” It was somewhat delightful to think about, like the old WWII shows I used to watch with my dad.

“You jumped on that idea quickly.” he grew heavier again.

“What’s wrong? Is the pain getting worse?”

“It’s catching up to me. It’s only thanks to that liquid fire your friend used that I’ve made it this far.”

“Liquid fire? You mean the vodka?”

“Whatever she poured on the wound. It helped to slow down the poison.”

“Poison?!” At this point I was panicking and could only repeat him.

He squeezed my hand. “Don’t panic. I should have the cure at home, and we’re halfway there.” This wasn’t reassuring, though, because he said it as he was becoming too heavy for me to hold up and was thus dropping to the ground.

“Halfway there?!” I repeated, trying to pull him back up. “Only halfway?” With how high I was raising my voice, it’s a miracle no students or security guards on campus noticed us. The whole place was deserted. Eventually I hoisted the faery up so I could carry him piggy-back style, and I jogged up the hill as fast as I could in panic mode. He wrapped his arms around my shoulders and nestled his head against mine as if he were hugging me for reasons other than the fact that his life was in danger.

“Stop distracting me!”

“Sorry.” he said meekly.

We finally made it up the hill to the building where I had met him at that dance. “Where do I go from here?”

“Towards the gardens.” the faery pointed the way until we had gone through several of the differently themed gardens and there was no more sidewalk to be had. I tried walking up the steep, grassy hill, but it was wet and a bit muddy from the sprinklers. There was no traction. I slipped and fell, dropping to my hands and knees and buckling under his added weight. We lay on our backs and rested for a moment on the hill, being streaked with mud and recovering from the fall.

“The sky is very pretty tonight.” the faery remarked conversationally.

I laughed shakily. “Yes, yes it is.”

“The stairs would have been faster, you know.”

“Not if this hill wasn’t wet!” I started ranting.  “If they would just run the sprinklers during the day when it’s hot and everyone’s in need of cooling off instead, this would have been faster!”  

The faery turned his head toward me and took my hand, like a dying person in a hospital bed. His grasp was weak.  “We’re almost there.”

I sat up. “Can you move at all? Do you think you can crawl up the slope?” He nodded and tried. “Where do we go from here?” I asked him.

“Through the hedge, Ashlyn. Don’t you remember?”

“No, because someone tampered with my memories.” I retorted, helping him to kneel up. He smiled and climbed up on my back again, and we trudged through the cedar hedges, which seemed overgrown now; green and prickly. On the other side was the Faery World.

It looked the same as another part of the gardens at first: trees, grass, flower beds. My faery, who was getting worse every minute, directed me to a road at the edge of the trees, which led to a village, an old-looking village, with thatched roofs and wooden shutters on the houses. The houses were all dark and silent, like they had been abandoned.

He started having trouble breathing by the time we reached it, and his temperature rose a great deal. He told me to enter one house that looked the same as all the others to me, but was apparently his. I pushed the door open to a dark mess. Books and papers were everywhere. There was an empty chair next to a table, so I sat him down in that.

“Okay, where’s the cure?” I asked. He hunched over, leaning onto the table. His pain looked agonizing. He pointed to the cupboards on the other side of the table, and I frantically searched them until I found one with little bottles and jars that looked like medicine.

“Which one is it? They aren’t labelled!” I dropped a few on the floor.

“It’s a blue glass bottle. It should be towards the left of the shelf.”

“Don’t say ‘should’ as if you’re not sure! I can't even see what colors they are!” I said, wringing my hands.

He calmly pushed some papers aside on the table and uncovered a candle and some matches. I hurried and lit up the candle.

There must have been at least thirty bottles in there, of all different colors. I brought him several blue ones, but he shook his head at them while fumbling with the clasp at his neck. Finally, I brought them all to the table, armfuls at a time, and he found it, a little blue bottle stopped with a cork.

“You have to pour it on the wound.” my faery said apologetically while he handed it back to me.

I threw the cloak away from his shoulders and started ripping off the duct tape that kept the bloody bandage on. He tried not to cry out, but he was a delicate faery after all. Pulling the cork out with my teeth, I poured a shiny substance into the angry gash on his back. It began bubbling. His hands were clutching the table edge, knuckles white. He drew in his breath quickly, as if the medicine burned him as it cured the poison. For all I knew, it hurt as much as the knife did in the first place. I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling helpless. Finally, he heaved a sigh of relief.

I looked at the wound again. It was frothing bubbles, but when I wiped it off with a towel it looked much better. The faery handed me another bottle that was supposed to close up the wound. I poured that on as well. I looked around for another bandage, and found another hand towel that felt clean, so I used that along with the few remaining strips of duct tape that were still adhesive.

With difficulty, my faery pushed himself away from the table and turned to face me. He sat up and put his hand on my face, looking meltingly grateful. “Thank you, Ashlyn.” And with that he immediately fell out of his chair and collapsed to the floor in a faint.

I groaned and looked around the messy room. There was a bed (unmade and also covered in books and papers) not six feet away. “Aw! You couldn’t have waited until you were in bed to faint? Honestly! It would have been two seconds! What am I going to do with you?” I eventually cleared the literary debris off of his bed and started dragging him towards it with difficulty.

            “Some enemy spy,” I grumbled. “Why don’t you just levitate yourself to bed? Isn’t there a spell that does that? One that you can do in your sleep?”