And with each okay I worked the needle and thread, passing it back and forth between us, sewing us together, palm to palm, sole to sole, cheek to cheek, bone to bone, until I couldn’t feel her skin against mine anymore because now it was my skin, until the boundaries between us melted away.
“It’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay it’s going to be okay.”
And then I was sitting in the dark of her basement—the real one, not the one deep down inside the hill—alone but not alone, wet through with sweat and tears, arms wrapped around my own shoulders, needle stuck to my fingers with blood, the light of the rising sun just starting to filter down the stairs.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said to myself. “It’s going to be okay.”
Then the door between the two houses blew open and I was engulfed in a cloud of brown dust.
Into Light
CHAPTER 56
It is hard to rebuild a house.
It is so much harder to rebuild a life.
But unless you’re content to rot in the ruins, it is a necessary work. A work I was finally ready to begin.
I woke up, broken and bruised in a hospital bed. I didn’t remember getting there. For a moment I thought I’d died and this was just what happened to folks after. Your soul is sent, battered and worn, to a soul hospital.
It’s alright, the soul doctors say. You’re safe now. It’s over.
No such luck for me. Thankfully.
I was too exhausted to feel much of anything other than tired and sore. I’d been burning myself at both ends for a while and I probably would have ended up here even if I hadn’t had my arse handed to me by a mythical shadow creature. The first few days passed in a blur of nurses and needles and dressings being checked and changed. The sunlight arced gently across the ceiling over a steady background hum of beeps, coughs, sighs, trolley wheels and crocs squeaky on linoleum floors.
Then on the third day, I woke from another recovery nap to find I had a visitor.
A figure sat in the plastic chair near the end of my bed, frowning at a catalogue of antiques.
I blinked, trying to clear my eyes, because it couldn’t be who I thought it was.
Fergus looked up, startled a little from the noise of me shifting under the starched sheets.
“Oh, hi,” he said, uncharacteristically sheepish.
I worked the spit round my dry mouth.
“What are you doing here?”
Fergus huffed in surprise.
“Tell me how you really feel, why don’t you?”
“Like I got a house dropped on me,” I said. “Now, what are you doing here?”
“Visiting you, you snarky cow.” He pointed to the table at the side of my bed. “Even brought you a gift.”
I turned my head gently, trying to pull on my aching and bruised body as little as possible. Sat on the table was a small cactus with a yellow ribbon round the pot. Next to it was a note:
A prickly bastard from a prickly bastard, F x
“See, Ro said you’re not supposed to bring flowers into wards anymore. Pollen and infections and all that. So, I got you a cactus instead.” He shuffled in his seat. “Also thought you might find it funny.”
I was beginning to think I must have sustained a head injury.
“Rowan?”
