Page 242 of Sigils & Spells

Our healer came through the bushes and dropped down beside me, beginning an examination without even asking a single question. The other two men from the temple compound followed right behind her with a stretcher.

“We need to get her back as quickly as possible.”

At her instruction they began loading me onto the portable cot, with Toby trying to calm me as I fought them, desperate to find Evie.

“I'm going to have to put her out,” were the last words I heard before losing consciousness.

The next thing I knew, I was drowning again, this time in shame and fear.

“No, no, no...” I argued with the voices in my head.

Evie's face floated before me, purplish bags below her eyes and lips a terrifying shade of blue. “This is your fault. You did this to me. You didn't save me.”

“Evie, please. I tried. I'll find you. It's not too late!” My tears burned tracks down my cheeks.

“Itistoo late. Already too late. Too late, Annarah. You're too late.”

The word repeated themselves over and over. They echoed through my head, ringing in my ears and thundering against my skull. My lips formed the words over and over as I chanted them.

A cool cloth washed over my face, lessening the sting of my tears. “Shh. There now, you're okay. It's okay now.”

My eyes slid open to see Diana's worried face hovering above me. Sitting up, I threw my arms around her and sobbed. She hugged me back and held me tight, rubbing her hand in circles on my back, just as she'd done when I was a small child.

“Evie? Where is Evie?” I wanted nothing more than to hear she was alright. Raising my head, I looked around the room to see if she occupied one of the other beds in the medical ward. They were all empty. “Please? Where is she?”

Diana shook her head. “I'm sorry, child. I'm so sorry.”

“Where is she?!” My voice rose octave after octave as hysteria swirled through me.

Before Diana could comfort me further, the healer came in. “I'm going to have to put her under again.”

Hand up, Diana stopped her. “Give her a minute. She is going to have to cope with this at some point. Let's give her a chance. There's not much point in putting it off. She is physically stable now.”

The healer pursed her lips and took a step back, deciding not to argue. At least not at that moment. She watched from the middle of the room as Diana attempted to talk me down from the ledge I balanced on so precariously.

“Annarah, please, take a deep breath, and try to calm down unless you want her to put you back under.”

“If Evie isn't okay, I don't care what she does to me. She can kill me for all I care. Throw me back in the river and leave my rotting corpse to feed the fishes. WHERE is Evie?”

Diana slid her eyes sideways toward the healer, whose name was Abigail, and nodded ever so slightly. She'd decided that I wasn't ready to hear what she had to tell me after all, and I barely felt them guiding me back to a laying position on the bed. The last thing I remembered was Diana's voice telling me to rest as she pulled the covers up over my body once more.

In and out of the fugue state, I wandered back and forth between the conscious world and the unconscious. No matter where I found myself, the pain of losing Evie was there, too. They hadn't come right out and told me, but if they had found her and she was alive, they would have said so, if just to keep me from descending into (hopefully) temporary madness each time the subject came up.

The first time I came back from being put under on my own, as in, without the healer pulling me from the blackness, I lay alone in the room. Dim light crept from the bedside lamp, barely illuminating enough to let me know it was sometime during the night. Even the windows were bereft of moonbeams.

Silence crept in from all sides, only slightly more comfortable than hearing Evie's voice in my head, echoing her accusations of abandonment and negligence. Testing my physical body, I wiggled my toes and fingers, then graduated to shifting my arms and legs against the slightly scratchy cotton sheets. Everything seemed to be working as it should.

Antiseptic smells tingled in my nostrils. Pure white made individual shapes hard to identify. Floors, wall, linens, everything existed in the same exact shade of white.

My legs swung over the side of the bed as I struggled into a sitting position. My gaze swept over the other beds. Empty. Mocking me. Reminding me that Evie didn't occupy any of them. Ever the optimist, part of me wanted to believe that she didn't lay in any of the beds here because she didn't need medical care. Whatever her injuries had been, surely they could easily be healed by now.

Deep down, however, something in me knew. Painful whispers prodded at the jagged wounds in my heart. “She's gone.” “For good.” “You let the river take your best friend.”

Something in the darkness called to me. It would be oh so easy to join her. With very little effort I could slip away from here and not have to live without her. Wherever she was now, the two of us could be there together.

My bare feet shuffled along the cold marble floors. The bathroom door swung open silently. Leaving the lights off, I did my business, then stood in front of the mirror. Pale, gaunt skin stretched over my cheekbones. Even my lips seemed colorless. My hair hung lifeless around my shoulders in a tangled mess. What a disaster.

Having seen more than enough, I left the restroom and continued down the hall, my weak legs already beginning to shake with the effort of carrying my own weight. At five feet tall and a hundred pounds, possibly less now, it wasn't much, but at the same time too much.

---