Page 72 of Outside the Veil
One of the men gave him an odd look. “You related? We could let you come with.”
“No, I’m his lover.”
The second man shook his head while the first shot him a quelling glance. “Sorry, then. You understand, eh? I mean, you can always follow in your car if you want or call the hospital to see how he’s doing.”
“Yes. Thank you. I’ll stay here.”
The men put Diego in the back of the truck and drove off. Finn sat on the front porch with the phone in both hands and though he tried to be brave, he couldn’t quite keep the tears from his voice when Tia Carmen called again. She told him the name of the place where Diego had been taken and reassured him that he would get the care he needed.
“Tia Carmen? Will you… Is there some way to speak to him?”
“When he wakes,querido. There will be a phone in his hospital room. But no one knows how long he will sleep.”
“He was so brave, so brilliant. You should have seen him.”
“I’m glad that the wind spirit’s balance has been restored, but I think I would have been too frightened to watch,” she said with a little chuckle.
“If you speak to him, could you tell him…tell him I will wait for him here?”
“I’ll tell him. He will be glad to hear it.”
For the next two weeks, Finn spent an inordinate amount of time on his back, staring up at the sky. The only thing Tia Carmen could tell him was Diego was ‘stable’, whatever in blazes that meant, and that he still had not woken.
He sank into a swamp of melancholy, unable to extricate himself. It was too ridiculous, of course. For centuries, he had lived alone, mating where he would, keeping his own counsel for the most part. These intrusions of mortal lovers, the way they seized his heart and held it fast, still puzzled him.
When he thought back over the years, though, he realized the one who captured him for more than a single night, again andagain, had always been the same. Six times he had found his Taliesin again in another vessel. This was the seventh.
Tia Carmen said Diego had woken briefly, twice. The doctors were baffled, since physically, he appeared well. Of course, they were human doctors and failed to understand the psychic toll exacted in defeating the wendigo.
Inside the house, the phone rang. He leapt up and dashed inside to snatch it up before the smug little answering machine could.
“Thorpe residence.”
“Finn,caro, it’s Carmen. Diego is awake, but very weak still. He has arranged to send you a present, though. A truck should bring the box today. He says the driver will leave it on the porch if you don’t show yourself. You are to take out the silver disc first and watch it before you touch anything else in the box, and when you do use them, make sure you do it outside. Do you know how to work the DVD?”
“Deeveedee?”
“The machine that swallows the silver discs and shows them to you on the television.”
“Oh. Yes. Diego has shown me. I watch the moving drawings sometimes.Anime, he calls them. Charming stories.”
“Bueno. Are you all right,querido? You sound so tired.”
“I am well enough, dear lady. Though I hesitate to tell you what I would give to hear his voice. Or better yet, to hold him again.”
“Soon, soon.” He heard the smile in her voice. “You are impatient for someone who has lived so long.”
“Yes. So I have always been told.”
The truck with the box arrived that afternoon, driven by a lovely woman with beautiful legs visible below her short, brown pants. Dog-Finn greeted her on the porch, tail thumping againstthe planks. She rang the bell, waited for a bit, ruffled Finn’s ears and left the box as Tia Carmen had said would happen.
Finn waited until the truck disappeared through the trees then shifted back to his own form to tear it open right there on the porch.Oh, such fascinating things…Strange little implements with tufts of hair on the end, bits of wood, and some large rectangles of some sort of cloth mounted on frames greeted him. Best of all, though, was the collection of brightly colored tubes. The arrangement reminded him of his crayons, which could only be a good thing.
“Ah, there you are.” He pulled out the silver disc and rushed back into the house to watch what it had to say. Soft music played and some incomprehensible lines and squiggles flashed across the screen. Then a rich-voiced little man with curly hair began to speak about ‘the basics of oil painting’.
Finn watched in rapt fascination to learn the secrets Jasper Johns knew.
Sheila drove up to the house again to check on things. Someone was staying at the Thorpe place, she’d been told, but since she’d started her new job at Fundy, she’d never seen a soul. There was a truck parked in the drive, sure, but it never moved an inch, and a big, black dog sometimes lay on the front porch, but no one ever came out when it barked.
