Page 37 of The Reluctant Reaper
“Your friend seems nice,” Skye began pleasantly. “For a doomed mortal.”
Amara dodged the blow—barely. “Thanks, I’ll tell him.”
“And it’s nice to see you haven’t let your appetite for pastries slow you downtoomuch.”
“Stop.” Amara blocked, then blocked again. “I’m blushing.”
“The only reason I came today was to see you.”
“Awwww.”
“No, that’s bad. You made me lose a bet with one of the Gede.” Jab. Block. “That purple-wearing shit. I was sure you’d stay in Minnesota.” Hammer fist. “Now I have to hand that smirking jackass twenty dollars.” Hook punch. Uppercut.
“You could at least pretend to be out of breath, you crone. And would it kill you to sweat just a little?”
“What’s that saying your generation loves? Cry more?”
“You leave my generation—ow!—out of it.”
“Mmmm.” Skye looked down at her onetime pupil, whom she’d just tossed to the floor, gasping like a gaffed lake trout. “And then there’s the other reason I came.”
“If it isn’t for the pleasure of my company, I will cry and cry. That’s what those tears will be. They won’t be tears of pain at all.”
“I won’t lie, I’ve always coveted your family’s land.”
“I know.”
“So I took the chance to see it again.”
“I know.”
“And that’s why—what? You do?”
“Uh, yes.” Amara propped herself up on an elbow.Argh, my bruises are going to have bruises.“You’ve told me many times. My parents too. You are not subtle, in case no one has shared that with you. It’s how we know the place reminds you of your home on the Isle of Skye.”
“Ah.”
“What I never got was, why not stay in Skye? It’s still yours.”
Skye tossed her a towel. “It’s a shadow, a scrap of a shadow of what it was,” she replied simply. “It’s almost worse than having nothing, because I can recall the former glory. I can almost see it at times. Close and far. And how are the migraines?”
Amara blinked at the subject change. “Frequent and nauseating.”
“Hmmm.”
The migraines: a twisted gift from... well, she wasn’t sure. First the spots would show up in her left eye, black irregular ones she couldn’t see through. A dime-shaped blob crackling around the edges like miniature lightning balls. The blob would grow until she was more than half blind in that eye, and each tiny lightning strike felt like it was hitting the middle of her brain.
Then the aphasia: an utter inability to speak in coherent sentences. Not drunk incoherent: “We shhh, mmm, w’should keep in touch better. Mmm serious, we gotta hang out!”
No, the aphasia rendered her really,reallyincoherent: “Bllp mmtttti jabbey killy berg.”
The most maddening thing about it? She knew exactly what she was trying to say. She could see the words in her mind, there was no confusion. But there was a breakdown somewhere between brain and speech.
The only good thing about migraine-induced aphasia was that it was transient. Though when you’re trying to ask for help, or just sympathy, and all you can produce is gibberish, “transient” is relative.
Then the headache, which would start at the back of her neck and gradually swallow most of her skull, the trigeminal nerve throbbing in perfect pace with her heartbeat.
Next came the aural sensitivity. Dropped pens sounded like bowling pins falling over, then blowing up.
