The darkness came and went in waves
that grew ever slower. Tessa was beginning to feel lighter, less like an awful
weight was pressing her down. She wondered how much time had passed. It was
night in the infirmary, and she could see Will a few beds away from her, a
curled figure under the blankets, dark head pillowed on his arm. Brother Enoch
had given him a tisane to drink once the [redacted] was cut out of his skin,
and he had fallen asleep almost instantly, thank God. The sight of him in that
much pain had been more harrowing than she could have imagined.
She was in a clean white nightgown
now; someone must have cut away her blood-stiffened clothes and washed her hair
before bandaging her—it lay softly over his shoulders, no longer twisted into
rat-tails of tangles and drying blood.
‘Tessa,” came a whispered voice. “Tess?”
Only Will calls me that. She opened
her eyes, but it was Jem seated on the side of her bed, looking down at her.
The moonlight spilling through the high ceilings turned him almost transparent,
an ethereal angel, all silver but for the gold chain at his throat.
He smiled. “You’re awake.”
“I’ve been awake here and there.”
She coughed. “Enough to know I’m all right besides a crack on the head. A lot
of fuss about nothing—” Tessa’s eyes dropped, and she saw that Jem was carrying
something in his hands: a thick mug of some liquid that sent up a fragrant
steam. “What’s that?”
“One of Brother Enoch’s tisanes,”
said Jem. “It will help you sleep.”
“All I’ve been doing is sleeping!”
“And very amusing it is to watch,”
said Jem. “Did you know you twitch your nose when you sleep, like a rabbit?”
“I do not,” she said, with a
whispered laugh.
“You do,” he said. “Fortunately, I
like rabbits.” He handed her the cup. “Drink just a little,” He said. “It is
right for you to sleep. Brother Enoch says to think of the wounds and shocks to
your spirit as you would think of wounds and shocks to your body. You must rest
the injured part of yourself before you begin to heal.”
Tessa was dubious, but she took a
sip of the tisane anyway, and then another. It had a pleasant taste, like
cinnamon. Barely had she swallowed the second mouthful when a feeling of
exhaustion swept over her. She lay back against the pillows, listening to his
soft voice telling her a story about a beautiful young woman whose husband had
died building the Great Wall of China, and who had cried so much over his loss
that she had turned into a silvery fish and swum away across a river. As Tessa
drifted off into dreams, she felt his gentle hands take the cup from her and
set it down on the bedside table. She wanted to thank him, but she was already
asleep.
