Nothing.
He changed the nature of his song to one of revelation and warning. This is the situation, Quentin, he sang. You are very sick and in need of healing. But you are fighting me. I need you to help me instead. I need you to open to me and let me use the wishsong to mend you. Please, Quentin, listen to me. Listen.
If his cousin heard, he didn’t do anything to indicate it and did nothing to give Bek any further access. He simply lay on his bed beneath a light covering and fought to stay alive on his own terms. He remained unconscious and unresponsive and, like Grianne, locked away where Bek could not reach him.
Bek kept at it. He fought to use the magic for the better part of the next hour, maintaining contact through the touching of their hands while trying to heal with his song. He came at the problem from every direction he could imagine, even when he suspected that what he was trying was futile. He attacked with such determination that he completely lost track of everything but what he was doing.
All to no avail.
Finally, exhausted and frustrated, he gave up. He rocked back, put his face in his hands, and began to sob. All this crying felt foolish and weak, but he was so weary from his efforts that it was an impulsive, unavoidable response. It happened in spite of his efforts to stop it, boiling over in a rush that left him convulsed and shaking. He had failed. There was nothing left for him to try, nowhere else for him to go.
“Poor little baby boy,” a voice soothed in his ear, and slender arms came around his neck and pulled him close.
At first he thought it was Rue Meridian, come down to the cabin when he wasn’t looking. But he realized almost before he had completed the thought that it wasn’t her voice. Gray robes fell across his face as he twisted his head for a quick look.
It was Grianne.
He was so shocked that for a moment he just sat there and let her hold him. “Little boy, little boy, don’t be sad.” She was speaking not in her adult voice, but with the voice of a child. “It’s all right, baby Bek. Your big sister is here. I won’t leave you again, I promise. I won’t go away again. I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
Her hands stroked his face, gentle and soothing. She kissed his forehead as she cooed to him, touching him as if he were a baby.
He glanced up again, looking into her eyes. She was looking back at him, seeing him for the first time since he had found her in Castledown. Gone were the vacant stare and the empty expression. She had come back from wherever she had been hiding. She was awake.
“Grianne!” he gasped in relief.
“No, no, baby, don’t cry,” she replied at once, touching his lips with her fingers. “There, there, your Grianne can make it all better. Tell me what’s wrong, little one.”
Bek caught his breath. She was seeing him, but not as he really was, only as she remembered him.
Her gaze shifted suddenly. “Oh, what’s this? Is your puppy sick, Bek? Did he eat something bad? Did he hurt himself? Poor little puppy.”
She was looking right at Quentin. Bek was so taken aback by this that he just stared at her. He vaguely remembered a puppy from when he was very little, a black mixed breed that trotted around the house and slept in the sun. He remembered nothing else about it, not even its name.
“No wonder you’re crying.” She smoothed Bek’s hair back gently. “Your puppy is sick, and you can’t make him better. It’s all right, Bek. Grianne can help. We’ll use my special medicine to take away the pain.”
She released him and moved to the head of the bed to stand looking down at Quentin. “So much pain,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I can make you well again. Sometimes even the special medicine can’t help. Sometimes nothing can.”
A chill settled through Bek as he realized that he might be mistaken about her. Maybe she wasn’t his sister at all, but the Ilse Witch. If she was thinking like the witch and not Grianne, if she had not come all the way back to being his sister, she might cure Quentin the way she had cured so many of her problems. She might kill him.