“No, Grianne!” he cried out, reaching for her.
“Uh-uh-uh, baby,” she cautioned, taking hold of his wrists. She was much stronger than he would have thought, and he could not shake free. “Let Grianne do what she has to do to help.”
Already she was using the magic. Bek felt it wash over him, felt it bind him in velvet chains and hold him fast. In seconds, he was paralyzed. She eased him back in place, humming softly as she moved once more to the head of the bed and Quentin Leah.
“Poor puppy,” she repeated, reaching down to stroke the Highlander’s face. “You are so sick, in such pain. What happened to you? You are all broken up inside. Did something hurt you?”
Bek was beside himself. He could neither move nor speak. He watched helplessly, unable to intervene and terrified of what was going to happen if he didn’t.
She was speaking to him again, her voice suddenly older, more mature. “Oh, Bek, I’ve let you down so badly. I left you, and I didn’t come back. I should have, and I didn’t. It was so wrong of me, Bek.”
She was crying. His sister was crying. It was astonishing, and Bek would have felt a sense of joy if he hadn’t been so frightened that it wasn’t his sister speaking. He fought to say something, to stop her, but no words would come out.
“Little puppy,” she whispered sadly, and her hands reached down to cup Quentin’s face. “Let me make you all better.”
Then she leaned down and kissed him gently on the lips, drawing his breath into her body.
Rue Meridian was sleeping in a makeshift canvas hammock she had strung between the foremast and the bow railing, lost in a dream about cormorants and puffins, when she felt Bek’s hand on her shoulder and awoke. She saw the look on his face and immediately asked, “What’s wrong?”
It was a difficult look to decipher. His face was troubled and amazed, both at once,—it reflected uncertainty mixed with wonder. He appeared oddly adrift, as if he was there almost by accident. Her first thought was that his coming was a delayed reaction to what she had told him hours earlier. She sat up quickly, swung her legs over the side of the hammock, and stood. “Bek, what’s happened?”
“Grianne woke up. I don’t know why. The magic, maybe. I was using it to try to help Quentin, to heal him the way Brin Ohmsford did Rone Leah once. Or maybe it was when I cried. I was so frustrated and tired, I just broke down.”
He exhaled sharply. “She spoke to me. She called me by name. But she wasn’t herself, not grown up, but a child, speaking in a child’s voice, calling me ‘poor baby boy, little Bek,’ and telling me not to cry.”
“Wait a minute, slow down,” she said, taking hold of him by his shoulders. “Come over here.”
She led him to the bow and sat him down in the shadow of the starboard ram where the curve of the horn formed a shelter at its joining with the deck. She sat facing him, pulled her knees up to her breast, and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Okay, tell me the rest. She came awake and she spoke to you. What happened next?”
“You won’t believe this,” he whispered, clearly not believing it himself. “She healed him. She used her magic, and she healed him. I thought she was going to kill him. She called him a puppy—I guess that’s what she thought he was. I tried to stop her, but she did something to me with the magic so that I couldn’t move or speak. Then she started on him, and I was sure she meant to help him by killing him, to take away his pain and suffering by taking his life. That’s what the Ilse Witch would have done, and I was afraid she was still the witch.”
Rue leaned forward, hugging herself. “How could she heal him, Bek? He was all broken up inside. Half his blood was gone.”
“The magic can do that. It can generate healing. I watched it happen to Quentin. He’s not completely well yet. He isn’t even awake. But I saw his color change right in front of me. I heard his breathing steady and, afterwards, when I could move again, felt that his pulse was stronger, too. Some of his wounds, the ones you bandaged, have closed completely.”