Seeking distraction, he patted his breast pocket again, feeling the locket. If it worked…if he could…it was a notion that had come to him only lately, as the possibility posed by the stones had matured into actual planning. But if it were possible…he fingered the small, round shape, seeing the face of Jerry MacKenzie on the dark surface of his mind.
Brianna had gone to find her father. Could he do the same? Jesus, Fiona! She was making it worse; the roots of his teeth ached, and his skin was burning. He shook his head violently, then stopped, feeling dizzy; the seams of his skull felt as though they were beginning to separate.
Then she was there, a small figure grasping his hand, saying something anxious as she led him into the circle. He couldn’t hear her—the noise was much worse inside; now it was in his ears, in his head, blackening his sight, driving wedges of pain between the joints of his spine.
Gritting his teeth, he blinked back the buzzing darkness, long enough to fix his eyes on Fiona’s round and fearful face.
Swiftly he bent and kissed her, full on the mouth.
“Don’t tell Ernie,” he said. He turned away from her and walked through the stone.
* * *
A faint scent came to him on the summer wind; the smell of burning. He turned his head, nostrils flared to catch it. There. A flame flared and bloomed on a nearby hilltop, a rose of Midsummer’s fire.
There were faint stars overhead, half shadowed by a drifting cloud. He had no urge to move, nor to think. He felt bodiless, embraced by the sky, his mind turning free, reflecting starlit images like the glass bubble of a fisher’s float, adrift in the surf. There was a soft and musical hum around him—the far-off song of siren stars, and the smell of coffee.
A vague feeling of wrongness intruded on his sense of peace. Sensation prodded at his mind, rousing tiny, painful sparks of confusion. He fought back feeling, wanting only to stay afloat in starlight, but the act of resistance woke him. All of a sudden, he had a body again, and it hurt.
“ROGER!” The star’s voice blared in his ear, and he jerked. Searing pain shot through his chest, and he clapped a hand to the wound. Something seized his wrist and pulled it away, but not before he had felt wetness, and the silky roughness of ash on his breast. Was he bleeding?
“Oh, ye’re wakin’, thank God! Aye, there, that’s a good lad. Easy, aye?” It was the cloud talking, not the star. He blinked, confused, and the cloud resolved itself into the curly silhouette of Fiona’s head, dark against the sky. He jerked upright, more a convulsion than a conscious movement.
His body had come back with a vengeance. He felt desperately ill, and there was a horrible smell of coffee and burnt flesh in his nostrils. He rolled onto all fours, retching, then collapsed onto the grass. It was wet, and the coolness felt good on his scorched face.
Fiona’s hands were on him, soothing, wiping his face and mouth.
“Are ye all right?” she said, for what he knew must be the hundredth time. This time, he summoned enough strength to answer.
“Aye,” he whispered. “All right. Why—?”
Her head moved back and forth, wiping out half a sky of stars.
“I don’t know. Ye went—ye were gone—and then there was a burst o’ fire, and ye were lyin’ in the circle, wi’ your coat ablaze. I had to put ye out with the thermos bottle.”
That accounted for the coffee, then, and the soggy feeling over his chest. He lifted a hand, groping, and this time she let him. There was a burnt patch on the wet cloth of his coat, maybe three inches across. The flesh of his chest was seared; he could feel the queer cushioned numbness of blisters through the hole in the cloth, and the nagging pain of a burn spread through his breast. His mother’s locket was gone entirely.
“What happened, Rog?” Fiona was crouching by him, her face dim but visible; he could see the shiny tracks of tears on her face. What he had thought a Midsummer’s Eve fire was the flame of her candle, burned down now to the last half inch. God, how long had he been out?
“I—” He had begun to say that he didn’t know, but broke off. “Let me think a bit, aye?” He put his head on his knees, breathing in the smell of wet grass and scorched cloth.
He concentrated on breathing, let it come back. He had no real need to think—it was all there, distinct in his mind. But how did one describe such things? There was no sight—and yet he had the image of his father. No sound, no touch—and yet he had both heard and felt. The body seemed to make its own sense of things, translating the numinous phenomena of time into concretions.
He raised his head from his knees, and breathed deep, settling himself slowly back in his body.
“I was thinking of my father,” he said. “When I stepped through the rock, I had just thought, if it works, could I go back and find him? And I…did.”
“You did? Your dad? Was he a ghost, d’ye mean?” He felt, more than saw, the flicker of her hand as she made the horns against evil.
“No. Not exactly. I—I can’t explain, Fiona. But I met him; I knew him.” The feeling of peace had not left him altogether; it hovered there, fluttering gently in the back of his mind. “Then there was—sort of an explosion, is all I can describe it as. Something hit me, here.” His fingers touched the burnt place on his chest. “The force of it pushed me…out, and that’s all I knew till I woke.” He touched her face gently. “Thanks, Fee; you saved me burning.”
“Och, get on wi’ ye.” She made an impatient gesture, dismissing him. She sat back on her heels, rubbing her chin as she thought.
“I’m thinking, Rog—what it said in her book, about there maybe being some protection, if ye had a gemstone with ye. There were the wee jewels in your Mam’s locket, no?” He could hear her swallow. “Maybe—if ye hadn’t had that—ye might not have lived. She told about the folk who didn’t. They were burned—and your burn’s where the locket was.”
“Yes. It could be.” Roger was beginning to feel more like himself. He glanced curiously at Fiona.
“You always say ‘her.’ Why do you never say her name?”
Fiona’s curls lifted in the dawn wind as she turned to look at him. It was light enough now to see her face clearly, with its expression of disconcerting directness.
“Ye dinna call something unless ye want it to come,” she said. “Surely ye know that, and your father a minister?”
The hairs on his forearms prickled, despite the covering of shirt and coat.
“Now that you mention it,” he said, trying for a joking tone, and failing utterly. “I wasn’t quite calling my father’s name, but perhaps…Dr. Randall said she thought of her husband, when she came back.”
Fiona nodded, frowning. He could see her face clearly, and realized with a start that the light was growing. It was near dawn; the sky to the east was the shimmered color of a salmon’s scales.
“Christ, it’s almost morning! I’ve got to go!”
“Go?” Fiona’s eyes went round with horror. “You’re no going to try it again?”
“I am. I’ve got to.” The lining of his mouth was cotton-dry, and he regretted that Fiona had used all the coffee extinguishing him. He fought down the hollow-bellied feeling and made it to his feet. His knees were wobbly, but he could walk.