A Matter of Heart (11 page)

Do you see this? I ask
Caleb. It’s like a fairy tale, or . . . I don’t know. Somewhere enchanted and
beautiful and I think I could look at it—

THE ELDERS ARE NOT ATTACKING
THE CAVE ANYMORE
.

The rabbit stops kicking at
its collar. Rainbows stretch out toward me and dissipate in a shower of Fourth
of July sparklers. I used to love tracing my name with those—

YOU NEED TO FOCUS RIGHT NOW!
THE ELDERS MIGHT BE GONE!

Gone, gone? Gone like dust
in . . . with? the storms—

FOCUS!

The rabbit’s head cocks
towards the wall, one ear twitching violently.

Wake Kellan up,
Caleb
urges.

The rabbit’s ears stand at
attention. And then it nods at me. Shoves its nose in my direction, and it’s so
weird, but I feel that wet smudge against the back of my hand. Laughter,
scratchy and foreign feeling, scrapes up my throat. ‘Cause, if a rabbit tells
me to do it, I’m gonna do it. “Kellan?” I croak. His head is still in my lap,
and I shake him lightly. When that doesn’t work, I give him a huge nudge, but
he still doesn’t move. I legitimately begin to freak the hell out, but I can’t
scream. I’m whisper-babbling, chanting his name like the prayer it is, shaking
him like a madwoman and wondering, can nineteen-year-olds be victims of shaken
baby syndrome? My eyes flick over to where the rabbit is, but—it’s gone. Again!
I get to one hundred and fifteen in Chloe-ese before his eyelids flutter
softly.

If I had any tears, I’d cry,
my relief is so intense. I stroke his face gently. “It’s quiet. They’ve stopped
attacking the cave. There were rainbows everywhere.”

He doesn’t answer me, but
his almost black eyes have opened up enough to show me he’s listening.

“I’ll blast us out of here.
If they’ve stopped and they’re gone, I’ll get us out of here. I think it’s what
the rabbit wants me to do. He’s got a collar on; diamonds, I think.”

Oh, for the love of—I don’t
think you have the energy for that,
Caleb argues, exasperated,
but I dismiss this. I’m going to try, no matter what. I have to. I have to get
Kellan out of here.

Where is the rabbit? It
should come with us, too.

Wait then,
Caleb
urges.
Because what if they’re just resting? Regrouping? Then it’d be an
ambush.

I reluctantly concede, and
Caleb nervously ticks off the time in the back of my mind:
One minute, two .
. . Five . . . Ten . . . Twenty minutes . . . a half hour . . .

Without warning, the ground
under us rolls and jolts, much more violently than any of the attempts by the
Elders. Hope springs forth. Hope that smells like leftover rainbows and fresh
earthquakes.

Earthquakes make me think of
Karl. Karl makes me think of Jonah. Jonah, Jonah, bo-bonuh,
banana-nana-mana-fanuh, tra-la-lanuh. I really like Jonah’s name. Joooo-nuh.

You made it so nothing can
break through the walls or the roof!
Why is Caleb screaming so
much?
You must fix it! If it’s Karl, he won’t get through otherwise!

But, you said to do nothing!
That I have nothing in me! But then I spot the rabbit, back on the bolder,
nodding its little head. So I focus as intently as I can on the wall in front
of me and will it to weaken.

And then I’m adrift, caught
in a torrent of water I can’t see that floods the cave and lifts me and Kellan
up.

Rock-a-bye, lullaby,

sing yourself to sleep,

row the boat

down the moat

and find yourself something
to eat.

Boat. It’d be nice to have a
boat. We could just shrink and float through the tubes, down, down, into the
middle of the Earth. No, not Earth. Where am I? The Elvin plane?
Wonderland
.

The rabbit skips across the
water—I can almost see it, it’s sparkling like moonlight on the ocean—and comes
to float near where Kellan and I are bobbing. No, not bobbing . . . we’re still
sitting on something, but . . . not? It reminds me of a game Cora and Lizzie
and Meg and I used to play. Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Rumble, shake, lighting
strike

float away, in a cave

The rabbit thumps its front
paws to the tune in my head. We bop together, my fingers skipping across
Kellan’s chest. A girl and rabbit band with skills to pay the bills.

Row, row, row yourselves

Light as a feather, stiff as
a—

Lightning streaks before my
eyes. So, so bright. So . . . pretty? The water beneath us churns, lifting us
up, then down, in a circle, all around. The rabbit grins, and it makes me
laugh. We like the waves, me and him. I ought to tell Kellan about them, but
he’s still so sleepy.

Rabbits and waves and
earthquakes, oh my
,

Explosions of light flicker
on by
.

The waves around us shatter,
and instead of raining down water—oh, I should have drank it when I had the
chance! Why didn’t I think of that?—there are bits of flying rocks everywhere.
The rabbit skips around us, trails of fluorescent light shimmering under each
strike of its paws.

I could really use that
metal umbrella right about now. Why did I let Kellan talk me out of it?

My name is called, so is
Kellan’s, and I laugh, just outright giggle in delight, because Jonah and his
voice are a ray of sunshine filtering through the raining rubble. The rocks
aren’t even
touching
him.

The rabbit darts in between
his running feet. There are rocks in my hair.

I need a hairbrush.

“Don’t disappear again,” I
warn Jonah the moment he drops to where his brother and I are stranded. “Don’t
go. Please?”

“I’m here,” he says. I have
never, in my entire life, been so happy to see someone as I am at this moment.

“I loooove yoooooou,” I
can’t help but sing-song, and every single atom in my body agrees with this.
Love for him fills me up and radiates out around me, like the rainbows did in
the cave. Love is pink, and pretty, and glittery, and all things good.

Jonah’s hands connect with
my body and, with one final glance at the rabbit—wide-eyed pink orbs utterly
unblinking as they tell me:
Be a good girl; it’s okay to let yourself sleep
—my
eyelids finally drift shut.

My eyes are itchy and dry; I
practically have to peel them open. The room I’m in is mostly dark, but there’s
a warm yet dim light spilling across the far side of the room.

I’m in a room! Not a cave!

“Hey, you.” My eyes slide
towards Jonah’s voice, eager to see his face. And he’s here, sitting next to me
on a bed I’m lying in, disheveled, relieved and worried at the same time.

I’m in a bed. In . . . a
hospital! With Jonah!

I try to tell him, “I am so
glad to see you,” but it comes out funny, all scratchy and soft. He doesn’t
laugh or smile. He folds me into his arms instead and lets me soak up
everything that is Jonah and wonderful.

“You scared me.” His voice
is tight and thick. “Don’t do it again.”

I do laugh, just a little.
It takes a few clearings of my throat to manage, “I didn’t plan for this, you
know.”

He kisses my temple. “Humor
me.”

I tug on him and shift the
blankets so he can slide down next to me. I tangle all of our limbs so we become
a knotted pretzel, all one piece and impossible to separate. “What happened? I
can’t remember much.”

“I’ll always find you,
Chloe. Always.” He kisses me slowly, trying to distract me, but as nice as this
is, I need answers. He sighs and continues, “It was a miracle we found you when
we did, though, because if even a few more hours had gone by, you would’ve been
. . .”

His words fall away,
replaced by silent agony that he struggles with.

“Dead,” I finish for him.
And I realize it’s true, and yet, I don’t really feel anything for that word
now. Like it’s behind glass, untouchable even though I was drowning in it
recently. “But I’m not, so don’t even go there.”

He shudders in my arms. “You
were hallucinating when I found you, singing about rabbits and rainbows and
metal umbrellas. The Shamans on the ground said you were severely dehydrated.
They had to hook you up to an IV, which was drastic, because apparently using
‘normal’ medical devices like that are considered archaic to Shamans. They
acted like it was the same as using crystals or voodoo spells. But they were
able to counter everything else the moment you hit the hospital two days ago.”

Whoa. Two whole days of
being asleep? I look down at my hand; it’s smooth, unmarked. There isn’t even a
hole or a bruise to mark where the IV would have lain. “Where’s Kellan?”

He’s silent for a long
moment, like he’s deciding whether or not to tell me. But then, “Next door.
Before you ask, Kel isn’t awake yet.”

All of my fears over Kellan
sleeping in the cave rear their ugly heads. My fingers dig in as I grip his
shirt. “Why?”

I feel Jonah’s sigh before
he shifts and props his head up on his hand. “I’ll tell you, but you need to
listen to everything I have to say and not freak out. The moment you do, I’m
going to stop, because the Shamans have warned me to not get you upset. Okay?”

Telling me not to panic is
pretty much the best way to get me to do so. So I say, “I need to hear
everything. If you think I’m panicking, do something to stop it—but you will
tell me everything.”

This surprises him, because
it’s rare he uses his mojo on me. But he does as I ask. “I’m sure it comes as
no surprise that Kellan was much worse off than you were. I mean, he knew that
was a risk when he used his powers over you like he did for two straight days.”
His voice lowers. “He was pretty much down to nothing. It was scary, especially
when he . . .” Jonah blows out a hard breath. “He’s in a coma. He held out long
enough to make sure you were okay, and then he . . . he couldn’t hold on any
longer.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, and
the panic takes hold. Gentle hands wrap around my head and the anxiety ebbs,
but it’s the knowledge that it should be there that gets me, as well as a word
that is beyond terrifying.

“Honey,” Jonah says, soft
and soothing, “he’s here in this hospital, in the next room, with the best
Shaman in all the worlds working on him. I’m told that right now, the coma is
his body’s way of getting the rest he needs. Do not stress over this. I’m
keeping a very close eye on him and am driving everyone insane with my
insistences and questions.”

“Why can’t they just wake
him up? They’re Shamans! They should be able to fix everything—”

“Not everything. You know
that. No Magical’s craft is absolute.”

“Comas,” I say, and the word
tastes bitter as it leaves my mouth, “are things that they should be able to
fix.”

“Not always.” His fingers
are gentle against my cheek. “It’s a testament to his strength that he held out
as long as he did, when most people would’ve succumbed much earlier. The
Shamans insist he will be fine. They could force him out of the coma if I
demanded it, but it was suggested to let him remain in one until his body
chooses to wake up. Sometimes the body knows best. And I wouldn’t let him stay
in it if I thought it was going to hurt him. You know this.”

I stare at the door he’s
indicated. “He’s through there?” Jonah nods. “You said I’m good, that I’m all
better?”

He nods again, smoothing
some of my hair down. So I will the door out of existence, needing to look into
the next room.

Kellan is in the distance,
uncharacteristically pale against the pillows and white sheets. His head is
tilted towards one side, angled toward the windows. If I hadn’t just heard what
I had, I’d assume he was napping. There is no IV, no machines, no nothing.

Just a boy in a bed.
Sleeping.

I force my attention away
from Kellan, back to Jonah. “How’d you find us?”