The Heroines (14 page)

D
r. Keller’s midnight visit was the only time I’d seen him since I’d checked in. Just because I’d said the food was bad that night, he’d upped my meds. Once my new drug regimen began, I sleepwalked for days, was spoon-fed soup and cereal, sucked juice and milk through straws. Incapacitating doses of narcotics comprised the treatment
du jour
. I suppose they felt they could strip down my defenses, pare me down to my thinnest self. But the therapeutic value of a thirteen-year-old transformed into a thumb-sucking three-year-old escapes me. All this for saying the food was bad? I was present just enough to notice that Kristina had gotten out of isolation, but it didn’t really affect me. I couldn’t feel it. Nothing could penetrate the walking-through-water sensation. The blur. The TV in the rec room had a rainbow aura, and I watched Nixon’s flabby and sagging face with a mixture of awe and pity. My doped-out sisters—Jennifer, Maria, even Jackie—seemed cloaked in angelic light. I was glad I’d managed the call to Albie before I got so doped up.

One night, I heard footsteps heading toward my door. I’d slept through dinner again. From the light at the window, I figured it was about nine. Florence opened the door and came over to shake my shoulder. I smelled her cigarettes and Jean Naté bath splash. She held the three pills in her palm, then tucked two under her thumb. I remembered that she had done something similar the night before, holding back one of the pills. As she passed one pill into my hand, her curved fingernails brushed my palm. “Sit up, now, sugar. Drink up.” Florence handed me the paper cup of water.

I swallowed the pill, then Florence tucked the others in her apron pocket, winking. I lay back down. Then I remembered. I had to hang a star on my window! I grabbed some paper and a Magic Marker from the nightstand and fixed a lopsided gold star to the window with a Band-Aid. Even with the smaller dose, I fell into a disturbed sleep.

Later that night, I woke up a little more lucid, with a heightened sense of my body. When I asked my toes to flex, they did. When I blinked, my eyes cleared, and I saw the white curtain around my bed rippling in the air-conditioning breeze. I’d been having a vivid dream about chasing my mother across a football field. It had something to do with running from my father. My father. A moody guy with dark hair. Maybe a one-night stand. No matter how I tried to envision him, to make him some icon of paternity, my mind continued to wander to Conor, the strong, handsome Villain on horseback. I vaguely remembered making the phone call to Albie, and for the first time in days, I wondered if he had found Conor, and what that meeting had been like. I sent him telepathic messages.
Conor, come now. Rescue me!
I propped myself up on my elbows and looked over at Kristina’s empty bed. I’d been keeping my distance from her, partly because I wanted to be complacent, partly because I’d lost all my energy. And Kristina had been sneaking over to the boys’ wing at night.

I had half dozed off again, when a rattling noise worked its way into my dream and dragged me out of it. As I pulled back the bed curtain, I heard the rattle again. Something hit the window. A handful of stones. Maybe Kristina’s boyfriend, Mr. Dobson, the drama teacher. I jumped out of bed and rushed to the window, cupping my hands to the glass. At first I couldn’t see anything, and then my night vision sharpened. I saw the outline of a horse’s mane.

“Are you there?” a man called. A man with a deep voice and a snorting horse.
Conor!
I broke into a sweat. At last! I was ecstatic, jumping up and down in my bare feet, and my heart started to thrum. In the last two days only my mounting collection of ice-cream scoops and Conor fantasies had kept me going. The adrenaline rush I felt outpaced the effect of the meds and I almost felt like myself again. Albie had done it. I struggled to raise the window, but it still lifted only four inches, too little for me even to swing a leg through. I whisper-yelled out the window, “I’m up here!”

Conor grasped the trunk of a large tree outside the window and disappeared in the leaves. I heard rustling and snapping twigs. The branches shook and then his face emerged in front of me, followed by his shoulders. He had his cape bustled in his arm, and there was a look of irritation on his face.

“Why did you not meet me?”

“They locked me up!”

“Where is Deirdre?”

Leaves were tangled in his hair, and I smelled the wood smoke in his clothes and his sweet sweat. He’d been living in the woods for weeks, and it showed in his rough and wild breathing, his overgrown beard. Still, my relief felt close to salvation, as if he were rescuing me from the jaws of death. “She’s back home.”

He looked the building up and down. “There doesn’t seem to be any spell around this place.” He squinted at me. “Is this your castle?”

“My prison! Please help me get out of here!”

“They imprison children in this kingdom?”

“And Mother says
you’re
bad.”

“Bad for wanting to save my wife!”

“Save me first!”

He sliced through the screen with his sword, then ripped off the frame, the screws popping against the glass. With a swift punch, he pushed out the whole inner window, crank and all. I grabbed it before it hit the floor, and I tore off the paper star. An alarm started to blare, a rolling, clanging bell.

“They’ve sounded the battle call!” He jumped soundlessly into the room and strode over to Kristina’s bed. I couldn’t believe he was this close again, and I wanted to crawl into his arms, to feel the press of his broad chest. At the same time, I feared the sheer volume of him, his sturdy legs, his billowing cape, his bulk. The jewel at his throat glinted green.

I went around to the side of my bed, looking for my shoes. All I could find were paper slippers. I slid my feet into them. There was no time to change out of my sailor-print pajamas.

Conor drew his sword and pointed it at the door. “The battle calls!”

“You can’t fight them!”

“The Lord of the Red Branch Knights fears no man!” he roared.

“But they’re not armed. Really!”

It was too late. Two orderlies rushed in, clenching their fists. They were the same two guys who’d restrained me the first night I was there. The black guy held a needle, and the white one drew back in shock, staring at Conor’s sword. They stopped and looked at each other like a couple of Keystone Kops. Florence squeezed in between them, standing there in a daisy T-shirt, a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “Holy hell, he’s real!” she cried.

Conor swung the sword and held it in front of his chest, the tip a half inch from his forehead. “The Master of the Twinkling Hoard does not battle unarmed men!”

“Let’s go!” I screamed. “They’ll arrest you, Conor. We can set up a—a—a duel later.” I had no idea if duels existed in his world.

Conor pointed the sword at the white orderly, who raised his hands in surrender, his eyes wide. “I’ll send a messenger to arrange a meeting at a battle ford.”

“Hurry!” I shouted.

He slid the sword into its sheath, strode across the room, and scooped me up. Resting in his strong arms, I felt pale and small in my thin pajamas and paper slippers, more like a baby than a rescued damsel. He leapt to the window ledge.

I looked up into his handsome face, then over my shoulder at the cowering orderlies. Florence shook her head and fired up a cigarette. “How did you find me?” I asked.

He said something about a crow and a riddle, but before I could ask what he meant, he jumped from the ledge, and I closed my eyes. We dropped straight down, through the warm night air, the leaves slapping our faces. Sirens were approaching and the alarm continued to ring. The horse seemed to sweep up to meet us, and I buried my head in the itchy cloth of Conor’s tunic, breathed in his smell. When we landed on the horse, it was like a jolt through my spine. The horse reared up, nearly throwing us off, then took off across the dark lawn. I hadn’t felt night air on my skin in weeks. Conor held me by the waist, and I grasped his arms and let my body fall into the rhythm of the galloping horse. I believed again! Dreams could come true. Deus ex machina. Deus ex homo imaginarium. I looked up at the dark night sky, at stars and treetops, holding fast to the arms of an imaginary man.

P
rairie Bluff was a well-wooded suburb—a green spot on the aerial map—so we followed forest preserve trails most of the way back to the woods behind the Homestead. Once in a while we burst from the woods into a paved cul-de-sac behind a nouveau mansion, or galloped across a train track. We avoided the open stretches beside the railroad tracks, which would have provided more direct paths, because Conor mistook the looming power line towers for giant effigies, humming with druidical spells. He asked if I’d heard talk of the giant Finn McCool. My blank response, “Who?,” yelled over my shoulder, did not dissuade him from suspecting that the great giant’s henchmen lurked in the vicinity. So we stuck to the forest trails.

Once we reached the woods behind the Homestead, I recognized everything immediately. Even in the dark, I knew those woods so well my mother would have been shocked. I spotted the path to Horace’s pond, the arching oaks, the railroad tracks on the other side of the trees. The horse galloped straight to the edge of a stream, but Conor held it back so I could dismount. The fresh night air helped to clear my wooziness from the ride and the latent effects of the medication. I walked up the path and looked around. Something in the brambles caught my eye. I walked closer and divined the outline of a hive-shaped shelter. Conor had camouflaged it masterfully, weaving reeds and cottonwood branches with leaves. It was like a thatched roof, though I glimpsed a white plastic sheet beneath it all, probably scavenged from some construction site.

“Imagine the Lord of the Red Branch Knights in such a hovel!” he roared. He led the horse up from the pond and tied it to a pine tree.

“It looks kinda cozy,” I offered.

“At the Twinkling Hoard, you’ll find all the javelins and shields and swords. I tell you, the place twinkles with gold and silver, shields and goblets and javelins. At the Ruddy Branch, I keep the severed heads and spoils of battle—”

“Severed heads?” Thank goodness I’d kept him from attacking the orderlies.

“With the sparkling torques still around their necks!” He rubbed his hands together. “We’ve got to get Deirdre!”

“Tonight?” I was wiped out, still murky from the medications. And I was in no rush to share Conor with Deirdre. Or risk running into Mother. “I’m really too tired to do anything tonight.”

“You must devise a way to trap her at dawn!”

“Why do
I
have to?”

“You assured me you could lure her to the woods with the promise of cresses!” His eyebrows drew together in anger.

“That’s out the window! I can’t go home now. They’ll toss me back into the Unit. The prison.”

“You’re clearly in favor with the sidé. Perhaps a night’s rest will bring a dream of entrapment.” He lifted the plastic opening of the shelter with the tip of his sword. “Now sleep!”

I crouched and crawled in over the rocks that held the plastic to the ground. At the center was a young oak trunk, and the roof was held up by curved branches, dug into the dirt. A confusing web of ropes crisscrossed the ceiling. Conor had fashioned a bed out of brown paper lawn bags stuffed with leaves. The tent smelled musty and damp, and it killed me to be only acres away from my own bed. I ached for my feather pillow, my pink satin duvet—the sheer peace of my posters and windows and rugs on the worn oak floors. I’d drive Deirdre out in a minute to have all that again. But I didn’t know who might be waiting for me at the Homestead—cops, doctors, orderlies—and I couldn’t trust that Mother wouldn’t hand me back over to Dr. Keller and Eleanor. What if they brought bloodhounds to comb the woods for me?

Conor crawled in the shelter after me, then stood up, his hair brushing the ceiling. I hadn’t noticed before how short he was—probably about five-foot-five.

“Have you started to bleed?”

I looked down at the thin scars on my arms.

“Not there,” he said. “Below. Have you had your first gush of blood?”

I felt color rise in my face. He was asking about my period! “No.”

“Then I shall not bed you. It’s written that every woman must sleep with the king before she sleeps with any other man. And any Ulsterman who gives me a bed for the night must give me his wife to sleep with as well. But you’re still a girl. It would not be kingly to bed you. Are you promised to any man?”

“I’m only thirteen!” I neglected to tack on the “and a quarter” bit. He could have raped me! Just like Mother had said.

“Sure the girls are marrying young as that!”

“Not around here!”

“For what are they waiting?”

“To finish high school?”

“Now you’re speaking nonsense. Take the bed, then. I’ll make do on the ground.”

I crawled onto the “bed” and curled up. I felt ridiculous, lying there in my sailor-girl pajamas. I had to get some real clothes and bug spray. A mosquito buzzed around my head, and I would have killed for a hairbrush. Despite all the physical discomforts of the woods and my relief over having escaped the Unit, what really rocked me was that Conor had considered having sex with me. I listened to him breathe heavily through his nose. Naïve as I was, I still believed sex was for married people (especially after what had happened to Mother), and he was already married to Deirdre! I’d be a mistress. It was weird to think that because I didn’t have my period yet, I could lose my virginity and not have to worry about getting pregnant. What a freaky window of opportunity, yet Conor would never do it. The Celts might have collected severed heads and believed in Druids, but sex with children was taboo. Even I saw something wrong in a man having sex with a girl who hadn’t started to menstruate, and I didn’t want to have sex with Conor anyway. My sexual curiosity hardly went beyond kissing. I feared sex, and the shock of Conor’s proposition melted into comfort. Having him bluntly spell out the sex issue had actually helped me. I felt safer than I had in weeks. And my crush on him could continue without the reality of his manhood intruding.

“Your lordship?” I said.

He grunted and awoke with a snort. “What is it?”

“What did you mean when you said a crow told you where I was?”

“Exactly that. Your thoughts took the shape of the Morrigan—”

“What’s a Morrigan?”

“A shape-shifter. She tried to trick me into giving up on Deirdre, but I solved her riddle and then a boy appeared to lead me to the prison.”

“Was the boy’s name Albie?”

“I do not know. A boy with a pox on his face.”

“Sounds like Albie.” I lay back on the leaf bed and stared at the white plastic sheet overhead. I didn’t get what he meant about the crow appearing. Maybe Conor was deluded, prone to see druidical interference where none existed. Part of me wanted to believe in shape-shifting birds. Part of me, reared on
Lord of the Rings
and
Narnia,
believed that magic had actually existed in bygone days. I thought the world had changed at some point from being a magical place to being a rational place. I couldn’t have articulated when I thought this monumental change had occurred. I guess I held the childish sentiment that things used to be better. I couldn’t believe that magic existed in the present. That’s truly odd, since I believed in the appearances of the Heroines. But I’d never attributed their arrival to magic: they appeared out of some literary imperative. Shape-shifters and witches were such obvious fabrications that I wouldn’t have expected them to visit the Homestead. That was another class of character altogether. So I chalked up the whole crow issue to Conor’s pre-Christian ideas for explaining the way things worked, and figured that Albie had saved the day. Still, as I drifted off to sleep in that damp hovel, I struggled to reconcile it all. Could the man really converse with crows?