The Undivided (22 page)

Hayley’s fog lifted slowly to be replaced by light-headedness and a bewildering darkness. Her bizarre dreams faded as she clawed her way back to consciousness. She realised she was in hospital, had a pounding headache, and for some reason, couldn’t see.

Her father and stepmother were with her. She felt her father’s hand gripping hers. Her stepmother was whispering her name, drawing her back from her cottonwool cocoon, coaxing her gently back to consciousness as the drugs relinquished their grip on her mind, and allowed the pain of her headache to come rushing back.

‘Hayley, love … can you hear me?’

‘Mum …’ she tried to say, but it came out as an unintelligible grunt.

‘She’s back,’ Kerry said to someone else in the room, her voice filled with relief.

‘Take it slowly,’ she heard her father say. Hayley smiled. Or, at least she tried to. It wasn’t easy smiling around the tube in her mouth.

A moment later, she felt someone fiddling with the hardware filling her mouth and she coughed reflexively as the tube was withdrawn and she started breathing on her own.

‘Did you want some water, pet?’ Patrick asked.

Hayley nodded, her throat dry and painful now the tube was gone. She raised her head a little and took a sip from the drinking straw her father guided into her mouth, and then lay back down, letting the cool water trickle down her raw throat, while she tried to make some sense out of her surroundings. It was still dark in the room, and she could feel the bandages over her eyes, which didn’t make much sense because they seemed to be the only part of her that wasn’t aching.

‘What happened, Dad?’ she asked after a moment. Her memories of the past few hours or days were too jumbled and unreliable to count on them to provide a reason for her being in this state.

‘There was an accident,’ Kerry said. ‘You were hit by a car.’

‘Ren was there …’ Hayley said, trying to piece together the last thing she remembered.

‘Aye,’ Patrick agreed, in a rather odd tone. ‘He was there.’

‘Is he okay?’

There was a moment of silence as a look she could sense but not see passed between Kerry and Patrick. ‘He’s fine, sweetie,’ Kerry said finally. ‘You need to concentrate on getting better, and stop worrying about your cousin.’

‘Can I see him?’ she asked. ‘When they take the bandages off, of course.’

‘Let’s just wait and see how you’re doing, lass,’ Patrick said, gripping her hand even more tightly. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Like I was run over by a bus.’

‘Well, actually, it was a BMW, but I’ll not quibble with you over the details,’ Patrick chuckled. ‘Are you in pain, love? The doctors can give you something.’

She shook her head. Or at least, she tried to. That’s when she discovered how stiff it was. And how thick the bandages around her eyes were. ‘I’m feeling woozy and I’ve got a headache, but it’s not that bad. Did I crack my skull?’

‘You surely did,’ her father replied with only the slightest hesitation. ‘Tried to dig a hole in the road with it, according to the doctors.’ Only the faintest tremor in Patrick’s voice betrayed how worried he was.

‘Am I going to be okay?’

‘Of course you are,’ Kerry said. ‘Few weeks and you’ll be as good as new. They’re saying you’ll be out of hospital by the end of the week.’

Funny how easy it was to tell when Kerry was lying. Probably because she didn’t do it much. She really wasn’t very good at it.

Hayley turned her head in the direction of her father’s voice. ‘But I’m
not
as good as new, am I, Dad?’

There was a thick silence for a time before he answered. ‘It’s too early to tell, pet.’

‘Why is it too early?’

‘You hit your head pretty hard, love,’ he explained. ‘Hard enough to make your brain swell. The doctors put you in a coma until the swelling went down.’

‘But …’ she prompted when her father paused, quite certain there was more to that statement.

‘You have a mild traumatic brain injury,’ Neil announced proudly, as if he’d been rehearsing the phrase to make sure he got it right.

‘
What?
’

‘Out,’ Kerry ordered in a firm voice.

‘But Mum …’

‘Now,’ her father added. A moment later she heard Neil muttering and a door slamming shut.

‘Was he serious?’ Hayley asked.

‘They did an MRI while you were unconscious,’ her father said, his voice choked.

‘They’re worried the blow to your head may have damaged
your occipital lobe,’ Kerry added, when Patrick seemed unable to go on.

Hayley was grateful for her practical, unemotional tone. ‘What’s that mean in English?’

‘Nothing to worry yourself about, pet,’ her father assured her. ‘The doctors are saying the effects are probably temporary.’

‘What’s “probably temporary”?’ Hayley asked, directing her question at her stepmother. Patrick Boyle was a loving father, but he’d never been good at delivering bad news. It was always up to the ever-practical Kerry to tell Hayley what she needed to know.

‘We’ll talk about it when you’re feeling a little better,’ Patrick said.

‘No. I want to know now.’
You can’t wake a person up from a coma and drop something like that on them without an explanation.

There was a strained silence for a moment before Kerry, as always, answered her difficult question. ‘The occipital lobe is the part of the brain that takes in what you see and makes sense out of it,’ she explained.

Hayley took a moment to digest that information and then frowned when she realised what it meant. ‘You mean there’s something wrong with my eyes?’

‘No, no …’ her father hastened to assure her. ‘Your eyes are fine. It’s just the part of the brain that helps it all make sense, that’s all. Until the swelling goes down, the doctors won’t know the full extent of the damage.’

‘Is that why my eyes are bandaged?’

‘It’s only while they make sure there’s no other damage, love,’ Patrick said. ‘They’re hoping that as the swelling recedes, the pressure will ease and you’ll be fine again. In the meantime, they want to protect your eyes. You could accidentally look into the sun, or do some other damage without realising you’re doing it.’

‘But in the meantime, I’m blind,’ Hayley said with admirable calm. It was probably the drugs, she realised, because the news should have made her distraught. There was definitely something in the drip, feeding into the vein on the back of her left hand, that was taking the edge off her emotions.

‘They’ll do another MRI in a couple of days,’ Kerry told her. ‘And a whole lot of other tests too, they’re saying. But you’re awake and talking, so that’s a good sign you’re not suffering permanent brain damage.’

Hayley’s mind reeled at Kerry’s casual mention of brain damage.
Brain damage? Oh my God, I have
brain
damage …

‘I dunno, the lengths some people will go to in order to get out of going back to school, eh?’ said her father with a forced laugh.

Hayley didn’t know what to say, so she fell back on a reliable topic. ‘Does Ren know?’

‘We haven’t told him yet,’ Kerry answered. She sounded very terse.

‘But you told Neil?’ Hayley asked.

‘Did you want him back in here?’ Kerry asked, a smile back in her voice. ‘For a wee while? He’s been beside himself with worry.’

‘Really? He was worried? Not asking if he can have my room if I die?’

Patrick chuckled and squeezed her hand. ‘It’s good to have you back, sweetheart.’

‘It’s good to be back,’ Hayley said. ‘And it’s going to be even better when they take these damned bandages off and I can see.’
Assuming, of course
, she added to herself,
I don’t have permanent brain damage.

Kerry let Neil into the room, then she and Patrick went to speak with the doctors. Neil sat on the edge of the bed, and poked her on her arm as he tested whether or not she really was awake.

‘Hey, ratbag,’ she said with a smile. ‘Watcha up to?’

‘Nothing,’ Neil said. ‘Except hanging around here. Are they going to let you come home now you’re awake?’

‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Why? Do you miss me?’

‘I miss everything,’ he lamented. ‘All we’ve done since Doctor Symes ran you down is hang about here waiting for someone to tell us something, and talking to the cops about Ren. Can you ask Mum if we can stop at McDonald’s on the way home? She’ll say yes to anything you ask for the next few days.’

‘Why are the cops asking about Ren?’ Hayley asked. ‘This wasn’t his fault, you know.’

‘Nah … it’s nothing to do with you. He’s mixed up in some drug deal. Someone died, too. They arrested him, but he got away and now we’re supposed to ring the cops if we see him or if he tries to call us.’

Hayley fell silent. The Ren she knew wasn’t into drugs. He used to joke that he had problems enough to deal with, without chemically enhancing them. What had happened since her accident to turn the world so radically on its head?

Still, it explained Kerry’s terse dismissal of her questions about Ren.

‘What about Kiva?’ she asked. ‘What’s she up to?’

‘I dunno. She held a couple of press conferences. Then after Ren disappeared she locked herself in the house and won’t come out, but that’s probably because all the paparazzi in the known universe are camped outside her gate at the moment.’

Hayley felt a moment of pity for her. ‘And nobody’s seen Ren at all?’

‘Not a whisper,’ Neil confirmed. ‘It’s like he’s vanished. I heard the cops telling Kiva he hasn’t used any of his credit cards, and nobody’s spotted him anywhere. I think the cops think the drug bosses got him and have killed him for ratting on them about the —’

‘Neil, that will be quite enough!’ Kerry cut in, before Hayley’s brother could finish the sentence. ‘You’ve seen your sister, now you can go.’

‘But Mum …’

‘Now, Neil.’

Hayley sensed Neil lean forward and then felt his cool lips as he placed a brief and unexpected kiss on her cheek. ‘I’ll see you round, Hayley,’ he said, adding in a whisper, ‘and I’ll let you know if I hear anything about Ren.’ His weight lifted off the bed and the door closed behind him as he left.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, sweetheart?’

‘Was Neil right about Ren disappearing?’

Kerry hesitated. ‘It’s true he’s missing, love, but don’t start reading things into it. Ren blamed himself for what happened to you and he always manages to find trouble when he’s troubled. I’m sure he’ll be back when he’s ready.’

‘You don’t think he’s dead, do you?’

Kerry sat on the edge of the bed. ‘That boy’s survived being half-drowned, living in a fishbowl, being dragged all around the world and having my loopy cousin as a mother. Don’t you worry about that young man, sweetheart. Ren will be fine.’

Hayley didn’t believe it. For one thing, Ren didn’t do drugs. And, for another, Ren would never have left her in hospital alone, if he knew she was hurt.

And that meant something had happened to him. But Hayley’s head was aching too much for her to even attempt to figure out what it might be.

Most of the blood in which Ren was drenched wasn’t his, he discovered, when they finally hauled the dead weight of the slain wereman off him, and he was able to scramble to his feet, soaked from the cold rain and the warm blood of his attacker. He looked around, breathing harder than if he’d run a mile, stunned by both the ferocity of the attack and the unlikely appearance of his saviour.

‘You are the lost twin,’ the woman said.

Ren nodded, not sure if it was a question or an accusation. The rain was pelting down now, chilling him to the core, washing the blood from his face and making the fire spit and hiss. He rubbed his face and stared at the woman who’d rescued him. No older than twenty or twenty-five, he guessed, she was dressed in a similar fashion to Ciarán: tooled leather armour and trousers with gold trimmings, a bloody Roman sword in her hand, a quizzical expression on her face. She seemed oblivious to the rain.

‘I suppose,’ he said.

‘Ciarán was right,’ she said, bending down to wipe her blade on the wet grass. ‘You have no skills. You’ll not last a day in
Sí an Bhrú
.’

Ren wasn’t sure how to answer that. She didn’t give him the opportunity in any case. Instead, she turned to Ciarán, who was
unceremoniously slashing the throats of the dead weremen. The creatures were slowly morphing back into pale-skinned, naked, man-shaped creatures. She ordered him to run them through the heart as well with his
airgead sídhe
dagger, to be sure they were dead. Ren watched the gruesome task, almost too overwhelmed to grasp what their transformation back into human form meant.

Ren turned to find Brógán standing beside him, nursing a wounded arm that looked as if one of the wolves had taken a piece out of him.

‘One of them got you,’ he said. ‘Are you going to turn into one of them, now?’

The Druid shook his head. ‘Of course not. You can’t catch shape-shifting.’ He smiled. ‘You have some of the strangest ideas about the
Daoine sídhe
,
Leath tiarna
.’

‘He has no idea at all,’ said the woman who’d come to Ren’s rescue, sheathing her sword. ‘That’s the problem.’

Ren studied her, not ungrateful for her assistance, but a little annoyed by her tone. He wondered who she was. He was under the impression Ciarán had gone to fetch an eighty-year-old Druid warrior to be his bodyguard. This woman was tiny — barely reaching his shoulder — dark haired, lithe and cranky. Maybe she was Sorcha’s great-great-great-great-granddaughter or something.

‘He will learn,
a mháistreás
,’ Brógán assured her.

‘But will he survive the lesson?’ Ciarán asked as he joined them, wiping his dagger on the leg of his trousers. He added to the woman, apologetically, ‘I think one of them got away.’

She frowned. ‘You’ll never track him in this rain. Was he wounded?’

‘Bleeding like a stuck pig.’

‘Then let’s hope he won’t make it through the night. In the meantime, we should get our fragile
Leath tiarna
here into the hut and dry him off. It would be a shame to save him from the weremen only to lose him to a common cold.’

Ren didn’t appreciate being described as fragile, but he was all for getting out of the rain.

‘Pity about the roast,’ Ciarán said, eyeing the drenched carcass. ‘No point leaving it out for scavengers.’

Ren hurried up the slope to the hut. Ciarán lifted the spit from the fire, slung it over his shoulder, and strode up to the hut, throwing open the leather-hinged door. It was very crowded inside. Ciarán would fill any enclosed space on his own, Ren supposed, but with Brógán and Sorcha crammed in too, there was barely room to move.

‘Take your clothes off.’

‘Excuse me?’ Ren stared at the young woman.

‘This is Sorcha,’ Ciarán explained. ‘You’d do well to heed her, lad. Your life will be in her hands when we get back to
Sí an Bhrú
.’

Ren stared at the young woman in disbelief. ‘
This
is your eighty-year-old warrior?’ He shook his head. ‘She’s not much older than me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I have eyes,’ Ren said.

‘And they see nothing,’ Sorcha replied. She took the flaming branch from Brógán and squatted down at the tiny fireplace to set fire to the tinder-dry wood in the hearth, filling the hut with a warm orange light. Ren thought it odd that she’d lit the fire like that when Brógán and probably Ciarán could have waved an arm and done it with magic. Sorcha fed a few more sticks onto the fire and then stood up and turned to Ciarán. ‘
This
ignorant ingrate is what you wanted me to protect? I should have stayed home.’

‘It’s not his fault, Sorcha,’ Ciarán said, ‘that he knows nothing of our ways.’

‘And whose fault is it that he lacks any manners?’

‘I do not lack manners,’ Ren protested.

‘You do,’ Sorcha said, turning on him. ‘And you also appear to lack the ability to follow a simple instruction. Take off your clothes. I’ll not have you dying on me, for such a mundane reason as catching a chill. I am not, however, averse to running you through myself, should your conduct convince me that this world would be better served by the discontinuation of your line.’

Ren stared at her, not sure he believed her threat, and then he looked at Brógán. ‘Is she for real?’ he asked in English.

‘Most definitely,
Leath tiarna
,’ Brógán said with a smile. ‘She is every bit as capable of killing you as she claims.’

Ren still hesitated, but in the end decided to do as she commanded, in part because he was freezing and in part because Ciarán and Brógán had begun to peel off their own wet clothes. Ren did the same. Sorcha snatched the clothes from the men as they undressed, wrung them out, shook them, and then draped them around the fire on the low stools that served as seating in the hut. The others didn’t seem to mind sitting on the dirt floor. The rain beat down relentlessly, dripping through the thatched roof, but the hut was surprisingly warm, helped, no doubt, by the body heat of four people.

Ciarán attended to Brógán’s wounded arm. He held the Druid’s arm, closed his eyes and, a moment later, Ren watched as the mangled skin began to knit together. The whole process took no more than a few minutes and Brógán’s arm was as good as new, only a faint scar and a few bloodstains left behind giving any indication of the nasty bite.

Ciarán smiled. ‘Not as good a job as a
Liaig
would do, lad, but it’ll do.’

‘I’m just grateful you know enough to heal, Ciarán,’ Brógán said. ‘Thank you.’

‘Don’t thank me. Just be glad a bit of healing is a useful thing for a warrior to know. And that you weren’t suffering from
anything more than a flesh wound.’ He caught the look on Ren’s face. ‘What’s the matter,
Leath tiarna
? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘What you just did … it’s … unbelievable,’ Ren said, shaking his head. ‘I saw it before, but it’s … unbelievable.’

‘Why?’ Sorcha asked. She was studying him intently, awaiting his answer as if his life depended on his next few words.

‘Because … well, you just can’t fix things like that in my reality.’

‘This is your realm, Rónán,’ Brógán reminded him.

He glanced at the Druid healer and shrugged. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘I don’t see how it’s different,’ Sorcha said. ‘What happens to people who are injured in this other realm you’ve been living in?’

‘We have doctors and nurses and paramedics and hospitals —’

‘So, what you’re saying is that injuries and diseases are healed by men and women who spend years studying their craft?’ she cut in.

‘Well … I suppose.’

‘What makes you think it’s any different here?’ she asked, turning to stoke the fire again as the wind picked up outside, rattling the walls of the tiny hut.

‘But … well, he used
magic
to fix Brógán’s arm. It was healed in a few minutes.’

‘And I’m sure some of the cures used by healers in your world would seem equally miraculous to us,’ she said, sitting back on her heels. She turned to Ciarán. ‘Keeping him alive may prove the least of your troubles. Imagine trying to teach him anything.’

Ren decided to ignore that remark. He really wasn’t in the mood to argue with her.

He was, however, fascinated by the idea of magical healing.

‘Can I do that?’ he asked Brógán.

The young Druid nodded. ‘It is all a matter of training,
Leath tiarna.
I am a
Liaig
, which is similar to a doctor in your reality,
but we use plants and some magical intervention to heal. Here, unlike your realm, surgery is a last resort.’

‘Does everybody use magic here?’ he asked.

‘Not everyone,’ Brógán said. ‘Of course, there are many of the Druid caste who do, like the
Brithem
. They’re similar to a judge or an arbitrator in your realm. They specialise in lexichemy. That’s magic using the spoken word.’

‘Of course it is.’

Brógán continued in a lecturing tone. He seemed to be enjoying this chance to show off his knowledge of Druid society. ‘Niamh is also one of us, although she is
Cainte
. A master of magical chants and incantations. Our Vate comes from the Bardish caste, whose job it is to maintain our history and the history of all the important events and people in our world. There are also the
Deoghbaire
. They specialise in intoxicating and hallucinogenic substances, such as the
Brionglóid Gorm
we used to knock you out.’

‘So you have your own version of the paparazzi and drug dealers? Some things are the same all over, I guess.’

Brógán frowned, but ignored the interruption. ‘Ciarán is of the Warriors. All those involved in the trades and in agriculture belong to the Producers.’

‘What’s Darragh? And what am I?’

‘The Undivided stand outside the Druid castes,
Leath tiarna
, embodying all of them, yet being no part of any one cast.’ Brógán glanced at Ciarán, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod. ‘The power of the Druids is vested in the Undivided through the Treaty of
Tír Na nÓg
,’ Brógán went on. ‘In theory, you can do anything. In practice, even with access to all that power, it’s not something one does without training. Traditionally, because of their role as leaders of the Druids, the Undivided are trained in more … esoteric disciplines, such as philosophy and ethics.’

That sounded deadly dull. ‘They’re trained as warriors too, aren’t they?’

‘What makes you ask that?’ Ciarán asked.

Ren held out his arm to reveal the fine web of scars he’d collected over the years from his brother’s injuries. ‘I didn’t get these because Darragh doesn’t know how to handle a steak knife.’

‘The Undivided are taught to defend themselves like any other warrior,’ Ciarán conceded.

‘Why not just use magic?’

‘What do you mean?’ Sorcha asked, frowning.

‘I mean, if you’re chock full of magic and can do anything, then why not just defend yourself with it?’

The three of them stared at him for a long, silent moment.

Eventually, Sorcha turned to the fire and tossed another small log on it from the pile by the hearth saying, ‘There are those who thought the Treaty of
Tír Na nÓg
was in danger with one of the Undivided missing.’ Then she added cryptically, ‘They are going to pine for the good old days when they realise the danger it is in, now that he’s back.’