Chapter 6

An Uncertain Awakening

When she regained consciousness, Alyndia realized right away that the transfer of her spirit into the body of Annelise Layton had failed. The failure of the transfer had resulted in an uncontrolled burst of magical energy, which caused her to remain unconscious for some indeterminate time. On awakening, she found herself tumbling in the snowy gray, dimly lit expanse of ethereal nothingness known as the Wild. A messy coil of silver cords bound her psychically and hindered her movement, trapping her like a cocooned insect in a spider’s web. As she struggled with all her psychic strength to release herself from the cords that bound her, she direly wished she could cast a spell on the cords so that she could slip free of them, but she knew her element-based spells could never work here.

Alyndia tried mentally for the thousandth time to locate her body back on Cerinya or the enchanted bracelet in order to channel her spirit toward them, but both seemed unreachable through the void. This perplexed her. Although she knew intuitively her body was still alive, for some reason she was no longer able to return to it. Was it possible that some demon or denizen of the Wild now possessed it? And what of the bracelet and the professor’s beloved wife? Alyndia was certain that Elise’s spirit had left her body long ago. Could she have somehow been wrong, and her spirit had still remained in the body? Alyndia cursed herself for ever having dabbled in celestial magic. Now, it seemed she would pay for her mistake for all eternity.

It was impossible for Alyndia to estimate how long she’d been in the Wild, but it was probably much longer than was considered safe—much, much longer. She’s heard stories of souls that got lost or trapped in the Wild for long periods and ended up having their life forces sucked away by the negative planes. While she was unconscious, much of her life force had indeed been drawn away. She felt it—and now the process was accelerating. It was only by virtue of her soul remaining connected to her living body via the silver cord that she hadn’t succumbed already. And yet the energy from her body was scarcely detectable. Was her body on Cerinya already close to death, or was it Elise Layton’s comatose body she felt? Maybe Gerald was successful in putting the bracelet on her wrist after all.

She peered through the tangle of silver cords that imprisoned her. Indeed, the snowy gloom of the Wild was gradually becoming darker as she drifted toward some negative force, and that force was draining away her spirit energy—her very existence. A mental fog rose up in her, akin to sleepiness. She fought to remain focused while continuing to will herself away from the deepening gloom, but it was no use, as too much of her psychic energy had already ebbed away in the time she’d been in the Wild.

Random memories began flooding through her mind. The climaxes and depths of her life. She remembered the warmth of her mother’s womb, her first kiss on a cold, wintry evening, the ecstasy of casting her first spell, the moment she learned of her mother’s death, and all the meaningless and insignificant moments in between. This is the time of my death, she thought amid the collage of memories. In a quickening moment, I will sleep and remain this way for all eternity. Forgive me, Gerald, for my failure.

Then, in the midst of her death dream, there came an intermittent tone emanating from someplace. It sounded like a harpsideth string continuously being plucked over and over again in steady rhythm. But where was it coming from? Was she close to the material plane?

She shook off the drowsiness and willed herself toward the sound with all her waning life force. The sound of the plucked string grew louder until it resonated strongly in the ether. Then she felt an unexpected sense of inertia. At once, horror rose up in her as she became aware that whatever lay at the source of the sound had latched onto her spirit and was now drawing her toward itself. She felt its hunger. Can it be a wandering demon or some incorporeal monster? She tried desperately to will herself away from it, but her acceleration toward the thing only intensified. By the gods! It’s going to devour me! She tried resisting the movement with the remainder of her psychic energy but found she could no longer do so. Finally, she just gave in and let the thing consume her. As she did so, the feeling of inertia ended abruptly with a soft jolt.

Instantly, she felt real physical pain throughout her being, and she felt hot. The plucking string sound was loud. It emanated from her left. She felt a sharp, burning pain on her wrist and a pain in her head. No, it was only a headache. Vaguely, she felt a rhythmic pressure in her chest and heard a snake-like hissing sound nearby. Gradually, she began to feel more. She realized the presence of her body around her, but it was nothing like she was used to. And something in her mouth tasted awful. She tried to utter her name, but something blocked her voice. She was lying on her back on a soft surface, probably a bed, although it was much firmer than the bed in her home. Something, perhaps a light cloth, covered her body. She heard someone snoring nearby.

She wondered if she had somehow made it to the body of Elise, and Gerald was close by. “Gerald!” she tried to say. She tried over and over again to cry out his name, but the words would not come. She shook her head. There was something in her throat. At once she heard the sound of footsteps echoing in a long hall. The footsteps seemed frantic. There came a loud snapping sound, and suddenly she saw bright red.

There came a warm touch against her hand. Then she heard voices. Not words—just sounds. Alien voices with alien words she could not comprehend. Then she understood parts. They were talking about her; she knew only that much. She wanted to call out “Gerald!” but something still blocked her voice.

“Connie,” she heard first. It was a man’s voice. He spoke to her tenderly. “Connie—” and then he said something else, but it was just a jumble of sounds to her. It did not sound like Professor Layton. It sounded like someone entirely different.

She realized the red she saw was actually coming from her eyes.

“Connie,” the voice came again. She felt the man’s breath on her cheek. “Are you there, Connie? It’s Will. Can you hear me?”

This time she understood the question. Alyndia struggled to reply. She felt her lips move, but something seemed terribly wrong in her chest. The string sound quickened, staying in sync with the beating of her heart.

“Nurse, get that damn tube out of her throat. She’s trying to say something,” the man said.

“I can’t remove the respirator tube without doctor’s orders,” the woman stated.

“Either you remove the tube right now, or I’ll take it out myself. What’s it going to be?”

“I can get into trouble for this,” the woman murmured.

Seconds later, she felt a tugging at her face and then a ripping sound as something attached to her was removed. Momentarily, she felt pain on her face, as if she had been slapped. Then she felt a large object moving around at the back of her throat. Then the object came out of her mouth. She felt a strange heaviness in her chest. Once the air deflated from her lungs, she found she could not inhale. She writhed and then began thrashing about on the bed, unable to catch her breath. Hands firmly grabbed her and held her down.

“Breathe!” the woman said. “Go ahead! You can do it!”

Alyndia opened her mouth and laboriously inhaled air into her strange lungs. “That’s it,” the woman said. “You’re doing fine.”

After a few breaths, the breathing became easier. Her heart beat strongly in her chest. The plucked string reflected this.

“You keep an eye on her,” the woman said. “I’m going to get the doctor. He’s gonna want to see this.”

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As some footsteps fell away from earshot, Alyndia became aware of the warm pressure in her hand. It had not released her throughout the ordeal.

“Connie,” came the man’s voice again. “It’s Will. Can you open your eyes?”

Alyndia tugged at her eyelids. Gradually, her eyelids responded, and bright, white light attacked her retinas. She barely made out the image of a man looking down at her. She fluttered her eyelids until her eyes adjusted to the change in brightness between the somber red behind her eyelids and the harsh glare of her environment. Her eyes focused on a large man staring down. He had a wide face and a square jawline. He had a thick head of straight salt and pepper hair with a slight gray at his temples. He had a thick crop of black stubble on his chin and cheeks, nearly blended in color with his broad eyebrows. His green eyes looked weary and puffed. He had wrinkles, and the corners of his eyes set above a wide nose. His face displayed a stern expression.

“Can you see me?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. She coughed a few times to clear her dry throat. “Yes, I see you,” she said more affirmatively. Her voice sounded somewhat lower now, huskier than what she was used to. This was to be expected. She was certainly not in her own body. Nor was she in Elises’s.

“Do you remember your name?” he asked.

She nodded. Alyndia, Elemental Sorceress of Roggentine, Daughter of Alitrea, she thought. “Connie,” she said.

A slight smile appeared on Will’s face.

“How old are you?”

She wondered how old Connie was. She decided to make a good guess. A number came to her from some shadowy place in her mind. “Thirty-four years. I am thirty-four years old,” she replied.

The slight smile broadened. He nodded, not taking his eyes off her. “Yes! In fact, you are thirty-four,” he said, seemingly relieved.

A chill ran up her spine. Why did she know how old this person was? Where did that memory come from? Whose spirit lingers with this body?

“How many fingers do you see?”

She counted, one-two-three. “Three,” she answered.

At those words, he clutched both her shoulders with his large hands. “God, Connie. We were worried about you.”

“What happened to me?” she managed to ask with great difficulty.

“We don’t know what happened to you. Something about that damn bracelet that Professor Layton gave you. He might have put poison on it. It knocked you out cold. I’ll spare you the details for now.”

The bracelet! she thought, her mind returning the burning sensation around her wrist.

“Where is Gerald?” she asked him.

The smile fell away from his face at the mention of Gerald’s name. To Alyndia, he looked as if he’d bitten into a spoiled aceralla nut. “Layton’s at home. We have him on twenty-four-hour surveillance. He isn’t going anywhere until we find out what the hell he did to you. You should have heard the bullshit story he was trying to tell us about people living in other dimensions and how he heard voices in the sunlight. Unbelievable, the things he said.”

At that moment, the night-shift floor doctor entered the room, followed by a young nurse with thick, horn-rimmed glasses. The doctor, an unkempt-looking young man in his late twenties midway through the second half of a double shift, carried with him a folded-open, aluminum clipboard.

“She’s the one,” the nurse said, pointing to the woman on the bed.

The doctor rushed up to the bed. “Excuse me,” he said to Will as he cut between them to have a look at her.

“She’s all right,” Will said. “I was talking to her. She remembers her name and how old she is.”

The doctor seemed surprised to see her eyes open, peering back at him. “Nurse, where’s the breathing tube?”

“I had to remove it,” she said, cowed. “When she came to, Mr. MacGregor told me to remove it, or he’d remove it himself.”

The doctor shot MacGregor a hard look. MacGregor returned his look without a flinch, unrepentant. The doctor returned his attention to the patient. He pulled out a penlight and checked the dilation of her pupils. The nurse spoke to him while he did this.

“We got an alarm at the nurse console. Her brain activity had abruptly picked up. It was as if someone flipped a switch and all the lights came on. She woke up just a few minutes later.”

He turned to MacGregor, “And who is he?” he asked the nurse with ill-concealed suspicion.

“I’m Agent Will MacGregor, CIA,” he said, expertly flipping open his wallet to show the doctor. “And this is my partner, Agent Connie Bain.”

“I see.” The doctor turned his attention to the EEG readout. “Incredible,” he said. He pulled the folded strip of paper from the box by the bed. “That looks like exactly what happened.” He looked up at the patient, bewildered. “How do you feel, Connie?”

“My throat is dry,” she said. “I have an awful headache.”

“Oh, I can imagine,” the doctor said. “Do you know you’ve been in a coma for over two days?”

“She has a headache,” MacGregor said, pouring her a cup of water from a nearby plastic container. “Aren’t you going to get her anything for it? Or are you just going to stand there?”

“Just a moment,” the doctor said. “She might just as easily fall back into the coma. We don’t want to give her anything until we find out more about what happened to her.”

“A little aspirin won’t hurt.”

The doctor spun around quickly. He was a little more than half MacGregor’s size. “Agent MacGregor,” he started. “Do you know what an anticoagulant is?”

“No, I don’t,” he answered.

“An anticoagulant is a blood thinner. It prevents blood from clotting. Now, your partner here has sustained a head injury of some sort. We don’t know, but she may have suffered a hemorrhage or a burst aneurysm. If we give her aspirin, we could cause the hemorrhage to start all over again, and she could suffer severe brain damage, fall into a coma again, and eventually die. Now you don’t want that to happen to your partner just because you wanted to give her aspirin for her headache, do you?”

“No, I suppose I don’t,” MacGregor replied nonplussed.

“I didn’t think so. So though I appreciate your concern for the well-being of your partner, we are the doctors here, not you. We are responsible for her as long as she’s in our care. So if you don’t mind, keep your opinions to yourself, and let us do our job. Do I make myself clear?”

MacGregor sighed heavily and granted the doctor a slight nod. He knew when to back down.

“Fine,” the doctor said, returning his attention to the patient. “Nurse, if Agent MacGregor says another word. Please escort him to the lobby.”

“Yes, doctor,” the nurse replied as she laid an imperious, smug look on MacGregor. MacGregor disregarded her and kept his eyes stoically fixed on Connie.

The doctor gave the patient a few informal neurological tests. He made her count to ten, performed a few ad-hoc word associations, and then he pricked her extremities with the end of a hypodermic needle to check for insensate areas. Alyndia was not sure what the man was doing, but she listened to him. She gathered he was some kind of healer.

“Incredible,” he said again after he completed his tests. He wrote some notes on the tablet on the metal clipboard while the three of them watched. He looked at his watch and jotted down the time. Finally, he tore off the part of the readout where the patient had awoken. “The brain is an amazing, mysterious organ,” he said as he folded and stuffed the sheet into the tablet. He then gave the nurse orders to remove the I.V. and the EEG connections but leave the EKG attached until her doctor could have a better look at her the next morning. Before the doctor left the room to go back to his rounds, he turned to MacGregor. “Your partner is very lucky,” he said. “I think she’s gonna be all right.” He looked over at the nurse. “And get her some ibuprofen for that headache.”

* * *

Connie awoke with a jolt in her private room in Wendsar’s Inn. She looked around the room. The oil lantern by the bed burned low. Its emerald flame illuminated the room with a deep, green glow. White moonlight shone through the wood slotted blinds that covered the window, creating a fairy ladder on the wall opposite the window.

Her body felt achy all over, as though she had fallen down a flight of stairs. She also felt oddly short of breath. She took a few deep breaths, and the feeling of breathlessness quickly dissipated. Then there came a tingling at the crown of her head, as if an insect were crawling on it. She reached up to crush it and only found hair.

She fluffed up her pillow and shifted her body into a more comfortable position. As she lay in the darkness, she recalled that she’d been dreaming moments before she’d woken up. She’d dreamed she was floating weightless in a dark place and tied up so that she couldn’t move. She recalled struggling to get free and feeling helpless and distressed, and then being terrified as she started floating toward some monster or something. Such a horrible dream, she thought. She didn’t usually have dreams like that.

The room was slightly chilly and her feet were cold, so she sat up and covered them with the blanket. As she did so, she heard a man’s and woman’s voices conversing in some unknown language, along with the beep of a heartbeat monitor. The voices sounded faraway and had a thin tonal quality to them, as though they were coming from a portable radio. Just as she cocked her head to determine their origin, they abruptly stopped. All was now still and silent except for faint snoring coming from the other side of the wall. She listened for a while longer, but the voices didn’t return.

Now she was thirsty, and her throat felt rough, probably from the dry air. She got out of bed and helped herself to the urn of water that the maid had left. As she imbibed the water, she felt that tingle at the top of her head again. This time, it was almost a tug, as though someone were gently pulling on a few strands of hair. She felt the top of her head again—nothing. The feeling passed.

“Connie, what’s going on with you?” she asked herself aloud.

She got back into bed, curled up beneath her blanket, and closed her eyes.