The Memory of Water Page 6

  “Unhappiness with their lot also drives them here,” Aurelius said. “But it is not all that draws them. I will talk to her.” He threaded his hands together and studied Elizabeth.

  “Michael!” Suzuki called, an urgent note in her voice.

  “I have to go.” I fought hard not to sigh, wheeled around and headed for Schroeder’s temporary cubicle.

  As I wove around the cots to the cubicle, I focused upon something else Aurelius had said, other than the astonishing fact that I had the greatest success rate easing Errata through their change than anyone else. So why did I feel like I was losing ground with every day that passed?

  Yet the other thing he had said echoed in my mind.

  You are a highly observant man. You can discern what we need from how we behave and respond.

  Although Aurelius could not possibly have guessed it, he had said exactly the right thing to give me the jolt I needed to keep going.

  I was fourteen when I met Dr. Onni Garbo, shortly after my mother was hospitalized with two crushed vertebrae, in a coma, and with little likelihood of recovering from either.

  I sat beside my mother in the intimidating public ward of the Glangwili Hospital, scared to move off the upright blue plastic chair placed precisely beside the bed. I watched Dr. Onni Garbo stride down the length of the ward, the fronts of his white coat flying beside him like sails.

  He smiled at me, pulled the curtains around the bed and bent over my mother, who looked very small, with all the tubes running into and across her body. “They say you saved her life, laddie,” he said in Welsh.

  I shrugged. It was a lot more complicated than that. I had presumed it was the hospital who had saved her life.

  Dr. Garbo turned to consider me properly. “You’ve eyes like an owl in the afternoon. How long have you been sitting here, hmm?”

  “Do you have the time?” I asked him.

  Garbo lifted his wrist. “It’s nine in the morning.”

  I calculated. “Thirteen hours.”

  He opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he turned back to my mother, and I understood that she was his priority. As she was also my priority right now, I was not upset by his wordless dismissal.

  He stepped back from the bed and his eyes narrowed in the way I suspected mine were held.

  “Have you been watching your mother, laddie?”

  “Of course.”

  “Noticed her hand moving?”

  I glanced sharply at her hand, lying still upon the cover.

  “The other one,” Garbo said.

  I switched my gaze to her left hand. “It’s not moving.” I looked up at him—he seemed very large to me. “They said she wouldn’t ever move again, unless she came out of the coma. And they didn’t think that would happen for a long time.”

  “Or at all. Did they say that?” Garbo’s tone was kind.

  That made it easier to nod, even though my eyes ached with more than tiredness.

  “There. See?” Garbo said, staring fixedly at my mother’s hand.

  I got to my feet. My back protested. I rubbed at it and stared at my mother’s hand the way Garbo was and waited.

  The movement was tiny. Her little finger twitched. It moved sideways.

  “I see it.” I looked at Garbo. He wasn’t as tall as I had thought him to be, not when I was standing. But I had always been tall for my age. “What does it mean?” I squashed flat any tendril of hope.

  “Wait,” he murmured, still watching her.

  I waited again.

  “Finger and thumb.” He held up his hand and imitated the little sideways movement of my mother’s finger. His thumb splayed out, too. He did it again, this time with more exaggerated movement. “Pain,” he murmured, considering her once more.

  “Her back…” I said helplessly.

  Garbo shook his head. “Acute pain. Something else.” He bent over her, as if he was examining every inch. And he was, for he pulled back the cover, revealing the metal brace around my mother’s middle.

  I stepped out of his way, then pulled the chair out of his way, too.

  Garbo shook his head. “Something we can’t see, that no one noticed.” He was speaking to himself. Then he straightened and pulled a pen from his pocket and moved down to the end of the bed and unhooked the board hanging there. He flipped pages and scribbled.

  Then he glanced at me. “Why the long face?”

  “Acute pain,” I repeated.

  “Acute pain sounds bad, but in this case, it’s a good thing, laddie.” He hung the board on the frame once more and put his pen away. “Acute in medical terms means temporary and sharp. You understand?”

  I frowned. “Her back, that pain…it’s not temporary.”

  “It’s chronic,” Garbo corrected me. “But she is responding to pain. That’s a good thing.”

  “It is?”

  “I think you might get your mother back sooner than you thought.” He smiled at me. “I’ve ordered x-rays, to see what’s going on in there.” He ruffled his hair, which made it stand up, which seemed like an extraordinarily ordinary thing for such a man to do. “Chin up, laddie.”

  He strode away again, the tails of his coat lifting behind him once more. I watched, awed.

  Three hours later, the staff discovered via the x-rays that my mother had a fractured arm. The arm was set and she was given a more specific pain killer for that injury.

  Dr. Garbo came to see her once she was settled back into her bed. He watched her breathing. “Mmm…”

  “What?” I asked, alarmed.

  He gave me a warm smile. “She’s sleeping.”

  “Well…yes.”

  “She’s coming out of the coma.”

  I looked at her, expecting her to open her eyes straight away, but she didn’t look any different than she had before.

  “You can’t see it. It’s in the details,” Garbo told me. “Trust me, I can see it. She’s recovering.”

  I hunched on the chair, miserable.

  “Most sons would consider that good news,” Garbo added.

  “I should’ve known.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I wasn’t sure I could say it again. So I approached it from a different angle. “You…noticed she was hurting.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “Doctors are supposed to make people better, not…see things.”

  “Seeing things is part of making people better. Especially people who don’t know how they’re sick, or why.” Garbo paused. “Every read Sherlock Holmes?”

  I nodded. Then my mouth popped open. “That’s what you did! Like him!”

  Garbo laughed. “Not like him, actually. The man who wrote those stories knew a doctor—a real doctor. Dr. Joseph Bell. Dr. Bell observed his patients and could diagnose exactly what was wrong with them, because he paid attention to the details.”

  Understanding flared. “So the writer made Sherlock Holmes do that.” I pulled into my mind an image of the cover on one of the stories. “Arthur Conan Doyle,” I read off.

  “Yes, indeed,” Garbo said. “Look up Dr. Bell. He’s there in the history books. A real Sherlock Holmes.”

  “But why didn’t the other doctors notice my mother?”

  Garbo hesitated.

  I added bitterly, “Neither did I.”

  “You think you should have known?” His tone was kind enough, but there was a sharp curiosity there, too.

  I nodded.

  “Lad, look at me.”

  I managed to meet his gaze.

  Garbo’s eyes were brown like his hair, which was standing on end once more. “You saw something you think should have told you her arm was broken?”

  I was fourteen, old enough to know that a question like that would swiftly lead to a great many more questions I didn’t dare answer truthfully. I froze, for once not willing to lie. Not to this man.

  Garbo rested his hand on the white-painted pipe frame of the bed. “You don’t have to answer. Let me ask you this, instead. If your mother really did fall down the stairs, then nod your head. That’s all you have to do…or not do. Then you can truthfully swear you said nothing, later.”

  His brown eyes seemed to grow very large as I stared at them, not moving an inch. I didn’t dare breathe, either.

  Garbo nodded. “I see.” He gave me a stiff smile. “I have work to do. We’ll talk, later.” He spun away, then turned back. “What is your name?”

  That much I could say. “Radford Michael Jones.”

  “Radford?”

  I lifted my chin. I’d heard it all before.

  “That’s a name that comes with burdens, yes?”

  Surprised, I nodded.

  “I’ll be back, Michael. Watch your mother.”

  I knew, suddenly, that he meant I should try to watch her the way he did. I nodded.

  Neither I nor my mother went home after that. My mother regained consciousness a day later, but the crushed vertebrae left her a severe paraplegic, who needed permanent care in a nursing home.

  I was sent north to my first foster home. There, I insisted that everyone call me Michael, and they did.

  I thought of Dr. Garbo as I stepped into the cubicle where Suzuki waited for me. She pulled the blanket closed once more. “You asked Aurelius to help Elizabeth?”

  “I thought…” I frowned. “What is it?”

  “You know about his son, yes?”

  I shook my head. I knew very little about Aurelius beyond his new race and his place of origin, Changsa.

  “His son prevailed,” Suzuki murmured.

  That was a whole conversation in a sentence. I stretched my shoulders and rubbed my temple, thinking it through. What Suzuki was saying was that Aurelius’ son was a recovered Tutu victim, who could not face the prospect of changing.
Either before the active phase started, or perhaps as it started, he had chosen to end his life, instead.

  There were a great many Errata who did, enough so that the practice had become known around the world as Seppuku, the traditional Japanese honorable suicide. The term infuriated Suzuki and would send her into rare rages when she heard it used.

  “They are not trying to restore honor!” she would rail. “They haven’t lost their honor in the first place!”

  Instead, Suzuki and everyone who knew her opinion about the practice, including me, used the term “prevail”. Errata could choose to let their human natures prevail over the coming change in the only way we knew would permanently defeat it.

  Aurelius’ son had chosen to prevail and now I had Aurelius standing at the bedside of another child going through what his son could not face.

  I closed my eyes. “Sod it.” I squeezed my temples with one hand. “I’ll tell him I’ll find someone else.” I dropped my hand. “It seemed like a good idea.”

  Suzuki lifted her brow. “A very unscientific one.”

  “So?”

  “Yesterday you railed about lack of data about Magorian.”

  “I said I would think about it.”

  “And now you’ve roped in Aurelius, who is the last person we should be tapping to help—”

  “We have to do something,” I ground out. My temples throbbed. It was the heat, I told myself. “Aurelius just told me that I have the highest rate of success in the world, getting Errata through the active phase. People keep statistics about it!”

  Suzuki shrugged. “So?”

  I flung a hand out toward Schroeder. “People die! We lose far too many and I’m the best? How many other Errata out there are dying unnecessarily because of ignorance?” I tried to straighten up and control myself. “I will do what it takes to reduce that number, even if it means using the Errata’s own powers. I’m sick of this, Suzuki. I’m sick of watching them die. I’m sick of being helpless.”

  Suzuki nodded. “I’ve heard that before.”

  “Never like this,” I said bleakly. “I’m running out of options.” I glanced at Schroeder. What was left of Schroeder. “Elizabeth’s temperature has risen two more degrees.”

  Suzuki shifted and shimmered, as the fae did in very low light.

  I knew that shuffle of hers. “Just say it.”

  Suzuki rolled her eyes. “You use Aurelius and his skills, but you won’t use Magorian.”

  “The witch?”

  Suzuki began to laugh. It was a soft chuckle that swiftly built to a frame-shaking hysterical expression that did not sound at all amused.

  I rested a hand on her shoulder, coaxing her to calm herself. She gathered her composure an inch at a time, then wiped tears from her eyes and sniffed.

  We were all under strain. I waited.

  Suzuki gave a last soft sigh and squared her shoulders. “I already reached out to the man, earlier today.”

  When she was supposed to be resting. I sighed. “This isn’t anticipating me. It’s bulldozing me.”

  “He refused to come.”

  “He refused?” I could feel wind whistling down my throat as I sucked in my breath. It was one thing for me to refuse. I’m the bloody doctor. Apparently, I had acquired a typical doctor’s arrogance, despite working in very a-typical conditions, for I was outraged, now the shoe was on the other foot.

  Suzuki pressed her lips together and nodded. “He said he wasn’t a wiccan and to find someone else.”

  We shared a look and smiled grimly at the irony.

  “Can you watch Elizabeth for a while?” I asked her.

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  I took off the ratty coat that was supposed to be white and crisp but had long ago faded to a decrepit grey. “If Mahmoud won’t come to the mountain, this humbled mountain had better go see him.”

  “Even though you don’t think he can help.”

  I held up a finger. “I’m trying to be open-minded,” I warned her. “For that little girl’s sake, I have to try.”

  She nodded. “I’ll send you his address. It’s in the old town.” She paused. “It is very hot out there,” she warned.

  I knew that. The air in the tent was stifling, warning of worse outside. “If I wait, I won’t go at all.”

  Suzuki hesitated, then lifted her hands. A soft breeze plucked at me, bathing my skin with chilled air. I could feel the goosebumps break out.

  She lowered her hands with a self-conscious air. “That will last for a while. After that, stick to the shade.”

  I turned to go, then looked back at her. “Maybe…try that with Elizabeth. Carefully. A degree at a time.”

  Suzuki’s smile was beautiful.

  I left before I changed my mind about that, too.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  With Suzuki’s chilled air enveloping me, the walk into the old town was pleasant, although I could see heat shimming over the old cobbles and paving. Once the…whatever it was—and I still couldn’t bring myself to think of it as magic, even in my own mind—once the cool air dispersed, the heat would make walking very unpleasant.

  Most of the city was shut down, for it was siesta time. I felt quite alone, walking down the long road on the east side of the river, with the ancient walls of the city across the water. From the ancient Alcantara Bridge, footpaths wound up the sides of the river valley to the city proper.

  As I made my way into the old town, I recalled what I could about Magorian. The name had a mental patina that told me I’d seen it somewhere before. It might be another Magorian, but it wasn’t a common name, so perhaps it was the same one.

  I tugged on various starting mnemonics and followed them into the archives and found the post fairly quickly—I had remembered it because it was dealing indirectly with the Errata, with a very unusual twist.

  I reviewed the article, which had a brief interview with Benjamin Magorian III, a self-proclaimed wizard. Even though I didn’t think the man was for real, I was a little taken aback by the scathing tone of the article. The writer felt as I did, that Magorian was a charlatan, and hadn’t stinted himself expressing his opinion. Then he wrapped up the article by suggesting that Magorian was an Errata trying to pass as human and explaining away his Errata-given talents by telling everyone he was a wizard. The writers finished with a warning that we should all watch out in future for Errata trying to move among us, as one of us…

  The article had left a sour taste in my mouth, but the source was minor and no one picked up on the theme and ran with it. It had failed to go viral, to my relief. Possibly because of the fundamental flaw in the writer’s logic; one cannot be a charlatan with no magical abilities, yet have the magical-seeming abilities of an Errata…

  Once in the crooked, cobbled streets of the old town, I pulled out my cellphone and punched in Magorian’s address. Google politely tracked out my route for me.

  I found myself climbing streets full of stairs, while the old stone walls of the buildings on either side grew closer to my shoulders. I wasn’t claustrophobic and was glad of it.

  Magorian’s street was barely six feet wide. The walls of the buildings lining it were rough old stone, stained black in places, dull cream in others. Even the curved tiles on the roofs were a dull grey. But there were old fashioned street lamps on wrought iron brackets, and the cobbles were free of dirt and rubbish.

  There were no house numbers, no street signs. Google told me which door to knock on. I considered the stone doorway. The doorstep was at street level on the left, and six inches above the cobbles on the right. The door itself was wood so old it had a patina that looked silky.

  There was no door knock and no knob, either. Just a rusted, black iron keyplate. To the right of the door was a window barely a foot square, covered in black iron grillwork. Centuries ago, a gatekeeper likely peered through that window to examine newcomers before opening the door.

  On the other side of the window, a closed-in, covered bridge crossed over the street between the buildings. It was arched underneath, had the same dull grey tiles on the roof and a small square window on either side, also covered with the same grillwork.

  There was an oddly modern call button mounted on the wall to the left of the door. I pressed it and waited.

  “Who?” came the demand from the speaker beneath.