Deception of the Magician (Waldgrave Book 2) (19 page)

“No. I fell in the river, that’s all. I don’t want a hospital or the police.” Lena hoped it sounded better to Dorotea than it did to her. To her it sounded like a lame lie, especially given that her knee had split open again from all her walking, and a fresh stream of fire-truck red blood was starting to pool in her one remaining shoe.

Dorotea took a few steps forward. She brought her hand up to Lena’s face, settled it just under her chin, and looked into her eyes. She was soft and smelled of incense and laundry detergent. Lena knew she must have smelled absolutely foul to the kind stranger offering to bandage her up. Then Dorotea pulled her into a hug. Lena wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“You’ve been through a lot, I can tell. But you’re safe here. You have the touch of God—there’s someone I want you to meet after you’re clean and rested. You remind me very much of him. So strange that two such visitors find our little church in such a short span of time.” Dorotea took a step back. To Lena’s horror, the white shirt she was wearing had smudges of mud on it from where they had made contact, but Dorotea somehow managed to smooth her shirt and continue to beam optimism. “But yes, we have a phone. Later, though. Now we need to clean you up and then you need to sleep some.”

Dorotea left Lena alone for a few minutes, and she did as best she could with the soap and towels to clean herself up. She managed to wash most of the smell out of her hair in the sink, then folded her old clothes on the edge of the basin and put on the clean clothes the Dorotea had brought; a worn pair of sweat pants and a tee-shirt that was a size too big. There was even a pair of worn shoes; they were two sizes too big, but at least she had one for each foot.

There was a knock on the door and Dorotea came back in toting what looked like an extensive first-aid kit. She had Lena pull up her pants leg, exposing her wounded right knee, and then set to work with the disinfectants. It stung so bad that Lena laid down so she didn’t have to watch as Dorotea wiped away the crusty mud and blood mixture and pulled thorns and bits of small rock out of her leg. But she moved very quickly, and faster than Lena would have thought, she was done. She looked down at her leg and saw that it had been wrapped up in clean, white gauze and bandages. She still felt sick, but the sight of the cleanliness of her once beaten leg afforded her some relief.

Dorotea waggled a roll of medical tape at Lena. “We’ll need to change the bandages twice a day, and I still think you might need the hospital, but we’ll see. We have ice for the swelling. Does it feel okay?”

Lena nodded. Her head was pounding with images of the previous night again; the glass shattering and going everywhere. She blinked, trying to make the flashback disappear. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Dorotea nodded. “Now sleep, and I’ll get you the phone after you wake up. You need to sleep first, because you look ready to fall over. Do you need any other blankets or anything?”

Lena looked at the sheets and blankets on the cot. “No, thank you.”

“Okay. You sleep then, and I’ll come to get you.”

“Okay.”

Dorotea excused herself from the room, and an ungodly silence fell around Lena.

She sat on the edge of the cot, trying to process everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours of her life. The room she was staying in now had green painted walls, just like her room at home. There was one small window on the wall opposite the door. The cot wasn’t very comfortable, but it was infinitely warmer and more comforting than the riverbank she had spent the night on. She laid down on her side and curled into a fetal position; she didn’t feel like she was done crying, but at the moment she was just too tired.

She woke with a start to the sound of metal grinding and shrieking. The sound was everywhere. The world was shaking, and she didn’t know where she was. As she tried to come to her senses, she called out.

“Dad?!”

She reached deftly for the light switch on the wall and flicked it. She was in a small room, but not a hotel…the train!

With a gut-wrenching lurch, the lights went out. The cabin tipped, and Lena heard the suitcases go crashing from the window side of the cabin into the door, which burst open on impact. She had been lying on the bed, but suddenly found herself slipping to the wall; her legs crumpled beneath her confused weight as she heard the window shatter and a rain of glass fell all around her. The cabin was still moving, grinding along.

She knew the train wasn’t on the track anymore, but it was still skidding along jarringly. She braced herself between the top and bottom bunk beds, which were now acting as walls on either side of her, and eventually the movement stopped. Everything went still and quiet, and the only sound she could hear was her own frantic breathing.

She tried to look around, but there was nothing to be seen. It was the middle of the night, and she was buried deep in the belly of a dead train, like a mouse swallowed by a snake. No one was going to find her here.

“Dad?” Her words didn’t so much as echo in the hot, velvety blackness. There was no answer, and she crept around the side of the top bunk and peered into the spot where her father should have been sleeping. She groped in the darkness, but could not find him. He hadn’t even been in the room.

Not sure if she was panicked or relieved, she settled back into the bed of glass between the bunks, unsure of what to do. It could have been seconds or days later that she heard the voice, so quiet and so frantic, babbling on in a language she did not understand. There was a light in the hall, which was now beneath her feet since the train had tipped, that Lena could see through the broken doorway. It was a flashlight.

“Here! I’m in here!” It wasn’t until she heard her voice crack that she realized she was crying. She thought the words had died on the dry air, but then there were people looking up at her through the door, pulling her out of her nest between the bunks, carrying her out of the train, and sitting her on the ground. She looked at the moaning figures around her, but it was too dark to tell who was who until the sun came up.

There were people missing limbs, people bleeding all over, and people with clearly broken arms or legs. The medical assistance crew had arrived some time ago, and Lena was finally pulled off to the side. A young man and a nurse had very carefully looked her over, checking all of her limbs for breaks and pulling shards of glass out of her skin.

Then the questions started.

“Who are you traveling with?” The man spoke in clear English, with a British accent that rang like a bell.

“My father. I think he was up in the dining car.” There was a ringing, buzzing sound all around her head.

“And your mother?” The young doctor was picking up a clipboard and flipping through the pages.

“She’s dead.”

“I see. She was in the dining car as well?”

Lena looked up at the nonchalant expression on the doctor’s face. “No…She’s been dead since before I ever knew her. She died when I was little.”

The doctor looked at her for a moment, as if trying to comprehend what she had just said, then called to the nurse in a different language. She came over and a brief exchange occurred before she walked away again. The doctor was looking back at his clipboard.

“What is your father’s name?”

“Collins. Aaron Collins.” She proceeded to spell the name out as the doctor searched through his pages.

He flipped through the leaves deftly for what felt like hours. “And you’re sure he was in the dining car?”

“No.”

The doctor looked up.

“He was…I was going to sleep, and he decided to go to the dining car to get water.”

He was flipping through the pages again. Another man, this one not a doctor, but dressed in civilian type clothes and wearing an official looking badge, walked over. The doctor turned to him and started into another florid exchange that Lena didn’t understand. The new man was casting her nervous glances. He finally spoke; he had a strong accent.

“Miss, I’m very sorry, we can’t find him. Would you be willing to identify the body?”

Lena stared at him. What? They couldn’t find him, so they were assuming him dead?

“I…I’m sorry, what are you asking me to do?”

The man took on a very official tone. “Can you tell me what he looks like?”

Lena sat, stunned. The man asked her again, and she did the best she could to describe Aaron’s appearance. She tried as hard as she could to remember what he had been wearing, but couldn’t. All she could remember was that he had on his grey coat.

The man left, came back, and took Lena with him. They went to a small tent with lists posted all along the outside. People were standing around, looking at the lists with sullen faces. Inside the tent, the bodies had been arranged in rows with an aisle leading through the middle. The first body wasn’t him.

The second body was.

They had washed his face. The man refused to remove the sheet from more than his face; he explained that the body had been crushed, and was not something a person should see. Aaron’s face looked calm, but it wasn’t like he was sleeping. She knew he was dead.

Lena stood over him in the small tent that had been erected to protect the privacy of the dead. She felt lighter than air—she wasn’t even touching the ground. She was hovering like a ghost. It had to be a dream. She had to wake up, sooner or later.

There was a loud knock on the door and Lena sat bolt upright. She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she had apparently been dreaming. She had arrived in the morning, and it was already dark outside again. There came a second knock, and then the door opened. Dorotea stuck her head in.

“Abilene?” She asked warmly. “Are you awake?”

“Yes.” The word caught in Lena’s throat. “Yes…I’m awake.”

“We’re serving dinner in the kitchen now, if you’re hungry.”

Lena was suddenly very dizzy. She hadn’t eaten in more than a day, but she still wasn’t hungry. She looked around the room again; she needed to use the phone, anyways. And it was probably best if she ate something while it was free and available.

“Okay.”

Visions of her nightmare were coming back to her, very slowly, and she had the sickening realization that it wasn’t how she remembered it. The doctor was different. The official was different. The tent, the lists posted on the outside, and the people looking at the lists she didn’t remember at all. She wasn’t sure if any of it had happened like in the dream, or if she had been too distressed at the time to notice.

Lena followed Dorotea out into the hall and to the kitchen, where a couple dozen people were serving themselves off of a buffet-style setup. There were card tables and chairs set up in the open areas around the room, where people were sitting. Dorotea helped Lena get her food, then they settled at a quiet table in the corner. Lena stared at the dinner roll, lentil soup, and chicken breast in front of her. She still wasn’t hungry, but she pecked at her roll for a while. Suddenly, Dorotea’s arm shot up; she was waving at someone across the room.

Through the crowd, Lena tried to see who it was. The throng of people parted and she saw a scraggly man walking towards them. Her stomach fell to the floor and a wave of nausea came over her; he looked much older and thinner than the last time Lena had seen him, but the eyes were the same. She had never forgotten those eyes. It was Warren Astley; the man who had tried to strangle her to death.

Lena pushed her chair back with a loud screech and jumped up. Dorotea looked at her, shocked and bewildered, but Lena’s gaze was still fixed on Warren. He had frozen in place, a worried and confused expression on his face. He looked away, but didn’t move.

“Do you know each other?” Dorotea asked cautiously.      

They stayed fixed like that for several long seconds; Warren avoiding Lena’s gaze, Lena trying to figure out if she should run or fight, and Dorotea very confused looking at both of them. Warren Astley wasn’t the dark shadowy figure Lena remembered from the night by the barn. He had changed so much; he wasn’t the noose-wielding terror she had thought about in those moments before giving her exposition for the Council. He was just a thin man, perhaps homeless, who hadn’t shaved in several days, wearing clothes that didn’t fit him, and looking very sad.

Warren finally allowed his eyes to wander back to Lena’s. They were pained. He looked to Dorotea.

“Yes.” He shrugged. “We’ve met.”

Dorotea’s eyes went wide, and she nodded; a tight smile spread across her lips. “I knew you belonged together. God has brought you here for a reason.” She gestured for Warren to sit at the table, which he did, but Lena still wasn’t quite sure what to do. She stood there, next to the table, until Dorotea stood and practically forced her into a chair. “You need to help each other. I’ll leave you alone now.”

As Dorotea walked away, Lena’s pulse quickened. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Warren Astley happened to be hanging around the town where someone had just tried to kill her. Her first impulse was that he was involved; but he didn’t look involved. He looked like a miserable bum. Moreover, he had seemed genuinely surprised to see her sitting there.

“I’m sorry. All I can ask is your forgiveness, though I know I don’t deserve it. I’m so sorry.” His voice was quiet and calm, and so very different from the strained tone he had used with her more than a year before.