Morrigan (16 page)

When the food arrived, Morrigan only cracked
open the door, and prayed Tiarn would not cry out in his sleep
again until after their host had left. Trying to get him to eat the
thick beef stew and bread had proved impossible. When she lifted
the spoon to his lips, he cursed and brushed her hand away.

“I cannot touch that. I cannot stand the
smell. Please, Morrigan, take it away.”

Morrigan was concerned when he refused to
eat, but she could hardly force feed him. At least she had managed
to get a little water into him along with the medicine. Still, the
food didn’t completely go to waste. She managed to shovel a few
morsels into her mouth while Tiarn was sleeping, and she found a
moment to change out of her wet clothes. She pulled out the extra
pair of stretch pants and the sweater she had brought and let her
gown hang across a chair in front of the fire to dry.

Morrigan savored the few minutes of quiet.
She took out her sketchbook and drew the likeness of Brigid and the
everyday people of the town. She listened to the rain beating
against the roof of the inn. The light patter was almost
mesmerizing, but her quiet peace was short lived. Too quickly,
Tiarn was tossing and thrashing. In his agitation, the piles of
blankets were knocked to the ground. She ran to grab the bundle
from the floor and started to rearrange them on the bed, but Tiarn
pushed them roughly away.

“Too hot,” he mumbled. His face was covered
in beads of sweat, yet still his body wracked with tremors.

“You need to stay covered,” Morrigan told
him.

She forced the covers back over him. As
disturbing as it was to see him so drenched in sweat, she recalled
reading that the best thing for a fever was to sweat it out. He
only struggled for a moment, but she realized it was because he had
passed out again. She bundled him up tight and took advantage of
the reprieve to check his arm and change the bandages. She
unraveled the gauze. Underneath, the wound was not bloody, but the
long cut looked puckered and swollen, with a thin veil of yellow
discharge leaking through.

She tried not to gag as she took out her
meager first aid kit and hoped it would be enough to help him. For
the first time, she missed her old home and its modern
conveniences. She wished she could just pull up to an ER where a
simple flesh wound would be easy for a team of trained physicians
to heal. Of course, if they saw him morphing into a wolf, they
might want to dissect him—so maybe they were better off in Tír na
NÓg after all.

Tiarn didn’t even notice as she cleaned the
wound for the second time. She tried to use the products sparingly,
in the hopes of getting at least one more use out of them before
they were gone. He hardly moved as she worked, he was sleeping so
deeply. It made her nervous at first, and she had to check his
pulse every few minutes and make sure he was still breathing. She
saw his chest rise and fall steadily, so she continued with her
work. She noticed the hydrogen peroxide bubbled a great deal more
than it had the first time, which hopefully meant it was doing its
job. She was just putting on the finishing touches when Tiarn began
to stir again.

He was not quite awake, yet he moaned and
thrashed on the bed. His eyes rolled into the back of his head so
she could see only the whites, and his body trembled furiously. She
was terrified he might go into a seizure or stop breathing. She
struggled to remember the CPR basics she had learned in health
class, even as she did what little she could to soothe him. She
found a little towel next to a chamber pot which was filled with
clean water for bathing. She wet the towel in the water and carried
it back to try to cool the raging fire within him. She wished she
could control the flames that consumed him as easily as she did the
element.

Tiarn flinched as she dabbed the cool cloth
to his feverish brow. She fought him from pushing it away with one
hand while she nervously chewed her fingernails on the other. Tiarn
was tossing and turning in his troubled sleep and gripping the
blankets so roughly she was surprised there was anything left of
them. It seemed as though hours had passed with no change. He was
quiet aside from the moaning, but then he began to mumble
incoherently. It was just a whisper at first, but as time passed,
the cries grew louder. She struggled to make out his words, but
some of them seemed like they might have been in another language,
perhaps Gaelic or something even more ancient.

“Tiarn,” she whispered. “Tiarn, can you hear
me?”

His fever seemed to get worse no matter what
she did. He was growing more and more delusional. She had no idea
what to do, and she was terrified he was going to die. That wasn’t
only scary because she would be stranded in an alien world all
alone. She was also afraid of losing him when so much remained
unspoken between them. They deserved time to explore the feelings
they had been trying to suppress from the second their eyes met
through her classroom window. That moment seemed like a lifetime
ago. And for Tiarn, it might truly be a lifetime, because she
wasn’t sure he was going to leave the inn alive.

“No, no, I couldn’t have . . . no, no, please
. . . .”

Tiarn’s delirious ramblings were converting
back to English. The anguished whimpers woke Morrigan from her own
selfish reveries. Tiarn had opened his eyes, though they remained
glazed. She knew she should be a little nervous that the wolf would
take over, but she couldn’t even begin to worry about her own
safety. She only knew he was seeing something that was far removed
from their quiet room, and whatever it was, it was devastating to
him.

“Dead! No, not the child. He cannot be
dead!”

He was starting to get louder, and Morrigan
was afraid the innkeeper was going to come back to see what was
going on. Yet, a part of her wished he could continue. What child
was he talking about? Could he be a father? Maybe he had a younger
brother or sister? He cried out in despair again, practically
weeping as he reached out a hand to the invisible child of his
past.

“It’s all right, Tiarn,” Morrigan soothed and
touched his forehead with the cloth, though it was already starting
to dry. “Can you hear me? Everything is all right. You’re safe
here.”

“Mor . . . Morrigan?” His voice was thick,
confused.

“Yes, Tiarn, it’s me.”

She was beyond relieved that he was aware
enough to recognize her. His fingers stretched and searched wildly
for hers among the maze of blankets on the bed. Morrigan reached
out to grab hold of his hand. She thought he was just looking for
comfort and it would be a gentle gesture, but he squeezed her
fingers with surprising force. She could see her knuckles turning
white under the strength of his grip.

“Go!” he ordered. His teeth were bared in a
combination of fear and panic, and beads of spittle flew from his
lips. “Leave me; you must leave me . . . before I kill you
too!”

At first, Morrigan felt shocked and a little
afraid. Then she calmed down when she realized it was probably the
same delusional babble he had been spewing since they arrived. She
had seen him in battle. He had been careful to never strike a fatal
blow, though he had ample opportunity to do so. She knew he was no
killer. Yet, he had hinted at something similar earlier, even
before the fever had claimed him.

“Please, Morrigan. You must flee . . . you
must leave before it is too late. I cannot harm you, not you, not
my sweet princess.”

“It’s all right, Tiarn,” she repeated. “You
didn’t hurt anyone. And I know you would never hurt me. Just try to
relax and go back to sleep.”

He shook his head furiously. “Don’t you see
him? The boy! Goddess save me, I have killed a child! What makes
you think I will not kill you as well?”

“Tiarn, you don’t know what you’re saying,”
Morrigan whispered. A small seed of doubt was beginning to creep
in. “There is no child here. No one is hurt.”

He growled and squeezed her hand even
tighter. She flinched at the unexpected brutality of it and tried
to pull her hand away, but even in his illness, Tiarn was too
strong for her. He gripped her hand even tighter, with more
strength than she would have thought possible considering his
weakened condition.

“You know not what you risk by remaining
here, Princess,” he spat bitterly. All hint of tenderness was gone
from his voice. “You do not know me! I am an animal! A monster! I
have done darker deeds than you can even imagine!”

As if to prove his point, his green eyes
flashed and changed to yellow slits. His canine teeth extended into
a gruesome snarl, and a low rumble emitted from his chest.
Morrigan, though shaken, refused to leave her post. She had seen
this inner struggle in him before. She knew there was goodness
within him, no matter how hard he tried to convince her
otherwise.

“I won’t leave you, Tiarn,” she told him. “I
can’t.”

She stared him down until finally he
collapsed against the pillows in an exhausted, defeated heap. His
eyes flashed back and forth between animal and man, before settling
into their former glazed state.

“I do not wish to harm you, Morrigan,” he
whispered desperately. “I would rather die.”

She smiled gently and went back to wiping the
sweat from his forehead. “You won’t, Tiarn. I know you won’t. No
one is going to die here tonight.”

“The boy!” he cried out again, and she knew
the moment of rationality was gone. He had started to sob, and he
clutched her hand in desperation. “The child . . . I did not mean
to harm him . . . oh please, not the child. . . .”

The next few hours continued much the same.
He would beg and plead with her to save the child he spoke of, only
to fall to pieces again when he realized it was too late. It was a
nightmare that he lived over and over throughout the course of the
evening. The physical pains of his sickness were eclipsed by the
emotional torment he suffered. Seeing the man she loved in such
torment all but ripped her heart to shreds. Morrigan would have
done anything to spare him that agony, but all she could do was
hold him, comfort him, and somehow try to convince him everything
was going to be okay.

Several times during the course of the
evening, she glimpsed the face of the lycan. Each time the
transformation would begin, Tiarn somehow found the inner strength
to drive the beast back down, despite his illness. She saw how
difficult the struggle was. He seemed drained and broken to the
point she was unsure he would continue to fight. Somehow, he always
did, and she marveled at his willpower.

There were also several times when she
thought she was going to lose him to the fever. His body was
burning, but he wouldn’t drink. He would tremble and gasp for air,
and a few times she was sure she heard the death rattle. The
endless night seemed to go on and on like that forever, until
finally the sun began to peek through the windows of the inn. With
the breaking of the morning sun, Tiarn’s fever finally broke as
well. While it didn’t go back to normal immediately, he felt
considerably cooler. He ceased his constant tossing and finally
fell into a true, relaxed sleep. She could hear the sound of his
steady breath rise and fall, no longer raspy and uneven. She said a
silent thank you to the Goddess for allowing him to pull through
this nightmare and prayed it would be the worst battle they would
have to face before reaching her mother.

Morrigan realized all at once that she was
exhausted. She had only dozed briefly the night before in the log
she had holed up in, and after that they had been moving nonstop
all day. She didn’t want to stray too far from Tiarn in case he
needed anything. She curled up next to him in the double bed and
laid her head down on the feather pillow. Beside her, Tiarn sensed
her nearness. She almost expected him to push her away now that he
was more himself, but instead, he shimmied over to give her a
little more room. Even more shocking, he put his good arm around
her and pulled her close. Morrigan fell into a well-deserved sleep,
safe and secure in the shelter of his arms.

Morrigan awoke to a loud pounding at the
door. She bolted upright in the bed and was disoriented for a
moment. This wasn’t her foster parents’ house or even the forest
floor where she had made her bed the last few nights. In a rush,
the previous day’s events came back to her. She reached out for
Tiarn, to see how he was faring, only to find the spot beside her
empty.

“Tiarn!”

She was instantly alert and filled with fear.
She imagined he might have morphed into the wolf as she slept, and
at best, done away with the village chickens. At worst—she wouldn’t
even let herself finish the thought. She jumped out of bed and
reached for her shoes so she could search for him. Just before she
was about to have a complete and total nervous breakdown, she saw
him. Tiarn was fully dressed and leaning against the table, gnawing
hungrily on the stale bread that was left over from the previous
night’s meal. He gave her a cocky smirk as he ripped into it.
Before she could open her mouth to ask what he was doing out of
bed, there was another pounding at their door.

“Tiarn, what? Who . . . ?”

A new panic was starting to take hold. Were
the soldiers of Arianrhod waiting behind the door? Surely they
wouldn’t have bothered with such civilities as knocking. They would
have broken down the door, without waiting for a reply or giving
any warning.

“It is just the innkeeper,” Tiarn told her,
completely relaxed. “I requested she bring up our breakfast. I also
took the liberty of requesting the room for an additional evening.
It is your turn to rest, Princess. The queen can wait one more
day.”

The pounding at the door was a little more
insistent this time. Brigid’s cheerful voice called out. “Is all
well in there, my dears?”