The Mind's Eye (31 page)
Authors: K.C. Finn
Tags: #young adult, #historical, #wwii, #historical romance, #ww2, #ya, #europe, #telepathic, #clean teen publishing, #kc finn
My vision
grew cloudy as I threw off my covers to see my legs. A salmon
coloured blotch the size of a dustbin lid had wrapped itself around
one of my knees. I couldn’t move; I sat there staring at my leg as
my damp neck grew weary of holding up my head. I was going again,
back to the blackness, for how long only God knew. And possibly my
mother.
desperately to say ‘Who from?’, but there was a surge of heat in my
face. My body slumped over against my will and soon-after I was
gone.
***
Though I
didn’t hear Mum’s voice again, the fever plagued me for over a
week, which told me she had found a way to stop me from using my
powers, however unfair it was. When Mam was in the room I felt
clear headed and almost well, but any time that Blod or Idrys came
to check on me I almost always went under the fever’s heated grip
before I could answer anything more than their first question. I
started trying to pass quick bits of the story to them before the
fever could take me down, but I wasn’t sure if they were getting
through.
me for more, but I couldn’t reply.
My days in
the sickbed were degrading at best after all the progress I had
made. I shuddered to think how weak I would be when Mum finally
allowed me to come to again, if indeed she didn’t keep me raging
like this until the end of the war. The rash gave me sore skin, Mam
said she even thought it had got inside my throat and my
fluctuating temperature meant that my head spun every time I even
adjusted it on my pillow.
But most
disturbing of all were my dreams. I knew, sometimes, that when I
was half asleep I stepped into other people’s heads by accident,
but in the delirium of the fever I couldn’t be sure that anything I
saw between my waking moments was real. I thought that Blod was
crying in her room at night, which might have been real, but I also
had visions of a grim grey place where someone in horrific pain was
biting so hard on their lip that they cracked it open. I could
taste the blood when I woke. I saw the dark black tunnels under the
POW camp, felt the cramped little walls closing in until I screamed
myself awake, terrified that they were going to bury me there
before I could get out. I dreamt of lying flat and being told not
to move whilst the floor beneath me bobbed to and fro like I was
riding a huge wave. I dreamt of people in a dimly lit café talking
in a foreign tongue.
And I dreamt
of running. There was so much running, day and night, a speed so
fast that the buildings, fields and forests around me were nothing
but colourful blurs. Aching lungs sagged like they were filling
slowly with sand, but I kept on running, wild eyes searching in the
blur for the next direction to take. A strong, hammering heart
raged in my chest, thumping loud in my ears every time I stopped to
hide. The hiding was never for long before I took off again,
seeking the next target. When I woke from the running I could never
remember enough; I lay frustrated and crying day after day.
Until the
fever just stopped. It was night time when I opened my eyes and
felt that the pounding in my head had finally abated. I sat up
immediately, my limbs floppy and raw as they were finally able to
obey my wishes. I didn’t have the strength for anything more, so I
cupped my freezing cold hands to my face to call out for help. For
the first time I noticed that the nipping frost of winter had set
in on the dark windows, when I shouted out my breath followed in a
stream of condensation.
It was Blod
who heard me first; she burst into the room clutching a long letter
on bright white paper. I smiled at her weakly and her sparkling
eyes lit up. She rushed to sit down beside me on the bed and
flapped the letter at me with a fearful, nervy smile.
quite follow her, but I nodded all the same, reaching limply for
the letter. She held it up for me to read, her hand quivering so
much it took me ages to make out the words. Steven Bickerstaff was
in a military hospital in Llandudno, which was about as far north
as you could go in wales without falling into the sea. He was
recovering from undisclosed injuries and the doctors needed someone
to bring him home to the village.
scenes from the night in Africa replaced my selfish wish, I saw
Bickerstaff’s silhouette illuminated by the light of the oncoming
trucks, the gut wrenching sight of the remains of his leg flying
yards away from his body. I could still hear him screaming. I
looked at Blod again. Undisclosed injuries, the letter had said.
She didn’t know what had happened to him.
help but smile. “Don’t phrase it like that when you see him,” I
advised.
***
I made a few
difficult decisions between my first moment of feeling well again
and the time that we got on the train to Llandudno. The first
decision was not to go looking for Henri. Mum had perhaps decided
that I had learned my lesson about staying out of the war and I
hadn’t felt hot or headachy at all since the fever had left me, so
I had a feeling it wasn’t a good idea to go looking for him right
away, no matter how desperately I wanted to. The other thing that
helped me resist temptation was the prospect of being allowed to go
to the hospital with Mam and Blod to bring Bickerstaff home. Having
seen what the poor man had been through, it seemed selfish to risk
putting myself back in a sickbed when I should’ve been there to
help him.
The other
decision was to tell Blod what had happened to Bickerstaff. At
first I hadn’t said a word, but she was so excited to see him that
I knew she’d think I’d betrayed her if I didn’t tell her he was
missing half a leg. Our friendship had never felt particularly
secure and we’d only really come together once I’d offered to use
my powers to help her. Besides which it was only right that she
knew what she’d be getting herself into if she went to Llandudno
ready to shower the bad tempered solider with affection. He had
surely been through hell in the last ten days and even being back
in Blighty couldn’t solve the problems he now had.
The hospital
was what I had expected, a proper sterile space with that cold,
clammy feel to it like rainclouds were forming overhead. It was
absurdly busy; every corridor was full of people chattering away in
English and Welsh, sometimes at the same time. I saw flashes of men
in uniform, some visitors and some patients and several outside
courtyards where men in pyjamas were gathered in clouds of
cigarette smoke, their faces grim as they nodded to one another in
hushed tones. When we reached the section we had been guided to
there was a pretty nurse at a desk who gave Mam a pile of forms to
look over before Bickerstaff could be released.
at me, helping me out of my chair and onto my crutches. She grabbed
the green grapes that Mam had paid a fortune for and led me off
into the ward. I was smiling too until we crossed through the
double doors, when a tidal wave of sadness seemed to hit us without
warning. Faint cries came from behind screened sections as we
passed the first few beds. A young woman passed us in silent tears.
The men that were in full view were an atrocious sight, their once
youthful faces marred by scars and burns. They had casts and
splints and great metal contraptions that seemed to be holding
their injured bodies together; one even had bandages all over his
face. I feared what might have been underneath.
I spotted
Bickerstaff at the very end of the ward by virtue of the fact that
he once again had his nose in a file. I noted the empty tray at the
end of his bed and supposed it was probably his own file that he
was analysing. Typical. The ward was far too noisy for him to hear
us coming, even with Blod clicking along in her best heels and me
clunking my huge heavy crutches all the way down the perfectly
clean path. He was in plain white pyjamas with the covers pulled up
to his chest and as we got closer I saw once again the huge scar
that marred one side of his face where the Iti blade had slashed
him. All the same he looked rather well compared to the other men
suffering around him, it was no wonder that they wanted to pack him
off home.
blonde head shot up at the sound of her voice. His mouth dropped
open a little and let his file fall into his lap. His eyes flashed
to me briefly before they settled completely on Blod.
staring wide-eyed at Blod. “That’ll do, I suppose.” His scarred
face expanded into a sheepish grin before he gulped nervously.
Blod pushed
the grapes at me, which I barely caught without dropping my
crutches, then rushed to sit beside him on his bed and threw her
arms almost violently around his neck. Bickerstaff reached out and
hugged her to him, looking at me awkwardly and then out into the
ward.
something about Mam against Bickerstaff’s neck that I thought
sounded extremely offensive. I ambled over and dumped the doctor’s
grapes on his bedside table, waiting until Blod released him from
her grip. When she came away there were tears collecting in her
eyes. Bickerstaff wiped them away with his thumb, looking to me
with a frown.
mouth dropped open again, his blonde eyebrows dropping to frame the
confusion in his eyes.
what he thought of me or how suspicious he would be. Mum might have
been able to stop my mind going to Henri’s, but she couldn’t
prevent me asking these kinds of questions in person. Bickerstaff
looked at me like I had three heads, but he replied all the
same.
carefully. “They sent Carter back to you?” I asked.
At the
mention of his fallen ally Bickerstaff dropped his head. “What was
left of him,” he muttered. As he spoke Blod’s hand snaked across
the bed to hold his. He clutched it tightly, giving her a small
smile before he looked back to me. “How do you know all this?”
moved out of Bickerstaff’s grip and touched his knee under the
hospital blankets. “Mam doesn’t know anything, as usual,” Blod
explained, “So we’ll keep it that way, and you’ll have to explain
to her about your leg when she comes in.”
grew cloudy as I threw off my covers to see my legs. A salmon
coloured blotch the size of a dustbin lid had wrapped itself around
one of my knees. I couldn’t move; I sat there staring at my leg as
my damp neck grew weary of holding up my head. I was going again,
back to the blackness, for how long only God knew. And possibly my
mother.
“
I won’t forgive you,” I murmured, my teeth sticking to my top
lip as I fought to speak, “If someone bad happens to Henri, I
won’t-”
I’m sorry,
Mum said again,
but I have my orders.
desperately to say ‘Who from?’, but there was a surge of heat in my
face. My body slumped over against my will and soon-after I was
gone.
***
Though I
didn’t hear Mum’s voice again, the fever plagued me for over a
week, which told me she had found a way to stop me from using my
powers, however unfair it was. When Mam was in the room I felt
clear headed and almost well, but any time that Blod or Idrys came
to check on me I almost always went under the fever’s heated grip
before I could answer anything more than their first question. I
started trying to pass quick bits of the story to them before the
fever could take me down, but I wasn’t sure if they were getting
through.
“
Bickers…” I slurred, my eyes half closed,
“S’okay.”
me for more, but I couldn’t reply.
My days in
the sickbed were degrading at best after all the progress I had
made. I shuddered to think how weak I would be when Mum finally
allowed me to come to again, if indeed she didn’t keep me raging
like this until the end of the war. The rash gave me sore skin, Mam
said she even thought it had got inside my throat and my
fluctuating temperature meant that my head spun every time I even
adjusted it on my pillow.
But most
disturbing of all were my dreams. I knew, sometimes, that when I
was half asleep I stepped into other people’s heads by accident,
but in the delirium of the fever I couldn’t be sure that anything I
saw between my waking moments was real. I thought that Blod was
crying in her room at night, which might have been real, but I also
had visions of a grim grey place where someone in horrific pain was
biting so hard on their lip that they cracked it open. I could
taste the blood when I woke. I saw the dark black tunnels under the
POW camp, felt the cramped little walls closing in until I screamed
myself awake, terrified that they were going to bury me there
before I could get out. I dreamt of lying flat and being told not
to move whilst the floor beneath me bobbed to and fro like I was
riding a huge wave. I dreamt of people in a dimly lit café talking
in a foreign tongue.
And I dreamt
of running. There was so much running, day and night, a speed so
fast that the buildings, fields and forests around me were nothing
but colourful blurs. Aching lungs sagged like they were filling
slowly with sand, but I kept on running, wild eyes searching in the
blur for the next direction to take. A strong, hammering heart
raged in my chest, thumping loud in my ears every time I stopped to
hide. The hiding was never for long before I took off again,
seeking the next target. When I woke from the running I could never
remember enough; I lay frustrated and crying day after day.
Until the
fever just stopped. It was night time when I opened my eyes and
felt that the pounding in my head had finally abated. I sat up
immediately, my limbs floppy and raw as they were finally able to
obey my wishes. I didn’t have the strength for anything more, so I
cupped my freezing cold hands to my face to call out for help. For
the first time I noticed that the nipping frost of winter had set
in on the dark windows, when I shouted out my breath followed in a
stream of condensation.
It was Blod
who heard me first; she burst into the room clutching a long letter
on bright white paper. I smiled at her weakly and her sparkling
eyes lit up. She rushed to sit down beside me on the bed and
flapped the letter at me with a fearful, nervy smile.
“
He’s home,” she said in barely more than a whisper, “This
just got yur. Mam said he don’t have any family, see, so they wrote
to us after they asked him.”
quite follow her, but I nodded all the same, reaching limply for
the letter. She held it up for me to read, her hand quivering so
much it took me ages to make out the words. Steven Bickerstaff was
in a military hospital in Llandudno, which was about as far north
as you could go in wales without falling into the sea. He was
recovering from undisclosed injuries and the doctors needed someone
to bring him home to the village.
“
I didn’t know he didn’t have any family,” I said
sadly.
“
Neither did I,” Blod answered, taking the letter back to read
it again. Her eyes drank in the words and a wicked jealous moment
hit me where I wished it was Henri coming home instead.
scenes from the night in Africa replaced my selfish wish, I saw
Bickerstaff’s silhouette illuminated by the light of the oncoming
trucks, the gut wrenching sight of the remains of his leg flying
yards away from his body. I could still hear him screaming. I
looked at Blod again. Undisclosed injuries, the letter had said.
She didn’t know what had happened to him.
“
Mam says we have to pull together and help him,” Blod said
with almost a giggle, “No complaints here of course.” She hugged
the letter to her chest and gave me a secretive little look. “I’ve
missed his surly, rotten face so much, you know.”
help but smile. “Don’t phrase it like that when you see him,” I
advised.
***
I made a few
difficult decisions between my first moment of feeling well again
and the time that we got on the train to Llandudno. The first
decision was not to go looking for Henri. Mum had perhaps decided
that I had learned my lesson about staying out of the war and I
hadn’t felt hot or headachy at all since the fever had left me, so
I had a feeling it wasn’t a good idea to go looking for him right
away, no matter how desperately I wanted to. The other thing that
helped me resist temptation was the prospect of being allowed to go
to the hospital with Mam and Blod to bring Bickerstaff home. Having
seen what the poor man had been through, it seemed selfish to risk
putting myself back in a sickbed when I should’ve been there to
help him.
The other
decision was to tell Blod what had happened to Bickerstaff. At
first I hadn’t said a word, but she was so excited to see him that
I knew she’d think I’d betrayed her if I didn’t tell her he was
missing half a leg. Our friendship had never felt particularly
secure and we’d only really come together once I’d offered to use
my powers to help her. Besides which it was only right that she
knew what she’d be getting herself into if she went to Llandudno
ready to shower the bad tempered solider with affection. He had
surely been through hell in the last ten days and even being back
in Blighty couldn’t solve the problems he now had.
The hospital
was what I had expected, a proper sterile space with that cold,
clammy feel to it like rainclouds were forming overhead. It was
absurdly busy; every corridor was full of people chattering away in
English and Welsh, sometimes at the same time. I saw flashes of men
in uniform, some visitors and some patients and several outside
courtyards where men in pyjamas were gathered in clouds of
cigarette smoke, their faces grim as they nodded to one another in
hushed tones. When we reached the section we had been guided to
there was a pretty nurse at a desk who gave Mam a pile of forms to
look over before Bickerstaff could be released.
“
While you do that, shall we go in and let him know we’re here
Mam?” I asked as Mam sat down with the paperwork, a puzzled look on
her rosy face.
“
I s’pose so,” she muttered, leafing through the pages, “This
might take a bit of time.”
at me, helping me out of my chair and onto my crutches. She grabbed
the green grapes that Mam had paid a fortune for and led me off
into the ward. I was smiling too until we crossed through the
double doors, when a tidal wave of sadness seemed to hit us without
warning. Faint cries came from behind screened sections as we
passed the first few beds. A young woman passed us in silent tears.
The men that were in full view were an atrocious sight, their once
youthful faces marred by scars and burns. They had casts and
splints and great metal contraptions that seemed to be holding
their injured bodies together; one even had bandages all over his
face. I feared what might have been underneath.
I spotted
Bickerstaff at the very end of the ward by virtue of the fact that
he once again had his nose in a file. I noted the empty tray at the
end of his bed and supposed it was probably his own file that he
was analysing. Typical. The ward was far too noisy for him to hear
us coming, even with Blod clicking along in her best heels and me
clunking my huge heavy crutches all the way down the perfectly
clean path. He was in plain white pyjamas with the covers pulled up
to his chest and as we got closer I saw once again the huge scar
that marred one side of his face where the Iti blade had slashed
him. All the same he looked rather well compared to the other men
suffering around him, it was no wonder that they wanted to pack him
off home.
“
Oi,” Blod said once we were at the foot of his
bed.
blonde head shot up at the sound of her voice. His mouth dropped
open a little and let his file fall into his lap. His eyes flashed
to me briefly before they settled completely on Blod.
“
I,” he stuttered, “I thought Idrys might come.”
“
You’re stuck with us and Mam to get you home on the train,” I
informed him.
staring wide-eyed at Blod. “That’ll do, I suppose.” His scarred
face expanded into a sheepish grin before he gulped nervously.
Blod pushed
the grapes at me, which I barely caught without dropping my
crutches, then rushed to sit beside him on his bed and threw her
arms almost violently around his neck. Bickerstaff reached out and
hugged her to him, looking at me awkwardly and then out into the
ward.
“
Steady on,” he said quietly, “What if your mother comes
in?”
something about Mam against Bickerstaff’s neck that I thought
sounded extremely offensive. I ambled over and dumped the doctor’s
grapes on his bedside table, waiting until Blod released him from
her grip. When she came away there were tears collecting in her
eyes. Bickerstaff wiped them away with his thumb, looking to me
with a frown.
“
You won’t know about Henri,” he said in a breathy
tone.
“
Did they recover him from the Italians?”
mouth dropped open again, his blonde eyebrows dropping to frame the
confusion in his eyes.
“
No, they got away,” he said in disbelief, “How do
you-?”
“
But they haven’t found a body? There’s been no news of him
since the ambush?”
what he thought of me or how suspicious he would be. Mum might have
been able to stop my mind going to Henri’s, but she couldn’t
prevent me asking these kinds of questions in person. Bickerstaff
looked at me like I had three heads, but he replied all the
same.
“
Nothing,” he said, shaking his head, “I think if they’d
killed him we might have had a body back to bury. That particular
team had a penchant for that sort of thing.”
carefully. “They sent Carter back to you?” I asked.
At the
mention of his fallen ally Bickerstaff dropped his head. “What was
left of him,” he muttered. As he spoke Blod’s hand snaked across
the bed to hold his. He clutched it tightly, giving her a small
smile before he looked back to me. “How do you know all this?”
“
I’ll let Blod explain it to you when we get home,” I replied,
content at least that there was a fair chance Henri was
alive.
Where
he
was alive was now the problem. I found my eyes travelling down the
bed to where one solitary foot was poking out of the covers. “You
don’t have to explain what happened to you, either,” I added
gently.
moved out of Bickerstaff’s grip and touched his knee under the
hospital blankets. “Mam doesn’t know anything, as usual,” Blod
explained, “So we’ll keep it that way, and you’ll have to explain
to her about your leg when she comes in.”
“
But you know?” he asked, his face young and helpless. Blod
leaned in and planted the tiniest kiss on his lips. Bickerstaff
straightened up and took a deep breath, looking down at his hands.
“In that case, it’s a good job I taught you to walk, Kit. I’ll be
needing that chair of yours now.”
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