Days passed. They took out my staples and I was allowed to get up and exercise. Short walks and then, they took me to do a stress test where they evaluated my heart. Checked all my organs and even my brain. I understood direction, had trouble with simple tasks like putting on clothes in the right order, putting round blocks in round holes and squares into square holes. Zippers were impossible for my fingers to grasp except for the giant one on the wooden board. I hated trying to do the buttons.
I had trouble picking things up from the floor, because I no longer had any depth perception. My speech was hard to understand, halting, I could see the proper word in my head but it came out of my mouth as something totally different.
This morning, I had served myself breakfast under Murphy’s watchful eyes, messier than usual because I had been given a knife and wanted to hide it from him. He made me nervous. It was only a butter knife but I thought I might be able to hone it to a dangerous point by using the concrete of the wall. When he turned to see Corwin and Merlin enter, I slid it off the tray and tucked it under my thigh where it quickly lost its steel chilliness.
“Good morning, Raven, Murphy,” both greeted us and Merlin came around to hug me even though I flinched and sat back. He looked at the tray and raised an eyebrow.
Murphy said,“He’s sitting on it.” Merlin held out his hand and I glared back. He muttered a spell and the knife under my leg burned hot enough to blister. I ignored it and he sighed, reached under me and pulled it out.
“You’re as stubborn as my grandfather, boy. It runs in the family. Here, Murphy.” He handed the gargoyle the knife and uttered another spell that turned the burn numb. “No wonder you pissed Jurt off,” he sighed. “He always did like to torture the lesser demons because they fought back even when it was likely to hurt more. He hated me growing up in the Courts. Having you to break must have been a great way to take it out on me.”
“Crawled tiny wizard,” I snarled and felt the tears spring to my eyes. They puzzled over that one and it was Murphy that deciphered it.
“Called him baby Merlin,” he translated. There was a knock on the door and two young women came in, introduced themselves as the physical and respiratory therapists there to work on me. Everyone but Murphy went to the waiting room while I performed for them, no better than before their foolish tasks. Next, came a woman dressed in soft pastel suit with a white coat. Her name was embroidered on the left breast pocket in blue.
Dr. Caroline Nieve, PhD. She came straight to my good side and held out her hand. “Hello, Raven. I’m Dr. Nieve. Dr. Caroline Nieve. I’ve come to talk to you.” She ignored Murphy as if he was furniture but it didn’t annoy him. Murphy didn’t have feelings like a human, after all, he was stone. A gargoyle. He grinned and took a seat on the window sill and he looked like a stone sculpture until I blinked.
“Being?” I asked studying her hands. They were soft, her nails long and polished. Short hair in a bob, green eyes and freckles on her little nose, glasses in her pocket. Pretty in a soft, chic way. Fierce intelligence in her eyes.
“I’m a doctor of Psychology, a Psychiatrist, Raven. I help people overcome the trauma of physical, mental and sexual abuse.”
“Far away,” I snarled and lifted my hands. Murphy was there in a split second, lifting her aside and grabbing my arms. He held them apart and above my head.
“You will not harm anyone who is trying to help you, Corbin,” he said in a tight voice. “Or I will punish you.”
“You mind you can?” I hissed. “Look at body! Took more than you could plate outer! King of Cruel my Master. Spit on you!”
“Please, Murphy,” she said and put her hands on his bulging arm. “He can’t hurt me. He’s too weak. Besides, anger is good. Anger means he knows what was done to him was wrong and not his fault. Anger is easier to break though than apathy.”
Murphy let go and my arms dropped to the bed. I sat mulishly stubborn as she settled herself in a chair and sat quietly. The tension built but my mind vault had been created and honed under the Master’s tutelage, was rich and textured, a place made inviolable by an expert. It was where I went after his tortures to hide from what he had done. It was the coping mechanism that allowed me to survive.
An annoying tapping noise kept intruding. I opened my eye to stare at both of them. They were rapping a pencil against a board and the repetition irritated me to no end. “Pop. Died,” I countered.
“Will if you will,” she said and I gaped at her. It was so childish, I was astonished. “Just talk to me, Raven. Just conversation. It’s good for your brain and will make you feel better.”
“Mouth and head fucked,” I said grudgingly. “You tattle. Me, ears.”
“I talk and you listen you’re saying?” she encouraged.
“No.”
“I believe your ‘no’ means yes,” she smiled. I nodded. She spoke, told me her name and where she’d grown up, how she decided to become a doctor of the mind and help people who’d been abused. That she had suffered sexual abuse as a tween from the age of ten to thirteen, too old after that to interest her father anymore. Out of jealousy and rage, she turned to drugs and whoring, tried to kill herself with alcohol and razor blades. Came out of it, went back to school and had her father arrested, convicted and sent to jail where he lasted only one week before an inmate killed him. Wrote a paper on the suicide rate of teens and correlated it to sexual, physical and mental abuse and proposed how to save those teenage lives. Implemented a program and was successful in 85% of her cases. The other 15% tried but called before they actually died and received medical care. Only one died and that motivated her to try harder, it had been her baby brother born ten years after her. He had cut his own throat rather than deal with the horror of his own father brutally sodomizing him at the age of eight.
I shivered, imagining what it would have been like to be forced by an older man at that age. At least, I had been sexually and physically mature and large enough not to have ruptured anything internally. “Lucky,” I said and she struggled to decipher my meaning.
“Lucky he died?” she returned finally.
“Yessss,” I hissed, a long drawn out sibilant whisper. Waved my hand at my chest. “Me.”
“You want to join him, Raven? To kill yourself?”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“No sticks me. Zero-ness.”
“You don’t believe in an after-life?”
“Soul gone. Master took.”
She turned to Murphy. “What are your religious beliefs, Murphy? Religious affiliations? Raven, what do you believe? And who is the master?”
“Zero,” I said. For me, there was nothing. I wasn’t sure if I was even allowed to die, the Unicorn had told me if either of my relatives killed me, it would destroy both the Pattern and the Logus. If I killed myself, I wasn’t sure if the same rule applied. In fact, I no longer cared. I was tired, tired of this life, tired of struggling, of waiting to fall back in the Master’s control. As long as he held my soul, he held me. Years ago, he had killed me, brought me back but in doing so, left a vital part of me behind.
Murphy tried to explain to her who the Master was without making it sound like a fiction story but he embellished on what he suspected had been my lot. I felt sorry for her but no empathy. The world was a cruel and harsh place, only the tough survived, I feared I was no longer one of them.
She stayed about an hour, pressed my hand and told me she would be back again in a day or so. Prescribed more drugs and said goodbye to both of us.
Lunch came and I picked at it. I was more used to bread, water and cheese, an occasional watered wine and for a rare treat, a piece of discarded fruit from the Master, usually thrown at me. This endless variety of meats, pastas and sandwiches that everyone tried to get me to devour usually wound up in Murphy’s stomach. I let him order and picked off what I wanted. For snacks between meals, he ordered peanut butter and jelly, those I ate without any urging, they brought back memories of simpler days. I still felt as if this Raven they talked of was someone else, not me. I no longer felt like I was Corbel the Blackbird, or Corbel, the dragon. Neither did I aspire to be Raven the Prince. I was in a vague limbo, waiting. Waiting for the Master to return and my fate be decided.
The new drugs I was on made me feel as if a veil was between me and the rest of the world. I didn’t care. I ate what they put in front of me, put their wooden blocks in the right holes most of the time and spent a lot of my time sleeping or dozing. Drooling. The doctor came in once a day to inspect my incision, listen to my heart and ask me questions. Which I answered in vague response.
“I think we can cut back on the Thorazine, he seems a bit too sedated. I had hoped he’d level off, it’s a really minute dose,” he told Merlin. Today’s suit was a blue pinstripe, very sharp. “I would recommend discharging him soon. His appetite has improved, his bowels and kidneys are functioning well, his lungs are clear and his motor skills have increased swiftly. He should go to PT 3X a week, there’s an excellent clinic near your home. I think it would be better for Raven to go out to them rather than have one come to the home. Patients such as Raven are in danger of becoming reclusive but don’t force him, that would only exacerbate his condition. He should see Dr. Nieves at least twice a week until she says otherwise. The nurses will make appointments before you go home. How does that sound, Raven? You ready to go home?”
I barely looked at him. “Home. No home.” They didn’t understand what I meant and for once, I had confounded Murphy. I was sick of the sight of him, cursed him and told him to leave. Ordered him away. Through it all, he merely sat there like a...stone. I couldn’t stay angry, it required too much energy which I didn’t have.
The doctors discharged me three days later. Murphy dressed me in fresh new clothes. Jeans, dress shirt, jacket, socks and sneakers. No belt, or laces. Put me in a wheelchair and listened as the nurse explained my post-op care, meds and appointment dates. Gave the two Amberites telephone numbers and an impressive wad of papers. A card from a detective in Robbery/Homicide.
I rode down in a wheelchair, the car waiting at the curb was a Cadillac Escalade driven by a man named George. He seemed to know me, he called me by name, came out to assist me into the back seat in the middle. Seat-belted me in. I tugged, it was snug against my belly but not tight enough to hurt. Merlin tucked a soft pillow behind my back, any kind of pressure on those wounds hurt. Corwin sat on my left, Murphy on the right and Merlin took the passenger seat up front with George. Since I didn’t have a window, or the interest in watching the scenery whiz by, I closed my eye and pretended to fall asleep. People said things when they thought you weren’t listening.
“How come you aren’t scared of the car, Raven? It’s not something you would have experienced in Webster’s realm. I mean, Jurt.” Merlin asked.
I had assumed it was a carriage like the ones we had seen in the harpy attack. Sat forward and stared as the driver shifted a stick and the car slid smoothly away from the front facade of the hospital. In some fashion, I remembered these things so that they did not seem all that unusual and yet to Corbel, they were objects of magic. “What city is this?”
“Washington. Washington General Hospital we just left,” Murphy answered. “It’s one of the best, if not the best facility to handle trauma victims. Lots of gunshot wounds here and it’s staffed by former servicemen who have treated battle wounds.”
“Thirsty, Murphy,” I complained and he opened the center console to hand me a bottle of water. All four of them watched me struggling to open it and when I did, I squeezed too hard and the contents shot out the top and soaked me. Furious, I threw the bottle but before it could hit anyone (although I was aiming it at the driver), Murphy snatched it out of the air and handed it to me as if nothing had occurred. Frustrated, I drank what was left and Merlin used a spell to dry my clothes.
“Temper, temper,” was all he said. I sat and fumed, making and throwing out plans to escape. Escape where, I didn’t know or care, I just wanted to be alone.
Other vehicles passed us. Moving so fast that their wake buffeted us. Some were over fifty feet long and would have given my dragon body a serious challenge if they could fly. Others were so small that I wondered how a human body fit inside one. There were thousands of them on the road, all colors and sizes. Elevated roadways looped around us, rose up and came down with amazing defiance of gravity. My vision was limited to what I could see through the front window, the side ones opposite me were blacked out. I couldn’t turn around to look out the back.
“Where going?” I asked, sulking. I couldn’t slump, it pulled at the new skin growing on my back. The doctor, a burn specialist, said my back looked like raw hamburger and he would treat it much like a burn victim with skin grafts of real human skin and synthetic grown in a lab. He was curious how I’d become so scarred and Murphy had stepped in, diverted the conversation.
Merlin and Corwin had a harder time getting the police to back off. Finally, he told them I was brain damaged from the lack of oxygen due to blood loss and couldn’t remember anything. Since I was underage, he could limit their contact with me and they had arranged to meet us at his home for a short interview.
“Dad has a nice place on the Chesapeake Bay,” Merlin answered. “With a sailboat, gardens and lots of rooms to wander in. Books, videos, blue-rays and a great private beach. A quiet, safe place to convalesce.”
“Whoopee.”
Corwin smothered a laugh. Said, “Typical teenage response.”
“How would you know, Dad?” Merlin shot back. “You weren’t around for my teenage years.”
“No, I was stuck in a blue cave courtesy of your mother and her cohorts. How is she by the way? We heard rumors you cut off her head.”
Warily, he answered, “She’s in Salurn, one of the old Duke’s former estates where she promised not to make trouble.”
“You believe her?” he seemed skeptical.
“Dad, she cried when she told me Raven called her Granny. Besides, she can’t leave Salurn without me opening the way.”
“You didn’t exile her?” Corwin gaped at me. “Dara is many things but I’ve never seen her cry. So, you think Jurt will approach her for help?”
“She is our mother. Murphy said the harpoon hit him in the lower back. It was coated with Dragon blood.”
“Which means he can’t heal it with magic.”
“No.” Corwin shuddered. “I can’t think of anything worse than killing your own son unknowingly. Lucky Murphy stopped Julian from cutting off Raven’s head.”
“I owe him a return favor for nearly spitting him with that jousting lance. What did he think, he was St. Michael against the dragon?”
“I was born on St. Michael’s Day,” I said as clear as a bell.
“So you were, Raven,” Murphy agreed. He put his arm around my shoulder, the weight was light and warm. I caught myself leaning into his chest. Not because it was comforting, but just to rest my stiff back.