The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H. G. Parry

Author:H. G. Parry [PARRY, H.G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2024-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

17

Clover.

The voice came from a long way away—so far, in fact, that I wondered if it weren’t from my own head. I couldn’t place it. I couldn’t place myself. The world beyond my closed eyes was slippery, amorphous. I had a vague sense of being home, in my childhood bed and my childhood body, in those safe days before the war, but when I reached out to draw it closer, it slipped through my fingers.

“Clover!”

My name again, more insistent. Not from inside my head. Outside it. My head itself was pounding in sick glass-splintered waves; I forced open my eyes and saw only a vague blur. I rolled over with difficulty, wincing, stifling a moan, and the blur resolved into something not entirely unlike Alden Lennox-Fontaine.

“That’s it.” His voice was a sigh of relief. “You’re fine.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a command. I nodded, putting a hand to my throbbing forehead as I did so. “Ow… Yes. Yes, I’m all right.”

My glasses were on the floor beside me. I fumbled for them, put them on. My surroundings came back into focus, painfully sharp—not my old bedroom at all, but the east wing at Ashfield. The sun was peeking over the horizon, and its grey light illuminated the battered state of the room. It looked as though a storm had ripped through, thrown everything in the air, and set it down again crooked. The floor where I lay was littered with dead leaves.

I sat up, and saw Eddie doing the same by the wall, white and clammy and dazed. Hero was sitting on the couch, her head in her hands, looking very much as though she were fighting not to be sick. The edges of the world felt wrong, off-kilter, and my entire body throbbed. My mind fumbled for what we had been doing.

“The door.” The touch of the memory was like a shock of electricity. I straightened at once, ignoring the stab behind my eyes. “Is it—?”

“It’s closed. For good, this time.”

I let my eyes shut, partly in relief, partly against the spinning of the room. God, what we had nearly done… I thought of that vast, teeming mirror-kingdom seething behind the wall, the burning force of will pushing through, the shimmer of magic in the air, and my stomach churned. How had we been so stupid? We’d had no idea. We could have split open the world.

Alden was saying something I couldn’t hear, or at least understand. I had to ask him to repeat it.

“I said, why did you do that?” The relief that I was alive had faded from his voice. It was hardening, solidifying, settling somewhere between accusing and hurt. “Thomas was right there! We were so close.”

I blinked, too surprised for the moment to feel anything except dull confusion. “We were close to that thing getting out! It was going to take your body, or perhaps mine. It wasn’t going to give you Thomas back.”

“He was there. I could see him.”

“There was

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