The Tom Birdseye Collection Volume One by Birdseye Tom;

Author:Birdseye, Tom;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

4. Right on the Mouth

“Here, have some Daru tea.”

The voice, soft and gentle, floated through the fog in Jackson’s mind. A hand touched his arm, then moved behind his head and lifted it. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t. The lids, like his entire body, felt numb, lifeless.

“It’ll bring back your strength.”

With great effort he tried again, and finally was able to force his eyelids halfway open. All he could make out was a small clay cup before him. Steam rose from it in wispy fingers, carrying a strange but pleasant scent.

“Drink.”

The cup moved forward until it touched Jackson’s lips. A tiny sip passed onto his tongue. It tasted slightly sour, but good, like hot lemonade. He swallowed. A soothing trickle of warmth glided down his throat and into his stomach.

“That’s it. Have more.”

The cup tilted. Jackson swallowed again, then still again as the warmth in his belly grew and began radiating out with amazing quickness, thawing the numbness first in his arms and legs, then in his fingers and toes. Up the back of his neck it went, rising like a small sun in his mind. The fog there broke, then thinned to a haze … and thinned more … until only a filmy trace of vapor remained.

“Good! You’re feeling better already, aren’t you? Ernt tea mixed with Daru. The combination never fails.”

Jackson blinked and opened his eyes all the way to see the girl from the bridge sitting at his side, looking down at him. Panic shot through him like quicksilver. He bolted upright, a thin blanket falling from his shoulders, but he went lightheaded and fell back to the crunch and smell of straw beneath him.

Broken images flashed across his mind: being lifted out of the mud by strong arms … a voice, then two … hands steadying him through knee-deep water, helping him up the riverbank … stumbling along a path … a gate, then a door … whispers … a dark room … the smell of wood smoke … his muddy jacket gone, then back, clean … a warm washcloth on his brow … and through it all talk about things—an instrument or something—that made no sense.

Jackson shook his head. Nothing made any sense. “Tell me I’m not crazy,” he begged. “Tell me this isn’t real.”

The girl’s face came closer, her forehead furrowed with concern. She smoothed the blanket and tucked it under Jackson’s chin. “But it is real. You’ve been sent to us, and you’re in my home in the village of Timmra. And whenever you’re ready we can go and you can fix the Shaw-Mara and stop the Baen from …”

Her words trailed off as Jackson struggled up onto his elbows, frantically looking for a way to escape, a way to get back to reality. A small fire burned on an open hearth a few feet away. From its dim, flickering light he could make out a crude table and benches built of rough-hewn planks, a wooden barrel, a clay crock, windowless walls of straw and mud, a heavy door bolted shut.

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