Page 66 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
“We won’t know yet. But nothing indicates there is right now. She just needs rest; her body had a shock. She might be confused, ask repetitive questions, that sort of thing. Be patient. With the hike, then the exposure overnight and the dehydration, she really put her body through it.”
“Matthieu...” I say, his name trailing across my tongue. I was with him, on the mountain, in the loam and the cold and the dark. “Is he here?”
Jess glances down at me, the conversation stuttering out. After a pause, they keep talking, about temperatures, about blood flow, about fluids and getting me to begin moving... but I’m slipping again. Slipping below the surface, the eddying lake rises up to submerge me. I try to move my lips, try to frame the question again, try to keep my hand gripped in Jess’s as the room slides away, my thoughts fracturing, sinking—
Matthieu.
Are you here?
Are you real?
Matthieu...
Chapter 51
Carrie
“He’s real.”
I crane my neck, focusing on wrapping my fingers around the mug offered to me. “What?”
“You kept saying, ‘I don’t know if he’s real, what if Matthieu’s not real?’ And I’ve been telling you every time you wake up,” Jess says, taking a breath. “He’s real, he’s recovering. You can see him... if you want to.”
I’m still in the hospital, but in a different ward. I’m in a room all my own, and I’m waiting for the all-clear to get discharged. Jess is fussing around me as Tom hovers by the door. She keeps turning to him, giving swift orders as she turns back the blanket on the bed, smoothing out the folds around me. My breath hitches, and I stare down into the mug, turning her words over and over. I was moved an hour ago, Jess pushing me in a wheelchair, Tom walking behind us with a bag of my things against his chest. I didn’t like being in a wheelchair, but apparently it’s hospital policy for transporting patients between wards.
They discussed over my head when their daughter, Elodie, needed picking up from school. Which clubs she was doing today, what extra items she needed in her backpack. I zoned in and out, the world of the hospital around me still a fuzzy blur of light. I was still bewildered by their presence, by both of them being here. Just thinking about it clogged up my throat, making my chest ache.
“Now? Can I see him now?” I ask, looking at Jess hopefully. “He—he doesn’t know anyone else in Woodsmoke. I should have stayed with him. We should be here together. I don’t even know if he has any family left to call.”
“We know,” Tom says from the doorway. “I tried, went through his phone, talked to him when he was awake briefly. But he just kept asking for you. Saying we’d left you on the mountain.”
I close my eyes, a sigh brushing my lips. I keep feeling like the world will tilt and fall into a dream at any minute, and I still can’t handle much more than the basics of eating and sleeping. I want to get out of this hospital, back to the cottage, back in my own space, to process it all. “How long have I been here?”
“Two days,” Jess says. “The doctor said that time will feel weird, like it could be months, or minutes, that you’ve been here. Or you might think you’re still... up there.”
I sip the tea, remembering that the cup is in my hand, a slight tang of chemicals lingering at the edges. “I won’t believe we both actually left the mountain until I see him. I need to see him. All of this... I don’t know.” I drop my gaze to the tepid tea in my hands. “Nothing feels real.”
I catch Jess’s glance at Tom out of the corner of my eye. She raises her eyebrows at him, then looks to me and nods. “Okay. We’ll go now.”
Tom leaves to pick up Elodie, and Jess wheels me to another ward, inquiring for directions along the way at a nurses’ station. I can feel slumber dragging at me, tugging at my hand, but I shake it off. I can’t slip away yet, not until I’ve seen him, not until I’ve touched him. I need to know it’s true—that we both survived the night.
He’s on an open ward. Some curtains divide up the space, butthe curtains around his cubicle are thrust open. A small shudder rushes through me as Jess and I approach, relief and a strange dread mingling beneath my ribs. I lean forward when I catch sight of his features, his eyes staring into the middle distance. My fingers flutter at my throat, choking down a sob.
He’s real.
I didn’t dream him up from the frost and my own longing. Cora’s worries, the frost tale, none of it was true. He didn’t disappear as the frost thawed. My heart beats harder, straining against my chest. I reach for him, my hands clutching at thin air, then his blanket, then his face. Tears leave salty tracks down my skin, and he blinks, then locks his eyes with mine.
All there is in that moment is him.
“Carrie,” he says, his voice flecked with cold. As though the frost crept inside him on that mountain and hasn’t melted since. “You’re here.”
“I—” My throat closes up before I can get my words out. I bury my face in his shoulder, sobbing and sobbing, tears soaking into his skin. I really thought he might die up there. I thought that, if I left him at daybreak to find help, he wouldn’t be alive when I returned... or that I wouldn’t have been able to find him at all.
“I’m going to leave you two to, er...” Jess says over my head. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
I stay there for a few moments, aware of the rattle of his breath in his lungs, of my own tiny sips of air as my sobbing subsides. “I thought you were going to die, your leg was so bad, and there was blood, and you had a fever... I, I can’t believe—”
“I’m here. We’re both here,” he says, stroking my hair. “Could have lost my leg if it wasn’t for you. Could have lost more than that if you hadn’t found me, if Jess and Tom hadn’t called search-and-rescue to get out there...”
