Extended Stay - Part One

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Chapter Six: Extended Stay - Part One

Heather plant: (Calluna Vulgaris) This common, but resilient plant can survive harsh conditions, grazing, and can even regenerate following occasional burning. Heather was also used in the Middle Ages to flavor beer before the use of hops. Today, the brewing of heather beer is carefully regulated, as the undersides of the leaves may contain a dusting of an ergot-like fungus, which is a hallucinogenic intoxicant. Heather honey, a highly valued product, is revered in magic as a naturally alchemic substance often used in protective spells. In its liquid state, it is also often used in binding processes — such as love spells — as its subsequent solidifying stage symbolizing strength and constancy.

Lenten

Pray?

When was the last time Lark Lenten had ever really — honestly — prayed? Lenten didn’t even know if he believed in a God. Staring at the crying, screaming, scrambling girl at his feet, Lenten wondered whether both this world — filled with this kind of suffering, Mei’s fading, Ash’s disappearance, Olive’s pain — and a God could exist together.

“Are they gonna be okay?” Olive’s tiny voice whimpered.

Lenten looked up to the hallway corner, meeting his small niece’s large, blue eyes, wet with frightened tears. He sighed, not knowing what to tell her. Lenten turned to look at Flax, who hovered over Rowan and stared at Olive with a reluctant frown. It seemed neither of them knew what to say.

Lenten jumped when Calla let out a positively anguished groan before she curled in on herself, her arms wrapped around her body so fiercely it hurt to look at her.

“Please,” the girl begged. “Please, just let me go.”

Swallowing hard against the tightness clenching his chest, Lenten reached instinctively out to gently brush his knuckles across her cheek, wishing he could stop whatever torment the girl was under.

He hesitated. His scalp still ached, reminding him exactly how much, however well-meaning, Calla might not appreciate his comfort. But, when she just shuddered and cringed under his touch, he felt the breath leave his lungs.

“Please,” she wept, her usual sass replaced by a broken, tearful squeak.

Lenten’s jaw clenched. How had he never noticed how small she was? How helpless? So strong and brash and headstrong, Calla was a force. She swept into a room, rearranged everything — things, circumstances, people — to fit her own picture of them, and wouldn’t quit until the world fit her precise vision. She was the type of person others assumed were bigger than they actually were by virtue of her personality. Her dramatic dimensions forced you to take her measure in more than just inches and pounds. Because to do any less would do her a huge disservice.

But now, as she writhed, wracked with sobs and stripped of the strength of her force, she was small. Skinny. Just a slip of a thing. Her runner’s legs, muscled but thin, were bent and shaking like cold, brittle leaves. 

A surge of protectiveness overwhelmed him. He watched her shirt — a short, movie-poster patterned T-shirt — twist and bunch with every turn, flashing a trim waist and flat middle.

Lenten, embarrassed for her, quickly moved to tug the shirt back down, covering her body again from view. He flushed. He knew that they had bigger concerns right now than Calla showing a little skin — particularly when she bared more on her daily runs — but he couldn’t help wanting to preserve her modesty. She was already emotionally overexposed; she didn’t need to be exposed physically.

Brushing away a trail of tears from her cheek, he was shocked when she suddenly burst upward with a gasp, clipping his chin with the crown of her head.

“Ow!” He quickly leaned back, only to come closer again when he heard her wheeze and battle to breathe around her sobs. Her wide, unseeing eyes gaped unblinking as she stared out at nothing. “Calla?” He touched her shoulder gently, trying to comfort and ease her, just as he would with Olive when she woke still terrified from a nightmare.

“Let go of me!” The girl flinched away from his hand. She struggled to her feet on still shaking legs. 

Still on his knees on the floor, Lenten looked up at her, worried. “It’s safe now. You’re all right. You’re back at The Elysium.”

“I know that!” she snapped, her arms still wrapped around herself and her hands clamped on her shoulders, digging painfully at the bony joints. “I know that.”

Lenten reminded himself not to take her response personally. Still shaking as she hugged herself, a part of Calla was still very much there in her nightmare. Lenten could see that a part of her was still shaken, trying to come to grips with something shattered.

“Rowan!” he heard Olive scream from the hallway corner. “Why isn’t he waking up?”

Lenten turned and saw Flax furiously pumping Rowan’s chest in regulated compressions before tipping the boy’s head back to force breaths back into his lungs.

“Is he okay?” Olive’s voice cracked.

“Flax?”

“Not breathing,” Flax spat out harshly before he began quick chest compressions again. 

“Rowan!” Olive cried, taking a scared step forward, but too afraid to come any closer.

They all watched in tense silence when Flax bent again to breathe for the boy.

Oh God.

This was impossible.

People didn’t die in the hotel.

They faded, they got lost, they disappeared until the only trace of them left was in the meticulous annals of The Elysium.

But they didn’t die.

It just wasn’t possible.

“Wake up, goddamnit!” Flax pressed twined fists against Rowan’s frail-looking body. “Wake up!” He watched Flax blow breath past the boy’s pale lips for the third time, Lenten’s heart pounding with anxiety.

Then the boy burst up coughing and sputtering, his hand clenched over his chest as it rose and fell with rapid, shallow gasps.

“Is he all right?” Calla asked from her corner, cold concern in her voice.

“He will be.” Flax helped Rowan turn a bit to the side. “You gonna be sick, kid?”

“No.” Rowan coughed. “No, I’m…” He shook his head as he swallowed the instinctive, if inaccurate, fine. “What happened?”

“That’s kind of what we wanted to ask you,” Flax said.

“Later.” Lenten looked at the sad state of the boy. “When you’ve had time to rest and—”

“No,” the boy said, resisting and shoving Flax away. “Tell me,” he said, his breath still hitching, “what happened first.”

Flax huffed. “Not much to tell,” he snapped. “We figured out you two were messing with magic again, came to find you, saw the tiny willow weeping and crying over you, found you both unconscious, tried to wake you, couldn’t, then,” he stated matter-of-factly with vague shades of disapproval, “you both woke up on your own.” Flax tilted his head. “Well,” he amended, “actually Calla woke up on her own. You lay there on the floor half-dead before I brought you back from the brink.”

“Thank you,” Rowan mumbled contritely.

“Are you okay?” Olive’s voice squeaked as she sniffled and toed one more step closer to the window reluctantly.

Lenten looked at Rowan as he turned toward the little girl, the boy’s eyes growing sad and sorry. “Oh, Olive,” he murmured as he met the girl’s tearful gaze. “Please, please, don’t cry.”

“You and Calla were sobbing and screaming and I couldn’t wake you. I didn’t know what to do.” She began to weep even more in earnest. “I’m Lookout Girl!” she squealed. “Why didn’t I know what to do?” Tears streamed down her tiny cheeks. “I’m Lookout Girl.” 

“Oh, Olive.”

Lenten watched his little niece cry like a broken spout as words poured from her wobbly lips. “You wouldn’t wake up and you were screaming, like you were in pain,” she repeated, her face wrecked with sorrow. “So I went to get Uncle Lark.” She crumpled in on herself, bent over her doll. “I’m so sorry. I know I promised I wouldn’t, but I—”

“Shh,” Rowan murmured as he tried to stand, to go to her, only to be pushed back down by Flax, “it’s all right. You did the right thing.”

“Speaking of which,” Flax said, looking from Calla to Rowan, “since you seem so keen on speaking, let’s talk about what in the hell got into the two of your heads to think this was a good idea.”

“Flax,” Lenten said warningly.

“No,” Flax shouted angrily, throwing his hands up in the air. “What? You thought we didn’t have enough to deal with right now? What with Mei and the rip and…” He paused looking meaningfully at Olive then Lenten. “And everything. You felt the need to add to it?”

“I think they’ve learned their lesson.” Lenten rose to his feet before coming close to Calla who was staring intently out the window.

Not out the window, Lenten realized when he moved behind her. Taking deep, shuddering breaths, Calla studied her reflection cast in the clear, Elysium glass as if she’d never seen it before, and never wanted to again. He could feel her loathing — this hollowed out hurt — as it radiated out from within her.

“For right now,” he said before he touched her back, wanting to give her some kind of reassurance, “it’s enough to know that everyone is all right—”

But, just as his hand touched her body — just the briefest of brushes between her shoulder blades — she whipped around, a panicked sound escaping her lips. She whirled away, instinctively smacking his hand away.

He glanced up at Calla, the sheen of stunned regret mixing with the still vivid fear in her eyes. He straightened with a concerned frown. “Are you okay?”

She blinked at him for a few blank moments. “I need to be alone.” She turned to run down the hall.

“Calla, wait,” he called after her, feeling fairly useless and clumsy. “Calla.”

He started after her, only to be stopped by Flax. “Let her go,” the man told him.

“But—”

“You’ve got other things to deal with.” 

Lenten looked at Flax questioningly. The southern gentlemen nodded toward Rowan who was still seated on the floor, just staring at his hands in horror and shaking.

Lenten shook his head and backed away. “Oh,” he scoffed, “I really don’t think I can—”

“You need to shut this kind of stuff down,” Flax told him. “You can’t just let him go around playing wizards’ sticks willy-nilly. He nearly killed himself today. Tomorrow it could be Calla. Or Olive.”

They both turned to look at Olive who still stared worriedly at Rowan from her sentry post.

Lenten sighed.

Flax was right.

Of course, he was right.

This couldn’t go on unchecked.

Lenten knew that.

“Can’t you just…” He shrugged, sure he wasn’t up to this task today.

“No,” Flax hissed. “I’m done. I tried to be sympathetic, which you know, for me, isn’t the most natural thing in the world, but now I’m done. You’re the manager of The Elysium, Lenten;” Flax said, “manage this.”

Lenten bit his lip, undecided.

“This about Mei?” Flax asked, challenge and daring in his voice.

Lenten stiffened and turned away. “No,” he lied. He didn’t want to talk about Mei.

He just couldn’t.

Not until he knew what to say.

“Good.” Flax made his way to Olive. “Then deal with this;” he said, nodding to Rowan on the floor before lifting Olive into his arms, “I’ve got the girls.”

“Flax,” he called after the man who strode away with the small child — Lenten’s niece — curled up against his chest. “Flax.” But the man didn’t stop. Didn’t so much as turn around or even acknowledge him in any way.

Damn!

He looked back at the boy who was still peering into the palms of his hands as if trying to divine his fortune. Lenten looked nervously from the boy to the hallway.

“Flax?”

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