Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre (2 page)

    The public address system drowned out his reply with an announcement: "
Due to intermittent power problems on
the platforms, this station is closing. Please make your way
calmly to the nearest exit. There is no cause for alarm
." Another cramp twisted in my stomach and I curled around it, gasping as the light dimmed around me. I screwed my eyes shut and ground my teeth while she spoke calmly over me.

    "I am a doctor, and I know perfectly well what I am doing. I'm quite capable of dealing with a minor emergency like this one."

    I tried to tell her I was having a heart attack and needed the ambulance but this was interpreted only as
    further groaning.
    "It's on its way, madam," he replied.

    "Tell them to cancel it. He has no need of an ambulance. By the time they get here it'll be too late." He held her stare for a moment then turned away to issue instructions into his handheld radio. I finally managed to get enough oxygen inside me to be able to say something.

    "I think I do need an ambulance," I croaked.

    I lay on my side in the recovery position, her open hand resting on bare skin beneath my shirt. She leaned across, bowing her head over me, giving us a moment of relative privacy.

    "Tell me truly. Are you from the other lands, yes or no?" Her words were quiet but insistent.

    "Other lands?" I coughed. "Yes or no?"

    Her question pressed on me in a way I didn't understand. I felt the answer worming its way up out of my gut until I blurted it out. "I live in London. I was born in Kent." It seemed to be a relief to tell her. "Very well."

    She sat upright and the light faded. For one terrible moment I thought I was having another heart attack. Then I realised that the fluorescent tubes along the platform had dimmed and were pulsing with greenish light as they flickered uncertainly. A murmur rose among the people waiting to exit the platform and the attendant looked around. He began talking rapidly into his radio, only to find that it too had failed. He tapped it against his palm, pressing the talk button.

    There was a distilled moment, crisp in every detail. The floor underneath me was suddenly chill in contrast to the spreading warmth in my chest and I noticed tiny droplets of condensation forming on the hard tiles. A breeze whipped down the tunnel, plucking an abandoned newspaper from a seat, strewing broadsheets down the platform. The gust pulled at coats and hair as people turned their backs. I assumed a train would follow it and hurtle onto the platform, but the breeze died again just as suddenly, leaving sheets of newspaper floating gently down onto the tracks as the lights flickered back to brightness.

    The heavy pressure subsided and she took her hand away and moved so I could roll gently onto my back. "An ambulance?" I suggested, looking up at her.

    "Nonsense, young man, you feel better as every moment passes."

    I was about to protest about the chest pains, the cramps and the tingling, when I realised that I did feel OK. The numbness had gone, there was no frantic heartbeat, no tightness in my chest and no indigestion. Could I have imagined it all? Could it be a hallucination

    brought on by stress and low blood sugar?

    While my mind fought to rationalise the situation, the lady fastened my shirt buttons. I lay there stupidly while she carried out this act of decorous sensibility until she stood in one easy movement and offered me her hand. I sat up gingerly, expecting any moment for the clamping chest pains to reassert themselves, finding instead only how cold I had become on the floor.

    Two men ran down the platform towards us. From their uniforms I would guess the attempts to cancel the ambulance had been unsuccessful.

    "That's all right, madam, we'll take over now."

    For an odd moment I thought I heard the old lady swear under her breath, but then she turned to face them, all smiles and praise for the speed at which they had arrived. One of the men knelt down beside me. "How are you feeling, sir? Any dizziness, nausea?" "No, no. Nothing now."

    "Any chest pains, sir? Any tightness of breath or pain in the arms?" He held a stethoscope against my chest and listened to my heart. "Are you on any medication? Any pills?" "No, no. I'm not taking anything."

    "Any history of heart disease, diabetes, strokes, epilepsy?"
    "No, nothing like that."

    "Has this ever happened to you before, sir?" I shook my head. "No. I'm fine now."

    The platform attendant filled in the gaps. "We saw the gentleman collapse on the monitors in the control room and I was asked to assist. By the time I reached him the lady doctor had turned up."

    I looked around for her, wanting to thank her and explain, but she'd gone. Where did she go? "She was here a minute ago."

    His colleague looked up and down the empty platform. "No one here now."

    The man beside me looked down, assessing me.

    "You feel OK?" "Yes, the lady helped me."

    "We'd best get you to hospital just in case, sir. You're going to need a check up. Nothing to worry about but better safe than sorry, eh?"
    "I'll be late for work."

    "Better late than never, as they say. Can you walk?" "I think so."

    "It's probably easier to walk you up if you feel up to it. Any sign of dizziness or nausea, though, and we'll bring the trolley down for you. Mark, keep the oxygen handy. What's your name, mate?" He helped me to my feet then to a nearby seat. "It's Niall."

    "Excellent, Niall. I'm Joseph and this is Mark. Just sit there a moment and get your breath back." "I told you, I'm fine."

    "No sense in overdoing it, is there? Take your time." Mark draped a blanket around my shoulders while I sat there feeling like a fraud and the crew chatted with the platform attendant. I was just thinking that now I really had got an excuse for turning up late for work and that Katherine was probably going to think this was just another way of spoiling her weekend, when I heard a train coming down the tracks.

    As the noise grew, my eye caught the movement of one of the tiny grey underground mice that dwell in the cracks under the platform. It scurried quickly under the rail and bolted for cover as the train rattled onto the platform. As it crossed the open space between the rails, a long grey arm shot out from under the platform, snatched the mouse and vanished. The train rushed in, then slowed along the platform in a squeal of brakes. Passengers looked out from behind the glass as it slowed to walking pace, their expressions turning from hopeful to disappointed as the train accelerated again off into the tunnel without stopping. "Did anyone else see that?" I asked.

    "See what?" said Joseph.

    I looked at where the mouse had been. "There was a mouse, under the train. And then–"

    "Don't worry about them, sir. They live here all the time. They only come out when it's quiet."

    I thought about trying to explain about the grey arm, then thought better of it. Maybe I really did need a check-up. "Can we go up now? I think I'm ready." They helped me to my feet and walked me to the escalators at the gentlest of paces, accompanied by the attendant. The escalator was still working and carried us up to the ticket hall, where we were escorted through the side gate and around to the street exit. Up the stairs at street level the mesh gates had been pulled closed, but were pulled back to allow us out into the listless crowd waiting for the station to re-open. Mark cleared the way while they helped me to the waiting ambulance. Inside, the ambulance was white and sterile. They insisted that I lay down and was strapped in before driving off. Joseph stayed in the back while Mark went to the driver's seat and used the radio to inform his controller that they were en-route with a conscious patient. Joseph belted himself in and then we were away, siren blaring as the ambulance forced its way into the traffic. We accelerated in a short burst then braked hard as the traffic failed to clear out of the way. The siren wailed at the jammed cars.

    Without warning, another stomach cramp twisted violently into my gut, I gasped and squeezed my eyes shut against the pain, pulling against the restraints and grinding my teeth. Then, just as suddenly as it had arrived, it passed. I opened my eyes and the lady was standing over me. She was undoing the belts. "What are you doing?" I asked her.

    "I am trying to get you out of these wretched straps." "Stop that. I'm supposed to be going to hospital." There was a sound like a low groan coming from the ambulance.

    "You're not going anywhere. The ambulance is dead, can you not hear it?"

    I propped myself up on an elbow as she loosened the webbing. Joseph was slumped against the seat belt, Mark had collapsed over the steering wheel and the ambulance siren was making a sound like a stranded white whale. "How did you get in here?"

    "I followed you. I didn't have to walk very far with you in here. As soon as you had a spasm, all the power died and the ambulance stopped. That noise is the siren using up what little power remains. I would turn it off, but I don't know how."

    "You're crazy. What have you done to Joseph?"

    "He'll be well enough." She grabbed hold of my lapels and hauled me up to a sitting position with surprising strength. "Look, I don't have much time. I need to you to come with me now, away from here and away from the hospital. I don't want anyone looking too closely at you." She flung open the rear door of the ambulance and gestured for me to exit. The sound of car horns blared through the opening from the blocked traffic. "You're crazy! What are you talking about? I'm not leaving. I'm sick."

    "You're fine, you have my word. What are you called?"
    "My name is–"
    "I didn't ask you what your name is, I asked you what you were called."
    "It's the same thing," I told her.

    "No," she said, "it really isn't. I shall call you Rabbit." "I don't care what you call me. I'm going to the hospital."

    She shook her head. "No," she said quietly, "you're not."

    She grasped my hand in hers. There was a sense of vertigo and a momentary blinding headache.

    When I opened my eyes the ambulance had gone. It was almost dark, the threat of dawn glimmering through the overcast clouds. I looked around, but found only rolling grassland fading away into the darkness. I wiped my long hair back from where it clung to my face in the damp air. Fine rain drifted around me.

    Twisting around, I half expected to see the ambulance behind me, but found only empty grassland and patches of boggy turf in near blackness. Apart from the wind, there was no sound at all. The breeze was fickle and gusty, tugging at my buckskin jerkin and linen shirt. I couldn't see more than twenty feet in the dim light. I stuck my hands out around me, trying to break what must be an illusion. The cold breeze twisted through my fingers. Water started seeping into my boots from the soggy turf. Where had the lady gone? Where was I?

    A sound came. It drifted down the wind, too low for a wolf, too long for a bear. All the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. It howled, long and low, and the primitive part of my brain that knew about caves and monsters kicked my feet into motion.

    I found myself stumbling through the darkness away from that sound. My instinct said,
Hide, make yourself
small
. I looked around as I stumbled forward but there was no cover, just stringy tufts of grass and rolling hummocks.

    I started running and the howl came again, rolling down the wind after me. Tripping on a tussock of grass, I went down on my knees. Panic brought me up again, my fingers scrabbling in the wiry turf to get up and away. My heart started pounding in my ears as I accelerated away, the long howl louder now as it gained on me. I sprinted, every ounce of energy focused on getting away. Then the headache came again and blinded me.

I crashed into something and went sprawling on the concrete. I was surrounded again by the smell of wet pavement, the distant urban drone of diesel engines and motorbikes. My breath came in harsh barks while my heart drummed a staccato rhythm in my chest. I lay on my back, only thankful that the ground under me was hard and the sound of the hunt had gone. I had beaten it.

    A shadow crossed my face and I opened my eyes. It was her.

    "I'm so sorry," she said. "It took me a moment to catch up with you."
    "What in hell did you do?"
    "I used what I called you to create a certain type of reality for you."
    "You mean it was real?"
    "As real as you made it."

    This was insane, but still… "What would have happened if it'd caught me?"

    "The same thing that usually happens when wolves run down a rabbit."
    "There was only one," I told her.
    "You only heard one."
    "And it was too big to be a wolf."

    "Suddenly you're an expert on how big a wolf can get. Tell me, Rabbit, where did you come by such wisdom?"

    I squinted up at her then rolled onto my side, still breathing hard, trying to gather my wits.

    "Ah, more cautious now," she said. "Maybe there is some wisdom here after all."

    I looked up at her. The harmless old lady look was beginning to wear thin. "What are you, some kind of witch?"

    Her eyes hardened and her expression soured. She reached down to me. I scrabbled backwards to the wall away from her, avoiding her questing touch. "
That
word," she followed me until my back was against the bricks, "is not a kindly word where I come from."

    "Sorry, sorry. I didn't mean anything by it."

    She withdrew her hand. "I'll thank you not to use it again."

    "Fine, whatever you say." She relaxed again, allowing me to look around. "Where are we?"

    "Away from the ambulance and the hospital. In an alley. You collided with a dustbin and ended there. It was just as well you came back to yourself or you might have been trapped."

    "I was fine until you interfered," I told her. "I was going to the hospital."

    Another bout of pain erupted in my abdomen. I curled around it for half a minute or more, immobilised by its intensity. It faded gradually. "Oh God. I'm having another attack. Can't you see?"