Chapter 22
The cottage is quiet.
The LED torches are all off, but the place is lit by three candles shining a soft orange light around the room.
J is sitting on a wooden bench next to the table, cupping a steaming metal mug between his hands. He’s wrapped up in a
blanket, and there is a small puddle underneath his seat.
Patrick is leaning on the windowsill, looking at the stormy, dark weather outside.
On the other side of the table sit Tania and Peter, looking at J like a defused bomb, wondering if there is a second fuse
somewhere they didn’t think to check.
J blows on his tea and takes a sip, the hot liquid burning the tip of his tongue. He’s focused on the small ripples on the
surface of the liquid, but from the corner of his eyes he can still see them staring.
“Can you please stop looking at me like that?” he says.
“Aye. When ye finally tell us what ye were doin’ outside in this crazy weather.”
J bows his head, then puts the cup on the floor between his feet. “I was…” He shrugs. “I needed space.”
“From Monica?” asks Tania.
J nods, but after a moment he adds, “From everybody, I guess.”
“Well, it wasna’ the best o’ timing, yer know?”
After a while, J says, “I don’t care.”
“J, I understand what you feel, but…” Tania sighs. “This wasn’t all that clever.”
J doesn’t react.
“J? It wasn’t your fault.” She tries again, trying to bring more authority into her voice. “It wasn’t your fault she left. It was her
decision and she—”
“This is where you are wrong, Tania. I chased her away.”
“She didn’t really give you a lot of time to digest everything. And there was a lot to digest, that’s clear for everyone!”
“She could’ve given ye a wee bit of time, ye know?”
J smiles emptily. “Guys, I know you’re all trying to make me feel better. But…” His voice dies out as he looks down at the
floor again.
After a long while Patrick says, while still looking into the night, “I was still hoping she wouldn’t manage.”
Tania turns to him. “What do you mean?”
“I thought the teleportation wouldn’t work.” Patrick looks back. “I was certain we would see her at the drop point, and”—
he shrugs—“we’d just take her back home.”
Patrick shakes his head, deep in his thoughts. “And we saw her. She was just sitting there, and I thought, it’s gonna be fine…
I thought we’d—” He glances at J and then stops talking.
J’s face is an array of agonizing contortions. He is trying to hide it, but he fails. He bows his head low and presses his thumb
and index finger firmly on his eyes, his elbow resting on his knee.
“I’m sorry, J,” Patrick whispers. “I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry.” And he turns away again.
And the silence covers them again, thick and heavy, for several long minutes.
“I knew the beam would pick her up. Even before we saw her,” J says quietly, almost to himself.
“How?”
“The sound. It changes in the most unusual way. I just thought…” He swallows hard now. “I thought I could jump in and it would catch me as well.”
There is the cry of a jackal far in the forest, and the moon finds a gap between a few of the clouds, shining white silvery threads into the cottage, mingling the cold colors on the wooden floor with the soft yellow of the candlelight.
“Well, she should have stayed,” Tania says and stands to pick up the plates from the table. “Just to give you a bit of time to
think about it. That’s what I would have done.”
“You are a hundred percent Human,” Patrick says.
“What does that mean?” Tania stops cleaning up.
“It means that her decision was made by her Senthien,” he responds and pushes away from the windowsill.
“And why wouldna’ she listen to her Human?” asks Peter.
“Because it was her Human that got hurt, and she didn’t trust it any longer,” says J with finality.
Patrick reaches for the piled-up plates. “Let me take that, Tania.”
“Thanks.” And she sits down, then glances at the still-full plate in front of J. “Aren’t you going to eat something?”
“I’m sorry, Tania. I just don’t feel like it right now.”
“You haven’t been feeling like it for the past five days.”
Patrick waits for a moment to see if Tania’s comment changes J’s mind, but when he sees that it hasn’t, he piles J’s plate up on
top and takes it away.
“Ye know,” Peter says. “We might need to feed him intravenously before he fades away.”
Patrick laughs from the kitchen, and J’s lips, for the first time in days, spread into a smile. He nods. “You might actually
be right.”
“As brilliant as this idea is,” says Patrick, coming back to the table, “I highly doubt we’ll find a functional IV set somewhere
in the Underground.”
“Aye, ba’ perhaps we don’ need it,” says Peter with a grin. “Maybe we can use Stevanion’s E-band. There might be some
hidden integrated med kit we don’ know about. And then we can intravenously feed J for the rest of his days.” Peter winks at J.
But J’s smile disappears.
Peter turns serious as well. “Um… sorry, J! I was just—”
“No!” J lifts up his hand, his eyes open wide. “You said Stevanion’s E-band!”
Peter shrugs. “Aye. So?”
“I don’t think there is a med kit anywhere on Ste—” Patrick starts.
“Do we still have it?” J interrupts. “The E-band?”
“Yes… we do. Why?” Tania is wary, her eyes narrowing as she looks at J.
Then, out of nowhere, J starts to laugh so hard it shakes the table.
Peter turns his head to Tania, though still looking at J. “I think we’ve just lost ’im.”
J keeps laughing for almost a minute, tears running down his cheeks, while the rest of the company waits, frozen and unsure.
He wipes the tears from his cheeks but can’t stop laughing.
Then Patrick smacks his forehead. “Oh, of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Er…” Peter glances at J, then at Patrick, then back at J. “What are ye talkin’ about?”
Patrick is smiling broadly now as well. “If you stand at the drop point, at the base of the teleportation tube, it doesn’t
just automatically teleport you. You need to have something to enable it.”
“And what would that be?” asks Tania.
“An E-band,” J says and stands up from the table.
“Oy, where are ye off to?”
J smiles broadly. “I am going after her.”
