Threadbound, p.16
Threadbound, page 16
So he had to trust that Bran knew what he was doing. That he knew where he needed to go and why.
Jamie took a couple of deep breaths, trying to get control over his racing heart and internally-screaming mind, and pushed himself to his feet. Then he bent down and carefully—as carefully as he could, anyway—picked up the bundle that was Bran tangled in his mother’s afghan.
“Okay. But I can’t just… Can I put you in a tote bag?”
Bran squawked again.
“This is stupid. I’m stupid,” Jamie muttered. He couldn’t put Bran in a tote bag. That was just… Ugh. There was nothing in Jamie’s life that had prepared him to take care of a shapeshifting man-bird. Or even a bird-bird, for that matter. He’d never volunteered at an animal shelter, never even watched any of the Animal Planet documentaries that had been on in the motels he’d stayed at when back in Tennessee to place flowers on his momma’s grave.
He could at least try to untangle Bran from the blanket, so he set the bundle down on the bed and started to gently try to work feathers and gnarled toes out of the looped yarn of the crocheted afghan. Bran made small noises as Jamie worked, and he could tell that Bran was hurting, even though he was trying very hard not to.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But I can’t just leave you tied up in this.”
A soft caw.
By the time he finally got Bran free, it was clear that the injuries that had been inflicted on his human body were still present on his feathered one, and Jamie’s fingers had more than a little blood on them. But he had no idea how to bandage a bird.
Instead, he went and got a baking towel, one of the thin cotton ones that were cheap and plentiful in thrift shops, and wrapped that around Bran’s oblong bird body, carefully avoiding his wing. That, he had no idea what to do with.
“How am I going to carry you out there without attracting the attention of half the people on the street?” Jamie asked him, not really expecting an answer.
But Bran turned his head and looked at Jamie’s backpack, then back at Jamie. Then he cawed.
“You don’t seriously want me to put you in a backpack, do you?”
The caw Bran made was a little wavery.
“You don’t, but it’s probably the best idea?” Jamie guessed.
Another caw, this one stronger.
Jamie sucked in, then let out a heavy breath. “Okay. Backpack it is.”
Jamie had never in his life felt as vulnerable as he did walking toward Greyfriars Kirkyard with a massive bird awkwardly stuffed in his backpack making small, pained noises as Jamie tried his best not to jostle the bag and its sensitive contents too much. Emotionally, he was torn between feeling terrible for Bran and wondering if there even was a bird-man-fairy-whatever in the backpack, or if he’d lost his mind and was carrying a sweatshirt or something to the Kirkyard in the deepening light, having waited until the sun went down before attempting to break into a Churchyard.
Not having any experience breaking or entering, Jamie wasn’t exactly sure how he was going to get Bran into the Kirkyard—but he knew he’d have to figure it out somehow. Jamie also wasn’t quite familiar enough with Greyfriars to know where, exactly, Bran wanted to go. He’d said the trees in the back, but Jamie thought he remembered there being trees dotted around the Kirkyard in several places. It also wasn’t clear what the back meant, given the size and shape of the thing.
So he was going to try to figure out how to somehow get over the Greyfriars’ wall and to the right place without being seen or arrested. Part of him wanted to ask Bran if he could help—fairies were supposed to be able to cast spells… or at least Jamie thought so. Then again, if Bran could have just cast a spell, he probably wouldn’t be dying and in need of Jamie’s bumbling help.
Jamie wished he’d paid more attention to his momma’s stories about fairies. Even if she got the name wrong.
Because clearly the milk-and-honey thing was a thing—even if bookas or whatever didn’t like cities. Jamie certainly hadn’t lived in a city back in Maynardville, so it was entirely possible that if bookas were real, and not some figment of his brain melting into a puddle of goo, there had been bookas there.
Or maybe bookas were Scottish fairies? Fae. Whatever.
Jamie had so many questions.
And Bran was in no condition to answer any of them.
Maybe he never would be, either because he was dying—although Jamie really hoped not—or because he would go back to where he came from and not ever come back. Jamie couldn’t say that he’d blame Bran if he never wanted to set foot in the human world again, given that it had gotten him beaten bloody and poisoned.
Then Jamie wondered if Bran was dying because of something the hospital had given him when Jamie was gone, and that was a whole pile of guilt he really didn’t want to shoulder. Not that he had much choice. If he could save Bran by taking him to the Kirkyard and the tree, then that’s what he was going to do. Nevermind that it was well after the Kirkyard closed, and he was going to have to do something probably illegal and definitely sketchy in order to get Bran in there.
Jamie decided to head around the back of the Department of Communications, since it backed up to Greyfriars’ wall and probably wasn’t going to have a lot of traffic on a Tuesday night. His student ID would probably also provide an excuse for him being behind the building if he said he was cutting through—as long as he wasn’t seen scaling the actual wall.
Most of the building butted up directly against the Kirkyard wall, but there was a little bit in the back with an emergency exit that Rob used all the time for smoking breaks, so Jamie knew he could get out back there. The question remained whether or not he could get over the wall.
“You have to be quiet now,” he hissed back over his shoulder at Bran as he walked up the steps and through the front door of the building. There was no noise from the backpack, which either meant that Bran was listening to him, or that the fae was unconscious or dead. Jamie didn’t like either of those options, and he could feel his palms sweating as he contemplated what would happen if he did manage to get into the Kirkyard only to find a dead bird in his backpack. Or a sweatshirt.
He met no one on his way through the hallways of the Forrest Hill building, moving past the robotics lab and toward the back door. As he passed some weird, awkward looking chairs, he grabbed one, thinking that he might need the extra height to get himself up and over the wall.
No buzzer sounded when he pushed open the door—despite the warning sign on it—and Jamie breathed a sigh of relief even as he awkwardly pulled the chair out the door. The tiny area behind the building was empty other than dirt and a few leaves and twigs, and he definitely needed the chair. Even with the extra height, it was a struggle to pull himself up to the top of the wall, scraping his hands on the brick and mortar.
And then he had to contend with the fact that there was a very old mausoleum between him and the pathway of the Kirkyard. And he was sitting on a wall, very exposed. But he also didn’t want to go crashing through a fragile roof and into the remains of some centuries-old corpse.
A shudder rolled through him at the thought. Obviously—since he worked in the Surgeons’ Hall Museums—he wasn’t bothered by the proximity of the dead, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be covered in them.
A soft sound from his backpack added a little relief to the sour mixture of stress, anxiety, and adrenaline. At least Bran was still alive and hadn’t been too badly upset by Jamie’s very ungraceful clamber up the wall.
Several graves down was a tomb that had a flat brick roof, and Jamie figured that was probably a better bet than trying to drop down to one of the curved lower roofs. He knew enough to crawl over the reinforced sides of the vault, but at least that would give him a little more support than the fragile-looking arches. So he started carefully scooting his way down the row of sleeping dead, trying not to think about what it would sound like from their perspective—the scrape and rattle of the living passing overhead and disturbing their sleep.
By the time Jamie squirmed around so that he could slide down the far side of the vaults on his stomach—so that he wouldn’t crush Bran—he’d decided that he hated churchyards. He’d also decided that mausoleums and tomb vaults were stupid ideas, and everyone should just be cremated and tossed to the winds. Or maybe composted in a grove of trees. That sounded nice and pleasant and unable to leave massive scratches on his knees and belly—the last because his shirt got caught on a piece of uneven brickwork as he slid over the edge, and he’d skinned his whole torso and hands before half-falling to the ground, his feet hitting hard enough to send pins and needles through his legs.
But he didn’t fall.
Bran let out a soft squawk of distress anyway. Jamie hoped it was a sympathy-squawk, although it probably hadn’t felt great for the fae, either.
Jamie carefully slid the backpack off one shoulder and pulled it around so that he could unzip the top so that Bran could see out. “I don’t know where I’m going,” he hissed mostly under his breath, not wanting anyone to hear him and come investigating why there was a voice coming from the Kirkyard.
There was a rustle from the backpack, and a black bird head poked its way cautiously out of the open top, green eye blinking at Jamie.
Which did not entirely solve the problem, because Bran wasn’t able to actually give directions. At least not in English.
Jamie thought for a moment. “How about when I’m going the wrong direction, you caw at me? Softly?” Cawing, at least, was unlikely to get him arrested.
Bran blinked at him. Jamie took that as a yes, then headed away from the brighter windows on the populated side of the churchyard. Bran did nothing. But when Jamie reached the end of the row and went to turn left, Bran let out a soft caw, which sent Jamie turning right along the main path. Every time he tried to turn, Bran cawed, even when Jamie reached the end of the path and tried to follow it to the right.
Caw.
“You want me to go into the grass?”
Nothing.
Jamie went straight from his original path, into the grass and gravestones. His skin crawled, and he paused. “Are you sure?” he asked the raven fae.
Bran just looked at him.
So Jamie kept going, even though every instinct he had was screaming at him to stop until—it wasn’t.
Jamie sucked in a sharp breath, because there was absolutely no way the tree he’d just walked under was this massive. Its arms spread, gnarled and twisted, dripping with moss and tiny purple flowers Jamie didn’t recognize. Flowers and moss that he didn’t remember seeing as he walked the length of the path.
Bran cawed softly, rustling in the bag.
Jamie swallowed, realizing that whatever he’d just stepped into, it wasn’t something he’d ever seen before—and he definitely didn’t belong here. This was a place that wasn’t just old, it was ancient—far older than the gravestones and the church and possibly even the city of Edinburgh itself.
Jamie’s heart pounded, because this wasn’t a place that human feet were supposed to tread. It wasn’t a place for the modern or the mundane, and he was both. “I shouldn’t be here,” he breathed softly.
Bran cawed, the sound almost amused. Or ironic, maybe. Like he agreed that Jamie shouldn’t be here, but yet here they were.
Jamie’s skin felt—buzzy. Like every hair on his body was not just standing on end, but slightly electrified. Like there was more energy in the air under the massive, impossible tree than there was supposed to be.
Bran cawed again, and Jamie looked down at him. He squirmed slightly, letting out another caw.
“Sorry,” Jamie murmured, then set the bag on the ground, kneeling beneath the spreading arms of the tree in moss that was softer than he’d ever encountered without it being squishy and wet. As carefully as he could, Jamie helped ease Bran out of the backpack, wincing when his bird-feet stumbled. “Sorry,” he whispered again.
Bran cawed softly.
“Should I… take you somewhere?”
Bran looked at the tree, then back at Jamie.
“To the tree trunk?”
Caw.
As gently as he could, Jamie lifted Bran’s bird body, which felt both oddly light and surprisingly heavy. He was a massive bird, really, but at the same time, all the feathers made Jamie think that he should barely have weighed anything. Somehow, Jamie didn’t notice the weight as much on his back—although he was more used to carrying books and other heavy things in his backpack, so that probably had something to do with it.
Jamie carried Bran over to the gnarled roots of the tree and helped him hop carefully onto one of the larger ones. “Okay?” he asked.
Bran cawed softly, once. And then the air around them shifted, like a hundred thousand tiny fireflies had just swirled out of the branches of the massive tree, whirling and whorling around Bran’s bird-form, which seemed to slip and slide into the figure of the man he’d been only hours before…
And then he was gone, and Jamie was alone beneath the massive tree, its light and vibrancy somehow diminished.
Jamie swallowed, then sat in the soft moss beneath its spreading arms, staring up into the branches of the complete impossibility that was the tree with its mosses and hanging flowers. He spread his fingers over the gnarled roots, their surface rippled and rough, but smoothed by what must have been eons of time.
He had no idea how long he stayed there, beneath the sheltering shoulders of that massive, otherworldly tree, but when Jamie stood up again, he felt… oddly refreshed. Worried about Bran, yes, of course. But… less agitated. As though the tree had given him strength or peace or something.
On the one hand, that made sense—Jamie was a nature-lover, and often found himself in better sorts after a run through the woods or up the crags. But this was… different. Something he’d never felt before, and he was loath to leave because he had the distinct feeling that it was something he would never be able to feel again. That if he came back to the Kirkyard tomorrow, the tree wouldn’t be here. The stones—now that he looked around him—would be ordinary grave markers, not these oddly monolithic markers rising like grey shadows against a sky that Jamie somehow only half recognized.
He understood that he was somewhere between, somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be and would not have the chance to visit again.
But all things, as his momma had told him once, must come to an end, and Jamie knew that as much as he wanted to linger, this was not a place meant for him.
So, with a regretful swallow and a last long look, he put his back to the tree and began to walk back to the main path.
When he turned around, the tree was as plain and ordinary and small as any other, leaves rustling slightly in the summer night wind whispering only the promise of some deeper magic that Jamie had been given the gift to see.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
Bran’s memory of tumbling through the Gate was fuzzy, a mass of pain and regret and hope—both that he might recover from being poisoned by the geàrd soilleir and that Jamie might one day forgive him. He had a vague memory of falling, of hitting the ground after passing through the Gate, and of shouting and of hands pressing against his side and his arm. There had also been pain, although that was more a secondary concern—something that hovered in the background of everything, but wasn’t entirely worth remarking.
There was still pain, but it had been dulled by both healing magic and the tinctures that tasted bitter and sour at once. There was still dizziness, still the heavy weight of sleep that someone—sometimes his father, sometimes Maigdeann, sometimes Eadar, his father’s apprentice—would rouse him from so that he could drink broth or eat the soft pulp of the dath ubhal or a few spoonfuls of stew.
Bran was grateful, but he also couldn’t help the weight of guilt he felt about what he’d done to Jamie. What he’d asked of the half-breed. About the fact that he very well might have put Jamie in danger. After all, if the Sidhe thought Bran was a threat, then his bondmate would also be a potential target, because if Jamie and Bran completed the threadbond, then Bran’s magic would become stronger and more stabilized.
If something happened to Jamie…
Bran tried to draw a deep breath to calm himself. His father had told him repeatedly that he needed rest and relaxation—that agitation and fear made the poison stronger. That would explain why it had acted so quickly. Typically, the poison of the geàrd soilleir was slow and torturous. The victim wouldn’t realize for days that they had been poisoned, by which time the magic would have worked its way into the victim’s system, draining their magic to feed its own.
Victims of the geàrd’s poison often found themselves utterly stripped of their magical abilities, if they were lucky enough to survive.
Bran had been surprised at the poison when he’d realized that they had used it on him—because he’d only been alive enough for the poison to matter thanks to Jamie’s interference. It had been insurance, he supposed. And it had almost worked, except that Bran had been so agitated that the poison had caused ill effects before it could really sap what little magic he had left.
Cairn mac Darach’s healing abilities had been enough to keep Bran alive, but whether or not he would be able to save Bran’s already erratic and tattered magic, his father hadn’t been able to say. And that was worrisome. Certainly, Cairn would not lie to him just to tell him what he wanted to hear, and Bran appreciated that. But he also just wanted his father to comfort him, and Cairn—although Bran knew his father loved him—was not the comforting type. Wights seldom were.
It only made Bran miss the warmth of Jamie’s hands even more.
Bran reminded himself that he had no business missing anything of Jamie’s. They barely knew one another, and Jamie had made it clear that he wasn’t interested in anything romantic between them.
But Bran couldn’t help but feel the memory of Jamie’s fingers on his skin, his warmth and strength, the way he smelled a little like dust and books even when sweaty after a run.
