These Vicious Masks: A Swoon Novel(86)
“Was he—how was he?”
“He—he had his health,” Miss Grey said, grasping at straws and her purse. “And he seemed to be very much alone.”
“A consequence of running away,” I said evenly, choosing bitterness over anything else that was potentially embarrassing for the London streets. It was safer than wondering if that day had driven him to isolate himself from the rest of the world. Or if he thought I blamed him for Rose. Or whether he knew that I often found myself on the verge of hysterics when I saw that Lord Byron book in the bedroom.
“What about Mr. Kent? Have you heard from him?” She ushered me past a flower seller, trying hard to be cheerful.
“Yes, he’s well . . . and that’s why I can’t involve him.” After I’d helped heal his injuries, Mr. Kent had sent flowers and letters, but I was in no state to respond to them, and he was in no position to receive replies. Any further contact would only cause more trouble within his difficult family.
Miss Grey nodded firmly and surveyed the street as we rounded a corner. “All the more reason why you and I cannot sit idle. I think there is a particular role we must each play. A purpose. Our abilities are too unique and too specific to have emerged entirely by chance, as the saltation theory suggests. I believe I am the one meant to find others like us. I ignored it for long enough, and I . . . I wonder how things might be different had I taken up the responsibility earlier.”
“But what are you supposed to do when you find others?” I asked.
“Gather and connect us all, teach them what we are, offer protection. Anything to keep what happened with Dr. Beck from happening again. As far as we know, I am the only one who can locate other extraordinary individuals, and it feels as if it would be a waste of a gift to not use it.”
We found ourselves on Great Ormond Street, standing before the hospital entrance. An unhelpful fairy that sounded very much like Rose seemed to whisper in my ear, nudging me to answer my own unspoken question: Would it be a waste if I didn’t try to heal every sick and injured person in the world?
As we entered the three-story building and claimed to be visitors on behalf of some fictitious Christian children’s rescue society, I couldn’t help but wish someone would see through the lie and send me back to my bed, away from Miss Grey and her ideas of responsibility and purpose. Could I not sleep away the rest of my life? Could I not let others hold the world on their back?
But the busy woman at the front waved us in when Miss Grey pulled out her Bible as irrefutable proof, and I found my feet following her. A nurse asked us the patient’s name and led us down a clean, gaslit hallway, passing room after room until she veered into a boy’s ward at the end. About twenty beds filled the room, all occupied by ill and injured boys between the ages of five and fourteen. Some of them had a doting mother or father by their side, some had a concerned nurse, and a few had only a book or a toy to keep them company. One of those few, in the far corner of the room, was Oliver Myles, though it seemed like a mistake. Such a young boy couldn’t have a power yet.
But after the nurse made the introductions and left to help another patient, I saw from closer inspection of his thin face that he was probably fourteen years old—just sadly undersized from malnourishment. We found two chairs and took our places at his bedside.
“I ain’t working in a factory,” the boy said defensively, eyes dull and determined, hidden beneath his fair hair. It sounded as if he’d had this conversation before.
“Don’t worry. We aren’t that sort of rescue society,” Miss Grey said soothingly. “We haven’t come to force you into a job.”
She looked to me, but I glared back. This was her insane idea. She should handle it. With thinned lips, Miss Grey continued. “We just want to help you if you need it. Is any of your family here?”
He frowned, looking suspicious. “I’ve got friends who’ll take care of me till I’m on my feet again.”
“But do your friends know about your extraordinary gift?” she asked, leaning in confidentially.
His eyes widened, and he suddenly sank and vanished into his sheets. A thud and a yelp of pain came from below, and I found him on the floor underneath the bed, wincing and holding his leg. Some of the boys around us noticed the commotion as Miss Grey and I scrambled to lift him back up to his bed. Fortunately, the nurses were too busy to notice.
“Here, this will help,” I said, relenting and grasping the knee of his injured leg. “Just don’t slip away again.”
“I can’t help it,” he said. “Sometimes I lose my hold and fall through walls or floors.”
“Is that how you got these injuries?” Miss Grey asked.
He nodded. “It was the stairs that time. But no one believes me. When I try and prove it, it don’t work. How did you two know about me?” He lowered his voice and raised his head closer. “Can you do it, too?”
Miss Grey shook her head. “We have our own gifts. When I sleep, I can dream of anyone else with a special gift—that is how we found you. And Miss Wyndham here can heal others. With her hand on your leg, in a few minutes, it’ll be as if you never got hurt.”
He looked at my hand in disbelief, then back up to me. “Will you visit me every time I get hurt?”
My lips twitched against my will, and in a room with a healer, a dreamer, and a ghost, this moment of happiness felt like the strangest thing there. I tried to stifle it back, waging a silent war within myself between the manageable numbness and the overwhelming pain, thinking the choice was obvious. But I watched as Miss Grey told Oliver all about the powers, teaching him with the same comforting authority I remembered as a girl. I watched as Oliver gasped in wonder and excitement, the world finally making a little more sense. And I watched as Oliver’s broken arm and leg were restored to full health, a miracle I could never imagine feeling commonplace. There were countless others out there who needed the same help, but strangely, now it didn’t feel quite so daunting and futile. It felt almost comforting, the fact that there would always be more. For the first time in a while, I had that excited rush of a new idea, a new plan unfurling in my head.