The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(37)

Ander shook his head. “Come on, Nell. I’ve got to get you home.”

“Aye, yes, walk me home, quick,” she backed down the steps as he put on a pair of shoes and a light jacket over his pajamas and followed her. “So you remember what General Malone was saying?”

“Uh huh.” In spite of himself he had to stride along very quickly to keep up with her.

“It’s worse than they know. The Xia Sorceress is free. And – lah, it’s complicated – but there’s a being here now who is good and he’s been hurt very badly. Di Shang doctors wouldnay be able to help him. I dinnay think even the Sorma could help him. But there’s a place in Tian Xia that...heals beings when they’re hurt or sick. And I need to get him there, aye.”

“Do your parents know you’re running around drunk in the middle of the night?” asked Ander.

“Of course they dinnay know!” snapped Nell. “Are you paying attention? There are ways into Tian Xia...a lot of ways, aye, and there’s one not far from here. The only way to get there fast is to fly, but this being, he cannay fly now, because he’s too badly hurt. But you can fly the helicopter, nay? The one for emergencies? You flew Missus Brock to the mainland hospital when she had a heart attack!”

They had reached the back gate.

“Let’s get you inside,” said Ander wearily.

Nell dragged him by the hand to where Charlie lay in the grass.

“You’re back,” said Charlie with a faint smile. “Good. Who’s that?”

“Mister Brady,” said Nell. “He can help us.”

“He’s hurt?” Ander asked, kneeling swiftly. “You didnay wake up your ma?”

“She cannay fly a helicopter,” said Nell.

Ander took the towels gently from Charlie’s chest and looked for a long moment at the rippling fusion of gleam and gloom that bled from the wounds.

“What in the name of the Ancients is that?” he muttered.

“He’s a Shade,” said Nell, pressing the towels to the wounds again, though it did little good. “It means he can change shape. He’s good, aye, and he helps humans. He helped to get rid of the Cra. But now he needs help. I’m nay drunk or crazy and I know exactly what to do. I just need you to fly the helicopter.”

“Nell,” said Ander, but she didn’t let him finish.

“Whatever you’re going to say, save it. I dinnay care. You’re just trying to think of what you should do and he’ll die while you wonder. We have to help him. I’m going inside to get a couple of things and when I get back, you need to carry him.” Nell ran back into the house. Ander looked down at Charlie again.

“I cannay just take the helicopter,” he said to Charlie apologetically. “I dinnay understand what’s going on here. We should call somebody, I spec. Dinnay know who, though.”

Charlie didn’t waste his strength talking to Ander. He was trying to hang on until Nell reappeared.

It was a testament to her family’s ability to sleep through anything that none of them woke as Nell tore through the house. She filled a school bag with bread and cheese and apples, two bottles of water and a half-empty bottle of brandy. Then she fetched her maps of the caves in Holburg from the stacks of papers in her bedroom. The tunnels had been built during the war for the islanders to hide in in the case of a Tian Xia attack. As children Nell and Eliza had known the entire complex by heart and had mapped it out. She placed these old penciled maps on the kitchen table with a note for her family, Please check in on Missus Brady. Hide if you need to. Back soon. Then she went back up to her room and added to the bag of food her three most prized possessions. These were the First Place Medal in the Kalla District Mathematics Competition she had won last year and the birthday presents Eliza and Charlie had given her when she turned fourteen. Eliza had gotten hold of a signed Cherry Swanson album (Any friend of Eliza’s is a friend of mine! Cherry S., she had written), and Charlie had brought back from Tian Xia a shard of black rock, embedded in which was the fossil of a tiny dragon no bigger than her hand. All of these she put in the bag. She ran back out to the yard, where Ander was massaging his temples with his thumbs and Charlie was quietly dying.

“Do you have anything valuable on you?” she asked Ander. “That watch! Is it valuable?”

“This?” He looked at his watch in surprise. “I dinnay spec so. It was my father’s.”

“Perfect,” said Nell. “Pick him up. We have to hurry.”

“Nell,” said Ander again.

“Pick him up!” Nell all but snarled.

Without really knowing why he was letting a fourteen-year-old girl with alcohol on her breath boss him around in the middle of the night, Ander did as she said.

“Praps we should stop by the doctor,” he suggested, following her out the gate.

“Dinnay be stupid,” said Nell angrily. “You know just as well as I do that a doctor cannay heal a wound like that. We’re saving his life.”

Somehow that settled it for Ander. He had his doubts that Nell knew what she was doing, but she seemed to think she knew, at least. He himself hadn’t a clue, but he held that action was better than inaction. And so he found himself wrapping the thing in blankets in the back of the helicopter, loading up with extra fuel and climbing into the front with Nell.