Folding the Sky

-28-

"Welcome back," said Chike as Aldric peeled his eyes open. "Would you like a cookie?"

    Aldric blinked at Chike groggily, the words not immediately making sense to him, as if they were coming through the warbled satellite of an old radio set. Then it struck him, everything: the pain, like his nerves were gasoline freshly set alight, the memory of where the pain was coming from, the realization that he had no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there.

    All of this hit him at once, and Aldric did something he didn't usually know himself to do.

    He panicked.

    Breathing was suddenly a manual task. He sat up, wide-eyed, letting out a scream as hot pain shuddered through his abdomen. Chike cursed under his breath, springing to Aldric's side. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy, Aldric, easy. You got shot, for Kiro's sake. Calm down."

    "I know I got shot, Chike; that's why I'm not calm," said Aldric, but he let Chike lower him back down against the cushions. Aldric turned his head slowly; he was in a small, narrow room he didn't recognize, the ceilings low and the walls painted a shade of brown that reminded Aldric of the burnt, crunchy color of a dying leaf. The bed beneath him was wire, and unforgivingly firm.

    Chike settled back into the stool by the bedside, reaching for a metal tin resting on the nightstand. Handing it to Aldric, he said, "We're in a hospital."

    Aldric jolted, his hand halfway into the cookie tin.

    "Obviously we didn't give the nurses your real name, stupid. Calm down and eat your cookies."

    Aldric nodded, and bit into one. Lemon and sugar melted on his tongue. "Still risky, Chike. We should've just gone back to the warehouse to regroup."

    "You looked about five seconds away from death. I tried to heal you...I don't know, I thought maybe if I could heal myself I could heal another person, but all I managed to do was steady your pulse," Chike said, leaning back in his seat. "A steady pulse doesn't mean much if you're still bleeding out, so we brought you to the nearest hospital we could find. We weren't taking any chances. Not with your life, Finck."

    Aldric finished his cookie, selecting another one. The fierceness of his appetite surprised him, considering he'd never felt so feeble, like his tired muscles were bread soaked in warm milk. And yet he found himself thinking of that restaurant back near the warehouse, the chive cakes fresh out of the oven, steam rising into the summer air. "Thank you, Chike," he said, and he meant it. His quick trick with the ice wouldn't have saved him, not if Chike and the others hadn't finished the job. "Is Zuri okay? And everyone else?"

    Chike hesitated, his eyes skirting towards the floor.

    An alarm went off within Aldric, blaring and unstoppable. He strained up to a sitting position again, ignoring the pain, the tin slipping off of his lap. "Where's Zuri? Tell me, Chike."

  "Seriously! Are you crazy? Quit moving or we'll have to tie you down," Chike said, widening his eyes. Obediently, Aldric rested his head against the pillow, but didn't lessen his glare.

    After a moment, Chike sighed and said, "Fine. To be frank with you, we don't know where Zuri is. She made it out of the mill before it collapsed; we know that. But we were heading to the nearest town, looking for a hospital, when Jem realized she wasn't there. She must have slipped off somewhere. Jem and Kalindi are out looking for her."

    The alarm only blared louder, and a thousand voices in Aldric's head screamed at him to get up, to toss open the door and not even think about returning until he'd found her. One glare from Chike, though, and that dream was no more than a dampened candle wick, quickly extinguished.