The Mind's Eye (37 page)
Authors: K.C. Finn
Tags: #young adult, #historical, #wwii, #historical romance, #ww2, #ya, #europe, #telepathic, #clean teen publishing, #kc finn
“
Where are they treating him?” he asked.
lip. “On a submarine, I’m afraid.”
“
Are you mad, woman?” Bickerstaff blurted, “A pressurised
space is no place for a man who’s been stabbed through the
chest!”
“
We didn’t have a choice,” Mum pleaded, “if the boys hadn’t
got on that sub, the next one we could arrange for England would
have been after Christmas. There’s nowhere you could hide a man in
Ieuan’s condition for that long, he’d have died.”
“
Do you at least have a proper doctor?”
“There’s one on the submarine. It’s a fully manned vessel, lots of
people trained to help with injuries.”
“
Getting stabbed isn’t usually the speciality of doctors who
practice underwater,” Bickerstaff griped. He thumped his one
remaining leg hard. “God I wish I could look him over and advise
you.”
snapped up, her eyes suddenly brighter.
“
Actually you can.”
I wasn’t
privy to the full details of how it worked, all Mum would tell me
was that there was a way for psychics like us to pull another
person’s consciousness into our heads and take them with us
wherever we went. She had done such things with Dad all year,
letting him snoop on people and places with her across the whole
length of Europe to gain information to help the Free French. She
had never tried it with anyone but him though, so she took
Bickerstaff away with her to another room to try it out in private.
Astonished as I was that there were yet more things I could learn
to do with my powers, I was bitter that she wouldn’t let me see how
it was done. I had a feeling she would be reluctant to teach me
anything that would allow me to get into more trouble during the
war, so I made a mental note to see if I could figure out the
method with Henri sometime in the future.
After his
first consultation with Ieuan, Bickerstaff was visibly shaken and
practically green in the face. He had to lie down for a little
while before he was collected enough to tell us what he had seen
and even then his speech was stunted and breathy. Ieuan was in a
critical state but there was every chance he could still survive.
He had been pierced clean through the chest but the blade had only
brushed against his lung, puncturing the chest cavity and causing
it to temporarily collapse. Medics had been able to re-inflate his
lung into a weak but working order, the problem now was the risk of
internal bleeding. Ieuan kept suddenly rupturing inside his chest
and the medics aboard the ship were finding it hard to keep
stemming the blood and they had not found the source of the bleeds.
Bickerstaff had recommended some medications based on what they had
on board the sub to help his circulation, but the treatment he
really needed wasn’t available on board.
“
If they don’t find the source of the bleeding he’ll need a
transfusion soon from the continued blood loss,” Bickerstaff
explained in his usual emotionless voice.
“
Or he’ll just bleed to death?” Blod asked, her hand on his
shoulder. He just nodded at her. “Then what can we do?”
started talking over each other, but I heard none of it, my mind
reeling with something that Bickerstaff had said. The source of the
bleeding. The thing that was causing the ruptures. I thought hard
about everything I’d seen and felt that awful night in the
tunnel.
“
Stop,” I said loudly. Everyone fell silent. I looked to the
former doctor as I gathered my words carefully. “Could some kind of
object stuck in his shoulder be causing these rupture
things?”
“
Definitely,” he said with a nod, “What do you
know?”
“
When I could feel it all happening,” I gulped dryly, “The
blade came back out and he started to find it hard to breathe. But
there was something else, something sharp under the back of his
shoulder. I felt like I wanted to pull it out of his
body.”
“
An obstruction,” Bickerstaff mused.
“
A piece of the blade left behind pr’aps?” Idrys
suggested.
slowly started to nod. Bickerstaff leapt up, totally forgetting his
fake leg until Blod came to steady his wobbling form. He approached
my mother unsteadily and took her arm.
“
We have to go again, now.”
It was hard
to believe that between all the life and death conversations a
wedding was slowly coming together in the background. Everyone who
was in on the plan to save Ieuan operated in shifts to cover for
one another, doing their special duties like pressing clothes and
arranging flowers whilst whispering updates to one another from
Mum’s latest trip to see how he was doing. I wasn’t allowed to see
anything, of course, so I spent the next three days passing on
messages and quizzing Bickerstaff about what was really going on.
When Blod wasn’t around he was willing to tell me the truth: Ieuan
had almost died the first time they tried to remove the foreign
body in his shoulder. Things didn’t look good.
It was the
night before the wedding that I sat in Blod’s room with her,
helping her put her hair into overnight rollers for a perfect set
of blonde curls at the chapel the next day. We were talking about
simple things, nice distracting things like how pretty Ness would
look as a flower girl and how we could put some flowers over my
crutches to make them look less hideous in the photographs, when
suddenly Blod fell silent. I knew she had returned to her worries
about her brother, so I kept quiet too and tried to finish her
hair. I had just put the last roller in when she exploded into a
fit of tears.
“
How am I supposed to go and have the happiest day of my
life?” she sobbed, turning to me with anger in every muscle of her
face, “Ieu’s dying. He’s dying and we’re yur doing
nothing!”
her fists down on her bed and I caught her by the wrists to calm
her down.
“
You heard what Mum said,” I tried to soothe, “that sub is due
to surface in England tonight, where all sorts of proper doctors
and equipment are waiting.” I rubbed her wrists with my thumbs.
“He’s made it this far.”
few times, scrubbing tears from her eyes roughly.
“
It’s lucky you were there to feel that bit of blade that got
stuck,” she said quietly, “or he’d most likely be dead
already.”
bitterly about Mum not wanting me to be there at all, how if I had
just done as she said and stayed away, Henri wouldn’t have even
known to rush down the tunnel and help them to get out. The thought
of Henri sent a pang straight to the centre of my chest. Suddenly I
wanted to cry too. All the horrible things he must have seen and
now he was all alone on that submarine, time ticking away until he
could set foot on safe ground once more. When he left for war I had
promised to be there always, but now we were truly apart.
The door to
Blod’s bedroom opened and a breathless figure clunked in, shutting
it behind him.
“
Oi!” Blod cried, her hands rushing to her hair. “You’re not
supposed to see me now! It’s bad luck!”
Bickerstaff heaved with the effort of hauling his false leg and
crutch up Ty Gwyn’s stairs for the first time, but when he looked
up at us he was grinning like a madman. He shook his head, gasping
for breath.
“
No love, it’s the best luck,” he began, clutching his chest,
“they got the blade fragment out. The sub’s surfaced in Cardiff
docks. He’s stable.”
off the bed so fast she nearly knocked me to the floor, rushing to
Bickerstaff and throwing her arms around him. He wobbled
precariously and held onto her, trying to keep himself steady as
she kissed him all over one side of his face in utter joy.
“
Cardiff’s in South Wales, isn’t it?” I asked.
nodded as Blod let him go. “It’s a fair drive, but Idrys says we’ll
go down tomorrow right after the wedding and see him.”
Blod settled
herself beside me again on the edge of the bed, clutching my hand
for a moment. “Thank you,” she began with a huge grin, “both of
you. You’ve done so much. Now get out of my room! I’ve got a
sack-load of beauty sleep to catch up on for the morning!”
She pushed
and shoved our limping forms from the room, but we took her
enthusiastic brutality with a smile.
pretended that he’d had a letter from a colleague in Cardiff
General Hospital so that we could break the news about Ieuan to
Mam. I was front row centre to see her reaction and she didn’t
disappoint me. First she attacked Bickerstaff with a hug so fierce
that he actually fell right over on his backside after she let him
go, then she ran around kissing each one of us with joyous tears
pouring down her cheeks like some great waterfall of relief. She
picked up Ness; already half adorned with her flower girl outfit,
and swung her around the kitchen until the paper roses that had
been tacked to her skirt came flying off in all directions,
covering us all in pink petals. As a final act, she burst outside
to shout to the heavens and thank God himself, only to find herself
ankle-deep in the first full drift of December snow.
“
Ooh!” Ness cried, running out after her to play in the white
blanket all over the yard.
followed suit, throwing himself face first into a huge drift that
had piled up outside the nearby barn. I looked out at them with a
nervous kind of joy in my heart. I had never actually walked in
snow before. I hauled myself out gingerly, stepping down into the
cool, powdery stuff, feeling my feet make a deep print before I set
out with more confidence. I looked back at my tracks after a while,
the crutches making it look like two peg leg pirates were walking
side by side. Even Blod came out to enjoy the drift without moaning
about what it might do to her shoes, throwing a snowball at
Bickerstaff that he deflected with his false leg, which almost came
off totally from the impact of the throw.
The whole
contents of the house were still outside in the fresh morning when
a lilting voice called over from the path:
“
Oi! I thought you lot had a wedding to go to?”
turned to see Thomas racing towards us in his fine navy uniform,
his bags discarded in the snow. He went straight to Mam, turning
the tables on her for once as he half picked her up in his
excitement.
“
Oh Thom! Ieuan’s home!” she exclaimed, delighted to have
another person to tell, “He’s in hospital in Cardiff!”
pulled away from the hug his young face was a picture of shock. He
looked around to Blod and his grandfather, both nodding to help him
accept the good news. It took quite a few moments, but eventually
it all sank in. He swore quite loudly, but nobody told him off,
then threw himself backwards into the snow and laughed up at the
morning sky. Ness leapt on his stomach and covered him in slush,
which to Mam and Blod’s horror was also all over her dress.
“
You little mochyn!” Blod cried, pulling her away from Thomas
and dragging her up to see her soaking wet hem.
when the real work of having a wedding began.
***
The
preparations had been hard, but they were nothing compared to
organisation of the big day itself. The ceremony was at the chapel
at half past twelve but it was gone nine by the time everyone was
dried off and breakfasted after our time in the snow. Mum was a
whirlwind of activity, shooing Mam away from the kitchen for her to
get ready whilst she took over making the sandwiches and sorting
out the other foodstuffs for the party at Ty Gwyn straight after
the service. A visit to Cardiff or not, Mam would never let anyone
set off with an empty stomach.
It was my
duty to help Blod get into her dress, but everything was such a
blur and a rush that I spent most of that time close up to it
adjusting hems, fixing broken seams and resetting her golden curls
once we’d secured her veil. In fact I didn’t actually stop to look
at her properly until some hours later when we were outside the
chapel with Ness, waiting for Idrys to come and walk her in. It was
then that I saw the long, flowing white skirt of the gown. It was
as bright as the snow all around us, something shiny in the
material was reflecting the sun that had broken through the clouds
above. Blod’s perfect skin was like porcelain against the dress
save for a pinkish glow in her cheeks as she stood catching her
breath in the cold air.
“
You look perfect,” I told her, smiling widely.
