Gebo, she thought, one flash of coherence, of memory, just before her head slid under the water. Gebo, the rune of sacrifice.
Oh, Tom.
Dying was painless-but sad. It hurt to think of the people she was leaving behind.
She kept picturing her parents, imagining what they would say when Dee and the others got home and told them. If Dee and the others got home and told them.
Her thoughts were very scattered, like dandelion fluff blowing erratically on the wind.
Mr. and Mrs. Parker-Pearson-Summer's parents -had been so hurt when they lost Summer. Jenny hated to think of her parents hurt that way.
And Tom ... what would happen to Tom? Maybe Julian would let him go. No point in keeping him after Jenny was gone. But that didn't seem likely. Julian was a Shadow Man, he belonged to a race that didn't have gentle emotions. They weren't capable of pity.
Julian might take out his anger on Tom instead.
Please, no, Jenny thought... but it didn't seem to matter that much anymore. Even her sadness was fading now-breaking up and floating away. She was dead, and she couldn't change anything.
Strange, though, that a dead person could suddenly feel pain-physical pain. A burning. The frigid water had stopped hurting a long time ago, and since then she'd had no sense of her own body. Trapped in absolute darkness and utter silence, too numb to feel any sensation, she didn't seem to have a body. She was just a drifting collection of thoughts.
But now-this burning had started. At first it seemed very distant and easy to ignore. But it didn't stop. It got worse. She felt heat: a tingling, prickling heat that demanded her attention. And with the heat she began to have a body again.
Hands. She could feel her hands now. And feet, she had feet. She had a face, defined by thousands of tiny red-hot needles. And she was aware of a vague, fuzzy glow.
Open your eyes, she told herself.
She couldn't. They were too heavy, and everything hurt so much. She wanted to go back into the darkness where there wasn't any pain. She willed the light to go away.
"Jenny! Jenny!"
Her name, called in tones of love and desperation. Poor Tom, she thought dimly. Tom needed her-and he must be frantic with worry. She should go to Tom.
But it hurt.
"Jenny. Please, Jenny, come back-"
Oh, no. No, don't cry. It'll be all right.
There was only one way to make it all right, and that was to come back. Forget how much it hurt.
All right, do it, then. Jenny concentrated on the fuzzy glow, trying to make it come closer. Pulling herself toward it. The pain was terrible-her lungs hurt. But if she had lungs, she could breathe. Breathe, girl!
It hurt like hell, and darkness sucked at her, trying to drag her down again. ' "That's it, Jenny. Keep fighting Oh, Jenny ..."
With a tremendous effort she opened her eyes. Golden light dazzled her. Someone was rubbing her hands.
I did it for you, Tom.
But it wasn't Tom. It was Julian.
Julian was the one rubbing her hands, calling out to her. Golden light danced on his hair, his face. It was a fire, Jenny realized slowly, and she was in another cavern, slightly bigger than the last. She was dry, somehow, and lying in a sort of nest of white fur, very soft, very comfortable. The heat of the fire was bringing her back to life.
The pain wasn't so bad now, although there was still an unyielding knot of ice in her middle. And she felt weak-too weak and exhausted to think properly. It was Julian, not Tom-but she couldn't really take that in.
It didn't even look like Julian ... because Jenny had never seen Julian look afraid. But now the blue eyes were dark with fear and as wide as a child's-the pupils huge and dilated with emotion. Julian's face, which had always seemed molded for arrogance and mockery, was white even in the firelight-and thinner somehow, as if the skin were drawn tight over bones. As for the dangerously beautiful smile that usually curved Julian's lips ... there wasn't a trace of it.
Strangest of all, Julian seemed to be shaking. The hands that held Jenny's had stopped their rubbing, but a fine, continuous tremor ran through them. And Jenny could see how quickly he was breathing by the way his chest rose and fell.
"I thought you were dead," he said in a muted voice.
So did I. Jenny tried to say it, but only got as far as a hitching breath.
"Here. Drink this, it should help." And the next moment he was supporting her head, holding a steaming cup to her lips. The liquid was hot and sweet, and it sent warmth coursing into the cold, hard knot inside her, loosening it and chasing away the last of the pain. Jenny felt herself relaxing, lying still to absorb the fire's heat. A feeling of well-being crept through her as Julian laid her back down.
Gently. Julian was being gentle ... but Julian was never gentle. He belonged to a race that didn't have gentle emotions. They didn't feel tenderness, weren't capable of pity.
She probably shouldn't even accept help from him-but he looked so haunted, like someone who had been through a terrible fright.
"I thought I'd lost you," he said.
"Then you didn't send the water?"
He just looked at her.
It didn't seem to be the time for recriminations. Oh, she probably ought to say something-maybe list the kind of things he'd done to her in the past. He'd hunted her in every way imaginable.
But here, now, in this little cavern surrounded by rock, with no one present but the two of them, and no sound but the soft roar and crackle of the fire ... all that seemed very far away. Part of a past life. Julian didn't seem like a Shadow Man, didn't seem like a hunter. After all, if he were a predator, he had his quarry right here, exhausted and helpless. He'd never have a better chance. If he wanted her, she wouldn't even be able to put up a fight.
Instead, he was looking at her with those queer dazed eyes, still black with emotion.
"You would have cared if I died," she said slowly.
The eyes searched hers a moment, then looked away.
"You really don't know, do you?" he said in an odd voice.
Jenny said nothing. She pulled herself up a little in the white nest, so she was sitting.
"I've told you how I feel about you."
"Yes. But ..." Julian had always said that he was in love with her-but Jenny had never sensed much tenderness in the emotion. She might have said this, but for some reason it seemed-inappropriate-to say it to someone who looked so lost. Like a child waiting for a blow. "But I've never understood why."
"Haven't you." It wasn't even a question.
"We're so different." Madness to be talking about this. But they were both looking at each other, now, quietly, as they had never sat and looked before. Eyes unwavering-but without challenge. It meant something to look into someone's eyes this long, Jenny thought. She shouldn't be doing it.
But of course she had wondered, she had wondered from the beginning what he could possibly see in her. How he could want her-so much. Enough to watch over her since she was five years old, to pierce the veil between the worlds to come after her, to hunt her and stalk her as if he thought about nothing else.
"Why, Julian?" she said softly.
"Would you like a list?" His face was completely blank, his voice clipped and emotionless.
"A-what?"
"Hair like liquid amber, eyes green as the Nile," he said, seeming utterly dispassionate about it. He could have been reading a page of homework assignments. "But it's not the color, really, it's the expression. The way they go so deep and soft when you're thinking."
Jenny opened her mouth, but he was going on.
"Skin that glows, especially when you're excited. A golden sheen all over you."
"But-"
"But there are lots of beautiful girls. Of course. You're different. There's something inside you that makes you different, a certain kind of spirit. You're -innocent. Sweet, even after everything that's been thrown at you. Gentle, but with a spirit like flame."
"I'm not," Jenny said, almost frightened. "Audrey sometimes says I'm too simple - "
"Simple as light and air-things people take for granted but that they'd die without. People really should think more about that."
Jenny did feel frightened now. This new Julian was dangerous-made her feel weak and dizzy.
"When I first saw you, you were like a flood of sunshine. All the others wanted to kill you. They thought I was crazy. They laughed... ."
He means the other Shadow Men, Jenny thought.
"But I knew, and I watched you. You grew up and got more beautiful. You were so different from anything in my world. The others just watched, but I wanted you. Not to kill or to use up the way-the way they do with humans sometimes here. I needed you."
There was something in his voice now besides clinical dispassion. It was-hunger, Jenny thought, but not the cold, malicious hunger she'd seen in the ancient eyes and the whispering voices of the other Shadow Men. It was as if Julian was hungry for something he'd never had, filled with a crippling need even he didn't understand.
"I couldn't see anything else, couldn't hear anything else. All I could think about was you. I wouldn't let anyone else hurt you, ever. I knew I had to have you, no matter what happened. They said I was crazy with love."
He had gotten up and walked away to the edge of the firelight. As he stood there, Jenny seemed to see him for the first time, looking at him with new eyes. And he looked-small. Small and almost vulnerable.
Nothing in the universe was moving except her heart, and that was shaking her body.
She had never thought about what the other Shadow Men might say to Julian. She knew he was the youngest of a very old race, but she'd never thought about his life at all, or his point of view. She hadn't thought about him having a point of view.
"What's it like, being-" She hesitated.
"Being a Shadow Man? Watching from the dark places everything happening on the worlds that aren't full of shadows? Earth has colors, you know, that you never find here."