Page 17 of Spears and Shadows (Defenders of the Light)
5
Nora dreamedthat she was in Millenium Park, under The Bean. She was staring into its mirrored surfaces and recognized Adam and Drew. Drawing closer to her image, she stared into her own fevered green eyes. She was so close that her nose touched the cold metal surface, but it wasn’t like metal at all. It felt like water, and then there were ripples moving out from where she touched the surface. The ripples warped the reflections around her, and she lost sight of Adam’s and Drew’s faces. She opened her mouth to scream but then she pitched forward and began to fall again.
Now Apollo the sun god himself stood above her as she lay on a cloud. His arms were raised, the orb of the sun shining impossibly close behind him. He was draped in vibrant green fabric, contrasting with his dark skin, which shone in the light. His voice was deep as he called her name.
“Nora, you have to wake up.”
She tried to tell him that she was awake, but then he was pouring molten sunshine into her open mouth and she coughed and spluttered around it. He kept pouring it down her throat until she was drowning, and her vision went white. She could think of nothing but the brightness of the sun and the heat coursing through her veins.
* * *
Nora’s mindslipped gently back into her body. When she opened her eyes, it was to a clear blue sky and the sun above her. As she stared up into it, she wondered why the sky was such an odd texture until she realized that she was not really outside but looking up at a very realistic fresco painting.
Lowering her gaze, she registered that she was lying on a gigantic four-poster bed, cocooned in a fluffy white comforter. Nora was glad to see she was so thoroughly swaddled because her next realization was that she was naked against the silky sheets. While Nora was all for sleeping in the buff, she wasn’t sure she felt comfortable being completely exposed when she was… Where was she?
As if in answer to her silent question, the man from her dreams approached from outside her field of vision. He smiled at her and said, “Welcome to the Sanctuary, Nora Zvezda.”
“Apollo,” she whispered in awe.
His head tipped back and he laughed deeply before continuing in an accent she couldn’t quite place. “No, not even I am quite that good looking. My name is Thaddeus, but you may call me Thad. I’m the reason you are still alive.”
“Thad,” she echoed, remembering the name being shouted during her white-hot haze of confusion. “Adam brought me here.” Wherever here was. “Why am I not in the hospital?”
Thad chuckled once again. “The hospital wasn’t going to be able to help you, no matter how talented your physician was. Only a Healer here at the Sanctuary can treat the poison you were suffering from.”
Nora remembered Adam saying something about poison, but none of this made any sense. She shook her head as if that could somehow straighten out the jumble of thoughts in her mind. Also, why was Thad wearing a green toga?
Thad’s expression was sympathetic.
“Adam will explain everything to you. He’s waiting outside.” He motioned to one side of the room, and sure enough, when Nora looked around the cavernous space, she spied an open archway on one wall, real sunlight shining through.
Thad continued as she looked around. “I put some clothes over there for you to try on. If you then head out into the courtyard, Adam will tell you everything.” He took another glance at her confused face before adding, “It’s good to see you, Nora.” Then he drew back and made his way out of a heavy wooden door.
With Thad’s departure, Nora pulled herself into an upright position, keeping the comforter clutched to her chest. She counted it as a small victory that her head didn’t spin, and she was able to move with much more strength than she had in the hospital. Sitting up, she was able to take in her surroundings more thoroughly than she had before. The large bed occupied one end of a room that had to be the size of her entire city apartment. While the ceiling was painted to mirror the sky, the walls and the floor were made of polished white stone. A lack of furniture other than a few barren bookshelves made the room appear even more cavernous and foreign.
As overwhelming as her predicament was, Nora concluded that everything would be easier to face when she was no longer naked.
She swung her feet around to put them on the floor and stood, pulling the comforter with her, and was surprised to find that the process had been painless. She padded over to the screen and stepped behind it, finding a low stool with a pile of red fabric folded on it.
Letting the comforter drop now that she was behind the privacy of the screen, she glanced down and drew in a sharp breath. The gash in her leg was now nothing more than a thin pink scar. She ran the pads of her fingers over it in wonder for a few moments before remembering that she was supposed to be getting dressed. She picked up the fabric from the stool, only to be dismayed to find that it was not, in fact, clothes, but instead a large rectangle of fabric with no discernable arm or leg holes. Remembering how Thad had been draped in fabric like the figures of ancient Greek statues, she grimaced. Sure enough, under the pile of fabric, she found a set of small golden clasps and a thin gold cord that could serve as a belt.
Thanking her lucky stars that she was a historian and knew how classical Greek clothing worked, she draped the scarlet fabric around herself, albeit awkwardly, and used the clasps to fasten it at the shoulders, before tying the cord around her waist, gathering in the voluminous fabric. She searched in vain for any undergarments before deciding that going commando under a toga was hardly worthy of her concern at the moment. Nora did succeed in locating a pair of leather sandals next to the stool and tried her best to lace them up her calves with unpracticed fingers. Her hair fell loose around her face and, even without a mirror, she could tell her brown curls had become a mass of frizz, but the hair elastic she normally kept around her wrist was missing, so she had no choice but to leave it. A hysterical giggle bubbled up in Nora’s throat as she glanced down at her outfit. Maybe she was still hallucinating.
An image came to her mind then of a swirl of dark creatures and Adam at the center of it, slicing and hacking with a bronze sword. Her smile slid from her face as she remembered how terribly real that had been, and suddenly, it seemed more plausible that this might be real too. Part of her longed to run for the shelter of her cozy apartment and bury her head under the covers and pretend this had never happened, but who knew if she would be able to find her way home from wherever this was. Listening to Adam’s explanations was her best option. She stepped from behind the screen and made her way over to the arch that Thad had indicated.
As she stepped out into the dazzling light, Nora was forced to blink rapidly. Once her eyes adjusted, she found she was in a courtyard made of the same white stone as the room and surrounded by towering, Ionic style Greek columns. The gentle murmur of running water greeted her, and as she looked around, she located the source—a fountain at one end of the courtyard. The outside was covered in small turquoise tiles, and at the center of the pool stood a grand statue of a man. The figure had his face turned up, and held aloft in his hand was a spear, the blade pointed straight up at the sky. Water shot out of the tip of the spear, cascading around him before falling into the pool at his feet, the tinkling of the water reverberating around the almost deserted courtyard.
Perched on the edge of the fountain, Adam looked up at the man. The dark jeans and argyle sweater he wore made him look out of place in the sun-soaked courtyard, and Nora felt even more self-conscious in her odd ensemble. When Adam heard her footsteps echoing off the polished stone, he turned to look.
When he caught sight of her, he froze for a second with his lips parted and eyes wide, probably in shock at her ridiculous outfit. Her cheeks warmed, but the look was gone as quickly as it came, and he jumped to his feet.
“Nora, you’re up!” He looked her over and his voice contained an edge of laughter as he continued. “I see Thad gave you a peplos to sort out for yourself. I’ll see if I can’t find you some real clothes after we are finished talking.”
Nora managed a tight smile as he motioned towards the edge of the fountain, and they both sat down, Nora angling her body to face him. She wanted to inspect his face as he spoke. A silence fell between them, and Nora realized she had so many questions that she did not even know where to begin. She opened her mouth to say something, but Adam got there first.
“I thought you would have attacked me with questions by now.”
Nora tilted her head in thought before responding. “I’m actually debating whether or not to shove you into this fountain for dragging me from a weekend business meeting into a life-endangering fiasco that has me thinking I might be more than half insane, not to mention putting my entire career at risk.”
