The Silenced Tale, стр. 36

Pip rests her head against my clavicle and sighs. “And he’d call us if he needed us.”

“I should hope so,” I say, the rage rushing back in. “Though the fool did not tell us. So make of that what you will.”

Pip snorts. “He’s being a dramatic martyr.”

“All the same,” I admit, “I shall be strengthening the digital protections around our home.”

“Shame you can’t set wards,” Pip says, and I don’t think she’s teasing.

“Perhaps if magic really is here, I may be able to—Pip!”

I have just enough time to keep her from pitching sideways against Alis’s high chair when Pip freezes up and her eyes roll up in her head. She sways with greater force than I’ve seen in one of her fits thus far, as if she has been flung from her chair by a mighty, invisible blow. I manage to get us onto the tiles safely, Pip piled in my lap. Her arms jump up, as if to ward off something coming at her face, and the suddenness of the movement and the blow of her wrist to my forehead drives me back against the side of the table. I crack my head hard.

Alis screams.

I manage to stay upright, shaking away the stars that spark in the edges of my vision.

Alis wriggles and writhes, and I am grateful that her high chair is both sturdy enough not to tip and comes with a little seatbelt that she has not yet learned to undo on her own.

Pip slides from my lap down onto the tile, and I just manage to keep my hands under her head, keep her from bouncing it off the hard surface. Pip cries out once, a long, high keen, arms still raised to protect against something I cannot see, cannot fend off for her.

Dear Writer, my poor love. What is happening to us? To her?

When she finally slumps, chest jumping as she struggles to catch her breath, I take the time to gently set her down and go see to Alis. My daughter is sobbing nonsense, a string of words in English and Mandarin punctuated with, “Bu yao, bu bu!”

“’S all right, sweeting,” I mumble, and lift her from her high chair. Alis tips herself forward in my arms, trying to get at Pip on the floor. “No, no, let your mother rest for a moment.” Alis screams louder as I walk us into the living room, twisting and jumping in my arms like a live wire.

For a moment, I fear that, as Pip’s daughter, whatever is affecting my wife is torturing Alis as well, but a careful examination of Alis shows no pain in her back, no reaction to my light touches on her skull. She seems only to be upset by Pip’s fit.

Another few puzzle pieces floating at the back of my mind slot into place. When Pip is well enough, she staggers into the living room and joins Alis and I on the sofa. This time, I let Alis crawl over to Pip, who seems content to hold her daughter close and whisper nothings into her ear. She pets Alis gingerly, though, and holds herself stiffly.

“Pip,” I say, acting on my concern and closing my fingers around Pip’s wrist gently. Pip lets me pull her hand away from Alis’s back, and I am startled to find her palm an angry red, already blistering a little, as if she’d burned it badly. Pip offers up her second palm without saying a word, proving that it has happened to both hands.

The burns go part of the way past her wrists.

“Cloth Cage of Neglect time for you, sweeting,” I tell Alis, trying to lighten the mood. It doesn’t work. I pluck Alis away from her mother and drop her into her playpen. She grumbles unhappily, but luckily, her rage seems to have worn her out, and she lays down and cuddles some of her board books crankily.

“And upstairs to the bathroom and the first aid kit for you, wife,” I tell Pip. She nods wearily, and lets me help her lever herself upright. She minces as she walks, cradling her rib cage.

She sits down on the edge of the tub, and then gasps as I turn around to fetch the first aid kit from under the sink. “Forsyth, your head.”

“Hmm?” I touch the place from which my headache seems to radiate, and my fingers come away slightly tacky with blood. “A small hurt,” I say. “Let’s see to you first.”

I run the tub as cold as I can make it, and Pip rinses her hands while I peel up her shirt to get a look at her side. Her torso is bruised with deep purple marks, the kind of bruises Kintyre used to get when he took a fall from Stormbearer. But these ones look days old already. Even before my eyes, some of the smaller bruises are beginning to lighten to the sickly green-and-yellow of healing. It is unnatural and alarming.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone was Speaking Words of Healing over Pip right now. Working on a theory, I pull Pip’s cold, wet hands up to my face and Speak my own Words of Healing. The Word crackles and sparks in the air, an actual puff of watery glitter, but nothing happens. Still, it is more than a Word has ever done in the Overrealm before.

“It’s getting stronger,” Pip says, face ashen.

“But not nearly strong enough for what we need right now,” I say.

None of the blisters on her palms have grown large enough to require lancing, so I set about swabbing her hands with antiseptic wipes and covering them with a generous helping of burn cream. Pip gestures wearily at my head.

“I can’t help you clean that when I’m covered in goo.”

“No need, my love,” I say, kissing her forehead gently.

I rip open a fresh swab and search the back of my skull until I find the part that stings. It doesn’t start bleeding