“She’s exhausted,” said Sally.

  “She’s alive. I thought I’d killed her.”

  “Phoebe said—”

  I opened my eyes again. My vision was a little clearer this time, and I could see a cloth ceiling stretched above us, a blue so pale that I’d initially taken it for the sky. We were in a tent. Given the shade of blue, we were in an Ithacan tent, meaning Helen and Phoebe had managed to find us.

  “I know what Phoebe said,” snapped Thomas. “And she was right, but dammit, we need to stay with Alice now.” He looked back at me. “Darling, when I was looking at your tattoos, I saw several that were associated with healing. Do you know what they do?”

  I considered whether I felt well enough to nod, and finally forced myself to do so.

  “This is a bad idea,” said Sally.

  “I’m allowed to have the occasional bad idea,” snapped Thomas.

  Sally sighed. “I’m going to go get Phoebe,” she said, and stood, vanishing.

  “Bones,” I said. Then, “General.”

  “Anything relating to organ damage?”

  That was an alarming question, especially given that the spells contained in my tattoos could only be used on myself. I wanted to ask which of my organs had been damaged—maybe my lungs, if my ribs were even more badly broken than they felt—but the question felt like too much work. Instead, I frowned and asked, “Why bad idea?”

  Even that was too much work. I wanted to go back to sleep.

  Thomas swallowed, looking haggard enough that what I wanted didn’t matter as long as I could make him stop looking like that. “It was . . . difficult breaking the barrier from the inside. It took even more effort than I had anticipated. I had to keep ripping the pneuma off of you long past the point where I wanted to stop—your blood pressure was clearly far too high, and your temperature was spiking badly, but we’d gone so far and used up so much of what we had that stopping would have killed us all, you probably included. So I kept going.”

  He sounded so genuinely sorry about that that it hurt to hear. I was already in physical pain; I didn’t need to be in emotional pain at the same time. I tried to lift my hand to comfort him, and it didn’t want to respond. Oh, that was frustrating. I frowned. I could still do that much, at least.

  “But we made it! Alice, we made it. We’re out. We’ve been trying to resuscitate you since then. You have several broken ribs, judging by the way you’re breathing, and you had at least one heart attack. Possibly more than one.”

  That didn’t make a lot of sense. CPR alone won’t bring someone out of a true cardiac arrest, just keep their blood moving long enough to prevent brain damage before their heart can be restarted. I frowned more.

  “I may have exhausted us both getting us out, but it’s a sorry sorcerer who can be dropped into a dimension with more ambient magic than that hellhole and not manage at least a small electrical charge,” said Thomas.

  So he’d been shocking me back to life? Useful man. I smiled and closed my eyes.

  He shook my shoulder. “I know you’re tired, love, I know you want to sleep, but I need you to stay awake. It’s going to take me time to recharge, even with access to a living pneuma. I can manage small, elemental things right now because I’m an elementalist before anything else. I can’t manage a healing. I’ve never been able to do that, and there wasn’t enough ambient magic in the bottle to let me learn. If you want to repair the damage, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

  “Not right now, she won’t,” snapped a beautifully familiar voice. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could still smile, and so I did that.

  “Helen,” I rasped.

  “Hello, you beautiful fool,” she said, voice softening. “Even Tyche’s love wasn’t enough to save you this time. You ran faster than we could follow, and by the time we caught up, you had already gone into the jar.”

  “Aikanis?” I asked. Three syllables seemed to be about my limit right now.

  “Naga wasn’t pleased to return the book but recognized that an Ithacan descendant’s claim superseded his own. He surrendered it rather than fight with Phoebe, and oh, you should have seen that old snake squirm. He was not pleased to hear that you’d gone on ahead, or that you intended to enter. It could have been a suicide mission.”

  “Technically, it was,” said Thomas. “She did die.”

  “And don’t think I won’t be discussing that with you, at length, once she’s stable.” The soft clop of Helen’s hooves came closer. “Which she is not right now. Sally tells me you were trying to coerce Alice into using some of those tattoos she’s covered with, and I know you weren’t doing that, because we both know that her humors are already out of balance with themselves. Unbalancing them further could only have negative effects on her health.”

  “Which would be less extreme if her heart weren’t damaged!” Thomas protested.

  Helen sighed. “Aceso, grant me strength,” she said, almost under her breath. “Get out of here, now.”

  “But—”

  “There are to be no ‘buts,’ human. The people you saved, at the expense of your own Odysseus, need you. They wait for your wisdom, such as it is, and they put no faith in Phoebe’s word. If we’re to navigate them home, we’ll need you to calm their anxious nerves. Get out.”

  Thomas looked at her bleakly, then turned back to me and squeezed my hand. “I’ll be right outside,” he said. “I’ll be back in an instant if you need me, I promise you I will. I’m so sorry, Alice.”

  Helen snorted. “As you should be. Now go.”

  Thomas let go of my hand. I would have grabbed for him if my arms had been working. Instead, I could only watch helplessly as he straightened and stepped out of my field of vision. A bare instant later, Helen stepped into view and crouched down, placing something cool and damp that smelled of herbs on my forehead.

  “Koalemos has been with that man for a very long time,” she said, settling beside me. “Only the God of Fools could have sustained him in your absence. Or perhaps he watches over you both, you lucky, lucky fool. Although your luck failed you in this instance.”

  I made a small sound of protest. She shook her head.

  “No, I mean that sincerely. Yes, you found the papers that led you to the man, if a man who would kill you to save himself, and then try to convince you to repeat the act to salve his conscience can truly be worth finding. And yes, we followed the instructions and your trail here, to poor, once-sweet Cornale, which will grow sweet again, thanks to your actions.”

  She pursed her lips, wiping the cool, damp thing across my forehead. “The broken vessel was shattered by the blow from within and has crumbled away. The door is gone. Not closed or sealed: removed. It no longer poisons the pneuma of Cornale.”

  I smiled. Good for us.

  “Had you been a little less eager, we would have told you not to go through the door to begin with,” she said. “When Aikanis fell through it, he was with a full detachment of cartographers and sorcerers, all of them set to support his explorations. All of them trapped by a world that they were never meant to find.”

  She shook her head, lips pressed into a hard line. “Three of their sorcerers gave their lives to get the rest of them out. They drained themselves to nothing, and they did their best to break the bonds holding that lost world to this one. They failed, and so felt they had failed Cornale, and Ithaca, for the danger remained. They exiled themselves. You have brought home more than a dozen explorers, returning their legacies to their families, by telling us how their stories ended. The three sorcerers who died there will be remembered for their sacrifice. Their names will be sent into glorious retirement.”

  “Why . . . mad?” If Aikanis had lost three men in getting out of the dead dimension, and we’d only lost me—and not for good—it didn’t make sense for her to be angry with Thomas.

  “Because I know you’d do anything for that man, even die, and I can’t believe he let you do it,” she said, voice going sharp. “We would have found another way.”

  “No . . . time,” I said. I was so very tired. My eyelids felt like they weighed ten pounds each, and I could feel them starting to drift closed. “Dying.”

  “I know the world was dying,” she said gently. “The girl Sally, she told us everything, and we believe her, because unlike you and your Penelope, she has no cause to lie. It wouldn’t have fallen so easily upon your exit if it had been able to sustain itself any longer. You’ve done what you set out to do, and you can rest now. We’ll see about repairing the damage in the morning, when you’re stable, and then we’ll start for home.”

  That sounded pleasant enough. I let my eyes close, sighing, and relaxed into the bedding beneath me. I couldn’t remember ever having been this tired in my life. Maybe a few times when I’d been injured back in Buckley, but that had been so long ago that I’d started to question my memory of how exhausted I’d been. This was impossible to question.

  I didn’t sleep. I just drifted, lost on a tired bed of weariness and aches. I missed my tunnel and the topple through the dark. At least that had been painless and peaceful.

  Helen left, coming back a while later with a bowl of rich, salty broth that she fed to me one spoonful at a time. I would have been embarrassed by my own weakness if it had been Sally, or even Thomas, but because in Ithaca, food is love, I knew she wasn’t judging me. She fed me, and I ate, and when she followed the soup with sips of some sort of sweet, sugary drink I didn’t recognize, I drank, and eventually she left, and I was alone again.

  This time, I did sleep, at least long enough that when I woke again, it was to darkness and silence. I was still too weak to move, but someone was nestled in beside me, warm and solid. I turned my head as far as I could, which wasn’t far enough, and he stirred, making a soft mumbling noise. I smiled. Thomas. I closed my eyes again.

  We both slept.

  Twenty

  “Someone hurts your family, you make them understand why no one hurts your family twice. You make the lesson very, very clear.”

  —Alexander Healy

  In an Ithacan tent, barely able to move, still in a presumably hostile dimension full of man-eaters, so, you know, having a great time

  The next time I woke up, the tent was filled with morning light and Helen was sitting next to me with another bowl of broth. I tried to sit up and scowled when I still couldn’t move. Okay, this was getting ridiculous.

  “What’s . . . wrong?” I managed to ask. Even that took too much effort.

  “We think you had what the people in your dimension refer to as ‘a stroke’ shortly before your heart stopped,” said Helen bluntly. “The strain you put yourself through by allowing an untrained sorcerer to strip the pneuma from your body so quickly was too much. There are methods for removing it safely—surely Naga must have shown you some of those, given that you’ve been cleaned off regularly for as long as I’ve known you; that old snake has to be good for something—and you followed none of them. You’re lucky your Penelope was able to bring you back at all.”

  I stared at her, eyes wide with horror. “Fix it,” I demanded.

  “Damage to the brain is trickier than damage to other systems. I don’t know if we can. And that wasn’t the only consequence, although I expect it to be the one you care the most about.”

  Well, she was right about that at least. I continued staring at her. Finally, I scowled. “Tattoos?”

  “All your embedded spells are still with you, and if you want to repair your skeletal system at this point, that should be within your limits. You’ll need another night for soft tissue. But before you do, a moment.” Helen’s expression turned grave. “Phoebe is willing to repair what damage she can. She has two requirements for you, if she does.”

  “What?”

  “You won’t return to Empusa for any longer than it takes to collect whatever you may have left there. Your association with Naga is done. This is not up for negotiation.”

  I nodded with difficulty. “O . . . kay. And?”

  “You and your Penelope have an obligation to the people you removed from the dead world. You will see them settled in a place that will have them, and after that’s done, you will go home, and stay there long enough to get some help laying your fears to rest. You are our friend. We love you dearly. We would rather you be healing yourself in peace and safety than running around risking your life on legs that we have granted you.”

  I blinked, thinking this through. It sounded like they were happy enough to let me finish fulfilling my obligations, as long as I was willing to go back to Earth when I was done, and . . . get therapy? Maybe? My kids had been trying to convince me to do that for years. I smiled at her.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Helen smiled back, with obvious relief. “I’ll get Phoebe,” she said and rose, leaving the full bowl of broth behind as she walked to the door. I stayed where I was. It wasn’t like I had any real choice in the matter.

  Two sets of hoofbeats sounded a few minutes later, and then Phoebe was there, kneeling next to me and taking my hand. “Helen tells me you’ve agreed,” she said. “Is this true?”

  “. . . yes,” I managed.

  “Then close your eyes and trust me.”

  I closed my eyes. I trusted her.

  Thomas’ magic was the magic of Earth, no matter what dimension he was in, and it always felt a little bit like fire, even when it was being used kindly. I didn’t have any magic of my own; mine was all borrowed, and all implanted in me on Empusa, where it felt like sandpaper on my skin. Not unpleasant, but absolutely abrasive. Phoebe’s magic was Ithacan. It felt like a warm wind blowing off the ocean, full of stinging salt but also gentle heat, cleansing and wiping the world away.

  She rubbed some sort of oil on my wrists and temples, humming under her breath. I relaxed as the pain in my chest smoothed and faded, the bones knitting back together. The ache remained, damaged lungs not popping back until she moved on to the soft tissues of my organs, and I actually felt the moment when my heartbeat evened out, a hitch I had barely been aware of smoothing away to be replaced by a normal rhythm.

  By the time Phoebe took her hands away, I didn’t hurt at all. “You can open your eyes now,” she said, and I did, blinking up at her. She smiled, offering me her hand. “Let me help you up.”

  I took her hand. It was easy. I just thought about it, and I did it, and the fact that it felt remarkable to me was new, and different, and I hoped it wouldn’t stay remarkable for long. She pulled me to my feet as she rose, and I stood without difficulty.

  My knees complained a little, which was odd, but not odd enough to make me stop or sit back down. When we were done, we were both on our feet, and when Phoebe let go of me, I didn’t fall down. Instead, I looked down at myself, noting that everything seemed to be intact; I was even still wearing the clothes I’d been in when we started the ritual. I ran my hands along the length of my body, then held my arms out in front of me, testing for tremors. They didn’t even shake.

  “You’re a miracle worker,” I said.

  “I am touched by Perse, as you are beloved of Tyche, and like the love of any god, my blessings have their limits,” she said, in a tone which implied correction. “Miracles are for the gods. I cannot fully restore what has been taken, but I can do as much as my gifts allow.”

  That was ominous. I blinked but decided not to push. Thomas was going to tell me all about it, I was sure, probably while apologizing for letting me suffer the consequences of my own actions. “I still appreciate it,” I said. “Helen told me your conditions, and they’re fine by me. I don’t think Thomas would have let me go back to Naga even if you’d been okay with the idea, and I want to spend some time with my family. I feel like I don’t know them as well as I want to. And Thomas doesn’t know them at all, right now.”

  “That sounds good,” said Phoebe. “You need to rest.”

  “Yeah, we do.”

  “You may not be able to receive magical healing again.”

  That was new. I blinked. “Oh?” But then, before I’d started gallivanting around dimensions like it was my job, I’d never had access to magical healing. It isn’t much of a thing on Earth, unless you could hook up with a Caladrius, which is a big part of the reason there aren’t many of them left. After I’d been bitten by the Bidi-taurabo-haza, I’d been in physical therapy for more than a year, and I hadn’t walked without a limp for almost five. Losing something I hadn’t been expecting to keep wasn’t much of a blow, although Phoebe looked at me like it was.

  Then again, Ithaca didn’t have indoor plumbing, and if someone had tried to tell me I could never have a shower again, I wouldn’t have taken it very well. We get used to the things we think of as normal.

  “Your system can only handle so much,” she said. “I would discharge those spells without spending them, if I were you.”

  “Can I even do that?”

  “Yes. It’s a matter of intent,” she said. “Did Naga never tell you?”

  “I get the feeling Naga never told me a lot of things, or if he did, I forgot them as soon as it was convenient for him that I not know those things,” I said grimly. “You’ll have to tell me how to do it, but I’m willing. I’ll release them as soon as we get home—just in case something goes wrong in the interim.”

  She nodded. “That seems fair. You should go. Your Penelope is waiting, and angry to be kept so long in abeyance.”

  I paused. “Why do you keep calling him that? His name is Thomas.”

  “Because he waited on his island for fifty years for you to come and find him, and kept his faith for all that time,” she said. “And you, his Odysseus, traveled through stormy seas, disasters, and the wrath of the gods themselves to find your way back to him. He was the king of Ithaca, you know.”

  “What?” I blinked at her, not following.