The Lost Knight (Volume III) The Lost World

Chapter 41: The Canary and The Ostrich

I wake up with a start from a nightmare I can't remember. I wasn't asleep long. I'm wet and cold, and I want off this cloud. Why aren't we leaving?

Dathid squats down next to me. My face tries to smile automatically, but the sharp pain shooting through my cheek reminds me that I'm badly injured.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, overly chipper.

I don't like cheerful Dathid. It's phony. He's phony. He lied to me, too. The joy I felt a second ago twists into a seething hot coal burrowing deep into my gut.

He misreads my silence for pain. "Let's prop you up against your tree and have a look."

He gently lifts me until my back is resting against the trunk, then he turns my head and pokes around at what remains of my ear. Pain shoots through my body like I'm being electrocuted. I pull away as best I can, and he stops his inspection.

"Kyrbast will enjoy rebuilding that," he says.

"How bad is it?" I'm afraid of the answer. I don't want to go through life with only one ear.

He looks as if he's not going to tell me but changes his mind. "We'll have to wait and see if the ear is working. Everything is probably muffled for you because it's swollen. The top burned away, and I had to cut off most of the bottom portion because it was badly charred."

How can things keep getting worse? I always trusted that if a bad thing happened, then a good thing had to follow.

I'm at the end of my rope. I can't take anymore. I was born plain, and now I'm horribly scarred. I never thought of myself as a vain person, but I don't want to be ugly. Of course, even before the disfigurement, the odds of me finding another human who could understand my life wasn't likely. But now it's gone.

"The good news is..." Dathid continues in his overly happy manner, "that ears are easy enough to grow. Especially if you only need cosmetic work."

I try to cover the bandage with my hair, but there's no hair left on that side of my head. "Well, I guess someone has to make Trelix look like the pretty one," I joke.

He's kind enough to chuckle at my attempt at humor. "Do you see him?" Dathid whispers. "He's walking over here. Only one horn is making his head crooked, like the remaining horn is too heavy. It's funny."

You lied to me, I remind myself. My old feelings for him are resurfacing, and I don't welcome them.

"I know you want to be included in the meetings, so are you up for some strategy?" Trelix asks when he steps into my line of vision. I almost laugh because he's holding his head at an angle that makes what's left of his broken horn stick straight up. I stifle the chuckle but can't keep the laughter from my eyes as I exchange looks with Dathid.

"I know," Trelix says. "My head is floating away."

"Do you want me to cut the other one off and even you out?" Dathid offers.

"No, I don't dare do anything until I get the wife's permission. She won't be happy with this."

The others slowly join our conversation. Jonah's here, and so is my elf sparring partner, Dufh. There are two other faeries and another huge creature I've never seen before. It's bigger than Jonah, wearing silver armor and a helmet that shields most of its enormous face. It looks like someone put a cow in a suit of armor. It's standing on two legs, and all I can see is some light blue skin around its cow-like eyes and a thick chunky hand, just like the one I was holding last night.

There are eight beings in the group, including myself. They gather around, and Jonah sits in front of me. "Agatha, I need to catch you up on what happened and where we are now."