Chapter 140 THE FIELD

Chapter 140 THE FIELD
THIRD PERSON

She looked at Lyra's head next. The bandaging was intact. She asked Lyra to follow her finger with her eyes, asked her to state her name and where she was, the last thing she remembered, and listened to the answers.

"The headache," she started. "Is it worse than it was before you slept?"

"It's different," Lyra said carefully. "Not worse exactly. It's concentrated in one place instead of spread."

She pressed two fingers gently to the point on Lyra's forehead that she had indicated and Lyra's intake of breath was immediate.

"There," Lyra pointed unnecessarily.

"Yes," Coraline said, and removed her fingers. She looked at Kai and Yvaine standing against the far wall and her expression communicated something she was not going to say in front of Lyra. "She needs to sleep. Both of you should as well." She looked at Lyra directly. "You do not get up again for the rest of the morning. Whatever you need, you ask for it. Is that understood?"

"I didn't mean to get up," Lyra said.

"I understand that," Coraline replied. "But I am telling you regardless. If you wake and feel the need to move, you call out for Calder. You do not put weight on that ankle again."

Lyra nodded.

Coraline packed her kit and looked at Kai once more as she moved toward the door, a brief, significant look that communicated clearly that she wanted a word outside. He followed her out, pulling the door behind him.

The corridor was dark and empty.

Coraline stood in the low light of the overnight lamps and looked at him
"She was outside?" she asked.

"Yes," Kai said.

"How far outside?"

"She was in the corridor when I found her. Coming from the direction of the lower ground entrance." He paused. "I don't know how far she actually went. She didn't know either."

Coraline was quiet for a moment. "The pain has changed," she said. "The concentration at the forehead. In my experience that is not typical of post-impact swelling presenting at three in the morning." She held his gaze steadily. "It can be consistent with exertion. With neurological activity of a significant kind occurring during what should have been a period of rest."

Kai looked at her. "What kind of neurological activity?"

"I don't know," she answered plainly. "I'm telling you what it might be consistent with, not what I'm certain it is. There's a difference." She paused. "She should not have been able to walk on that ankle. The pain threshold required to suppress that reflex is not something ordinary sleep produces." She looked at him. "If this happens again, I need to be called immediately."

"Understood," Kai said.

She left.

Kai stood in the corridor alone for a moment.

He looked at the door to Lyra's room. Then at the direction she had come from when he found her. Then back at the door.

He went back inside.

Yvaine was in the chair again.

She had pulled it closer to Lyra's bed this time, not the respectful distance of earlier in the evening but close enough that the arm of the chair was nearly touching the bed frame. She had a blanket over her shoulders that she had apparently pulled from her own bed.

Lyra was lying back against the pillow with her eyes open, looking at the ceiling.

She looked at Kai when he came in.
"What did she say?" she asked.

"That you need to sleep," he said.

"What did she actually say?"

He looked at her for a moment then he sat on the edge of the bed and folded his hands between his knees, looking at the floor briefly before looking back at her.

"She said the pain has changed," he said. "The concentration point in your forehead. She said it can be consistent with significant neurological activity during sleep." He paused. "She doesn't know what caused it."

Lyra absorbed this with the slightly distant expression. "Neurological activity," she repeated.

"She was being careful about what she committed to," he said. "She didn't want to say more than she knew."

Lyra looked at the ceiling again. "I don't sleepwalk," she repeated but it was not a question this time but a statement of something she was certain of.

"No," he confirmed.

"So something happened." She pressed her fingers to the bandaging at her forehead, lightly, feeling whatever was underneath it. "Something took me out of my bed and across the Academy grounds and then—" She stopped. "And then stopped."

"Yes," he said.

"And neither of you know what it was."

"No," he said.

She was quiet for a moment.

"The field," she said. "You said I was coming from that direction."

"Yes."

"There's something about the field," she said. "Every time you say it I feel—" She stopped. Pressed her mouth together. "Something… I can't get to it. It's like reaching for sand and trying to squeeze it"

Kai looked at her face.
He thought about whatever had walked her there without waking her.

"Try not to think about it," he said. "Coraline said overthinking makes the headache worse."

"I know," she sighed. "I know that. I just…I hate not being able to understand things”

"I know you do," he said, quietly.

She looked at him. The lamplight was casting the amber light and her violet curls were loose around the bandaging, she looked very tired.

"You're not going to sleep, are you?" she asked.

"No," he admitted.

"You should."

"Probably," he agreed, without moving.

She looked at him for another moment. Then she looked at Yvaine in the chair.

"She's important to you," Lyra said quietly and without any accusation in her tone.

"Yes," Kai said.

"And to me," she said. "Even if I can't remember it. I can feel that she is." She looked at Yvaine directly. "I'm sorry I don't know you."

Yvaine held Lyra's gaze across the dim room.

"You will," Yvaine said simply.

Lyra held her eyes for a moment. Then she nodded, once. Kai sat on the edge of the bed and did not go anywhere.