He got the thermos open and poured a cupful of coffee into the lid, handing it to her. Mina sipped the coffee and tried to listen to what Karl was saying. Her eyes were becoming increasingly heavy, and it was hard to concentrate in the warm vehicle.
“You must be the luckiest girl in the world. You know that, don’t you?” His lips pressed together. He studied her under heavy lidded eyes.
Mina wasn’t so sure it was luck. She made sure to take a good look at the trunk of the tree as Karl helped her into the car. The tree wasn’t hit by lighting. There was no evidence, of charring or it being cracked or split. The hundred foot tree was uprooted, but most of the trees roots were still buried deep in the ground. Something of extreme force hit the tree, causing it to fall into the road. Mina was almost positive it was Jared, but why?
The car felt like it was on fire and burning her up. She tried to move her hand toward the heater to turn it down, but Karl mistook her actions for wanting more heat. He turned the knob up and, Mina’s hand felt heavy and it dropped uselessly on her lap. She was having problems even controlling her own limbs. The intense heat emanating from the car’s heaters made it almost impossible for her to breath and she started to shiver again but this time from a fever.
She heard Karl speak to her, but she couldn’t respond, couldn’t move. She heard a chuckle and felt his hand touch her cheek and forehead. She felt the seat move and heard the sound of something being opened in the backseat. She passed out and awoke a few moments later to the sound of a siren.
Karl cursed out loud and picked up the radio again and he mumbled something into it about being “too late to be sure.”
Another vehicle pulled up beside them. More people piled out of the other vehicle. Her door opened, and she was moving through the air.
She opened her eyes to see she had been moved onto a stretcher and someone was taking her blood pressure. She blinked, or at least she thought she did and the next time she opened her eyes, she squinted in pain because she was in a hospital. Doctors, nurses and a familiar voice spoke in hushed tones. Her fever raged on most of the night and into the next day, sometime the next night it broke.
“Mom?” Mina spoke quietly and a hand encompassed her own and squeezed gently. She heard her mother’s voice whisper to her that she was going to be all right. Mina relaxed and drifted back to sleep.
***
Something was touching her nose! Mina’s eyes flew open to stare at an offending feather assailing her face. Her eyes followed the large white goose feather to the small hand clutching it and up the sleeve to the perpetrator. She should have known it was her younger brother.
“Charlie!” Mina whined and tried to swat the feather away. “Do you know how many diseases that feather is probably carrying, and you brought it into a hospital?”
Charlie just grinned wider and nodded his head. The eight-year-old proceeded to climb up onto Mina’s hospital bed with an old pencil box. It usually housed his favorite possessions like an old Matchbox car, a broken piece of quartz, silver bottle caps, a whistle, and a few old election pins. But currently these items weren’t in the box but carefully placed around Mina’s body on the hospital bed.
“Charlie, what are you doing?” she picked up the bottle cap that was closest to her hand and handed it back to her silent brother, who put it away in the box.
“He was worried about you,” a warm voice answered from out in the hallway.
Mina’s head spun toward the sound, and she almost cried in relief when she saw her mother standing there. Sara started crying, crossed to the hospital bed, and pulled her daughter and son into an embrace.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I never meant to make you worry.” Mina sniffled.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay,” Sara intoned softly. “Well, no, it’s not okay, but we will get to that later.” She pulled away and brushed Mina’s hair out of her face. “What happened? What were you thinking? When you didn’t come home from school, I called Nan. She said you got a ride, but then when you didn’t come home at all, I panicked. I was so scared, and I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe the Story had gotten involved and you were in the middle of a quest.”
“Mom, it wasn’t the Story, not exactly.”
“I hate that you have to be a part of this. If there was any way that I could protect you from the Grimm curse you know I would, right?”
“You protected me for sixteen years from the curse and the Story. It’s okay Mom, now it’s my turn to protect Charlie and you.” Mina tried to sound strong, but her words only made her mom tear up more.
“Oh, sweetheart. I can’t tell you how helpless I felt not knowing what was going on. The police wouldn’t understand our circumstances… how could I call for help and tell them that I thought a fairy tale had come and kidnapped my daughter or worse, killed her? I knew something had happened, but I couldn’t do anything. I ended up calling the police, but they said you hadn’t been missing for forty-eight hours.” Sara stood up and paced the room, waving her hands wildly about.
“Mom!” Mina tried to distract her mother, knowing she was about to lose it.
“I mean, really! Forty-eight hours? Do they not have kids? Forty-eight hours to a scared parent might as well be forty-eight days.” She stopped pacing, and Charlie jumped off the bed and began to put his knickknacks back in the box, obviously satisfied that they had served their purpose.
“Thanks, Charlie.” Mina patted his head.
Charlie grinned and pointed his finger into his open palm.
Mina raised her eyebrow in disbelief. “I owe you? Why do I owe you?” she laughed.
Charlie started signing, and Mina watched carefully. “Because you protected me?”
Sara frowned at Charlie thoughtfully and spoke on his silent behalf. “Apparently, he read somewhere about creating a fairy circle for protection against evil. So he took all of his shiny objects and was adamant about protecting you. Even to the point of making a nuisance with the nurses.”