No, he was simply waiting for Loki’s kinetic memory to kick in. He was waiting for Loki to remember drinking. But Loki hadn’t drunk anything.
That’s because Loki’s whole conversation had only lasted an hour. But Danny’s attempt to remember it had lasted much longer, starting over again and again.
He succeeded in swallowing. The water came down his throat so painfully that he realized: I have gone a long time without drinking.
Hermia was gone. But he still held the water bottle in his hand. He tried to lift it to drink more. He couldn’t remember how. He bent over and touched his cracked and bloody lips to the plastic lip of the bottle. The water didn’t come upward. But he was able to hold it against his lips as he straightened his body. This brought the bottle up with him. Water flowed from it over his lips. He made his lips and tongue work and swallowed some of it. This time it felt better. But then it went down wrong and he coughed. Choked. Dropped the bottle. Even as he continued to try to cough out the water that had gone down his windpipe, he felt around for the bottle. Why can’t I see it? he asked himself. Everything’s so bright.
Then there were hands again, hands on both sides of him, picking him up, raising him to his feet. It hurt to unwind his body, to stand up. His legs would not support him. His legs had no feeling. How long had he sat in the same position without moving?
They were talking to each other. Two women. Hermia again. Veevee. The other gatemages. His friends. They were both angry. They were both worried. But they were speaking in language, and he was avoiding language. He didn’t want to hear language because that would distract him from …
No, no, he wasn’t remembering anymore. He was no longer in the trance. It was good to have language now. He needed to hear what they were saying and understand them.
“He’s not hearing us,” said Veevee.
“Tell me what I don’t know,” said Hermia.
“We have to get him to Naples,” said Veevee.
“There’s no gate to-oh, Naples, Florida. Let’s just concentrate on getting him back through this gate to the house he left from.”
Danny staggered. His legs were beginning to get feeling again. An ecstasy of pins and needles. An agony of pain in his long-unmoved joints.
“He’s trying to walk,” said Hermia.
“He was just staring at the cave?”
“Makes the Narcissus story make sense,” said Hermia. “Forced to stare at the same spot forever.”
“Only not his own reflection.”
“How do we know what he was seeing?”
What was I seeing? Can I remember anything? Was this all wasted, because it didn’t enter my own mind in a way that I have any hope of making sense of?
They got him down the sandy, rocky slope to the gate and suddenly they were indoors. Hal’s bedroom. Was that really the last place he had been? It didn’t matter which had been last. There was a gate from Hal’s room to the cave in Egypt, and that’s all that mattered. Hermia had found it. Then she had gone for Veevee to help her. Chaining from gate to gate.
Hal was there. He swore, tried to help.
Danny should have been able to walk easily. He should have been healed of everything by passing through a gate. Certainly the physical pain was gone. The feeling in his legs was back. But he was still having trouble walking.
“We’re getting him back to his own house, dear,” said Veevee. “You were a great help, but we’ve got it from here.”
“You’re sure that nobody made him do this?” asked Hermia.
“He was completely normal,” said Hal. “For Danny, anyway. He had this project he was doing. It had something to do with Loki. He had to go to the desert and we had to dig out the cave. It didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“But you don’t think anybody else was controlling him?” asked Hermia.
“How would I know?” said Hal. “For all I know, somebody’s controlling you.” He was standing between them and the gate back to Danny’s house.
“You’re such a dear,” said Veevee. “Please don’t worry. The gate already healed him. But he’s still not functioning properly, so we’re not sure what’s happening. If we take him to a hospital they’ll find nothing wrong and we’ll have to explain why we brought him in.”
“I’m OK,” said Danny to Hal. “I’m just having trouble … using my body.”
“He’s like a beastmage who got lost in his heartbound,” said Veevee.
“Apparently, judging from his motor skills, his heartbound is a drunken slug.”
Hal stopped blocking the way. They got him to and through the gate.
Back in his own house, Danny wouldn’t let them take him to Naples. “No reason to go there,” said Danny.
“We have to rehydrate you,” said Veevee. “Going through a gate doesn’t replace the water you lost. A day and a half in the desert sun. Not to mention a night in the desert. What were you thinking?”
“I was doing research,” said Danny.
“Into near-death experiences?” asked Hermia. She was tasting water from a glass in Danny’s kitchen. “You drink this stuff?”
“Buena Vista’s finest,” said Danny. She handed him the glass and he drank it down in one long sloppy draught.
“I can’t believe that your third-degree sunburn has turned into a tan,” said Veevee. “I think of all the lotions and hours in tanning booths and … all I needed to do was get a savage sunburn and go through a gate.”
“Do you have any idea how you terrified us?” demanded Hermia. “Suddenly nobody can find you. Marion and Leslie have no idea. Nobody knows. Until Veevee finally thought of asking your high school fan club.”
“My friends,” said Danny.
“You are the world’s only Gatefather,” said Hermia, “and you don’t have the right to disappear without telling anybody.”
“I told my friends,” said Danny. “And I was only going to be gone for a few hours.”
“At least thirty-six hours,” said Veevee.
“I didn’t know,” said Danny.
“You could have died,” said Hermia. “Do you understand that? What drug did you take?”
“No drug,” said Danny.
“Don’t lie,” said Hermia. “It took forever to get you out of that trip you were on. Were you hallucinating?”
“Not half well enough,” said Danny. “Instead of being mad at me, do you want to find out what I was doing? I warn you-in order to do that, you’ll have to actually listen to me.”
“Oh, you’re telling me off?” said Hermia. “You do a foolish, stupid-”
“Hermia,” said Veevee, “let’s listen to him and find out whether he was foolish or stupid.”
“Now you’re on his side?” demanded Hermia.
Danny and Veevee looked at her in silence.
Hermia stood up straight, took a deep breath, and flopped down on the couch beside him. Veevee pulled up a kitchen chair. “So the old woman gets the straightback chair.”
“You just went through a gate, you feel fine,” said Hermia.
“You know I have Loki’s gates inside me,” said Danny.
“You captured them, yes,” said Hermia.
“But now he’s given them to me. So we … talk.”
“You and Loki?” asked Veevee.
“In a way. Maybe. But I think I’m just talking to his gates. They obey me now. But they’re still part of him, so maybe he knows and maybe he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. There are things in his memory that I need to know, and he’s not here. Plus, if I asked him I don’t think he’d tell me. He doesn’t seem really eager to teach me.”
“But you can talk to the gates?”
“I don’t know how it works,” said Danny. “Have you ever heard of anybody giving their gates to somebody else?”
“That would be like giving away your outself,” said Veevee.
“Yes, I’ve heard of that,” said Hermia. “Old family legend. Two friends who were so devoted to each other that they became each other’s heartbound.”
“But it isn’t like that,” said Danny. “He’s not riding me, and I’m not riding him. He isn’t controlling me. He isn’t a manmage.”