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am I? Wally thought. He bit his lip. He wanted to believe Ariane had only hurt Flish by accident, didn’t want to think she had done so deliberately...but blowing up the tennis courts? It was overkill, like trout-fishing with dynamite.
    In the back of his mind, a worm of doubt stirred itself. What if it hadn’t been an accident? What if Ariane had chosen to hurt them? After all, hadn’t he seen her try before?
    Mrs. Carson pushed a wheelchair into the room. “They said it’s all right for me to take you up to her room,” she said. “She won’t be able to talk to you, but at least you can see her. She should be awake tomorrow and then you can visit properly.”
    Wally nodded. He was able to get out of bed on his own this time, using the wheelchair handles to support himself during his one brief, dizzy moment. He grabbed the robe that had been lying at the foot of his bed and pulled it on over his hospital gown, cinched the belt around his middle, and then sat down in the wheelchair, put his slippered feet on the footrests and let Mrs. Carson push him out into the hall.
    She wheeled him past the nurse’s station, maneuvered him around an old woman clutching an IV pole as she shuffled along one tiny step at a time and pushed him into one of the elevators. Two floors up, they got out, turned right and rolled down another hall that looked pretty much the same as the one outside his room except for a different collection of bad artwork on the off-white walls.
    Mrs. Carson rolled him into a private room. No snoring old-man roommate for sis , Wally thought, but his momentary bitterness fled when he saw Flish’s face. Shocked, he took in the huge blue-black bruise surrounding her swollen left eye, the gauze pad on her right cheek (stained with a spot of blood, red as a ruby), and more gauze wrapped around her head, where a portion of her scalp showed, shaven and naked-looking. His eyes travelled to the tube in her arm and the cast on her leg, hanging in traction from the ceiling, and his gut heaved. Ariane did this. The thought burned like acid. But then, No! Not Ariane. The Lady of the Lake.
    You were thrilled when the Lady gave Ariane her powers, thrilled that she gave you this quest , he reminded himself. A real-life quest just like in your favourite books. He couldn’t deny he’d been caught up in the wonder of the whole thing. But he’d forgotten one very important fact: even in books, people got hurt.
    To be fair to Ariane, Wally had no doubt that Flish and the rest of the coven would have beaten her up if they’d been able to. Would he really feel any better about things if Ariane were lying in the hospital instead of Flish?
    His head was hurting again. And he didn’t think it was entirely due to the concussion.
    Mrs. Carson turned his chair around and pushed him back into the hallway. “That’s enough,” she said. “They told me not to keep you out here any longer than ten min utes.” She pushed Wally back toward the elevators. “This is such a terrible thing to happen while your parents are away.”
    Away, Wally thought . They’re always away. Dad dropped by two weeks ago, but only long enough to tell us he and Mom were separating. Now he’s in Japan with his new girlfriend, on “business.” Mom hasn’t been home in three months, off working on that movie in Canmore. Neither one had come rushing back when he’d hurt himself. He doubted they’d come rushing back for Flish either. But at least Flish had Mrs. Carson to worry about her. Who worried about him?
    Up until this evening, Wally would have said Ariane. But now, for the first time...he wasn’t so sure.
    ~~~
    Ariane cried for ten minutes, while just out of her sight she heard ambulances and fire trucks rushing to the tennis courts. Several people hurried past the end of the alley, faces lit by flashing red and blue lights, to see what was going on. But Ariane stayed where she was, sitting in numbed silence, arms around her legs, head on her