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“Oh, how annoying,” said Valancy Snaith from the dining table of her Blue Castle.
“Hmm?” Barney asked from the sofa where he was smoking his everlasting pipe and reading the newspaper. Banjo was curled against his hip with an innocent expression, as if wondering to himself how he ever happened to end up in such a compromising spot.
“I’m out of medicine. I thought my last prescription would get me through the end of the month.” She silently shook her empty bottle with a rueful expression.
Barney hopped from the sofa, dislodging Banjo with a yowl, and checked the clock. Just past five, too late for the chemist’s to still be open. “I’ll fetch it tomorrow,” he said. “It’s about time I get some more eggs, after all.”
“Not from Uncle Benjamin’s store, please,” Valancy groaned, laughing. “He still hasn’t given up on trying to convince you to let me go home for my own good, has he?”
Barney grinned the impish grin that still made Valancy’s heart do a little two-step, no matter how often she saw it. “If he’s too foolish to stop, then he’ll just have to listen to another Snaith treatise on the happiness of women.”
“Signed Snaith and Snaith,” said Valancy, standing up and stretching her arms as if she could take Barney and Banjo and the entire little cottage into her embrace.
The attack came on slowly that night. Valancy awakened in the blue light of past-midnight with the sensation that her lungs were filled with ash. She coughed herself to wakefulness, bent over the side of the bed, reaching for the empty bottle that wasn’t there. Fear washed through her, and she felt her heart stutter, the heavy thumps that rattled her ribcage like a prisoner.
“Valancy?” came Barney’s sleepy voice from the other side of the bed. “Is something wrong?”
“Go back to sleep,” said Valancy in a whisper that was more air than words. “I'm fine.” She tried to swing herself out of bed, thinking a glass of water might help, and nearly fell to the floor. The dizziness spun the room around her.
“Valancy?” Barney’s voice again, much more awake. Through the pressure of pain and breathlessness, she heard him climb down to the floor beside her. His eyes were wide and anxious. “One of your bad spells?”
She nodded, incapable of saying anything more. The attacks always came like this—a slow build where, if she had her medicine, she might head off the worst of it, and then a sudden plunge where it felt as though her heart were revolting on her body, wanting to burst from her chest. The pain climbed up her nerves to her brain, so that it was like a migraine and a heart attack and drowning all at once. Death stood at the other end of the room and laughed at her.
She bent over again, gasping, but when she reached out for something to lean on, she found Barney’s strong hand under hers.
“That’s fine, just hold onto me,” he said steadily. “Can I do anything?”
She shook her head, trembling all over, but he carefully gathered her close and lay her so her head was in his lap. He stroked the short strands of her hair. “It’s going to be all right,” he said, and it was both a prayer and a certainty. “The sun’s going to come up soon, don’t you know? There’s already one lone bird warming up its voice for dawn, and Leander will no doubt be grumpy about it because he won’t want to go to bed yet. The moon’s going down slowly, like a stately old lady, attended by little wisps of clouds floating around her face. She wants to say goodnight, Valancy. One Moonlight to another.”
Valancy felt herself borne on the current of his voice, not entirely able to discern the words (which, Barney considered afterwards, quite a blessing, because he knew he was being particularly John Fosterish for her sake) but unendingly soothed by his solidity. The fear of death retreated in the face of his ordinary kindness. She had known he would provide just this sort of comfort—known it since before they even became friends, before she ever dreamed she might be in love with him. Slowly, the unbearable beating of her heart stuttered back to its ordinary rhythm and settled. She took a few more ragged breaths, and then the attack was over. Her body felt quieter, and her mind was no longer an unwelcome intruder in its house.
“Good Luck is running in his sleep. He’s catching fields and fields of mice,” Barney went on, his eyes lifted toward the living room until he sensed Valancy shift beside him. He glanced down and saw her pale pointed face looking up at him, no longer so drawn. He let his hand slide off her shoulder casually, so that she could move away if she wanted, but she didn’t. “Better?” he asked, hoping that none of his alarm would show through. He had never seen one of Valancy’s attacks before, and they frightened him for their silence, the invisible war she was fighting with herself where he could neither follow nor help.
“I think so,” she said quietly, but with the familiar humor back in it. “That’ll teach me to be so forgetful about my prescriptions. But it was—nice—to have you here.”
Barney wouldn’t admit that his own heart did a little jig. “You won’t be able to get rid of me so easily.”
He said it lightly, but Valancy reached up and took his hand, and they stayed like that together as Leander flew off to his morning slumber and the morning sparrows filled the sky with song.