Barry begins walking faster. “Look,” he says, puffing over his shoulder. “I know that you know about magic. I mean the kind that we don’t learn about at EI.”
“What?” I try to sound outraged, but really, it’s all I can do to keep from croaking. How could he possibly know? We don’t even hang around the same people.
“I made it my business to know, and there were others to help me find out. Really, since your grandmother is a greenwoman, it’s not that big a jump.”
I have to grant him that, but I still don’t like it. Are all of my most hidden secrets common knowledge? My parents don’t know--or at least, that’s what I thought. “Look, Barry,” I begin.
“I’m not going to turn you in, Kestrel,” he says, not slowing a bit on the stride that makes me trot beside him to keep up. “That’s not why I wanted to find out about...you.” He ended his sentence lamely, and I wondered what else he had been going to say. All I knew was that if Barry was trying to ask me out, this is the strangest approach I have ever experienced too, but since it’s the only one, that doesn’t count for much.
He doesn’t say anything for a long minute. I concentrate on keeping up with him, even though the whole time I'm wondering if I am an idiot who should turn around and go home. “Look,” he tells me finally, “I really do need magical help. The green woman isn’t around for a few days, and I don’t have anyone else to ask. You were close, and your light is on. If I go all the way over to the village to ask someone else, he’ll be dead by the time I get back.”
“You really have a dying friend somewhere in the forest?” I say.
“I really do.”
“What happened? Is it someone I know?”
“You’ve never met him. And I’ll tell you what happened, but I can’t at the moment. It’s complicated.”
“What’s wrong with him? I didn’t even bring anything. Should we go back?”
“Come on,” he says a little gruffly. We’re almost there. I swear I’ll tell you what you need to know, but now’s not the time. I have some first aid stuff at the camp, but I promise you that if we could save his life with it, we would have done it already.”
“Magic isn’t medicine,” I tell him, stopping.
He grabs my arm and drags me forward. “Well tonight, it’s going to be.”
After that I don’t say anything. I just follow him. It’s easy to tell when we’re getting close. At first, I think that they must have bonfire or something that got out of control. And then I realize that several trees are burning as well as all the willows along the bank of the creek. Green willows are hard to set on fire, I think. What happened here?
I must have slowed a little because he turn to look at me. “It’s right over there.” He yanks his head in the right direction. “Come on.”
He holds both lumilamps while I crawl into the tent, afraid of what I’ll find. Inside, I can smell a meaty smell that reminds me of kitchens and cooking until I realize that it must be Barry’s friend’s blood. I think I’m going to be sick.
They have him stripped down. No shirt. And all the cloth is cut away from his hip to reveal a...well, a mess. A wound is a cut, a slice, something that you can put a bandage on. This is just the ragged edges of what happens when you rip a chunk out of someone.
Part of me thinks all of this quite calmly while the rest of me is busy reacting. Once it gets into my head, then suddenly my stomach is involved in a bad way. I push back out of the tent and throw up, but still, that logical part of me actually thinks about how I should go around to the side so that it’s not a problem for people coming in and out of the tent later. And once I leave my stomach behind, the calm side of me can take over, even though I think it’s weird. I should be fainting or queasy some more, or at least upset. Nothing. All of the shock has gone away somewhere.
“He should have bled to death already,” I say aloud, though as soon as it’s out of my mouth, I realize what a callous thing it is to say.
“We, um... had to cauterize it to slow the bleeding,” he tells me. “But we put off doing too much of it, hoping that he might be able to walk again some day or at least keep the leg.”
Walk? I think to myself. How can you walk without a hip?
“Well,” I say, “I don’t know what can be done, but get some hot water, and I’ll--”
“No,” he says, “not good enough.” As I open my mouth, he cuts me off. “He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s sinking every minute. I’d say he has maybe a couple of hours, maybe less. Not that I’m a great judge,” he adds.
“So what can I do?”
“Kestrel, I’ve seen you in class. You’re the best out of all of us at mathmagics, but it’s more than that,” he says as I’m about to tell him how useful equations and crystals are to a dying man. “I know about...other times. I know about what you can do.”
Suddenly I’m the one who is pale. “What do you know?”
“Enough to go get you tonight.”
“Barry,” I try to reason with him again. “Whatever you saw or think that you know, it doesn’t mean that magic is about healing. You know the five applications as well as I do.”
“No,” he says loudly. “Not as well as you. Now listen, you get over there, and you heal him. There are a lot of lives depending on what he can do. If you fail, I have no one else to ask. He’ll die. Others will die. The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
(116)
"I’ve been trying to tell you, that the function of magic is not to heal. It is a method of transfer for energy. If you have the right focus, then you can move things with it. You can even change things. You can create light and heat. But you can’t heal. It’s just not one of the properties of magic
“You say that you can transfer energy?” Barry says. “Then do that. Try it.”
I stop for a moment and think through what would happen. On the one hand, he’s right, that Sage needs more energy. His body can’t keep up with the losses. He can’t repair it fast enough. On the other hand, the problem that mathmagics has had ever since Archimelion wrote the first postulates is focus. You have a source of energy, but how do you direct what it will do? “No,I say finally. I would rather use what we all know of real medicine to keep him alive, even if he can’t walk. If you try magic without knowing what you’re doing, the chances are even higher that he’ll die.”
Barry’s face twists up, and he looks around for something to smash, but because of Sage, he doesn’t. Finally, his fists drop to his knees. “I can’t force you,” he says quietly. “But if I could, I would.”
Barry’s face twists up, and he looks around for something to smash, but because of Sage, he doesn’t. Finally, his fists drop to his knees. “I can’t force you,” he says quietly. “But if I could, I would.”
(115)
"I want to help. Does he think that it was my idea to come out here late at night to watch a stranger die? But just because I can balance an equation doesn’t mean that I can make a man with only half a hip walk. People just don’t do things like that. But he’s scooting me over to this guy, this dying man. He’s not much older than I am. Certainly out of EI, but not for a long time. What kind of a life does he have? I look at his black hair and cinnamon brown skin.
It's crazy. I know it’s all crazy. How can I possibly heal him? And even as I think it, I’m placing my hands on his raw flesh so that I can try.
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