[110]
"Tell me once and for all," I say as I get to my feet. "Does this have anything to do with Outliers?"
Barry looks sheepish. "If I tell the truth, you won’t heal Sage. I brought you here because you know about magic. I mean more than we learned at EI.”
My mouth freezes, half open. Whatever words I was going to say are lost. How could he possibly know? We don’t even hang around the same people.
“I was curious, and I had help finding out. Really, since your grandma used to be a green woman, 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. "And there may be people who are better at healing magic than you, but--"
That's an understatement. "I don't know anything."
"Look, you know more than anyone I can get to in time. That's all that matters. We were meeting in the forest to discuss...some plans. We got caught. There was an event. It's over now, but Sage is bleeding to death. I don't know how long we have, but I do know that my most skilled medic can't save him. I realize that you're a long shot, but I'm begging you to try."
He doesn’t say anything for a long minute. Finally I nod and walk back to the kitchen where I wordlessly put on my boots and coat. I pick up a lumilamp and follow him.
I open the back door and then turn to him. “You really have a dying friend somewhere in the forest?” I say.
“I really do.”
Telling myself that this is a really bad idea, I walk outside. The cold air sticks in my throat, and I wish that I had brought my thick scarf to wrap across my face and keep the air from going down my neck.
It feels like we are walking for a long time without getting very far, and while I'm good at walking alone at night, walking with someone I don't completely trust is a very different thing. I twitch at every noise I hear, every time I think I see a shadow move, and with the light of two swinging lumilamps, there are a lot of shadows. My shoulders are tight and hunched inside my coat, and it’s not just because of the cold.
When we near the creek that has all of the willows near it, I begin to smell smoke. We must be getting near if I can smell their fires. But it’s strange that I can smell it without being able to see the light.
And then I see a glow. At first I'm just relieved that we're getting somewhere that seems like a real place and not like a thieves' den in the middle of nowhere, but then I realize that the fire is too big for a campfire, even a bonfire. That's when I realize that there are several fires--and some of them are trees and that all the willows along the bank of the creek. Green willows are hard to set on fire. What happened here? I hesitate, and Barry turns and reaches for a hand that I don't offer to him.
“Come on,” he says a little gruffly, pulling me forward a few steps. "The fire is contained. Thank the Benevolent Force that we're at the end of winter instead of the end of summer. We’re almost there. I have some first aid stuff at the camp, but I promise you that if we could save his life with it, I would have done it already.”
“Magic isn’t medicine,” I tell him, stopping.
He drags me forward again. “Well tonight, it’s going to be.”
After that I don’t say anything. I just follow him.
He slows and says,“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.
Without a shirt, I can see the sweat and dirt that covers him, but even with two lumilamps, I takes me a minute to make sense of the darker patch I see on his hip. I cover my hand with my mouth and turn back to Barry. His face looks hard, angry. The moment of fear at seeing his face gives me courage to turn back for a second look. My first callous thought is that he should be dead. Why isn’t he dead? The fact that he looks like that and is still alive is the single most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.
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’ve seen you at home, too.”
“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?”
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 injured 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. What kind of a life won’t he have if I’m too scared to try?
But it’s crazy. I know it’s all crazy. What can I do? And even as I think it, I’m placing my hands on his raw flesh so that I can try.
I gather myself, try to focus my thoughts as I’ve done before. Of course I’ve done little experiments. I thought that most people must, in spite of the fact that it’s forbidden. Well, how can you learn the principle and not want to see if you can really do it? But this time, it’s not to find little glimmers inside of myself and gather them into a spark that pops from my fingertips to the kindling in the wood stove. This time I need to give instructions, to cause his tissue to behave in a specific way and then give it the energy it needs to accomplish that, not just to gather enough energy so that it catches on fire. This could go horribly wrong.
My fingertips tingle. My eyes are closed, but I’m acutely aware of Barry watching me. I try to concentrate on the task. The little bits of magic that collect like dew drops and trickle down into my hands are gathering, but what do I do with them? My hands grow warmer, almost hot. I need to release the magic soon. I could dribble it down into him and hope that it does more good than harm, but I doubt that it will work. The simplest manifestations of magic are light and heat. Without direction, the magic will illuminate the wound and make it hotter. That’s not what I want at all.
I let go a long breath and open my eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I tell Barry.
“Your hands are glowing,” he says in a hushed voice. “I can’t do that. None of us can. Kestrel, you can do this. I know you can find a way.”
He isn’t helping.
If only my grandmother were here. She might know. She knows more than she has taught me, but how much more? And then, as always when I think of her, I begin to run through the words that she has taught me, the words that she whispered over my cradle and still tells me nearly each time she visits.
The words aren’t Galliun, like my mother taught me to speak. They’re different, ancient. Running through them helps to calm me, to focus my mind.
And I realize that they are exactly what I need.
Suddenly, it snaps into place. I flex my fingers and then lightly rest them on the wound, ignoring the blood that smears itself on my fingertips. “Effro,” I whisper.
A part of me can see--or at least be aware of--what is there. Deep, close. There are tiny strings of muscle, all layered on each other, ending in nothing. They mingle with blood vessels, some burned shut, others dripping, all damaged. They know how to grow, to repair, but they are all in shock, hurt and tired. “Symud,” I tell them, all the little listening presences. And then I let the energy free. I drip it slowly, just enough. I don’t want to overwhelm them.
It’s like tiny mouths drinking. They relax. The pain eases. “Symud,” I say again. And I try to combine it with the idea of growing. For a moment, nothing happens, and then all they expand, just a little. They reach toward me. I let more energy free. Now that they understand what I want them to do, they stretch faster. They multiply. They lap up magic as fast as I can pump it down my arms and through my fingertips. The yellow-orange glow intensifies, turns blue, and then white as less energy is lost as heat. It is no longer warm.
It feels like I am inside a waterfall or a dance.
When it ends, it feels like I have been jerked to a stop. My whole body, inside and out has been slapped, or maybe slammed into something.
My nose tickles. I lift a shaking hand to touch and find that my nose, my cheeks, are wet with tears.
I can hear someone talking, but it doesn’t make any sense. Who would be talking? I try to find all those little voices, to go back to the dance, but it’s like a door has been shut. I am alone. I can’t see. My eyes don’t know how to make sense of what light there is, and even the light is fading.
[200]
Continue on to Chapter 2
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