[From 106]
[114]
Barry shouts at a couple of people who are hovering outside the tent door. I wait for too long. It must be a couple of minutes, but it feels like forever. For Sage, it may be more minutes than he has left. Finally, Barry hands me a few crystals. Several are small, probably quartz, not worth much, but a couple of them are good ones. There is even an emerald--a created emerald, but an emerald none the less.
Placing the crystals in the palm of one hand, I then put my fist as gently as I can on the wound. I close my eyes. I’ve done this before--well, not exactly this, but something similar. If Sage needs energy, then all I have to do is open a channel for flow and then control that flow so that all the energy from the crystals isn’t released at once.
I mentally target the stones. My hand can feel the energy humming in them. I imagine something like a sluice gate on an irrigation ditch. If I remove one small board from the gate, then energy will flow out--not too much, just a trickle.
The shock bites at my hand like a wasp sting. I immediately smell something awful, something burned.
“What have you done?” Barry yells. He moves forward to put his ear to Sage’s face. “He’s not breathing!” He pulls Sage’s shirt open and puts his hands over his friend’s chest. “No heart beat.”
I drop the crystals in horror and put two fingers on Sage’s neck. I was hoping that Barry just couldn’t feel it. That it was just faint, but it’s not there, not even a flutter.
What have I done?
“No,” the word only half makes it out of my mouth. “It can’t...” Inside of me, a terror, a fear of something, I can’t even tell what, chases me like some unseen thing in a dream. It’s like everything inside of me is running as fast as it can, but my legs won’t move.
Not good enough, I tell myself. Move. Beat. This can’t be real. Without thinking, I shove Barry aside and plant my palms on Sage’s chest. His heart has to move. I have to find a way to tell it to beat again, or it will never run fast enough to get away from that fear. I’ll never get away from that black fear chasing me. I have to make him understand.
“Deffro!” I yell, and shove magic from my hands into Sage. Sage’s body jerks upward, stiff, awkward.
I hold my breath.
Beneath my fingers, I feel a thump, then another. The steady drumbeat is there. “I can feel it,” I babble. Then I turn to Barry. I laugh like an idiot. “He’s there.”
I don’t wait for his reaction. I’m gaining, moving ahead of that blackness, and I’m not about to let it catch up to me again. If I can make Sage--no not Sage, not exactly. If I can make his muscles, his blood vessels understand me, then the energy won’t...do what it did before. I feel light-headed with relief, reckless.
I put my hands on his hip, ignoring--or at least pretending to ignore--the further damage that I caused to the bloody, now slightly more blackened mess. The word I used wasn’t Terran. It wasn’t even Galliun. It was a word from a language that I don’t actually speak. I only know of one person in the whole Archipelago who does, but she taught me a few of the words, and Sage’s heart understood.
“Gweller,” I say softly, letting a trickle of magic escape through my fingertips. I have never used magic directly from myself before. It feels like someone is pulling thread along the inside of my arms and out through my fingers. It’s a little warm, and it almost tickles.
The logical part of me insists on pointing out that this is due to the minor resistance of my muscle tissue, but that it shouldn’t be a problem. It also points out that the energy is channeled along my blood vessels because magic can travel through liquid with less resistance than through muscle or bone.
The rest of me, the part that cares about Sage, shuts my mathmagics ramblings off and focuses on that one word, gweller.
It means heal or get better, my grandmother told me. She tells me a few words here and there, words that people once spoke, but that was almost gone even in her childhood. Words of power, I think. Words that will save Sage.
“Gweler,” I whisper, and I am suddenly aware of Sage’s muscles and bones, of the little tubes that carry blood. I can see them all, not in the same way that my eyes work, but I know that they’re there. I could identify each part. “Gwella,” I tell them. “Gwella.” And then I send just enough energy for them to begin.
It’s slow at first. I can sense tiny pieces inside of his muscles beginning to stir. They vibrate, hum slightly as if they are waking out of a torpor. Then they busy themselves by cutting off the dead pieces. There is a sadness, a loss in the task. But then the real work begins. There is a swelling, and then there are new bits. I can feel them. They call for the river, and from far away, the return call, low and deep comes. I realize, as the flow of blood increases, that it is the marrow of Sage’s bones, answering the request for more blood to feed the starving new flesh. I send magic along the tunnels, and the bloodflow soon increases again. Faster than could ever be possible, blood comes to feed them all, and so the growth continues. All of the work has a feeling that goes with it. It’s like a song, only one I can’t hear, but it’s there somehow anyway.
When the work is complete, I am reluctant to leave, but I feel something from far away. Something shaking my shoulder, I realize, and I wonder where my shoulder is. It can’t be here, in the dark with the unheard singing. It must be outside. With Barry.
I open my eyes. Barry’s face is concerned. “You look awful,” is the first thing he says.
All I can think is that it feels cold out here. But I can figure out what to do about it. I realize that singing for blood to come to make me warm isn’t the right thing. What is?
“You did it.” I can hear the relief in Barry’s voice. “He’s going to live.” Focusing on it brings me back a little more.
“A blanket,” I say, happy that I can remember the word I was looking for. “That’s what it is.”
“What?” Then he nods. I think he would agree to anything I said, but I don’t care. I feel like half of me is floating away. “Yes, we’ll get him a blanket. In fact, I think we’ll get one for you, too.”
I sway a little and smile at him.
“Kestrel, do you understand?” he says to me. “You’ve healed him. I don’t know what you did, but he’s fine. He’s sleeping now, real sleep,”
“All right,” I tell him, but it doesn’t mean very much because it occurs to me that I’m very tired. Maybe if he quit talking then I could just go to sleep.
“Kestrel. Kestrel, are you okay?” His voice keeps me awake, but I decide to ignore it. I can probably sleep through it. I lean toward him. His shoulder is soft, so soft. Everything will be fine if I can just go to sleep.
[200]
Continue on to Chapter 2
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