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[116]
Then he looks at his hands as if he is thinking very hard about them. “Come on,” he tells them, “light up.”
Instantly, there is a blue glow filling the tent. I’ve seen that before. In fact, I’ve done it myself. My mind whirls on about how it’s a slight discharge from the gathering of a pool of magic all together. But what I find really interesting is that he couldn’t do it without talking to his hands. Magic doesn’t have anything to do with words. Magic is energy. It travels the path of least resistance when not channeled. But then, he said that he isn’t very good, so maybe he needs to talk to himself to help focus.
“Barry,” I say, suddenly coming back to reality--the reality of what he’s about to do--”I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He glares at me, but doesn’t say anything. I reach out to stop him, but then I hesitate, knowing that I’m likely to get a big shock from touching him with that kind of charge gathered.
“Really,” I insist. “Stop. Now.”
His hands touch Sage’s skin.
Instantly, there is a burst of light that sounds as loud as it is bright. The lumilamps are a part of it. The glass chimneys shatter, sparks fly out. I scream as I drop mine. I feel Barry’s weight drop across me.
Then everything goes dark.
“Barry?” I say, gingerly prodding him.
Nothing.
“Barry?” I call more urgently. I can’t get out from under him. I’m already pressed against the tent wall.
A wave of panic washes over me. I shove at Barry, scramble backwards. I think I’m scooting towards the tent door, but then I hit the fabric. I hit at it, but the wall just puffs out away from my hand. I can see a dim glow coming through the wall, but it’s not nearly enough to tell where anything is. I feel sophocated; I have to get out of her now.
I close my eyes because even though it’s dark, I need to focus. I need to collect my thoughts all in one place. I tell myself to calm down, to think clearly enough to not be lost in this sea of panic. I breathe in and out twice.
Then I touch my lumicube, and to my relief, it turns on, sending out a cold, white glow. Barry is still half draped over me, but I know which way to go to wriggle out from under him.
Since I end up at Barry’s feet, it’s easiest to check Sage first. I reach out a shaking hand and put it on his neck to find a pulse.
I can’t find one.
I look for a rise and fall of his chest. It’s not there.
“Barry what have you done?” I whisper aloud. And then it hits me.It’s my fault. Barry wouldn’t have been forced to try what he did if I hadn’t been so scared.
A new kind of fear pounces on me. It’s a panic not to get away, but to make everything all right before it’s too late. My hands are glowing--I didn’t even think about it, and when they touch his skin, tiny swirls of light move across him like fog tendrils.
I take one more moment to think. Barry sent an unfocused charge of energy into Sage, and it killed them both. How can I do something different? How do you focus magic without gears and machinery?
And then I remember Barry’s hands. Words. He used the words not for the magic’s sake, but for his own.
“Heal,” I say softly. It doesn’t work.
“Salu,” I say it again in Galliun. Even though it doesn’t actually work, when I can’t get someone to understand me in one language, I feel like switching to the other will help. If only I knew what language magic spoke.
Maybe I do. If I were at home, I would be filled with that fidgety calmness that I always experience when new understanding takes me to some exciting new idea that I had never considered before. Now, I just grab the thought and go with it.
“Gweler,” I say softly as I push energy though my hands,through the word somehow, and into Sage.
Of course I don’t actually see inside of him, but somehow I do anyway. All of his muscle, bone, and blood. It’s all there, and even things I don’t know the name of. I could tell you their shape, where they are, how they move.
His heart is still. I need somehow to push it, to give it enough energy to convince it to beat again. ”Gweler!” I yell,and shove magic into it.
Sage’s body arches upward, his back bent, his limbs rigid. I leave off, surprised, and afraid of what I did to his poor body that’s already been through so much.
And then he gasps for air.
“Sage?”
He doesn’t answer, but his breathing fills the space that had been too quiet. Had I heard Barry’s breathing? Now I can’t remember.
I lean over to touch Barry’s neck. The pulse is there. I sigh. Now that everyone is alive again, maybe I can attend to keeping Sage alive for more than the next few minutes.
I lean across Sage’s body to put my hands on the mess that used to be his hip. I can’t get any closer because Barry is in the way, and I know I can’t move him.
I squirm at the touch of wet flesh, of feeling something that should remain hidden away in his body. It reminded me of a fish flopping around on the shore, exposed and somehow awful.
I need to see inside of him, the way I did before. It doesn’t come. Now that it’s not as immediate, I can’t focus. I need a word, another word that magic understands.
“Effro,” I whisper as I close my eyes. And suddenly, I can see. Even though it’s really more like feeling, touching to know what things are.
I find the rough edges where the muscles and veins end abruptly. “Gweler,” I say. They move slightly, like a meadow of grass when a breeze blows over it. “Gweler,” I tell them again.
They began to stretch, to extend. It’s slow,very slow. It’s like filling a chasm with pebbles, but as long as he is healing, he isn’t dying.
I have no concept of time, except to know that it’s been long enough for my feet to fall asleep and my back to begin to protest about how I’m situated. If I’m going to heal him, then I need to do it fast enough that my own body doesn’t give out. There is so much work still to be done, and already I’m getting tired.
I take a deep breath and say it one more time, “Gweler.” But as I say it, I gather myself and push every drop of magic I can find in my out through my hands and into Sage.
It’s like...it’s like, like an explosion, like a morning glory opening, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. All of the tendrils stretch at once, grow together. From somewhere a rushing feel crashes forward, and blood comes in through new veins to feed the young muscles. It’s like watching a dance that sweeps me away until I am nothing.
I can see everything inside of him more clearly every moment, but when I try to find myself, my own hands, the feel of my own body, I don’t know where to look. And then I forget to try.
[200]
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