Chapter Twenty-Six Fenlia
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Fenlia
Zinnitzia arranges the butcher shop turned infirmary into some semblance of order.
She makes hefty use of the city guard to ensure that only the most ill patients are brought to them first, with the others lining the streets outside.
The ill are carried in, too sick to even move.
They are laid down on cots, and Zinnitzia stands out of the way and tells Fen to explain how it works.
Fen reaches for her metaphor…a great door standing between a Reaper’s all-consuming lethality and the patient’s life on the other side.
A keyhole, where only the slightest bit of Reaper power could slide through, aimed directly at the spot that Reaper should focus on.
Killing one thing at a time. One ant after another.
The Givers stare at her, bewildered, and though Cieli serves as translator for the Alelunen Reapers, they too appear mystified by the explanation.
‘It’s not a virus or a bacteria,’ Fen repeats for what feels like the twentieth time ‘It’s not a natural illness.
There’s nothing causing the problem, the problem just exists.
And the problem is that there is too much life in their bodies, so it’s killing them. ’
‘That’s illogical,’ a Giver Fen knows as Gerai says. ‘Life can’t kill.’
‘Life is killing them right now, but you’re welcome to figure out your own theory in your own time,’ Fen snaps back. ‘It’s why we need the Reapers to help us.’ Fen glances their way. She doesn’t know any of them.
‘So, what, Reapers kill the plague-affected patients, and we bring them back?’ Gerai asks. It is a solution Fen proposed in Kreuzfurt once. Wondering why she couldn’t just let a patient die and why after that patient’s death she couldn’t just resuscitate them after.
‘No,’ Zinnitzia says firmly. ‘If you resurrect them, they will only fall ill again. If they die, they must stay dead. That is the point of this. Death caused this plague because of resurrection, and so we must find balance in their bodies that has nothing at all to do with stealing a soul from her domain.’
‘And if we can find that balance before they die,’ Fen adds on, ‘then we can save them.’ She looks down at the writhing person closest to her: a middle-aged woman, hair in disarray and bulging eyes going back and forth from Fen to the others.
There are tears streaming down her face.
She has heard everything that they have said.
She cannot speak or interject or say anything, but she and everyone in hearing distance – each patient – has been listening.
They can hear how casually their lives and deaths are being discussed, and they have no agency to do a thing about it.
Their vocal cords are swollen and useless.
Their throats constrict and confine even as their lungs suck in more and more air.
Fen places a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘Cieli?’ she asks.
The Reaper slips into place, touching the woman’s other shoulder.
Despite the gasps of horror from the collected Reapers and Givers, the patient doesn’t immediately drop dead.
‘I keep her alive,’ Fen explains. ‘Cieli stops the processes that are overworking. She forces them back to their natural state. Feel her,’ she instructs Gerai.
The other Giver does. Then Fen explains the idea of the door, keyholes and ants.
She is the door keeping a Reaper’s power from wholesale killing the patient at a touch.
The keyhole is just open enough for some of that power to slip in and focus on only one small piece at a time.
And for the Reaper, when a target is eventually made available, the instinctive rush to destroy that target feels very much like killing ants.
If the body is made up of an entire colony of independent ants – heart, lungs, kidneys and so forth – then killing one at a time then allows the Giver to address each ant one at a time in turn to ensure the colony as a whole survives.
‘We’re not cheating death,’ Fen reiterates.
‘We’re…acknowledging its importance. Everything must die eventually…
Cells die, organs fail, life ends. But when those things die, others gain new life.
So the Reapers need to squish these ants, so to speak, to force them to die, so that a better, more stable life can take its place.
And that’s the balance that is meant to exist within a body.
Life and death, one for another. Over and over. ’
The groups do not look entirely convinced, but Zinnitzia places a hand on Fen’s shoulder and stares them down. ‘She’s right. Now. Get your partners, and get to work.’
The day feels endless.
They told Adalei each patient took about an hour to heal, but when Fen checks in on the others, she realizes for every three patients she and Cieli manage to heal, the others have barely managed to accomplish one.
And even with that, they hardly seem capable of explaining how they managed it in the first place.
They are not working together, only succeeding in spite of each other rather than alongside one another.
Fen’s mind becomes lost in a sea of sensations.
The presence of Life and Death permeating through every patient…
and each of their care-givers. She argues with frustrated Givers; she prods lackadaisical Reapers who don’t seem to know what it is they are meant to be doing.
Cieli tries to help them understand too, but it’s exhausting, infuriating.
Fen feels like she’s looking at a memory in reverse.
Where once she was incapable of healing a single person while all those around her could manage their task, now it is she trying her best to guide them through their recalcitrant attempts.
She stands next to the stalwart and brilliant elite Givers of Kreuzfurt and not even one of them is capable of doing their job.
They cannot understand the need to let the Reapers in just enough to focus on one area or another.
They close the barrier between life and death so firmly, not one ‘ant’ or malfunctioning organ can slip through.
And so, the body cannot find its balance.
Fen’s skin itches with rage as she watches their faces twist in frustrated confusion.
It is so simple, so easy. They just need to do it.
And yet they cannot, and the first of their patients dies. Fen is not even sure what happened. One moment she is trying to explain the concept of the door to an Alelunen and the next there is shouting. ‘You killed her!‘ the Giver, Gerai, screams in Soleben.
‘I did not!‘ the Reaper, Angelo, shouts in Lunae.
Back and forth, back and forth. Fen runs across the hall, but it is not fast enough to keep the news from spreading out into the streets.
The few people who were well enough to line up and wait for treatment have now started dispersing.
Panic breaks out amongst them at the sheer thought of a Reaper bringing about their death.
And Fen cannot tell for certain if it was a death caused by the plague or by the Giver releasing the body and having their Reaper partner kill the patient entirely by accident.
‘You have to work together,’ she insists.
‘You can’t stop doing that, no matter what. ’
‘Why should we?’ Angelo asks in frustrated Lunae. ‘When it is clear that is not what they want?’ He thrusts a hand at Gerai. ‘Why should we bother at all?’
‘Because your stello asks it of you,’ Cieli says.
‘He is not here, he does not see this, they do not care for us, they do not want us to help. They hate us! I thought maybe it would be different here, but it is just the same. They hate us just as we were hated in Alelune.’
‘Yes,’ Cieli says. ‘They do. And some people always will. But our stello is fighting for our chance to be free despite that hate, and here – here is how we prove that we are worth it.’
‘You were always worth it,’ Fen says. Cieli blinks at her, startled.
‘You don’t need to heal anyone to prove you’re worth being free.
No one deserves to be enslaved or imprisoned just because they exist. And that’s what Cat – what Stello Alest wants of you.
If you don’t want to be here, go back to Altas and ask someone else to take your place.
We don’t have time to be dealing with you not wanting to help.
But if you are going to be here, then help.
Because it’s the right thing to do. Because people are dying. And we should all be working together.’
‘Everything dies eventually,’ Angelo tells her.
‘But it doesn’t have to be today.’
‘You’ve seen that princess and me make it work,’ Cieli tells him. ‘You know it’s possible.’
‘And when it’s over?’ Angelo asks. ‘When we finish? You all said the last time this plague happened, the Soleben Reapers and Givers were sent to this Kreuzfurt place. What’s to stop us from just being imprisoned there anew, or worse?’
‘Our king won’t allow that,’ Cieli replies.
Fen winces at the wording. She shakes her head, but Cieli is not looking at her.
She is looking at the Reapers. ‘He is freeing the Reapers of Alelune as we speak. When he returns to this land, he will not allow any Reaper to be held in bondage. You will be free.’
‘Cieli,’ Fen hisses. ‘You can’t just speak for him. He never said—’
‘I can speak for him,’ she retorts. ‘I know his will. Do you?’
Fen grits her teeth. She does. She has heard him.
Even at the beginning of their friendship, right when he first started to properly speak again, he wasn’t subtle about his thoughts.
Kreuzfurt is a prison same as any other.
It’s a beautiful prison, but it’s still a prison. There is no freedom there.
She had felt it herself, known it to be true.
From the moment she raised that first animal from the dead, and she was slated for training in Kreuzfurt, her lessons were only ever put on hold when the King permitted it.
Had she not been adopted by King Aliamon, she would have had no other life.
She would have stayed in the House of the Wanting until she was sent on specific assignments for the clerics.
She would never have been allowed to have the freedom to leave, to work at court, to try to be something more.
‘There was a report…’ another Reaper says.
Fen strains for the name – Ana, maybe? ‘A pamphlet. We found it in Altas before your army came. It talked about Stello Alest.’ Fen’s breath catches.
Her fingers twitch, recalling the feeling of her pen late in the night, writing furiously in an attempt to create a narrative that would win Cat the supporters he needs to succeed.
‘It said he’s never broken an oath. Would he make this oath – to free us? ’
‘Yes,’ Cieli swears for her king. The Reapers nod. They nod, one by one, like they are receiving the oath directly from Alest himself. Angelo still doesn’t seem very happy, but he swallows back the frustration anyway, grudgingly looking to Gerai.
‘And you?’ Zinnitzia presses Gerai. ‘I don’t suppose you can manage to set your pride aside to actually bother attempting to help people like you always seemed to want to do before? Or is learning something new at your advanced age simply too much of a challenge?’
Gerai’s cheeks flush; her nostrils flare. ‘I can do it. If he can.’ And it seems spite just might be enough of a motivator to move them forward. They both reach for the patient who was neglected throughout their argument. And at the very least: they both seem willing to try.
The day is still far from a success.
Someone has died, and they cannot resurrect them. The dead must stay dead. And though they are saving lives, it does not feel like they are doing enough.