25. The Lessons Resume
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THE LESSONS RESUME
When Riel woke me, I was horrified to learn I’d somehow slept the rest of the day and night away. After a desperate rush for the bathroom and some time spent freshening up, I felt like a new person. The body aches and exhaustion were replaced by uncontainable excitement and an overall sense of vitality. Riel and I had a quick breakfast and headed to Seersthri’s, where the mender pronounced me hale and hearty.
Thus, we were resuming my belated magic lessons.
“Let’s start with something simple,” Riel suggested. He looked around before stooping to collect a piece of straw. He separated it into two pieces and held them out to me.
I raised my eyebrows at the offering. “You’re… asking me to heal a piece of straw?”
“Mending is not limited to living things,” he reminded me. “Although it’s often more intuitive to direct energy into something that has its own, you should be able to put an object back together just as well as you can a person.”
“I’ve never tried,” I admitted, still eyeing the straw with doubt.
“It’s the same concept,” Riel assured me. “Try to fix this piece of straw. ”
It felt like it had been ages since I tried to access my magic. Plus, I’d been healing people for years, and straw was new. On top of that, the straw didn’t care if it was whole or not, whereas there was a bit more at stake with people. Altogether, it didn’t bode well. With a sigh, I held a piece of straw in each hand and put the severed ends together. Turning my attention inward, I went through the usual steps.
My flicker of magic leapt to meet me as though thrilled to be back in action. I ignored the temptation to draw directly from it and instead felt around for something new.
During the past few years, I’d become intimately familiar with that place inside me. Normally, it was a yawning chasm of nothing, illuminated only by the faint flicker of my paltry life force. Now, there was a roaring tempest of power surrounding my little flame. It had a presence like the sun, radiant and fierce and bathing everything around it in light and warmth.
There could be no doubt. This was mana . This was what I had been missing. I inhaled a sharp breath.
“Avery?” Riel asked, a hint of concern in his voice.
In awe of what I was feeling, I’d momentarily forgotten the task at hand. I held up the straw with confidence, and there was a brief pulse of light.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, so surprised that I dropped the straw. It fell from my hands and fluttered slowly to the ground—in one piece. I stared, shell-shocked.
“Nicely done,” Riel praised, scanning my expression. “How did that feel?”
“How did that feel?” I repeated, pivoting to fix him with an incredulous stare. “That was… that was…” No words came to mind. Nothing even came close. Shaking my head, I settled for “Indescribable.” With that kind of power available to me…
Faces flashed through my mind—Felicity, the surgeon from Camp Perry who had asked me to heal her ear. The feeble old lady I’d tried to heal outside the White House on the day I lost my magic. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of hopefuls in a crowd, screaming for me to notice them. “I can heal them all.” My voice dropped to a whisper as the gravity of the situation became clear. “Oh my God. I can heal them all. Every last one of them.”
“Remember, what you’re feeling is all the mana around you, not just what you can use,” Riel warned. “You’ll need to take it slowly until you’ve figured out your limits.”
“How can I figure out my limits?”
“You heal,” Seersthri said from behind us, startling me all over again. She came through the open doorway with a covered basket and hustled past us into the kitchen. “You heal,” she repeated, stooping to sort through some glass jars on the floor, “until you cannot.”
“It’s found through trial and error,” Riel clarified, coming to my side. “Then, like anything else, you practice. With time and training, you’ll get more comfortable. You’ll learn control, and you’ll be able to expand your capabilities.”
Seersthri directed a question toward Riel in the fae language.
“She’s asking if you would like to help her with her patients today,” he translated with a slight frown. “You don’t have to. It would be best to take another day or two to rest before you try anything big. We can keep practicing on small things until you’ve recovered.”
“No, I feel great,” I was quick to say, my heart soaring at the prospect of helping people again. “And I’d love to help. Do you have a lot of sick or injured?”
“Always something,” Seersthri responded absently, transferring some jars to her basket. “Sickness. Accidents. Animal bites, sore muscles, fever, broken bones. Sometimes births.”
“Births!” I exclaimed, my eyes widening to a comical degree. How different would it be to treat people who weren’t dying for a change? Could I handle it? Usually, I didn’t have to see any blood or gore.
Seersthri took her time collecting everything she needed, and we set off to a modest clinic a short walk away from her home. Riel didn’t appear pleased by my decision, but he came along anyway. Through him, Seersthri explained that with mending magic being what it was, she and her coworkers didn’t often come across a case they couldn’t handle. A handful of people with chronic illnesses returned or stayed several days for multiple treatments, but for the most part, people came and went over the course of the day.
I shadowed her for the first hour or so. It was infinitely more boring than I had expected. Even in a city of 30,000, people here didn’t get hurt all that often. When they did, the injury could usually be fixed within a few minutes. Thanks to magic, they had no need for a full-size hospital with dozens of staff members, an emergency room, and a recovery wing.
When a blue lady came in with a broken nail, Seersthri called me over.
“Look,” she said, pointing. “Simple. You try it.”
I moved forward eagerly. Though trying not to stare, I couldn’t help but appreciate the lady’s form. She was lithe and graceful like Luenki, but her skin and hair were powder blue. Her eyes were azure pools framed by royal-blue lashes, and her artfully draped dress was one or two shades darker than her skin and practically see-through. I desperately wanted to ask Riel what she was but realized how rude that might be.
The situation would have been laughable if the poor lady didn’t act as though she’d lost an entire arm. Trembling and sniffling through tears, she extended one dainty hand to show me her injury. Sure enough, one of the fingers on her right hand—one out of six, I noted—had a crack in the long, almond-shaped nail. A drop of blue blood leaked from the wound.
Giving me little time to process, Seersthri encouraged me to take the lady’s hand. Her skin was smooth and cool to the touch, like a polished river rock. I went to heal her injury, but the feeling of “wrongness” I was familiar with didn’t jump out at me. I dug a little deeper, forehead creasing in concentration. A faint trace of mana came to my call, a single spark of light flashed in my vision, and her nail was whole.
“Huh.”
“What is it? Are you all right?” Riel was there in an instant.
“I’m fine,” I assured him, releasing the lady’s hand and stepping back. “It’s just weird. I was healing people with cancer and stuff back home, and it just came so naturally. Even though this was easy, it was almost harder. Is it because I’m using mana now?”
Seersthri grunted, catching my attention. “Simple is not always easy,” she remarked, ignoring the blue lady as she admired my work and gave a squeal of glee. “We listen to the body. Sometimes, it screams. Sometimes, it whispers.”
The patient reached out to grasp my hands, her eyes swimming with gratitude, and babbled something in a language that sounded like all vowels.
“You’re welcome,” I responded automatically, smiling at her infectious joy. She squeezed my hands one last time and swept past us for the exit. When she had vacated the room, I spun to face Riel with a question on my lips. “Did you see that?”
“I did. You made her very happy.” He looked at me with something akin to pride, which only served to amplify the giddiness I experienced.
“Well, yes.” I ducked my head sheepishly. “But the little bit of light? When I healed her?”
“Light? No. But that’s not common with mending.” Noting the change in my expression, Riel added, “I’ll watch more closely next time.”
“Okay.” Turning to Seersthri, I asked, “Can I try something else? Something different?”
“Come,” she said, indicating for me to join her. I followed her to another room, where they had more permanent cots set up for long-term patients. There was a young faun in one of the beds there, whom Seersthri greeted briefly. The thought occurred to me that she didn’t have the bedside manner one might expect from a renowned healer.
“His body is stubborn,” she explained. “The lungs are weak. We heal, but it comes back.”
The patient fixed me with a stare that bordered on impolite. Brazenly, I stared back, taking in the curling black horns that jutted out from either side of his skull. The man was somewhat gaunt, with an unhealthy pallor to his skin and tired eyes. I approached him warily, thankful for Riel's comforting presence not far behind.
“May I?” I reached for his hand and paused, seeking permission. He was reluctant, but gave it to me without complaint. His sickness was apparent, like a black rot spreading inside him. Now this was something in my wheelhouse. I reached for the mana flow to assist me.
The burst of warmth was sudden, thrilling, and didn’t hurt in the slightest. Around me, the room appeared to flash gold.
The faun blinked in surprise, taking a breath that started out hesitant but deepened as he went. He repeated the breath and said something in a hopeful tone.
“Your eyes,” Riel murmured, hovering beside me to examine my face.
Seersthri stepped forward to take the patient’s hand, presumably to check my work. After a moment, her lips stretched wide in a half-grimace, half-smile.
“Well done,” she praised, releasing his hand. She said something brief to the patient, and he settled back against the pillows in muted shock. Chattering all the way, Seersthri led Riel and me back to the main room.
“She’s seen a mender’s eyes glow like yours did only once before,” Riel translated as we went. “It’s an outward sign of the mana you’re channeling. Normally, it’s a slow draw, and there’s a limit to how much you can direct into another body in a sitting. But it seems like you’re pulling larger amounts faster than usual, and apparently without any ill effects. ”
“That’s a good thing, yeah?” It was hard to tell with his matter-of-fact delivery.
“She’s very impressed,” Riel assured me, though he didn’t look too happy about it. Seersthri had begun to pack up some items once more. “She wants to take you to see some of the other people they treat with chronic conditions. There are a few of them in the city.”
Excitement surged at the prospect. It had been way too long since I was able to be useful. “Let’s do it,” I agreed eagerly. “Lead the way.”
“You died yesterday,” Riel reminded me in a low voice, putting a hand out to stop me when I started forward. “You should take things slow.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I feel fine. Great, even. You’re worrying too much.”
Even as I told him so, the shadows in his eyes didn’t retreat. What’s that about? Is he just concerned for me, or is there something more?
He made a reluctant sound in his throat but accepted my words. I patted his hand in what I hoped was a reassuring way.
“I’ll be careful,” I promised. “I just want to be helpful. It’s been a long time since I did anything to earn my keep.”
“I hope you don’t truly believe that you have to earn anything here.”
Riel’s distaste was apparent in his tone. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t get it—he was the top of the food chain here. I’d had my share of luxuries, but I still understood there was a give-and-take at play.
“That’s life, isn’t it? Adult responsibilities and all that. I mean, it’s different for you, but where I come from, we all have to do our part if we want to eat.” With an indifferent shrug, I went to catch up to Seersthri. She waited by the door with her basket.
“Tell me if you need rest,” she ordered as I approached. “We will walk. ”
“Sure. How many people are we going to see?” I asked politely.
Seersthri considered my question, gazing down at one clawed hand as she counted. “Hm. Five, six. If there is time.”
“We’re at your disposal,” Riel said from behind me, sounding for the most part sincere. Seersthri’s eyes twinkled, intrigued by the prospect of getting to use the prince for menial labor.