Back to the Beginning #2
At first, I dream as I have always done—my dreams peopled with those I know, and also those who have gone before me.
Sometimes they speak to me. Sometimes they merely watch over me, guiding my actions by the gentle weight of their presence.
But in the background of these dreams, there he is—a hovering figure in the distance, easy to ignore, if I choose.
But I never choose.
As the weeks go by, he grows nearer. I can make out more of him—the unshaven plane of his cheek, the dirt beneath his fingernails, his slightly parted lips, like he is always just on the cusp of saying something out loud.
Still, I do not approach or speak to him. I am waiting, but he is waiting, too.
We are learning about each other.
I wonder if this is the hidden price I must pay for the magic that cured my village—that I have carved out a place in my brain for him, and he has taken up residence there.
And yet, he does not feel like an intrusion.
Can one really be an intruder when someone has opened the door and allowed you inside, if only on the threshold?
Yes, that is exactly it. He stands upon my threshold, neither asking for nor taking the liberty of further admittance. He simply… is.
He is patient. I am not.
When I can glean no more of him from watching him in the distance, it is I, not he, who approaches closer. It is my choice—at least, I see it as my choice. Perhaps I never had a choice.
Now I chase him through my dreams. I turn to look at him, and he fades away.
I call out to him, but I have no power there, for I do not know his name.
I find myself looking for him, searching for him.
I try to get closer, but he never lets me get close enough to answer the questions that poke at me like needles.
Then, one night, as soon as my eyes close, I see him.
Just him. No one else. The guides, the familiar faces, they’ve all fled to further reaches of my mind.
Here, it is only him and me, alone for the first time since that night in the clearing.
In fact, as the setting resolves around me, I realize we are in that very clearing, standing at opposite ends, looking at each other.
I raise a hand, if not in greeting, at least in acknowledgment.
He raises one as well. Then his knees buckle and he falls to the ground.
I forget how to breathe. My heart turns to a lump of ice in my chest as I lurch forward without thinking, stumbling across the clearing to get to him.
Is he injured? In pain? What could have taken him to the ground like that?
The tall grasses around me pull at my skirts and wrap around my limbs, preventing me from reaching him, like warnings I am determined to ignore.
I am halfway across the clearing when he raises his head, eyes dark and sparkling with agony. Still hunched upon the ground, arm wrapped around himself protectively, he whispers to me from cracked lips; and though he is still so far away, I can hear the words as though spoken into my ear.
“Help me.”
My eyes fly open. I am no longer in my bed, but in the middle of the bedroom floor.
The candle beside the bed has long since gone out, and the room is wrapped deeply in shadow.
I peer over at my sister, but she is still soundly asleep, mouth open, snoring softly.
I tiptoe over to her, and place my hand over her head.
I close my eyes, and a gentle flickering series of images plays foggily in my mind—baking bread, drying herbs, watching butterflies unfurl from their cocoons in the milkweed—she is in the tight grasp of her dreams. She will not hear me go.
I slip down the stairs, and out into the moonlit garden.
My feet carry me forward without conscious thought.
I am not even sure my eyes are open. I am reaching out into the air for him, trying to find his energy, like a beacon I can follow.
My heart is pounding hard and high, and I feel like I can’t breathe. A vague fear is gripping me tightly.
It is not fear of him. It is fear for him. I must find him. I must help him if I can.
My mother has said that I could navigate the Sedgwick Woods in my sleep, and that’s how I feel—like a sleepwalker in a terrible dream that I can’t wake up from.
Why do I feel such emotion for this being I have no real knowledge of?
Why does it feel like it is my responsibility—mine and mine alone—to make sure he is safe?
I cannot fathom it; it frightens me, but the fear I feel over the depth of this strange connection pales in comparison to the feeling I fear at the thought of his demise.
The forest yields to me. No brambles snag at my clothes, no roots pull at my feet.
I arrive at the edge of the clearing once again, and stare around wildly.
At first, I see nothing. The silence is absolute, other than the sounds of my own ragged breathing.
Had I misunderstood? Had the dream been something else—a premonition perhaps, or a trick?
It hadn’t felt that way. My grasp of the dream state has always been strong, my interpretations accurate.
Then there is a feeble flicker of movement close to the ground, so small, I nearly miss it. A hand rises above the gently waving grass.
I hear him at last. His voice, again, at once distant and so close: Help me.
I am across the clearing in a heartbeat, and then freeze like a deer scenting a hunter at the sight of him.
He smiles up at me—a smile that is also a grimace of pain. “Do I look that terrible, then? I suspected as much.”
I want to turn away, but I don’t. I take in every horrible detail.
His deathly pale complexion, mottled with gray; the beads of sweat glistening over his face and chest; his labored breathing that contorts the muscles of his neck from the effort.
And worst of all, standing out all over his body, is a deeply contrasted web of black veins, pulsing sluggishly.
“What… what has happened to you?” I manage to whisper.
“If I knew, I imagine I could deal with it myself,” he replies, in a hoarse ghost of a voice.
I drop to my knees beside him, my hands hovering uselessly over his wracked and pulsating body. I feel helpless, lost, and yet desperate to try something.
“I must understand the nature of this illness. I must perform a revelation,” I whisper, somehow sure he will know exactly what that means. Unsurprisingly, he nods, like this is what he both expected and dreaded by calling out to me.
“It will hurt,” I say unnecessarily.
He nods again, grimly. “Do it. Please.”
It is a spell I have performed countless times as a healer, but I know at once this will be no ordinary revelation. The man on the ground in front of me is not an ordinary mortal man, and whatever I reveal is unlikely to be a mortal man’s ailment. Still, I must try.
I pull at the buttons of his damp and filthy shirt, but my fingers are shaking too badly, and so I simply tear, so that his heaving chest is exposed.
The veins are bulging against his skin, like they are struggling to break right through.
Bracing myself, I place my hands against his chest, startled at the bitter cold of his skin, and close my eyes.
Seek it out. Draw out the poison. Reveal the bane.
A barrage of images hits me with the force of a fist, but I do not remove my hands from his skin. Instead of giving in to the impulse to push the images away, I lean into them even as they repel me, and I try to make sense of what I see and feel.
Grasping specters of clawed hands…
A cave, the scent of the ocean…
A stone archway…
The man in front of me, his hands pressed to the stones, his bare foot crossing the threshold…
Agony. Cold. Ripping. Tearing.
I pull my hands away, the flesh on my palms and fingers aching and burning with cold. I look down at them. They are covered in frost that begins to melt in the warm gasps of my startled breaths. I look down into the man’s agonized eyes.
“You saw it?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I sought only to understand, but…”
I feel a tiny prickle on the back of my neck. A lie? I brush the feeling aside. He’s fading before my eyes.
“I do not know this magic,” I tell him. “But it is of the spirit. You’ve been… invaded. Possessed. There are natures here that are not your own.”
“Can you help me?”
I bite at my lip. He needs help. He will not survive whatever this is. And yet I do not know.
“This may be beyond my skill. I can promise nothing.”
“Can you promise to try?”
The plea in his voice almost breaks me. I think of the soil. Of the fever that vanished like a nightmare with the dawn.
“Yes. I promise to try.”
He presses his lips together in a thin, colorless line as he nods and closes his eyes. Waiting.
Waiting for me. I can barely breathe with the weight of the fear pressing down on me, suffocating me. I do not fear to try. I fear to fail. To fail him.
I have nothing, no tools to aid me, and somehow I know there is no time to retrieve them.
I ball my hands into fists, stretch them wide again, and place them back against his skin that burns with cold.
I can see it now, in every vein, this cold energy.
It is what is killing him. It must be exorcised, like poison from the bloodstream.
I raise one hand to my throat, my fingers already numb, and fumble for the chain that hangs there, tugging it free from the collar of my night dress.
I stare at the object that dangles from it: a tiny glass vial which contains a protective charm.
Whispering an apology to the goddess, I bring the tiny vial down hard on a rock, and it splinters apart into a dozen diamond-bright shards. I take the largest of these into my right hand and, before I can talk myself out of it, I bring it down against the man’s skin and press down ruthlessly.