66. THE HEALER
THE HEALER
London, England
Years ago
She was rumored to have the “sight of the devil.” Many outsiders called her the spawn of a witch, on account of her late mother’s healing gift. Yet the ones who believed in the old practices came asking for her help.
Pain wasn’t a burden. It was a beast. And Rivka was a beast-whisperer, her healing powers growing stronger year after year. So did her visions. Those, alas, she couldn’t tame.
The night her father died, Rivka knew it would happen long before it did.
She knew in her own way. Just like she knew about the births and deaths before they came, people’s sorrows and blessings before they happened. Some called it a gift. She thought of it as Pandora’s Box, with all things haunting and dark.
She also knew that the girl brought to their house for surgery one night brought death with her. She had seen it for a while. Rivka knew her father’s death wasn’t an accident. But that she couldn’t change. She wasn’t a magician. She was just a girl with the sight .
The night she lost her father, she knocked on her grandfather’s door, who took one look at her and understood.
“It’s all meant to be, Rivka,” he said to an orphan who would grow up by his side and help him in his drug store.
Five years later, on a day like many, a woman with a girl walked into their store. The woman looked around thievishly when she spoke.
“My mistress’s daughter, she has pains now and then.
Occasionally, so terrible that she doesn’t leave the bed for a week until it passes.
My mistress, you see, would not consider anything but the best doctors.
But they are helpless. Perhaps, there is something else…
Not conventional… Perhaps, another method. A way . I heard?—”
The rumors about Rivka’s healing methods were known across the city. And though she helped her grandfather at the drug store, its substantial income came from the people who came asking—for help, for advice, for healing, or about the future.
But right now, Rivka studied the girl brought by the maid, the girl with dark hair and pretty eyes who waved her hand in shy greeting.
She saw it all over again—her father, a child’s body on the surgery table, a red stone.
She saw far-far back—a monstrous beast with fangs, a young boy at the girl’s side, the seas and the distant lands.
And she saw far ahead—that same boy, now a man, that same stone the color of blood, and a blazing fire, a fire of destiny that would destroy so many.
The girl in front of her was so full of light. Beautiful tunes filled Rivka’s head as she approached. But also pain. There was so much pain.
Rivka took the girl’s hand in both of hers, the tune in her head growing louder at the touch.
“My name is Rebecca,” she said. “You can call me Rivka. I shall help you.”
The girl threw a surprised glance at the hands holding hers, then lifted her hopeful eyes to meet the pitch-black ones.
“I am Grace,” she answered with a shy smile. “You can call me Gracie.”
Rivka didn’t blame her for her father’s death. Fate simply worked the way it did, occasionally with a warning that so many blindly ignored.
What Rivka didn’t expect was to grow so close to the girl.
Years went by, and Grace was brought again and again by her maid for the healing sessions that often lasted all day. As Grace grew older, she started escaping her chaperons to come see Rivka and go to a theatre, an exhibition, or for long walks, finding comfort in the only friend she had.
Rivka loved her dearly. She came to Grace’s house once, but the Sommervilles were pretentious people. “The likes of her,” they said in mutters to each other, and Rivka was never welcomed back.
That didn’t stop Grace, who was fierce in her love and loyal to her best friend.
Rivka saw him once, the boy from Grace’s past, the man from her future.
At one of Grace’s performances, he stood in the back of the crowd, his eyes on Grace.
And Rivka’s mind got possessed by the visions of what had been and what would be, so powerful that she could sense the man’s presence for days.
“Who is that man? The one with the scars? You know him,” Rivka confronted Grace once.
Grace only scoffed. “He is a rich man, a diamond miner from India. I’ve been introduced but he is …
” Grace’s air of hostility was suddenly gone.
“There is something about him that I can’t explain, nor can I tell how it makes me feel,” she said, absently brushing her fingers over the scars on her forearm. “Scared, I think.”
Rivka studied her in silence.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that.” Grace broke out in laughter, then blushed. “He is not a suitor. Nothing like that.”
“You like him?”
“By God, no! I don’t even know him. But his eyes have this strange intensity.
As if he is looking through me. I can’t explain it.
Do you ever meet people and feel like you know them, from far-far in the past, perhaps a previous life?
But of course, you do!” She looked at Rivka with hope. “Do you see something?”
Rivka only smiled, never once having told her friend anything she saw or sensed, trying to make sense of her vision, Grace and the man and the red stone and the blazing fire.
And now and then, Grace succumbed to the agonizing pain.
“Rivka, take it out of me, whatever it is. Please, help,” Grace would beg, curling in her bed in agony.
“Not yet,” Rivka replied year after year, doing everything to ease her suffering.
“Not yet,” she repeated, not once having told Grace what was wrong with her, but waiting and waiting for a sign.
One night, when Grace turned fifteen, she came to see Rivka. Cheeks sunken, eyes bright with fever, pain folded her in half.
“I need help, Rivka,” she whispered, collapsing in Rivka’s arms.
That night, Rivka called on the spirits. She murmured prayers. She lit the candles.
And finally, the spirits spoke.
There was a time and place for everything, and if in several years, a procedure such as this would have killed Grace, the pain and infection would have killed her sooner. But now?—
Now Rivka stood gazing down at her friend as her grandfather stood by her side.
Silent tears rolled down Grace’s cheeks as she withered in pain.
“Drink this,” Rivka ordered calmly, pushing a sedative tea into her hand, and waited until Grace’s eyelids fluttered closed in a deep sleep.
Rivka saw it clearly now—what she had to do.
“I need my medical bag from the attic. It’s time,” she finally said to her grandfather. “Let us get the surgery table ready.”