Chapter 1 #2
“Fates, I call upon your age-old wisdom.
Take this mother’s pain over time.
Heal her hands slowly, and leave no scars.
As I command, so it goes.”
The ink settled into the fibers of the parchment, shimmering faintly before fading into an ordinary black scrawl.
A shiver rolled down my spine, then spread outward like the warmth of a whiskey shot hitting the bloodstream.
My legs trembled, but a deep sense of relief followed, thrumming through every nerve, softening the ache in my head.
The magic had taken hold. I folded the parchment carefully, tucking it into my pocket.
Magic, especially this kind, wasn’t to be trusted loosely.
Turning back to the workbench, I found the children still stirring, their faces alight with concentration. The wooden spoon clinked rhythmically against the bowl.
“Good job,” I said, offering them a smile.
“You’ve done well.” With gentle hands, I emptied the mixture into a small container and sealed it tightly, the scent of lavender lingering in the air.
I gathered a vial of alcohol, clean cloths, and a small tin of numbing powder, balancing them carefully in my arms as I approached the mother.
“Is there anyone at home who can help you care for the wounds and apply the lotion?” I asked, soaking a cloth in the alcohol. The liquid gleamed under the dim light, catching on the rough fibers. She shook her head, her gaze fixed on the floorboards.
“No,” she whispered. “My mother’s too old.
And my husband…” Her voice cracked. “He died in a mining accident a few years ago.” Her words hit like a cold wind, sharp and sudden.
I swallowed hard, the familiar ache of loss stirring deep in my chest. My father had been taken in the same way.
The memory still pressed against the edges of my heart.
I measured the numbing powder, mixing it into a glass of water until the pale liquid swirled into an opaque mist. “Drink this,” I murmured.
I lifted the glass to her lips as she downed the contents in a few determined gulps.
The tension in her shoulders eased almost immediately, and the faint lines of pain softened around her eyes.
I guided her hands gently onto a clean cloth spread across the table, the skin raw and angry.
“Stay still,” I said, keeping my voice calm and steady.
Turning to the children, I beckoned them closer. “Come help me,” I offered with a reassuring nod. “We’ll take care of her together.” The children nodded eagerly.
“Tonight, I want you to help your mother and be gentle with her. Take one of these wipes and carefully dab it across your mother’s hands, exactly like that.
” As I spoke, I was already disinfecting the burned skin.
“It will sting a little, but you are not going to hurt your mother. When her hands are clean, I want you to help her open the container with the lotion and help her apply it. Do you think you can do that?”
The mother thanked me over and over again, promising me to come back with payment. I refused, but I was certain that one day she would return to settle her debt. What she didn’t know was that it was me who was settling a debt, one that I could never fully repay.
* * *
When they had left, it was already completely dark outside, my head throbbing again and the tiredness in my bones being almost too much to bear.
For a second, I pondered lying down on the stretcher and not going home at all, but the promise of a cooked meal waiting for me at home made me get up and lock up the surgery.
The lamplighter had already made his rounds, leaving the streets bathed in the faint, flickering glow of the black lanterns. The soft light seemed to shiver in the cool night air, casting long shadows across the cobblestones.
I remembered my mother’s voice, warm and comforting, telling me stories of a time before the Gods had left our world.
She spoke of glowing orbs that hovered above the streets, pulsing with vibrant hues.
Blue, green, and red lights danced in the air like fireflies on a hot summer night.
The warm light, she said, had swallowed the night whole, leaving only soft, golden shadows.
I wasn’t sure if she had truly believed these tales, or if she’d invented them to ease my fear of the dark as we had walked back home at night.
But I liked imagining a world where light never fled, where the night couldn’t creep in and steal away the warmth.
The thought lingered in the back of my mind as the lantern’s light flickered again, casting a lonely glow along the street.
It wasn’t the warmth of an orb, but it was enough.
By the time I reached home, a steady throb had settled in my temples, radiating down my neck in sharp pulses that made it feel like my skull might split.
Each step was heavy, each breath a little harder to take.
I eased the door open as quietly as I could, careful not to disturb the silence in case my mother had already fallen asleep.
The dim light from the hearth spilled into the open kitchen and living area, casting soft, flickering shadows across the room.
There, in her favorite armchair by the fire, was my mother.
Her frail form was outlined by the warm glow, and the fire still crackled low, as though she had stayed up waiting for me, until exhaustion had finally claimed her.
As I knelt down beside her, I removed my boots, the soft creak of the floorboards barely audible.
Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
She stirred, her eyes fluttering open, and a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“Long day at the surgery again, my dear?” My mother’s voice was soft.
I smiled, though my hands, clenched into tight fists, betrayed me. The pain in them was so intense that I could barely hold back a grimace as she took them in hers. The warmth of her hands only seemed to heighten the throb that pulsed through my fingers, and I quickly pulled them back.
I moved to the kitchen and turned on the tap, letting the cold water run over my hands. It did little to numb the sharp ache that was now pulling at the edges of my vision.
I tried to focus on something, anything, other than the pain.
“There’s soup on the stove and a chunk of bread in the basket,” my mother called from her chair, her voice light.
The scent of the soup wafted toward me, and my stomach growled in response.
I couldn’t help but smile; my mother had made my favorite, lentil soup.
Somehow, she always knew when I was having a hard day.
I’d meant to go straight to bed, but the hunger gnawed at me, so I sat at the table beside her, pushing the thoughts of exhaustion aside, if only for a moment.
I told her about the patients I’d seen that day, the usual gossip drifting through town.
Nothing important, but she loved it, and I was happy to indulge her. Her eyes lit up as she listened.
Leaning back in my chair, I rubbed my temples. The headache was settling in, deep and pulsing, and exhaustion threatened to overtake me. My mother’s gaze sharpened instantly; it was impossible to hide anything from her.
“Are you suffering from headaches again?” she asked.
I forced a smile, trying to ease her anxiety.
“It will be all right tomorrow, mother, don’t worry. I just need to sleep.”
She didn’t seem convinced, her brow furrowing, but she didn’t press me further. I rose from the table to clear my bowl. As I turned to head upstairs, she called softly after me.
“You are allowed to use the heka on yourself, you know? If you are careful, there’s nothing wrong with finding some relief from your pain.”
I paused, the words striking a chord I’d spent most of my life avoiding.
My heka, as it was called, had always been a mystery to me, something I’d learned to suppress rather than understand.
The idea of using it on myself to ease this constant pain terrified me.
But then again, so much of my life was about hiding, suppressing, pretending.
Hekas weren’t unheard of. Once, they had been seen as a divine gift, bestowed upon humans by the Fates themselves.
There were stories of those who could heal, summon rain, or speak with the dead.
But over time, people had twisted their gifts for greed and power, and the Fates withdrew their favor.
Those born with a heka were now more a curse than a blessing, hunted or shunned for the power they carried.
As a child I had noticed how sometimes I would write little stories that seemed to come true outside my window.
When I turned seven, I wrote a wish list for my birthday and sure enough, the presents appeared in the living room the next morning.
My parents’ reaction was what had scared me the most. My mother’s face had turned ashen, as if someone had drained the life out of her.
Without uttering a word, she had scooped me up in her arms and taken me to my room.
I remembered my dad closing the curtains and locking the doors and windows, but everything after that was a blur.
I didn’t know much, but I knew that the heka was as much a gift as it was a curse.
Using it for my own purposes was a great risk, like taking a strong drug and hoping not to get addicted.
A lesson I had learned and paid for dearly later in life.
Pushing these thoughts away, I sent a kiss flying to my mother and smiled at her.
“Thank you for saying that, but I will be fine tomorrow. Otherwise, I will ask Dr. Marris for help, I promise. Good night!”
I could hear my mother huffing.
“Dr. Marris, the old fool wouldn’t know the difference between a tooth and a stomachache.”
* * *
I tried to sleep, but the pain in my head only worsened with every passing minute, like a relentless, pulsing vise tightened around my skull.
My hands were burning, though I couldn’t see any reason for it.
The heat crawled up my arms, spreading like fire through my veins, igniting my shoulders and making it nearly impossible to get comfortable.
No matter how I shifted, the pain only grew sharper, more insistent.
Hours passed in restless turns before I finally sat up, gasping for air.
I barely made it to the bathroom before my stomach heaved. The contents of my belly surged up and spilled into the toilet, sharp and bitter, leaving a sour taste in my mouth. My headache was blinding, pulling at the edges of my vision, and my stomach churned with nausea.
My fingers started tapping against the toilet bowl in a steady rhythm.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
If the rhyme ended on “remember,” the Fates allowed me to use my heka on myself. “Betray” meant enduring the pain.
Red for the roses, white for the veil,
one to remember, one to betray.
Thank the Fates—remember.
I crawled back to my bed, my limbs heavy and uncooperative, reaching for the pen and paper on my nightstand.
Just this once.
One breath. One act. One choice.
Do good. Stay clean. Hold steady.
My hands shook as I wrote the words, the pen slipping in my grasp:
“Fates, I call upon your age-old wisdom.
Ease the pain from my body,
and let me awaken well-rested in the morning.
As I command, so it goes.”
The moment the ink dried, the throbbing in my head faded as if it had never been there at all.
Before I even realized I was falling, I drifted into a deep, blissful sleep.
I didn’t feel the sudden shift in the air, as if the very atmosphere around me had thickened and shimmered with heat.
A pulse of invisible energy rippled through the room, the air growing thick and warm like a summer’s breeze before it exploded outward.
Silent waves of light disappeared into the night as quickly as they had come.