“How do you know that?” Triel whispered, thinking of Jetta’s encounter with the Motti’s weapon and seeing her father’s face in a blur of light while she was healing her friend.
Helena smiled, her wrinkled cheeks bunching around her eyes. “I told you, it has all been foreseen; you need not worry.”
Helena held Triel’s hands against her own chest. “Now is the time to give in to your faith, Triel Aelana of Algardrien. Give away your fear, give away your doubts. Now is the time to let yourself become who you were destined to be.”
Triel looked around her. The Jumaris and the wolves stood behind the outer circle of the worship area, watching them closely.
“What do I need to do?”
“No Great Mother has done what you will need to do, Triel of Algardrien. Even Diyanna of Algarsie never faced such a daunting task. The risk will be great for you, so you must prepare yourself.”
“How? And with what?” Triel asked, looking at the surrounding statues. Each was of a great Prodgy who possessed exceptional powers. Arpethea was amongst them, stationed between two other avatars renowned for their abilities to resurrect the dead. “Spells and magic? Prayers and offerings?”
“The ritual of Ne’topat’h.”
“A mating ritual?” Triel exclaimed, pulling away.
“That’s what the commoners call it,” Lady Helena explained. “The translations have lost their meaning over time. Have you read the words of the Gods?”
“No, but I’m not expecting to have a child,” Triel said, starting to walk out of the circle.
“Stop!” Helena said. “It is not just your life at stake.”
Triel exhaled. She knew it was true. The Natari had silently served her people for centuries, and by defying Helena she was breaking the sacred oath between the humans and the Prodgies. Breaking the rules had never bothered her before, but this was different.
“Come,” Helena said, leading her to the altar. She sat her down across from the symbol of the Gods. Helena pulled llalana leaf from her satchel and gave it to Triel.
“You’ve used this before, I take it,” Helena commented as she watched Triel break down the center of the leaf and roll it into two separate halves.
“I haven’t, but my father always used it to meditate. He always tried to get me to, but I just never...”
She didn’t finish the sentence. With one bite she ingested both halves. She crossed her legs and folded her arms as she waited for the leaf’s properties to take effect.
“Now,” Helena said, pulling down the scroll from the altar. “Just listen.”
“But I don’t know Amiqi—”
“Just listen,” Helena told her.
Triel closed her eyes and let Helena’s words slip through her like water through open fingers. Her accent was atrocious, but Triel found herself gliding away from her feelings and settling into a place far above her cares and concerns. Memories of her summers on the farm and running through the yellowtail flowers after her brothers flowed through her consciousness. She could smell her mother’s perfume and hear her father’s voice in the distance.
Triel...
Amaroka...
She relaxed even deeper, drifting away from the sensations of her body. Memories of her past healings wove in and out of her awareness. She felt herself bridge the physical planes with invisible filaments of energy, opening herself to the parallel axis of her patients. Ragged, asymmetrical tangles of disease and injury disrupted otherwise harmonious biorhythms. She remembered the fight to not only survive another’s disorder but transcend their flesh and engage in the most sacred aspect of all Healing—the exchange of quintessence.
Her father, her grandmother, her friends; soldiers, civilians—even a few enemies. She had many memories of the deep and wonderful connections she had shared over the course of her life. But of all her restorations, two stood out the most. Her healings of Reht... and Jetta.
Reht was her first love, so it was no surprise to her that their interaction had been so powerful. She had fallen hard for him at first sight, and even to this day, despite what they had been through, she still missed the way his bandaged hands touched her body and the way he smelled, even after a night at the bars. There had always been something about him, something dangerous and unpredictable, but also genuine and compassionate.
And then there was Jetta. She was unusual and complicated, and the most guarded individual she had ever managed to heal. Still, in the brief moments of unadulterated clarity between them Triel had felt something so pure and luminescent that she couldn’t turn away. Everything else—all the confusion, all the reasons to stay apart—seemed to fade away.
Lady Helena’s voice whispered somewhere from the beyond.
Ne’topat’h...
Mating ritual...
Ne’topat’h...
Jetta’s face materialized before her, eyes shining like the clearest cut emeralds. Her smile was warm and inviting, with arms outstretched as if she expected their embrace. The Healer’s fingers stretched out and touched her friend’s stomach. “I choose you.”
(Help me!)
Triel heard the cry and woke abruptly from her meditation. Everything around her was vibrating as if tuned in to a different frequency until her mind adjusted to the sudden jolt back to reality.
“What’s wrong?” Lady Helena asked, looking up from her reading.
“Jetta’s in trouble,” Triel said, uncrossing her legs and standing up. “We have to help her.”
“Wait!” Helena shouted as Triel grabbed a torch from a Jumari and ran back the way they came. “It’s not safe!”
Triel ignored her as she raced down the hallway, the two wolves at her heels, following the siren of psionic turbulence.
“Jetta—no!”
She knew that noise and what it would bring, and she feared for her friend and those around them.
As she descended the staircase to the Diez di Trios, she came to an abrupt halt. Jetta stood at the door, repeatedly striking a motionless Amargo in the head and spraying the stone work with his blood. Her green eyes had deepened into chasms of animal fear that lit up her entire being like an overcharged circuit.
“Jetta!”
But the Healer could take no step further. Something hovered in the air, something oppressive and heavy, and moving any closer made it feel as though a vice was tightening around her head.
“Jetta, what are you doing?”
Triel hadn’t noticed that the three Jumaris behind her were drawing their bows, but Jetta did.
“Dema’qorp!” Jetta screamed.
The Jumaris instantly froze and fell over, their bodies limp and colorless, as if she had struck the life from them.
Helena stood at the top of the stairs and shouted down: “Get out of there! It’s too late!”
Triel ran back up the stairs and grabbed Helena by the shoulders. “What happened down there?”
“I don’t know—it wasn’t supposed to be like this!”
Helena and the others turned to run down the corridor but stopped in their tracks. Everyone but the wolves and Triel, dropped to their knees.
“Please,” Lady Helena said through blue lips, “don’t hurt us...”
Triel tried everything she could, going from person to person to save them from the invisible hands asphyxiating them. Finally she came back to Helena. Her eyes bulged from their sockets as she choked out each word.
“Do not... Do not let her... believe...”
Triel frantically dipped beneath her skin to save her dying body, but the same force that kept her from approaching Jetta kept her out of Helena’s biorhythm.
Helena locked eyes with Triel one last time, her lips quivering, “Ne’topat’h...”
Triel laid Helena to the ground next to one of the Jumaris and closed her eyes. The two wolves whined softly, their ears flat against their heads as they cowered behind a statue.
The corridor was silent save the sound of her rapid heartbeat pounding in her ears. “Jetta?�
��
She remembered her meditation; she remembered Jetta’s open arms. I choose you.
Triel placed every footstep carefully as she approached the top of the stairs. She leaned over and peered down the staircase. Jetta was hunched over Amargo’s body, breathing heavily.
“Jetta,” she whispered.
Jetta looked up, the familiar green of her eyes doused with terror. “I thought they were going to kill me. I didn’t know. I saw you, the wolves—but they were not real. They were the monster in my dreams.”
Jetta scooted away from Amargo. “I couldn’t stop.”
Triel froze in place, not sure what to do.
Jetta looked at her bloody hands. “Death follows me wherever I go.” She forced a laugh. “I guess the Grand Oblin was right.”
“I can’t keep doing this,” Jetta whispered, cradling her head in her hands. “There is something terrible inside me. I am an abomination. I am Rion, I am poisoned. It doesn’t matter if it’s me or something. I can’t be trusted.”
And with that, Jetta unsheathed the knife hanging from Amargo’s belt. “Until my last breath,” she said, and she plunged the blade into her stomach.
Triel felt the knife as if it stabbed her own belly and screamed out in pain. She collapsed, rolling down the stairs and coming to rest in a battered heap by Jetta’s side.
“Why?” the Healer sobbed.
Triel moved her hands over the wound, but Jetta batted her away. “It’s for the best. I am a monster. I’ve killed so many people. I can’t kill any more. I can’t risk hurting you.”
“Jetta, no one can tell you who or what you are. You are Jetta Kyron. You are my friend.”
Triel painfully shifted her weight onto bruised hands and knees. She brushed back the hair clinging damply to Jetta’s forehead and held fast to her hand. “You can’t abandon me now. I need you. You have to fight this thing—whatever it is. This is too important. It’s beyond me and you, and it’s beyond anything we’ve ever stood for.”
Jetta’s breathing went shallow and rapid. Triel could feel the pulse beneath her skin waning as her blood pooled on the cold stone floor.
Triel couldn’tquell her anger and fear. She wanted nothing more than to have her friend back, but when she thought of the dozens of people Jetta had just instantly killed, she wondered if she was capable of making the right decision.
Jetta’s head rolled to the side as she lost consciousness. Triel tried to pull out of her grasp, but Jetta’s grip only tightened, and she found herself falling backwards and inwards, into the deepest recesses of Jetta’s mind, behind her eyes.
They huddled beneath a fort made of cots in a hot apartment with boarded-up windows. Nobody else was around; it was just the two of them. Jaeia was off mapping the ducts and Galm had gone out again. He wouldn’t return until early morning, probably with a few new cuts and bruises. It was late, and but they were too afraid to sleep, so instead they were playing a rock dice game they had come up with a few months ago when things started getting really bad.
Jetta wanted so badly to make her brother laugh. His laughter was infectious, making his little belly jiggle and his cheeks turn cherry red. There was no other sound as important to her, but tonight she couldn’t seem to make him even smile.
“Jahx, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t have to ask. She could feel the pangs in her brother’s empty stomach. They had donated all their food to Jaeia, and Yahmen had stripped the apartment of anything even remotely edible the previous week.
Jahx rolled a triple moon, winning her lot of buttons and paperclips, but still no smile, not even a hint of delight at his victory. His cheeks looked more sunken than usual, his eyes dull and flat.
Jetta crawled out from their cot fort, ignoring her brother’s arguments as she decided how to fix the problem.
“No way, Jetta—don’t do it—it’s suicide. We can wait until morning.”
But Jetta knew that waiting until the morning scramble for food with the other child laborers wasn’t any kind of guarantee that they would eat. In their shape, they needed something now.
The outer door was locked and guarded by Yahmen’s henchmen, but the air vents between apartments were unguarded and just big enough for her to squeeze through.
With considerable effort she hoisted the last remaining kitchen chair onto Galm’s bed and climbed the unsteady mountain of furniture to reach the air vent in the ceiling. She removed the latch and lifted herself up, accidentally toppling the chair. Jahx was whispering for her audibly and screaming for her silently to come back, but she blocked him out.
She smothered her cough as the dust and debris in the air vent choked her lungs. She had to be careful. The next door neighbor, Mr. Gravesbury, was a nasty old man with strange proclivities that made even the hardened criminals of the drag seem benign.
Jetta pushed out the vent cover to the neighboring apartment. She could hear the television on in the next room. It was the game show channel, and someone had just lost a hefty bet. The audience was cheering wildly as the host read his fate from the cue cards.
“Oh, so sorry, contestant number 196! Looks like you’ll have to—”
The audience called the last part out in unison with the host. “Run—For—Your—Life!”
Run For Your Life. Jetta knew that one. Everybody talked about it. The contestant would have to run through a gauntlet of armed audience members and trained animals to the safety zone. The prize for winning was close to ten million in cash, more than the entire planet was worth, but no one ever won. It was usually a free-for-all with audience members beating and torturing the contestant to death.
Jetta could barely see in the dark. Mr. Gravesbury had tacked blankets to the windows, so it was nearly pitch black. The flickering light from the television gave her little clue what lay below her as she lowered herself onto what she hoped was a dresser.
The wooden dresser creaked as she set down her full weight, and she froze in place. No sound but the television.
“Get ready to run, contestant number 196!”
Triel couldn’t tell if it was her own fear or Jetta’s that charged through her veins as the little girl padded slowly across the patchy carpet. She kept quiet when her toes sank into something squishy and warm, reigning in her fear with her imperative.
The refrigerator was only ten meters away, and the lone recliner faced the television, away from her. She kept her mind on the unpleasant presence in the reclining chair as she tiptoed slowly towards the refrigerator. Five meters. Four. Three. Two.
“On your mark. Get ready!”
Her tiny fingers wrapped around the handle and tugged on the massive door. It wouldn’t give. She put a little more effort into it, trying to keep quiet despite the escalating noise from the audience on the television.
Finally, desperately, all her weight. The refrigerator door popped open.
“Go!”
The blood drained from her face. Body parts were stacked neatly on every shelf. There were even jars of bobbing eyes tucked away in the fruit suspender. The parts were humanoid, small. Like the parts of a child.
When she noticed the presence behind her, it was too late.
“Finally come to visit, little Jetta Drachsi? I thought your uncle would never allow you over. I know you and your siblings are always so hungry. How about a drumstick or a breast of the finest meat Fiorah has to offer?”
Jetta tried to dodge his bony hands, but she slipped on something wet on the kitchen tile and came down hard on her chin and chest, knocking the wind from her lungs.
“Oh, the first blow is always the worst. Look at contestant 196—still running, though! Watch out for the axe!” said the announcer.
She tasted warm copper in her mouth and rolled over just in time to see his boot coming down on her face. She dodged to the left and he cried out in pain at his impact with the floor.
She darted out of the kitchen and tried to get back to the bedroom, but there were too many objects hidden in the s
hadows, reaching up and pulling her down like hands from the grave.
“Get back here!” Gravesbury shouted. His eyes, hidden behind thick lenses, took on a life of their own in the dark, like cold flames in a pitch of wicked desire.
She scurried up the dresser and leapt for the air vent, but he grabbed her by the pant leg and threw her on the bed.
“You’re a little thin, but I’m sure we can find some meat on those bones.”
The television seemed to agree with her predicament. “Oh, it doesn’t look like contestant 196 has a chance.”
She saw him reach for something on his belt and screamed. What happened next inside Jetta was reflexive, reactive. The Healer was tossed into a parallel world, the place of Jetta’s power. Torrents of psionic energy rushed in from all directions, coursing over and through her with violent force. When the onslaught drained away, she found herself in a blue-white, ghostly world, standing ankle-deep in one of an infinite number of mirrored pools. A young girl stood in another, crouching to dip her hands in the blackened water at her feet.
(My Gods, Jetta,) Triel whispered, (Don’t you see what you are showing me?)
Triel was thrown back into the scene in the adjacent apartment. Jetta was eviscerating him with a nightmare so profound Triel moved away from the memory to spare herself the knowing. The old man screamed, clawing his face and knocking over furniture, speaking in foreign tongues.
Jetta staggered back to the kitchen and swiped whatever she could find before returning to the bedroom. She moved out of the way as Gravesbury reeled past her, his blood splattering her clothes as she hurriedly wriggled through the air vent.
She avoided Jahx’s eyes as she lowered herself back into their apartment. Usually she would join him in celebrating their prize, but she merely emptied her pockets onto the bed and fled to the kitchen. She wiggled her way underneath the sink piping and waited there, uncertain of who or what would come after her next.
Jahx opened the cupboard doors and looked at her solemnly. “I think there’s still a little water coming from this sink. I’ll help you get washed, okay?”
“I’m sorry, Jahx!”
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