by Jada Fisher
Even though I knew it had to be a little disconcerting, his level of astonishment did seem like a bit much.
“I’m just sitting. It’s not that big of a deal.” It wasn’t like he had seen me walk or anything. As far as he knew, my butt was just feeling exceptionally supportive all of a sudden. Thick thighs and all— I looked down, seeing sagging skin and wasted away muscle.
Right. Didn’t have those anymore. I had a long road ahead of me to get myself back.
But Krisjian ignored my grouse and looked to the others.
“What’s going on?”
“I would say we’re right between we don’t know and totally bewildered,” Mickey answered wryly, and I couldn’t help but echo the sentiment. “She just woke up like this.”
“You woke up like this?” he asked me, accent thickening as his eyes went wide.
“I woke up like this,” I confirmed. I knew that Krisjian was from another country and didn’t really get the meme he was referencing, but I couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped me.
“And we’re sure this isn’t some sort of…rallying syndrome? Or terminal lucidity, or-or—”
“Whoa, slow down there, kiddo,” I said, holding my one hand up. “I’m not dying, and this isn’t some sort of last-minute burst. I’m not even healed all the way.” I raised my stump of an arm as best I could, the muscles barely responding. It was just past halfway down my bicep, the bandages going all the way up to my shoulder.
“Actually, that reminds me,” Mickey said, her attention brought to my limb. “Those are pretty dirty. How about we see what’s going on under there while I change and drain them?”
I nodded, my stomach twisting at the idea. Apparently, the rotted dragon’s spit or venom or whatever it was that had gotten into me had caused a nasty infection, which was why the wound was packed with gauze and changed at least twice a day. Not that I was awake for most of those changings.
Normally, I was under enough of the fuzziness that I couldn’t feel embarrassed by just how gross the human body could be, but I realized I was going to have to face the mess completely coherently for the very first time. As much as I hated the cloudy feeling those drugs had given me, I kind of found myself missing them.
But I didn’t voice any of that to Mickey and she dutifully began to unwrap the outer layer. Then it was snipping away the inner layer with a tiny pair of medical scissors. Then it was taking off the gauze at the end of it, which usually was colored dark brown, green, and yellow after a few hours. I hated to think what it looked like considering I’d missed a dressing change with the whole escape.
“Dios mio…” she breathed.
That could go either way, and I opened the eyes that I hadn’t even known I’d closed. Looking down, I saw the stump there, scarred and gnarled in a way that was both familiar but also completely different from my burn scars.
But it was healed. Skin fully around the limb. No pus. No ache. Just a stump of an arm, as happy and healthy as it could be.
“I’m gonna palpate it,” Mickey breathed, as if she was afraid that if she spoke too loudly it would somehow go back to floating on the precipice between healing and necrotizing. “Just to make sure it didn’t seal anything inside or make a pustule packet.”
I nodded. Although I’d been pretty out of it, I knew that was one of the reasons why they hadn’t stitched off the end of my wound beyond making sure that all the blood vessels were sealed off—doing so could apparently make a nice, warm, cozy home for infection to take place and really bloom. And that was just about the last thing that I needed, of course, so that was why there were the multiple packings a day until the antibiotics and rest eliminated the infection.
And the poison.
And whatever awful thing being in physical contact with a rotted dragon had done to me. The monster was a walking pathogen, which I supposed was appropriate. I wouldn’t be surprise if, given that the world lived long enough, a new plague suddenly burst into being just from his being around.
“I don’t feel anything. I really wish we had a doctor on hand, but from what I can tell, you’re good.” She took a deep breath, in and out. “I don’t know if this is a fully-awakened oracle thing or what, but I feel like this is too good to be true.”
“Well, your lupus has been better since your powers awakened, right? Only one flare?”
“Yeah, it’s helped, but I still have to be careful. And, Davie, not to scare you, but you were in a real bad way. Something healing you this much makes me nervous.”
I nodded. I was nervous too. I chewed at my lip, trying to think what kind of freak magic or failsafe could have saved me, but then tiny fingers were digging into my arm.
“What’s up?” I asked before looking to the hand and realizing it was Sokhanya. She tugged again, pointing to the other side of the room, into the blackness I knew that I couldn’t see through. “I—”
Those words died on my lips when I noticed what she was gesturing to. A smoky outline, flickering just on the edge of reality, barely visible but there, nonetheless.
It was the spirit. The same one that had been hunting me.
And she looked rough.
Her normally billowing smoke was more like a light fog, and the way she would shift somewhere between the visage of a once-human woman to a skeleton had stopped, leaving her mostly bones and sagging cloth. The foreboding aura she had to her was gone as well as the warning tingle that always slid up my neck.
“Oh,” I said, all of it sliding into place. “Was all this you?”
I remembered, just barely, our conversation in the hall as we were escaping. Although calling it a conversation was certainly taking liberties with the idea.
I’m going to try to help you, okay? It’s going to break a lot of the rules, but I can’t have you like this. You can’t even think, can you?
She’d said that, hadn’t she? With those non-existent eyes and her non-existent mouth. The spirit had said she would help me. Would break the same rules that had compelled her to hunt me down in the first place.
“You can heal?”
She didn’t nod, she didn’t speak to confirm my suspicion, however. If anyone else thought it strange that I was talking to someone they couldn’t see, they didn’t say so. But considering that both Krisjian and Sokhanya were aware of the presence cut it down to just Bronn and Mickey, and I had the feeling that the two of them were just exhausted enough to go with the flow. Even if that flow was really, really bizarre.
The spirit raised her hand, as if she was going to point just like Sokhanya, but then she vanished in a snap, leaving barely the faintest scent of sulfur and a wisp of smoke.
“Do y’all want to explain what just happened for the peanut gallery here, or is this a fun mystery experience?” Mickey said, her tone lilting toward joking but not quite getting there.
I swallowed hard, trying to gather my thoughts. I felt like I was leaping to one heck of a conclusion, but it was the only thing that made sense.
“You guys remember that spirit of death that was hunting me because I’m not supposed to be alive?”
“That’s not exactly something a sister would forget.”
“Right. Well. I think she’s the one that healed me.”
I could practically feel the sharp jolt of surprise from everyone.
“And why do you think that?”
“Well, for one, she just showed up and she wasn’t exactly looking brand spankin’ new. It was like she’d lost most of her energy. Secondly, last night she told me that she was going to help me because she needed me to not be, well, how I was. Said she’d be breaking a lot of rules. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t interpret any of that as ‘I’m going to perform some sort of miracle of science and nearly heal you,’ but if I had to infer, that’s what I would guess happened.”
Mickey took a breath as if she had a reply to that, but then Mal was returning.
“Hey, I found a spot. It’s only a bit away from where I remember it. Come on.” She gave a
nod to Krisjian, who returned it, and that was her only way of a greeting before we were heading out as a group.
It almost felt a bit like being a teenager and sneaking out. Not that I had ever had to do so as a teen. I’d never needed to be anything but completely honest with my sister. But we’d both done plenty when we were younger in the various foster homes we’d bounced around in. Whether it was hiding from drunk parents, mean siblings, or sneaking to the library or even out to see each other if we’d been separated, we always found a way back to each other and to safety.
Hopefully, we could continue that trend.
We found the spot that Mal must have been talking about fairly quickly, a circular opening that almost looked like a tunnel but stopped four feet in, only the slightest bit of grate sticking out of the cement that sealed it. Bronn and Mickey helped me up, and a few moments later, we were all pressed together, sitting along the hard partition with our feet pointing towards the opening of the tunnel.
Bronn’s were the only ones that came even close to the edge, and it was a bit comical to see how much longer his legs were than anyone else’s. I was the only other tall person in the group, but since I was mostly torso, I wasn’t exactly hot competition.
There was more shuffling as the blankets were arranged, then the emergency ones, then the other bits and bobs of cloths people had grabbed. After that, Mal set up the lantern thing that was apparently powered by winding, and it was almost like we had our own cozy little campsite.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was nice, considering the circumstances and all, but it certainly wasn’t bad.
As we settled, I slid my one remaining hand into Bronn’s. I wanted to do the same with my sister and actually tried for a beat before I remembered. Being down a limb didn’t seem like something a person would forget, and yet…
“I gotchu,” Mickey whispered, so quietly that even I almost didn’t hear it. Her arm lifted and wrapped around my shoulders, leaving me feeling surrounded and cuddled in the best sort of way.
Sokhanya planted herself right on the other side of my sister and turned, her back leaning against Mickey’s slender side and her feet over Krisjian’s lap. Mal sat to the other side of Bronn with her back up against the wall and her legs over Bronn’s, giving me somewhere to set our joined hands.
It was the closest that any of us had been in…far too long. And yet there was someone missing. Someone who absolutely should have been there.
A hot, sharp knife of pain stabbed through my heart and I shoved those thoughts to the side. Later. There was always later. I could deal with that pain when the world wasn’t about to teeter into the abyss.
Although, to be honest, teetering was definitely seeming to become the new normal rather quickly.
“You know, I bet if we went pilfering, I could get a few more blankets, some canned food, maybe some metal to make a firepit, and this could be our own little hangout,” Mal said coolly, one of her hands riffling around in her ratty knapsack. “Not that I want to return to my ol’ mole ways, but this isn’t even in the top ten worst places I’ve had to hole up. Cozy.”
“I’ve also stayed in many worse places,” Krisjian said. “This reminds me of my last home. It was very hidden. Hard to find.” He craned his head to look over at me. “Except for certain ghosts, apparently.”
“I’m not so sure I was a ghost,” I said with a laugh. “But point taken.”
“Oh.”
5
Bedtime Stories
Something about Mal’s tone was wrong. Leaning forward, I scanned her over to see that she still had one of her hands in the pack, her eyes wide.
“That was a strange oh.”
“Yeah, I uh… I kinda forgot about something important.”
I raised my eyebrows and she pulled something out of the bag, revealing an old, barely-held-together tome that looked more like it belonged on a movie set than real life.
And of course, I recognized it instantly.
“Oh,” I parroted, my stomach dropping right along with my tone.
Somehow, I had forgotten it too—the book that had called to Sokhanya and I back when we were trying to escape from the prince and Baelfyre, the fateful day when the deaf oracle had stabbed a golden quill with a peacock feather right into the side of his throat. I felt that same familiar pull of magic throb through me and considering how detached from my own energy and how drugged up I had been, it was almost like touching a live wire.
“Is that—” I didn’t know why I was asking, I knew exactly what it was. But before I could even get the whole phrase out, Sokhanya was practically leaping over all of us, snatching the book up and holding it in the light of the emergency lantern. She couldn’t really read, so I wasn’t quite sure what she was doing, but none of us were going to grab the book back from her.
She turned it this way and that, opening the pages and running her hands across them. I could hear Mickey draw in a sharp breath, as if she was going to warn the girl to be careful but seemed to cut herself off when she realized that it would fall on literally deaf ears.
The parchment within was yellowed, brittle even, and the smell of both dust and damp filled the air. I got the feeling that the whole thing should have disintegrated right under the woman’s tiny fingertips, but it seemed perfectly fine.
Huh.
It was like all of us were waiting for some sort of revelation on bated breath, but after a few more minutes, Sokhanya turned around and knee-walked over Bronn to squeeze right between us.
It wasn’t exactly a comfortable fit, but Sokhanya clearly didn’t care. She thrust the book into my hands, already open, and looked at me expectantly.
“Read,” she said, nearly causing me to drop the whole thing. I could feel my brows shoot up, but she just pointed right back to the paper. “Read!”
Her voice was thick with a deaf accent, but her meaning was clear. I was always of the opinion that she didn’t ever have to speak verbally if she didn’t want to—we were all learning sign along with her and I tried to always have a notebook around back when we were at the manor—but I was pretty impressed that she was.
Now Krisjian was leaning over, practically climbing into Bronn’s lap as well. “Since when did you—”
“READ!”
“Okay, okay. I got it.” I finally looked down at the ancient pages, feeling my eyes drag along the faded ink. It looked to be some sort of runic language, one that made my head thrum in a way that I couldn’t tell if I liked or not.
“Um, this is cool, Sokhanya,” I said slowly, making sure not to over-enunciate. “But I can’t translate this, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
She didn’t seem satisfied with my answer, her finger tapping impatiently at the top of the page. “Read.”
“I can’t just—”
Apparently, she didn’t like my start of an answer because she stopped pointing and suddenly both of her hands gripped my wrist with a surprising amount of strength all things considered. I was startled for a moment that her fingers could completely encircle them, but then I felt a cool rush start to flow through me that made me forget about everything else.
Concentrate. You can see the meaning.
I was startled by her voice in my head, except it wasn’t really a voice, but more of a perception of what she would have written to me. It’d been so long since I’d really interacted with another oracle’s magic, it was like I had forgotten what it had felt like entirely.
I didn’t let myself linger on that for too long however, and I looked back down at the pages.
At first, it was the same runic symbols and shapes. Things I could tell meant important stuff, but I didn’t have a clue what they were. But then, as I stared, they began to move and shift. Just little wiggles at first, so subtle that they mostly just made me want to rub my eyes and wonder if I was insane. But then they started to melt, dripping down the page like they were hitting invisible walls that eventually channeled them into letters that I could understand.<
br />
Bit by bit, it reshaped itself, until finally a full and complete expanse of English was in front of me.
“What’s happening?” Mickey asked from beside me, nearly startling me into jerking the book up into Sokhanya’s chin. “I can feel that something’s happening.”
“Apparently, this is in English now.”
“Really?” Mickey leaned over, brows furrowed. “Still looks very un-English to me.”
“Here.” I pried one of Sokhanya’s hands off my wrist and transferred it to Mickey before my eyes flicked back to the pages. The words wavered a little, like my eyes were watery, but I could still read.
“Man, no wonder you oracles were so coveted back in the heyday,” Mal remarked dryly. “It seems the more of you that get together, the more crazy things we can do.”
“It’s how their magic works,” Bronn said, his voice a deep rumble that helped ground me from the cool rush. “I’m not an expect, but as far as legends go, the magic that runs through all oracles is supposed to connect each and every one of them, like different trees in a forest. You cut down one tree, new ones will grow.”
“But if you cut down all the trees…” Krisjian murmured, and he didn’t need to go farther than that. We’d been cut down alright, all of us, and it was only through some miracle that something had planted the seed that had allowed us to return.
“All that magic dies and you’re left with dead earth,” Bronn finished.
“Anyways, don’t leave the rest of us waiting. What does it say?”
“It’s, um, I think it’s about…maybe it’s a legend? It’s in English but it’s not exactly modern dialogue. Gimme a second.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and started reading aloud. It was slow going, and I found myself tripping over words or stuttering when that had never been a problem for me before. I’d always been an excellent reader.
I guessed my brain had more healing to do.
The first mirror realm was seen not within the looking glass, but within a moonpool, reflected in warped waves and ripples. It was not purposely sought out, but discovered nonetheless by an apprentice of the Great Seer in our capital.
