by AA Lee
The water started to go away as soon as she said her orders. The water came back after a few minutes and handed her the guava leaves like a person would.
Kenda bowed to the water and the water started to disappear, leaving a trace in the dry earth. She chewed the bitter leaves and spat the green juice onto the cat’s wound. The cat’s breathing was shallow as it slept. Kenda tore away the hem of her shirt and bound the cat’s wound, wrapping the strip of cloth from the cat’s back to its right foreleg.
Goni stood as soon as the cruel sun had dried the water’s trail. He went to Jinja’s cell and untied him. Kenda laid down next to Lucy. She was getting sleepy, so she closed her eyes next to the sleeping cat, hoping that the cat’s wound would have begun to heal by the time she woke up. Goni returned and sat cross-legged, looking at the two of them. They had previously decided that one should be the guard while the other slept. Neither of them trusted Jinja enough for them to sleep at the same time.
Chapter 30
Kenda
Kenda rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She jerked backward when she saw a crying boy of about eight years old. A man was hitting him.
“Do it! You are a man!” The tall man pointed at the woman tied to the tree with a stick.
“No, I can’t.” The boy’s cries became louder as another stick hit his leg from behind.
“Weak!” The man spat on the ground and hit the boy one more time. Blood was starting to come out of the lashes on the boy’s leg.
“Father! Stop it! It hurts!”
“I will stop if you do as you are told!” the father shouted. Kenda came closer to stop the man from hitting the boy, and her jaw fell when she saw his face closely. It was the tattooed man who had been taken by the water. The boy was one of the ten kids in the vision she had experienced before. She found it strange that she could not remember Goni starting the magic to give her the vision.
“I don’t want to hit her.”
The father hit him one more time and the boy’s knees buckled, giving up as he fell to the ground.
“Come on, boy. Do as your father says.” It was the woman who spoke this time. She was also crying.
“No, Mama. I will not hurt you.”
“Don’t worry about me, boy. I am big. You cannot hurt me with your stick.”
“No!” the boy wailed.
“Stand up!” The father hit the boy’s leg, even though he was sprawled upon the ground.
“Stop it!” Kenda shouted, but no one heard her.
The boy struggled to stand but ended up falling again as his father hit him. The woman wailed for the father to stop.
“Do it! Come here, boy. Do it!” the mother begged.
“I will do it,” the boy said, biting his lip.
The father handed the stick to the boy. “Good job, boy. Good job.”
The mother closed her eyes as he came closer. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s not your fault. You should not be sorry.”
The boy raised the stick to hit his mother on her legs. The stick barely made a mark, but the boy fell to the ground, bawling after hitting her.
The father told him to hit her harder, but the child was not listening anymore. He was gasping for air, and the woman screamed for her husband to help him breath.
“Breath through your nose!” shouted Kenda, and she awoke, hearing her own voice. The dream had felt real; so real that it had felt exactly like the visions that Goni had intended to help her strengthen her magic. Her hand brushed Lucy’s fur, and she panicked when she suspected that the cat wasn’t breathing. She touched the cat lightly to make sure that it was still alive, and she sighed with relief when she saw the light rise and fall of its flank.
“It must have been a bad dream,” Goni said quietly.
“It was. I haven’t had a nightmare for a long time.” Kenda stroked Lucy gently again. “I hope Lucy gets better soon.”
But Lucy did not become better. It became weaker and weaker over the following days, and it refused to eat from the little food the guards gave them. It also started to lose weight.
On one of Pilly’s visits to them, Kenda asked her to bring fish, Lucy’s favorite food. Lucy just stared at the fish without eating, and Kenda was left feeling hopeless.
“Come on, Lucy. Just a bite.” Kenda begged the cat, but Lucy did not respond. It had stopped communicating with her since the day of her dream. Kenda sat next to the cat and moved the fish closer to its mouth.
“Why won’t you talk? Come on, tell me what I should do.”
“I’m sorry, kid. I think the soul has left its body, and that’s why it is not responding.”
“No! Lucy is strong. She would not surrender that quickly.”
Goni did not answer, and Kenda knew that he just didn’t want to argue.
“There must be something that I can do.” Kenda stood and paced around the small cell. Her face lit up in realization. “There must be something in town. I need to go to town. People there keep cats as pets. Lucy used to be one. I’m sure that they must have something better than guava leaves for treating her wound.”
“I already told you that it’s not a good idea to go out.”
“But I can use my magic,” Kenda said, quietly this time, not wanting Jinja to hear their conversation.
“But how are you going to use it? The water might not know what you need, because even you don’t what you need.”
Goni was right. “I have to see the town so that I will know what to ask the water to bring. Can you let me see it like you did the last time you contacted me there?”
“It doesn’t work that way. There is no one specifically to talk to. We need to talk to someone on the other side to open the connection. The main purpose of that magic is to communicate.”
“Then what can we do? If only I knew how to make myself invisible, then people wouldn’t know whether I used magic or not.”
“That’s it!”
“What? Can you make me invisible?” Kenda said with excitement.
“No, but your soul can travel. I think it can be done because you have the gift. That’s the only requirement. You need to have the gift to do this.”
Kenda’s expression turned sour. “Will I lose control of the situation like before?”
“Well, sort of.” Goni rubbed his hands together. “The difference this time will be that you will see what’s happening in real time. There will be no guessing if what you see is real or not, because all of it will be real. Your soul will travel where your body cannot.”
“So, basically, I will just leave my body here and return when I have accomplished what I wanted to see?”
“Exactly.”
“And how do I return?”
“It is simple. You just lay down on top of your body. This process is very simple and you will not be disoriented because you have experienced having visions already.”
“All right. I think we have to hurry. Lucy has little time left.”
Goni motioned for her to lay down. White smoke escaped the bottle when Goni opened it. Incomprehensible words came out of his lips as he circled Kenda. “Do not think of anything else. Just relax and imagine yourself rising,” he murmured.
Kenda felt herself being lifted up. Like part of the air itself, Kenda moved her arms and legs effortlessly. She looked down and saw herself laying down on the ground, with Lucy next to her.
Upon realizing that she was outside of her physical body, she willed herself to be carried by the wind. The wind blew hard, and it didn’t take long for her to reach town. She fought the urge to visit Lita’s store to check up on her, convincing herself that the cat needed her urgent attention.
She looked around, searching for places that displayed pictures of cats or dogs. She spotted a store whose sign said, ‘We take care of your pets.” Kenda went inside as a woman opened the door to enter. The woman was carrying a cat that looked similar to Lucy.
The woman in the office smiled at the woman as she started to ex
plain what had happened to the cat. Kenda’s knowledge of the town language was limited, so she only understood that the cat had been in a fight a week ago. It was barely breathing, and its eyes were half closed.
The receptionist took a quick look at the cat and went inside a small room. Kenda followed her. There was a long metal table inside with wires and tubes hanging beside it. The cabinets on the walls contained bottles and tubes. She saw scissors and sharp metal objects on a tray next to the long table.
The receptionist talked to a man wearing a long white gown. With a sad face, she went on to explain the situation, her hands moving to add emphasis to her words. She went out in less than two minutes and let the lady in with her cat.
The man asked the lady to put her cat on the table and pushed a machine closer to the table, right above where the cat was lying. The cat’s swollen shoulder was facing the machine. Kenda leaned close and she saw that the wound had gone yellowish with pus.
Without moving her eyes away, she hurriedly followed the man and the woman as they went out of the room, leaving the barely breathing cat. There was a glass window outside the room, so Kenda looked through it and saw a bright light coming out of the machine above the cat. Kenda wondered if the machine was healing the cat.
The man and the woman returned to the room, and Kenda followed them, hoping that the cat was showing signs of improvement. The man looked at the cat using tools that were all alien to her. She found it all rather confusing, and so she looked at the medicines in the cabinet. She saw liquids in varying sizes of containers.
A cry made her stop. She turned, and the woman was covering her face. What could be wrong?
The man spoke softly to her, and she nodded in understanding. She was obviously sad about something. Kenda did not understand what they were talking about because the words they were using were not any she had heard from around the market. One thing was clear in Kenda’s mind; the cat wasn’t getting any better.
The man asked the weeping woman to leave the room. He opened one of the cabinets and removed several items. He opened a plastic wrapper containing a long plastic tube with lines and numbers on its side. He opened another plastic wrapper and connected it to the bottle. After he had removed the cover completely, Kenda realized that it looked like a sewing needle. The man picked up a vial containing a clear liquid, put the needle inside, and pulled the end of the numbered tube, drawing the liquid from the vial into it.
With steady hands, the man then held the cat, and Kenda’s brow wrinkled as she saw the end of the needle pierce the cat. The cat breathed its last within a minute. Realization hit her. Instead of healing the cat, they had killed it. She screamed and pushed the man, but she was too late.
The man looked around in shock as he fell to the ground. His brow became furrowed as he tried to get back to his feet. Bright light blinded Kenda when the door opened. The cat owner had entered the room. She walked to the table where the cat was lying, lifeless, and Kenda felt rage toward the woman who had let her pet die.
Frustrated, Kenda left the room. She started to doubt herself for coming here. How could a kind-looking man kill a helpless animal? And how could its owner let it die? Kenda’s head pounded.
Kenda sat down on a chair outside the clinic, contemplating what to do next, when a woman ran toward the clinic, holding a bleeding cat. The receptionist alerted the man right away, and the woman was led into the same room where the previous cat had died. Would the man kill yet another cat?
Kenda hurriedly followed the woman, trying to think of a way to stop him. She knew that her soul had some kind of physical force, despite it being weaker than her physical body, and she needed strong emotion to move things.
She waited for the man to reach for the needle again, but he did not. He washed the cat’s wound and wrapped it in a white cloth. He then went to the cabinet and pulled out a medicine in square packaging. Motioning for the cat owner to sit, he walked to his desk and sat down opposite her. He held the medicine and explained the procedure to the woman. The words he used were simple to understand, and Kenda knew that the cream was supposed to help heal the cat’s wound.
That’s what I need! She waited for the woman and the man to leave the room before moving closer to the cabinet. There were several packages left inside. She tried to open the cabinet, but her hands just passed through it. She tried to summon her anger and the cabinet shook, but it did not open. Her shoulders sagged. The medicine she needed was in front of her, yet she could not touch it. She decided to give up, and let her body be carried by the wind back to the prison.
Goni was still sitting next to her unconscious body when she returned. She laid down in the same position, exactly as Goni had instructed her to do. When she opened her eyes, she was in her physical body. She stood and felt disoriented because she had become used to the weightlessness of spiritdom, even though she’d only been out of her body for a short time.
“Do you know what to use to help the cat?” Goni asked, as Kenda tried to move her legs.
“Yes,” Kenda replied, looking at Jinja.
“Don’t worry about him.” Goni stood and went to Jinja’s cell. Jinja did not protest when Goni tied him to face away from their cell again.
Kenda raised her hand to call forth the water. When it came a few seconds later, Kenda whispered what to get for her and where it could be found. The water backed down and slid away after she gave her command. Kenda stroked Lucy’s head and tried to feel its breathing. The cat was barely breathing, and Kenda prayed for the water to bring back the medicine successfully.
Time passed by slowly. After almost two hours, the water returned with the medicine. Kenda bowed in gratitude and hurriedly applied the cream to the cat’s wound. She applied it generously as she wanted the cat to heal quickly. She did not know if the amount would make a difference, but she made sure that the entirety of the wound was covered.
Lucy did not protest when she was applying the cream. Kenda thought that it was weird. It looked like Lucy could no longer feel the pain anymore, but it seemed that it had nothing to do with the cream.
Chapter 31
Kenda
When night came, Lucy closed its eyes. Kenda begged her to keep them open, but she did not. Several times since applying the cream, Kenda was afraid that it had already passed away, when suddenly the cat would breath. It hadn’t purred or communicated with Kenda in a few days.
“Why isn’t it getting better?” Kenda asked no one in particular. “It should be okay by now. I applied the medicine.”
Goni looked at her but did not answer.
“Uncle, there must be some magic that you can use.”
Goni hesitated in answering. “I’m sorry, but there isn’t.”
“Then what should I do?”
“I think it is time to let her go. She has suffered for too long already.”
“No! I will not do that. I will not let my cat die.” Anger rose in her voice.
“Look, kid. I want to keep the cat as much as you do, but I don’t think we have a choice. It looks like, for whatever reason, your cat’s soul is not with its body anymore.”
“Are you saying that my cat is dead?” Kenda did not want to fight with her uncle, but she didn’t know how to control her emotions. “It can’t be. It is still here. There must be a way to keep it alive.”
“I have heard stories about guiding a spirit back before they completely cross to the underworld, but I never actually seen it done. I don’t even know how to initiate the process, so I can’t help you. I’m so sorry.”
Kenda did not answer. She knew that her uncle had received limited training as his father had passed away early. The only experience that she herself had had with souls was summoning her grandmother, but she did not have the staff she needed to contact her.
Taking a chance, she closed her eyes and called forth her grandmother. She felt herself getting dizzy, as though she was being sucked into a void.
“Kenda. You haven’t called me in a long time.�
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“Grandma, I am sorry, but there is no time. I need help.”
“I suppose it is because of your cat.”
“Yes.” Kenda was a little surprised that her grandma knew about it, but she assumed that as she was a soul, Nora had been watching over them all along.
“I am sorry. The soul is not with us yet. I cannot let you talk to it as it has yet to cross over.”
“Is there a way for me to get it back?”
Her grandmother’s soul appeared to be thinking. “There was once a great healer in our village, a long time ago, but I never met him and I don’t know his name, so I wouldn’t know how to contact him in the afterlife.”
“What did he do?” Kenda was getting impatient.
“He went out of his body. His soul guided the sick person’s soul back to the living, much like other souls guiding the soul of the dead to the underworld.”
“I’ve traveled outside of my body already.”
“This is different. This time, you will have to endure the pain of the animal. I am sorry, but because I don’t know the exact details, I don’t know how. I will try to find that healer and ask for you.”
“Please do, Grandma. I don’t want to lose my cat.”
“Be careful. You might not be able to—”
Kenda opened her eyes, and her grandmother disappeared instantly.
“Uncle, my grandmother mentioned a healer who was able to guide souls back to the living, but I can’t wait for her to find him. I need your help. I will lay down like I did when you helped me get out of my body, but this time, please place Lucy on top of me carefully.”
Goni nodded, and Kenda lay down on the dry earth. He placed the cat gently on her stomach. Kenda stroked the cat’s head, thinking about all the things they had been through together. She thought about the time when she had first met the cat, their struggles by the river eating fish together, and the time when they had found the bridge. She focused her mind on what the cat might be thinking, begging it to open its mind to hers.
