by M. M. Perry
Gunnarr stood and stepped back from the bed so Nat could see Cass. Nat’s relieved face turned ashen.
“Gods save me, VIOLA!”
Nat turned and shouted out the door. Gunnarr turned to Cass who was still holding the Timta effigy, an unreadable look on his face.
“This is probably better than her anyway. She’d likely demand I go back into Oshia’s den to end the war. Or something else truly horrific. Viola’s good at this. She’ll fix it.”
Gunnarr looked as if he had his doubts. Viola came rushing into the small house and stopped abruptly as she looked down at Cass.
“Wow. Ok, uh… ok. Let me think a minute.”
Nat came in behind her, pushing his way into the room, trailing Manfred. Manfred looked down at Cass, and for perhaps the first time any of them had seen, a look of concern passed over his face. He seemed to crumple before them as he dropped by her side, looking down at the wound closely.
“What have you gone and done now, girl?” he said in a gently chiding manner, disguising his true grief.
“You should see the other guy,” Cass joked then winced.
“I did. The gods have strange fancies, I can tell you that,” Manfred said as he looked at the wound. He swallowed heavily, his eyes meeting Cass’. She didn’t understand the look in them. It wasn’t what she expected at all. He reached up and touched her blue tattoo. Viola, watching the gesture widened her eyes a moment, afraid of what might happen. Gunnarr felt an odd tug of jealousy within his gut. He pushed it aside as a momentary lapse of judgement when the djinn pulled back from Cass and sighed.
Cass watched him, still confused with what was going on in Manfred’s head. She had forgiven him his secrecy and misconduct. Perhaps he was concerned she would die with anger in her heart toward him. She hadn’t yet told him she no longer cared about her memory of the pub.
“Hey,” she said taking his smaller blue hand in hers, misinterpreting his anguish, “we’re good. I swear it.”
Manfred nodded, realizing he was causing a stir. He cleared his throat and stood back up, composing himself.
“Can you fix it?” Cass asked.
“No.”
“No?”
“No. I can’t fix it. Not without help. Whatever did this to you, it was powerful stuff. God made, came from the beast out there? It oozed it, or some such?”
“Spit, yes,” Cass said wincing again.
“The gods must be overflowing with power right now to waste it in such a manner. It would take several djinns to create something like this substance, something so powerful. And it would drain every last one of us dry, and not in a replenishable way. That beast, that’s surely a sample of what’s to come when the power is set free. What the seer saw. It will manifest itself physically, into creatures that do this, expel pure corrupting power that has no containment, but destroys everything it touches. And I can’t fix it. Not alone.”
Cass reached out and held Manfred’s small blue hand in her own until he looked her right in the eyes.
“Then what can we do, my friend?”
Manfred stared at her for a moment, his inner torment calmed as he looked at her.
“The right thing. That’s the only thing to do. Viola, if you were still an enchanter, what would you need to close a wound like this?”
Viola stared at Manfred as if in a daze.
“Uh… well I haven’t been able to do something like that since I was about eight years. But, if I still had that kind of power, I’d need the skin of a pig, fresh. Seaweed pellets, strands from a griffin mane and… well I see some of the other things I need in here.”
Viola began rummaging around in the wooden case Oleg had retrieved.
“Stuff for infection and pain, yes. I mean, this stuff I could administer without the enchanting. The enchanting would make it work so much better, but I could do it. The other though, there’s no way to repair that without enchanting.”
“Alright, wait a moment.”
Manfred popped out of existence leaving a swirl of blue air behind him. After only a few moments, he popped back, a wet sack in his hand, a pig tucked under his arm and a handful of feathers that ended in a long silky hair.
“Now, I know it’s distasteful work, but we need this pig butchered.”
Nat took the squealing pig from Manfred and started to walk outside.
“Wait,” Viola stopped Nat from leaving, “I said I’d need to be my eight-year-old self. Now, I know I can’t go back in time, so unless you plan on toting an enchanter of appropriate power here, there’s no need to butcher the pig. I can’t do anything with it.”
“We’re going to work together, Red. I can’t create… not like that. Not without years of practice. That’s what you have. Years of practice, of learning, of training. I can’t just snap my fingers and know it. That’s not how it works. Small wounds, I can heal, sloppily. But I can hammer my way through it. This… this is too complex. If I don’t do it right…”
“Yeah, I know. It’ll still be messed up inside, and she won’t know it until she dies of it. But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t see what needs to be seen to do that. I lost that power. And the god that gave it to me, they might not even still be around,” Viola said.
“I’m pretty sure Apsos is gone,” Manfred said. “Yet I remain. I think there is something more to what they create, it lives on when they die. So even if your god is gone, I think you still have it in you somewhere.”
“Then how? I haven’t done any enchanting in so long. And at that level,” Viola gestured to Cass’ wound, “so much longer.”
“I’m going to turn it on in you again, and we’re going to do it together.”
“You… you can do that?”
Viola was asking about more than just his ability. She knew he couldn’t return to Xenor or his people would keep him there. Such a task, she imagined, would take an awful lot of power.
“Just sit here beside her, Red,” Manfred said. Viola wasn’t sure the djinn could do what he claimed he could, or that even if he did, she could perform this feat. She turned back to look at Cass’ exposed insides and decided her best option was to believe she could. She moved beside Cass and felt Manfred stand behind her and place his hands on her shoulders.
“Ok, Red, get to work.”
Viola nodded at Nat, who took the squirming pig outside. She pulled the heavy case of herbs and medicines toward her. She put the seaweed and griffin hair down and fingered the little glass vials filled with various substances, some liquid, some powder, some still resembling their plant form. She picked up a small black pouch near the bottom of the case. The leather was heavily oiled to help contain what was within. The dark dye in the leather contained dragon’s thistle. She could smell it. There was only one type of medicine she knew of that required such care in preservation. Morte’s kiss. It was a delicate purple flower that grew along river beds in the southern regions of Centria. The berries the flower turned into were what people both sought and destroyed. Morte’s kiss was responsible for more than a few deaths by accidental poison. People took it to forget their troubles. In the right dosage, it could numb you from the world. The problem was, very few people could measure out the right dosage.
Viola used to be able to use Morte’s kiss easily. She could use her power to make the dangerous properties of the berry inert and to strengthen and focus the right properties, making it an ideal thing to have on hand at all times. Viola touched her current vest. There were many similarities between her new garb, and that of her youth. But one of them was not the inclusion of Morte’s kiss. Terrified she’d kill someone trying to use it, Viola never kept it with her any more.
“Is there some hot water available?”
Oleg brought over a kettle of steaming water and some cups. Viola reached into the case and pulled out a well-polished mortar and pestle. She opened the black leather pouch and let one of the dried up berries fall into the pestle. The bright orange color still shone in some places on the wrinkled surface of
the berry. Viola looked again at Cass’ wound, and put two more berries in the mortar before closing the pouch up tightly again. She slowly ground the berries into a powder, the orange color making her ill to her stomach from fear. She knew she had to try now, nothing more to do before she used her magic on the berries.
The metal of the mortar was silver, a small comfort to Viola as it would not interfere with her enchanting powers. Some metals made it more difficult for her to work. Selina may have even bought this set from a retired enchanter, Viola thought. She wondered if Selina had even been able to use the berries, or if they had just come with the medicinal kit. Everything in the kit matched, even the tiny stoppers to all the vials. It seemed to Viola, the whole thing must have come together to Selina.
She cupped the mortar in her hands and concentrated the way she used to when she was younger. She waited to feel the infinitesimal movements in the substance she was working on. The change couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, she had to feel it, somewhere within herself. Manfred’s hands on her shoulder began to tingle warmly. She sensed strands of something invisible moving through her. She felt an odd sensation then. It was one she would never have been able to explain to others, but the tiniest pieces of the berry, so tiny twenty telescopes end to end would not have been able to make it out, began to move. A swap here, a release there, and the composition of the crushed berries slowly changed. Viola saw the orange color of the powdered berries dim to a pale yellow. It looked right to her, but she was unsure if she had actually managed it. She poured the powder into the bottom of one of the cups, then poured hot water over it. Gunnarr caught her eye as she stirred the concoction with a spoon. She could not give him the look of reassurance that he needed. She turned back to Cass and raised a spoon to her mouth.
“Bottoms up, eh?”
Viola nodded and Cass swallowed the liquid. Viola continued to spoon the liquid into Cass’ mouth until her eyes fluttered shut. She put down the cup and placed her fingers on Cass’ wrist. She counted the heartbeats. Slow. But steady. She made sure they didn’t slow too much before she went back to work.
Using the hot water she rinsed the mortar out and put in a handful of the seaweed pellets. To that she added a few other ingredients from the case. A thick, green gel formed in the mortar by the time Nat came back in.
“Is everything still ok,” he asked Viola.
She nodded at her friend and took the bloody piece of flesh he offered her. She carefully laid it across Cass’ rising and falling chest for the time being, and began scooping out handfuls of the green gel and covering Cass’ wound with it. The skin, for all Viola could see, had melted away. The edges were smooth as if they had been burned. They were slightly slick with puss and fluids, but otherwise very little blood. The section missing went from her bellybutton over to her hip bone. Viola wondered how Cass had managed to stay conscious for as long as she had. Viola watched Cass’ face for any changes as she smoothed the gel over the wound. She could feel the intestines slide around under her fingers as she worked. She could not remember if she’d ever had to save someone as badly injured as this, but she had seen another save a man who had been gored by an ogre’s spiked club. It was worse damage than this, but there had been three enchanters working on him at once. She wondered if Manfred was doing more than just restoring her power while they worked but once again she pushed away concern that he might be harming himself to save Cass.
After Viola spread all the gel onto the wound, she carefully picked up the pig skin and laid it on the center of the wound. It did not cover the wound, but it was more than enough for Viola to do what she needed to if, she thought, she even could. Morte’s kiss was one thing, this was another entirely. She used the feathery hairs from the griffin’s mane to pierce the pig skin. She then stretched the hair to skin that was undamaged on Cass’ side and pierced it as well. The griffin hairs’ sharp ends poked cleanly through the flesh.
Viola lay her hands atop the skin and pushed herself harder than she ever had before. She felt Manfred’s hands heat up. It began to burn her skin, pain coursing through her with the power. She felt it only for a moment before her ability kicked in and she was too concentrated on the task at hand to notice it anymore.
She could see in her mind the blood and the veins carrying that blood in the pig skin. Everything was very still. She went into the blood in her mind, and saw what made it, strange round discs with divots in the center. She went deeper into the blood and found the segments that made it pig’s blood. She held that in her mind then went into Cass. She found Cass’ blood, blood moving swiftly, but not as swiftly as it should. She knew she was running out of time. She found what made up Cass’ blood and held it against the pig’s blood in her mind. She forced the pig’s blood to change, to match the blood of Cass. To Viola it seemed to take hours to line up the pieces correctly. Once they had locked, the effect cascaded throughout the pig skin, changing all its parts to match Cass’. The cascade flowed into the strong strands of griffin hair, knitting the two pieces of flesh together. Viola felt a release within herself. She had done the hard part. She had managed it. Now to finish it out, she thought.
As she surfaced from her thoughts she began to feel the burning sensation on her skin where Manfred was in contact with her more acutely. She tried to ignore it as she pushed the skin over the wound with her hand, stretching it to cover the wound. The skin was still in flux, changing as Viola worked it with her fingertips, moving like clay to mold itself around the wound. When everything was covered, Viola dove into the skin again in her mind, forcing it to set itself into a permanent state. The skin solidified into place, sealing up at the edges. Only a faint pink line around the patch and a slight discoloration of the area indicated there had ever been a wound there. Viola leaned all the way back until she fell to the ground in a flop, her forehead covered in sweat, her eyes dilated completely. She closed them and promptly fell asleep. She did not noticed Manfred fall away in his own heap on the floor.
Chapter 15
Cass gingerly touched the area that was still healing inside, she could feel an odd sensation of not quite pain underneath.
“I recommend wrapping it with thick cloth for a couple days. It’s going to be tender, and in general not as tough as the rest of you, yet. It’ll get there, but you’ve got to give it some time,” Viola said.
Cass smiled up at her.
“Thanks, Vi. I appreciate it.”
Viola gave her a hug in return.
“I’m just glad I was able to do it. I really wasn’t confident. But Manfred came through.”
“Yeah, he did.”
Cass looked over at the sleeping djinn. His blue coloring had turned dusky and dull.
“That’s probably not a good sign, is it?” she asked tilting her head toward the djinn. Viola walked over the Manfred and dipped a cool cloth into a bowl of water next to him and dabbed his brow once again. Ever since she had woken, she had been performing this duty periodically. She turned over his small hands and spread a simple salve she made over the blisters there. After tending to Manfred, she reached up under her own tunic and spread some salve on her shoulders as well.
“I think helping us here took more out of him than he’s willing to admit,” Viola said sadly.
“How much longer before your power fades again?” Cass asked.
“I think it’s gone already. As soon as he stopped helping, it was gone, I’m pretty sure. I tried to make a kind of rejuvenation tea for everyone, a simple thing I used to do all the time. It didn’t work in the slightest. He gave me just long enough to save you. And even that took just about everything from him I think.”
“Should we leave him here? I mean, would it be safer for him?” Cass asked looking down at Manfred.
“I think he’d hate that. And, I think maybe he’s earned the right to come with us if he wants,” Viola said.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Cass said. “He’s trying so hard to make it up to me. That he’s hidden a part of my past from
me. Between you and him…”
Cass got up and walked over to Manfred. She brushed his fraying hair off his brow.
“It’s something different than I thought. I think I realize that now. I don’t know if I want to know anymore or not. I don’t know how to feel. The way he looked at me when he thought I was dying…”
Viola bit her tongue, holding back her own thoughts on the matter. Instead she offered what she hoped were words of solace.
“In the end, Cass, I can tell you this. Whatever happens, knowing wouldn’t change how you feel about what has to be done. I don’t believe that anyway. I’ll tell you what he said to me, one small thing. He’ll remember it for both of you. Right now, I think we should respect that. As hard as it might be.”
Cass stood and nodded. She pushed aside her confusion and looked at the door to the small hut.
“Everyone else outside and ready, I take it?”
“Yeah, they were just giving us some space to rest. Here, I’ll help you bandage yourself up. It needs to be tight, and an extra hand will help with that.”
Viola began wrapping a long piece of cloth around Cass. She made sure it was snug against Cass’ skin.
“Why’d you leave without us?”
Cass sighed. She knew her injury would only buy so much time before she was scolded for sneaking away.
“I needed some time to think. I thought if I could see the plains, see the devastation the gods caused, it would give me the strength to keep going. To keep putting everyone’s lives at risk, when there was a good chance it was for nothing. What if I’ve led you all to waste your last good moments? Time you could be spending with loved ones?
“A cousin I never knew hated me then died. Suman… everyone who has died or been in peril because of me. I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to save my world. The world that prays to these gods, that worships them. Maybe they wouldn’t mind if the gods just took them out. Maybe they’d all end up with Morte and happy somewhere. The dragons are immensely powerful beings, and they don’t care if it all ends. They’ll just watch as it all starts again. And maybe the next time, everything will be better. Anyway, that’s what I was thinking. And I didn’t like it. I needed to see what I was fighting against. I needed to see that it wasn’t futile. I hadn’t intended on finding a fight, that’s for sure.”
