"They sure can move when they want to," Royal said as he watched Spin's awkward gait.
"You should see them in a forest. It's like they melt around things."
"I don't doubt it." Royal looked at me. "Why is there blood on your clothes?"
"I moved too quickly, and something tore. It bled more than the wound warranted though; it was only a tiny cut."
"That's a good sign!" Royal took a seat on the window ledge where Sid had been speculating only a few hours before. "It means the blood flow is coming back."
"Well, that's just great." I sat down slowly on the bed, but the cut still stung. "The whole raw nerve thing is getting a bit old though."
"Hopefully tonight will seal some of the frayed edges."
"That would be great. I'm getting tired of feeling every single bone in my feet with every step I take."
"You're going to need better shoes when you leave here."
"I've got lots of great shoes at home; I just need to wrap my feet up well for the journey."
Royal grunted a noncommittal response and looked at his hands for a few moments.
"So you are going home." It wasn't a question, and it held a level of resignation that made me sad.
"I have to, Royal."
"Why?"
"There is a space in my home that I designed specifically for healing myself. I guess I used to get hurt a lot before my time as a human. It's a circle deep inside a greenhouse that I built in my house. I know if I get there I can speed this healing process along. I'm not strong enough to Travel yet, so I need to do the moon healing tonight, but after that, I've got to get home. The circle there knows my body; it will know what to do to get me better." I looked at the dried blood on the strips of cloth that wrapped around me. "I think I'll need a few treatments though."
"Makes sense." He paused. "Will you visit me?"
Oh! So that's what this was about. Royal was worried he'd never see me again. For all of his crotchety old man mutterings, he liked the company. Liked my company. And I liked his.
"Of course I will." I crossed to him and slid my boney ass onto the window ledge beside him. "Royal, you are the only person I've met who is just like me. We are two of the same species in a world where most of these guys operate in the thousands, or at least the hundreds. We need each other. We need to stay close." I thought back to what Sid had said, someone out there still wanted me dead. "I don't think the danger is anywhere close to being over for me. Not just because I look like a skinned rabbit. There's something dark out there that's still got its eyes on me." I shuddered, and Royal put his arm around me. I curled into his shoulder as his wings wrapped around us both.
"I'm there for you, Phoenix. You just say the word."
"Word." He laughed; I could feel it right through my battered body. It loosened something in my chest. "Wait a second." I sat up. Whatever had come loose was now banging away in my chest. "Something's moving." I took his hand and put it on my chest. If I'd still had breasts, it would have been way inappropriate, but I was just a ribby meat wall. "What is that?"
Royal sighed, and single silver tear moved quickly down his cheek.
"That's your heart, honey. It's finally beating again."
8
Finding out that you've been living without a beating heart would mess with most people's brains. Fortunately, I am not most people. Unfortunately, I am far too used to the crazy crap going on in my life, so the news that my heart had returned to its steady rhythm was only a mild shock. A shock that made my heart stop, but after a few thumps from Royal, got moving again.
Once Royal was sure my heart wasn't going to stop again, he ordered me to take a bath and get dressed. The sun was disappearing below the horizon, and I needed to be out in the Moon Circle very soon. I bathed as quickly as I could, which was kind of gross. Running my stick fingers over my meat covered legs and barely there torso was not fun. But I rinsed off the dried blood and carefully patted myself dry. I did not need another tear this close to the moon.
I picked up the robe Royal had left for me. A poncho. His word, a poncho. What Royal calls a poncho, I call a tent. It was big and grey with no slits for my arms or my wings, and a big hood that covered my head and most of my face. It was so long it pooled on the floor, which made walking slightly more challenging than my stick feet could handle. I would be walking slow tonight.
Once I was dried and draped, I made my tent like way out to the living room. All three men were sitting around the fire with strained looks on their faces.
"Cheer up, it might not happen," I said from deep within my grey hood. Spin glanced up at me and yelped.
"Oh! I am sorry, miss; it's just, you look like..."
"I look like a tent of nightmares." I waved my arms under the robe. "Enter if you dare! Ooooo! Ooooo!"
"Alright, that's enough," Royal said it playfully, but there was an undercurrent of tension to his words.
"You're right. I could play tent of nightmares all night, and then where would we be?"
"Very funny, Phoenix." He moved to the door. "Let's get you outside."
"Okay." I waved to Sid and Spin, who both sat on the couch in various displays of tension. "I'll see you guys later."
Once outside, Royal seemed to go back to his usual relaxed self.
"The circle is just over that rise there." He pointed to a dark mass in the near distance. "Just walk in a straight line, and you can't miss it."
"You're not coming with me?" I was starting to panic.
"No, darling. You can do it all by yourself." He smiled and then reached up and pulled the hood back from my fleshless head. "Nobody out here to see you, let it all hang out."
"Okay." If I'd had real lips, they would have been stretched into a very thin line. "I don't like this."
"You're not supposed to." Royal placed a hand gently on my shoulder. "If you were supposed to, we'd be burning up all over the place."
"All of us, being the two of us," I said.
"Yeah, just the two of us. Now get going before you miss the moon."
"Where is the moon?" The sky was dark save for a few twinkling stars. "And how am I going to see where I'm going?"
"The moon will show up."
"Seriously?"
"Yep, it'll show up."
"Alright then." I took a few steps towards the rise. "Thank you, Royal," I had to move to face him since my neck lacked enough sinew to turn, "for everything."
"You're welcome." He smiled and then walked back into the house, leaving me alone in the dark with sand between my bone toes.
The sand between my toes really started to freak me out as I walked. It was literally between my toes. I could feel it swirling around the exposed bones of my feet, sometimes pushing up through the spaces and spilling out over the surface. In sand, feet are meant to act as paddles, mine were working like sieves. Getting over the rise was slow work.
It was nice not wear a big hood over my head. The fresh night air felt wonderful as it slid over the bones of my skull. A couple of times a big gust came up, and I wished loudly for eyelashes. But the plus of being sinewy was the sand came in and then just fell out.
As I walked, I was reminded of the last time I was in a desert at night. I had been alone then, too, looking for the wings that were now a collection of burnt sticks on my back. I hadn't found my wings that night in Queen Hatshepsut's tomb, but I had found Mastyx. He had proven to be an ally of sorts. To paraphrase the greasy snake man, I was too interesting to let die.
He'd also found me when I'd accidentally Travelled to the Void. I'd been lying there injured and hurting; he'd kept me company and hadn't tried to kill me. With the Bounty out on me, it was a really nice gesture. Maybe he'd support me joining the Guard?
Lost in thought, I'd walked to the top of the rise without realising it. My head was down when I suddenly noticed that the sand between my foot bones glowed. I looked for the source of the light and found myself face to face with the biggest moon I'd ever seen.
Maybe
it was a trick of the desert, or maybe it was Traveller magic, but that moon hung so full and so close that I felt I could reach out and run my hand over its rocky surface.
"Whoa." I am so eloquent.
Tearing my eyes from the moon, I looked around at the circle Royal had fashioned. 'Circle' was an inferior name for the magical space that lay before me.
When he said Circle, I pictured a line drawn around an area in the sand and maybe a blanket in the middle for me to rest my bones on. This was so much more than that.
The area was ringed in torches, they hadn't been lit but the moon provided more than enough light. Each torch was placed at the points of a compass or the hours on the clock. Once I laid in the centre, we would form some kind of moon dial. In the heart of the circle was a large pool. It was as smooth as glass and shone like an opal in the moonlight. The scene was beautiful and powerful. I could feel it pulling at me.
I slipped out of my robe and let if fall to the sand. The breeze caressed my skin. I took a deep breath and centred myself. I had to be present for this. If I was going to be strong enough to get home, I needed this to work. I called to the power deep in my belly and felt it there like a pilot light waiting for kindling. I said a silent prayer that I wasn't literally the kindling it needed, and then I stepped forward into the circle of torches.
The moment I crossed into the Circle all sound ceased. I hadn't noticed the sounds of the desert as I walked, but now that they were gone, the lack of sound pressed in on my ears.
When I was a human, wow that's a weird thing to say, when I was a human, I had gone through a brief witch phase. White witch of course, but witchy none the less. I really thought I could be Wiccan and practice magic and stuff. But the reality of the work involved with the rituals and things made me abandon the practice. I guess that was a blessing because I don't think Wiccan and Traveller could indeed coexist. But while I was exploring witchcraft I learned a bit about the unusual magical properties of moon water. And now I was going to lay down naked in a giant bath of the stuff while a full moon hung in the sky. If that didn't get the healing going, then I was a lost cause.
I stepped off the sand and into the moon water. It was cool but not cold, the sand beneath it was warm as it moved through my toe bones. It was like standing in the hot sun with an air conditioner pointed straight at you. A pleasant feeling. Some power in the water was pulling me through my memories. Flashes of my human life came racing through my brain. My wing stubs started to twitch, and images of the Void ran behind my eyes. Memories I hadn't yet remembered and maybe never would. Strange. A whole life lived and no memory of it. Maybe that's how a past life feels? I guess technically it was a past life. A life that part of my body had lived without me.
My wing stubs were positively thrumming, and the desert breeze was getting colder by the moment. If I'd had skin, it would have been covered in goose bumps. The moon was growing in size before my very eyes. Soon it would be at its apex. I needed to get in the water.
I walked out to the centre of the pool and looked up at the moon. It looked to be inches from my face, and I reached out to touch it. As my fingers extended towards the orb, they brushed against something cold and grainy. I pulled my hand back, had I just touched the moon? No, that was impossible and yet, I had touched something.
I reached out again, slowly this time, and pressed my palm towards the pale grey of the moon's surface and touched rock. My whole hand was pressed against stone, and the moon itself started to pulse ever so slightly. This time I did not pull my hand away. I brought the other up to meet it and stood naked, a collection of sticks and sinew, with both hands pressed against the surface of the moon. She began to throb, and as she did so, cold moonlight dripped down my arms coating every little sliver of flesh still clinging to my bones. The bones themselves started to vibrate. A small contained vibration that held me tight to the moon and at the same time asked my bones to grow. Don't ask me how she communicated that, but she did. The moon asked my bones to grow.
I took the message to my heart and repeated it like a mantra. My wing stubs heard the call and began to flap slowly against my shoulders. The tiny stubs of bone no longer than a pencil stretched as best they could towards the sky, the moon, the great giving orb that I was so completely plugged into.
The grey energy of the moon had coated my arms and was now moving across my shoulders and chest. My ribcage had been the most damaged by the burning. In the beginning, my lungs and shrivelled heart had been entirely visible. After a few days, they had grown a thin tissue covering that still showed the organs' shadows but made me slightly less vulnerable.
Now the energy of the moon ripped right through those flimsy coverings. Tearing through the slivers of intercostal muscle so fresh blood welled up as a scream ripped from my mouth. I tried to pull my hands from the moon, but she held onto me. The pain was incredible, and my knees buckled, the only thing keeping me upright was the moon's grip on my hands. I hung there as she invaded my body with her power. Her great grey light plunged into the cavity of my chest and surrounded my heart and lungs. My heart, which had only just started beating again, began to beat faster and faster under her tutelage. She held my lungs in her power and pushed them to the very edge of their capabilities. Filling and draining them over and over again with oxygen.
I could do nothing. I was along for the ride, and that knowledge filled me with a degree of calm. As that calm washed through my mind, my body relaxed, and the pain felt less intense. Now finished with my heart and lungs, the moon worked her magic through my torso, moving down through my internal organs. I struggled to my feet. I hurt. I felt like my body was running a marathon as I stood completely still under the light of the moon. But I could handle it; I could ride the waves of pain. Whatever was happening here was healing me. I would not resist it.
The light had now coated my pelvis and was crawling down my thighs, encouraging the tissue, vibrating the bone. It passed over my knees, and I let out a small cry as it swirled around the crispy cartilage and through the joint itself. It moved down my shins where I was only bone, and doubled the vibration, I looked down hoping to see the flesh regrow, but all I could see was the bright light of the moon coating me. I watched as that light travelled down my shins and touched the surface of the water.
Instantly the entire pool became a great glowing mass of grey light. The torches around the circle began one at a time to flare into life, their flames bright grey. The entire area was awash in the moon's power, and I was forcibly reminded of the Void, my land, the place that birthed me. I missed it. I missed the grey undulating ground and the cool dark streams. I missed the trees that swayed without winds. I missed the sky, the vast grey sky that I had spent a lifetime flying through with my brightly coloured wings. I missed it all.
A single tear fell from my eye and dropped unheeded to the pool below. As it struck the surface a swirl of pink, my power, flowed out through the sea of grey. Swirling and multiplying, it began to fill the pool. The light in the torches faded from grey to pink, and as they did so, the moon loosened her grip on my hands. I did not try to hold on, I simply lifted my hands from its great surface and stretched my arms wide. The moon's power caressed me, and soon I found myself falling backwards, most gently, to rest in the pink and grey swirling pool. The last thing I saw as I drifted off to sleep was the moon shrinking in size as she made her way over the horizon.
9
I woke to the fresh pale light of morning. I could see my breath in the air, a misty cloud against the crispness of the sky. I was warm and relaxed but didn't know why. A bird sounded in the distance, and I suddenly remembered where I was. The desert. It had been dark when I'd drifted off to sleep, and now it was morning. Very early morning judging by the touch of pink that flirted with the horizon.
I sat up slowly and as the water streamed from my body, the morning air rushed in to surround my flesh. Flesh. I had flesh.
I held up my hands. They did indeed have meat on them, my fingers could actually
move! I looked down at my legs and feet, they were now corded with muscles. No skin or fascia, just solid red muscles running down my legs and wrapping around my toes. I still looked gross. I resembled a giant piece of red liquorice. I ran my fingers over my stomach; there was flesh now there too. I ran my hands up over my chest, my breasts hadn't returned, but I did have pecs.
I rose from the water and looked around. The torches were black and cold having burned themselves down to just stubs above the sand. Stubs! I had almost forgotten my wing stubs. I looked over my shoulder and saw that where I had once had tiny sticks, I now had large webs of bone. There were bits of tendon and even smaller bits of flesh holding them together. It was fantastic.
Royal had hoped I'd be fully healed by the moon, but I think we both underestimated how badly I had burned and how much skill it would take to work with the moon's power. Last night I'd felt like an overloaded circuit. It had taken all my zen skills to keep from completely falling apart at the sheer weight of her power.
I walked to the edge of the pool, revelling in the fullness of my feet and the ease with which I powered through the sand. Man, it felt good. The breeze was gentle on my new flesh, and the sun was drying me. I picked up my robe from the side of the pool and decided to walk naked for part of the way back, I was still a little damp. Once I got back amongst people, I would need to cover up. I still looked like I'd stepped out of Hellraiser.
I walked over the sandy rise, but I misjudged my newly formed feet and tumbled down into the sand. This was when I realised naked was a bad idea. It didn't really hurt hitting the sand, but when I got up and looked down at myself a fine layer of it covered me from calf to sternum. So now I looked extra-gross. I sighed and made my way back up the hill to the moon pool.
The sun was starting to get hot, and I was starting to feel a bit cooked. So I washed off the sand as quickly as I could and then rushed myself into the robe, damp flesh be damned. As I drew the hood up over my head, it flopped a bit quicker than I anticipated and I had to shut my eyes against the onslaught of cloth. It was at this point I noticed I now had functioning eyelids. Which made me smile. Which then made me realise I had real lips! I ran my fleshy fingers, which still had no fingerprints; you need skin for fingerprints, over my new lips. They were skinny and flat, but they covered my teeth and let me smile. I had to get to a mirror to see how all this was looking. Wrapped up tight against the sun I made my way quickly and carefully back to Royal's house.
Mend the Flesh (The Phoenix Series Book 3) Page 5
