Page 73 of Spelunking Through Hell

“Sure,” I said.

Helen smiled back, with obvious relief. “I’ll get Phoebe,” she said and rose, leaving the full bowl of broth behind as she walked to the door. I stayed where I was. It wasn’t like I had any real choice in the matter.

Two sets of hoofbeats sounded a few minutes later, and then Phoebe was there, kneeling next to me and taking my hand. “Helen tells me you’ve agreed,” she said. “Is this true?”

“...yes,” I managed.

“Then close your eyes and trust me.”

I closed my eyes. I trusted her.

Thomas’ magic was the magic of Earth, no matter what dimension he was in, and it always felt a little bit like fire, even when it was being used kindly. I didn’t have any magic of my own; mine was all borrowed, and all implanted in me on Empusa, where it felt like sandpaper on my skin. Not unpleasant, but absolutely abrasive. Phoebe’s magic was Ithacan. It felt like a warm wind blowing off the ocean, full of stinging salt but also gentle heat, cleansing and wiping the world away.

She rubbed some sort of oil on my wrists and temples, humming under her breath. I relaxed as the pain in my chest smoothed and faded, the bones knitting back together. The ache remained, damaged lungs not popping back until she moved on to the soft tissues of my organs, and I actuallyfeltthe moment when my heartbeat evened out, a hitch I had barely been aware of smoothing away to be replaced by a normal rhythm.

By the time Phoebe took her hands away, I didn’t hurt at all. “You can open your eyes now,” she said, and I did, blinking up at her. She smiled, offering me her hand. “Let me help you up.”

I took her hand. It was easy. I just thought about it, and I did it, and the fact that it felt remarkable to me was new, and different, and I hoped it wouldn’t stay remarkable for long. She pulled me to my feet as she rose, and I stood without difficulty.

My knees complained a little, which was odd, but not odd enough to make me stop or sit back down. When we were done, we were both on our feet, and when Phoebe let go of me, I didn’t fall down. Instead, I looked down at myself, noting that everything seemed to be intact; I was even still wearing the clothes I’d been in when we started the ritual. I ran my hands along the length of my body, then held my arms out in front of me, testing for tremors. They didn’t even shake.

“You’re a miracle worker,” I said.

“I am touched by Perse, as you are beloved of Tyche, and like the love of any god, my blessings have their limits,” she said, in a tone which implied correction. “Miracles are for the gods. I cannot fully restore what has been taken, but I can do as much as my gifts allow.”

That was ominous. I blinked but decided not to push. Thomas was going to tell me all about it, I was sure, probably while apologizing for letting me suffer the consequences of my own actions. “I still appreciate it,” I said. “Helen told me your conditions, and they’re fine by me. I don’t think Thomas would have let me go back to Naga even if you’d been okay with the idea, and I want to spend some time with my family. I feel like I don’t know them as well as I want to. And Thomas doesn’t know them at all, right now.”

“That sounds good,” said Phoebe. “You need to rest.”

“Yeah, we do.”

“You may not be able to receive magical healing again.”

That was new. I blinked. “Oh?” But then, before I’d started gallivanting around dimensions like it was my job, I’d never had access to magical healing. It isn’t much of a thing on Earth, unless you could hook up with a Caladrius, which is a big part of the reason there aren’tmany of them left. After I’d been bitten by the Bidi-taurabo-haza, I’d been in physical therapy for more than a year, and I hadn’t walked without a limp for almost five. Losing something I hadn’t been expecting to keep wasn’t much of a blow, although Phoebe looked at me like it was.

Then again, Ithaca didn’t have indoor plumbing, and if someone had tried to tell me I could never have a shower again, I wouldn’t have taken it very well. We get used to the things we think of as normal.

“Your system can only handle so much,” she said. “I would discharge those spells without spending them, if I were you.”

“Can I evendothat?”

“Yes. It’s a matter of intent,” she said. “Did Naga never tell you?”

“I get the feeling Naga never told me a lot of things, or if he did, I forgot them as soon as it was convenient for him that I not know those things,” I said grimly. “You’ll have to tell me how to do it, but I’m willing. I’ll release them as soon as we get home—just in case something goes wrong in the interim.”

She nodded. “That seems fair. You should go. Your Penelope is waiting, and angry to be kept so long in abeyance.”

I paused. “Why do you keep calling him that? His name is Thomas.”

“Because he waited on his island for fifty years for you to come and find him, and kept his faith for all that time,” she said. “And you, his Odysseus, traveled through stormy seas, disasters, and the wrath of the gods themselves to find your way back to him. He was the king of Ithaca, you know.”

“What?” I blinked at her, not following.

“Odysseus, the first one. He was the king of Ithaca, and his story was so beloved that our sages carried it to all the nearby worlds, including your own. His name has been retired since his death, but we use it still, for the faithful, and the lucky, and the foolish.” She smiled at me. “You’ve earned it. Now go.”

“Okay,” I said, still not quite sure what she was talking about, but not really in the mood to argue, since it sounded like she was saying the Odyssey had actuallyhappenedin the dimension next door to our own, and that was more than I felt equipped to deal with right now. Besides, I was standing up, and that alone felt amazing. I walked toward the mouth of the tent, pushed it open, and stepped out into the daylight.

We were still on Cornale; that was obvious from the dry, cracked land around us, which looked like a verdant paradise after the dimension with no name. This world wasn’t dead yet, and maybe now itwasn’t going to be, since we’d managed to excise the parasitic influence of the dead world from its pneuma. This was all very confusing and made me feel more like a cell in the body of something much, much larger than I liked. I wanted to go home where I could be to scale with the problems around me, and they might be big and terrible, but they’d be comprehensible.

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