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“Watch out. It looks like a killer,” Ryson whispered into her ear, alerting her as to how close he was. She squirmed out of his touch, leaping forward like he’d shocked her.
The girl became a quick escape from her embarrassment.
“What is your name?” Clea asked as she leaned toward her. The girl’s pointed ears and fingertips marked her as a Kalex. They were common mutations. The less fortunate could be born with a wing, hooves, or any assortment of deformity.
The girl spoke back in Kaletik, and the word Clea always recognized was the wordillness.
Clea felt another tug on her sleeve. Surprised, she turned to see an older boy accompanied by two others farther behind him.
Another voice distracted Clea, calling from afar. She turned and spotted a woman rushing toward her, and then another. Inminutes, she had gathered a throng of Kalex, all requesting that she heal wounds and sickness. Clea noticed that the crowd was nudging Ryson away. He started to step back from the frenzy, and pleadingly, she reached out and grabbed his hand.
He flinched, as if it hurt. Clea was surprised by her own impulse to reach for him, but also by the subtle jolt in his reaction.
Clea pulled him toward her through the people, but lost his gaze as more Kalex tugged on her sleeves. “Stay,” she said more softly than she’d meant to. Then she knelt among the people and released his hand. “I might need your help,” she added, almost too forcefully to counteract her previous softness.
She received a toddler from a persistent mother, and inspected his bandaged arm. The toddler wailed, and Clea stroked his hair and whispered a few words of comfort as her other hand radiated light over the injury. He stopped crying as she healed his ailment. Clea searched for the mother as others grabbed for her attention. Kalex tugged at her clothes; patients gathered in the masses. Though she scanned the crowd frantically, she failed to find the child’s mother in the crowd. In a rush, she thrust the boy into Ryson’s hands. “Hold him!” Clea said before kneeling.
“I don’t like children,” he said.
“You’ll be fine, Ryson,” Clea replied, healing the broken leg of an adolescent girl as other Kalex carried their sick to her feet.
“What am I supposed to do with it?” he asked.
Clea turned around to see him holding the toddler upside down by the leg.The child’s lips formed an ugly frown, right before he choked into another fit of crying.
“Ryson!” She tried to stand, but another patient grabbed her sleeve again. “Don’t hold him like that! Hold him close to your chest, with both arms!”
Ryson thrust his arm out farther, like he was disgusted by the idea, and Clea saw the mother appear from the crowd and grab her child. Shouting in a foreign language, she proceeded to beat Ryson with her free hand. He withdrew, dodging her fist as she yelled at him.
He stumbled over a child behind him in an attempt to escape. The mother marched off angrily with her toddler. Ryson scrambled to his feet. Clea’s muffled laugh escaped in a brief snort. She pursed her lips to hide her smile as his eyes locked onto her in sheer spite.
“Never mind the children, you can help me with something else,” she said, still fighting her grin. Clearly unconvinced, Ryson kept his distance.
“I promise you won’t hate it.” Clea beckoned him to kneel beside her, and as he did so, she offered him the leg of a patient who now lay on the ground. The leg had a fresh wound. “Hold the bottom of his calf like this.” She guided his hands to where hers had once been. She then placed her hand upon the bloodied gash on the person’s shin.
The older man cried out, but settled down as she healed him. Clea felt the warmth under her palm, felt the flesh and the skin stitch back together as her ansra burned away any infection. Feeling the flesh and blood shift under her palm was areminder that despite the beauty of it in theory, healing wasn’t for the faint of heart. It involved a deep confrontation with ugliness and violence.
Her eyes flickered to Ryson at the thought. He was watching the process with a composed but focused interest, and she wondered if he’d seen healings performed before.
“It’s fine now; you can let go,” Clea said, using the snow to wash the blood from her hands.
Ryson released the patient’s leg, and they watched as he stood and danced jubilantly. He ran off as Clea healed another patient that came to her. They approached with all sorts of wounds and illnesses, the young and the old. Finally, before Clea could move on to the next patient, Ryson pulled her off her knees.
The remaining crowd dispersed at Ryson’s intervention, as if they possessed as much of a natural aversion to him as they were drawn to her. His interruption left a single Kalex woman who waited beyond the rest with her hands folded in front of her.
“You need to rest,” Ryson said. “They’re going to take you in for the night. There is a human here. That woman will take you to the human so that you can sleep. I’m going to stay in the woods tonight.”
Clea looked over at the woman with a curious and lingering gaze and then turned back to Ryson, but he was gone. She watched the place where he’d been standing before the woman circled around her and beckoned for her to follow.
One night out of the woods.
Clea was less than disappointed.
She’d hardly noticed her own exhaustion until now. It felt so energizing to heal, to be around people and see laughter, relief and joy. Physical exhaustion was a burden, but she hadn’t realized how long she’d been aching to freely give herself to the world, to dissolve into it completely, to feed their joy.
These people had needs, but they didn’t look at her with the wild hunger of the Virdain mobs, or crave her like the forest beasts. They didn’t reach to tear clothes or hair or skin. She didn’t feel like a target anymore and somehow, she felt like she’d give these people all those things if they asked. She’d share her soul, her mind, her heart, her body, and somehow be more whole in surrendering it all.
She noticed for the first time how her greatest fear of being devoured and her greatest desire entangled each other. In both her most hellish nightmare and her most divine fantasy, she dissolved completely into the world.
