The boy was still, and the nurses oversaw the warning calls of the electronic monitors, so he was in good hands, but Aamira was hurting all over, so many pains to note at once, so much to catalog and hold separate from herself. While she could take into herself the damage and illness from another’s body, she could not absorb analgesics; the pains associated with the bodily damage would soon be felt in full force. Disorganized feelings flitted across her psyche, her last thought from the boy being his worry of what happened to his older brother and little sister, bringing both the boy and Aamira deep emotional pain.
She looked from the boy to his mother, wondering how any woman could weather this storm; this was true strength. This mother has endured enough. One child is dead and this one close to it. She will not lose another child while I have strength to help. Aamira had the good sense to get out of the way and let her nurses do the job for which they were well trained, excusing herself to the mother. She walked stiffly from the room, hoping no one noticed how carefully she walked, or at least that they contributed it to her very long and tiring day.
It was the stairs for her now, up and up on stiff limbs being careful not to jostle her body in this precarious state. In minutes, she knew, her body would take on the ‘otherness’ of the foreign energies she had absorbed. Her body would start turning them into her own injuries of weakened bones and ready-to-burst organs. The headache at the base of her skull would soon cause her to pass out and tumble down the stairs.
She had long ago ascertained where the cameras were on every floor, and how to circumvent the security features of many obscure places within the hospital, as she occasionally needed to expel the blighted energies and pain she absorbed with more of a burst than a trickle.
Jimmying the door handle, she opened the last door to the roof and stepped onto the gravel and into the darkness of a humid, airless night. A full moon peeked from behind the clouds and it looked like rain. Careful, careful, don’t go beyond the air conditioner intakes, there’s a window on the building next door, can’t be seen. Sometimes she accepted too much of that damaged energy and she couldn’t dispel it slowly through the sewer pipes but needed to discharge it quickly. Like now.
A sudden wind came up and chilled the night air into cold mist, the minimal lights of other buildings and the few stars above growing dim. Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach and she felt the dismaying fright of not being alone, of being in the presence of something… otherworldly. She knew this would happen again, one day. Now seemed likely, with the condition of her newest patient; she suspected the visitor to her rooftop was drawn to the darkest auras, and the boy was certainly slipping into the blackest of states. Aamira had seen this being twice before, years ago, and the last time had been… difficult.
Drawing herself to her full, if diminutive, height, she put her expressive hands to her hips and looked around expectantly.
“All right, I know you’re there. I can feel your presence.”
A security light outside a neighboring building grew obscure and vanished. Before her, near the roof’s guarded edge, coalesced a being, tall and thin, a long black robe obscuring his features and many layers of mist hiding his face. Aamira felt a thrill of fear burn through her and she shivered, despite herself. This thing was not human.
“So, we meet again,” she offered.
“This one is mine,” he said without preamble.
“Don’t you ever say anything else?” She was tired, filled with pain, and needed to release this polluted energy very soon. She was also too protective of her patient to properly address this being, sempiternal powerful entity or not.
He was turned toward her, his outline seemingly made of colorless mists while his center was solid black and impossibly, endlessly deep. He said nothing, as if he simply did not register her words. Or was ignoring them.
She tried again, praying she was strong enough for the encounter. “I know you. You are ferryman. Envoy. Angel of death.”
“Healer. That is your name. I know you as well.”
Her breath caught. She hadn’t expected this response, hadn’t thought he might offer such a personal exchange. Actually, she hadn’t known what to expect at all. “Are there others like me?” Her voice sounded childlike and wistful, even to her.
He paused at this question, his head tilted as if considering; knowing he was looking directly at her was alarming, a snake with its prey. Perhaps, being an ageless being, he was unattuned to thinking in linear terms. “Once.”
There were no classes built around what Aamira could do, nor were there instruction manuals. She had had to figure out her gifts alone amidst much trial and error, much suffering and frustration. She could have died before she had discovered what she was, how to handle it. When her maternal grandmother immigrated from Egypt to the upper reaches of New York to live with the family, she found a kindred spirit; grandmama knew the tales of such things as healing magic, and ancient legends of impossibly powerful creatures.
“Are there any now? Can you help me find them?”
Thinking of her grandmother reminded her to touch the talisman of schorl she wore at her neck; a chunk of black tourmaline used in ancient times as a psychic shield to protect against negative energies… and entities. Or so said grandmama. Right now, Aamira would take all the help she could get. She began to call silently to the heavens, pulling down and surrounding herself with that pure and brilliant light that seemed to have protected her the last time she challenged him.
“Unknown.”
“Well, you can’t have the boy. He’s mine now. You should go away. I’ll see to his care.”
“He cannot live.”
“You think you scare me, but you don’t,” she lectured, fiercely protective. “Well, not much anyway. I’ve fought tooth and nail, studied my butt off, worked long and hard, to learn my job. And my job is saving lives. Your job is, what? Extracting people from their bodies? Taking them… where do you take them, anyway? What god do you subscribe to?” She knew it was too much to ask, but any hint he offered might help if this encounter went sour.
“I do not choose the path. He must die. Do not interfere.” She could hear from the impatient tone of his voice that she was on dangerous ground.
“I can’t allow that, not if I can help him.”
“Insufficient. Your way is suffering. Do not oppose the natural order of the universe.” Mists swirled around him when he moved, as if he wasn’t entirely in this dimension.
“You are a broken record, and I can help him. Give me that chance.”
“My time is brief; it must be now. I shall proceed.”
Alright, we do this the hard way. Again, she touched the schorl at her neck, and spoke as her grandmama had counseled, giving him a name. Names had power, and even if she did not have his true name according to the Law of Names, if she could label him, she might repel him.
“I name you Wraith! Intruder! Unwanted! Abuser of power! You have no value here!” This was a chancy thing to do but Aamira had always been strong, and she wasn’t going to back down now, with a child’s life at stake.
“Mother Isis, hear me! Constrain your minion. Anubis, take back your menial. Thoth, command your servant to withdraw. Nemty, refuse your ferryman.” She called on gods ancient and modern, hoping to find the right one, the one who would listen, the one who might recognize him. As Aamira beseeched the heavens, his stance changed. Whether he was disturbed by her actions or simply annoyed, there was no way to tell.
“Babalu-aye, recall your servant from this place. Charon, return your seeker. Azrael, withdraw thy angel of death. Kauket, hold back the darkness. Hades, bid this one not enter. Thanatos! Keres! Refuse this psychopomp. Atropos, stay thy blade.”
Yes, there was some sort of reaction from him, she could feel an unnatural darkness closing in around her as he focused on her. Taking a deep breath, and taking her life in her hands, she continued. “Ptah, withdraw not the breath of life! Kali-Ma, remove this purveyor of death from my sight.
Azrail, take not this soul from us. Sekhmet, prevent this suffering.” He never showed his face, making it hard to assess his reaction to her pleas. Until react, he did.
“I shall remove you.” Raising his arms to the night sky, he also raised his power. The night turned even darker, blotting out all sources of light, the wind around him rising and his robes swirling and extending their enveloping mists. In that moment, he seemed a black hole in the universe, drawing everything toward him while the world struggled helplessly to escape. The movement of wind carried his scent to her, something she had avoided in the open air. Now she sensed his anger burning through her and was overwhelmed by the stale scent of death tainted further by the stink of incense, the unforgettable smell of funeral parlors. He reached toward her, and she expected he meant her death.
In desperation and fear, and in her determination to protect the living, Aamira did something she had never done before. She collected all of the pain and injury wracking her body into an unshaped mass of energy in her hands. The blighted colors, coated with the lacy golden light she had been calling down from the living universe, became her weapon; the energy of life against the entity of death. She raised her arms in self-protection and raised her voice above the unnatural wind, beseeching the unseen.
“Heka, protect my gift of healing. Gods of all time, hear your vassal. I am attendant, not slave! Withdraw this Wraith from the land of the living; bid him depart!” With those words, she flung the energy at the Wraith, releasing it with the intent to do harm.
In an instant his arm curled and he batted the energy away with an unearthly growl. The energy she had released sought the next likely target and was pulled into a lightning rod mounted at the corner of the building. A deafening crack assailed Aamira’s ears, a combination of the creature’s angry howl mixed with the collision of energy as the lightning rod dispelled the threat harmlessly to the ground.
Aamira, weakened from violently discarding the pain she had held within herself for too long, slumped against the wall behind her. Momentarily blinded by the impact of energy, she almost missed the Wraith’s reaction as well; he held up a skeletal hand, glowing with the impact of pure golden light as if he had never before experienced pain. He’s still here. I’m about to die.
“You think me of no value? Without purpose in the mortal world? Keep the boy, Bearer of Torment. I am done.” With a flourish of his arms, the entity was gone. His sudden disappearance created a vacuum that sucked everything, including her, toward it.
In the deafening silence that followed, his words echoed painfully. He didn’t call me “bearer of pain,” which, technically I am, since I hold in negative energy; he said “bearer of torment.” Have I crossed a line? Aamira sighed. Not sure what I’ve accomplished here, other than ticking off a very powerful entity who has the power to remove souls from living bodies, but it gives me more time with the boy. I might live to regret this. Or I might not. Tired from all she had done that day, she knew she was still in for a very long night.
What she wanted was a nap, but that wasn’t to be. The mother had been coaxed to put her feet up nearby, given a place to rest while waiting for whatever was to come; the nurses promised to call her when her son woke up, or if there was a change in his condition, which was a gentle way of saying “if he took a turn for the worse”.
His head was covered in a simple bandage with a thin tube leading to what looked like a thermometer that measured drainage of brain fluid. In Aamira’s mind, such a thing should never happen to a child. She knew relieving the pressure on the brain was necessary for survival, but it bothered her every time she saw the procedure. This practice has been around for centuries; archaeologists have uncovered gladiators’ skulls with holes drilled into them. We're just sterile about it now.
She looked over the pumps and monitors and saw no change in his condition. Keeping this child alive will take a miracle, or at least magic. But I’ve got that part covered, so let’s get back to work. Settling herself beside him again, she took his hand and relaxed into a deep, sighing breath, focusing on his face and remembering the fierce love she felt for all her patients.
Her eyes cleared in that peculiar way that gave her a different type of vision and could see his aura, still muddy browns and even darker colors but not so much of the bright fireworks shouting of injuries. What she had inadvertently absorbed had helped in the process of knitting him together again, but there was so far to go. She began melding with him, drawing white light around them both, inviting him to allow their joining and then pulling more of his trauma into herself.
She noted his brain area was not responding to her silent ministrations. That was worrying. With such severe injuries, you assess the case from the moment a patient arrives. When head trauma was involved, that was handled first along with breathing and profuse bleeding, then the next most serious traumas, which was Aamira’s domain. After the patient stabilized there would be time to address the non-life-threatening injuries.
And she was going to make sure he survived. This mother has suffered enough with one child dead and the other two hospitalized. I can’t allow this Envoy of Death –now named Wraith– to separate the family any further.
Aamira offered him her strength, her energy, her health, but his soul, his self, was harder to find this time. She was dismayed to find him growing weaker, even while she stepped up the loving energy she was providing. He was fading. It didn’t register on any machines yet, but she knew there was a difference. She attempted to connect on an even deeper level, as she had done before when he had called out to his mother in his mind, but he wasn’t there. Not within his body, at least.
She looked up when she noticed movement across from the bed and saw a boy, a young teen. It took a moment to clear her vision and understand he wasn’t really there. Well, he was there, but he had no body.
“You’re his brother, aren’t you?” she whispered, pretending to talk to her patient. Communing this way included a few oddities even more strange than healing. When she was working with someone so close to death, she could see things on a different level. In this instance, she knew this boy was dead, and she was viewing his newborn spirit. She had twice seen the spirit of a young friend who had died years ago and was not particularly startled at seeing this new one.
The newcomer looked at the boy in the bed and was clearly disturbed by the sight. “He’s all wired up. Why?”
“These machines are supporting him, giving him time to heal. He’s unconscious now, but he may wake up soon. Are you here to talk to him?”
“I can talk to him now. He’s my brother, after all; he’ll talk to me.”
“I don’t know, he’s deeply asleep. He might not hear you. You can try.”
The boy leaned close to the bed. “Jimmy? Jimmy, it’s me, Thomas. Come and talk to me, Jimmy.”
The boy in the bed moved. Just his lips, but he moved. Thomas was right, the boy had heard his brother’s call.
The monitor bleeped, showing a sudden spike in heart rate. A nurse checked her patient’s vitals, and in doing so came too close, which disrupted the delicate newly born spirit’s energy and caused him to disappear. She left, none the wiser.
Aamira waited, continuing to feed health toward the injured child, but it was a very sticky transference now, more like melted butter that had gone cold again; she was depleting her own core strength. This couldn’t go on for much longer. Aamira needed rest in order to rebuild her own stamina, then she could share more of herself. The boy, Thomas, returned.
“What are you doing to my brother? I can hardly hear him.”
“I’m helping him, giving him my strength to get him better.”
“Can he play baseball again? He’s catcher for his team, and they’re playing in the championships soon.”
“No. He’s very ill. He won’t be able to play for his team. He might never be able to do that again, but he can still go home. To your mother. Your sister.” In her thoughts, Aamira had to be honest with herself as well as
the brother. I can make him live, but he’ll never be whole. That’s a hard thing to admit, but at least he’ll be alive and with his family. His mother needs that.
“He’d hate that. Don’t do that to him, please. He’s so good at running and baseball, he’d hate it if he couldn’t do that anymore.”
“No, he might not play baseball anymore, but he’d be alive. He’d grow up and live his life. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“That’s not Jimmy. Ask him. Ask him what he wants. He’ll tell you. Jimmy! Tell her what you want! Jimmy!”
Some ethereal wisp raised from the bed and took form; Jimmy coalesced and stood beside his brother, confused. She had heard of this before; he was astral projecting his spirit, his true self, outside his broken body, drawn by his brother’s call. “Thomas! You’re okay! I was worried, I saw the car hit you first. I was sure…” Jimmy turned toward the bed, noticing himself for the first time. “Is that me?”
Aamira spoke up to answer his question. “You’ve been hurt, Jimmy. You’re in the hospital. Your mom is sleeping over there, do you see her? We’re waiting for you to wake up now. Can you do that?”
“How do I get back in?” Jimmy reached out to touch his body and his hand went right through.
Thomas spoke first. “Jimmy, the lady says you’re too hurt to play baseball anymore. Maybe never.”
Aamira interrupted, before Thomas could persuade him further. “Jimmy, maybe you can’t play baseball again, but you’d be alive, with your mother, with your sister. You could grow up, have friends, do the things you want to do.”
Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4) Page 199