by Kody Boye
From his current perspective—near-asleep and spread out all the way along the bed—Odin could just barely make out the frown that crossed the man’s face.
“Are you sick?” the mage asked.
“Yes,” Odin said, pulling the blankets tightly around him. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. If you’re not well, I can leave, if you’d like, I—”
“No!” Odin cried, coughing when he realized his outburst. “It’s all right, I mean. You can stay.”
Though Daughtry’s eyes narrowed, he nodded and closed the door before moving the empty plate of food off the stool. “When did you get sick?” he asked.
“This morning. I woke up because I was coughing.”
“Bad?”
“Pretty bad.”
“Sit up. Let me feel your chest.”
Odin did as asked. He gripped the blankets and took several long, deep breaths and exhales as the mage tested several different points on his chest with but two extended fingers. He even took the time and notice to place his hand at Odin’s brow to test the warmth there—which, judging by the man’s expression, seemed to be slightly above normal.
“You’ve got a fever,” Daughtry said, glancing down at the blankets. “Are you cold?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not going to tell you to take them off, but I’d suggest getting rid of them. Overheating yourself when you have a fever will only make you sicker.”
Upon Daughtry’s suggestion, Odin cast the blankets aside and to the end of the bed, though regretted it almost instantly, as what felt like thousands upon thousands of bugs began to crawl along the surface of his skin.
What kind of fever makes you feel like this?
“Sir,” Odin said, managing to contain another cough when it arose in his chest. “I can try to do a little magic, if you’d like.”
“Are you up for it?”
“I’ll try.”
“I don’t want you to overexert yourself.”
“It’ll test my limits,” Odin smiled. “Right?”
“I suppose,” Daughtry shrugged.
The professor removed himself from the stool, then crouched down beside it, where he pulled from his usual bag the wine glass so stable within their teaching and retrieved a vial of water from his robe. He watched Odin for a brief moment before uncorking the tube of liquid and dumping its contents into the glass.
“All right,” Daughtry said, raising his head. “If you don’t think you can do it, don’t. I don’t want you hurting yourself.”
“I know, sir.”
With little more than a nod, Odin raised a finger. The tip glowed white.
Whilst concentrating as hard as he could despite the pain in his body, he managed to pull a few individuals strands of water into the air that resembled something like snakes gliding through the air from the highest parts of the trees. From these fragments he formed three orbs—which, upon concentration, he set to revolve before Daughtry’s eyes in a complete circle.
“Did you try to do this,” the mage asked, “or were you trying to get all the water out?”
“Just this,” Odin managed.
Of course, he chose not to let on that his meager attempt at pulling the water from the glass had been somewhat sloppy, as in his current frame of mind he didn’t think he could do direct-displacement whilst being so ill. For that reason, he took his time in allowing the three floating masses of water to rotate before combining them into one larger entity, as doing so made a spark of weightlessness appear at the very center of his vision.
“Very good,” Daughtry said, watching the progress with his eccentric brown eyes.
“What do you want to see?” Odin asked.
“What do I want to see?” the professor frowned.
“Yeah. I want to try to make something.”
“Out of the water?”
Odin nodded.
“All right,” the man shrugged, setting three fingers to his chin. “How about a horse?”
From the mass of water floating before them Odin formed the figure of a horse within his mind—from the legs, to the flank, to the midsection and then finally to its proud, standing head. With extra thought, he willed the stallion into artificial life, feeding movements risen from his mind and into the magic with little more than a passing thought. In response, the stallion reared up and kicked its forelegs at Daughtry. It even managed a little whinny.
“Did you make it make that sound?” Daughtry asked.
“I… guess,” Odin frowned. All he’d had to do to produce the affect was imagine the water replica making a noise. “Was it supposed to do that?”
“If you made it, yes, it was supposed to. I don’t know how it could’ve made the sound though.”
“I just thought about it.”
“Yes. I know.” Daughtry set a hand to his face and watched Odin through the fingers splayed out across his cheekbones. “Did you find it hard to make the creature replicate the noise?”
“No.”
Daughtry nodded. “This is very good,” he said. “Try making something else for me.”
“Like what?”
“Well, anything you want. This is your lesson, after all. I’d like to see something you would like to make.”
What to make, what to make, Odin thought.
Instantaneously, hid mind traveled back to the night he’d fled from his father.
Pouring over the details within his head as if his thoughts were the pot and the air before him the land in which the tea would be dumped upon, he created the Shewolf on the flat of his hand as if he were looking upon her right in this instant. From her proud, elegant figure, her tall, muscled thighs, her hidden but somewhat-ample breasts and the intent stare that lit her face in a light so intimidating that Odin found it hard to even think about it—he filled in each and every tiny detail he could think about and made her prance around in front of the professor, almost as if she were right there at that current point of time and demonstrating just who and what she was.
“A werewolf,” Daughtry said, eyes transfixed on the image before him. “Odin, are you sure you can hold something that long in your condition? I mean—”
A series of coughs escaped Odin’s chest.
Desperate, intent, wracked with pain but somehow able to maintain the image currently set on the hand before him, Odin held the figure in place as he continued to cough until, finally, one long bout of pressure sent blood from his mouth. These small speckles, seen as liquid by his magic, joined with the shewolf and began to swim within her like parasitic worms bent on destroying her from the inside out.
“Release the image,” Daughtry said.
“But sir,” Odin managed.
“Do it.”
Before Odin could fully lose hold on the construct, Daughtry lashed his hand forward, caught the figure within his grasp, then superheated the water and blood until it disappeared into a plume of mit before them.
“Sir—”
“You need to rest now. I’m going to have a healer come up and look at you.”
“But I don’t—”
He wasn’t able to finish. Daughtry had already opened the door and stormed out.
Both Daughtry and Jordan stood to the side as a young healer applied pressure to certain points of Odin’s chest and gestured him to breathe every time he placed his hand flat and splayed his fingers along his upper torso. This man, who couldn’t have been any more than twenty-somewhat years of age, directed Odin to take several slow, deep breaths and directed what felt like a slight tingling sensation throughout his chest, which in turn flickered down his arms and up through his throat until eventually it hit the inside of his head. Here, it seemed, the sensation turned into static, and though he couldn’t necessarily see what was happening, Odin imagined his hair had gone alight with static and was now standing on end.
“You’re very ill,” the healer said, pulling the blanket up and over Odin’s shoulders. “You need to st
ay in bed.”
“But sir—”
“Listen to him, boy,” Jordan said, then in turn set a hand on the healer’s back when he came forward. “Will he be all right?”
“He’ll be fine if he rests,” the man said, narrowing his eyes as if to drive the point home. “What triggered this?”
“He was performing magic,” Daughtry said, “and I—”
Jordan turned his head. Daughtry’s eyes widened with hurt and worry.
“It’s not his fault,” Odin croaked. “I’m the one who pushed myself.”
“You should’ve been more careful,” Jordan said. “Daughtry, can you take this gentleman outside for a moment? I need to talk to Odin.”
Daughtry merely nodded.
The moment the two were out the door, Jordan ran both hands through his short hair and walked to the window, where he looked out its small surface before he began to speak. “I’d like to write to your father,” the weapons master said. “If that’s all right with you.”
“Sir?” Odin managed.
“I can’t be here to take care of you, and the healer or Daughtry can’t be here all day—especially Daughtry.”
“You want my father to come to Ornala to take care of me?” Odin frowned.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but both me and your father have been conversing through letters over the past few months. He’s wanted to come and visit anyway.”
“After all this time?”
“He was afraid of writing you directly. He feels you hate him.”
Hate him? Odin thought. But how… why…
He could never hate the man who had raised him—could never, in the slightest, ever hold that much anger or regret to ever think of his father in anything but a wholesome light. While they’d both had their differences over the past, and while it seemed that things would never really, truly ever be simple between them, he could at least appreciate the man for training him to get as far as he had when he’d ultimately left the group some two years ago.
“He would be here to help you recover,” Jordan said, pulling Odin’s eyes away from the blanket. “It’s better to be watched with an illness like this anyway.”
“What do I have?”
“Blood cough.”
Blood cough?
How could he have caught an illness that ran so rampant through children now, when he was nearly an adult?
“When you felt the magic on your chest,” Jordan continued, “it was the healer looking into your lungs. He says they’re very dry.”
“Why is that?”
“He doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks it has something to do with the weather. He wants to bring a tub of water up here to help moisten the air in the room.”
“All right.”
“You ate breakfast, I assume?
Odin waved his hand to the end of the mattress. Jordan stooped to pick the platter up. “All right,” Jordan said, rising to his full height. “Get some rest. I’ll write your father and have the healer come in with a tub of water. You stay put. You don’t need to overexert yourself again.”
The moment Jordan left the room and the door shut firmly behind him, Odin closed his eyes, pulled a single blanket up and around his body, and tried to go to sleep.
If he truly had what Jordan said, then the next few days to even weeks would not bode well for him.
Days later, after what seemed like an eternity of suffering in bed, the healer kneeled at Odin’s side, running a damp rag over his face, chest and upper arms. Several times, he asked Odin to inhale from the cloth, damp with water and solution. Though he said it would help his breathing, it only served to make him more miserable.
“When will I get better?” Odin asked, setting a hand over his brow.
“Eventually,” the healer, whom Odin had come to know as Barmut, said. “You need to be patient. The body heals at its own pace.”
“Can’t you just use magic on me?”
“If it were a physical wound that I could see, yes—I most likely could. In cases like this, however, it would be like you asking me to lift a metal object you swallowed out of your stomach. How would I know which side of the object wasn’t sharp if I couldn’t see it?”
“But Master Jordan said you were looking at the insides of my lungs.”
“I can’t literally see them though.” The healer paused. “I don’t know how to describe it, but to explain it as simply as possible, it’s like looking at a gem and seeing the tiny flaws in it. You can’t see the very flaw—like you could see how a piece of cheese was cut with a knife at an awkward angle—but you can see the bubbles that were trapped during the gem’s creation. Do you understand?”
“Sort of.”
“Good.” Barmut set a hand on Odin’s shoulder. “Like I said, just get some rest and stay in bed. If you need to go to the bathroom, do so, but go right back to bed.”
Odin nodded before the healer took his leave. He rolled onto his stomach and hoped that the sudden movement wouldn’t start enough coughing fit. The reminder alone of his personal body functions revolted him to no end. Here he was—in a tower, having to use a bucket to relieve himself—when he could just as easily be escorted down to the castle and use the sewer system there.
During his train of thought, the door opened.
At first, Odin thought Barmut had returned for something, but when he raised his head and found that it was Jordan who stepped into the tower, he frowned and pushed himself up with one elbow. “Sir?” he asked. “What’re you doing here?”
Jordan closed the door—quietly, as if he were treading into dangerous waters and ready to watch the witch herself. “Your father is here,” he said.
“Already?”
“I wrote to him days ago. The messengers are quick. You know that they stop for little.”
The lapse of silence that followed forced Odin to realize that, in but a few moments’ time, he would be talking to the very man he had run away from all those years ago.
“Will you stay in here with me?” Odin asked.
“I promised to give the two of you time alone.”
Unable to look at his weapon’s master, Odin bowed his head.
“Don’t worry,” Jordan said, kneeling to meet Odin’s downturned gaze. “Your father wants to see you, and as far as I can tell, he doesn’t plan to yell at you.”
“You think?”
“I do.” Jordan rose. “Just be thankful that your father still cares, Odin. Not many men would if their sons ran off.”
Jordan left the tower before he could say anything else.
All right, Odin thought, waiting for the door to reopen and his father to step in. Here he comes.
Several long moments passed without anything happening. It could have been a blessing, as it gave him ample opportunity to brace himself for whatever was to come, but it could also be seen as a consequence, for it felt for each moment that passed he was being sawed open and forced to lay prone for eagles and other animals to tear his innards out of his body.
“Come on,” he whispered, closing his eyes. “Just get in here and—”
The door opened.
Odin drew a breath.
The moment the door opened, Odin saw the man who could be none other than his father—a man whom, by all respects, appeared the same as he had before, save for several days’ worth of stubble on his face and a few streaks of grey in his hair.
“Son,” the man said, the tone so plain Odin could barely derive any emotion from it.
“Sir,” Odin replied, swallowing a lump in his throat. “Father, I—”
Ectris Karussa took one step forward.
Odin froze. Instinctively, as if grasping for comfort, his fingers curled around the edge of one blanket.
I’m a child, he thought, awaiting a beating.
“By God,” Ectris smiled, falling to his knees beside the mattress. “Look at you. You’re so… you’re so grown up.”
“I’m sorry I ran away,” Odin replied, u
nable to restrain the tears that coursed down his face in the following moments. “I didn’t want to turn around. I wanted to come here.”
“I should never have threatened you like that,” Ectris said, opening his arms. “I hope you still love me even after all this time apart.”
Instead of answering, Odin slid into his father’s arms, where he resumed to bow his head into the curve of the man’s shoulder and cry. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed.
“Don’t be sorry, Odin.”
“I fall asleep crying sometimes because I know how bad it must’ve hurt you to have me run off like that.”
“Yes, it hurt,” Ectris sighed, pushing Odin away from him. “Damn you, boy. Damn you and your brave heart.”
Odin found himself smiling.
Ectris—who, likely, only just realized he had yet to hurt his own son’s emotions—smiled in return. “Your weapon’s master tells me you’re very sick.”
“I’m sorry you had to come all this way, Father.”
“Why are you apologizing? It’s not your fault you’ve got a cough.”