“Phil, I don’t think it’s going to help…maybe Kesil can go back in…” Lesia looks back at an exhausted and drenched Kesil.
“I can try Phil. I can get her.” He tries to convince himself as much as Phil.
Phil opens the Book again and reads the first page his eyes focus on. His eyes dart back and forth, he reads faster than he ever has before.
“She’s running out of time,” Lesia reminds him, as if he needs reminding that his best friend lay at the bottom of a river without oxygen. “Go Kesil.”
Suddenly, Chrissi emerges, the beast close behind. Phil pushes Lesia and Kesil back. A warmth flows through him and for no reason at all, he feels he can save Chrissi. Instead of diving in the river he just sort of leaps in and splashes around for a second, the Book under his arm. As he finds a rhythm, he moves towards Chrissi and the beast. Once he is about two feet away the beast yelps and swims back in a panic away from Phil. Chrissi pauses as she treads water and stares at the beast. It stays floating about ten feet away with wide and fearful eyes, but it definitely isn’t going anywhere soon. It watches them closely.
“That’s right!” Phil hollers. “Step back!”
Chrissi laughs even as pink diluted blood runs down the side of her head and exhaustion threatens, “Thanks Phil. Um, think you can help me?” She lifts up her right hand, pale and gloveless.
Phil’s eyes widen in surprise, then understanding. They swim back to shore and Chrissi climbs out with Lesia’s help, although they struggle as Chrissi is careful not to use her right hand.
“Ugh, Chrissi, come on! Stop being weird!” Lesia grumbles as she tries to grab Chrissi’s bare hand. Eventually they get it and Chrissi sits in the warm green grass beneath an early setting sun. “Come on Warrior Phil.” Lesia reaches her hand out to him. Phil puts the book on the shore and grabs her arm as she begins to lift up. As his foot hits the shore and all but his left leg is out of the water, the beast rushes at Phil, chomping down on his leg, but Phil has enough momentum from Lesia pulling him up that he makes it to shore anyway. The beast and Phil flail on land. Everyone gasps at the full sight of the thing. It is covered in thin pale-grey fur with red eyes and very sharp claws and teeth. Its back is hunched like a bear’s but its head is like a wild dog’s. It tries to pull Phil back into the river. But the heat of the sun seems to weaken it as its fur steams and smokes and its eyes turn a disgusting shade of yellow. It whimpers but won’t give up Phil.
It drags Phil a good two feet towards the river. Phil punches it in the eye but it doesn’t budge. He grabs the Book just a foot away and the beast’s eyes widen and it whimpers again but still doesn’t budge. Phil lifts the Book, ready to bash the animal’s head, but before he comes down with it the beast lunges at Phil’s chest, knocking the Book away.
Lesia catches the Book and opens it, “Help!” she shouts at it, not caring how ridiculous she may look talking to a book. A hunting knife shoots out of the Book. Lesia flings back to avoid the knife. It lands on the ground near the Book and she grabs it staring incredulously and uncertain. Kesil takes action swiftly grabbing the knife from her hand and vaulting at the beast. He stabs it several times in succession and it finally lumbers off back into the water, leaving a thick, black bloody trail.
Chrissi runs to Phil’s side calculatingly, keeping her bare hand away from anything and anyone. Lesia is already kneeling at his side. Kesil turns to see the girls sobbing. Phil’s blood pours out, much more than in the clearing a couple days ago. It runs out in a large circle around his motionless body and pools around Lesia’s knees. She doesn’t even care. She looks up at Kesil, tears streaming down her cheeks. Between great heaving sobs she tells him, “Phil’s dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The meadow is silent aside from the rushing rapids of the river in the Tunnel. There are no blood-curdling screams on this side.
Kesil kneels by Chrissi and hovers over Phil. He leans his ear to Phil’s mouth and hears very shallow breaths.
“He’s breathing, but barely,” Kesil looks at Chrissi wondering what to do next.
Chrissi stares back completely blank. She doesn’t want to be the reason for this journey anymore. She doesn’t want Phil’s life in her hands. She closes her eyes and silently wishes it all away. Maybe it is all just a really bad dream. She opens her eyes, Kesil is still staring at her expectantly.
“OK,” Chrissi says while trying not to look at Phil. “Let’s move him away from the water in case—”
“No.” Kesil blurts. His voice softens as he explains, “We shouldn’t move him, he has a lot of wounds and there is no telling what internal damage is done. If we move him we risk losing more blood and making his wounds worse.”
“Right. Don’t move.” Chrissi feels the familiar sting of tears as Phil’s chest moves slower and slower with every decreasing breath. “So, maybe CPR?” She looks to Kesil for more guidance. He should be their guide, not her.
“I’m not sure…” Kesil stares at Phil which causes Chrissi’s eye to drop to her dear friend’s face. That was a mistake. Hot tears now trail easily down her cheeks.
Phil’s face is pale and lifeless. She holds his hand in her left one, even through her glove she can feel warmth leaving his body.
“Ph-Phil,” Lesia stammers. “You are so smart. You are kind…” she chokes back sobs, but they remain thick in her throat, ready to burst forth any second. “You are gentle and even wise.”
Kesil and Chrissi glance at each other, realizing what Lesia is doing. Back in the clearing when Phil was badly hurt, Lesia saved him with mere words. Perhaps she can do it again.
“Amazing, true and honest, fearless even! We witnessed it today.” Lesia sighs and lets a couple sobs go. “Oh Phil, wake up!” she cries.
Phil’s chest rises as if he is taking a deep breath but instead of the fluid sound of oxygen filling his lungs, there is a terrifying rattling noise like he is struggling. His chest falls and remains still.
“No, no, no, no,” Lesia utters in the same rhythm she said the word refusing to enter the Tunnel a couple hours ago. “Phil! Kind! Generous! Strong! Friend! You’re my friend! Come back Phil!” Chrissi lets her sobs go too. She watches Lesia comb back Phil’s hair with her fingers. She looks to Chrissi with unexpected wisdom, “You can help. This is your journey, you were meant to help.”
“What? What are you talking about Lesia? I can’t do anything!” Chrissi shouts in exasperation. She didn’t ask for a journey. She didn’t want any of this. She would gladly trade keeping her curse to have her best friend back. Phil dead? How could this happen? How could Phil’s adored King Roi let this happen?
“I don’t know how I know Chrissi, but I know you can do this. I just have a…feeling,” Lesia says, glancing back at the Book lying on the ground next to her.
Chrissi stares at the girl she very recently used to loathe and despise, the girl who hated Phil, the girl who made her life miserable back home, the girl who only came on this journey for a guy’s attention, the girl who complains every chance she gets. The girl who has totally changed in a few days’ time. Maybe she knows what she is talking about, or at least what she is feeling. That is more than Chrissi has currently.
Chrissi pushes Kesil and Lesia out of the way and begins CPR, again thankful for her swim lessons as a kid in which she had to learn it. She begins the pattern of chest compressions counting under her breath.
“One, two, three, four…” as she continues keeping time with the compressions her numbers become prayers, “Please, Roi, bring, him, back, to, me. Please, Roi.” She says it over and over again desperate enough to call out to a distant king. She checks Phil’s airway, pinches his nose with her right hand and breathes into his lungs. His chest rises and she leans back, only then realizing what she had done.
Gold light shimmers and falls down from Phil’s nose and around his face.
“NO!” Chrissi screams. She stares at her bare right hand. How could she have forgotten? She never forgets. She is always
so careful. She covers her face with her hands unwilling to witness the blackened decay take over sweet Phil. She shakes her head furiously, angry with herself. She stands up and turns her back to them.
Lesia stares at Phil in wonder, “What’s happening? Phil? Phil? Is he waking up? Is he OK? I knew you could do it Chrissi!” She doesn’t take her eyes off of him.
But Kesil looks at a horrified Chrissi. She turns to glance at Phil, not wanting to see but unable to keep her back to him. He looks at the bare hand she now clutches against her chest. He sees the grief and panic settle in her eyes. “What did you do?” his voice is barely above a whisper.
Chrissi glances at him then back at Phil. Her mouth opens to speak but she can’t find the words. What words are there to say when you have doomed your best friend? Tears overflow her mournful eyes and spill onto her cheeks. Sobs erupt from deep within her chest. Kesil continues to stare, slightly confused but mostly alarmed.
“He’s moving!” Lesia says with bright, red-rimmed eyes. As the glow spreads across Phil’s neck and shoulders his whole body begins to rise. When he is about one foot off the ground the glow becomes so bright everyone shields their eyes. Chrissi peeks again after a few seconds to see her friend floating two feet above her head and glowing like the sun.
“What have I done?” she moans under her breath. Kesil looks at her, concerned as she continues to sob bitterly.
Lesia looks up now too and reaches out for Phil’s hand, “No!” Chrissi warns. “Don’t touch him Lesia! You don’t understand what’s happening!” Chrissi jumps up and runs underneath Phil’s body to push Lesia away with her gloved hand.
Lesia is hardly fazed, “Look!” she points to Phil’s floating body. Chrissi looks to see it slowly coming back down to the ground. She turns her eyes away not wanting to see her best friend’s decaying body. Kesil and Lesia watch with wide apprehensive eyes.
As soon as the glow subsides Lesia rushes to the body, “He’s breathing! And his wounds are healed!”
“What?” Chrissi, now beside Lesia, looks incredulously at her friend who should be a rotting corpse by now. “How? This has never happened.” She stares at her ghostly hands.
“Ew, think about a tan later huh?” says Lesia before turning back to Phil and trying to wake him up. But Chrissi doesn’t hear her.
“What does usually happen?” Kesil stands at a distance directing a look of revulsion at Chrissi. His brow is furrowed and his demeanor dark as the events of his dream prophecy come back to his mind. A yellow glove. A bright yellow glove he holds in his hand now.
“Well…it’s just that…I…please don’t look at me like that—”
“Guys?” Phil struggles to sit up.
“You’re healed!” Lesia hugs him around the neck, almost knocking him back down.
“Healed? Again?” Phil sighs and rolls his eyes. He would be the one to need healing again. “Thanks Les,” he smiles sheepishly at Lesia.
“Actually,” she corrects, “it was Chrissi this time. She gave you CPR and then…well when she touched you, actually you were all golden and yellow and floating. It was weird!”
Phil looks up to see Kesil still glaring at Chrissi, but she is looking from her bare hand to Phil and back again. Phil catches her eye. The secret is out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Chrissi can heal too!” Lesia says so emphatically and confidently it almost breaks Chrissi’s heart to have to tell her the truth.
That is just what she has to do too—tell them all the truth. Kesil’s expression has softened slightly, mostly due to the throbbing pain in his ankle. He used a shirt from their bags to wrap it and stop the bleeding but the pain is hard to ignore. It is obvious he is still on edge about just what the extraordinary event they saw take place really was. He starts to ask a question but isn’t sure how to phrase it. Whatever he just saw has to have something to do with Chrissi’s gloves. One of which she was not wearing when she touched Phil earlier, he recalls remembering the look of sheer terror on her face. As he thinks about it more, Kesil doesn’t remember ever seeing Chrissi’s bare hands; not even in the middle of the night in Madqarah when they had to hide in the bathroom.
“Do you think we can all heal?” Lesia ponders with Phil. They huddle close together, examining Phil’s, now, invisible wounds and hypothesizing.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what is different in each situation,” Phil says.
Chrissi laughs uncomfortably and leans in and whispers to Kesil, “Looks like Phil’s science face is contagious.” Kesil just stares at her for a second and then limps away towards their bags which had, at some point during all the chaos, been tossed all around the clearing.
He throws the glove at Chrissi’s feet.
“We need to get going,” he says, tossing a bag to Phil. Phil barely catches it in his chest and it knocks the breath out of him.
“Kesil!” Lesia chides. “He just recovered from DEATH!”
Kesil pays no mind and heads towards the only trail out of the clearing, into another forested area.
“Guess it is time to go,” Phil shrugs toward the girls.
Chrissi picks up her glove and slips it back on her hand.
They grab their bags and follow Kesil. The path is narrow like before so Kesil leads, Lesia and Phil walk together and Chrissi follows behind everyone, listening to all the hypothesizing and the newfound excitement that has ignited in Lesia to meet the king.
“Do you think healing is our gift?” she asks Phil.
“Well, maybe…or maybe it is something extra on this plane or because of the Book. We can’t be sure just yet,” Phil says.
“Oh I can’t wait. I have so many questions for Roi now! Imagine if these gifts go back home with us!” Lesia bounces in her enthusiasm.
“I don’t know, wouldn’t we have had them before?” Phil wonders, sending a gentle glance back at Chrissi. She knows what he is thinking. She had a curse before. Her healing “gift,” or whatever it was that showed up in that clearing, is a curse at home. What does that mean for the gifts they receive from Roi here? Will they too become curses at home? Will her curse simply go back to normal when they leave this plane? Was it a one-time happenstance? Or has her curse really transformed into a gift? So far this journey has just created more questions for Chrissi.
As Lesia and Phil continue to talk, Chrissi becomes more and more anxious at the thought of telling her new friends the truth. Surely they are close to it now, or at least more curious about her gloves than before. After that fiasco of a show, skin disease is just not going to cut it anymore. At least, not for Lesia or Kesil. She sighs out loud.
“You OK?” Lesia looks back at her.
“Oh, uh yeah. I’m fine,” Chrissi manages a weak smile.
“I would think you would be overjoyed Chrissi! You saved your best friend! Maybe you don’t need to wear the gloves anymore!” Lesia beams.
“I…I don’t know,” Chrissi glances nervously at Phil. He looks back and forth between the girls and then stares upfront at the back of Kesil’s head, at a loss as much as Chrissi. She sighs again and hopes it all just fades away so she can go on as normal. At least until they reach Roi, he can tell her the truth. Deep down, she feels he was the one who gave this curse or gift, whatever it is. This is the reason she is on this journey. Her perceptions do not make sense, but they are strong. King Roi can answer all her questions.
After a couple of hours of walking, they reach another small clearing.
“Time for a rest?” Phil half asks, half tells Kesil.
Kesil shrugs and reluctantly stops in the clearing. He puts his bag down and checks the bushes and trees surrounding them. He hasn’t said a word since they left the clearing. Chrissi worries he suspects much more than Lesia. Her hopes of Kesil and Lesia forgetting her part in saving Phil’s life, drift away little by little with every severe glance from Kesil. There is a small part of her, a fearful part, that wants to keep things just like they have been because it has worked out so fa
r. Then, there is a great part of her, the part of her that has been bearing this secret for 16 years, that wants to let it all out.
As everyone sits down they begin digging in their bags for food before remembering they ran out nearly two days ago. Lesia’s stomach attests audibly.
“Pass the Book around,” Phil suggests.
Lesia takes it first and reads a few pages. When her cheeks become rosy once more and her stomach settles, satisfied, she passes it to Phil. The Book gets to Kesil last and instead of reading it he just sets it down beside him.
“Kesil!” Lesia says in shock. “You have to read! We don’t have food and this, well it is actually better than food. It will fill you up perfectly. You need to read it.”
Kesil stares at Lesia so long she fidgets uncomfortably and even begins to scoot away from him. Phil, sitting between them, waves his hand in front of Kesil’s face.
“Dude, you’re freaking us out, what’s up?”
Kesil turns his intense gaze to Chrissi, “Let’s ask her.” He points across at Chrissi, who stands on the other side of Lesia, keeping a good distance from him.
She gasps. He knows.
“What…what do you mean?” Phil feigns ignorance.
“I mean, why do you really wear those gloves Chrissi?” Kesil begins to interrogate. He doesn’t mean to be cruel but also feels Chrissi has been hiding something that should have been shared with the rest of the group. Flashes of the yellow gloves in his prophecy dream float to his mind. What if this is it? What if this, if Chrissi, is a secret weapon Roi has been keeping for just the right moment to overtake Tok? This curious girl could be his uncle’s demise.
“I…because…” Chrissi stammers but cannot bring herself to finish.
“Because she has a skin disease,” Phil finishes. “And it is really rude to make her talk about something so personal if she doesn’t want to.” Chrissi sends a quick thankful smile to her confidant.
The Reconciling [Part 1] Page 16