Leaf and Branch (New Druids Series Vol 1 & 2)

by Donald D. Allan

  The Reeve waited a moment and then quietly told me to lift back the blanket and have a look. I glanced to him and he held my nervous gaze. The eyes that looked back at me seemed to plead. Whatever doubt I felt about my abilities, it seemed the Reeve did not share them. I saw a glimmer of hope behind those eyes and it humbled me on the spot. I broke my eyes from that stare and lifted a hand to pull back the blanket. I looked over at the woman's face and was startled to find her staring right back at me with recessed eyes surrounded by black circles, radiating fear and sickness. The whites of her eyes were yellowed, and the lids were crusted all round. Dried dark-green snot clung thickly to her nostrils and her lips were pasty white and cracked, bleeding and swollen. The top of the blanket, pulled up to her neck, was sprayed with dark green phlegm and bright flecks of blood. She stared back at me and did not seem to blink. She just stared and stared and I felt frozen in place by the anguish and fear I saw there. Whatever certainty I had left washed out of me and I believed she must have sensed this, for she startled me by touching my foot nearest her with her hand.

  "P–p–please..." she said so softly that I could barely make out the word and for a moment I thought I saw hope spark in her eyes.

  "Right," I said with an uncontrolled squeak. Red–faced and embarrassed, I cleared my throat and repeated myself. "Right, I'll just have a quick look. Is that alright?" I waited and after an almost imperceptible nod from her, I gently pulled back the blanket.

  I am not sure what startled me the most. It was either her nakedness – I had never seen a woman undressed before – or it was the emaciation of her body. She was wasted away. Black and blue circular blotches surrounded by white, flaking, dead skin marred her skin. She looked like she had been severely beaten. Her ribs stood out like the bars of a cage and I thought back to the starved girl I had seen by the porch and thought now that the girl had looked fat compared to this poor woman. Her stomach appeared to be sucked in tight against her spine. This woman should be dead, I thought. No one could starve this much and not be dead. I had no idea how she clung to life. What skin she had – that was not covered in pustules – was yellow and looked like leather left out too long in the sun. I had no idea what I could do to help her. I almost turned away at that moment but an urge to do something rose up inside me and almost took my breath away with its intense ferocity. I felt the Reeve staring at me and when I looked briefly at him, his eyes pleaded.

  The desire to help was so strong and yet I felt so helpless and tears stung my eyes in frustration. Then I remembered the coin and fumbling, I reached up to grasp my leather pouch through my tunic. The coin called out and I knew I needed to hold it but I couldn't do that with the Reeve present. Inspiration struck, and I glanced at the boy and then asked the Reeve if he could remove the child for a moment. The boy should not be in here in any case, I thought to myself, and so the request was not unreasonable. The Reeve looked quizzically at me, grasping my tunic, and then nodded and lifted the boy up in his arms and carried him outside.

  Alone with the woman, I saw that she had now fallen asleep or passed out - I didn't know which - but I was relieved that she would not witness what I was about to do. Her breathing was shallow, rasping and strained as she struggled for each breath. I quickly pulled the pouch out of my tunic and emptied the coin into my hand. My fingers shook with the need to hurry, and quickly I placed my thumb on the worn spot and rubbed it and immediately I shifted and the woman changed before my eyes.

  She was surrounded by a sickly yellow–green colour that swirled and pulsed around her. Like before with the walls in Daukyns' room, the coin was making her flesh ghostly like fog and I could look inside her. It was repulsive and impressive all at the same time and part of me wondered in awe at all the moving parts of the human body. I was observing the beauty of life and I felt the need to understand how each part worked together. Her heart was pumping and her blood moved through her veins. I followed those veins to her lungs and saw that both of them were full of a thick, dark fluid that stuck to the insides and robbed her of breath. I did not understand how she could breathe at all with what remained of her lungs. I intensified my gaze and noticed tiny flashes of yellow light and my eyes focused on a tiny particle that came floating out of her opened mouth when she exhaled. As I watched, it drifted lazily in the air and disappeared out of my sight. The mote was so small – smaller than a particle of dust, its light the only thing that alerted me to its presence. Intuitively, I shifted my gaze and saw, with horror, the very dust in the air light up with these same motes. They filled the shack, and I saw that I had been breathing them into myself from the moment I had entered. A wave of nausea struck me and I had to fight back a sudden urge to vomit. Terror struck me as a cry escaped my mouth and I fought the desire to run from this shack and never stop. I heard the Reeve outside call in with a question of some kind, alarmed probably by my cry, but I bade him remain outside and thankfully he did.

  With effort, I forced myself to remain where I was and leaned forward to look closer at the woman and felt my vision draw closer and closer to her without me moving. What were these things? What harm were they doing? I had to know. She grew in my eyes until suddenly I was within her. I had to be – I was surrounded by her flesh but knew I was not physically there. I could feel myself still kneeling beside her but my vision, what my eyes saw– that was inside this poor woman. I was stunned.

  My gaze had pierced her skin, and I rushed into her lungs and I now found myself moving and drawn to one of the tiny motes trapped in her lungs. My thoughts seemed to guide what I saw, and I moved closer and closer to the mote until it filled my vision. I knew right away that this was no mote of dust. It was alive and pulsed. Tiny hairs all around it swam and propelled it through her. I watched in increasing horror as this monstrous thing suddenly gripped another object inside this poor woman and attacked it. The hairs pulled the object in tight against it and I watched, repulsed, as it transferred part of itself into it. This part immediately started devouring the object from the inside. I knew, with sudden clarity, that this small portion of the woman was dying right in front of me. These motes were, one–by–one, attacking this woman from the inside and destroying her. They had laid siege to her body, and they were winning.

  Trembling now, I pulled my vision back a little and watched more motes swim toward more parts of this poor woman and knew they wouldn't stop until she was completely dead. Hundreds and thousands of the motes, more than I could count, were invading this woman. They darted about and drove toward the healthier parts of her with such malevolent intent. The motes were a natural part of this world, I somehow knew, but they served no purpose. They invaded and killed, spread and destroyed, leaving a path of destruction behind them. They gave nothing back to the world. They took and took. At these thoughts I felt the presence again and knew that I had just discovered something important, something the presence wanted me to see. A moan from the woman broke this thought, and I turned my attention back to her illness.

  I had no idea how to fight these invaders No army could hope to conquer something this small. I felt powerless and rage began to grow and simmer in me. I quickly ran through the healing my unguents and herbs could provide and knew that what little lore I possessed could do nothing to stop this invasion. A loud ringing noise started in my ears, startling me, and with it an urge rose quickly up within me, fuelling my mounting anger. A desire to heal this woman was now so strong that it was almost overwhelming me. I felt like a man drowning, looking upwards at the surface of the water and knowing he couldn't make it. Knowing that he would soon suck in a lungful of water with that last killing breath, and even knowing that it would be his last, unable to resist.

  The Reeve had called me a healer, and I was determined now to do just that – whatever the cost. I focused my gaze on the motes and recognised them for what they were: an abomination of nature. The motes lived to destroy. They added nothing to the world except pain, misery and death. They upset the balance of nature. I struggled wit
h my inner emotions, dizzy now with the effort; the ringing in my ears was so loud it hurt. I felt that my very being was trying to reach out to cure this woman, and I did not know how to do so. I was the drowning man, and the surface was so far away. The task seemed impossible and my anger and urge to heal grew without an outlet.

  I focused on one mote and studied it. It was so ugly to my eyes. Never had I seen such an aberration. With my vision, it appeared large than I was and it loomed over me. I did not understand how this coin allowed me to observe things as I did but I marveled at the power it afforded me. I stared at the mote as it arrogantly destroyed yet another piece of this woman and felt an intense hatred for it join my anger. I had never felt such hatred. It matched my anger and made my mind come into sharper focus and I watched, repelled, as the mote started to move toward another part of the woman and intuitively I reached out and willed it to stop.

  And it did.

  I felt like I held it, squirming, in my hands. It struggled to swim away yet with no more effort than a thought I grasped it firm. Experimenting, I released it and it continued its path toward the object. Exulted, I grabbed it again and held it. My hatred and revulsion grew, and I imagined my hand closing on the mote, squeezing it, crushing it. To my delight and astonishment, the mote collapsed in on itself and ruptured. The hairs around the cell ceased their motion, and I released the mote. It floated there, unmoving and lifeless. I had destroyed it and felt elation soar through me. Like that drowning man, I suddenly burst free of the water and sucked in a lungful of glorious air! I knew what to do: I had killed the invader with nothing more than a thought! Eagerly, I reached out to another mote, grasped it and crushed it. I moved to another and repeated my attack. I went to another one and another one, gleefully killing them with my righteous anger. As I progressed from one mote to another, a thought finally occurred to me that this would take forever to accomplish. I reached out and grabbed two of the motes and crushed them. Then three, then four at a time, and then it seemed as there couldn't be a limit. I pulled back my vision and saw all the motes in the woman as one. They stood out like sparks of fire in the night sky. I grabbed them all at once and with a thought crushed them. Rapture filled me and I nearly toppled. My soul leaped in the knowledge that this unnatural enemy had been destroyed. As the feeling faded, the green colour that had pulsed over the woman ceased and withdrew and a wonderful soft blue slowly emerged to engulf her. I could sense that the balance of her health was restored, freed from the invaders, but I also sensed that I had more to do if she was to live. The ravages the motes left behind in her were extensive. I had killed her invaders but their damage was still everywhere.

  Her ragged, shallow breathing continued, and I turned my attention to the fluid that filled her lungs and I pushed at it and watched as it came up through her throat. Her eyes snapped open, wide with fear, and her hands shot to her throat. It was choking her, but I was resolved to finish this and so I pushed harder and was rewarded with a mass of phlegm, enormous in its volume, pouring from her mouth. She twisted violently onto her side and coughed and spat what she could out of her mouth. I kept pushing until her lungs were clear but saw then that I had collapsed them. Her throat convulsed and her face grew a deep red with her effort to breathe. I pushed air into her lungs and as they inflated, she took over and she gasped in mouthfuls of air and collapsed on her litter exhausted, eyes closed in surrender to the joy of breathing freely once again. Colour returning to her face, she drew air deeply into her lungs. Her entire body suddenly relaxed, and I realised with relief she was unconscious from exhaustion.

  She was no longer in any danger that I knew, but she was still so very weak. I worked my way through her skin and pushed dead cells out of her and urged her skin to heal those areas blackened and damaged by the motes. I know not how I knew what to do, but trusted in the power of the coin to guide me. In time, I knew I could do no more to the woman and that she would need nourishment for her body to replace what flesh she had lost to the illness. I had done it. I had saved this poor woman, and I felt such a strong feeling of gratitude to the power that permitted me to help her. The presence flickered again, and I felt a sense of amusement and then a nudge to remember the boy.

  I pulled back my vision from the mother and turned it quickly to the boy, lying limp in the arms of the Reeve.

  I repeated my actions against the motes within him and found it much easier this time but it was accompanied with a feeling of weariness deep within me and my head started to pound. I ignored this, eager to keep healing, and reached into the boy's lungs and pushed the phlegm clear of his young lungs, watching as the Reeve suddenly put the boy down on the ground and pound him on the back. I heard the Reeve's cry of disgust as the thick, green phlegm poured clear of the boy's mouth. I heard him call my name for help but I ignored him as I poured air into the lungs. The boy was clean and required nothing more from me.

  I glanced at the Reeve and I crushed the motes inside his body. Another glance to the air surrounding me and another within myself and the area was clear. Each effort was now accompanied by a feeling of weariness that warred with the elation at defeating this invader. The pounding pain in my head and the weariness within me grew stronger with each effort but I pushed it away and ignored it. I was unstoppable and my eagerness to continue filled me and drove me. I was truly the healer now. The title the Reeve had given me was mine to keep. But I sensed it was something more. I wasn't just healing; I was restoring a balance to the world and felt the righteousness of it.

  Inspired, I pulled back my vision until I could observe the entire village and saw that almost everyone was infected to one degree or another. It had spread throughout the town. But how was it spreading and how had it spread so quickly?

  I opened my eyes and looked around the room I was in and was drawn to the small container of water the boy had used with his mother. I shifted and right away observed the bright yellow motes aggressively swimming in the water and I was revolted. Then, shocked, I knew the answer: the town well! By the Word, water was the source! It all came together for me then: everyone in town, from the rich to the poor, used the same well.

  I traveled to the well with my vision and quickly entered it. And with a fright I spied a large family of rats living in a burrow where the water met the sides of the well and where the lining stones of one wall had fallen free. An elaborate series of tunnels led up from their nest to the surface near the open market. Motes swarmed all over the rats on the back of fleas and leapt from one rat to the next. All the water of the well was teaming with the motes and I saw the dead carcass of a rat lying half in the water and another one that floated, bloated with gas, on the surface. I felt bile burn and sour the back of my throat. This was the source that was infecting the village. The invaders had spread from person to person – inhaled and exhaled through the lungs and ingested in the water they drank every day. It had spread until it had consumed the entire village.

  I remembered that I had drunk from that well that morning and recalled the funny taste of it and realised with shock I had drunk water that had a rotting carcass of a dead rat in it. I clenched my teeth and willed myself not to throw up. My throat convulsed, and I fought with myself to quell my stomach. Without hesitating, I glared at the invaders in the well and crushed them with a thought. The rats, oblivious to my action, carried on. I thought briefly of killing the rats but no sooner had the thought occurred to me then a pain sharpened the pounding in my head and I quickly turned away from that idea. The motes were an abomination, but not the rats. I could not kill them.

  I could do something about these motes, however, and my hatred of these invaders continued to consume me as I clenched my hands and jaw with determination. The wrongness of what they did stoked my rage and made me forget the growing pain in my head. I observed the entire village once again and saw the invaders light up brightly wherever they hid – in people, in water containers, on the fleas that covered the rats, cats and dogs. They even drifted freely in the air. With
out hesitation, I reached up with my free hand; fingers curled and stretched upwards, and with a cry of exultation crushed my hand into a fist and smote the invaders wherever they lay.

  My head and vision exploded with an agony beyond reckoning and I found myself lying on my side, immobile. I blinked against the white pain that clouded my sight and dimly made out the Reeve rushing into the shack with his arms outstretched toward me. I thought I heard him cry out my name as he reached my side and grabbed me. For an instant he became a woman who I at first thought was my mother but it wasn't her, I knew at once with sadness. As I closed my eyes, I smelled the fresh scent of rain.

  Blackness consumed me and I embraced it.

  Five

  Jaipers, 900 A.C.

  I WOKE IN a strange room and braced myself to feel the pain come crashing back into my head, but slowly, I realised with relief, it was gone. The pain had been excruciating and consumed my entire being; I would do anything to never feel it again. I trembled at the memory and lay for a spell, simply relishing the absence of pain. It was almost blissful. After an effort, I was able to crack my eyes open and a quick glance failed to provide me with any recognition of where I was. I shifted my eyes and took in my surroundings. I lay on the thick mattress of a real bed and I was covered with sheets – real sheets! They were pulled up to my chin and tucked under my sides, cocooning me in a feeling of security. A brief memory of my mother returned to me but it eluded my attempt to hold on. Sunlight streamed in from a window somewhere to my left and highlighted the dust that danced in the air. I closed my eyes and thought back on what I could remember since the pain claimed me.