The Healer

by Michael Blumlein

  The question took her by surprise. “Oh, Bolt. You don't know?”

  “Well, it's a Conk. Least it wants to be. Wish it would make up its mind and get it over with. Then at least we can settle this thing.”

  She had a sudden vision of bloodshed. “No. Please. Give them time.”

  “We got all night.”

  “It may take longer.”

  “Twelve hours is what you said.” He pointed his pike at Payne. “You think he's even working at it? Looks to me like he's asleep. Maybe we ought to wake him up and remind him why he's here.”

  “He doesn't need reminding.” She tugged on Bolt's arm until he turned away and left the two of them in peace. “I've got another story. This one's true. It's about me.”

  Bolt stayed until daybreak, then left to get some sleep. Meera had packed an open-sided tent for protection against the sun, and she set it up, centering the canopy on Wyn and Payne. She was careful not to touch the blue Concretion, which was smaller now, or at least smaller outside Wyn's body, and thus easier to avoid. How big it was on the inside, and what, in fact, its character had become, she could only imagine.

  Wyn had to be exhausted. He continued to strain against the stakes, but with less and less frequency and but a fraction of his previous strength. His breathing had become more shallow, and his pulse, visible between the cords of his neck, was as rapid as a sparrow's. His eyes, to her relief, were finally closed, but his eyelids continued to tremble.

  Sometimes a patient had to be brought to the very brink of death before he could be brought back, before he could be healed. It required the deepest kind of faith and trust and, ultimately, surrender. Payne had spoken to her of this, and she herself remembered lying on the healing bed with Wyn. She had loved him very much, or what she had felt was love back then. Otherwise, she would never have consented. Theirs had not been a one-night stand as she had told Payne, but a longer and deeper affair, lasting several months. Wyn had never threatened her. For all his swagger he had a streak of insecurity when it came to women, or at least when it came to her. He needed proof of her affection, and by the same token, he had to prove that he was worthy of it. Which is why he had insisted on the healing, despite knowing of her bloodline and the risk it posed to both of them.

  She'd been so young. So full of romantic ideas and so vulnerable to words. Flattered into thinking she had the power to relieve him of his insecurity, she had agreed to do what he asked. Undeniably, she'd been swayed by his entreaties, but she was not coerced, as she had laid it out to Payne. She had gone ahead not against her will, but willingly. With trepidation, to be sure, but with excitement, too, with daring and with passion. He had bound their arms together, hers to his, his to hers, and she had surrendered to him.

  Now she knelt beside him and whispered for him to do the same. Surrender to his brother. Have faith in him.

  Through the morning she stayed beside them, sharing the cover of the tent. She felt sleepy but forced herself by various means to stay awake. She sang songs. She recited fragments of poetry. Near her boot she found an anthill, and for a while she counted ants. In the absence of food it seemed odd that they would take up residence inside the Pen. She searched the ground for carrion, following the antline until she caught sight of a millipede, or a caterpillar, something rather large and furry with many legs. It was lying on its side, looking dead, but strangely, the ants disregarded it, marching past as if it didn't exist. She hadn't known that ants were so particular about their diet, when all at once, the creature wriggled. Well, she thought, that explained it. The ants didn't want it because it wasn't dead. When it righted itself, she changed her mind about what it was. Too big and broad and lumpy for a caterpillar or a millipede, and much too quick. It shot across the sand as if it were on wheels. And was it her imagination, or was it making some sort of squeaking sound?

  A second later, it struck her chest, which was protected by her vest, then hopped from it to the open skin of her wrist. She tried to brush it off, but it had attached itself to her. She felt a little tingle, then all at once a razor-sharp, stabbing bite.

  With a shock she realized what the creature was. Grabbing the bucket, she thrust her hand inside.

  The Conk didn't like the juice one bit. Rearing up, it gave a piercing squeal, then released her and fled.

  After that, she scoured the area around the tent for anything suspicious, then widened her search to include everything inside the boundary line. Finding nothing, she returned to the shade of the canopy. She had some water and dribbled half a cupful into Wyn's mouth, careful not to touch him. The blue Concretion had receded farther. Now it was no more than a knob, a mushroom cap, atop his meli.

  She gave Payne water too, searching his face for information.

  Overtly, he seemed at ease. His eyes remained closed, roving slowly back and forth beneath the lids as though he were dreaming. His breathing was deep and even, broken on occasion by a hissing sound on exhalation she hadn't heard before. His face looked poised between wakefulness and sleep, but overall he seemed calm. He might have been on the Lac du Lac, floating.

  She recalled his speaking once about how healing required two states of mind, of consciousness, that on the surface seemed antithetical. One was complete subordination and immersion of oneself in one's patient, an engagement where that patient's needs, desires and pains did not merely become primary but were experienced, literally, as one's own. The other was separation and detachment, which allowed for objectivity. Without this there could be no hope for the proper perspective, no hope for reason and common sense to prevail. Both states depended on a systematic approach to healing. This, in turn, depended on a system.

  The Seven Stages was Payne's system; it was every healer's system, as far as she knew. She wondered, though, if it was different when the healing was between Grotesques, if there was another stage, or another twenty. She wondered what stage they were in now. She wondered if they were making progress. Most of all, she wondered if Payne could do this thing that no one had ever done before.

  She remembered taking care of Wyn after the abortive healing. She had brought him to her house on the Lac du Lac and tended to him, feeding him, washing him, reading to him, putting him to bed at night. In the beginning he had allowed these things, although it was never clear how much, if anything, got through to him. But she'd believed that if she was patient enough, good enough, penitent enough, she could reach him, and with time he would recover.

  But he didn't. Instead, he became unmanageable.

  At first it was little things. He'd lose his temper. He wouldn't sleep. He'd get all worked up for no apparent reason. He'd shout and carry on.

  Gradually, the little things got bigger. He started throwing things: clothes, books, dishes. He broke a mirror and then a window. He tried to cut himself, and then one day he came at her. He bit her, once on the hand and once below the ribs, before she could fend him off. She had the scars to prove it, the one on her knuckle and the tooth-marked oval on her side, right in the spot where, had she been a tesque, her meli would have been.

  After that she'd acted swiftly. She had Wyn put away and later transferred to the Pen. She had no choice. It was time to see things as they were, not as she wanted them to be.

  What would she do, she wondered, if Payne became like that? If the man she wanted, or had wanted once, recovered, and the one who wanted her, to whom she would owe Wyn's life, did not?

  In the afternoon a plume of smoke appeared, or what looked like smoke, except that it was moving against the wind. It seemed to be composed of interwoven tendrils, twined together like a braid of hair. She was half-asleep, and slowly it approached her, halting at the perimeter she had drawn, then edging forward, giving off a lilting, reedy sound.

  Instantly, she was wide awake. Leaping up and grabbing her spear, she lunged at it, driving it back beyond the semicircle. She stood there, feet planted, spear point aimed at its center, daring it to return.

  Not that she would have known what to
do if it chose to do so, for if her spear had no effect, she had no idea what would. But it seemed to have settled where it was, a yard or two beyond the perimeter, neither approaching nor retreating.

  It made her more than a little uneasy, especially its sound, which had become increasingly sweet and inviting. The heat, too, was getting to her, and the sleepless night, and not knowing how long she'd have to keep her vigil up, or the outcome.

  And if Wyn did recover, what then? Certainly, he would be different, just as she was different from the woman she had been. Would he care for her? Would she for him? Would they go their separate ways? Would they try again?

  At length the Conk condensed and darkened, and to her relief, like a cloud emptying itself of rain, precipitated on the ground. And there it puddled, slowly being absorbed by the burning sand, until it occurred to her that this was providential, this was manna that should not be wasted, it was juice that could be used against the likes of its own kind. She rushed to get the bucket, then scooped up what remained of the puddle, freshening her spear tip with it. After that, feeling both clever and more prepared, she returned to the tent.

  That was the extent of her visitors that day. Bolt did not return, nor did any of the guards. She missed the company but was also relieved, for their return, she feared, would bode no good for Wyn.

  At dusk the convoy rumbled into view, descending to the Pen in a whirlwind of dust. She used what remained in the bucket to fortify her circle, then watched with pike in hand as the day's cargo was dispatched. She was growing used to the Concretions, feeling less besieged, which was dangerous. Their multiplicity was astounding, their beauty awful and unique. There were dazed moments when she felt that she had found her niche, that these part-human, part-tesque creations were her family, and living among them was where she belonged.

  In the west the sky turned orange, in the east lavender, as evening approached. The furnace sun finally dipped below the lip of the canyon. The wind died off. Two days and a night had passed since she had slept. Her eyelids fluttered like moths, then closed.

  She had a dream. Seconds later, she woke with a start. The moon was up. Hours had passed.

  Furious with herself, she rushed to Payne and Wyn. Something was different about them. Something was wrong.

  Blindly, she swept her spear back and forth above them to drive away what she could not see.

  Then stopped. And sucked in her breath. And stared.

  Not wrong, but right.

  The blue Concretion was gone. Wyn's side was clear, his meli dark and unburdened.

  And his eyes were open; they were staring at the sky. By the feeble light of the moon it was difficult to be sure, but the blue opacity, the stony deadness, seemed gone from them as well.

  She knelt beside him and called his name. He didn't respond. She leaned over him so that he could see her face, but he didn't respond to that, either. Nor to her scent, which had never failed to arouse him before.

  His arm was trembling, the one that was bound to Payne. Except that it wasn't Wyn but Payne, she realized, who was trembling, trembling for the both of them, shivering and shaking as if possessed.

  All at once he began to babble, loosing strings of words in bursts between labored breaths, as though he were conversing with someone. Wyn? But no, his brother was in another world. Her? Perhaps. But she couldn't understand a thing that he was saying.

  He opened his eyes and sought her out, his speech pressured and urgent.

  “What?” she asked. “What is it you want?”

  He choked something out.

  “Again. Say it again.”

  He did, then followed it with a medley of indecipherable, guttural noises.

  She was at a loss. “I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Help me. Please. Speak clearer. Tell me what it is you need.”

  He tried again, but it was no better, and as her frustration grew, so did his. He raised his voice. He thrashed his head from side to side. He hissed at her.

  She stiffened.

  Turning his head and breathing rapidly, he pointed with his chin.

  “Your hand? Is that it? You want me to free it?”

  He nodded fiercely.

  She hesitated. Wyn looked better, but Payne was not himself. And what had happened to the blue Concretion?

  He pleaded with her to cut him loose, not in words but in sounds and gestures, so desperately that finally she gave in. With her knife she cut the thong that bound his hand, the one unattached to Wyn.

  It seemed to calm him down. He flexed his wrist and then his elbow. He wiped his lips, then pointed to them.

  She understood this to mean he wanted water, and she went to fetch some. In the half minute she was away, she heard a noise she took to be a Conk, then another one immediately after. It was dull and thumping, like someone pounding meat, and rushing back, she found Payne pummeling his meli. She grabbed his hand and forced it away from his body, then knelt on his forearm until she could knot the severed thong and get it back around his wrist.

  He cried out.

  “Too tight?”

  But it wasn't that. It was his meli. In the pallid light she could see it throb. Something inside was trying to get out. Payne broke into a sweat and moaned.

  The final stage began when the sickle moon was at its zenith and lasted through the dawn. The air around Payne darkened, as though the night had condensed, collapsing light. In this darkness appeared a faint blue luminescence, like a vapor or a fog or an exhalation of the ground. Gradually, it coalesced into a long and coiling spiral that wound around itself in a vortex of ever-tightening strands. It looked a little like a ball of string, but it was oval-shaped, like an egg. A large egg, fat and swollen at one pole. The other pole tapered to a taillike thread that pulsed rhythmically from Payne's meli.

  He spat it out like he was spinning yarn, and Meera watched from a distance, mesmerized, spear in hand. The extrusion, like all of them, was utterly unique. But it looked familiar, too, and perhaps it should have, having come of her through Wyn and now through Payne. It represented such a trivial malady, one she'd barely been aware of, and yet such grief had come of it, such pain. There was a lesson in everything: she believed this, and certainly there was a lesson here. But she did not believe, as many did, that everything had a purpose. For what could be the purpose in so cruel and harsh an outcome, so many years wasted, so much damage done, all for so innocent a mistake?

  Hours passed, until at length the healing drew to a close. The extrusion had grown in all dimensions. As the sun appeared, its broad oval form hovered over the brothers, casting a faint shadow. By the thinnest thread it remained tethered to Payne's meli and began to revolve again, but in the opposite direction. Slowly and methodically, it unwound itself, until what had been dense and tightly coiled became long and sinuous.

  Meera stood up and raised her spear. The Concretion took no notice. Rearing up its head, it let loose a frightening hiss.

  Like a fish or a gigantic eel snagged by the tail, it whipped one way, then the other, thrashing wildly back and forth until at last, it tore free. Payne screamed at the unnatural birth.

  The creature hovered over him as if to strike. Then blue as flame it fled.

  He had a dream. It was as close to reality as a dream could be, except for its strange, disturbing ending. In the dream he was roughhousing with his brother, and Wyn, as usual, was having his way with him. From the room next door his mother scolded Wyn to let him be.

  “Yes, Mother,” said Wyn, who sat astride Payne's chest, leering down at him. With his knees atop his younger brother's arms he had him pinned to the floor. “Give up? Give up?” he taunted.

  Payne struggled to free himself but couldn't. Wyn was bigger, older and stronger. With a grin he worked his mouth, making spit bubbles between his lips, and was about to let Payne have it when their mother swept into the room. She pulled Payne up and brushed him off, then turned to her firstborn.

  “Come here, you naughty boy.”

  While Pa
yne looked on, she took Wyn in her arms and pressed him up against her chest. He seemed to disappear inside of her. All at once her eyes rolled back. Her scold gave way to a look of rapture. Alarmed, Payne cried out to her, but she didn't respond. He cried louder, and she heard him—he knew she heard—but she wouldn't listen.

  When he woke up, he was in a room in the guardhouse on a bed, covered by a thin blanket. It was night, and on the other side of the room on a similar bed was Wyn, who by candlelight appeared to be asleep. Meera was perched on the edge of Wyn's bed. Her shadow flickered on the wall. She was stroking his hair and whispering words too soft for Payne to hear. Her eyes were red and puffy, as if she'd been crying.

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, it was day. Meera had a sponge in her hand, which she periodically dipped into a bowl, wrung out, then pressed against Wyn's cheeks and forehead. From time to time she gently raised his head and squeezed some drops of water from another sponge into his mouth.

  On a stool beside Payne's bed was a small bowl of his own, filled with a salty broth. Propping himself on an elbow, he cupped it in his palm and sucked up some of the liquid.

  Stirred by the sound, Meera turned her head. “You're awake.”

  “Am I?” He'd been rather hoping he wasn't. “How's Wyn?”

  “Alive,” she said. “But weak.”

  “Alive is good. Alive is what we wanted.” He lay back down. “I healed him. I did it. May I have some water, please?”

  Dutifully, she rose and left the room, returning with a pitcher and a cup, which she filled and handed to him. While he drank, she kept an eye on Wyn.

  “He'll recover,” Payne assured her.

  “His meli's all torn up.”

  “All the better. He'll live a longer life if he can't use it.”

  The thought had crossed her mind, and she had put it aside, along with other questions better left for later.

  “And you?” she asked. “How are you?”

  His side was sore, all around his ribs and up into his armpit. His meli throbbed and ached. He was as thirsty and worn-out as he'd ever been.