The Healer

by Michael Blumlein

  “I'm fine,” he said.

  “Your meli?”

  “Fine.”

  “That thing? The blue Concretion?”

  “Gone,” he said.

  “It's over then. You did it. You're a hero.” Out of gratitude, she took his hand in hers, pressed it to her chest, then kissed it.

  There was a hint of reverence in the gesture, which was not what he wanted from her. As for her gratitude, he had hoped that that would lead to something else, that it would spark a deeper feeling in her heart for him, but the deeper feelings seemed reserved for brother Wyn. He should have seen it coming.

  Before she could say another word, he pulled his hand away and thanked her for the water. “I think I'll rest a little now.”

  Poor man. What he wanted he could not have. What he had he did not want. It wasn't over. Not for him. The thing he'd battled and shaped and wrought was no Concretion. It was alive, extruded from his body but not gone. He would follow it. He had to follow it. There was nothing for him to follow here.

  Two days later, revived and stocked with food and water, he set out after it, taking the trail along the fence until the trail gave out, then continuing up-canyon, the Pen now behind him. The going was slow, for the canyon bed was composed of a fine, soft sand that gave beneath his feet. There were also scattered outfalls of chalky rock that forced him into detours. He wore sturdy boots and a head cloth for protection against the sun. He carried no weapon.

  Midday he stopped for water. The canyon had begun to narrow, and its walls had steepened. Soon he came to a stretch where they were nearly touching. It was the first shade he'd had since early morning, but he could not enjoy it, for the wind here was fierce. Funneled by the narrows, it picked up sand and flung it in his face. He pulled the head cloth down around his nose and mouth, then bent his head and like a mule plodded onward.

  The wind and flying grit seemed determined to drive him back, but eventually the narrows ended. The canyon opened up and the wind died down, its roar falling to a whisper. Payne removed his head cloth, shook it out, and stretched his stiffened neck. He had some water, then wiped his face clean.

  Ahead, like the bulb at the end of a thermometer, the canyon broadened, coming to a head in a little bowl. Here the cliffs were not as steep as before. There was vegetation on them, chiefly cacti, whose shallow roots found something to their liking in the thin, impoverished soil. There was also a smattering of gray-leafed, spiny shrubs. On one of these a branch lay dangling by a twist of stringy bark, as if a boulder or perhaps some careless animal had broken it. Sloping upward from this bush there seemed to be a path, although more likely it was just a wrinkle in the hill, a little cleft between two humps. Still, it seemed a reasonable way up, and Payne took it.

  At the top of the slope was a ridge that snaked along for half a mile, climbing steadily to a rocky summit. Here he stopped to catch his breath. The Pen was not in sight, though half the world, it seemed, lay below him. He saw no sign of movement anywhere.

  He had some water, then took his bearings. The sun was on his right and no more than an hour from setting. To his left, turning a dusky rose in the lengthening light, was a jagged line of mountains of which his ridge was but a low-lying arm. Behind him lay the canyon he had spent the day ascending. Ahead of him, falling off the summit at roughly ninety degrees to one another, were two daughter canyons. This seemed to be the way to go, but which, he wondered, should he take?

  One seemed to run more or less straight into the mountains, falling then rising steeply before disappearing in the haze. The other wound around the mountains’ ankles and looked more gentle. He couldn't decide and had more water and a little food, after which he promptly (and unintentionally) fell asleep. Several hours later he was woken by a troubling dream. The sun had set and the sky was full of stars. It was a grand display, but the aftertaste of the dream left him feeling cold and lonely. Unwrapping his head cloth, he pulled it around his shoulders, then lay down to wait for morning.

  He tried to stay awake, for he didn't want more dreams, but an hour or two before dawn he nodded off. The next time he woke, the sun was staring him in the face. He'd had no dreams, or none that he remembered, and he felt better. This second sleep, more than the first, had restored his strength and cleared his mind. Without physical evidence to point him in the right direction, he resorted to common sense and reason. The right-hand canyon was the easier and more inviting, which argued for the left. Although maybe it was time to put that particular argument to rest, which argued for the right.

  He pondered this a while. He had more food and water. At length he packed his small bag, shouldered it, then turned around twice with his eyes closed and pointed. It wasn't reason, but neither was it strictly chance. It was something in the realm of intuition that told him this was the right way to do it, and, satisfied with his choice, he descended.

  What followed was a terrible day, which didn't necessarily make it a terrible choice, except for the effect it had on his confidence, which by midday was in a state of collapse. Distances in the desert, he discovered, were deceptive. What seemed close was far away, what seemed short was infinitely long. The bulk of the mountains kept receding. By afternoon he was barely halfway up the canyon, when all at once it split in two. Poised at the fork like a sentinel was a large boulder. It offered shade, if not direction, and he hunkered under it, hiding from the sun, faced again with a choice.

  First, he had more water. His supply was getting low, and he allowed himself only a mouthful, not nearly enough to satisfy his thirst. On impulse he had a second. It was rash, but he was thinking of Meera, the only other thing he thirsted for, and he felt defiant. To die of thirst, if it came to that, would be ironic. But he didn't think that he would die.

  He chose the right fork, this time on the chance that his intuition failing twice in a row was less than the chance of its failing once, which seemed reasonable but of course was not. After several miles the branch petered out, forcing him to scramble up a hill of jutting sandstone ledges, some of which undercut the canyon wall. He passed holes and pockets and even small caves in the rock. On the ceiling of one he found what looked like a petroglyph. Its wavy lines and cluster of tiny dots were similar to the spots and squiggly shapes that had been floating across his field of vision for the past few hours. He was exhausted, and it was possible that he was seeing things.

  His meli had been aching ever since the healing, and now the rest of his body ached too. Every bone and joint was sore, his legs especially. The muscles of his thighs and calves quivered with fatigue and overuse. His feet felt as if he'd been traveling barefoot over stones.

  He climbed a little farther, then had to stop. Instantly, he fell asleep and dreamed of water, then woke up and stole another drink. It was warm, but it was wet, and along with the nap, revived him a little.

  Doggedly, he made his way forward, ranging ever deeper and higher up into the mountains and farther from the haunts of man. Rarely, he saw a sign, or what he took to be a sign, of the creature. But sign or not, it was never out of his mind. He sensed it ahead of him. Sometimes when the wind was still, he heard, or imagined he heard, its hiss. He and it seemed to be moving in tandem, it from him and he from Wyn and Meera, as well as from himself. He had done something no one since Mobestis had done, but now it seemed that he was leaving that identity behind. He had another future, and he didn't know what it was, but it frightened him.

  On the third day his water gave out, and on the morning of the fourth he found a seepage in a cleft between two rocks. He'd been drawn to the spot by the unusual appearance of the cliff above it, whose horizontal cross-bedding was broken by a long, dark, vertical scar. It was lichen, he discovered, a living plant, which meant there was moisture. At the base of the cliff he dug a hole with a rock to form a basin, then sat back and waited for it to fill. It took forever, and the water was bitter and knotted up his stomach. It was also the best water he had ever tasted. He rubbed some on his face, topped off his bottle and
reluctantly moved on.

  Later that day, high on a pinnacled ridge, removing a stone embedded in his foot, he lost his boot. It was pure carelessness, and his heart fell as he watched it pitch and tumble down the slope, then disappear. He tried walking with one boot, but it was worse than none. Thereafter, he went barefoot, which was painful though not as painful as it would have been with sharper rock. The ridge was made of sandstone, pressed of ancient sediments and sculpted by the elements. It was soft as sandstone went, and while he sustained his share of scrapes and cuts, none was serious, and none became infected. The mineral heavy dirt seemed to have antiseptic properties.

  Higher and higher he climbed, through crumbling country where gnarled and stunted trees replaced cacti, and outcroppings of metaphoric rock began to appear along with the sedimentary stone. The daytime heat was not oppressive, as it was on the desert floor. Nights, however, were cold and increasingly uncomfortable. He'd been rationing his food, and now it was almost gone. He dreamed of it when he slept; when he was awake, he was always hungry. His meli, which had been throbbing like a toothache, began to prickle every so often with a sharper pain.

  The next morning, an hour past dawn, he caught sight of the creature in a talus-sloped swale. It was far off, half a day at least, and in the distance looked small and harmless. He got a quiver of excitement, for it seemed the chase was drawing to a head. But then he lost it for the rest of the day, though not its hiss, which like the wind blew hot and cold, loud and soft, sweet sometimes and sometimes cruel. In this it was similar to other voices he had heard in his short, cobbled life—similar, in fact, to them all.

  That night he saw it again, across a narrow defile on the crest of the opposing ridge. The moon was just rising, pale and yellow and fat, and the creature in silhouette seemed a thin cut across its face, a dark and crooked scar, a dribble. It paused in its flight and appeared to face him, emitting a long, piercing, high-pitched hiss.

  He felt a stitch in his side, then a stab as though pricked by a knife. His meli had started to bleed. It was sticky and wet to the touch. He tore off a piece of his head cloth, wadded it up, and pressed it against the organ, stanching the flow of blood. But every time he moved, it started bleeding again, not a gush but an ooze, like a tree leaking sap, until eventually the ooze became constant.

  There are wounds that bleed but don't hurt, and some that hurt less for the bleeding, but this was neither of those. Up to then he'd been able to put the pain out of his mind, but now that became impossible. At rest it was stabbing, and with movement it was worse. He walked with his hand clenched against his side; half the time he walked doubled over. He wondered what he'd done to deserve such a fate, and wondered at that, for he had never believed in pain as retribution.

  He thought of Wyn. Beloved Wyn, whom he'd idolized. He thought of his mother and his father. His throat got tight, and then a sob escaped his lips. Soon he was weeping freely. It made the pain in his side worse, which to that point had seemed impossible.

  Now he was groaning with every step, and every third or fourth step he stumbled. He lost his head cloth and then his ortine. His side was blood-soaked and wet. He tripped on something, caught himself, then tripped again and fell to his knees, too weak to get up. He was visited by the thought to fall farther. If he couldn't walk, he could slither belly-down, which seemed a reasonable mode of advancement for a man in his condition, though in the end he rejected it. Instead, head bowed like a beaten old dog, he crawled forward on his hands and knees, heading nowhere but driven by the thought that he had to keep going. A short time later he collapsed.

  When he came to, he was sitting against a rock face, propped at the waist like a puppet. He felt better, which was strange, for in so many ways he was worse. Scraped up and bloody. Hungry, bruised and dying of thirst. At first he thought that he actually was dying, or about to die, that this sense of well-being was the prelude to his death. He waited for it to arrive, curious and without fear, but it never came. On the contrary, he felt more full of life than ever, and he couldn't understand it. Then all at once he did.

  The pain in his meli was gone.

  It still throbbed, but it was the throb of healing, not the throb of a worsening wound. To the touch it was dry. To pressure, just sore, like a bruise or a cut that was mending.

  He wondered why and how this miracle had happened. He gave thanks, first silently, then aloud, the words spilling out in a torrent. He was not stingy in his gratitude and praise, but lavish, embracing the sun and the sky and the wind and whomever and whatever else he could think of. On the off chance he had been at fault, that the pain was, in fact, retribution, he swore to rectify his ways, to be upright and blameless and true, in short, to be and to do whatever was necessary to keep the pain from recurring. More than anything, he didn't want it back. It was a reckless, impetuous vow, and destined to haunt him, but such was the flavor of the moment and the immensity of his joy and relief.

  When he was done, he stood up, and feeling light of head but lighter of heart, set out anew. He tracked the creature up into the heart of the mountains, and then, when it turned, back out. Down ridges and rockfalls and sun-bleached ravines, like unraveling a spool. In place of the pain in his side, he felt the thrill of the hunt and the chase. Without agony he found joy in being alive. The sky was more luminous, the air sweeter to breathe, the earth more replete and inviting. There was beauty wherever he looked, and the land was a garden of plenty. Cacti became a source of food and water for him. Lizards, too, though their horny bodies made for a stingy meal. The first time he ate one, and every time thereafter, he blessed them for giving him life and in the same breath asked forgiveness for taking theirs.

  On the seventh day, while descending a flinty defile, he felt a twinge in his side. It lasted just a second, but then it returned, and then his meli went numb. It was a strange sensation to feel nothing, quite distinct from having no pain. When he looked, the organ seemed pale and pinched, like a mouth pursed against speech. He dabbed it with water, then, recalling something from his father, cut off a section of cactus and made a paste from the pulp. This, he hoped, would act as a restorative.

  That afternoon, after rounding a broad shoulder of the mountain, he came in sight of the plain. It lay several thousand feet below him and looked as if it had spilled from the mountains themselves, a hazy brown liquid skimming the earth, vast and flat as a pan. In the distance, glinting like metal, was a line of gray-blue that seemed to separate the earth from the sky. Was this water? A mirage? The horizon? He rubbed his eyes and tried to blink it away.

  The creature was still far ahead of him and, if it hadn't already, would soon be reaching the plain. The line in the distance did not disappear. It was water, he decided, and no trivial flow, but a river, or more likely, an arm of the sea. The creature was headed for the Lac du Lac: Payne had a premonition of this, and something told him he should hurry.

  The numbness in his meli persisted, and despite his ministrations, the os kept constricting. It was now pinpoint in size, nearly closed. He forced it back open with the tip of a finger, which hurt like the stab of a knife. But before long it closed up again, tighter than before, and he couldn't get it open at all. And soon there was tissue bridging the lips, fresh, hymenal new skin. It crisscrossed the opening like the warp and weft of a cloth, until the os was completely covered. All that was left was a dimple in his side, a shallow depression like a thumbprint in clay, where his meli had previously been.

  It was a puzzling and alarming development. When he had vowed to do anything to keep the pain from recurring, he had not thought of this. It was a price he was unwilling to pay. Healing was his gift, his one special gift. It set him apart. It gave him reason to live. He'd lost many things, but refused to lose this. Not his power to heal. Not his meli.

  By moonlight he worked his way down a tongue of loose shale to the canyon where the creature had fled. In the dawn he found signs of its passage, broken branches and a winding, furrowed track in the sand. The drainage
was dry but not lifeless. There was brittlebush, saltbush and stampon. There were cacti too, pin-cushion and beaver-tail, the pads of the latter studded with fruit. The swollen red globes had been pecked at by birds, who had spilled the black seeds on the ground. Mindful of the needles, Payne picked what was left, eating on the move. The fruit was juicy and sweet and more succulent than lizard, though not, he surmised, as nutritious.

  While gingerly plucking one of these fruits from its spiny pad, he spied something half-buried in the sand. It was opalescent and looked like an egg, but after digging it up and brushing it off, he decided it couldn't be one. It was too big for one thing; no bird in the world could have lain it. And its surface was soft and rubbery, not hard like a shell. Thinking it might contain food, he tried to open it, but couldn't. Not with his hands and not with a rock. It resisted all attempts to be broken.

  He threw it in his bag along with some beaver-tail fruit and resumed his pursuit through the canyon. A hundred yards farther he found another such egg, then another and another and another. All down the wash, like giant pearls, they were scattered, some nestled in sand, some exposed.

  By day's end he reached the foot of the canyon, where its bed fanned out in a delta and its walls melted into the plain. He had gained on the creature; he could see its trail ahead of him, raising dust as it fled.

  He set out after it, walking all through the night and into the day. It was a long and arduous journey. The plain was vast and not as flat as it looked from above. There were hill-sized dunes, some solitary and some part of ranges that were too wide to skirt, forcing him to trudge over them. The sand was like liquid and gave beneath his feet. In places it was so steep that he had to crawl. The sun was overpowering, burning his face and beating on his head and neck like a hammer. He rationed the cactus fruit, for it was his sole source of food and water.

  He didn't rest because the creature didn't rest. He pursued it all day and all night. Finally, at dawn, he caught up with it, on the shore of the sea. It was gazing out over the water, as if waiting for him. Slowly it turned and faced him. It had taken the form of a human.