Treasurekeeper

by Ripley Harper

All in the dazzlingly bright colors of healthy souls. There are no monsters here.

  Seventy-three dragonfires.

  Every single person here has some magic of their own.

  I feel myself relaxing. My shine cannot permanently harm anybody here.

  “Draw up your defenses and prepare to protect yourself against my dragonshine!” I cry in English. Then in Spanish. And then I wait for the boy to repeat my words. Keepers can also become shine-sick if they’re caught unprepared, and although I found a way to cure them, one night in a desert, that’s not an experience I’d want to repeat any time soon.

  When I’m satisfied they’re all protected, I open my eyes fully and I speak to them in my dragonvoice, ordering them to go back to their lives and to forget about me.

  No translation necessary.

  *

  When I fully return to myself, all the Earthkeepers have left and Zig and Jonathan are both staring at me.

  “Holy fuck,” Jonathan says. “That was cold.”

  “You think so?” To be honest I’m not one hundred percent sure I know exactly what just happened. “But they’re going to be okay, right?”

  “They’ll definitely not be bothering you again.”

  There something about his voice. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No.”

  “So why the attitude?”

  He doesn’t try to deny it. “It’s just…” A slight shrug. “Those people wanted to give you something. Something that was important to them. And you were like, whatever. Goodbye.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Around us the clearing is now completely empty. Apart from a few empty clay cups and a walking stick someone has left behind, there’s no sign left of anyone. I feel a curious pang, remembering those hopeful faces. But then I square my shoulders.

  “You don’t get it. They didn’t just want to give me something; they also wanted something from me. A piece of myself. The kind of ‘pledge’ they talked about creates a bond that goes both ways, and if you haven’t noticed, I’m barely holding myself together at the moment. There’s no way I could’ve handled such a huge responsibility.”

  “If you say so.”

  I turn to Zig. “Do you think I did something wrong?”

  “You stuck to the plan.” His tattooed face is so expressionless that I can’t decide if he thinks that’s a good thing. But whatever. I’ll take it.

  “Exactly. We had a plan and I stuck to it.” I turn to Jonathan. “You said it yourself: no mess, no fuss. I’m simply not in the position to do anything more for anyone right now.”

  “Hey, I’m not criticizing. I’m just saying. Not a lot of people would’ve been able to do what you just did.”

  “Okay.” I decide not to examine that statement too closely. “So what happens now?”

  “Now, I guess, you do the same thing to the people waiting to be Healed.”

  When we get to the riverbank, the scale of the human misery around me literally takes my breath away.

  I know this must make me sound dumb, but it’s only when I look at the suffering of the people waiting there that I realize it must only be the most desperate of the desperate who visit a faith-healer in the middle of nowhere, based on nothing but an insane rumor.

  “Dear God,” I whisper, stunned, as I look at the line of people stretching for as far as the eye can see, all waiting patiently in the heat and the mud, their faces resigned. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Yes,” Zig says. “This is why you needed to leave your room.”

  “But this is madness!” A quick, panicked glance tells me that there are crying children waiting, and men with open wounds, and women too sick to stand. There are sores and abscesses and injuries and illnesses so serious that some of the people look close to death: coughing and shaking and bleeding. “These people shouldn’t be here! They should be in hospital.”

  “The nearest hospital is a two-day journey from here,” Zig says. “And they’re mainly focused on primary care.”

  “That can’t be right. What do people do when they get really sick?”

  “The hospitals in the cities offer more specialist services. But I suspect not everyone has the money to travel so far.”

  “Surely we can help them with that. I mean, Jonathan’s dad has all the money in the world! Can’t we make a plan to fly some of the sickest people to a city hospital or something?”

  Jonathan shrugs. “He’ll give you the money if you ask. I don’t think he’d deny you anything. As long as you know he never does anything for nothing.” He looks at the people waiting in the blazing sun. “But anyway, I think you’re wrong. Money won’t fix this.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t wait on a riverbank for a week to see some rumored faith-healer if a normal doctor can help you. Especially if your country offers free medical care to all its citizens. My guess is that the people here must be suffering from incurable diseases: untreatable cancers or genetic conditions or whatever.”

  A woman walks up to us and greets us in Portuguese. I ask her if she speaks Spanish and she makes a so-so motion with her hand before looking past us towards the village, a painful mixture of hope and desperation playing across her features.

  Okay. This is good news.

  I flash a grateful look in Jonathan’s direction; his Enthrallment spell must be working. We decided earlier that his job would be to cloak the two of us in a visual illusion which will make us appear completely unremarkable in every way.”

  Zig, who was born with this magic anyway, surprises me by greeting the woman in fluent Portuguese. They speak for about five minutes before she wanders away again.

  “Since when do you speak Portuguese?” I ask.

  “I picked up some of it while you were resting. I don’t claim to be an expert.”

  “He’s being modest,” Jonathan says. “Zig’s genius at languages.”

  Zig ignores him. “The woman I spoke to has a nine-month-old baby who was born with a serious birth defect. The doctors told her there’s nothing they could do. Only a miracle can save her child’s life.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “So that’s what she’s doing. Waiting for a miracle. She heard about you from a friend of a friend of her second cousin, who spoke to someone who knows a woman who saw with her own eyes how a man from this village, who had been paralyzed for years, miraculously began to walk again. She traveled hundreds of miles to get here, spending all her savings, and she’ll stay here for as long as it takes.”

  I give him an uncertain look, not completely sure what to do with this information. “You’re telling me that I’ll have to use my firemagic on them or they won’t leave.”

  He doesn’t respond, merely looking at me with those cold silver eyes until I feel myself shivering slightly.

  “So how should we do this?”

  “Do what, exactly?” he asks, his voice as icy as his eyes.

  “Order these people to go back to their lives and forget about me.”

  “You’re the firemaster.”

  “Yeah. But I can’t control my shine without you. And the last thing they need is to get shine-sick on top of all their other problems.”

  “So that’s the plan.” The dying dragon on his face flicks its tail once, twice. “Order them home without making them shine-sick.”

  “Yes.” I frown. “I mean, isn’t it?”

  Somewhere behind me a baby starts crying, a high, shrill wail of misery.

  “If your aim is simply to protect them from the shine,” Zig says, “it would be best if you don’t speak to the whole group at once. From what I’ve seen, binding a big group to your will takes more power than binding a few individuals. And the more magic you use, the more difficult it will be to dim your shine.”

  “Okay. So perhaps we should walk from one group of people to the next and, I don’t know… Offer them something maybe?”

  “Most people here would apprecia
te fresh water.”

  I choose to ignore the slight edge to Zig's voice. “Good idea. Then, after giving them the water, I can use my firemagic in a really controlled way to send them back home one by one. It will take a lot longer, but I won’t have to use so much magic at once.”

  Zig doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t argue so I take it as a yes.

  I look at Jonathan. “It’s your job to make sure the people waiting in line hardly notice us. Can you do that?”

  He raises a shoulder. “I can disguise your appearance quite easily. But once you shine too brightly, there’s not that much I can do. Your magic is stronger than mine. Stronger than any magic I’ve ever seen.” There’s an edge to his voice too, but I’m too nervous to worry about it.

  I need to get all these sick people safely back to their homes, and I need to do it now.

  Chapter 16

  And yea, the Horror, the Deceitful One, shall wipe the tears from the eyes of the fearful, and soothe the brow of the unbelieving, and bring healing to the abominable, and peace to the idolaters.

  But behold: there will be no glory in this healing, and no virtue in this peace, and the lives of the healed will be bitter as ashes, and the peace so fashioned will crumble into dust.

  The Old Words: Verse 22:11-13

  We load up a few big bags with bottled water from the village. Then we go to the woman with the sick baby.

  Zig speaks to her in Portuguese, offering some water. I stand beside him, and Jonathan a step or two behind us. Apart from the woman and her husband, who are quietly talking to Zig, nobody takes any notice of us whatsoever.

  While Zig hands over a bottle to the couple, I take deep, timed breaths, trying to calm my heartbeat. Not because I’m worried about the shine or my magic or anything, but because the whole situation is so tragic and desperate than I’m only now beginning to realize how isolated I’ve been, how totally cut-off from reality.

  Truth is, I’ve almost forgotten that normal people can have terrible lives too.

  From what I can make out from Zig’s conversation, the woman’s name is Ana and her husband’s name is Pedro. She’s a middle-aged woman with short black hair, and he’s a scrawny guy wearing dirty, threadbare clothes. Both of them have the same dull, dark eyes. Neither of them looks as if they’ve gotten any real sleep in weeks. I don’t want to look at the baby, who’s sleeping in a makeshift carrier on the ground next to them, but after a while my curiosity gets the better of me.

  It’s not so bad.

  I was worried the child might look obviously injured or sick or suffering, but he (or she; I can never tell) is sleeping peacefully and seems absolutely normal.

  “His name is Francisco,” Zig says, coming closer to get a better look. “He was born with congenital heart failure and he’s not strong enough to operate on. At best he’s got weeks to live. At worst, days. Or hours.”

  “He looks so peaceful.”

  “That’s because he’s exhausted. He hasn’t been fully awake in days.”

  “They shouldn’t be here. This baby should be in hospital.”

  His scarred lip pulls back slightly. “Imagining this child in a neat, clean hospital, hooked up to high-tech machines and surrounded by white-coated specialists might make you feel better, but it’s not going to happen. They waited almost ten years to have this child, Jess. They want him to live.”

  “This is so sad.” I feel my throat closing with emotion, and for once I don’t even try to fight it. “Are you ready to help me so we can send them home?”

  The way he grinds his jaw makes him look even more scary than usual. “I’ll do what I can. Just don’t go too deep.”

  “Okay. Jonathan, be ready.”

  I don’t close my eyes. I only let them go slightly out of focus as I stare into the distance, just like we practiced last night in my room. Then I relax my shields, just a little, and allow my magic to flow up from deep inside me.

  A part of me is dreading what will happen. One of the deep skills of firemagic allows you to look past a person’s outer appearance and right into their deepest being, and I’m honestly afraid that I won’t be able to handle the depth of the suffering hidden in the hearts of the people on this riverbank.

  But there’s no other way. I need my magic.

  I control my breathing and clench my fists, bracing myself as I call on my firedragon.

  It’s not the firedragon who answers.

  When I open my eyes fully, there’s not a single flame to be seen. Instead, the world is green and growing and alive with a raw, beating heart that swells out from everything around me in gorgeous waves of endlessly pulsing energy.

  “Zig!” I call out for help before I lose myself in the green-eyed beauty of this living, breathing world. “Do it now!”

  He responds immediately, just as we practiced, putting one calloused hand firmly on my shoulder. “Stay.”

  His hand on my shoulder anchors me to this world. This body. This life. And yet the lustrous miracle of the growing world around me still calls to me with a low, thrumming voice as familiar as it is strange, telling me that we’re all connected by an endless chain that—–

  “Careful!” Zig tightens his grip on my shoulder to something just this side of pain.

  “Am I shining?”

  “A little,” Jonathan says. My spell can still hide it. But you’re going to have to focus.”

  “It’s not like the other times.” My voice sounds strange to my ears. Deeper and slower. “Something’s gone wrong.”

  “Tell me what you see,” Zig says.

  “There are no fires. I can’t see any flames, but the world is… breathing. Everything is so vivid. The colors are so bright and the textures are so rich and I can see… I don’t know how to describe it. A connection between everything. A oneness. Oh, Zig, it’s amazing! There’s this lustrous, sacred thread of life that runs through everything, connecting all of us. Everything is in harmony. We’re all part of it this glorious balance. We’re all part of everything.”

  “It’s earthmagic.” Zig sounds impatient but not angry. “You must’ve accidentally called on your cavedragon instead of your firedragon.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Maybe not. The important thing is not to let yourself get sucked in too far. What you need to do—–”

  But I can’t concentrate on what he’s saying because I’m too fascinated by the way the intricate patterns inked on his skin seem to be moving in the soft summer light, and the way his voice sounds so low and so deep, as if its timber is part of the sound of creation, and the way the tiny specks of blue and white and green and grey in his eyes melt into a silver so pure it shines like metal, and the blue veins beneath his skin, pulsing with energy and life, and the tiny hairs on his shaved jaw moving so slowly—–

  Another hand on my shoulder. The weight of it like a thousand tons. “Come on, Jess. You can do this. Stay with me now.”

  “Oh, Zig! You are glowing with life. So perfect and so whole.”

  “Glad to hear it. But I still need you to focus.”

  “I can see each and every little hair on your face. Each speck of dust in the air between us. Every individual leaf on each individual tree.”

  “You’re going too deep.” His grip on my shoulders now like a vice. “I can’t keep you here if you fight me like this.”

  “But it’s a miracle! And I never knew! Everything is in perfect harmony. We’re all one!”

  “No we’re not.” Zig’s voice is as deep and pure as a bell. “That’s only true if you look at this world through a very specific lens. From where I’m standing, right now, we don’t look like ‘one’ at all.”

  He does not relax his grip on me. If anything it grows tighter.

  “You’re healthy and young and full of life, while the people around you are sick and desperate and dying. You’re filled to the brim with power, while the people around you have no power whatsoever. I need you to come back to this reality and I need you to do
it now.”

  Something in his voice—–an uncommon decency, perhaps—–pierces through the bewitchment.

  He’s right. I’m going too deep. It won’t be long before I lose myself.

  And yet! The temptation to succumb to the power is overwhelming. How joyous it would be to surrender to the oneness, to allow the physical boundaries between me and the world around me to melt away completely, to dissolve and flow into the living heart of this living green planet!

  The weight of his hands on my shoulders.

  The pain of his steely grip.

  The sense of his words.

  I look at the slayer who is forcing me back into my body and I center myself in the wonder of his living, breathing face.

  This is Zig.

  I am Jess.

  I am surrounded by vulnerable people, and I cannot allow myself to go too far or too deep into my magic.

  I close my eyes. Step away from the abyss.

  “It’s okay. I’m back in control.”

  No response.

  “Zig.” I open my eyes carefully. “You need to relax your grip a little. You’re hurting me.”

  He pulls away immediately, leaving the world to swirl and crash in slow, undulating waves of the most gorgeous—–

  “No! Don’t let me go!” I grab at his hands again. “I can’t do this without you.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  As soon as his hands settle back onto my shoulders, this time more gently, the world rights itself again. I am still deeply aware of the wholeness of existence: how everything alive on this world sounds its own unbearably precious individual note in the vast symphony of being. But instead of being drunk on the glorious wonder of creation, I merely feel a deep sense of calm, clarity and contentment.

  “Have I injured anyone?”

  “No.” It’s Jonathan who answers. “I could hide your shine, but it took everything I had. If you lose yourself like that again, I won’t be able to help you next time.”

  “Thank you, young Pendragon. You do your mother proud. How beautiful and how fitting it would be, if an honorable young man like yourself could finally redeem the darkness of that cursed family name.”