The Orchard of Hope

by Amy Neftzger

  “Holy wildcats! You didn’t say your friend was a giant kitten!” Grim One exclaimed.

  “I’m a leopard,” Megan said as she stepped forward and stared down the reapers. “Kittens are much more playful and far less deadly. Leopards eat things your size, and we love it when our food is in costume and full makeup. It makes the meal more interesting.”

  The reapers scrambled backwards as Megan took large, deliberate, pounding steps toward them. For each of her steps, the reapers took four or five smaller ones to keep their distance.

  “You’re not sticking around? Because if I eat you, then Roland here can do his job, and you’ll be able to see your hero in action. How cool would that be?” Megan asked with a mischievous expression.

  “Stop playing with them,” Maggie whispered loudly as Megan was getting farther away from her.

  “I’ll stop when they’re gone,” Megan whispered back out of the corner of her mouth. “I’ll bet Kelsey found these guys annoying!”

  “Yes,” Maggie said with a chuckle. Megan studied the reapers for a moment. They were attempting to keep a comfortable distance between themselves and Megan.

  “They worship Roland,” Maggie said in a slightly louder voice. “And yet they don’t want to get near you because they think you’ll kill them. How strange is that?”

  “If you die near the Edge of Immortality, what happens then?” Megan shouted at the reapers as she paced back and forth with authority. “Maybe you become immortal, but I really couldn’t say. This cliff is simply at the Edge of Immortality, and we don’t know on which side of that edge you’re currently residing or where you might land. Shall we find out?” Megan lurched forward with a loud growling noise, and the reapers took off running.

  “I don’t like it when my dinner doesn’t put up a decent fight,” Megan said as she quickly returned to Maggie’s side. She sniffed Kelsey’s unconscious body carefully, paying close attention to both her broken hand and the burn marking on her arm.

  “Is she going to make it?” Maggie asked with concern.

  “Sometimes it’s better if they don’t,” Megan replied. Then she turned to face Roland and spoke in a language that Maggie couldn’t understand.

  Chapter

  26

  The Healing

  After her brief discussion with Roland, Megan turned back to look at Kelsey. She instructed Maggie to remove the bandages on Kelsey’s broken hand. Once the swollen hand was exposed, Megan gently licked the back of it, running her tongue along the bones from Kelsey’s wrist to the ends of her fingers. Then she used her nose to gently flip the hand, and she licked the palm. Within minutes, the hand was back to its normal size, and the bruising was gone. The coloring was completely normal. Maggie gasped.

  Next, Megan examined the burn mark on Kelsey’s other arm. She sniffed it very carefully, running her nose up and down Kelsey’s arm from her wrist all the way up to her shoulder. She paused when she reached the petal-shaped mark to sniff all around the edge before moving on.

  “I can’t do anything about this,” she finally said.

  “Why not?” Maggie asked. “You just healed her hand perfectly. This is just a little mark.”

  “It’s not real. I can’t heal injuries that don’t exist.”

  “Not real? How can that be?”

  “It’s going to take Moss and Nicholas to remove that mark. It’s a spell. I can manage the symptoms until we get back, but this mark is going to take a sorcerer to remove.”

  “You can manage the symptoms but you can’t remove the mark? That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Maggie said.

  “The symptoms are real,” Megan explained. “That’s because the symptoms are Kelsey’s reaction to the magic. Her reactions are real. But the cause isn’t real, so I can’t remove it.” Megan waited for the information to sink in before continuing. “We can get her back to the castle once I heal her symptoms, but even after the magic is removed, Kelsey may have to overcome the damage she’s received from the experience. It may be years before she’s completely healed. Something like this can change a person.”

  “How can real illnesses happen from fake injuries?”

  “It happens all the time,” Megan replied. “But she’s in good hands. We’re all going to help her.” Megan paused for a moment to examine Kelsey’s face, and then she continued, “Let’s get her symptoms healed so she can travel home and then we can get started on the process of removing the spell. Did you bring the sample of the plant for Nicholas and Moss?”

  Maggie nodded and held up the bag she had tied to her backpack. After briefly sniffing the bag, Megan went to work.

  She sat up on her hind legs and placed both of her large paws over each of Kelsey’s temples as she leaned over her. Maggie felt an invigorating breeze as the leopard exhaled over the top of Kelsey’s head. It gave her goose bumps, and she felt so much energy that she thought she could run the entire rest of the way to the castle. She folded her arms as she continued to observe. Megan exhaled her reviving breath up and down Kelsey’s body several times, and with each pass, Kelsey’s garments quivered in the moving streams of air.

  Next, Megan moved her paws to Kelsey’s shoulders, and she slowly licked one of Kelsey’s cheeks and then the other. Finally, she removed her paws completely and kissed Kelsey on the forehead. Kelsey’s eyes fluttered and then opened as Megan sat back.

  First her eyes rolled around her field of view, looking at the trees above her. Then she turned her head a bit to see Roland and Maggie.

  “Where am I?” she asked. She blinked several times as she squinted into the sunlight.

  “Near the Edge of Immortality,” Maggie answered.

  “I hate that place,” Kelsey said as she rolled onto her side and pushed herself up into a sitting position.

  “We’re not staying, Squirt,” Megan said. When she heard the leopard’s voice, Kelsey quickly turned around to face Megan. The color in her face rapidly returned along with her energy.

  “You!” Kelsey shouted angrily. “You stole my soul!”

  “You’re welcome,” Megan replied coolly.

  “She just healed you,” Maggie interjected.

  “Probably so she could get more of my soul!” Kelsey exclaimed.

  “How do you feel?” Maggie asked.

  “Just fine. Good enough to kick some leopard butt.” She glared at Megan, who simply laughed.

  “Calm down. It was for your own good. The king asked me to do it,” Megan explained. “Nicholas and I had the same agreement, but you needed it more.”

  “I am not OK with this,” Kelsey insisted. “I don’t care who authorized it or who else you made an agreement with. I do not find the situation acceptable at all. And that first message you sent by bird was obnoxious!”

  Megan laughed and slapped her massive paw on the ground, causing the earth to tremble briefly. Kelsey felt nauseated for that moment.

  “Telling me that you were taking good care of my soul when you knew I hadn’t read that contract …” Kelsey paused in disgust. She breathed rapidly a few times and then continued. “That was … ”

  “Hilarious?” Megan asked with a smile that showed her glistening fangs.

  “Not funny at all.”

  “I was teaching you a lesson for not reading what you were signing.”

  “Lesson learned,” Kelsey snapped. She scrunched up her nose and forehead as she glared back at Megan. “It was still my soul, and you should have made sure that I understood that I was signing it away.”

  “Sometimes we don’t appreciate what we have when we concentrate only on what we’ve lost,” Megan said.

  “Well, when you lose a piece of your soul, that’s a pretty big thing to lose,” Kelsey retorted.

  “But you gained a piece of mine,” Megan said forcefully. “And mine was more valuable because it has more experience and more heart. It has already learned to love, and you needed that in order to learn to heal. You could never have healed Maggie without it. That ability just was
n’t in you.”

  “What?” Kelsey’s expression changed from one of anger to one of confusion.

  “In fact, I lost some of my wisdom when I transferred it to you, but I gained some of your youthful perspective and energy. I can appreciate that.”

  Kelsey stared back in disbelief as she processed this information. It was as shocking as learning that she had lost part of her soul, perhaps more so.

  “So we traded?” Kelsey asked. “This wasn’t a one- way thing?”

  “We’re both richer for the experience. We will always be connected, and neither of us will ever be the same. But it’s a good thing.”

  “Still … ” Kelsey sat back without continuing the thought. She looked around at the trees, as if searching for an answer in the color of the autumn leaves.

  “It’s really very simple,” Megan continued. “You had no natural healing ability. I had to impart a piece of myself into you so that you could learn healing.”

  Kelsey thought back to how she had healed the bird and Maggie. She’d never done anything like this before in her whole life. Now that she was reflecting upon the experience, she saw how easily she had done the work and how much of Megan was in her accomplishments. She could not have done it without the leopard’s help.

  “I’m … I’m sorry,” Kelsey finally said as she looked directly into Megan’s eyes. It was a difficult thing for her to say because she had been angry for so long over the situation. She should have known better. She should have trusted the king or Roland. She should have trusted her friend. “I thought you’d stolen from me,” Kelsey said quietly.

  “Next time read the fine print. Relationships are complicated. Don’t make them worse by not paying attention to what you’re getting yourself into.”

  “It wasn’t just for your own good,” Roland interjected. “It was for everyone’s benefit. Look at how you helped Maggie. Look inside yourself and see how much you’ve grown on this journey. Having that little piece of someone older and wiser inside of you helped you to get to this place.”

  “It still doesn’t sound right,” Kelsey said. “But I suppose I needed it, even though it still feels wrong.”

  “So you’re not angry?” Megan asked.

  “Not as much.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to dismiss your anger altogether. It wouldn’t be like you,” Megan replied with a smirk.

  They set off on their journey back to the castle, stopping whenever Kelsey’s symptoms returned and made her feel tired. Each time it happened, Megan healed the symptoms, and they continued homeward.

  When they finally made it back to the castle, Nicholas was already waiting for them. He’d been communicating with birds and getting updates on the location of his friends as he worked with Moss on developing a method to remove the sorcerer’s spell from Kelsey’s arm. He and Moss had seen enough of the sorcerer’s laboratory while scrying to figure out how the spell was constructed. Based on the building blocks they had witnessed, they had developed an idea of how to deconstruct the spell.

  Kelsey sat down at the large wooden table in the king’s study. Her friends gathered around her, with Megan and Roland talking privately in the corner of the room. Newton jumped up onto the table, beating his wings a few times to give himself some extra lift. He waddled awkwardly over to Kelsey and squatted next to her as he stared closely at the mark on her arm. He was so close that she felt his warm breath on her skin.

  “That’s evil,” he announced.

  “It’s a gift from the sorcerer. Of course it’s evil,” the king replied with a slight laugh.

  “Who are you?” Kelsey asked.

  “I’m Newton, the castle’s finest gargoyle.” He stood up and bowed.

  “I like you, Newton. You look like a fighter.”

  “I combat evil at all levels and in all forms.”

  “Except the evil of gluttony,” Moss interjected. “That’s one evil you embrace.”

  “Gluttony is a sin. However, since I technically can’t eat to excess because I never put on weight or get fat, it’s not a sin that applies to me.”

  “You’re exempt from sin?” Moss asked with a raised eyebrow. “That sounds quite arrogant.”

  “In this case it’s the truth,” Newton insisted calmly as he held up one paw with the pads facing Moss.

  “Who are you?” Kelsey asked Moss. “I recognize your voice.”

  “My name is Moss. I’m the sorcerer in residence at the castle.”

  “Note that he’s not the castle’s finest sorcerer,” Newton interjected.

  “You’re the only gargoyle. I’m not the only sorcerer. There’s a difference,” Moss replied in a biting tone.

  “Not the only sorcerer?” Kelsey asked.

  “Moss has been teaching me. He helped me to grow the cuttings into the trees in the orchard,” Nicholas explained.

  “I remember now,” Kelsey said as she reached up to shake Moss’ hand. “Thank you for helping us in the orchard.”

  “I don’t shake hands,” Moss said as he folded his arms in front of his chest and placed his fingertips safely inside of his armpits. “There are better things to shake.” Before Kelsey could ask him to explain further, Newton leaned forward, took her hand and kissed it.

  “Enchanted,” he said as he released her hand.

  “You are enchanted,” Kelsey replied. “You’ve been brought to life.”

  “I think we may be soulmates,” Newton said dreamily, and Kelsey smiled.

  “Because we both have hearts of stone?” she asked.

  “Perhaps,” he said as he weighed her response. “I was thinking it was more because we’re both wired to fight evil. It’s in our blood.”

  “You’re made of stone. You don’t have blood,” Moss said with irritation.

  “Don’t I?” Newton asked skeptically.

  “I know what you meant, though,” Kelsey said to the gargoyle. She saw some similarities in their natural dispositions.

  “Enough,” Moss said with a clap of his hands, “we have work to do.” At this statement, Kelsey looked back down at her forearm. She wasn’t sure if she disliked the fact that the scar was in the shape of a petal or if she disliked what the spell was doing to her more. Everything about the injury bothered her.

  “Can you help me? Do you know what this thing is?” Kelsey asked as she held up her forearm.

  “Yes – at least, we think so,” Nicholas said. “The sorcerer is trying to place his magic in nature so that it will multiply and increase the chaos in the kingdom. If he’s successful, it will spread on its own. He put disorder, doubt and other forms of destruction inside the plant. When you stepped on it, these things were released and landed on you. The chaos is attempting to take root inside of you.”

  “Can you get it off?”

  “Understand that removing the seed will not remove the effects,” the king interjected. “You may live with the repercussions of this experience for years.”

  “What?” Kelsey asked.

  “Just because the cause of the problem is removed doesn’t eliminate the effects. You may need to work through this for a long time to recover completely.”

  Kelsey thought for a few moments as she looked around the room. She stared at the tall windows and velvet drapes as she tried to understand the seriousness of the injury.

  “What kind of repercussions?” she asked.

  “The seed of doubt can shake your confidence, especially when you really need it,” the king answered. “This life is difficult enough with all of the physical and emotional trials already here. Adding an imaginary burden can be enough to break someone.”

  “But you’re going to be OK,” Newton interjected. “It didn’t change who you are. It only changes the way you view yourself. Inside you’re still the same person. I can smell it.”

  “All of you and your senses of smells,” Kelsey said with a sigh.

  “We’re all going to be here for you,” the king assured her. “I just don’t want you to have a false
sense of security that everything will be fine once the source of the injury is gone. It’s not that simple.”

  “OK,” Kelsey agreed, “but first things first. Let’s just get rid of the mark. We’ll deal with the whatever-happens-next when it happens.” She turned to Nicholas. “Can you get it off?”

  “I’ve prepared a solution of logic and reason,” Nicholas said as he held up a clear flask that looked as if it contained rubbing alcohol. “I think that this will combat the chaos and disorder that’s been implanted. But if that doesn’t work, we’ll try an elixir of common sense.”

  “However,” Moss interrupted, “the ingredients for common sense aren’t all that common, so to speak. We had more of those ingredients before Newton baked them into cookies and ate them all, but that’s another story.”

  “I baked those cookies for you, but you wouldn’t eat them,” Newton replied defensively, “and they would have done you some good.”

  “Regardless,” Moss continued, ignoring Newton’s remark, “we’ve studied the plant you brought, and we think this solution will work. We’ve been calling the plant ‘the seed of destruction.’ You’re lucky you had a piece of Megan’s soul to help protect you from self-destruction. That little bit saved you. It probably kept the seed from taking root in your heart.”

  Kelsey glanced over to the corner of the room where Megan and Roland were in conversation and watching from a distance. She smiled at them, and then turned her attention back to the king.

  “Bardou the wolf called it the seed of doubt,” she said.

  “Doubt and destruction are two of the main ingredients in the solution that the sorcerer fed to these plants,” Moss explained. “These plants could cause a variety of troubles.”

  “You won’t be completely cured overnight, but you will get better,” the king added as he patted her on the shoulder. “I have every confidence in the abilities of these two sorcerers.”

  “I don’t know if this will sting or burn or anything,” Nicholas said to Kelsey as he swirled the ingredients in the flask to mix them gently. “We’ve never done this before.” Nicholas took the flask and poured a bit of the clear liquid onto a cotton ball and then rubbed it onto the mark on Kelsey’s arm.