by Peter Hartz
He pulled his friend into his room, and shut the door.
Pushing Jimmy onto the bed, he stepped back. “You see that pen on the desk?” Jimmy nodded, wondering what was up as he looked at it, then jolted upright as it lifted off the desk, and hovered in midair as if on a string or something. Then it moved over to Daniel’s hand.
“How the heck are you doing that?” He asked in amazement, as he at the pen floating in front of him in midair. “I don’t see any strings or anything!”
“I am doing it with my mind! I can’t believe this! And you know what else I can do?”
Jimmy gaped at his friend. “What?!?”
“I can heal myself! Watch this…” Daniel held up his hand as if to wave, concentrated, and the pen flew up, then into his left hand in a sharp motion, breaking the skin again. Daniel pulled the pen out of his hand, and it started to bleed. Daniel showed it to Jimmy, who was shocked at what he was seeing.
Daniel closed his eyes and touched that current inside himself once again; only this time, he felt an answering current from everything around him, connecting with him deep inside. Reaching out with his mind, he pulled that current into him, and opened his eyes as he covered the wound from the pen with his other hand, willing the energy to heal him. As he concentrated, he suddenly saw the wound glow briefly. Then he focused again on what he was trying to do.
As both boys watched in amazement, a green light emanated from Daniel’s right hand, and the shallow wound in his left hand from the pen disappeared as if it had never been there before.
“Isn’t that incredible?” Daniel crowed to his friend.
Jimmy shook off his shock, and looked at his longtime friend with new eyes. “Can you heal others?”
Daniel thought about it for a moment, and shook his head. “I don’t know. I just found out I could do this earlier today. I haven’t tried.”
Jimmy stood up. “Will you try to heal me?”
Confusion flashed across Daniel’s face. “What do you need me to heal? There’s nothing wrong with you, is there?”
“Well,” Jimmy returned, “That’s easy enough to do. Jab me with that pen. Or a pin or something.”
“I can’t do that to you!” Daniel pulled back, aghast at the idea of harming anyone, let alone his friend.
“I can do it. Here. I have to know if you can do this.” There was a note in Jimmy’s voice that Daniel suddenly recognized. Desperate longing. And in a flash, he understood.
Grimly determined, he stood. “I can’t hurt you. But if you can, I will try to heal you.”
Jimmy looked around, and reached over to Daniel’s bulletin board. Pulling off a pin, he took a deep breath, and slashed the back of his hand, hoping it didn’t hurt too much. It did, though.
Daniel nodded, and looked at the cut on Jimmy’s hand, trying to bring up the sight he saw just before he healed himself, and there it was. A not-so-faint green glow was coming from the new wound. As Daniel held on to this new vision, he looked his friend over, and saw several other areas that glowed green as well. All the other areas that glowed had a greenish sheen that was nearly grey, with only a hint of color in them, and Daniel understood. They were old injuries that had mostly healed, but had left their mark behind.
“Did you break your arm at one point? It looks like the bone cracked or something.”
Jimmy gasped. “That happened before we moved here. I fell off my bike when I was seven. I had a cast on for like eight weeks. How do you know that?”
“I seem to have this way of seeing that shows me old and new injuries. I see a few on you. They are grey-green, barely green at all. The cut on your hand is very green, but it is not that bright, probably because it is not very serious.”
Daniel reached for the current deep inside, and channeled it into his hand. The greenish glow grew, and he moved his hand over the cut Jimmy had just made.
Jimmy felt a brief, electrical tingle, and when it went away, he looked at his hand. The wound was gone. He started to pull away, but Daniel wasn’t finished. He grabbed Jimmy’s wrist with his right hand, and directed the current out his left hand as he passed moved over Jimmy’s left arm, where the old wound quickly disappeared.
“Does that feel better? The glow there is gone.” He didn’t stop there, though. He suddenly looked at Jimmy’s head, and saw something else – a bluish glow behind his eyes. Daniel suddenly connected that with why Jimmy wore glasses all the time. He spoke softly to his friend. “Take off your glasses, Jimmy.”
Jimmy jolted as if someone had stuck his finger in a light socket, then quickly took his glasses off. Only a few feet away, Daniel was suddenly out of focus. Jimmy’s vision was pretty bad.
Daniel focused on the current, and moved his hand over Jimmy’s face and eyes, but the greenish glow did not make the blue glow from Jimmy’s eyes go away.
“Nothing happened. Was something supposed to happen?” Jimmy asked anxiously.
“Hmmm. Your eyes glow blue, but your cut and your arm and everything else glowed green. I wonder…” He thought about it, and then looked at his hand. He tried to change the glow from his hand to blue, thinking that fixing vision must be different than fixing injuries, and his hand suddenly emanated a brilliant sapphire blue. Smiling now, he moved it over Jimmy’s forehead, his friend’s eyes so wide he could see white around the entire iris in each. He held his hand there while directing the blue glow into his friend’s head and eyes. The matching blue glow from Jimmy’s eyes faded slowly, then went away entirely.
“Oh my God!” Jimmy looked around, then at his hands, then leaned over to look out the window. “Danny! I can see perfectly! What did you do? Sorry, Daniel! What did you do?”
“I think I fixed your eyes. Wait a moment, let me fix everything else I see on you.”
Jimmy waited as Daniel pulled the current into himself, shaped it, and, in a flash of insight, reached out to Jimmy to shake his hand.
Jimmy took his hand, and as quickly as he could, he willed the green energy to flow throughout Jimmy’s body, and watched as it erased every area that glowed green. In the blink of an eye, every grey-green glow in Jimmy went out.
Daniel stepped back, held the vision a moment longer, and nodded when he didn’t see anything else that needed work. It was getting much faster and easier each time he did it, he noted. Then he looked Jimmy in the eye. “When does your dad get home from work?”
Jimmy nodded, then looked at his watch, amazed that he could see, stunned at everything that had just happened, and tried to hold his elation in check at the possibilities that rushed through his mind.
“In the next half hour. Can you do it?”
Daniel seemed to straighten, looking suddenly much more mature and, somehow, maybe just a bit taller. “I want to find out.”
Jimmy nodded, and they silently walked out of the house together.
Daniel looked around at the neighborhood as they started the two-block walk back to Jimmy’s house. The sights and sounds of the suburban environment around them suddenly pulled at his focus. Everything looked the same, yet somehow different. The sidewalk seemed more dull and drab than usual, but the grass, trees and bushes arranged against houses and along property lines all looked more alive than ever before, as if the color had been artificially turned up in a photo editing program. A bright red cardinal flew past him, a splash of brilliant color against his field of vision, and he seemed to be able to watch every pump of its wings as it dipped then pushed hard to soar up and out of sight into the trees lining the street. A cat hid behind a bush a few doors down the way, its yellow eyes following their path and making contact with his briefly as they went by. And the sounds came to him much clearer, as well. A warm, light breeze was blowing under a clear blue sky just visible through breaks in the leaves of the trees overhead, rustling everything in its path.
“Do you think you can do it, Daniel?” Jimmy asked with quiet anxiety as they walked down the street and around the corner towards Jimmy’s house.
“I think
I can. I was able to heal everything wrong with you, and some of it was much older than your dad’s injury, right?” Daniel’s voice was low, but confident. “I will give it a shot. I have to try.”
Jimmy was so grateful his friend was willing to attempt to heal his dad that he had to hold back tears.
“Why do you think you can do this all of a sudden?” The question was fairly simple, but Daniel didn’t have the answer.
“I have no idea. I was just reading my favorite book, you know the one, and I reached out to the pen on my desk. I could suddenly feel it as if it were in my hand, and when I tried to pull it towards me, it flew so fast it stuck into my hand. When it fell off, I saw it was bleeding. I was so shocked by this that I tried to make the pain go away, and when it did, the hole the pen made went with it.” Daniel relayed the story quietly, as if others were listening.
Jimmy had no idea what to think about what had happened to his best friend. He could only think about what he so desperately wanted Daniel to do. One thing was obvious, though. If he was able to do it, Jimmy would never be able to pay him back for it. That much he knew for certain.
They turned the corner to Jimmy’s street, and saw that the minivan was already in the driveway. Jimmy’s dad must have gotten home early, as he was rolling his wheelchair heading down to the mailbox at the end of the driveway to get the mail.
As they got within ten feet of where Jimmy’s father was getting the mail out of the mailbox, Daniel turned on his special vision, and looked at Paul, Jimmy’s dad. He was so shocked at how much damage he saw that he nearly stopped walking.
The car accident three years earlier had nearly killed Paul, and had left him paralyzed from the waist down. It was a week that Daniel was certain he would never forget any of it. Even now, the moment that Jimmy had called him in tears to tell him his father might die was still crystal clear. Daniel had told tell his mother what happened, and she had instantly swung into action. Together Daniel and his mother had taken care of everything else while Jimmy’s mother spent every moment she could at the hospital, waiting for her husband to wake up, and pestering every doctor she could for any scrap of information. Jimmy had stayed with Daniel in his room, and had cried himself to sleep next to Daniel, wondering if his father would still be alive in the morning, while Daniel hugged his friend, tears running down his own face.
The recovery had been slow, with weeks spent in the intensive care unit, which turned into months in physical therapy. But Paul had worked incredibly hard to get back everything he could, and nearly fifteen months later, he had returned to his job for a local television station, managing their computers and technology.
Daniel’s mind returned to the present as he surveyed what he could see in his friend’s father. Damaged nerves, broken vertebra that had never fully healed, atrophied muscles everywhere below the injury; the damage was extensive. The worst of it, and obviously central to everything: Paul’s spinal cord was completely severed in his low back where the broken vertebrae had been surgically fused together.
But it wasn’t just the injuries from the accident. A lifetime of other injuries, seen to Daniel through his special vision, was evident to him in the man in the wheel chair. Most of them glowed a faint, grey-green color, like Jimmy’s arm. A broken shoulder that had left a faint glow, a knee that had been torn up in high school football decades before; anything that Paul had ever suffered was visible to Daniel’s sight. There was almost no place in him that didn’t seem to have been hurt at one point or another.
Paul, Jimmy’s dad, looked over as the boys walked up to him, then grinned in amusement as his son’s friend Daniel offered his hand in a handshake, something that had never happened before. “Hello, Daniel, it’s good to see you again.” As he looked into Daniel’s eyes, he reached out to shake the young man’s hand, and suddenly, a very warm, comforting feeling shot up his arm, into his body, and roared through him from the top of his head down to his toes. Daniel concentrated at changing as much as possible as quickly as he could, knowing that he might only have one chance to do this if Paul pulled free of his grip before he was finished. Time seemed to slow down during his moment of hyper-focus as he pulled from that current of energy deep inside him and all around them, changed it to the purest green color he could think of, and literally flooded it into the form in front of him as fast as possible, seeing the entire being as one container he needed to fill as quickly as possible.
Paul instinctively tried to pull his hand back, but Daniel’s surprisingly strong grip held him fast for a few more moments before letting go. He looked at Daniel’s hand in surprise, and thought he saw a faint glow for a moment, but when he blinked, it wasn’t there.
Jimmy turned to Daniel, and asked, “Did it work?”
Daniel looked at Paul with his vision, and saw that every old injury was gone – erased, as if it had never existed. The spinal fusion had been reversed, and every vertebra looked perfect. The spinal cord had been reattached. Even muscles that had atrophied away were now toned and strong. He nodded.
Jimmy turned back to his dad, and Paul was stunned to see tears coursing down his son’s face. Concerned, he started to reach out, but Jimmy threw himself into his father’s lap, wrapping his arms around his father’s shoulders, and sobbed.
Then he realized something. He could feel Jimmy’s weight against his legs. His mind froze. Then his hand reached out, around Jimmy, who felt the movement. Jimmy quickly stood up and stepped back. Paul touched his leg. And for the first time since that horrible day, could feel his hand on his own leg. Tears suddenly welled up in Paul’s eyes, and he gasped, sobbing himself. Jimmy had gotten himself somewhat under control again saw the tears on his father’s face, and lost it once more.
“What happened? Daniel? Did you do this? I felt something when we shook hands. What was that?” His voice sounded almost watery as he tried to make words get through his suddenly overwhelming emotions.
“I don’t know how to explain it, Mr. Bretton. I just… I can heal. Can you stand up? I… erased everything wrong with you.” Paul just looked at the young man with incredulous eyes, his mind trying desperately to process what had happened, and what he was feeling.
“I don’t know. Wow. This is incredible. Wait a minute.” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath as a more tears made their way down his face, and held it for a ten count. Then he opened his eyes. His hands were almost robotic, locking the brakes on the chair in well-practiced habit. He then reached down to lift each foot up with his hands to flip the foot rests up and out of the way. He looked down at the cement pavement of his driveway in front of him without really seeing it.
Then, steeling himself, he leaned forward, and stood unassisted for the first time in three long, impossibly hard years. He looked down at the ground, suddenly further away than it had been in a long time, and the enormity of what had happened overwhelmed him. He sat down suddenly, grateful the chair was still there, then leaned all the way back, sagging against the back rest.
Jimmy stepped quickly up to his father’s side, and went down to his knees. “Dad! Are you ok?”
“This is so overwhelming! What happened?”
Jimmy stepped around to the front of the chair, and pulled his dad to his feet.
Paul looked around, and saw Daniel standing there with an incredible smile on his face that seemed to reach all the way past his ears to his hairline, as if he had just gotten the greatest gift in the world.
Paul swayed a bit as his balance slowly returned after so long, and as his stability returned, so did his tears. “Oh my god. OH MY GOD!” Sobbing in happiness, he swept the two boys into an embrace, and cried as he hadn’t before since finding out that he would never walk again. Then he laughed through the tears.
Emotions so strong were overwhelming the three, when suddenly they heard something from the open garage door.
All three turned to look towards the source of the sound. Marie Bretton had come out to see what was taking so long, only to see her brave, em
otionally strong, incredible husband, standing. On his own. Actually hugging their son and his friend Daniel so hard, their feet were off the ground. She lost her balance, and sat down hard on the cement just inside the garage door.
“Oh crap! Mom!!”
“Honey!!”
“Mrs. Bretton!”
Chapter 15
The hallway that Giltreas took them down was different than what they had been in before, and led to a stairway that climbed to a second level. A short hallway after the stairs led to a doorway covered in a heavy drape that had two guards with lances taller than themselves stationed outside it.
Giltreas stopped outside the door, and spoke to the guards. “My mother has requested my presence and that of my friends.”
The guard on the right looked them over for a moment, taking in Dave and Allison’s strange clothing, and Michelle’s robe, then his eyes went to the three dogs accompanying the humans. Sadie had sat when Michelle stopped, but Abby stood looking up at the two strangers before her, wagging her tail so hard that her entire posterior went with it. Max, on the other hand, wagged his tail fiercely at the end of his leash, standing on his hind legs as he tried to get close enough to meet and greet what was obviously two new friends that he could play with. Abby, while less enthusiastic than Max, nonetheless tried to engage the two for some play as she went into play stance, her tail wagging.
Sadie looked over at Max, and woofed once. The sound of the word “Sit!” came from her, and Max looked at her in astonishment, then plopped down to sit as directed. His stub of a tail continued to move, though.
The guards laughed and nodded. The spells they used to augment their senses in their role guarding their queen showed no evil or ill intent in any of these two- or four-footed beings in front of them. The one on the right turned and spoke quietly into the room behind the curtain, then nodded and held the drape aside, motioning them inside.
Giltreas moved forward calmly and confidently, and the rest of the group tried to act as if they knew what they were doing.