A Healer's Destiny

by Katherine J. Sinclair

  Chapter 12

  As the morning sun filled the room, Elah wondered what her training would entail and who was going to train her. She found a brown dress and readied herself as she didn't know what time her day would begin or what she would be doing. 

  Elah was out exploring the garden, when Adam came in. "Are you ready to begin your training?" he asked, from the garden door.

  "I'm not sure, I don't know what to expect" she admitted, shrugging her shoulders.

  "Don't worry, the first thing we will need to do is establish where we need to start" he said, smiling at her. 

  She followed him into a large open, essentially empty, room with timber floors and floor to ceiling windows. Elah felt confused by the lack of facilities but wasn't sure what would be needed to start with.

  “You need to wait here for Dainan" Adam instructed, as he watched her look around the room curiously.

  Elah started panicked as he turned to walk away. He was the first person to be nice to her, without an ulterior motive, since she lost her mother. "Please don't leave" she pleaded. 

  He turned and looked at her with a soft face, "I'm sorry but if I don't leave I will be late for my lesson."

  Sighing, Elah nodded and watched him leave. Once he closed the door behind himself, she walked over to see what was outside. She could see the forest across a grassed area and mountains in the distance, it was a very beautiful view.

  "Good morning, you must be Elah" a voice said, from behind her. 

  Elah spun around to see a man who appeared older than Adam, with long black hair that fell onto his white robe and emphasised his bright green eyes. "I'm Dainan" he said, examining her from across the room. 

  He walked across the room and stood in front of her. “Okay, just stand still and open yourself up” he said, examining her closely.

  “What?” Elah asked confused.

  “You just need to open your mind to me” he replied, placing both hands on either side of her head, just like Adam had.

  As she stood still, she could feel his energy run through her body and figured that the sensation was what others felt when she healed them. She wasn’t sure if others could follow where she sent her energy but she could feel where he was directing his energy and noticed he spend the majority of his time in her mind. She wondered what he was looking for and what his special gift was.

  “Do you and Adam have the same gift?” she asked, when he stood back.

  “Umm kind of” he replied and as he ran his hand through his hair she noticed his ear was rounded at the top.

  “Your not fae are you?” Elah asked, not knowing what to expect, as she took a step away from him.

  “No, with the exception of you, everyone here is either a wizard or witch” he answered calmly.

  Elah’s jaw dropped open and excitement ran through her with a hint of fear. She had wanted to meet a wizard and thought she would never get the opportunity. Now that she had one standing in front of her she didn’t know what to say. She just stood there looking at him, trying to find what was different about him, besides his ears. Besides being taller than her, which most were, she couldn’t find any differences and wondered what made him a wizard.

  “Elah, you are going to have to stop staring?” he asked, breaking the silence and looking at her amused.

  Elah put her head down to look at the floor and felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I’ve never meet anyone other than fae” she said softly.

  “It's okay but I believe you have meet others, you just didn’t realise it”

  “Oh, how do you know if someone is different?”

  “Well, most of the time you don’t, unless you know what to look for. It’s not a bad thing, some just want to live their lives in peace. Now tell me everything you know about your gift.”

  Elah hesitated at first but then told him what she knew and what she could do. He quietly listened to every word and nodded at her often. Once she finished telling him what she knew, he stood in front of her and looked at her, appearing deep in thought. Elah felt quite exposed, what was he thinking about or did she say something wrong.

  “Well I guess we have a starting point then” he finally said, rubbing his chin. “While you are a strong healer, there is more to your gift then just simply healing.”

  Elah looked at him surprised. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Have you talked to non-vocal creatures yet?”

  “Besides a wolf I healed once, no”

  “Tell me about the wolf”

  “Well there really is not much to tell, it had some broken bones and I healed them. I have to admit I was surprised when it talked to me in my mind but nothing else happened”

  “You also have the ability to enter creatures minds, so you can heal their minds” he said, watching her hang onto every word he was saying. “With the exception of the fae, no creature can kill you, inflict pain yes but not kill.”

  “I had no idea”

  “Well now that you do, we can now start to strengthen your other abilities. We will start with helping you to talk to the creatures you meet and move on to entering their minds.”

  Dainan took Elah for a walk in the garden and found some small creatures and told her how to talk to them. The gardens were beautiful with all kinds of different species of plants, attracting different types of animals, not just the gums and forest species she was use to.

  As the sun started to fall, Elah was surprised by Dainan’s sudden need to finish up and go inside. She followed him in and wondered what she was meant to do now. He led her into a large dinning hall and sat her down next to him.

  To her surprise, the dinning room started to fill with men dressed in robes and women dressed in dark long sleeved dressed. It seemed everyone was wearing long sleeves, even Elah’s new dress had long sleeves, although she had to admit it was comfortable and she suspected there were other reasons besides comfort that they had long sleeves.

  She watched as a young lady sat down next to her. She smiled at Elah and waved her hand over the table producing a plate, a knife and a fork. The lady noticed Elah’s surprise and smiled at her again.

  “Here let me help you” she said and waved her hand over the table in front of Elah to produce a matching setting.

  “Thank you” Elah said, touching the plate to see if it was real.

  “You aren’t a witch are you?” she asked.

  “No” Elah replied, feeling like the odd one out.

  “I’m Violet” she said, introducing herself.

  “I’m Elah and I’m also fae” Elah responded, unsure of herself.

  “Oh, nice to meet you. At first I thought you must be a witch since there is so much power surrounding you” Violet said inspecting Elah. “You must have a powerful gift.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that”

  “Well I guess that’s why you are here, to explore and understand your gift.”

  Dainan leaned over and waved his hand over Elah’s plate creating a plate full of familiar food. He smiled at her and Violet and went back to his conversation with the person across from him. Elah poked and sniffed the food before taking a small taste. It tasted normal and there was nothing different about the texture, so she ate her fill.

  After dinner Violet invited Elah to the library to pick out some books. They sat in a couple of chairs by a fireplace and talked for hours. Elah found that Violet led a pretty solitary life, mostly working on projects in other realms. She predominantly worked with the natural elements but could work with non-natural elements as well.

  Elah enjoyed getting to know another female and felt comfortable talking about herself and her gift with Violet. Violet even produced two warm cups of milk and made some suggestions on what books Elah might like to read. Elah enjoyed reading all the suggested books in her spare time.

  Over the next few weeks Elah and Violet became quite close and Elah found herself looking forward to meeting with Violet in the evenings, even though she was getting to
know Dainan and quite enjoyed his company but Elah just wanted to share some time with another female.

  Elah became very upset the evening Violet told her she had to tend to matters in another realm and was not sure when she would be back. Elah only ever saw Violet once more for one evening when she popped in to gain council from one of the elder wizards.

  It broke Elah’s heart to lose a friend again but she understood that Violet had to work and that involved going to other realms. Elah found herself often wondering what Violet did and what it was like to visit other realms but was never given the opportunity to even see the portal.

  When Violet left, Dainan spent more time with Elah in the evenings and would sometimes produce different foods for her to taste. She would miss him when he left for other realms but he never spent too much time away. Elah was grateful for this.

  While Dainan was away, she would spend extra time with Adam, who she watched grow his abilities. They would share their experiences and talk about their progress. Adam was strongest with fire and would light a room full of candles with one wave of his hand. Sometimes he would play with a flame in his hand as they talked about their day, as if it was a normal thing to do.

  It took over a year before Elah was able to fluently communicate with different creatures and found herself talking to the local animals more and more, especially when Dainan was tending to matters in other realms and Adam was busy in his own lessons. And by the time she had learnt how to enter minds, she had lived at Treriton for over three years.

  Elah would often think about her family and how she would heal them, especially River but she had no idea how far off from entering his mind she was and wished she could see him. She also figured Lavi would have moved on by now and hoped that Talib had gone off the university.

  During her time at Treriton, Elah had meet several other wizards and some beautiful witches. None of them came close to the beauty Violet had, in Elah’s option but they all had their own beauty. They all had different strengths and Elah liked them all for different reason.

  When ever a new witch or wizard would come and visit, they would usually sit down and ask her questions about the fae and Elah would ask them questions about the realms they had visited. Elah gave up trying to count how many realms there were after she lost count at about the one hundred mark.

  Most of the wizards and witches seemed to spend most of their time in other realms but maintained their own quarters at Treriton. Elah spent most of her time with Adam and Dainan when they were around but Dainan, being her trainer, was who she got to know best and came to think of him as family.

  Dainan would tell her about the different realms he visited and would sometimes bring her different items. Her favourite was light blue knitted blanket he obtained in the human realm. She kept it on her bed and would use it to remind herself that there was kindness in the people she meet.