The Healer (34 page)

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.

With a sweep of its arm it invited him to sit. Distrusting it, he remained standing. It assured him he had nothing to fear, and cordially asked what he wanted.

“My meli,” said Payne. “Give it back.”

The creature smiled with a smile that reminded him of Meera. Was he sure of this? it asked. His meli, that was what he truly wanted?

Payne eyed it warily and nodded.

The smile deepened, and for an instant the human face blurred, as if the creature had trouble holding its shape. When the face became distinct again, the smile looked different, less like Meera's and more like his brother's. The shape of the face was different too; less human and more Grotesque.

“Very well. Come here then. I'll give it to you.”

Cautiously, Payne inched forward. The creature made no move until he was an arm's length away, and then it attacked.

It knocked him over, onto his back, and they grappled in the sand, throwing punches, clawing and kicking. Payne got in some blows, but he was no match for it, and before long the creature had him pinned.

It sat astride his chest, gloating. Enraged, Payne gathered every ounce of strength he had left, closed his eyes and with a surge of will, heaved the creature off. Then he rolled over and sprang to his feet, and before the creature could react, leapt forward. He pummeled it, first the body and then the face, furiously, relentlessly, sending it staggering backward. It held up its hands for him to stop, but he wouldn't stop, not until he had it pinned on its back.

The creature cried out to him. He was hurting it, wouldn't he please get off? Triumphant, Payne refused, but the creature whined and whimpered so that eventually he took pity on it and sat back a little, easing up the pressure of his knees. It was all the creature needed, and with a shove it threw him off and rolled away.

And now, abandoning its adopted form, it began to elongate, like glass being heated and stretched. Its arms and legs melted into its sides. Its tongue lengthened and narrowed into a featherlike whip. Its eyes lost their lids. Its skin turned thick and blue and scaly.

Payne was on his knees, staring at it, panting. Longer and longer it grew, until it loomed above him, blotting out the sun. It began to sway back and forth, languidly, almost listlessly, then coiled itself and prepared to strike.

Payne threw up his hands to protect himself.

Hissing, the creature reared its head and struck.

It was over in an instant. By the time Payne came to his senses, the creature had him wrapped up tight. Its skin was cool, which made it feel wet. Beneath the skin its body quivered with power and strength. Every time Payne exhaled, it tightened its grip on him. His breaths grew more and more shallow. Soon he would be out of air.

Its fat head floated above him, lolling side to side as if in time to a slow, sad song. Its tongue flicked out and kissed his cheek. Its blue eyes mocked him.

“Give up?” it hissed. “Give up?”

Crushed and starved for air, Payne could hardly think. He could barely speak. He drew what he knew to be his final breath.

“One wish,” he choked. “One last wish. Then yes, I give up. Do what you want with me.”

The creature's head stopped moving. Its tongue grew still. “What wish?”

“Dance,” said Payne. “Let me dance.”

He had no way to make music. The ortine was gone, and he didn't know how to sing. But his heart was beating and his blood was flowing, and once the creature released him, he could breathe again. He was alive, and that would have to do.

The first few steps were stiff and painful. He stumbled and tripped once over his own feet. His legs were weak, and it was hard to keep his balance in the sand.

He started over, widening his stance and bending his knees and paying attention to the ground's uneven contour with his toes. This steadied him, and he raised his arms. His shirt and pants had been torn off in the fighting. His naked skin was pale in the early light.

He lifted one foot, holding his balance, then slowly and carefully shifted his weight to the other. He repeated this motion, rocking back and forth, keeping his arms light, gaining confidence. He stomped his feet a few times, added a little hop to his landing, gradually picking up speed.

It was a clownish dance, but no one was there to call it that or ridicule him. It was silly, but what was that to him? Death was staring him in the face, coiled within striking distance, and here he was dancing. He glanced at the creature, and laughter bubbled out of him.

He had the rhythm now. He didn't need a drum to beat for him—he was his own drum, his own instrument. The music was in his body and his head. He flicked his tongue in and out and closed his eyes. The sun was bright behind his lids. Floaters shaped like worms swam across his field of vision. Tossing back his head, and stirring up these worms into a kind of spastic dance of their own, he started turning.

Sometime later he opened his eyes to discover that the creature was turning too. Tail planted in the sand, head ten or fifteen feet aloft, its lazy revolutions were timed to his. It remained coiled, and with every turn its coils tightened and its height diminished.

Payne kept dancing. The next time he opened his eyes, the sun was overhead, and the next time after that, it sat aflame atop the horizon. The sea glittered in its long horizontal light, and the beach blushed pink. The creature had contracted into a dense coil no taller than he was. Its head had flattened and its mouth had widened to the point that it seemed to be grinning. Its eyes were sleepy and glazed. The light in them was dying.

Payne felt a stab of pity and he slowed, prompting the creature to raise its head and speak.

“Don't stop. Finish it.”

He hesitated, and the creature gave a hiss that made his blood run cold. With a sense of foreboding he resumed his turning. Not like before but fast this time, round and round until he dug a hole for himself in the sand, round and round until his head was spinning. He whirled and danced without a thought for the creature or himself, without a thought at all, until every bone and sinew in his body ached. He whirled with a sense of dread and then of ecstasy, until he was gasping for air. He whirled and danced until his heart was bursting and he had to stop. Staggering then, he clutched his chest and then his
side, and it came to him that he was going to die, as surely as the creature was. It was the end of his life, and his eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the ground. He had danced the dance of death for both of them.

When he came to, he was lying facedown in a shallow bowl. His mouth was full of sand. Nearby was another bowl, slightly deeper, filled with a dark blue liquid. He had only the faintest idea of what had happened and how he'd arrived at where he was, or for that matter, where he'd come from. His mind felt emptied, like the pages of a book torn loose and blown away.

He did feel tired, that he knew, and his eyelids drifted shut. When he opened them again, the material in the bowl beside him had changed. It was thicker now, and a darker blue, nearly opaque.

He brushed the sand from his face and got to his feet. In his bag was a clutch of eggs, as well as a partly eaten cactus fruit, which he finished. He filled his bottle with water from the sea, then returned to the pool of liquid. It had a sweet, nutritious, bloodlike smell. He crouched at its edge, arms around his knees, studying it.

At length he rose and went to his bag and removed the eggs, which he piled beside the pool. One by one, very carefully, he dipped them in. The liquid, he noted, was sticky and adherent. It coated the eggs in an elastic blue skin. When all of them were bathed, he carried them to the nestlike cavity in the sand where he had woken and gently placed them in it, close but not touching. Then he sat back and waited for them to ripen and mature.

The days passed, and from time to time he turned them, brushing off the sand that stuck to them before nestling them back in place. Occasionally, he wandered down to the water's edge, but mostly he stayed beside the eggs.

In time they hardened. The sun did its work, and the skinlike coating, which had been translucent, turned opaque. Not long after that, the eggs began to jiggle and shiver. Hairline cracks appeared in the shells. The cracks widened, pieces of the shell broke off, and one by one the eggs opened.

From each emerged a hatchling, boy or girl, hair wet and plastered to their heads, bodies glistening. The heads and faces of these boys and girls were neither tesque nor human but stranger than both, stranger than strange. Payne carried each of them down to the water, where he washed them off. Then he carried them back to the nest. The pool beside it had shrunk, but not completely. In the center a portion of it remained. Payne collected the now-viscous liquid in his bottle, which he brought to the children, dabbing the dark fluid on their tiny tongues. Later, when they could, he had them drink it. When there was no more left, he scraped the sand and broke off pieces of crust where the pool had dried and caked, and had them suck on these, and when they grew teeth, chew and eat them.

Before long, the children were walking, then running. They ran away from him, crying out that he should run after them, that he should give chase. But he had no desire to give chase, to them or to anything. He had chased enough. And when he didn't, they laughed and chased each other and sooner or later ran back to him.

With time their limbs lengthened. Their bodies filled out. They grew taller, smarter, older. To Payne it all seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. When they reached adolescence, he gathered them around him and said that it was time to leave. They had a journey to make, they were a tribe, and he would guide them.

And he did, over many years, out of the desert, over the mountains and beyond the sea. And in the fullness of time they came into a valley, fed by rivers and surrounded by deep forests. It was a rich and fertile land, untouched by tesque or human.

Here they settled. And they flourished and they thrived. They
grew strong arms and legs, strong wills, strong minds, strong bodies. Strong faces too, strange faces, strangely featured, hideous but also beautiful, faces unlike any that the world had ever seen.

And like their father they were healers, every one of them, though none possessed a meli, nor did any of them need one. The skin where it might have been was no different from the skin around it. There was no os, no hidden organ, no internal gland. Yet they had the healing power to an advanced degree. A degree, in fact, that far surpassed any healer save their father who had ever come before. They healed through touch alone, touch and spirit, and they had no need to reify their healings, no need, that is, to make things concrete. They suffered no such earthbound limitation. Moreover, they had the power to heal tesques as well as humans, and animals if they chose. They had power to do a great many things, power, some said, commensurate with their monstrous beauty. Power that, despite the long and treacherous and often fruitless search to find their hidden valley, prompted many to seek them out. Tesques came, humans came, and as time went by, tesques and humans came together. For these healers born of Payne seemed to smile most on pilgrimages composed of both races. They seemed to love best the mix.

And Payne was proud of his children, and he was happy in his heart. But in time he grew restless and could no longer stay with them. And on the morning of the first day of the season they called Promise he left the valley and climbed the ridge to the east. When the forest was far below him and he could see in all directions, he stopped, and when night arrived, he built a fire and sat down. The sky above him was a sea of light, and there were shooting stars in great numbers. Each was swallowed quickly by the dark interstice between the points of light, all save one that arose from a long, serpiginous constellation in the north. This star seemed to fall forever. And in the hour before dawn a stranger appeared at the fire. Payne invited him to sit, and he accepted the invitation. The two of them shared the fire until daybreak, when the stranger stood, then rose. And Payne followed him.