Fren was there to take the infant when it arrived. The little brown body was incredibly small and doll-like and made no sound when its father cradled it in his arms. Fren stared at his newborn and ran his fingers over the infant’s face as if he could not believe it was real.
“Shouldn’t the baby be crying?” I whispered to Remy, trying not to disturb the boggies. Fren cooed at the baby and Mol lay there with her eyes closed, too exhausted to even look at her child.
Remy nodded, his face grim.
That’s when I felt it, the familiar pulling sensation drawing me toward the baby like steel to a magnet. I gasped softly. “He’s sick, so sick…” The first icy tendrils of death brushed my skin and I knew we were too late. If I’d only gotten here earlier.
I yanked off my coat. “Give him to me! Hurry – there’s not much time.” Already I could feel the new life draining away.
Remy reached for the baby but Fren shook his head, holding the little body to his chest. Grunting forcefully, Remy leaned forward again. Whatever he said to the boggie worked because Fren relinquished the infant to him. I held out my hands and Remy placed the naked, wrinkled little body in them. It was no bigger than a week old kitten and as soon as I touched it I felt the weak fluttering heartbeat and the coldness already settling into the tiny limbs. “Try to hold on, little one,” I murmured as I pulled him to my own chest and covered him with my hands. Then I reached inside of myself and let my wall down.
It was like opening a furnace door. Heat flared in my chest and roared through my veins like a spark following a fuse. I didn’t have to tell my power where to go, it always knew. My body buzzed like a live wire as currents of energy raced along my nerve endings toward my hands and chest, any part of me touching the dying creature.
Normally I release the power in a controlled stream, letting it flow gently to find the source of injury or illness. It’s so strong, so forceful, that I worry it will shock my patients and kill them outright. But when a body is shutting down and preparing to die, a jolt to the system is sometimes the only thing that can help it. It’s kind of like those defibrillator paddles they use in emergency rooms, only mine works on the whole body instead of just the heart. That’s the only way I know how to describe it; my power didn’t exactly come with an operations manual.
The heat pooled in my hands until they gave off a pale white glow. Hotter and hotter the fire burned until it felt like I grasped a hot metal pipe, but I didn’t stop. I bit my lip to keep from crying out and held on, waiting for the power to grow to the right intensity before I released it.
Power exploded from my hands, pouring into the little body. I felt it race through veins and bones and weave through tissue, saturating every cell like a spring storm saturating the earth. My power is an extension of me so I felt it coiling around the failing heart, pulsing and surging. With each push it sent a spike of energy through the heart, causing the creature to jerk and spasm before it went still again. I sent wave after wave of power into the body, praying that each would be the one to fix the damaged heart.
I lost track of the minutes but at least ten passed before I was forced to accept that I could not save the boggie. My power was the only thing keeping his heart pumping and I could not keep it up much longer. One of the earliest and cruelest lessons I learned about my power is that sometimes I can’t save someone, no matter how much of myself I pour into them. I held the baby away from me and felt a painful tug at my chest when I looked at its lifeless face.
I’m so sorry, little one.
A broken sob rent the air. I opened my eyes to meet Mol’s stricken stare as she grieved for the baby she had never held in her own arms. My heart ached for her. No one should watch the one they love die.
It’s not fair!
We had done everything right. Mol’s baby deserved to live.
I pulled the power back to me until my hands grew hot again. The pain lanced through me but I barely felt it past the anger building inside me. I sent power shooting back through the baby with the force of a lightning strike. That much energy could stop a heart completely but there was nothing to lose now.
The power drained away. I was used up and vaguely aware of Remy and Fren breathing and Mol’s sobs as the little heart pressed against mine gave a long irregular flutter and stopped.
There was only silence.
Then… lub-lub, lub-lub, lub-lub.
Then the slightest of movements as tiny lungs expanded with their first breath of air.
Then the tickle of a tiny foot moving against my chest.
I lifted the infant, cupped in my hands, and watched in wonder as the squashed little face quivered and the tiny mouth opened. It started as a faint wheezing sound that quickly became a mewling wail and suddenly my hands were full of a squirming, crying, healthy baby boggie.
I laughed and cried at the same time as shouts filled the room. Mol grunted anxiously and held out her arms and I laid her baby boy on her chest. I watched as mother and father touched their child with awe, exploring the baby they both thought they had lost.
I sat back heavily and then laid down on the dusty floor. Healings always drain me, some more than others, and normally I just need a few minutes of rest to put me right again. But bringing back a life from so close to death is very hard and my body felt like I had run half a marathon. No matter how many times I used my power, it did not get easier.
I was six when I discovered what I could do. In the beginning, I often over did it until I learned not to drain myself too much. It’s easy to overlook your own welfare when you are trying to save a life. I had to learn how to lock my power away unless I needed to call on it. Otherwise, every time I came within a few feet of a sick or injured creature, the energy got sucked right out of me. Now when I heal, I let out just enough to do the job. Releasing a torrent of power like I’d just done for the boggie was almost like overloading a circuit, except there is no breaker to reset my energy. My power always replenishes itself; it just takes a little while.
A cool hand touched my arm. “You okay, Sara?” I heard the worry in Remy’s voice and I gave him a weary smile.
“I’ll be fine. You know how I am. Just need to rest a bit.”
“Yes, you rest.” He gently lifted my head and stuffed my folded jacket beneath it. I heard him talking to Fren and Mol and sounds of movement but it all became muffled as I drifted off.
Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep I felt a familiar stirring in the back of my mind. After expending so much power, I was not surprised it was on the move. It was always active after a healing when my power was low. Not that it would get far. Even exhausted, I had enough left in me to push it back down.
I called it the beast. It used to scare me having this dark thing inside my head even though I knew it came with my power. I read a quote once that said ‘when you light a candle, you also cast a shadow’ and I wondered if the same was true for me. My power was the candle – bright and warm – and the beast was its shadow – sullen and dark. Remy said that most power is a balance of good and bad and I should not be afraid of something that is a part of me. I did not embrace the beast, but I had no choice but to learn to live with it.
The room was quiet when I woke up and the long shadows told me it was late afternoon. Turning my head to the side, I saw I was alone. The boggies had most likely gone home but I knew Remy was still here. He would never leave me alone while I recovered.
I groaned as I got to my feet. My body ached, partly from the intense healing and partly from lying on the hard floor, and I stretched several times to get the kinks out. Then I picked up my coat and went downstairs where I found Remy looking out through the cracks in one of the boarded up living room windows. I walked over and leaned against the wall, ignoring the peeling wallpaper that snagged my hair.
He smiled down at me. “You sleep deep this time. Feel better?”
“That was a hard one,” I admitted. “But worth it.” I heard laughter outside and I peered through the crack at a group of teenage boys hanging out down the street. Remy had been watching them in case any of them decided to venture this way while I slept. I wondered what they’d do if they came in and found a troll waiting for them. Probably wet their pants. If I didn’t know my fierce friend I’d probably do the exact same thing.
“Mol and the baby are okay?” I asked.
“Yes. Fren and Mol take baby home to show family. They say you have big magic. Ask if you are sorceress.”
“Hardly.” If any magic had happened here today, it had come from Remy, the way he’d helped Mol deliver her baby. Though he didn’t have my power, he was as much a healer as I was and his knowledge of medicines never failed to amaze me. In troll years he was still a teenager like me, but he already knew more than I could hope to learn in a lifetime.
He looked at the street again. “It get dark soon.”
“Not for another hour. And I’m not afraid of the dark.”
“Uncle will not be happy if you stay out late.”
“Nate’s not happy about most things I do,” I quipped. Remy shot me a disapproving look and I said, “You know it’s true. I love Nate but we’re just so…different. He wants me to be someone I’m not. He wants a normal niece who has girlfriends and joins the band or the cheerleading squad or whatever. That’s not me and it never will be.”
“That not true. He just want you to be happy.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Since when are you an expert on human parents?”
“All good parents want children to be happy.” He pushed away from the window. “Come. Boys leave.”
I poked him in the back as I followed him to the back door. “You know, you’re getting kind of bossy these days.”
He let out a gravelly laugh. “Not even trolls boss you.”
“That’s right! I’m a strong independent woman and don’t you forget it.”
We crossed the yard and slipped through the fence. Remy turned to me. “You do good today.”
“
We
did good,” I said. “By the way, you never did tell me what Baktu is.”
“Baktu is winged serpent from desert lands.”
My brows drew together. “Huh? How does a serpent turn to crystals?”
“Crystals not serpent. It dried baktu dropping.”
“Dropping? You mean poop?” I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh! That’s disgusting, Remy!”
Remy laughed and started for the woods. “Baktu is poisonous serpent. Dropping makes strong medicine.”
Before I could reply he disappeared. I envy the way trolls can melt into their surroundings like vanishing into thin air. It’d be a handy skill to have at times.
The streets were empty when I walked back to the bus stop. Even though it was a Saturday evening, not a lot of people were headed into town so there were plenty of seats to choose from on the bus. The same driver always drove this route on weekends and he nodded at me when I dropped my change in the farebox.
At least I could relax on the return trip because Remy and I had done what we set out to do. I’d helped save two lives today – how many girls my age get to say that? Not that I enjoyed hanging out in smoky bars, doing illicit business with people who are the underworld equivalent of drug dealers. Just because I had enough wits to keep a cool façade and act like I knew what I was doing did not change the fact that I was in way over my head. But I couldn’t stop now, not when lives depended on me.
When Remy asked me two years ago to help him find powdered chimera horn to help a dying kelpie I had no idea there was an actual black market for that and practically anything else you can think of – if you can pay. Since then I’d found half a dozen other items for him and I also got pretty good at negotiating since none of them were cheap or easy to find. It’s not like you can buy hydra scales or hansling teeth on Amazon or eBay. Well not yet anyway.
We were lucky that Remy could afford to buy pretty much anything. Of course there are some things more valuable than even money, like the contents of the vial I gave Malloy, rare and nearly impossible to obtain. He’d sell his own mother to know how I’d gotten my hands on it but I’d never tell him – or anyone else. It was dangerous enough just letting someone like Malloy know that I had some to trade. People killed for a hell of a lot less. And if Remy’s people ever found out what we were up to… I shuddered at the thought.
Troll bile is a potent drug and priceless, not just because of what it can do but also because there are few brave enough to try to get it. Trolls are not only secretive and elusive; their vicious reputation keeps humans and nonhumans alike from seeking them out, let alone trying to take something from them.
It disgusted me when Remy first told me about it. But if you can get past the ungodly smell and not think about where it comes from, it has incredible regenerative properties. It can slow aging and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s and it can even reverse balding. I heard it can even fight certain types of cancer. I know from experience that it can not fix every injury, but half an ounce, like what I gave Malloy, could stop someone from aging for up to five years if used properly. It’s basically the fountain of youth and there are people who would pay almost anything to get their hands on it.
The younger the troll, the more potent the bile, but trolls are so protective of their young that it is near impossible to get close to them without meeting a horrible end. Remy gave me his own bile to barter with on his behalf, but his people would be furious if they ever got wind of what we were peddling. Trolls don’t like humans, though for some reason the elders tolerated Remy’s friendship with me. But I didn’t kid myself about where I stood with them. I was still just a human.