Ancestors, I couldn’t believe I’d survived all that.
Even my bones felt like elastic. They’d been mended back together and weren’t sure how to function properly. The doctors repaired the worst of me with potions, magic, and modern medicine, but I could tell not every bit of me was fixed. From beyond the closed door, I could hear my mother and husband speaking in hushed voices.
I told my beating heart to calm down. I was scared right now. Scared as hell. I’d tried to put weight on my feet, and for the first time in my life, they’d failed to hold me up.
I did my best to concentrate on my legs, and found I had a very faint sensation in my thighs. I could barely tell the scratchy Institute sheets were rubbing against them, so much so that I wondered if it was my imagination and not an actual feeling. I tried to move my legs, but all feeling stopped at the knees.
Something wasdefinitelywrong. I attempted to lift my left foot, even just a little, and it failed to move.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat and blinked away the tears. No more crying today. I’d been crying, and everyone else had been crying, for ancestors knew how long. I hadn’t gone to the Ancestral Lands, come back again and survived every hell the Infernal Underground had put me through to lie in this bed and weep. No, sir. I was getting up and out of here.
Even if it only meant using some fucking shampoo. I bet my legs were hairy after laying around for a week.
It crossed my mind how absolutely ridiculous that was. Trust me to worry about something as silly as shaving when I didn’t know if I could fucking walk.
But maybe that’s how it was. My mind couldn’t process what was happening to me, so it chose to fixate on something else. Something benign, something I knew I could fix.
I mean… I didn’t even feel upset about it. Or…worried.My legs failing to work was just… a thing.
Was I in shock?
Charlie raised his voice, and Mama shushed him. I strained to hear their hushed words through the door.
“There has to be more you can do,” Charlie insisted.
“But there’s not.” Mama sounded completely broken. “I’ve done my best, and I can’t heal her. I don’t know why my magic isn’t working. My powers should’ve helped, if not outright fixed her spine completely. The doctors performed surgery to put everything back in place, then, once they finished, I tried to heal her, to help her recovery. But my magic couldn’t fix it.”
“The surgeons didn’t allow you in the room?” Charlie asked.
“No, not until after, because the surgeons needed to set her spine and organs properly before my healing magic could fix the rest. She should be able towalk, Charlie. My Anichi magic is the strongest in our tribe… she should be completely well by now. But it did nothing.”
What the hell did that mean? I’d never seen someone hurt so badly my mother’s magic couldn’t make it right again. She couldn’t heal chronic illnesses, but my injury had resulted from an accident, and they’d gotten to me quickly. Why couldn’t Mama reverse this?
“Do you have any theories?” Charlie asked.
“Perhaps my healing magic didn’t work when her spirit was in the Ancestral Lands, because her body was alive on the operating table, but her soul was somewhere else. Anichi magic is Spirit magic, so if her soul wasn’t in her body at the time, maybe the healing couldn’t take place.”
“But shouldn’t you be able to heal her now?”
“I’ve tried, again and again. Something isn’t right.”
I attempted to break into Charlie’s thoughts, but he firmly shut me out. I couldn’t get past the iron barricade he’d put up, and I heard the sound of their footsteps as they walked away from the door.
I wasn’t sure what the hell they were talking about out there, but I was damn well determined to get out of this bed somehow and fix my fucking hair. The matter that I’d died hardly had bearing on the fact that I needed to look good.
And right now, I bet I looked like shit.
Oberi lay at the foot of my bed. He gave a couple of thumps on the mattress with his tail and said,I’m so pleased you’re here, beloved. I feared for a moment you’d ditch me with Mister Sunshine over there.
I would have laughed if I knew it wouldn’t hurt, so I merely smiled. “I’m just happy to be alive. I guess I can’t complain about the rest.”
I groaned as a sharp sensation shattered apart my organs before fading to a dull ache. “Though I gotta say, the Ancestral Lands weren’t easy to pass up.”
Isn’t it wonderful?Oberi gave a dreamy sigh and laid his head on my ankle.My own memories of the Ancestral Lands are… muddled… but I recall enough to know that it is a very special place.
“This is a very special place, too,” I said. “Even the Institute.”
Oberi gave a short laugh.That it is.
