Page 58 of The Moon Blessed King
They still don’t talk when they do eventually get a chance to ride.
It’s probably for the best.
They find their first group of travellers who fled from Altas not far from Great Dawn Pass. If this group is already here…it is very likely that others have already reached the pass and crossed the mountains. There truly will be no stopping this plague from spreading if that’s the case. Every territory will be affected.
Marina leads the way to the group. She hops from her horse in a swift and elegant motion. ‘Is anyone here feeling ill?’ she asks as Fenand Cieli dismount. The leader of their party, a dark-skinned man with a thick roll of cloth wrapped tightly around the top of his head, approaches her with a deeply earnest expression. He holds a bundle in his arms.
‘I am Rickard,’ he introduces slowly. ‘This is Maya.’ He holds the bundle up, revealing an ashen-faced child, perhaps no older than two. She is sweating and her lips are cracked. When her brown eyes open, the sclera is red and coated in pus. ‘Can you help her?’
Cieli hovers just behind Fen’s shoulder as she draws close to the child. Fen asks, ‘Who else?’ because she knows: it cannot just be little Maya. And it is not. It takes time, but the group begins to admit their woes: aches and pains, swelling and bruising, coughs and difficulty breathing. Some are better off than others, but they are all exhausted and tired, and the only reason their party had caught up in the first place is because this particular group had been slowing down more and more to accommodate the limitations of their sick charges.
‘What is it?’ Rickard asks as Fen reaches for the child to take into her arms. She is smaller than the first girl that Fen had failed to heal. Smaller than that first child who died because Fen couldn’t make things right. Maya’s limbs are limp and useless. Her head hangs heavily, and Fen needs to support every part of the girl to keep her from slipping free. She touches Maya’s skin and knows right away: there istoo muchlife in the girl’s body.
Her gut flora is replicating faster than it is being replaced. New blood cells are pumping into veins that are not managing the extra flow well enough. She is not passing waste but holding it all inside as every part of her body is screaminglive live liveand not enough of it is fading from existence.
‘Cieli, come here,’ Marina calls.
‘Can’t you do it with me?’ Fen asks.
‘The point is to make sure that Cieli can help you get to Himmelsheim, isn’t it?’ Marina cuts back. ‘Make sure you have a goodgrip on Maya’s arm. Youcannotlet go of her while Cieli is touching her.’
‘Iknow that,’ Fen mutters. But then Cieli approaches. She stands just by Maya’s head and carefully lifts one bare hand. She hesitates, Fen is gratified to see, for a moment just to make sure all is in place. Then, she reaches out and delicately places the tip of her pointer finger on the centre of Maya’s forehead.
Fen feels the moment that the connection takes hold. There is an instant thrust ofdieshoved ruthlessly into the body she is holding. Death cascades out from Cieli’s fingers, and almost immediately it is met by Fen’s own refusal to do just that. Fen has Maya firmly in her grip, and her presence blankets every part of the child, keeping her solidly in stasis despite Cieli’s efforts.
Cieli frowns, her eyes narrowing just a bit, and she moves so her whole palm is now touching Maya’s other cheek. They cradle the girl between them and Maya gasps out short breaths as she wriggles and squirms. Tears press at the corners of her eyes. All Fen feels isconflict.
She knows what Cieli is trying to do. She canfeelit, even. A violent combination of both life and death sluicing through her veins. It is so different from the razor-sharp precision of Cat and Marina. They seemed to be able to navigate around her power at will, targeting only that which they chose to influence. As if they knew she could make anything live if she wanted to, but still they could ignore her entirely and kill that which needed to die. But without that knowledge, Cieli is being blocked by Fen’s ability entirely.
‘You’re not doing it right,’ Fen says. Cieli frowns. She stares down at the little girl like the instructions for however Elician and Cat managed to create a balance of death and life will appear on Maya’s skin.
‘What exactly am Isupposedto be doing?’ she asks.
‘Finding balance,’ Marina replies. Rickard shifts from foot to foot, nervous, uncertain. His hands reach out as if to take Maya back. Any moment now he will ask them what is wrong, what they are doingand why this is happening, but Fen doesn’tknow. She doesn’t have any answers that she can give him. All she can think to do is keep holding on to Maya and hope that somehow it all slides into place. She waits for Marina to explain, but Marina just crosses her arms over her chest, waiting. ‘You need to findbalance,’ she repeats.
‘What does that even mean?’ Fen asks.
‘Just do what you did before!’ Cieli suggests.
‘Thenyoudo whatCatdid before,’ Fen snaps back. ‘You’re not trying to killher; you’re trying to stop the things that are killing her.’ Rickard asks Marina something, begging for clarification; Fen ignores them both and just tries focusing on Maya. She doesn’t know how to explain the complexities of the problem, doesn’t know how to talk her way around this. She has never been good at healing anything, or explaining how her powers work. She thinks.Thinks. Senses all the pain and trauma in the girl’s body, and says: ‘Her kidneys. Focus there first.’ It could have been any part of Maya, but it is one location for now, one place of focus. ‘You’re not…you’re not trying to endeverything, just end that one process.’
Cieli frowns. She squints and presses harder against Maya’s skin as if the extra strength increases her focus. All it does is send a flash of power through all of Maya’s body that Fen has to naturally redirect. The wall of death wants to kill everything. It wants to flood through Maya, pulling apart every blood vessel and organ until they all crumble into nothingness.
Cat did not touch anyone. He did not need to. He could close his eyes and direct his will to one single location or many. He could, with a thought, kill brain cells in one lobe while leaving the other unaffected. Marinadidtouch the patients, but she knew so intimately what she needed to do that Fen didn’t realize it for the talent it was. She hadn’t even considered it needed tobea talent.
But Cieli’s touch alone has only ever been used for ending a life in its totality, nothing so precise as what Cat had learned to do under Elena’s care. She has never needed to be that specific. She cannot relyonly on a single brush of lethal skin; she needs to sense and feel every sour note that’s singing within Maya’s blood. And she needs to target only that which will do Maya harm. ‘Focus,’ Fen murmurs. ‘Find her kidneys and focus.’
For Fen, barricading Maya from the impact of Cieli’s touch is instinctual. When death meets life, life fights for survival, and she serves now as the defender of all within Life’s domain.
I am the door that keeps death from Maya’s life. I am aseriesof doors. And each door has its own keyhole. Each keyhole has its own key.Marina and Cat had known their way through each door and keyhole, could navigate through the passages on their own. They knew enough about biology, and were skilful enough with their own powers, to be able to circumnavigate each barrier she erected. But without that prior knowledge, Cieli is blind. And so, Fen imagines reaching her hand out into the liminal space between two great planes. She imagines reaching into the yawning void that is a Reaper’s power, the vast, weightless everything that puts a stop to the wellspring of life, and plucks from it one tendril that she leads straight into a door of her own creation. She leads it to the keyhole. The open space in the door she has built. And she feels it when, finally…Cieli manages to slip through.
Maya’s kidneys stop emitting the hormone that produces red blood cells. Maya’s poor, abused organs are finally given an ounce of reprieve. Fen feels it when, finally, her kidneys stop manufacturing an excess that will kill. Cieli gasps.Shecan feel it too. It isworking.
‘Liver next?’ Fen dares to ask.
‘Yes,’ Cieli replies, and Fen reaches back to the door in her mind. She tries again, carefully, carefully. She waits for that moment where Cieli seems to have found the right thought or intention, and then together they open the barrier between life and death. They meld as one. They work as one.
Cieli is a touch too heavy-handed in her approach to the liver, but Fen is there shoring up any excess damage and healing what has beenleft behind. She shifts the keyhole, forces Cieli back out. They try again.
