Echoes of the Forest

Chapter Two

"This is a lot more than a favor," Mara huffed and flipped a lock of thick auburn hair over her shoulder. "He's half dead already. And how are you going to explain the ears?"

"I knew something was off with him," Ronan exhaled quickly, his face contorting into a frown of disapproval as he crossed his arms over his chest. Both Ronan and Mara looked at me with annoyance, waiting for a response.

I sat recovering in a wooden chair, avoiding their gazes, while Ronan leaned against a wall opposite Mara's examining table in agitated silence. After a few seconds of looking down to inspect his boots, Ronan finally lifted his gaze and we both looked on in silence as Mara scanned Jack's limp body.

I took a slow, deep breath in and the smell of antiseptic stung the inside of my nose. A tinge of nostalgia spread through my chest as I remembered the many times I'd been in this hut; especially when we had graduated from wooden swords to real blades in militia training.

Mara had become an apprentice healer for the militia around the same time I had joined as a soldier trainee. Years ago when the two of us were children, running around the backstreets of Imodell without a care, it never occurred to us that we'd end up serving the Kingdom. We were naïve to what happened outside the city walls. To this day, it still felt like we were.

"I won't need to explain the ears if no one notices," I emphasized, breaking the awkward silence that hung in the air.

"You can't just cast a minor illusion spell and expect no one to notice." She huffed again, turning to a cupboard on her right and opening it to gather supplies. "I can't believe we're doing this," she added bitterly. "Why do you care if a Human lives or dies?"

I rolled my eyes and didn't dignify her question with a response. But if I was being honest with myself, I didn't know. I knew - everyone knows - that the history between Elves and Humans was a long and tumultuous one. But I also knew that life is sacred. Or that's what the clerics preached, anyway.

Mara used a pair of shears to carefully remove what was left of Jack's tunic, deftly maneuvering around the gaping wound on his stomach as it oozed black blood down his side and onto her examining table. Her eyes widened and she couldn't hide her bewilderment. Like me, I'm sure she couldn't believe he had made it this far with the injury he sustained. He was all but eviscerated.

She paused, her eyes flitting back and forth, taking in the severity of the wound.

"I..." she stammered, "I don't know if I can fix this."

"You have to try," I met her gaze from across the room. She narrowed her eyes and stared back at me indignantly. Jack was eerily still on her table, his lips starting to take on the slightest tint of blue. "You have to try, or I'll do it."

"That's ridiculous," she scoffed. "You'll kill yourself."

"Well if you care about me then you'd better try."

Mara turned back to Jack and her hands just barely hovered over the wound on his stomach. She closed her eyes to concentrate; a familiar, ghostly green glow began to creep up her fingertips.

Jack's flesh made a grisly squelching sound as it knit back together; sinew and blood vessels reunited in a flash of arcane power. After an insufferable bout of stillness, his chest began to rise and fall shallowly at a steady pace.