Prince of Time

Chapter Twenty-Seven - Healer

“Heal them?” Ane echoed. “How can I heal them?”

“You must,” Auruna pushed her forward. “Someone must. This is the task.”

“Healer,” a young man stretched out his hands. “Healer.”

He was filthy, his skin sallow and his cheeks hollow. The colour of his hair was indistinguishable. Something lingered in his face of past beauty but it was irrelevant now, in this place where nobody saw.

  His eyes were clouded and grey, blind. Their red rims and the scratched scars over his face told a grim tale. Ane resisted the urge to run away, the terrible revulsion that crossed her heart.

“Healer,” the man repeated. “Please.”

Ane stepped forward and took his hands.

“What is your name?” she asked, gently.

His hands were rough and felt like mud, slick with dirt. He gripped tightly, as if shocked to find her solid and determined that she would never dissolve into mist.

“I have no name,” he told her. “Heal me. Heal me!”

“I…I can’t,” Ane stammered. “I don’t know how.”

The cry was taken up all sides, a demand for her to heal them. Creatures crowded closer, ordinary foxes and birds jostling amongst strange tree-people and forgotten species with ancient magic. They all reached out to her, all tried to touch her skin.

“Auruna!” Ane cried, panicking. “Auruna!”

The unicorn pushed forward, gently scooping the damaged cave-dwellers aside. He stood close to her, like a guard. Ane felt the familiar comfort of the bond between them, the unity of human and unicorn that she had trained for. It felt far more real, down here in the dark.

“Heal them,” he commanded her. “We cannot. You must.”

“I can’t,” Ane took a step back and bumped into the dragon. “I can’t! I’m sorry!”

“You can,” Auruna advanced. “You are what our cousins call a heart. You have been trained to heal. We have heard stories of the healings hearts perform for our cousins. You must do the same here, in the dark.”

“I can’t,” Ane sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around her knees and fighting back tears. “I can’t, Auruna! I’m only a cadet. I don’t even have a unicorn.”

Auruna bumped his nose against her head.

“You have me,” he said.

But Ane wouldn’t listen. She closed her eyes and sobbed with fear and shame and self-loathing. Her uselessness disgusted her and so she cried.

  She had failed. They required her to be a healer but Ane knew of no one who could heal this mess, this ruin. Perhaps experienced hearts, old relationships formed with powerful unicorns, bound deep in the soul, could do something. But not her.

 She wanted to heal these people. The desire for it burned through her. Ane couldn’t stand to see the pain and suffering, to feel their fears wash over her, to hear their whispering voices pleading and misunderstanding, unable to comprehend her inability.

 These people would suffer because of her. Maple and Haliwen would suffer because of her. Far away, so far that it seemed another world and another life, Merdia would suffer because she was too young and too weak to bring back last root to cure them.

“You are not weak,” Auruna spoke through the bond in their minds. “You have the power to do this.”

No, Ane thought, miserably. No, I don’t. Didn’t Origen always say that? Hearts take such responsibility but they can do nothing on their own. They are powerless.