Lies Dressed In Lace

Untitled Part 23

Valtok practically drags me to the healers cottage and threatens to tie me to a chair if I don't sit for her. An old woman answers the door and invites us in warmly. "Your friend tells my you broke your arm, yes?" I nod, "I'm glad you came to me then, here sit let me take a look at it." I look as Valtok who glares at me sternly. I sit. She takes my arm gingerly and unwraps the bandages. "Have you been using this arm since you broke it?"

    "Yes, barely and just for small things." She tisks and flicks my elbow. I snatch my arm back in pain and hiss at her.

    "Well whatever you were doing with it, it wasn't small." She takes my arm back and nods to herself as she runs her hands over my arm. "Its broken in several places but the bruising is turning green around the edges so it is healing, healing wrong but healing."

    "Is that good?"

    "Yes, it means you didn't damage anything unfixable." She looks at Valtok, "Please leave." I laugh at the bewildered look on Valtok face by her bluntness.

    "Why? I can help!" She shakes her head.

    "No you can not, I need a clear space to work on her arm." She says not looking up from her organizing a large set of tools. He looks at me and I nod.

    "I'll be fine." He looks from me to the instruments then back to me worriedly. "Go, I'll meet you back at the inn for dinner." He sighs and gives up.

    "Alright if this takes too long I'll come back to check on you."

    "Of course, I'll send someone if I need you." He nods and finally leaves.

    "What a lovely thing it is to have someone so protective, makes me wonder how you're arm was broken."

    "I fell from a horse." She looks me over and huffs.

    "I hear that quite a bit honey."

    "Trust me no man could lay a hand on me without my permission nor would he dare to try." She continues preparing a few more things like clean bandages.

    "You sound quite confident about that."

    "You sound quite skeptical about that, do you not believe me?" I tease her.

    "I rarely believe a dragon."

    "A dragon?" She wordlessly takes my arm and I feel the familiar sparks of magic scattering across my arm. I gasp, "you have magic!" I rip my arm away.

    "So do you child. Mine is only healing magic, I am but an ant to you, dragon." I shake my head feeling my arm begin to heal itself.

    "Why do you call me Dragon?"

    "That is what all magic folk call your kind, other than the noble Fae of course."

    "My kind?" She laughs.

    "You sound as if you do not know you're own history, my dear." She takes my arm back and begins to heal it again.

    "I do not, how do you know?"

    "I told you, I am a healer, I can see your veins and my dear dragons blood runs through them." Before she can heal my arm completely I stop her.

    "Teach me." I beg feeling the desperation to know who I am as I felt it to travel when I was a child. She can read it on my face and nods.

    "If that is what you wish."

    "Please?" She takes my hands.

    "Picture the wound in your mind, the broken bone, the cracks in it, the torn tissue, even the shards of bone lost in the flesh." I close my eyes feeling my way down my arm in my mind and find the throbbing aching bone. I picture the skin there, black and bruised and irritated, then I picture the aching muscles, and finally the bone as cracked and damaged as she described.

    "Ok." I breath.

    "Now picture the cracks reforming until its clean bone again, the shards coming back fixing it, the tissue mending, the broken bone back in place and almost like new." I feel her magic joining mine watching me mend my broken arm. I picture it all as she's said and feel my magic wash over the wound like water from a stream soothing the tender flesh and reforming bone. I gasp when its done and the magic stops flowing over the wound. I open my eyes to the beaming healer, "That was amazing!" She exclaims. I look down at my arm and find that even the bruise is gone. "You even set it yourself!" She marvels at the healed break.

    "How did I do that." I run my fingers over the once blacked flesh.

    "With magic, Dragon." I shake my head.

    "I can't have magic, I'll be killed." She takes my hands a forces me to look her in the eye.

    "You will learn to control it and then no one can harm you, you'll be able to hide it until then."

    "How! I just healed my broken arm! How can I hide that?" She laughs and begins to wrap my arm in bandages.

    "Just keep these on for a while no one will know." She tries to calm me down and it works slightly.

    "Thank you, I don't know how to repay you." I give her my small pouch of gold coins, "Thank you." She opens it and her eyes widen in shock.

    "This is too much! I can not accept." She tries to push it back into my hands but I don't take it and back out of the house.

    "Please take it, its all I can give you for your help today and yet isn't worth a fraction of what you have given me." She only stands there shocked as I close the door and make my way back to the inn.