Falling Skyward

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Words of the Imaman

Lana lay in the dark, trying to will sleep to wash over her. But the closer she edged toward sleep, the further its waves receded from her. Lana could hear Dawson's even breath sighing beside her. Taren must be on watch.

She gazed at the delicate threads of stars woven above her head, trying not to think of Dawson's body laying so near her own.

Before they had fallen to sleep, he had told her a little of what he knew of healing.

"I can remove poisons, toxins, and other foreign substances, but when it comes to wounds, I cannot heal anything that your body cannot heal on its own," he explained. "You said your healers—what did you call them?"

"Doctors."

"Right, these doctors, you said that they use herbs to heal others?"

"Well, yes. They use herbs and ointments to help those who are sick become well again, along with hot needles and small cuts behind the ear to let out the infected spirits."

Dawson recoiled slightly. "They, they cut the skin?" Lana nodded. "And, they use needles? What for?"

"To release infection from the body. Needles inserted into the stomach or, in extreme cases, into the eyes and lips are said to create holes where the festering spirits can escape."

Dawson's face twisted in mortification. "We don't believe in those kinds of practices here," he said, trying to keep his voice even. "Aside from a few natural remedies, we believe the body has the tools to heal itself. All it is lacking is energy and time. All healing requires is a way to pool time and energy and fixate it in a physical object—or, if you are advanced enough, a concept." Dawson spoke as though these ideas were the simplest, most basic threads of knowledge, but each word heaped heat onto the incinerator of Lana's imagination, warping and reworking her conception of the world like a silversmith reworks metal. She felt pliable, unfixed—and the most frustrating part was that she could not envision the final shape her world would take.

"So, as you can see," Dawson continued, "healing is simply logic—an application of the nature of things that becomes more refined with practice. I guess you might call it a type of art, much like painting or ironworking."

"Those professions deal with inanimate objects. I don't see how it can be the same thing—to manipulate or create something that lives and breathes? Something as complex as a body?"

"I am not creating anything—no one, even a necromancer, can create something out of nothing. All I can do is take what naturally exists in the world around me and rearrange it—shape it to my benefit." Dawson noticed Lana's eyebrows raise.

"Let me back up," Dawson said. "The Imaman believe that the world is full of several kinds of matter. There is matter that is physical—the things you can touch and feel and weigh. They call this Tel'al. Then, there is another type of matter that cannot be seen or felt or weighed, yet its influence over things can be weighed. This includes things like light, sound, and fire. This is what the Imaman call Ter'al.

"Then, there is the third type of matter that cannot be seen or felt, nor can its influence be measured or fully understood. This is where things like thought and time, love and power, souls and gods exist. This is the highest level of matter. It contains the essence of things, and the nearer you approach it, the more you can shake the limits of physical matter. This is what the Imaman call Ce'al.

"Though different, these three types of matter—the physical, immaterial, and essence—all interact and influence one another. They cannot exist separately but can only exist together as contrasting and mutually dependent states. What use would our bodies be if they did not have the power to speak and see or the thoughts and breath of life that move them forward? When we find the proper state and balance of the things we wish to change, it becomes easy to rearrange them how we want.