Authors: Rain Oxford
One in particular could be heard above all else. On a
ledge pathway, just a foot above the water, Vivian and I were across the canal
from the wail. “Stay here,” I told Vivian. With a wave of my hands, I calmed
the water enough to freeze the surface. In the middle of the ocean, I knew it
would be easier to rebuild the bridge, but freezing water used less energy and
I wasn’t sure what I would soon face.
I gingerly crossed the frozen walkway, intensely
aware that many people were watching. Stepping up on the ledge of solid stone,
I came to a doorway. Instead of the glass door that should have been there,
shattered glass littered the floor and stone debris blocked the way. In between
the cries I could hear the whispered voice of another child trying to give
comfort.
Inside was dark, previously a family room, cluttered
with broken furniture and decorative objects. The wailing led me right to the
only table left standing, where three little children and a baby were hiding.
The oldest child, a girl about ten years of age, snuggled the baby closer and
tried to push her small brother behind her.
“I will not hurt you,” I said in Lilat. I hoped she
understood my intention even if she couldn’t understand the language. Before
she could say anything, I saw that the blanket the baby was covered in had
blood on it. “Give him here.” I held out my arms but she clutched the bundle
tighter. The baby’s wail became even louder. “I need to check if he is hurt!” I
barked. The girl jumped a little, but held him out.
Supporting the head, I gently unwrapped the blanket.
The baby couldn’t have been more than a few months old. There was a small
scratch on his left cheek and a large cut down his belly, but it wasn’t fatal
by any means. I pulled the jar of healing cream out of my bag and dug out a
little. When I rubbed the cream on his cut, he stopped crying and watched me.
Just to make sure I did not miss any real damage, I pushed my energy into him
in search of anything that wasn’t supposed to be there. Like eco-location, I
could see that there were no broken bones or internal bleeding. I handed him
back to his sister.
“Are any of you hurt?” I asked.
After a short hesitation, she pushed the other little
girl towards me. She looked up at me with deep copper eyes, then held out her
arm. Her hand was at an odd angle and her wrist was swollen and bruised.
Hovering my hands around her wrist, I pulled my energy gently down my hands to
trickle into her wrist. The bone was cracked, but reparable. I cooled my energy
to create a numbing effect and got to work. Mostly, I used my energy to increase
her own body’s ability to heal. She squirmed as it warmed and itched, but
otherwise did not move. It only took a few minutes before the bone was healed.
I had healed many bones before, but not often in a child.
When I realized the room was starting to smell like
smoke, I saw that a fire had been started from a broken lamp. It was not large
at the moment, but within a few minutes, the room with an unusually low ceiling
and only one escape route would be full of smoke.
I sat back, a little tired; I no longer had my book’s
support. Before I could stand back up, the little girl launched herself on me
and wrapped her tiny arms around my neck. Then the older girl and the little
boy joined in. I pried the little boy off and the older girl let go, but the little
girl refused to be removed, so I carried her back out through the doorway.
Putting out a hand to hold the little boy back from the water while carrying
another child with my other hand, it was more difficult to form an ice bridge.
I looked at the older girl. “Hold him back, I will
take her across and come back for you,” I said. She pushed the baby into my
other arm and grabbed her little brother around the waist. I carefully crossed
the ice-bridge and someone in the building across the way took the children. I
froze more of the water before crossing back to the remaining children. I
grabbed the boy and carried him to the other side. When I turned back, the
older girl was trying to cross the bridge on her own. Unfortunately, she was
barefoot and there was water on the bridge.
She slipped. I reached her before she went over, but
my sudden weight caused the bridge to break and we were instantly dragged off
into the rushing water.
I tried to protect her body as we were swept into the
canal walls, though it was difficult enough keeping her face above water while
she thrashed. I used my shoulders to bear the brunt of the hard, wet stone of
the canal walls. People reached out to us, but we were moving too fast, and
every time I nearly got a grip, I would end up busting my arm on the stone
instead.
After a few minutes, the little girl stopped
thrashing.
I saw the boat, but could do nothing to avoid it, so
I held up my damaged are in order to prevent as much damage to my head as
possible. Even when the shearing pain tore up my back, my hand caught the firm
edge of the boat. After a few seconds, I realized I had a true grip. People
jumped in the small boat and pulled first the little girl, then me out of the
water.
They shouted directions around me but I wasn’t
listening. My energy swirled soothingly inside me, so I settled down in the
boat, closed my eyes, and I let it speed up my natural healing. Energy could
only go so far, unfortunately; I sat up slowly, angled myself carefully, and
slammed my shoulder into the wooden seat to fix my dislocated shoulder.
Then I turned over and coughed up as much water as I
could by pushing my chest into my knees. Sago had strong lungs and actual death
from downing was extremely rare. Assured I would survive just fine, I let
myself drift and my energy heal my torn flesh and muscles.
* * *
“Kiro. Wake up!”
It was very grueling to be woken by an irritated
woman’s voice. It was almost as if nothing good could possibly happen all day
if a woman was irritated at the start.
I opened my eyes to see Vivan looking at me
worriedly. I was still lying in the boat and the little girl was curled up
beside me. When I reached over and gently shook her, her eyes popped open and I
sighed with relief.
Even as the townspeople were trying to talk me out of
the boat, the two other children were crawling into it to create a puppy pile
around me. Vivian pulled at my arm until I stood up, taking the younger girl
with me as she put her arms around my neck again. The little boy planted his
arms firmly around my leg and the older girl wrapped her arms around my waist.
Luckily, the boat was parked right outside another
door, which led to an undamaged room. The room was a library if the
wall-to-wall bookshelves were anything to go by, with a large sofa sitting by a
window. I settled the children on the sofa and turned to listen to the
townspeople for the first time.
Most of them rattled on about thanking me and how it
would have taken days for them to get the children out, how the fire got out of
control… I was really too tired to listen. One woman in a drab, cream-colored
shift tried to dry me off with a towel. If she felt a little too much, I wasn’t
going to berate her. Really, I was tired, not blind, and her clothes did her no
justice. Her cream-colored hair was a gorgeous combination with her light blue
eyes. Her skin was soft and her features were womanly enough without being
abrasive. I found myself staring at her as she tried to ring out my shirt, out of
tiredness more than anything. Still, she smiled shyly when she saw me looking.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, my paternal instincts
dominated baser needs. I took the other towel she had and focused on drying the
little girl. The younger girl used that as an excuse to clamp her arms around
mine. Her deep copper eyes, ginger hair, and clinginess reminded me of my
daughter, Saren. She was two-hundred-eighty-four now, but I remembered changing
her nappies, which was very difficult because she would grab one of my hands
and hold on for dear life. Saren had her own children and was married. I hadn’t
seen her in fifty years. Even as the years had done her good and she was a
powerful witch, she was not immortal, and I might have seen her for the last
time.
I came out of my memories to the startled eyes of the
older girl, except her eyes weren’t copper like they had been before, they were
the exact same color as mine. As soon as I realized the color was familiar, the
color bled out to be replaced by their original copper. When tears started
falling from her eyes, I stepped back.
She was a natural empath; she had a very powerful and
distinct ability to read the emotions of others, and she had just felt mine.
Everyone else in the room was confused as she cried, but I was afraid to
comfort her when I did not know what she would read next.
* * *
After the children had calmed down, they all fell
asleep quickly. A short conversation with a friendly townswoman informed me
that the children were orphans and belonged to everyone. They even voted and
held meetings over parental decisions. I translated for Vivian and she argued
that that was the wrong way to raise children, but I shut her up with a glare.
It was not our place to question another’s culture, and they were obviously
healthy children.
When we asked about the damage to the town, she said
there were conflicting stories. What she saw was a huge winged beast that had
bird-like features but also four legs and a tail. It was the griffin. However,
at the same time, she heard noise from another creature. The people on the
other side of the city told that they were attacked by a huge black beast, also
flying, but otherwise had no bird features and was as black as night. One
person told her that its roar burst windows.
Vivian, the sleeping children, and I were left in the
library alone.
“How did you know they were in there?” Vivian broke
the silence. I frowned at her. “You went through the door without hesitating.
How did you know there were children in that random building?” she asked.
“You couldn’t hear the baby crying?”
She shook her head. “Over the alarms and the other
terrified people, no way.”
“Well, Guardians have good hearing,” I said as I
settled down on the couch and the little boy cozied into my side. The baby sniffed
and squirmed a little, but didn’t wake.
“You’d make a good father,” Vivian said.
“Are you kidding? Any father can comfort a child in
distress. Actually raising the children is much harder. There is nothing that
requires more responsibility than raising a person.”
“You
are
a father?” Vivian asked.
I looked at her. “Did Dylan tell you how old I am?”
“No, but I know Nano is much older than he looks, and
I know you are probably around his age.”
“I’m about five hundred years older than him. I am
over two thousand years old.
Vivian’s face went pale. “My boyfriend is
fifteen-hundred-years-old?”
I ignored her breakdown and answered her earlier
question. “I have many children, and all of them hate me. They resent me for
not teaching them enough magic, for having apprentices, going off and doing my
Guardian duties, me being more powerful than them, not loving their mother
enough, etcetera, etcetera. Half the time their mother kicks me out because my
work is too dangerous and takes too much of my time, or because I never age,
then my kids blame me for not being there for them.
“The ones that do want to keep in touch after they
grow up and have their own children… I have to watch them grow old. Watching my
children grow from a tiny blob to a complex person is amazing. Watching them
grow old is the worst thing in the world. Can you imagine knowing what the
universe is full of, but never having enough time to show the people you love?
Knowing that their time is coming to an end, slowly but surely, and you will be
left without them. My children can live for hundreds of years with proper use
of their magic, but none will ever be immortal.”
I looked at the sleeping children and thought of
Soren. I remembered the important moments of every one of my children, whether
they were biologically mine or not. “Can you imagine looking at your baby and
knowing that she was only going to last for a moment in time, and then you
would be forever without her? I try to show them what’s out there, but there’s
never enough time.”
I looked up to see Vivian in tears, no doubt thinking
of her own child. “Your baby will outlive you. As Nano’s child, he’s liable to
live for hundreds of years. Be happy,” I said.
She nodded. “I am happy for myself, but you should
never have suffered as you do.”
“Yet, I kept having children. Because even as I lost
my children to time and decay, my life was still better for having known them,
and my soul was still better for having brought them into this world.” I smiled
at her. “And then there’s Dylan.”
“But he’s not your son.”
“No, he’s my nephew. My twin brother, the only person
I had left in my life, who had been there with me from the beginning, was
killed. But he left me with the one thing I never had; a child who was
immortal. I know Dylan wasn’t a child, but he had a lot of growing up to do,
and still does. I can show him the universe, teach him to see its magic, and he
wants to learn. There is so much life in him, so much passion for learning.
There is no decay, no end coming. No goodbyes. More than for standing by me my
whole life, I am thankful to my brother for giving me Dylan. And I feel so
guilty because I am nearly thanking my brother for dying. ”
“He talks about you like he would a loving father.”
“It feels more like that recently, but I worry that
if he does think of me as his father, he will hate me as my children do. He
always grew quickly in magic, but now wants to do his own exploring and
learning. I worry that if I don’t let him reach out and find his own path in
life, he will feel smothered and resent me.”