I yanked off my coat. “Give him to me! Hurry – there’s not much time.” Already I could feel the new life draining away.
Remy reached for the baby but Fren shook his head, holding the little body to his chest. Grunting forcefully, Remy leaned forward again. Whatever he said to the boggie worked because Fren relinquished the infant to him. I held out my hands and Remy placed the naked, wrinkled little body in them. It was no bigger than a week old kitten and as soon as I touched it I felt the weak fluttering heartbeat and the coldness already settling into the tiny limbs. “Try to hold on, little one,” I murmured as I pulled him to my own chest and covered him with my hands. Then I reached inside of myself and let my wall down.
It was like opening a furnace door. Heat flared in my chest and roared through my veins like a spark following a fuse. I didn’t have to tell my power where to go, it always knew. My body buzzed like a live wire as currents of energy raced along my nerve endings toward my hands and chest, any part of me touching the dying creature.
Normally I release the power in a controlled stream, letting it flow gently to find the source of injury or illness. It’s so strong, so forceful that I worry it will shock my patients and kill them outright. But when a body is shutting down and preparing to die, a jolt to the system is sometimes the only thing that can help it. It’s kind of like those defibrillator paddles they use in emergency rooms, only mine works on the whole body instead of just the heart. That’s the only way I know how to describe it; my power didn’t exactly come with an operations manual.
The heat pooled in my hands until they gave off a pale white glow. Hotter and hotter the fire burned until it felt like I grasped a hot metal pipe, but I didn’t stop. I bit my lip to keep from crying out and held on, waiting for the power to grow to the right intensity before I released it.
Power exploded from my hands, pouring into the little body. I felt it race through veins and bones and weaved through tissue, saturating every cell like a spring storm saturating the earth. My power is an extension of me so I felt it coiling around the failing heart, pulsing and surging. With each push it sent a spike of energy through the heart causing the creature to jerk and spasm before it went still again. I sent wave after wave of power into the body, praying that each would be the one to fix the damaged heart.
I lost track of the minutes but at least ten passed before I was forced to accept that I could not save the boggie. My power was the only thing keeping his heart pumping and I could not keep it up much longer. One of the earliest and cruelest lessons I learned about my power is that sometimes I can’t save someone, no matter how much of myself I pour into them. I held the baby away from me and felt a painful tug at my chest when I looked at its lifeless face. I’m so sorry, little one.
A broken sob rent the air. I opened my eyes to meet Mol’s stricken stare as she grieved for the baby she had never held in her own arms. My heart ached for her. No one should watch the one they love die.
It’s not fair! We had done everything right. Mol’s baby deserved to live.
I pulled the power back to me until my hands grew hot again. The pain lanced through me but I barely felt it past the anger building inside me. I sent power shooting back through the baby with the force of a lightening strike. That much energy could stop a heart completely but there was nothing to lose now.
The power drained away. I was used up and vaguely aware of Remy and Fren breathing and Mol’s sobs as the little heart pressed against mine gave a long irregular flutter and stopped.
There was only silence.
Then… lub-lub, lub-lub, lub-lub.
Then the slightest of movements as tiny lungs expanded with their first breath of air.
Then the tickle of a tiny foot moving against my chest.
I lifted the infant, cupped in my hands, and watched in wonder as the squashed little face quivered and the tiny mouth opened. It started as a faint wheezing sound that quickly became a mewling wail and suddenly my hands were full of a squirming, crying, healthy baby boggie.
I laughed and cried at the same time and shouts filled the room. Mol grunted anxiously and held out her arms and I laid her baby boy on her chest. I watched as mother and father touched their child with awe, exploring the baby they both thought they had lost.
I sat back heavily and then lay down on the dusty floor. Healings always drain me, some more than others, and normally I just need a few minutes of rest to put me to rights again. But bringing back a life from so close to death is very hard and my body felt like I had run half a marathon. No matter how many times I used my power, it did not get easier.
I was six when I discovered what I could do. In the beginning I used to overdo it a lot before I learned not to drain myself too much. It’s easy to overlook your own welfare when you are trying to save a life. I had to learn how to lock my power away unless I needed to call on it. Otherwise, every time I came within a few feet of a sick or injured creature, the energy got sucked right out of me. Now when I heal, I let out just enough to do the job. Releasing a torrent of power like I’d just done for the boggie was almost like overloading a circuit, except there was no breaker to reset my energy. My power replenished itself; it just took a little while.
A cool hand touched my arm. “You ok, Sara?” I heard the worry in Remy’s voice and I gave him a weary smile.
“I’ll be fine. You know how I am. Just need to rest a bit.”
“Yes, you rest,” he said. He gently lifted my head and stuffed my folded jacket beneath it. I heard him talking to Fren and Mol and sounds of movement but it all became muffled as I drifted off.
Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep I felt the familiar stirring in the back of my mind. After expending so much power, I was not surprised it was on the move. It was always active after a healing when my power was low. Not that it would get far. Even exhausted, I had enough left in me to push it back down.
I called it the beast. It used to scare me having this dark thing inside my head even though I knew it came with my power. I read a quote once that said ‘when you light a candle, you also cast a shadow’ and I wondered if the same was true for me. My power was the candle – bright and warm – and the beast was its shadow – sullen and dark. Remy said that most power is a balance of good and bad and I should not be afraid of something that is a part of me. I did not embrace the beast but I had no choice but to learn to live with it.
The room was quiet when I woke up and the long shadows told me it was late afternoon. Turning my head to the side, I saw I was alone. The boggies had most likely gone home but I knew Remy was still here. He would never leave me alone while I recovered.
I groaned as I got to my feet. My body ached – partly from the intense healing and partly from lying on the hard floor – and I stretched several times to get the kinks out. Then I picked up my coat and went downstairs where I found Remy looking out through the cracks in one of the boarded up living room windows. I walked over and leaned against the wall, ignoring the peeling wallpaper that snagged my hair.
He smiled down at me. “You sleep deep this time. Feel better?”
“That was a hard one,” I admitted. “But worth it.” I heard laughter outside and I peered through the crack at a group of teenage boys hanging out down the street. Remy had been watching them in case any of them decided to venture this way while I slept. I wondered what they’d do if they came in and found a troll waiting for them. Probably wet their pants. If I didn’t know my fierce friend I’d probably do the exact same thing.