Suddenly, the itch popped out of existence as Lilly was drawn inward. Her inner eye saw things she’d never experienced before. She was no longer in the garden, but above it on some kind of cloud plane where time stood still. She could see herself and the others from above, but they stood still.
“First time, eh?” A man’s deep voice shocked Lilly into awareness. There were others standing next to her on this cloud, looking down at the garden and people below. The man who spoke was the one on her right in the garden. “I’m Bertrand.”
“Lilly,” she replied absently, noting both Lady Vi and the other healer standing on her other side. They were all here. All except for Petr.
“You’re doing very well, Lilly,” Vi said, moving closer. “Now, give me your hand.”
“Where are we?” Lilly asked as she reached out. Bertrand and his fellow healer joined hands, then he took one of Lilly’s as Vi took the other. They joined in a circle, and Lilly was pulled out of the cloud and back into the real world… but not.
Time still lagged. Things moved in slow motion as she felt more than saw her power rise—along with the power and skill of the other three healers—to seek the weak place in Petr’s small being. Somehow, they went within. Inside Petr’s energy, immersing themselves in the joyful, but weak power that was the boy’s essence.
Lilly was tugged in one direction, and the others followed her. She was aware of them, joined to her own energy, though she could no longer see them as she had while they were all on the cloud. She followed the energy pathway that led her to a place unlike anything she’d ever seen before. It was a place inside Petr’s being where energy was being sucked outward, away from the boy, depleting him. The hole appeared to lead elsewhere, and Lilly followed the flow of energy, surprised when she entered another being’s energy patterns. This being was distinctly separate, but yet very similar to Petr. But this one was a girl.
The realization shocked Lilly. She didn’t understand what she was seeing, but she got the impression that the other healers did, and they were just as shocked as she was. Words didn’t flow from mind to mind in this place of pure energy, but feelings crept through the connection, if Lilly let herself listen. There was a lot to learn about this intriguing place.
Just as she would have investigated further, she felt rage and a piercing scream that sent her energy fleeing back through the conduit to Petr. It was as if she was being pushed out. Chased and prodded by a power much greater than anything she could muster. Lilly went, knowing somehow that her very survival depended on it.
She tumbled through the conduit, back into Petr before the gate was closed shut with a resounding clang of angry power behind her. Lilly checked to see if all three healers were still with her and was gratified to be able to sense them all, still joined to her. She was getting better at this, the longer she did it.
Lilly took a look around and realized the place where Petr was joined to that other being was still there but closed tightly so that only a little trickle of power leeched from him into her. Lilly also sensed a return flow now, from the girl into Petr, but it was still weaker than the flow out. They were joined. Somehow. Lilly didn’t understand it at all, but she did feel the tug to heal lessen considerably. Closing the power drain—however that had been managed—had gone a long way toward making Petr better.
With a final sigh of regret for something she instinctively knew she could not fix completely, Lilly retrieved her power from the boy’s energy flow. It wasn’t a neat exit, nor a smooth one. Lilly spilled out, and the connection with the other three healers ceased immediately. She felt the jarring tug of their loss as she nearly keeled over. She blinked rapidly to clear the sudden and intense dizziness as she came back to herself in the real world and time began to flow normally again.
“Are you all right?” Petr’s worried voice came to Lilly as if from a distance.
She removed her hand from his back and put it instead to her own head. Lilly fell backwards in the dirt, unceremoniously landing on her ass, but it was either that or keel over right into the bed of plants. Bertrand was at her side a moment later, lifting her into his arms. He was much stronger than she’d expected. He carried her into the healing hall and placed her on a cot while his partner, Mirim, kept Petr nearby, and Vi hovered overhead.
“She’s had too much sun,” Lady Vi pronounced. “Petr, don’t worry for your friend. She’ll be well enough in a moment, once we’ve had a chance to let her rest. Go with Mirim and finish up in the garden, sweetheart. Lilly will be back outside in a few minutes, never fear.”
Petr went grudgingly with a kind-faced Mirim while Lady Vi prepared a tisane and bade Lilly drink it all down. Bertrand sat beside the bed, his expression both worried and touched with a hint of awe.
“Are you feeling better now, Lilly? No dizziness?” Vi asked as she sat on Lilly’s other side.
“Only a little.” Lilly tried to sit up, but it was a losing proposition. Still, Bertrand found a pillow and helped prop it up behind her, so she was raised a little. “What happened?”
“You remember us joining?” Vi asked, her eyes narrowed on Lilly’s face.
“On the cloud. Yes, I remember that. And the energy pathways and the conduit to… a little girl? Is that what it was? It felt feminine, but then, we got chased out by something much bigger. What in the world was that?”
“She remembers it all, Lady,” Bertrand said with grave solemnity to Lady Vi. Some sort of significant look passed between the two healers that Lilly could not interpret.
Vi looked back down at her. “You have a much stronger talent than any of us realized, Lilly. You took us inside to a realm few healers ever visit. Luckily, the three of us all have the ability—though not as sharp and defined as yours. But we knew what we were seeing, and we’re amazed that we missed it before.”
“What? What was that conduit?”
The healers looked at each other, their faces grave.
“It’s the place where Petr is joined to his twin sister,” Bertrand intoned.
“And I fear the force that chased us away was his mother, the sorceress.”
CHAPTER SIX
After much discussion, the healers arrived at the conclusion that the energy conduit and their inability to see it before had more to do with the fact that Petr’s mother was human than any lack of skill on their part. It took Lilly, a human healer, to see the power drain from Petr’s being to his twin’s. Of course, the diagnosis would have been considerably easier had anyone known that Petr had a twin in the first place.
Lilly felt much better after the brew Lady Vi gave her. She also got a little jolt of healing energy from the other healers who argued that she needed to be in top form for her journey. Lilly hadn’t realized that healers in a community shared so much of their energy between them and with such ease. It was a handy ability and something she had missed, not being instructed by a healing community. But she’d come to her power late, so she had little choice, they all agreed.
Petr threw himself into Lilly’s arms when she walked out of the healing hall a scant thirty minutes after she’d been carried in. The little boy’s worry touched her, and Lilly hugged him tight, twirling him around to make him laugh and take the fear away.