Healer's Touch (5 page)

“Or woman.” He tugged at her shirt, pulling several buttons free. “As the case may be.”

Llew felt the dry Cheer air on her exposed breast.

“Well, course she is,” the older officer said as though he’d known all along, eyeing her appreciatively and firing up goosebumps all over Llew’s skin. “A female hangin’ . . . 
that’ll
draw a crowd.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Llew spent three days in a cell, with Kynas in the cell next to her; long enough to make sure everyone knew there would be a hanging. She refused to talk to him, no matter how much he apologised, and determinedly looked everywhere but through the bars at him. He knew her better than anyone, and the betrayal was all the worse for that.

There would be no trial for either of them: the accusation was enough. ‘Cleaning up the streets’ they called it. In any case, since Kynas’ accusation someone had come forward about the body in the alleyway and had positively identified Llew as the killer. Or Kynas, maybe. They hadn’t quite been sure which of the two they had seen, but they had definitely seen one of them. Maybe. It didn’t matter. The gallows were going up before they’d even walked into the gaol.

As the sun cleared the tops of Cheer’s roofs on the morning of the fourth day, Llew and Kynas were dragged and pushed through a crowd of excited locals only too eager to spit at the filthy killer-urchins as they passed. The two were forced up the steps on to the stage of the gallows where they stood trembling in the cold air while the charges against them were solemnly read out.

The Farries had dressed Llew in a long, heavy skirt a couple of sizes too big for her, and a thin, floaty blouse, which they had tied in at the back to emphasise what femininity she possessed. A girl being hanged drew a larger crowd than a boy. Rarity, she supposed, and some kind of thrill.

The charge of theft was fair – they had both been carrying stolen purses at the time of their captures – but Llew took offence at being accused of stealing and killing livestock. She had a good relationship with a local farmer, and she caught fish which she regularly swapped for a little beef. She didn’t need to steal the beasts themselves.

Looking out over the crowd, she saw that very farmer watching from a few rows back. He looked less angry than the rest of the crowd; perhaps even a little saddened. Would someone actually miss her when she was gone? Llew gave a brief smile to him and he returned it with a pained look of his own. Suddenly he turned and pushed his way back through the crowd. There was no shortage of people to fill the space he left. Llew recognised a couple of men that her father used to drink the evenings away with, and there was Japod, his face still bruised. He grinned at her and she tore her eyes away. How could he smile to see his old friend’s daughter about to be hanged?

But, as she unwittingly caught a glimpse of her gallows-mate out the corner of her eye, Llew wondered what friendship really meant. You found people as lonely as you to whittle away the hours with, and if you trusted them, if you let your heart rest with them, they left, just as Llew’s ma and pa had done. Sure, they were most likely dead, but that offered no added comfort, because they surely had left. And now Kynas had proved Llew right in her decision to hold back from giving her heart to another. That should have meant she was safe from him and his betrayal.

The crowd buzzed with excitement, jostling each other for the best view and sharing their opinions on the two thieves, murderers, and livestock sodomites (how Llew earned that charge, she couldn’t guess). People laughed as though they weren’t about to see two children – at seventeen, nearly eighteen, Llew would have been the first to proclaim her maturity, but now it seemed appropriate to lean the other way – lose their lives.

Charges and prayers read, the Farries turned to their captives and pressed them forward to the nooses. Then the hangman took over, guiding the first noose over Kynas’ head before turning to Llew. Kynas blubbered disgustingly, still proclaiming his innocence. Llew was inclined to believe him, but she couldn’t excuse him pointing the finger at her and still refused to look at him. The rope settled about Llew’s neck as she stared out over the crowd. This was all becoming too real. Sure, she didn’t like Kynas much any more, but he didn’t deserve to die. She couldn’t look at him, but neither could she shut out his wailing.

The trapdoor fell away and Kynas hit the end of the rope, rattling the whole platform.

For a moment, Llew thought her world had fallen away with him. Her only friend in all the world hung limply from a rope beside her. She was all alone. Renny had died alone, too.

Parts of the crowd fell silent, while a small section cheered and then grew expectant.

Llew’s breathing grew fast as panic began to take hold. Her eyes swept the crowd. Would someone save her? Didn’t anyone believe she was innocent? She didn’t deserve to die! She’d stolen, a lot, but only to survive until the opportunity to live a more honest life presented itself. It wasn’t her fault that chance hadn’t come. Someone, someone. Please.

But she had no one.

The lever was thrown and she fell.

* * *

Llew woke from a dreamless sleep. It took but a moment to realise she wasn’t breathing, that she hadn’t been breathing. Gasping for air now, she grabbed the rope around her throat, trying to ease the pressure; her own weight kept pulling her down. Her legs kicked at nothing and she began to swing gently.

Someone gasped and someone – the same or another – ran off.

Consciousness faded and everything went black again.

* * *

When she stirred, she had a vague recollection of having done so before. She fought down her panic and managed to squeeze her fingers between the rope and her throat and raised herself enough to take a ragged breath: but her arms failed and she came down on her fingers. She was able to take shallow breaths but her fingertips were being rapidly suffocated of blood.

A woman’s scream alerted her to the fact she was in full public view.
Great.
Even if she got herself down, there was every chance she’d be right back here soon after, or disposed of in some other, more certain way. An image of a chopping block and an axe flashed through her mind.
Oh gods!

Through sheer force of will she made her arms once more raise her body and, trembling under the strain, she eased the rope forward from her throat toward her chin. She rested her fingers, grabbing the sides of the noose and leaning her head back into the spiral knot, redistributing her weight. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

The hushed silence told her that people were more fascinated by her efforts than they were interested in alerting anyone official.

She didn’t know how long she’d been gone. As she focused her efforts on freeing herself, some part of her mind turned over the fact that she’d already died once before. Now she could make it, what? Three times? Three times in how many days? The sun was high. Lunch time. She’d been hung in the morning. Was this the same day? The next day? A week later?

As far as she could tell, it had taken her a couple of hours or so to come back after the glass bottle incident. She didn’t know how long a broken neck would take to heal.

Her arms rested as much as they could under the circumstances, then she returned to her efforts to slide the rope to her chin. Her neck ached, the rope burned her cheeks and jaw, and trapped blood threatened to pop the tips of her fingers. But none of that mattered when giving up would mean suffocating to death. Again.

The flutter of wings and the scratch of claws on metal drew Llew’s attention to the roof of the building that cast a shadow over her, shielding her from the afternoon sun. A swamp hawk perched there, inspecting her, its head moving in staccato tilts and turns. She bared her teeth and hissed at the bird. It continued to peer at her with idle curiosity. The best way to lose the scavenger’s interest was to get free and on the move.

This was it, her moment of freedom likely followed by a more permanent death. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer to whatever god might listen to an orphan in such a godforsaken place. The ignorance of others and her own luck had so far kept her alive. She just needed them to hold out until . . . well, until she was away from Cheer. She was almost certain there was more to life out there, somewhere.

She took a breath, steeling herself for the drop, and wiggled, rolled and pressed the rope over the curve of her chin. It burned up the back of her head and caught under her nose. Pain seared through her top lip and up her sinuses into her forehead, and her legs thrashed, seeking ground; she wasn’t there yet. The rope was slipping, if slowly. With a flick of her thumbs she forced it from under her nose. Her brow caught on it briefly, then she slid free.

Landing on something soft she leapt up immediately, adrenaline flooding her bloodstream, fearing she had landed on an over-enthusiastic onlooker, only to find a still warm but motionless pile of feathers, fur, and flies. A selection of the local carrion eaters: swamp hawks, rats, and bugs.

Bile rose in her throat, and her skin crawled. Llew turned from the pile of death – her saviours, evidently. Her body ached and her tired muscles trembled. She would have collapsed from the fatigue and revulsion but, coming face to face with her audience, she was reminded she was not out of danger just yet.

The woman right in front of her looked as terrified as Llew felt. Llew poked out her tongue, screwed up her face and made an unintelligible sound. The woman shrieked and ran, her male companion following after, looking as shocked as she did. No one in the square seemed to know what to do about this girl who had come back to life. They simply stared.

Llew didn’t much know what to do either. But standing around was only going to get her caught and killed one more time. Taking advantage of their inaction, Llew leapt from the platform and ran; she kept on running.

She reached the outskirts of town and ran on dry grass verges, her bare feet grabbing a little life energy – or
ghi
as she called it – from the ground below to heal the rope burns and bruises with each stride she took. She checked over her shoulder for signs of pursuit, but it seemed no one was after her yet. She supposed they would have to think about what to do with someone who could come back from the dead. At least it gave her time.

Her toes slapped the hard-packed sand roads that led to her Spot, and then she pushed through the tussocks. Someone coughed and she skipped behind a tree. Her approach hadn’t been silent, but neither was Big River.

Peering around the tree, she saw a man sitting upstream from her hovel, his line in the water. She moved to confront him – fishing holes were like gold seams in Cheer, and this one was hers – but some small part of her made her grip the trunk and stop before she was halfway past. She looked in the direction of her small shelter, hidden behind more grasses and lupins, and knew she couldn’t return. If she went out there the man would see her. A large contingent of Cheer locals had seen her hang, and it wouldn’t take long for word to spread that she had lived and escaped. So she couldn’t stay in Cheer. If she left immediately she might have a chance. While news of her feat might spread far and wide, hopefully a detailed description wouldn’t.

She owned very little; yet it had been hers. To abandon it left a pit in her stomach, but still she turned away, pushing back through the tussocks, back to the road.

She had always thought travelling alone would be dangerous, but what did she have to lose now? If she were attacked, she would heal. If she starved, she would heal. If she poisoned herself trying to stave off hunger, she would heal. Why hadn’t her parents told her this? All her father had ever told her was to keep it to herself, keep it secret. She knew she could fix the odd bump and bruise. Had they thought that if she knew she could come back from the dead she would make a habit of it? Having gone through it twice, no, three times in, perhaps, five days she knew it wasn’t something she would care to repeat any time soon.

Calculating north, she ran with the simple aim of getting out of Cheer. There was no longer a place for her there and, if she was honest with herself, there hadn’t been since the night her father left.

She found a clean shirt and pair of trousers on a farmhouse washing line. Feeling almost normal, she continued north for as long as her feet would carry her; this turned out to be a pretty long way with bare feet brushing through fields of lush, vibrant grass. She was dimly aware of the almost constant tingling in her soles as her muscles were continually refreshed. Her stomach continued to grumble, though.

The outer regions of Cheer were turning to wine country now that gold was no longer so easy to come by, and she eased the ache in her gut with a couple of handfuls of grapes. And then she found the Great North Road. This continued on a predominantly straight line heading between fields turned to wineries, with others turned to cattle or sheep farms, and finally into the as yet uncleared Aghacian forests. She slept off the road amongst the trees after the sun dipped below the horizon. In summer the twilight would linger well into the night, but autumn brought dark evenings and freezing nights. She woke shivering in the dark and dawdled onward, figuring she may as well warm her muscles by walking rather than lie sleepless in the early morning cold.

Cheer lay behind a series of hills, yet Llew felt she’d hardly made any headway. There was so much farther to go. So many miles of road, so many hours of hunger and thirst. Aghacia was a long, narrow country and Llew knew little of it, having only vague memories of arriving with her father some eleven years earlier. Cheer was a long way from anywhere.