The Orchard of Hope (36 page)

“I can’t do anything about this,”
she finally said.

“Why not?” Maggie asked. “You just
healed her hand perfectly. This is just a little mark.”

“It’s not real. I can’t heal
injuries that don’t exist.”

“Not real? How can that
be?”

“It’s going to take Moss and
Nicholas to remove that mark. It’s a spell. I can manage the
symptoms until we get back, but this mark is going to take a
sorcerer to remove.”

“You can manage the symptoms but
you can’t remove the mark? That doesn’t make any sense at all,”
Maggie said.

“The symptoms are real,” Megan
explained. “That’s because the symptoms are Kelsey’s reaction to
the magic. Her reactions are real. But the cause isn’t real, so I
can’t remove it.” Megan waited for the information to sink in
before continuing. “We can get her back to the castle once I heal
her symptoms, but even after the magic is removed, Kelsey may have
to overcome the damage she’s received from the experience. It may
be years before she’s completely healed. Something like this can
change a person.”

“How can real illnesses happen
from fake injuries?”

“It happens all the time,” Megan
replied. “But she’s in good hands. We’re all going to help her.”
Megan paused for a moment to examine Kelsey’s face, and then she
continued, “Let’s get her symptoms healed so she can travel home
and then we can get started on the process of removing the spell.
Did you bring the sample of the plant for Nicholas and
Moss?”

Maggie nodded and held up the bag
she had tied to her backpack. After briefly sniffing the bag, Megan
went to work.

She sat up on her hind legs and
placed both of her large paws over each of Kelsey’s temples as she
leaned over her. Maggie felt an invigorating breeze as the leopard
exhaled over the top of Kelsey’s head. It gave her goose bumps, and
she felt so much energy that she thought she could run the entire
rest of the way to the castle. She folded her arms as she continued
to observe. Megan exhaled her reviving breath up and down Kelsey’s
body several times, and with each pass, Kelsey’s garments quivered
in the moving streams of air.

Next, Megan moved her paws to
Kelsey’s shoulders, and she slowly licked one of Kelsey’s cheeks
and then the other. Finally, she removed her paws completely and
kissed Kelsey on the forehead. Kelsey’s eyes fluttered and then
opened as Megan sat back.

First her eyes rolled around her
field of view, looking at the trees above her. Then she turned her
head a bit to see Roland and Maggie.

“Where am I?” she asked. She
blinked several times as she squinted into the sunlight.

“Near the Edge of Immortality,”
Maggie answered.

“I hate that place,” Kelsey said
as she rolled onto her side and pushed herself up into a sitting
position.

“We’re not staying, Squirt,” Megan
said. When she heard the leopard’s voice, Kelsey quickly turned
around to face Megan. The color in her face rapidly returned along
with her energy.

“You!” Kelsey shouted angrily.
“You stole my soul!”

“You’re welcome,” Megan replied
coolly.

“She just healed you,” Maggie
interjected.

“Probably so she could get more of
my soul!” Kelsey exclaimed.

“How do you feel?” Maggie
asked.

“Just fine. Good enough to kick
some leopard butt.” She glared at Megan, who simply
laughed.

“Calm down. It was for your own
good. The king asked me to do it,” Megan explained. “Nicholas and I
had the same agreement, but you needed it more.”

“I am not OK with this,” Kelsey
insisted. “I don’t care who authorized it or who else you made an
agreement with. I do not find the situation acceptable at all. And
that first message you sent by bird was obnoxious!”

Megan laughed and slapped her
massive paw on the ground, causing the earth to tremble briefly.
Kelsey felt nauseated for that moment.

“Telling me that you were taking
good care of my soul when you knew I hadn’t read that contract …”
Kelsey paused in disgust. She breathed rapidly a few times and then
continued. “That was … ”

“Hilarious?” Megan asked with a
smile that showed her glistening fangs.

“Not funny at all.”

“I was teaching you a lesson for
not reading what you were signing.”

“Lesson learned,” Kelsey snapped.
She scrunched up her nose and forehead as she glared back at Megan.
“It was still my soul, and you should have made sure that I
understood that I was signing it away.”

“Sometimes we don’t appreciate
what we have when we concentrate only on what we’ve lost,” Megan
said.

“Well, when you lose a piece of
your soul, that’s a pretty big thing to lose,” Kelsey
retorted.

“But you gained a piece of mine,”
Megan said forcefully. “And mine was more valuable because it has
more experience and more heart. It has already learned to love, and
you needed that in order to learn to heal. You could never have
healed Maggie without it. That ability just wasn’t in
you.”

“What?” Kelsey’s expression
changed from one of anger to one of confusion.

“In fact, I lost some of my wisdom
when I transferred it to you, but I gained some of your youthful
perspective and energy. I can appreciate that.”

Kelsey stared back in disbelief as
she processed this information. It was as shocking as learning that
she had lost part of her soul, perhaps more so.

“So we traded?” Kelsey asked.
“This wasn’t a one- way thing?”

“We’re both richer for the
experience. We will always be connected, and neither of us will
ever be the same. But it’s a good thing.”

“Still … ” Kelsey sat back without
continuing the thought. She looked around at the trees, as if
searching for an answer in the color of the autumn
leaves.

“
It’s really very
simple,” Megan continued. “You had no natural healing ability. I
had to impart a piece of myself into you so that you could learn
healing.”

Kelsey thought back to how she had
healed the bird and Maggie. She’d never done anything like this
before in her whole life. Now that she was reflecting upon the
experience, she saw how easily she had done the work and how much
of Megan was in her accomplishments. She could not have done it
without the leopard’s help.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” Kelsey finally
said as she looked directly into Megan’s eyes. It was a difficult
thing for her to say because she had been angry for so long over
the situation. She should have known better. She should have
trusted the king or Roland. She should have trusted her friend. “I
thought you’d stolen from me,” Kelsey said quietly.

“Next time read the fine print.
Relationships are complicated. Don’t make them worse by not paying
attention to what you’re getting yourself into.”

“It wasn’t just for your own
good,” Roland interjected. “It was for everyone’s benefit. Look at
how you helped Maggie. Look inside yourself and see how much you’ve
grown on this journey. Having that little piece of someone older
and wiser inside of you helped you to get to this
place.”

“It still doesn’t sound right,”
Kelsey said. “But I suppose I needed it, even though it still feels
wrong.”

“So you’re not angry?” Megan
asked.

“Not as much.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to dismiss
your anger altogether. It wouldn’t be like you,” Megan replied with
a smirk.

They set off on their journey back
to the castle, stopping whenever Kelsey’s symptoms returned and
made her feel tired. Each time it happened, Megan healed the
symptoms, and they continued homeward.

When they finally made it back to
the castle, Nicholas was already waiting for them. He’d been
communicating with birds and getting updates on the location of his
friends as he worked with Moss on developing a method to remove the
sorcerer’s spell from Kelsey’s arm. He and Moss had seen enough of
the sorcerer’s laboratory while scrying to figure out how the spell
was constructed. Based on the building blocks they had witnessed,
they had developed an idea of how to deconstruct the
spell.

Kelsey sat down at the large wooden
table in the king’s study. Her friends gathered around her, with
Megan and Roland talking privately in the corner of the room.
Newton jumped up onto the table, beating his wings a few times to
give himself some extra lift. He waddled awkwardly over to Kelsey
and squatted next to her as he stared closely at the mark on her
arm. He was so close that she felt his warm breath on her
skin.

“That’s evil,” he
announced.

“It’s a gift from the sorcerer. Of
course it’s evil,” the king replied with a slight laugh.

“Who are you?” Kelsey
asked.

“I’m Newton, the castle’s finest
gargoyle.” He stood up and bowed.

“I like you, Newton. You look like
a fighter.”

“I combat evil at all levels and
in all forms.”

“Except the evil of gluttony,”
Moss interjected. “That’s one evil you embrace.”

“Gluttony is a sin. However, since
I technically can’t eat to excess because I never put on weight or
get fat, it’s not a sin that applies to me.”

“You’re exempt from sin?” Moss
asked with a raised eyebrow. “That sounds quite
arrogant.”

“In this case it’s the truth,”
Newton insisted calmly as he held up one paw with the pads facing
Moss.

“Who are you?” Kelsey asked Moss.
“I recognize your voice.”

“My name is Moss. I’m the sorcerer
in residence at the castle.”

“Note that he’s not the castle’s
finest sorcerer,” Newton interjected.

“You’re the only gargoyle. I’m not
the only sorcerer. There’s a difference,” Moss replied in a biting
tone.

“Not the only sorcerer?” Kelsey
asked.

“Moss has been teaching me. He
helped me to grow the cuttings into the trees in the orchard,”
Nicholas explained.

“I remember now,” Kelsey said as
she reached up to shake Moss’ hand. “Thank you for helping us in
the orchard.”

“I don’t shake hands,” Moss said
as he folded his arms in front of his chest and placed his
fingertips safely inside of his armpits. “There are better things
to shake.” Before Kelsey could ask him to explain further, Newton
leaned forward, took her hand and kissed it.

“Enchanted,” he said as he
released her hand.

“You are enchanted,” Kelsey
replied. “You’ve been brought to life.”

“I think we may be soulmates,”
Newton said dreamily, and Kelsey smiled.

“Because we both have hearts of
stone?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” he said as he weighed
her response. “I was thinking it was more because we’re both wired
to fight evil. It’s in our blood.”

“You’re made of stone. You don’t
have blood,” Moss said with irritation.

“Don’t I?” Newton asked
skeptically.

“I know what you meant, though,”
Kelsey said to the gargoyle. She saw some similarities in their
natural dispositions.

“Enough,” Moss said with a clap of
his hands, “we have work to do.” At this statement, Kelsey looked
back down at her forearm. She wasn’t sure if she disliked the fact
that the scar was in the shape of a petal or if she disliked what
the spell was doing to her more. Everything about the injury
bothered her.

“Can you help me? Do you know what
this thing is?” Kelsey asked as she held up her forearm.

“Yes – at least, we think so,”
Nicholas said. “The sorcerer is trying to place his magic in nature
so that it will multiply and increase the chaos in the kingdom. If
he’s successful, it will spread on its own. He put disorder, doubt
and other forms of destruction inside the plant. When you stepped
on it, these things were released and landed on you. The chaos is
attempting to take root inside of you.”

“Can you get it off?”

“Understand that removing the seed
will not remove the effects,” the king interjected. “You may live
with the repercussions of this experience for years.”