The Southern Trail (Book 4) (20 page)

“I’m not here to harm your people.  But if you don’t move us to where I want to go, I will grow angry,” Marco told his wide-eyed companion.  “Now, you and your men proceed, and I will follow,” he told them.  He raised his hand again and whirled it once in the air over his head, making the dome shrink down to no more than the size needed to protect his body.

“Let’s get going,” he told them.

Nestor nodded curtly.  “Come along men,” he said.

“But Nestor!  He’ll kill our people!” one of them protested.

“No, I don’t believe he will,” Nestor answered.  “He could do many things, but I believe he is not a murderer.  He hasn’t shown me that so far, though he has shown me something here I hadn’t expected.  We’ll go to the village, and watch him pass on.”

The men fell in, stepping onto the path, then following Nestor as he began to move forward once again.

"We're approaching our villages," Nestor said as he halted the column’s progress several minutes later.  "Do I have your pledge that no harm will come to my people?"

"I will do them no more harm than I have done to you yourself so far," Marco agreed.  "Is that fair enough?"

"Fair enough," Nestor agreed.  He looked in Marco’s eyes and nodded acknowledgment.

He turned and resumed walking; five minutes later the forest gave way abruptly to small open fields and gardens, beyond which Marco saw the structures of a village.  An open fire burned in a cooking pit, and clothes hung from lines, drying in the sunlight.

"Nestor?" a woman's voice rang out.  "Nestor!" she repeated, and Marco watched a woman with a careworn face come flying out of the village.  She threw herself into his arms, and the two of them stood still in a silent embrace.  Marco could see the woman's face over Nestor's shoulder; she was crying, but the careworn features were revitalized and hopeful.

"Just because I took the long way home, you don't have to cry," Marco heard Nestor say gently.

"They said there was no hope, that a sorcerer had fought from where you'd been stationed," the woman told Nestor as they disengaged from their embrace.

"There was," Nestor agreed.  "He's standing back there," he pointed to the rear of the patiently waiting line, where Marco stood with his faintly glowing penumbra around him.

"Oh gods, Nestor!  Have you brought him here to kill us all?" Marco saw a frightened expression on the mobile features of the woman's face.

"He saved my life Corinne.  He magically healed me and hid me.  Now he's on his way elsewhere; he told me that and I believe him," Nestor told the woman.  "Let's go in the village and let him move on," he placed his arm around her shoulders and set the group in motion again.

The other members of the squad were greeted as they entered their home village, though not as warmly as Nestor had been.  All eyes turned warily towards Marco.

"He is not here to harm us; this sorcerer is merely passing through," Nestor told the ring of observers, as Marco stood quietly nearby, wanting only to pass through the village and continue on his quest.

"Marco," Nestor's voice addressed him, catching him by surprise, "would you pause in your journey and help our village?

"We have suffered a plague that has struck our children; it weakens their legs so badly that they can no longer walk.  Would you use your powers to help them walk again?" Nestor pleaded.

"Impossible!" someone called.

"Marco can do this, can't you Marco?" Nestor asked.

The man had boxed him in, Marco realized.  "You know that I'm in a hurry, don't you?” Marco asked.

"They are such small children, and they're in a hurry too, a hurry to run and jump and play, the way they used to," the woman at Nestor’s side pleaded.  “If you can do this, please help the children.”

He capitulated.  It was surprising, he reflected, that when Diotima had first offered the blessing of the unceasing supply of water, he had imagined it would be a boon for himself, enabling him to travel through hostile, desert environments.  He had never envisioned the use that had proven to be so important, as a healing agent for others.  He could not refuse to spread the blessing to assist others, he knew; his heart told him so, and he wondered if the spirit of the spring had known what her surprising boon was fated to accomplish when she had bestowed it upon him.

“I’ll treat your children,” Marco told Nestor.  “Provide me with a house I can work in, and start bringing the children to me.”

He was quickly led to a wooden home, one with three rooms, and he took a spot in the middle room, then finally released the power he had used to protect himself.  The glowing shield around him disappeared as he stood there with Nestor.  When Corinne entered the room, she stopped to stare of him.

“You don’t look any different from us,” she said.

Marco thought about the spots of gold that were showing through the covering Iasco had placed over his right hand.  In those few small places, the scratch on the back, the opening on his palm, and the tips of his fingers, he was displaying the shining physical evidence of the differences between them.

“I’m not much different from you; my heart’s not,” Marco said.

“Bring your children in, and we’ll try to treat them all.  Hurry though. I want to finish quickly,” he said.

“I’ll get some bread and cheese for you to eat,” Nestor offered after Corinne left, and Marco found himself alone in the room.

It was maddening, he thought, the idea that he was stuck taking care of children.

There was a sound behind him, and he turned to see Hector carrying in a platter with ham and bread and cheese.  There was another sound at the other door, and he turned to see a young boy, perhaps ten or eleven, standing at the threshold, using crutches to drag himself into the room.

The boy looked both pitiful in his physical state, and he looked as though he were contemptuous about the idea of presenting himself to Marco for healing.

“So you’re the magician who’s going to use magic to heal me?” the boy asked.  There was no trust in his voice.

“Come here,” Marco waved the boy over negligently as he took a bite of the bread.  He was instinctively aware of the boy’s attitude, and knew that he needed to open their interaction by appearing as disinterested as the boy was.

“Here,” Marco held his finger out.  “Let me test how strong your jaws are.  Suck on this,” he ordered.

“My jaws?  What do they have to do with anything?” the boy scornfully asked.

“I’ll tell you after we do this,” Marco still held his finger in the air.

The boy snorted derisively, then pulled the finger to his mouth.  He sucked on it, then coughed and gagged as he whipped his head away from Marco’s hand.

“How’d you do that?” he demanded.  He grabbed the hand and turned it, looking at it incredulously.

“Do what?” Marco asked, picking up a piece of ham and taking a bite.

“That water – where did it come from?” the boy demanded.

Nestor burst out in laughter.  The boy glared at him, then took Marco’s finger and tried it again, and got the water again.

“Where does it come from?” he questioned Marco less combatively.

“It’s from a magic spring way up north.  A spirit from the spring enchanted my finger.  She was a lady, but she was made all of water, and she stood on top of the spring water,” Marco let excitement creep into his voice.

The boy’s eyes grew wide.  “Really?  No way!” he replied.

“Honestly.  And the water is magic water.  It’ll help your body heal if you drink enough.  It helped you heal didn’t it?” Marco swung around to ask Nestor.

“I had stab wounds last night, and I walked home from Rurita city today,” he confirmed.

The boy was uncertain in the face of the unexpected water and the testimonial from the village leader.  He swallowed three more mouthfuls.  “So I’ll be able to walk after this?” he asked.

“Not right away,” Marco answered.  The boy’s protective shell had cracked, and he had asked his question with a hopeful yearning.  “But you’ll start getting better tonight while you sleep, and you can have more of the water tomorrow morning. 

“Now go along and tell the other kids to hurry in here,” Marco directed.

“You’ll stay until tomorrow morning?” Nestor asked once the boy was gone.

“There’s no choice, is there?” Marco asked.  “I can’t just leave the boy like that.”

And so Marco patiently served a score of children who came into the room, and finishing with the final one after the sun had set.

“Come out and join us around the fire,” Corinne asked him kindly.  “We’re all singing together to celebrate Nestor’s return.”

Marco left the house and followed the woman to the center of the village, where a large bonfire cast a cheerful ruddy glow upon the faces of those who sat around the fire.  Corinne made room for him to sit on the same log that she and Nestor sat upon, and the group started singing a song that Marco didn’t know, one that was a longing song about going to a home far away.  He listened to the unsteady voices sing the lyrics while filled with emotion.

They all immediately switched to another song, one with alternating verses sung by the women and then the men, a humorous, spiraling tale of domestic disaster that had them all laughing at the end.

A woman came and sat sideways, straddling the very end of the log where Marco sat, so tightly tucked up onto the narrow band of lumber that her backside was firmly set against his thigh.  “So you’ve got a magical finger that will make my Massey get better?” she asked, looking directly into Marco’s face, searching desperately for some sign of hope.

Marco remembered the six year old girl named Massey, a girl who was pale, pale white, unable to be in sunlight without getting terrible blisters on her skin.  She had come into the house swaddled in layers of dark woolen blankets, and sucked at the water that all the other children with all the other illnesses had consumed.

“I believe she’ll get better.  I’ll give her more in the morning before I go and we’ll see if it’s enough to give her a better life,” he told the woman.

“She’s the sweetest thing.  All I want is for her to be able to play with the other children.  It’s not too much for a mother to ask, is it?” the woman had her hand clutching Marco’s arm, unaware of what she was doing.

“There’s nothing more natural in the world than that,” Marco told her gently.  He thought of his own mother, in the foothills near the Lion City.  She’d wanted nothing but a good life for her children he knew; he wondered if she’d think that his life qualified.

Other parents came to see Marco too, to seek reassurance about his treatment for their children, and to each of them he repeated his gauzy belief that the children would get better.  And the crowd continued to sing a variety of songs that brought the people together and unified the village residents.

When Marco went to bed, half the village had gone before him, the logs in the fire had turned to coals, and the moon was high overhead.  He slept on a blanket given to him by Corinne, and dreamed of having a son with Mirra, a boy who drank water from Diotima every day.

He awoke in the morning, to find that the mother of Massey was already there, holding her thin daughter in a thick layer of blankets.

“I beg your forgiveness,” she apologized, “but I didn’t want to miss you this morning.”

Marco sat up and gave her a wan smile, then held his finger out for the girl.  It had to appear ludicrous, he knew, and the image of lambs stepping up to their mothers, an activity he had watched innumerable times when he had been a shepherd, came to mind once again.  It was a silly image, yet perhaps it had some truth to it, he thought to himself, and smiled.

When Massey had drank several mouthfuls of the spring water, her mother apologized again, then wrapped her daughter and left.  Corinne came and offered him milk and bread, and then other children arrived.  It was halfway to noon before Marco was finished with his work at the village, and all the children, those who had suffered from any notable malady at all in recent times, had been given water from Diotima’s spring.

When his duties were finished, he returned to his pallet to pack up his few belongings.  He looked up, conscious of someone else in the room, and saw Corinne, holding a large bundle.

“This food is for you,” the woman told him.  

“Will they really get better?” she asked as she handed the package to him.

“They will get better,” Marco said solemnly.  “I don’t know if they’ll get all the way better after just two treatments, but they will improve.  I think many of them will heal completely.

“And who knows,” he said as he placed the bundle into his knapsack, “maybe someday I’ll come back this way to check on them.

“Someday, when this quest is done,” he repeated softly, then stood, and motioned for Corinne to lead the way out of the room.  They proceeded to the courtyard space in front of the house, where Nestor was waiting.

              Nestor said good bye to Corinne, who gave a sincere thank you to Marco, crying as she stood and watched him leave the village.  “You’ve given all these children something to hope for, something to believe in.  That’s the greatest blessing we could ask for, sir.  Thank you,” she said emotionally, and then Marco and Nestor left the village, headed east.

              “How far do we need to travel?” Marco asked as they left the clearing and re-entered the encircling forest.

“It’s about an hour to the southern trail that the travelers use, and then their camp is just a quarter of a mile past that,” Nestor answered.

They walked on along a continuous string of trails that pointed eastward, with little conversation for the first thirty minutes.

“Was that true, what you told the boy last night?  About that spirit at a spring?” Nestor spoke up suddenly.

“Yes, it was true,” Marco assured him.  “I really met the spirit, and she gave me a gift to help me, the gift of her spring water.  When she gave it to me, I thought it was just for me, but I think she knew that it would help others.  Others knew about her spring,” Marco told him.

“That’s an amazing story,” Nestor said with a shake of his head.

“It was an amazing experience,” Marco said softly.  The journey that had taken him to the spring had been amazing; he’d traveled with Ophiuchus up to that point, he’d fought the Echidna, traveled through the underworld, become enraptured with Mirra, and yet still, being in the presence of the two supernatural beings had been amazing – frightening and confusing but also comforting, especially compared to so many of the other activities that had occurred since then.  The whole adventure had changed him, there was no doubt, but he hoped that when it was all finished, he’d come to find that the two spirits were pleased with both the outcome and him.