Published at 24th of February 2024 10:31 am

Chapter 15

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It was no surprise to me to see Malra heading our way within twenty minutes of getting back home. Father left for work and Mother started her daily ritual of feeding her mana to the plants in our garden in a doomed attempt to keep them lush and healthy. If the garden had been a third of the size it was, she probably could have managed it, but then it wouldn’t have produced enough food for all of us.

Or maybe it would. Less plants with more mana meant more food per plant, but I didn’t know the ideal ratio for maximum yield. Gardening was not one of my hobbies, and I’d never been in a situation where I had to conserve mana like this. Maybe the villagers had long since calculated this, or at least had a rough guideline.

Either way, Mother put a lot of time and effort into that little patch of dirt next to our hut, and it was there that we spent most of our time. The addition of Senica to our group was no doubt the clue that drew Malra’s attention to us.

“Good morning, Xilaya,” she said as she strode out of her hut and made a beeline right for my mother.

“Hello,” Mother said. “How are you today?”

“Just fine,” Malra said. “Always fine. My garden’s a lot easier to care for than yours is.”

That was because it was just Malra and her husband now. They were both in their fifties and their children were fully grown, so her garden was half the size. I’d also noticed the village had some sort of social welfare system that awarded larger portions of the field harvests to the elders of the village. To be fair, we also got a larger than normal ration thanks to the family having two children, but it worked out especially well for Malra’s household.

That wasn’t to say that Malra ever offered to help. No, she was there to gossip and nothing else. I supposed she could make an argument that all the mana she didn’t spend helping Mother was going into a draw stone at the end of the day anyway, but since I knew for a fact that there was no barrier being powered by this mana, it was a moot point to me.

I didn’t like Malra for the simple reason that she was nosy and I had secrets to hide. She’d been the one who’d suggested to Mother that I was possessed back when I’d first awoken, and I hadn’t ever forgiven her for that. Life was hard enough in this village without my neighbor going out of her way to make it worse.

Her eyes sparkled as they skimmed across our garden and settled on Senica. “No school today? I’m afraid I’ve lost track of the schedule. It’s been so many years since my youngest graduated.”

“Something like that,” Mother said. “You know that Cherok has never forgiven us for everything… Sometimes he has difficulty remembering that my children are not to blame for that.”

“Oh, is that why you all went off together this morning?” Malra asked.

Did this woman seriously have nothing better to do than watch the comings and goings of everyone around her? I’d had dedicated divination wards protecting my sanctum that missed more details than Malra, if only because I’d gotten sick of resetting them regularly when the squirrels and birds started going crazy in the springtime.

“The conversation didn’t go well,” Mother admitted.

“Oh no, what happened?”

While I personally thought it was none of Malra’s business, I recognized that Mother considered her a friend. I also knew that the villagers’ entire world was only three or four miles wide and their neighbors were likely the only people they’d ever know throughout their entire lives. Whether Malra found out now or later, everyone was going to know that Father had assaulted Cherok by the end of the day.

In fact, unless I missed my guess, a member of the Garrison was coming down the street right now. I hadn’t seen much of them since they seemed to operate as some sort of private security force that loitered around on the grounds surrounding the governor’s manor, but they did have a barracks that they worked out of and they actually acted as a police force if needed.

I always thought of governments as slow-moving machines, and to be fair, they generally were. Bureaucracy was an unwieldy beast at the best of times, but in a village with a population of under two hundred, there wasn’t much need for it. It was as simple as approaching someone in charge, asking for them to do a thing, and them deciding whether to agree. If they did, they went and did the thing, usually immediately.

Cherok had probably gone right to the barracks, pointed them at Father, and then walked back out with a vindictive little smirk on his face. From there, it had taken less than an hour for someone to come around.

He was a tall man with sandy brown hair, prominent cheekbones, and a chiseled jawline. Broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his shirt across his chest, and he had arms thicker around the biceps than my waist. Worse, he moved with confidence and poise. There was a short sword hanging from a scabbard tied to his belt, and I expected he knew how to use it. If he had half as much smarts as he did looks, he wasn’t someone I wanted coming around regularly.

“Morning, Xilaya,” the Garrison man said.

“Karad,” she replied, tight-lipped. Mother knew why he was here.

Karad cast a quick glance over at our hut, then asked, “He already in the fields?”

“Yes,” Mother said.

“Smart of him,” Karad said. “No reason to lose a day’s food over this whole mess. Anything you think I should know before I head on out that way?”

“No,” Mother said with a sigh. “I’m sure Cherok’s report was completely accurate. He doesn’t have any reason to lie this time.”

“Hmm,” was all the Garrison man said.

“Mom, what’s going to happen?” Senica asked.

Mother took a breath and said, “Well, the village has rules, sweetie. If you break the rules, you get punished. Your father broke a rule, so Mister Karad is here to talk to him about his punishment.”

“Did he get in trouble because of me?”

“No, of course not. He just lost his temper because your teacher wasn’t being very fair. Everything will be fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Senica did not look convinced, not with Karad standing right there. Her eyes drifted down to his sword and she started trembling, but Mother folded her up in a hug and said, “It’s alright. Don’t be scared.”

“Sorry to upset the little one,” Karad said. “I’ll get out of your hair now. Have a good day, Xilaya. Malra.”

“You too, Karad,” our neighbor said cheerily. She didn’t notice the glare Mother gave her, which was probably about the only thing she hadn’t noticed considering how much time she spent snooping on us.

Since Mother had everything under control and there didn’t seem to be much I could do to affect the outcome of this one way or another, I let her handle calming Senica down and went back to work. This mana crystal wasn’t going to build itself, and I still had another week of work before it was stable. I kept an eye on the time as I wove the mana together, though. I was probably going to need a full core tonight.

***

Father returned home about an hour later than usual and though he tried to hide it, I could see he was feeling tender. He held himself stiffly and gritted his teeth when Senica crashed into his waist to hug him.

“How many?” Mother asked softy from where she was preparing dinner.

“Three,” he said.

“Why so many?” she asked, surprised.

“Repeat offender.”

“That was eight years ago!”

“Apparently they’re keeping track,” Father said. He gave Senica a pat on the head and said, “Don’t you worry, I’m alright. Just got to take it slow for a few days.”

“Karad came through looking for you, gave her a scare,” Mother said.

“He told me. Said he was sorry about that.”

I waited for him to finish disentangling himself from my sister and send her back to Mother’s side, then sat down at the table next to him. I wasn’t tall enough yet to use a normal sized chair without standing on it, but that was fine by me. Nobody complained if I didn’t eat at the table.

Father looked over and said, “How’s it going?”

“It’s been an interesting day. I take it you have a history with Cherok.”

“You could say that,” he said. “It’s a painful story, not something I’m too keen on discussing.”

“I think I’ve got the broad strokes of it,” I said. “Details would just be gossip at this point, so I won’t press.”

“Downright decent of you,” Father told me.

“Mmhmm. Well, whatever you did or didn’t do is your business. I just wanted you to know I’ve been building up mana for the last six hours to heal you.”

Father jerked in place, then winced as his shirt rubbed across his back. “You can do that?” he whispered to me as he cast a glance over at Senica to see her occupied with Mother still. They were chopping vegetables to throw in the stew pot, though Senica was moving considerably slower than Mother and her results were questionable at best.

“Of course I can,” I scoffed. “I swear, how much proof do you need before you believe me?”

“Well I’d appreciate it, but you should save your mana for your project,” Father said. “This is just the consequences of my actions coming back around to say hello. I’ll be fine.”

“Call it the village giving back after all that mana you’ve given it over the years if you’d like,” I said. “Now, this will feel hot at first, then it’ll cool down. For three lashes, I should have more than enough to patch you up. Here, take my hand.”

It wasn’t that I couldn’t heal at range, but that added to the mana cost once I started including components of conjuration and divination in the spell. At its most basic, healing was an invocation. Most people could do it without thinking about it, and no real structured spell was needed for minor injuries like my father’s. Healing somebody else was trickier, since it required a bit of transmutation both to get a feel for what was wrong and to treat the injury itself.

Doing it without being able to touch the subject was substantially more expensive and complicated. That wasn’t to say it was outside my abilities, far from it. But, as always these days, I needed to budget my mana carefully.

Father took my hand somewhat hesitantly, and I cast a single diagnostic pulse through him. There were three bright lines across his back that stood out first and foremost, but there were also some smaller injuries in his hands, wrists, and shoulders. One of his knees was slightly swollen too. I assumed those were the results of twelve-hour days in the fields, but they were well within my capabilities to repair.

Healing spells were slow to cast, even for me. The body was an incredibly complicated piece of machinery, self-repairing and resilient, but at the same time, some parts were so delicate that the slightest nudge was all it took to create a cascading chain of failure. For a job like this, the risk was minimal, but I still took my time.

It was very possible to abridge the process of casting a spell, to drill the formation of its basic components so thoroughly that it came automatically. I did this for most spells I cast, but not healing magic. That always got my full attention for the entire process. It took precisely twenty-five seconds, during which my father started to fidget and made to pull his hand away before my fingers squeezed down around it.

Then the mana took on the shape I needed and healing magic flashed across his body. The back wounds closed, and the swelling on his knee went down. The nicks and scrapes so common in physical labor sealed themselves closed, and the inflammation on his arm and shoulder cleared up. It took almost all the mana I had, but Father was physically in perfect health again.

“I asked Mother to prepare an extra-large meal for you,” I said. “You should eat all of it. You’ll need the extra energy.”

Father looked down at me with wonder in his eyes, and I smiled in satisfaction. Some day soon, I’d be able to cast spells like that all day long.

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