Page 5 of Crown of Storm and Silence
I shake my head, pressing the injured finger to my lips. The metallic taste of blood triggers something, a flash of memory that's gone before I can grasp it. Dark eyes in darkness. A voice like silk and smoke whispering my name, but not the name I know.
"I'm fine," I lie, because what else can I say? That I dream of shadows that feel like home? That sometimes I wake with tears on my cheeks and don't know why? That my own reflection seems to belong to a stranger?
Mira doesn't believe me, her healer's instincts are too sharp for that, but she lets it pass. She's been letting a lot pass since a village woman with three young children found me nearlysix months ago, collapsed at the forest's edge with blood on my clothes and terror in my eyes, and brought me to Mira for healing.
When I finally woke three days later in this cottage, I knew nothing—not my name, not where I'd come from. The woman who found me said I'd been mumbling words in a language she didn't recognize, calling out for someone whose name she couldn't repeat.
I study Mira’s face as she returns to grinding dried chamomile, noting the deep lines around her silver hair and kind eyes. The cottage sits at the edge of the village, with her herb garden stretching toward the forest—a sanctuary that became my refuge after that desperate night.
"Elif," she'd said when I asked what to call myself. "You look like an Elif to me." The name had felt foreign on my tongue, but everything felt foreign then. Even now, nearly six months later, it sits uncomfortably, like wearing someone else's clothes.
The cottage door chimes as someone enters, and I look up to see young Willem hobbling in, his leg wrapped in bloodied cloth. His mother hovers behind him, making the soft keening sounds that mothers make when their children are hurt.
"Fell from the barn roof," she explains, her voice high with panic. "The bleeding won't stop."
I start to rise, but Mira waves me back. "Sit, child. You're pale as winter sky today."
As Mira kneels beside Willem and unwraps the makeshift bandage, something stirs in my chest—a pull, urgent and inexplicable. When the bloodied cloth falls away, revealing a gash that runs from knee to shin, deep enough to show bone in places, Mira's breath catches. The amount of blood pooling beneath his leg makes my stomach lurch—no wonder the boy looks ready to faint.
"Blessed Gun Ata," she whispers. "This is far worse than I thought."
"This needs stitching," she murmurs, reaching for her needle case. "Willem, you're going to need to be very brave?—"
"No." The word leaves my lips before I can stop it, and suddenly I'm moving. "Let me."
"Elif, you should rest—" Mira begins, but I'm already pushing past her, my hands hovering over Willem's torn leg.
Something inside me recognizes this wound with impossible certainty. My palms grow warm, then hot, and Willem's eyes widen as he stares up at me. Even through his pain and fear, there's curiosity there, the natural wonder of a child encountering something beyond his understanding.
"It's going to be all right," I hear myself say, lowering my hands to his skin.
The moment we touch, the world shifts.
Heat flows through me, liquid sunlight pouring down my arms and out through my palms. It's not painful—quite the opposite. It feels like coming alive, like remembering how to breathe after holding your breath for too long. The warmth spreads through my entire body, and for a moment, I feel more myself than I have since waking up in this cottage with no memory of who I used to be.
"What's happening?" his mother whispers.
Under my touch, the bleeding simply stops. Not gradually, the way wounds do when pressure is applied, but instantly, as if I've somehow convinced his body that it was never injured at all. The torn edges of skin begin to pull together, knitting with perfection that defies everything I thought I knew about how bodies heal.
I can feel every layer of tissue as it mends, muscle fibers weaving back together, blood vessels reconnecting, skin stretching to cover the gap. It's like watching a tapestryrepair itself, threads finding their proper places with impossible accuracy.
"Sweet merciful gods," Willem's mother breathes.
The gash grows smaller, shallower. New skin spreads across the gap like pale pink silk being woven into perfection. Even the bruising around the wound fades from deep purple to yellow to nothing at all. The heat flowing through my hands intensifies, and I can sense something deeper—not just the physical healing, but something else. The fear leaving Willem's body, the pain dissolving like mist before the sun.
The silence that follows is deafening.
Willem scrambles to his feet, bouncing on his toes. "It doesn't hurt! Look, Mother, look!"
His mother has gone white, staring at me as if I've sprouted wings. "How is this possible?"
I stare at my hands, watching the golden warmth fade until they look ordinary again. But they don't feel ordinary—they feel like they remember something I've forgotten.
"I don't know how I learned to do this," I whisper. "But somehow...my hands remember what my mind has forgotten."
Willem's mother fumbles for coins with shaking fingers. "Please, let me pay you?—"
"No payment necessary," Mira says firmly. "We're just glad Willem is well."
