Page 138 of A Grave Not Made For Mourning
My blood drips onto the dirt.
I stare at the stars.
Is this it? Is this my death?
Will I see Ma soon?
“No,”the boy hisses.“You will not!”
Muffled words make it through my moment of silence. It’s my name she screams. I glance down. Calista is tying something around my wound—the sleeve of her shirt.
“You’ll heal yourself,” she whispers.
No, she doesn’t whisper. My ears are clogged with rushing blood.
“Wendy! That is a command.Healyourself!”
I don’t respond.
“Listen to her,”the boy says.“She wants the best for you.”
A hand grips my cheek harshly, shaking my head.
“Do you hear me?” Calista picks up my one gloved hand, unbuttoning it for me. I jerk up, all instinct. She tears the leather from my hand. She knows not to touch, even now.
My bare hands settle over the wound. It feels like touching a ghost. Which part isn’t real? My hands or the wound? It’s as if the boy connects to me now. As if his hands are guiding me.
He doesn’t have hands.
They hold me anyways.
“The wound will stitch itself together,”he says.“You can heal the rest later. You must get out of the woods, first.”
It’s not my energy that fuels me. It’s not my magic that heals me. It isn’t me that forces myself to live—it’s the boy.
Tears well in my eyes as the green energy falls from my hands, like a waterfall of smoke. I don’t know why I cry.
It isn’t mine.
They are Calista’s tears.
There are very few.
I’ve only ever felt the magic of mending through other people. I’ve never mended myself. It’s like a circle. It’s like infinity. There is no ending or beginning. It is me meeting me.
I am the whole world.
And for once, the world heals me.
?
My arms hang heavy as I walk back to the academy, Calista beside me. She hasn’t said a word, and if she had, it wouldn’t have been a pleasant one.
My wound feels taut, stretched thin. I’ll sleep it off. If I need more healing, I can go to the infirmary.
I try to make it to my room, but with every step, the feeling I fought off earlier grows stronger. It isn’t anything concrete. I thought it would go away after I killed the moonaro, but nothing has changed. Dread coils in my gut, like something alive is chewing its way through me, the same way rot hollows out fruit.
It feels vaguely familiar, as if I felt it before and know what it means, but I fail to place it.
