Water bubbles and froths around the basin’s emberstone, boiling against the feldspar sphere as the ruby atop it glows. Red and black mix together into muddy brown as the scalpels, picks, and needles tumble in. A putrid brew of blood, pus, dirt, and flesh.

I reach in and sense the threat on me. Hardy bits of disease that neither soap nor fire can touch. They cling to my skin, unable to find purchase in the thin sheet of death that protects us all. The tools and knives appear glittering and clean, yet within the smallest pits and nicks in the metal I feel the greatest danger. Here they linger, sheltered from the dry air.

With my will I stamp them out.

Now dry and sterile, I sort the tools into bundles wrapped in cloth, and leave the washroom for the great hall.

In this place where once my people made their voices heard, now there is only chaos. Screams of pain. Shouts for aid as yet another who is sick and dying is brought inside. I weave through the crowd, from surgeon to healer, and deliver the tools they need. They pay me no heed as I walk past, cloaked in my dark robes, and I appreciate them all the more for it. Yet there is a presence here, a watchful eye that keeps finding me, no matter how many people I put between us.

There is a woman who has come to us from a land across the sea, one where great stone towers rise up above verdant forests, dressed in cloth wrappings that most travelers would leave behind in that tropic place. She stands head and shoulders above the tallest men of our city, and though she journeyed here on foot alone her brown skin is untouched by the weathers of the long roads, her long black braids are clean and free of dirt or dust.

She stands away from us, and among those that our healers have deemed beyond saving. She comes to a man laid out on the ground, a man whose leg has become so infested by disease that it has rotted off at the knee. She kneels down and briefly lays a hand upon him.

In her other hand she holds a large, egg-shaped stone. She speaks in a songlike tongue and the stone begins to weep, a reddish mud seeping from its surface as she sets it down. With both hands she gathers the substance into a thick rod and sculpts it like clay, carving out the muscles of the calf, the smooth face of the shin, the ball of the foot and even the quick of each toenail. The woman presses her creation against the man’s rotted knee, and utters one last word.

Spots of pale skin sprout and spread across the sculpture, knitting into and blending with the man’s flesh, growing flush as blood begins the flow.

The woman stands right as I turn away, and I feel her gaze on me once again.

A hand lands upon my shoulder, and turns me around—a young man whose handsome face is wonderfully, painfully familiar, with short black hair, gray-green eyes, and sun-tanned light skin. He is taller, but not by much.

“Brother. I need your help,” he says to me

He points to a patient upon a nearby table. An older girl, soon to be a young woman, with fine black hair about as long as mine. I try to examine her, to diagnose the welts and wounds that fester upon her body, but I cannot look away from her face. An emotion stirs within me, one of great desire, and great pain.

“Please,” my brother says.

I push forward, and lay a hand upon her abdomen. I can feel her fighting against this plague, and I can feel she is losing. Her flesh is being devoured, turned to rot, as an unseen swarm of unlife makes her body its home.

I cannot aid her in her fight. I cannot bolster her strength or heal her wounds. Yet I can still save her.

Death flows from my hand and into her. I weave it through her, and I find the devourer. I stamp it out like a boot that grinds an insect into the dirt, like a fist closed upon a candle flame.

I feel Life enter her at my brother’s touch, as he wills her body to heal.

“Thank you, brother,” he says.

That emotion stirs again, that wrongness bleeding into my mind, and I cannot meet his eyes.

I run away.

~*~

My robe is hot and heavy on my shoulders, and yet I pull it close around me as I walk through the streets. I keep its hood upon my head even as the summer sun starts to set.

Only when I leave the city and walk out into the fields do I loosen my grip and let my hand find its way to my hair, weaving the strands between my fingers, brushing them against my collarbone. For a moment it feels right, and then I sense how coarse each strand is, how rough my skin feels.

I walk until I reach the forest, miles beyond the city wall. I walk on until I cross a stream and find myself at a clearing.

The woman is there, kneeling, eyes closed. Her long braids have been gathered up above her head, tied together in a round, oblate form—almost like a flower about to bloom.

My heart leaps into my throat, and I take a step back.

“Please, my child. Come here.”

She points at the ground in front of her. I manage, with effort, to enter the clearing, and cross my legs as I sit down.

“You come with questions.”

“Yes.”

I wait for her to speak, only for her to nod.

“I wanted to thank you,” I say, and I feel that wrong again, as I hear the edge in my voice.

“Your people have thanked me enough,” she says.

Everyone, wealthy and poor, had offered her gifts. Jewelry, fine fabrics, gold, and more. She had, in turn, given away these tributes to those in need, save for one: a wreath woven from flowers and grasses by the children, which she wears upon her neck, each plant still as vibrant as they’d been when rooted firmly in the earth.

“I… I’m sorry. You traveled so far—”

She smiles, and shakes her head.

“It is you who have saved them, my child.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Mother Beneath whispers in her dreams, and each night, when I sleep under the light of her daughter above”—she raise a hand toward the crescent moon perched in the sky—“I hear her warnings to our Earth-sister, and in her stead I seek places where there is great suffering, so that I may be the salve upon their wounds.”

“You mean, the plague?”

“No, my child. The illness befell your people long after I began my journey, though it surely hastened my step.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Our Father above sees all with his light. He has seen the pain in your heart, and our Mother has felt the unease in your soul.”

I shake my head. “No, you must be mistaken.”

“Tell me, child. What is this great suffering you have buried within you?”

“I… I can’t tell you.”

“You may speak freely to me, my child.”

“No, I—I don’t know what to say.”

She nods.

“I understand.”

The woman reaches behind her head and into her braids. They come undone and fall loose onto her shoulders as she pulls the focal stone free and sets it down between us.

She picks a leaf from the ground, broad and flat, and lays it upon the stone’s apex. Dew drops spreads out across its surface until they form a sheet of water that reflects the sky as well as finely polished silver.

“Look upon yourself, child, and tell me what it is you see.”

Nausea climbs my throat as I lean over, knowing that the moment I brush my hair aside I will see a face, one that I want to hate, but can’t.

“This is my brother’s face,” I say as I stare at the shimmering water. “I… wear it, I’ve worn it my whole life, but it has never been mine.”

I look up as the woman opens her eyes, and in her gaze I can sense understanding.

“Your brother can Harness Life, and as I understand, this power is common to your bloodline. Why is it, my child, that you have walked the other path?”

As I close my eyes I can feel her presence, watching, listening.

I let the Death within me loose.

I let it wash over my skin, seeping into each follicle and root, save for those on my scalp. I let it eat at my spine and my shoulders, at my chin and my cheeks, at my brow at and the bones of my hands and feet.

I open my eyes and for the first time since she has arrived I see her face creased with worry, her amber eyes wide.

“My child… there is no need for such cruelty. You mustn’t bring this harm upon yourself.”

“This isn’t me,” I say despite the deepness of my voice, despite that edge that cuts against me each time I speak. “It’s never been me.”

For the first time in a long while, tears wet my cheeks.

“Take my hand, child.”

Reluctantly, I place my hand in hers, painfully aware of the contrast between them.

“Close your eyes, and breathe. Feel the Air within your lungs, the Water in your veins, the Fire in your flesh, the Earth in your bones, and the Light inside your mind. Listen to the Life that these Essences embody, and speak to them your Truth.”

In the moment I feel nothing, and then I glance once more at the leaf.

A girl with fine black hair and gray-green eyes looks back at me.

I lift my head to face the woman and feel a smile creep onto my face as tears fall from my eyes, only to choke as I glance back at the leaf, and see my brother face’s once more.

“Please! Please! Bring it back! Bring her back!”

“My child.” The woman puts a hand on my shoulder. “Do not despair. This is merely the beginning of a journey. It will be long, and at times it will press you beyond your limits, but you are a strong young woman, and you will prevail.”

“No, I… I’ve tried. I tried so hard, it—it’s not possible.”

She smiles, warmly, and shakes her head.

“I see now why the Mother Beneath sent me here. I will aid your first small steps, but it must be you who finishes it.”

“How can you help me?” I say as I look at her, at this woman before me.

She laughs. It is a playful, bemused laugh—and it is deeper than her voice should be.

I feel shadows around her. Of a square jaw and a bald head. Broad shoulders and a straight waist. Echoes of man that never was.

“I have walked this path myself,” she says, “and I shall teach you to walk it, too.”