She just screamed again. “Mama!”
“I’m going to take you to your mom, okay? I’m just going to pick you up and—”
“No.” Though she understood the elves had their ways of healing, and that a child so young needed her mother, Fallon stepped forward. “Don’t move her. She may have hurt something else.”
Fallon knelt down, laid a hand on the sobbing girl’s shoulder.
Tears rolled like liquid glass down the girl’s cheeks. “I want my mama.”
“I know. She’s coming. Do you see me, Twila?”
She murmured it as she glided her hands just above the girl. Head, throat, heart, torso, limbs. “Do you see me?” she said again with her eyes on Twila’s. Those dark, pain-filled eyes that pulled at Fallon.
Slowly, she let what rose in her ease out. “Do you see me?” she repeated, and watched those dark eyes glaze with the trance.
“I see you.”
“Do you hear me, Twila? Do you hear my voice? Do you hear my heartbeat? Do you hear what lives in me stir and rise?”
“I hear you.”
Fallon ignored the sound of running feet, a cry of alarm, and kept what she was, all she was, focused on the girl.
Behind her, Mick’s father gripped Twila’s mother’s arm. “Wait. Wait. The One has her.”
“I will be in you, you will be in me. Your bones are soft still, and the break is clean. I’m in you, you’re in me. We share the pain, and it lessens. Here. See me, only me.”
Fallon laid her hand on the break, gave herself to the knowing. “With me, Twila. Quick.”
And gripping the snapped bone, squeezed. Her breath caught as the girl’s did in that shared moment of heat and pain. Twila’s eyes widened in shock, pupils going from saucers to pinpoints, then back again until her eyes closed on a whimpering sigh.
A new tear slipped out.
“You’re all right now. She’s all right.” With the power still bubbling in her, Fallon eased back. How could she feel so strong, she wondered, with that ghost ache in her arm, with her stomach shaking?
“It was her arm,” she managed as she rose. “The rest is just bumps and scrapes. She’s all right.”
On a cry, the mother leaped forward, gathered Twila up, rained kisses over her hair and face. Cuddling her daughter, she reached up for Fallon’s hand. “Thank you.”
“Sure.” She turned to Mick’s father. She thought of Thomas as a kind of scarecrow man because of his tall, thin build and the mass of corn-silk hair he wore in a bushy braid.
Just then he seemed a little blurry.
“The branch broke. It was the way her arm was bent when she fell on it.”
“Yes. Here.” He pushed a canteen on her. “Drink some water.”
Realizing her throat burned with thirst, she started to gulp, but he laid a hand on the canteen. “Slowly now. Slowly.”
She did as he said, found the world clearing, settling.
“We won’t forget your care for one of our children.” He touched her hand when she started to shrug off his gratitude. “Caring for another matters most of all. We’ll get Twila back to camp, and Mick will walk you home. Mick?”
“Yes, sir.”
Thomas turned, picked up Twila. “We won’t forget,” he vowed, and carried the girl away while her mother stroked her hair.
The others scurried after them.
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
Neither did I, Fallon thought.
When Fallon got back to the cottage, she found Mallick harvesting honey, a chore he’d come to enjoy—despite the occasional sting.
He wore the big hat with the net, and gloves. She could see the last wisps of smoke he’d conjured to chase whatever bees weren’t out hunting from the combs as he slid out the rack, slipped in the spare they’d made.
With the rack in the bucket, he turned, saw her.
“Our bees have been productive.”
As she’d instructed him, he began to walk with the bucket toward the greenhouse—to get out of the open air because the scent of the honey would attract bees.
She walked with him and into the scents of the earth and growing things.
“Something happened.”
He gave her a quick, sharp look, but whatever he saw on her face had him relaxing again. He reached for a knife, warmed it, and began to uncap the comb.
“What happened?”
“One of the girls—her name’s Twila. She’s about five or six, I guess. She fell. She was tree-climbing and a branch broke. She hit really hard, and her arm … Anyway, she broke her arm.”
He paused, concern renewed. “Do they need our help?”
“No. I … I healed it. Her. The arm.”
He nodded, continued to work, separating the honey, the propolis, and the beeswax. All could be used. “How?”
Automatically, Fallon got a fresh jar for the propolis.
“I just knew. It was more than I’d done before. I’ve never healed a broken bone. And she was really scared and it hurt her. She was crying for her mother, so I had to calm her down first. I put her in a trance, a light one. I’ve never done that, Mallick, but I just knew. I didn’t have to think or wonder how.”
“That was wise. A child so young wouldn’t calm on her own.”
“I did what I knew, and what my mother taught me. How you look for injuries with your mind, your light. It was just the arm, or mostly. And it was like a snap—not jagged, but clean. I did a merge. With small injuries, you don’t have to. It’s just …”
“Surface,” he said and kept working.
“Yeah, surface. But to heal a bone, it takes more. But I think it went quick because I was right there, because it was fresh, and she was so little. I think. I had to hurt her a little.”
“You shared her pain?”
“It was just for a second.” A second she’d never forget. “The bone knit so fast, just that second of fire and pain, and then, she was okay.”
“And you?”
“I felt strange. Strong, but strange, and everything was a little blurry. And I was really thirsty. Thomas gave me water, and they took Twila home.”
“You did well. You learned.”
“Learned what?”
“Sometimes you think and plan and weigh. And sometimes you feel and act. And always, always, you trust what’s in you. Trust what you are. You did well.”
The next morning Fallon found a bounty on the doorstep. A small bag of salt, another of sugar—both precious—and a little jar of peppercorns, more precious still.
All had been arranged in a pretty woven basket and scattered with flower petals.
As she lifted it, she saw Twila and her mother. The woman gave the girl a little pat on the butt, sending her forward.
“I came to thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I made you this.”
She held out a crown of flowers twined with white rosebuds and starry white daisies.
“It’s really pretty.” Accepting it, Fallon made the girl smile by putting it on her head.
“You look beautiful. Like a princess, but Mama says you’re a queen.”
“I’m not—”
“I was in your light.” Twila smiled up at her, a face filled with trust. “It was so bright and warm, and nothing hurt so I wasn’t scared.”
Fallon crouched down. “I was in your light. It was soft and pretty, like the flowers.”
Twila giggled, then wrapped her arms around Fallon in a hug before she raced back to her mother.
Because Mallick was pleased with her, he allowed her an extra hour to devote to her quest. She went alone, convinced having Mick or even Faol Ban and Taibhse with her kept the horse elusive.
Though, she had to admit, she’d gone alone before, with the same results.
She’d made progress on so much—her spell casting, her class work, her archery, and her swordplay. She mastered balancing with one hand on the pool as well as the ground.
But she’d made no progress, at all, in her hunt for Laoch.
She’d told herself, during the winter, it was just a matter of waiting until the snow melted. Then she’d find him.
In the early days of spring she told herself she’d find him as the leaves grew thick again.