Page 20 of A Healer's Wrath
He laughed again. “No, Irina, I’m not angry. I’m proud. If Mage Kelså can help you learn to use this gift of the Spirits, I’m confident you will do great things.”
Kelså spoke for the first time since we sat. “You will need to continue your apprenticeship. To Heal complex injury or illness, you will need to understand the body and how it functions. Without a solid foundation of anatomy, you never could have healed Master Rist. Remember the image that formed in your mind?”
I nodded.
“You guided magic to mend what was broken. To do that, you first must know what things should look like, how they should work. I will stay for a few weeks to help you learn the basics, but you need to continue the Master’s work, too, likely for several more years.” She looked up at Rist. “If that is all right with you, Master Rist.”
He beamed, then schooled his expression. “Mage Kelså’s right. There’s still much for you to learn. We can’t have a half-trained magical Healer roaming around out there. Folks will end up with feet sprouting out of their ears.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
A month passed quickly.
Each day, I rose early, studied with my fellow apprentices, worked a full shift with Master Rist and his patients, then spent hours practicing with Kelså. I had never felt more alive, more filled with excitement and purpose.
The first time I called my Light and my palms glowed with Healing magic, I nearly fell backward. Then I jumped up and ran circles around the study, waving my glowing palms in the air.
Kelså laughed until she complained her side hurt.
At Kelså’s suggestion, we waited to tell my parents about my magic until the third week. In the immediate aftermath of Healing Rist, I’d been too frightened, too unsure, to admit anything to anyone. Then, after meeting Kelså and beginning to understand the implications of having magic, a fresh fear formed in my mind. My parents were wonderful physikers, dedicated to the healing arts for much of their lives. How would they react to their daughter possessing magic, being a Mage?
Would it change how they saw me? Would they think of me as one of the self-absorbed, elite men and women who rarely bothered to grace normal folk with their presence, much less help those in need? Would they be ashamed of who I was becoming? Of what I had become?
I dreamed the look in Father’s eyes, the disappointment, the loss. I felt him tremble and watched as he turned his back, never to look on me again. My heart wrenched at visions of Mother’s tears and the echo of her cries.
Kelså would have encouraged me, told me everything would be all right, but I was afraid to even approach her with something so trivial. We were meddling with powers beyond nations. The last thing she wanted to hear was a young girl’s fears over her mortal parents. I knew I was being stubborn. Kelså had been nothing but kind—loving, even. Still, courage fled each time I tried to ask her advice.
I had risked everything to save my adopted father. Now, it felt like I was risking everything not to lose my real one.
With no better plan, I determined to have better control of my Light before telling them anything. I knew the moment they learned I had power, they would beg for a demonstration. I knew Father, with his inquisitive nature, could never let a delicious curiosity go unexplored, especially when it involved his daughter.
In an ironic twist of fate—or a result of poor planning or the Spirits having a sense of humor about such things—I never told my parents I had magic. Roughly two months after Kelså’s first visit, I was at home for a weekend visit. Mother and I were chatting in the kitchen when Father burst into the house. He’d been tending the horses and managed to slice his palm open on one tool or another. Blood wept onto the kitchen floor as he stepped forward.
Without thinking, I reached out, and Light flowed freely.
Father’s eyes were wide as saucers. Mother fell back into her chair. Neither could speak for the longest moment of my life.
“Um, Father, I think you should sit down. I need to tell you both something.”
Father hugged me so long I thought he might never let me go.
Mother wept until Father insisted on seeing more of the “light show,” as he called it.
I felt silly afterward, worrying over my parents’ reactions, fearing their judgement or scorn or whatever. They loved me. I knew that before, and I knew it even more so afterward. Still, the relief I felt after sharing the weight of that knowledge was a brilliant light all its own.
By the third month, I was able to call my Light at will and perform Healings of minor injuries and illnesses inside the body as easily as writing my name on parchment. Master Rist marveled, and Kelså said she was astonished by my rapid progress. She said it often took others many months, even years, to approach my level of control and skill.
Kelså speculated that my singular focus on Healing offered more rapid advancement than those who attempted to delve into many aspects of their magical abilities. I wore blinders, insisting every waking moment be devoted to furtherance of my Healing knowledge and skill. I never even thought to ask how to perform simple magics, such as calling flame or Traveling. Healing was my life; it was my first true love.
Chapter eleven
Irina
Itried to keep my newfound powers secret, but word spread.
In the days following Kelså’s departure, one of Fontaine’s citizens arrived to see the rumored Mage Healer who worked in the Medica. Master Rist offered me an apologetic shrug, then ushered the woman and her ailing father into an exam room. By sunset, word of the man’s miraculous cure had spread halfway across the city, and people were queued up around the block at the Medica’s door.
I slumped against the exam table after the last patient departed around midnight.