Prophet's Journey, page 12
part #1 of Prophet of the Badlands Series
She blinked at him.
“They will open if you type in the right five-digit number.”
“What’s the right number?” asked Bill.
Ell-Gee shrugged. “No idea. That’s why I’m trying all of them.”
A few seconds later, the binder on that ankle emitted a chirp and opened, the display screen stopped on 71526. Ell-Gee typed the same number into the other side, and it opened as well. Such a massive surge of joy hit Althea that it radiated out over the settlement. Noema grinned broadly. Sumiko gazed into space. Bill closed his eyes and smiled. Avie erupted in giggles. Ell-Gee smiled, but appeared confused. Ooru, Paama, and Eem all cheered.
Althea squealed in delight and jumped off the table, hugging him. “Thank you!” She tackle-hugged Ooru next, then Paama, Eem, and the councilors.
“I feel most unusual,” said Noema.
“Truly the work of the gods if you are smiling.” Bill sipped his drink.
Sumiko nearly laughed, but stopped herself. Noema shot him a ‘what’s that supposed to mean’ look, but didn’t stop smiling.
Althea faced the elder and peered up at her. “Can you help me get back to Querq?”
The older woman raised an eyebrow—evidently not having the first clue what that even meant.
13
Banished
The councilors looked back and forth at each other in varying degrees of confusion.
A few minutes of silence broke when Avie prodded a device with the wand, causing it to emit a strange wailing noise along with a—possibly male—voice shrieking in agony. The little girl started moving her head up and down rapidly, making her fluffy auburn hair dance around.
“By the gods, what is that noise?” blurted Sumiko.
“Music,” said Bill.
Avie raised her left hand, extending her index and pinky fingers up into a shape like bull horns, continuing to bob her head in time with the noise.
“It sounds evil,” whispered Althea. “Are they hurting that man?”
“No, he is singing.” Ell-Gee laughed. “It’s from the time of the ancients. I believe they called it heavy metal.”
“It’s not metal. It’s sound,” said Althea.
The device emitted a spark and a puff of smoke before going silent. Avie lowered her ‘bull horns,’ stopped bobbing her head, and frowned at it. “Aww.”
Since the councilors hadn’t said a word about helping her go home, Althea figured they had no idea how to do so. At least Ell-Gee took those damn binders off her, so she could make her way back to Querq on her own.
“Thank you for helping me.” Althea hugged Ell-Gee again. “I must return to my family.”
She headed for the exit.
“Althea?” asked Noema. “Do you not have a message for us?”
“Umm.” Althea stopped and turned to look at them. “No. I didn’t come here to find you. Ooru, Paama, and Eem found me.”
Noema stepped closer. “The gods did not send you with a message from Queen Kye?”
“I don’t know who that is.”
The councilors exchanged worried looks—except Bill. He gave off a ‘well that figures’ sort of vibe. When no one said anything for a moment, Althea resumed walking out.
Bzzt. Avie giggled.
Althea turned left in the corridor and followed it back the way she remembered coming in. However, after a few turns that she thought seemed right, she realized she hadn’t gone the same way when she entered a hallway where a giant bundle of thick wires ran along the wall on the left at her eye level. Lost but curious, she followed the cables for a while until they went through a doorway. She peered into the room—at a group of machine men glaring at her.
“Eep!” She jumped back, flattening herself against the wall.
None of the machine men said anything about contaminants or chased her… so after a moment, she got up enough nerve to look again. Three wheel men hung from a frame of metal pipes by chains attached to metal loops on their shoulders. Their wheels and gun arms were missing and they didn’t appear to be ‘awake,’ no red light glowing from their multiple lens-eyes. Behind them, two larger machine men with legs and shiny silver bodies lay on the floor. They, too, did not appear to be awake. All five had suffered damage from explosives. Numerous wires connected their chests to a giant array of plastic boxes on the right side of the room. The huge cable bundle that ran along the corridor plunged into the top of the same array.
“Umm… I probably shouldn’t go in there.”
She backed away from the room and ran down the hall, trying to find the path to the giant chamber. A series of random turns brought her to a passage that appeared far more recent, one these settlers must have dug out themselves. Other people here paid her little attention beyond polite nods of greeting. Children near in age to her or younger stopped in place and stared at her as she walked by.
This is the wrong way. I should go—
A foul smell hit her in the nose, a smell she knew well: infection.
Concern pulled her deeper into the rough-hewn passage, to a white flag bearing a red mark that she recognized from her ‘math’ lesson as a plus sign. Confused why a village would have an entire room devoted to math, she approached and peered in the open doorway, nearly gagging on the smell of mierda, rotting flesh, and vomit.
Two boys not much older than her lay on cots, barely conscious. A woman and three men in their thirties also occupied beds farther in by the back corner. The worst smell came from the dark-haired boy, whose left leg below the knee looked more like a mossy log than human skin.
“Uh oh.” Althea ran over to him.
“Child!” yelled a woman even older than Noema. She somewhat resembled Sumiko, only old, short, somewhat pudgy, and clearly in a bad mood. “Do not pester him. He is very ill. The gods will welcome him soon.”
Althea disregarded the old woman and approached the boy with the rotting leg.
“Girl!” the elder scurried over and grabbed Althea by the arm, ungently.
“Let go,” said Althea. A brief brightening of her eyes accompanied the Suggestion.
The command knocked the angry expression from the woman’s face, leaving her bewildered. Her claw like fingers relaxed, and her arm fell.
“He does not have to go to his ancestors.”
For an instant, the woman appeared about to grab her again, but hesitated. Fear bubbled up within the emotions surrounding her. Confident the woman wouldn’t get in the way, Althea rested her hands on the boy’s arm and closed her eyes, plunging her consciousness into the quiet non-space in which her power connected to someone else’s life energy.
Angry blackness devoured the lower half of the boy’s leg. A hollow in the shin bone revealed an object not part of his body. The irregular shape made her think rock or fragment of concrete. The boy’s skin had died below the knee, the decay having seeped well into the muscles below. She commanded his mind to ignore pain, then focused her power on the area where death chewed. Bit by bit, she separated a thin layer of muscle shape away from the healthy parts, creating a ‘sock’ of dead skin and muscle tissue disconnected entirely from the boy. After holding the blood-presence in place so it didn’t leak out everywhere, she opened her eyes and grasped the crusty, hot mess with both hands.
The older woman gurgled in disgust when Althea slid the rot-sock off and dropped it to the floor, exposing glistening raw muscles, his foot stripped mostly down to bones.
“Wha… am I dead?” whispered the boy. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“No,” said Althea. “Please hold still.”
She closed her eyes and dove back into the dark world of multicolored shapes and forms. At the urging of her power, his body expelled the foreign object, then regenerated muscle tissue, his leg swelling from a spindle to normal thickness over the span of about ten minutes. Once the muscles appeared complete, Althea drew the skin-shape down over the leg, guiding its growth until it covered his toes.
His blood-presence contained much sick. Gathering it all to the bladder took longer than repairing the leg. The amount of sick exceeded his ability to contain it, causing him to involuntarily squirt fetid green fluid into the air.
The woman yelled and jumped back, then dashed over to a table to grab a plastic bucket.
Althea pushed the boy up onto his side, directing the stream of awfulness to the floor.
He moaned.
“What is happening?” yelled the woman, while running over to hold the bucket under the poison. “Ugh. This does not smell right at all.”
“He had a lot of sick.” Althea looked the boy over. Aside from being in dire need of a bath, he appeared healthy. “Please bring him food. He will be hungry from the healing.”
“Ngh. I can’t stop.” The boy grabbed himself, but the stream of dark green urine continued.
“Don’t. You have to let the sicks all the way out or they will harm you.” Althea kept a hand on his arm to prevent him from feeling pain. Getting rid of such foulness usually burned quite a bit.
Once he finished, he rolled flat on his back and let off a belabored moan. It took him a moment to realize his leg no longer resembled dead wood. “Gods!” He shot upright and pulled his foot into his lap, studying it. “Mariko! You did it.”
“I did nothing…” The old one held the bucket out at arms’ length, face scrunched.
Althea braced for the usual fanfare about The Prophet, but the elder and boy merely stared at her in bewilderment. Mariko cringed at the skin sock on the floor. With a sigh, Althea picked up the squishy-crunchy thing and dropped it in the bucket.
“You should burn that.”
Mariko heaved as if about to vomit. “Y-you touched it with your bare hand…”
Althea tilted her head, unsure why that would matter.
The boy’s stomach emitted a horribly loud growl. He clutched his gut for a second, then sprang off the bed, so desperate for food that he ran naked into the hallway. Althea moved around the empty cot and examined the next boy, who appeared a little younger than her. Thousands of tiny raised spots covered every inch of his skin. He lay half conscious, covered in a cold sweat, shivering. This, she’d seen before. Sometimes, this sick went away on its own, but it could kill raiders or villagers who got it. One village doctor had called it ‘pox.’ People tended to exile anyone with it since the sick spread rapidly.
“Do you have a metal bucket?” asked Althea.
“Yes.” Mariko shuffled off and returned with a big metal pail. “Is he going to pee, too?”
Althea nodded. “Yes. But…” She peeled him out of his hide clothing, tossing his tunic and skirt into the bucket. “All of this bedding will need to be burned, too. This sick jumps from person to person. Anything he touched can carry the sick. It can hurt everyone who touches these things. He will need to take a bath away from others in water that you do not keep.”
“Oh… how do you know this?” Mariko hovered closer, examining the red dots all over the boy’s skin.
“I’m the Prophet.” Althea rested her hand on his bumpy arm and dove into his life essence, forcing the threads of yellow pervading his blood-presence and life-shapes down to the bladder. After commanding his skin to heal itself of all the sores, she opened her eyes.
“The Prophet?” asked Mariko. “You see the future?”
“Umm. No.” She shook her head. “Well… sometimes I get a feeling about stuff that’s gonna happen, but only like right before it happens. People just called me that. You don’t know me?”
“I don’t.” Mariko shook her head.
The scrawny tow-haired boy opened his eyes. He sat up, looked at Althea, looked down at himself, then gasped in surprise, running his hands over his legs and arms. “The spots are gone!”
“You must wash yourself,” said Althea. “There is still sick on you.”
Mariko pointed at a giant sink in the back of the room.
He started to get up, but grabbed himself between the legs and moaned.
“You also must let the sick out.” Althea put a hand on his shoulder and turned off his pain sense.
“Umm.” He looked at her, blushing. “I can’t when you’re touching me.”
“If I don’t, it will burn.”
“But…”
She smiled and forced his embarrassment away. “There.”
He made a deposit in the metal bucket, dark red instead of green, then ran over to the sink.
Althea pointed at the bucket. “Please burn it.”
Mariko hurried out with both pails.
“Not near food!” shouted Althea. “Different fire from cooking!”
The scrawny kid climbed into the sink and turned the water on. Althea stuck her hands into the water to wash them since she touched him, then went over to the injured woman and grasped her hand. She hovered close to death, with a terrible burn through her upper torso. A channel roughly an inch wide had bored all the way from front to back with char-blackened edges. Fortunately, it had missed the heart shape.
Althea gasped and linked her power to the woman’s body, forcing her life shapes to reabsorb the charred parts and grow new muscle, bone, and skin. The wound closed in a few minutes, and they both opened their eyes at the same time.
“What…? How?” The woman sat up and looked around. “How did I get here?”
Althea shrugged. “I don’t know.”
She looked down at her. “Who are you?”
“Althea.”
“Your eyes are glowing.”
“Yes.”
“Am I dead?”
Althea shook her head. “No. You had a big hurt. I made it go away. You should eat soon.”
The woman swung her legs off the cot and stood. She wore only dried blood above the waist and a hide skirt covered in pouches. “I don’t remember how I got back to the settlement. This is Mariko’s room, isn’t it?”
“Yes. What happened to you?”
“Silver Men caught us. I was too slow to get down and it threw magic fire at me.” She peered at her chest, rubbing a finger at the circle of pink skin. “This is incredible… there isn’t even a scar. How did this happen?”
“I helped you.” Althea smiled at her, then walked to the nearer of the two men.
He, too, had a burned tunnel, but it had hit him lower in the abdomen, shredding the parts full of nasty stuff. Mierda had gotten loose all throughout his insides. Cringing, Althea ran to fetch a tray from the table, then rested both hands on his stomach, commanding the skin over his belly to split apart on either side of the wound, making a giant opening to his insides.
That done, she reached in with her hands to scoop out all the foulness that had gone wherever it didn’t belong, piling it on the tray. Charred, unusable bits, she pulled loose and added to the tray. Mariko walked in, saw Althea up to her elbows in the man’s guts, and screamed.
Althea glanced over. “Please get water. There is sand and stone inside him.”
“What are you doing!?” shouted Mariko. “You cut him open!”
“I’m trying to help him. Will you please get water?”
“You’ve got your hands inside him!”
“Do you want to clear out the meirda?”
“The what?”
Althea wracked her brain, trying to remember that other word. “Poop! There’s poop everywhere inside him. It’s making him sick.”
Mariko blinked. Mute, she walked over to the workbench, picked up a pitcher, and filled it at the sink where the boy bathed—at least using fresh water from the faucet and not the pox-laden water he sat in.
“Rinse him out,” said Althea, still searching around the man’s inner blobs for visible signs of filth. Sand and grit covered much of his ‘gut serpent.’
“All right.” Mariko poured water into the gaping wound.
Althea rubbed everything with her hands, chasing the sand and stone bits away, flushing them out onto the cot and floor. When the insides appeared clean enough, she dove back into the link with his life essence. Mending his body took longer than the others, due to the location of the injury as well as gathering all the yellow sick out of his blood-presence. It also left her noticeably tired.
The man groaned soon after she finished and opened her eyes.
“He will be very hungry.” Althea glanced at the empty sink. The boy must have run off while she’d been working. She hurried over there to wash her hands and arms. Even though she knew touching mierda wouldn’t give her any sicks she couldn’t fix, she still found it unpleasant.
After washing up, she checked the last man who only had a sprained ankle. She mended it, smiled at the stunned and bewildered Mariko, and trudged out into the hall, eager to find her way home. Alas, a sharp pang in her stomach had other plans.
I need to eat. Will these settlers give me food if I ask?
She rushed around the corridors, thoroughly lost until a lucky random turn brought her to the big hallway with all the scary pictures that warned people to stay away from that theater place. Giddy at the ability to once again run, she grinned while sprinting to the end, and the huge room with most of the settlers.
The boy who had the dead foot sat cross-legged around a cooking pot, devouring some bread-like item. Someone had draped a blanket around him, though he still didn’t seem to care about anything more than eating.
Althea walked in, looking around for a likely person she might beg food from.
“The girl,” said a man.
Everyone stopped and stared at her. That reaction, she knew well. Though, these people didn’t give off the usual ‘Prophet, grab her!’ emotion, only reverent awe. She cringed, shrinking in on herself. Being worshipped made her so uncomfortable that ending up in a cage almost seemed preferable.
Except for the sounds of the boy stuffing his face, the room had fallen silent.
“Can I please have some food?” asked Althea, her tiny voice echoing.
Several adults rushed over at once. Two women took her arms, each trying to pull her in a different direction, but not too hard. They eventually reached a consensus and brought her over to another cook pot, where she sat with them. The women handed her a heavy loaf of bread about the same size as the cheeseburger things she’d eaten in the bad city.
