The stones blurred around me in a gray that grew lighter and lighter. The circle of light above me widened.
The crushing feeling of rising too fast pressed my stomach.
Warmth beneath me, not the freezing stone of the bottom, but something that gave. Fabric. Muscle. A breathing chest.
"Welcome back to the living, Champ."
"Can you please not use that word anymore?"
The outline of the dark figure holding us was silhouetted against the blue sky. I struggled to adjust to the increasing brightness; his features were blurred.
But as always, his booming voice and the incense smell of the black priest's robe conveyed that aura of paternal confidence.
"Hahaha. You don't like it, Champ?"
"It's not that, ah, forget it, it's a long story."
Every time that word, Champ, twisted something inside me.
My Dad used to call me that.
The light intensified. The ascent felt faster than the descent had been.
And that descent had been pretty fast.
A flash of dirty red color reached the edge of my still-irritated vision. Lirka was on Tyeron's other arm. She was sleeping wrapped in her tail. Regular breathing, lips curved in a smile with a sharp canine showing.
The tension in my chest released—I didn't even know I was holding my breath.
"Lirka... how is she?"
Tyeron's face glowed like a warrior kissed by light.
His head was already out of the well's shadow. Sunlight on his graying hair.
A moment later we were too. The pressure coming from below stopped suddenly.
"Here we are, safe and sound! Hahaha!"
He declared with his usual laugh.
"By the Five. Arek, how—"
"Brother, that thing was insanely cool!"
Cora's voice was interrupted by Sipar. He was standing next to her, fists clenched over his heart and a smile so bright it reflected the sun's rays.
"You're not... not afraid of me?" My throat tightened.
"Afraid? That water serpent flying in the sky was the most incredible thing... not like that ridiculous stone thing that..." He pointed at our feet but was interrupted by our savior.
"Hey, a little respect!" Tyeron exclaimed, leaping onto the grass. The gold medallion clinked, swinging between me and Lirka still in his arms.
Beyond his shoulders, a kind of stone tower was emerging from the well.
"I brought them out of the well with that tower, didn't I?" the priest asked.
"But it wasn't as cool as a serpent! You could at least have tried something fancy."
Emma was staring at him with fingers on her hips, the corners of her mouth turned down.
"Father Tyeron, give them to me. Are they hurt?"
"Some scratches and blue lips."
I went from Tyeron's warm embrace to Cora's soft arms. If possible even warmer.
"Ow. Easy, easy."
She was holding me so tight I could barely breathe.
"Good job for someone who doesn't want to use magic, Champ."
Tyeron coughed. He rubbed the back of his neck, turning back toward the well.
"But now the well's as dry as the Whispering Desert. How will we manage?"
Then he laughed and his laugh sounded more strained than usual.
"I'm sorry, I..."
"Does this really seem like the time? A little water for two lives? You're supposed to be a Priest of Eteria, the goddess of Wisdom and Health!"
I smiled to myself.
"No, I just wanted to say that..."
But he didn't finish his sentence. He lowered his head to look at something, but his shoulders blocked whatever it was.
A mass of red hair and pink skin, naked as her mother had made her, leaped first onto his shoulder and from there toward me.
"Lirka, no! We made peace! Remember?"
Her small hands clawed me from under the armpits, sharp nails biting through the dusty fabric. I felt a violent jerk, a sharp blow that took my breath away. Cora's reassuring embrace vanished instantly.
I saw her pull away, or rather, we were the ones shooting backward. While she fell on the grass, we flew toward the darkness of the well.
Not again.
We landed on the stone column rising at the center, that enormous cylinder extending from the bottom.
"Gold boy, mine! You not hurt!"
Her pupils were narrow slits. Both eyes golden. The rumble of her growl echoed in my ribs. She was smaller and more petite than me, but she held me with both arms without the slightest effort.
Her tail swayed behind her like a snake ready to strike.
Sipar and Emma backed away. Tyeron remained motionless, his arms raised halfway, as if he didn't know whether to stop her or let her be. The only one to step forward was Sister Cora, bringing her hands to her heart.
"We family. We help Arek. We help you." She explained.
I waited for the growl to die down. "It's true, Lirka. They're my family. And they can become yours, if you want."
The fox-girl's yellow eyes darted from me to Cora and the rest of the group, repeating the circuit several times. Her expression grew even tenser, and she studied the perimeter walls a couple of times with the speed of a trapped animal.
For a moment I really feared she wanted to jump out of the garden and abduct me, dragging me away with her.
"Family?" she repeated, as if the word were a new and indecipherable flavor.
"Yes, she's like a mom to us. She takes care of us and dresses us." I nodded toward Cora. "Sister Cora."
Lirka tilted her head, confused. "Sister mama?"
"Uh, better to start with him then. He's Father Tyeron. He's like a father, but less... well, let's say he's a bit silly."
"Silly papa," she concluded, nodding with an almost solemn gravity.
"Hey!" Tyeron protested, but the smile lighting up his face betrayed his fake indignation.
I carefully descended from her embrace, trying not to collapse to the ground. When my weight bore down on my legs, every muscle screamed in pain, but I gritted my teeth to not show how close I was to my limit.
"Those two instead are Emma and Sipar. Brother and sister."
Lirka shifted her gaze to the two smelling the air, and returned it to me, scrutinizing me with an almost painful intensity. "And you?"
"Nice to meet you! I'm Sipar and that thing in the sky was..." The boy tried to step forward, but stopped with a shout when Lirka hissed at him, a short, guttural hiss, canines exposed. He jumped backward, almost tripping over his own feet. "Okay, okay! Message received! I... I'll go get some water? Right you must be thirsty!"
I think she drank enough for today.
"Lirka, dear. Come down from the well. You both need care and we just want to help you." Cora's voice was loaded with such genuine sweetness that Lirka wavered. Her ears vibrated, uncertain whether to trust that soft sound.
It was Emma, though, who definitively broke the stalemate. She approached the column's base with a determined step, without uttering a single word, enduring the fox-girl's hostility with her usual, inflexible calm.
Once she arrived below us, she raised a straight arm upward and remained still, offering her hand the way you would with a wild creature.
"Emma, what are you doing?" I asked, surprised by such a direct gesture.
Lirka hesitated another instant, bent her face toward the outstretched hand. She inhaled deeply a couple of times, studying the girl's scent. Her ears shot up suddenly and a small flash of understanding crossed her golden gaze.
"Okay. You sister."
With an agile and silent leap, Lirka descended from the well. I tried to follow her, knees buckling at impact, palms sinking into the damp grass of the meadow. Every single bone in my body felt like glass ready to shatter at the slightest impact.
"Well then, with your permission." Tyeron's voice grew closer as he passed by Lirka, who kept following him with attention and suspicion.
Cora, meanwhile, was examining every inch of her exposed skin, appearing amazed that she didn't have even a scratch, though holding back from touching her to not scare her.
"Not a mark on her. Even that bad black eye has gone. Anyway, you need clothes immediately, little one. Sipar, go get them instead of standing down there doing nothing!"
The boy, who had taken refuge near the house door after the earlier hiss, finally darted inside while the well's shadow was now only a memory behind us.
"Okay," Sipar answered, lowering his head.
Tyeron's hand rested gently on my shoulder. I felt the warmth of his palm through the fabric as he observed me with an attention that made me uncomfortable.
"Scratches and bites here and there, blue lips from hypothermia, eyes..."
Two large fingers, rough, insistent, forced my eyelids open. The light burned. My vision blurred immediately, leaving only indistinct spots of color.
"Red, probably irritated. Nothing that Eteria's grace couldn't fix in an instant..."
"Good, then let's proceed. What are you waiting for? It hurts like hell."
Tyeron's lips pressed into a thin line and his gaze grew dark. The silence that followed was broken only by the sound of wind through the apple tree's branches. He appeared to be searching for the right words, or maybe just gathering courage.
"You see, Arek..." he finally murmured. "As I told you, when we found you that night, I tried to heal you, but something right here," he said, touching my chest at the exact spot where I felt the Mark pulsing, "lit up gold and absorbed the magic. It literally devoured it."
"Maybe now it won't do it anymore. Or you could try with different magic?"
"The only healing magic is Eteria's. It might work this time, but..." He hesitated again, his hand trembling slightly on my shoulder. "Your expression, that night... you seemed to suffer terribly. If you feel pain, even just a bit, tell me immediately. Promise?"
I swallowed, feeling a knot of anxiety tighten my throat. "So... if I feel pain beyond what I'm already feeling, I should stop you?"
"Or do you prefer Cora's traditional remedies?" Tyeron proposed, tilting his head. "They work, sure, but they're not magic. They take time."
Lirka perked up her ears, sensing the change in the air. She approached with crossed arms and an expression decidedly too serious for such a small child, with red hair whipped by the summer breeze. She was watching us as if evaluating an imminent danger.
"Okay. Let's do it."
I closed my eyes. I inhaled, my ribs protested with a sharp pang, and exhaled deeply.
I felt the magic before I even saw it. It was a gentle warmth, like the touch of sun through a window on a winter morning.
When I reopened my eyelids, I saw a warm yellow light growing in Tyeron's palms, soft and pulsing at the same rhythm that his gold medallion vibrated on his chest. It was Eteria's grace, the Goddess of light and healing.
Tyeron's hands approached with exasperating slowness.
Initially I felt only vague discomfort, an annoying itch under the skin of my sternum.
The pain flared up like a fire fed by oil. It wasn't a gradual increase; it was as if someone had planted a red-hot nail in the exact center of my chest.
I gasped. My hand went to my heart, gripping the shirt.
In that precise instant, a light exploded from my body, so strong it overpowered even the midday sun.
The brightness shone through the fabric, white and violent. The light's patterns imprinted on the tunic like bone shadows. It pulsed in sync with my accelerated heartbeat and each pulse was a wave of agony that made me see stars.
Tyeron froze with his arms still raised, his magic still vivid. "Arek?"
I couldn't answer. The world had shrunk to that torment, to that white reverberation and a sudden sensation of falling.
Not physical, but interior. As if the Mark was pulling me toward a place that didn't exist in space, but only in memory. Or maybe in the future. Or maybe in a time that repeated infinitely.
The dark took me. Cold, dry and complete.
A tower. A red moon.
***
Grrr. SLAM!