The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (14 page)

“Really?  You need me to sing tonight?” Aja asked with a laugh.  “Because I was going to offer to take the night off from singing if it would help you travel farther tonight.”

Alec’s smile disappeared, until Aja laughed.  “I’m teasing you, Alec,” she reached out and ruffled his hair.

Alec smiled again, glad to see her personality on display.  “Let’s go in and introduce you to the innkeeper,” he proposed, and minutes later a corner of the tavern room was
converted to become the performance stage f
r
om which Aja could
sing her repertoire of music.  Alec was given a seat next to her, and she incorporated him into her singing act, making him clap the beat for her livelier tunes.  She introduced him to the crowd as Alec, then changed her song about the terrible apprentice to name the apprentice character as Alec, and shook her finger at him angrily with every chorus she sang, causing her audience to roar Alec’s name in laughing disapproval.

They stayed in the main room of the tavern until late at night, and then finally went upstairs to their room.  “I could do that with you the rest of our lives!  Wasn’t that fun, Alec?” Aja gleefully asked as they opened the door to their room and went inside.

“When I was a boy I worked in a carnival, and the entertainers always enjoyed a good show,” he replied.  “And tonight you put on a good show for the folks here.  Where did you ever learn so many songs?”

“Erwin made me work for a living to earn
money for him for many months,
the first time I passed through Moriadoc,
”
she replied.  “And so I had a lot of time to learn the songs the patrons and the tavern owners wanted played.  I learned to feel what a crowd wanted to hear, and now I just play the songs that are right for the mood.

“What was your carnival?” she asked.  She sat down on the narrow bed, next to Alec as he took his boots off, for the only other piece of furniture in their tiny cubby was a rickety chair.

And so he told her.  He told her about Richard the owner, and Jonso the clown, and Arthur the weightlifter.  He told her stories about Natalie and the dancing girls, and how they all packed up and rode from city to city.  He leaned back and laid on the bed, and as she listened, Aja laid back with him and snuggled in the crook of his arm, asking questions and listening to stories about entertainment and the business of entertainment much later into the night than Alec expected.

“I have to get some sleep,” he told her at last, as he yawned.  “I’m sorry to leave you like this.”

“You have been fabulous tonight, Alec,” she told him with a profound smile.  “Go to sleep now,” and he soon began to breathe the regular rhythm of a sleeper as she lay on the bed against him, sharing his body heat and replaying the memories in her head of the laughter and the clapping and the celebration by the crowd in the tavern.

Aja awoke Alec just a few short hours later, well before sunrise.

“I feel the sunrise will come soon, and I didn’t think I should revert to my other shape here in the inn, in case anyone asks you where I am,” she explained as Alec blinked his eyes.

He concluded her logic was sound, and slowly packed his supplies in his sack, then the two of them headed out the door and downstairs.

“Hey!” a voice called, and Alec saw a sleepy clerk at the front desk motion.  “The master was sure you’d sleep in late this morning, so he expected to see you himself, but he told me to give you this in case you got out the door before he told you what a fine job you did last night,” the boy tossed a small bag of coins to Alec and Aja.

“Wait here just a moment,” Alec told Aja when they went outside.  He ran to the stables and retrieved the pendant once again, and as he returned to Aja he saw her change into her daylight tree form, as the edge of the
sun’s
disk came blazing above the eastern horizon.

With a sigh he strapped his passenger on his back then began to trudge up the trail that climbed straight west towards the mountain pass behind the village, and realized that he sincerely wished he could enjoy Aja’s lively company and
her
wonder at the world as he walked the mountain path.  Alec felt tired; he made a conscious decision to travel only on his own powers that day, and focused on rhythmically lifting each foot to keep moving forward.  Clouds began to move in from the west, and less than an hour after he left the inn, Alec felt drops of rain sharply strike his face.  Despite the temptation to make his journey more comfortable, Alec resisted the temptation to use his energies to shield himself from the rain, stubbornly deciding to make it through the day without the use of energy.

And so it was in that state of mind during the late afternoon that he walked through a curving pass in the mountains, tired and cold, wiping the rain out of his eyes, when an arrow pierced his shoulder.  He let out a cry and fell to his knees.  The arrow wound was shallow, and a tug revealed that it was not barbed.  He stifled another cry as he pulled the arrow free and threw it away.  He heard the sounds of footsteps nearby and rose to his feet and pulled his sword out of its scabbard.

Four men were upon him at that moment, swinging their swords and axes fiercely at him.

Alec called upon his Warrior powers and swung his sword in a wide sweep behind him, slicing across the man who was closest to him.  He dodged into the open space created as that man fell, then threw his sword at a second man, while picking up the axe of the first man he’d engaged.

Th
at’s when he
felt the pressure of something making
solid contact behind him and he swung around, his legs sweeping the feet out from underneath another assailant, who Alec kicked hard in the groin.  He rose to his feet, and saw only one man standing; Alec ran at the man and kicked hard, landing his heel in the man’s neck.

As he landed he looked around at the small battleground.  All four men were on the ground; two dead, two injured.  Alec released his energy, then used his Healer energy to remove the pain the arrow had inflicted in his shoulder.  He went to the bodies of the men he had killed, and removed a bandolier of knives from one, while taking a bow and arrows from the other.  With his new arsenal in his hands, Alec walked for several minutes to get away from the bandits, then stopped again.  He needed to put the bandolier over his shoulder, which required rearranging his supply sack and Aja first.

When he lifted the load off his back, Alec stopped and took a deep breath.  There was a long gash in Aja’s trunk; Alec had no idea of how a wound to the tree would translate into an effect on the flesh of the woman when sundown came.  He decided to prepare for the worst, and packed himself up, then began looking for a sheltered gulley off the mountain road.

When he found a suitable location away from the road, Alec seized his Stone energies, and slowly parted the rocky cliff side of the gulley to create a cave that was deep enough that wind would not swirl into it.  Alec unloaded all his cargo within the cave
(except the pendant, which he left outside)
, then went back out and chopped several branches off fir trees to serve as bedding for the night.

With the bedding providing a
pleasant
fragrance inside the new cave, Alec used his Light energy to warm several stones within the shelter, as he had done on so many occasions during the trip through the eastern mountains.  The last step he took came as he judged Aja’s transformation was about to occur; he removed his shirt, and held a knife blade against his arm
, prepared for the
potential need to heal the
worst
type of wounds that might have been inflicted on Aja
, then stared at the small tree that was laid flat on the floor next to him, and waited.

The seconds seemed to each take an eternity and then the change occurred, as quickly as usual.  But this time, instead of the silent, languid stretching
with which
Aja
always returned to her body
, she arrived screaming and writhing in pain.  There was a long, deadly slice up and down her torso, starting at her hip and crossing her stomach and chest with deep and surgical penetration, then ending where it opened the flesh of her breast.

Her screams lasted only a second, and then she fainted from the pain.  Alec sliced his arm open, quickly did the same to her, then grafted the two wounds together so that his blood would start to flow into her body immediately.   That accomplished, he dropped the knife and placed the hand of his ungrafted arm on top of Aja’s stomach, where the worst wounds were.

Alec drew deeply upon his Healing powers, and sent a stream of energy into the organs of Aja’s body, repairing the internal wounds that had been inflicted.  He stopped the bleeding that was taking place within her stomach, repaired her uterus, and closed the tear in the muscles of the abdominal wall.  He shifted his focus to her hip, repairing the muscles there and filling in the nick in the bone, then smoothly knitting her skin together up over her hip and stomach.

He stopped for a moment to rest, then moved upward, to where two of her ribs were scored, and needed to be carefully and fully healed, so that breathing would not be a painful experience when she awoke.  Then, feeling guilty even though he had no choice, he gently placed his fingers on the torn flesh of Aja’s breast and pressed the wound there closed, allowing his healing energy to mend the edges of the slice together.

Exhausted from his work, Alec released his Healing energy.  He looked down at Aja, her face still twisted in pain.  He opened a link to the Light energy one more time, and warmed several more stones in their chamber, raising the temperature several deg
rees, then released that energy.
He
pulled the blankets up over the two of them, and lay himself down to rest and fell asleep, into a deep sleep where strange dreams began to invade his consciousness.

He dreamed of the wind, blowing through tree limbs, and he dreamed of the slow flow of nutrients from a rich, loamy soil up through his body, making him strong.  His dreams were the dreams of trees, of the quiet of winter time and the excitement of early spring, when the sap starts to rise and the buds prepare to burst forth with new life.

He was just imagining the joy of flowers blooming when Aja began to whisper his name and tickle his ear.

“Alec, wake up please,” she said urgently.  “Alec, tell me what this is, what it means.”

When he opened his eyes the cave was chilly again, and the grafted arms were sandwiched between their two chests, as their faces were only separated by inches.

“Are you okay?” she asked as soon as she saw his eyes open.  He nodded, and started to sit up, awkwardly as he rested on the grafted arm.

“I’m okay; how are you?” he asked, rearranging the blankets to cover her torso, exposed as it was by the sliced blouse she wore.

“I’m a little sore, and very confused, as well as slightly concerned,” she told him.

“Let me warm up the chamber, and then we can talk,” Alec told her.  He concentrated on his Light energy, and fed the light into the stones, which began to emit warmth immediately.

“We were walking through the mountains this afternoon, when some bandits ambushed us,” Alec told Aja, releasing his energy and lying back down next to her.

“Was I keeping up?” she asked.

“Well, you never took the lead, but you were never far behind,” Alec grinned, happy to know that the girl could maintain a sense of humor under such stressful circumstances.

“And we won the battle?” Aja asked.  “How many did we beat?”

“We defeated four bandits.  I was careless; it was rainy, so I
had been running with
my head down and didn’t pay any attention until the arrow hit my shoulder,” he explained.

“Well, as long as only one arrow hit you, it’s okay.  Could you explain this?” she raised the arms that were grafted together.

“During the fight, apparently one of them sliced through your tree trunk, with a sword or an axe, I’m not sure,” Alec told her.  “When I saw the wound you had, I was worried that it would be a wound to your flesh when you were restored to human form, and I was right.

“You can see from where your cloth
es are sliced,” he gestured.  “When y
ou turned human, you were badly sliced open, and you passed out in pain.

“The graft is something I use when a patient is in serious condition,” he explained.  “It lets my blood run into your body, and yours into mine; it’s a way to share my vitality with someone who needs the strength,” he told her.  “And that cut did a lot of damage to you.  It cut your hip bone and nicked two ribs, it damaged three organs, and it,” he paused, “it sliced you up pretty badly.”

“You fixed all of that?  How long did it take?” she asked, her hand unconsciously rubbing across her body.

“I fixed it all as best I could.  I don’t know how long it took, but after I was done I fell asleep here with you.  And I left our bodies connected,” he anticipated her next question, “so that you would continue to strengthen and heal while we slept.”

“When will it come apart?  When my body is done healing?” she asked.

“Well, that isn’t something that just happens.  I had to cut both our arms open, then fused them together to create it when you needed it to help your body heal,” Alec told Aja.  “So I’ll have to use a knife to cut us apart when the time comes to separate us.”