Healing Hands

  Healing Hands

  Stella Cassy

  Contents

  Attention

  1. Rothren

  2. Marie

  3. Rothren

  4. Marie

  5. Rothren

  6. Marie

  7. Rothren

  Marie

  Healing Hands

  Attention

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  1

  Rothren

  The light of our sun is so faint, so weak, in these dying years. It is a wonder that our plains were as verdant as my father once spoke. I was born much after that time, when now food is scarce and it is difficult to believe in a higher power. What would make this world and then condemn us to suffer like this?

  For surely if it created this world, it created Neff as well.

  It sounds innocuous. I would strongly debate that, as I sit here in the Laskel infirmary and hold my daughter's hand. Her gills flutter weakly at either side of her jawline. At one time In the past, her skin was the same beautiful swirled cream-and-blue that mine is. Today, the blues have lost their sky hue and retreated to a sad, dying twilight. The creams have washed out until, and now they are the same color as that which makes up the tent surrounding us.

  The tiny pink pustules stand out against her arms. The Neff virus is incredibly contagious, but I will not sit beside her in gloves and a mask as she takes her final breaths. I did so to her mother and I saw the repulsion reflected in my eyes in her own. In truth, she'd gone blind long before the disease took her, but I saw what a selfish creature I was. That's what mattered.

  Laskel is the final stop before Eilari will join her mother. It's the final stop for the majority of those in this area affected by the Neff. When the disease first appeared, it processed only a few per day. We still had time to perform funeral rites, to mourn our dead before the ritual land was needed for others. Now it stands filled with the decaying corpses of the dead.

  They don't bother to put the fires out any longer. They simply add bodies to the blaze.

  In desperation, we reached out across the stars to several of our allies. The Moul are too close to our own genes to risk their necks for us. The Enthinakisart are too frugal with their resources. To save ourselves, even we few left, we may have to break the will of our monarch.

  We are forbidden from contact with the Earthlings, but as it stands, they seem to be the closest in the near universe that have close to almost the same technology we do. Perhaps their doctors will see something that we are missing.

  Or they may not, and we may lose the fight against this plague. We may crumble from within and lose everything we have left.

  I glance down to see my daughter look up at me. Unlike her mother, she has not been given the gift of blindness. When she looks at herself, she sees the tiny bumps that will kill her. I curl my tail around hers and try not to hold my breath as those precious gills flutter--up, then down, weaker every time.

  "Telo?" she asks, her voice a weak rasp.

  Her tiny, premature canines will never grow into the fangs that press into my lower lip when she calls me by name. She will never get that chance.

  "I'm here," I murmur in return.

  "Where?"

  Her eyes see me without taking me in. I taste blood, the tips of my fangs piercing flesh. I can't help it. This is it.

  She is only four years old.

  It is all she will ever be.

  I try to answer her but the words won't come. Instead, my tail tightens around hers. It takes a moment for me to realize that her gills have stopped moving. Even her death throes are little more than a few sad twitches of her fingers.

  Tears fall, speeding up as this end settles like a blanket around my shoulders. I am alone. She was all I had left.

  A nurse dressed in more layers than I can count comes to guide me away. I'll have to go through a cleansing station to be returned to my home, among the scant population left. But what is the point? Constant cleanliness has done nothing for us. The Neff continues to spread no matter what we do.

  The nurse is so gentle with me. In better days, I would be gracious; grateful. Today, I leave my daughter in a bed, one that will hold another dying person the moment they remove her. My gills clutch tightly closed against the sides of my jaw and some part of me wishes it was my corpse, not hers. They care so well for the orphaned children that are left. She would have been cared for.

  My clothes will be burned. I am stripped, pushed into a cleansing unit, and the kindly nurse hits the button. He leaves. I sigh as the strange green gunk pours down over my head, a glob or two getting stuck to my horns. I shake it off and hold my breath. I am not a fan of this and I cannot bring myself to believe that it does any good.

  The dryer kicks on and the goop explodes into dust. This anti-viral stuff coats every inch of my body, supposedly killing off the Neff. If this gunk kills it, why don't they reverse-engineer some sort of vaccine or medication from it? It coats my tongue, despite holding my breath, and tastes like metal. If it weren't entirely impolite, I'd be spitting everywhere right now.

  Soon, the door snaps open and releases me back into my infected world. I walk the few steps to a water tank and dive in, glorifying in the use of my labyrinthian lungs. I gasp a pure, clean gillful of water before surfacing to taste the air once again. At the opposite end of the pool, another nurse awaits me with a fresh set of clothing. I look past her to see a pair of nurses approach the nearest fire. Between them they hold a small, black-wrapped form. With clinical professionalism, they chuck my daughter's body onto the pile with the rest.

  I watch as the flames take her home, back to her mother and her siblings. And for the first time since the Neff appeared, I consider joining them.

  "Are you getting out or what?" asks the nurse.

  This snaps me back to reality and I look up at her.

  "That was my daughter," I answer, my voice hollow.

  "That was a lot of people's daughters today. Are you getting out, or do I have to have someone come in there after you?" she answers.

  The brief respite of being waterborne once more is over. I swim across and step onto the landing with a muted sigh. The clothing shoved into my hands, I dress and walk the rest of the way home. I walk past a thousand empty homes to find my own, all of their owners long deceased. Our stone domes have never been my favorite domicile--I vastly prefer the way the Moul work with wooden structures. Now they're just a reminder of our failing civilization. Tombs without bodies.

  My home gives a quick genetic scan before I enter it, just to make sure I belong there. Once assured, it opens an airlock and I step inside. The door slams shut and the chamber quickly fills with water before I am allowed inside. My mate never much cared for a floodhouse, but after her death I hoped a more natural setting would encourage the health of my daughter and me. The scientists say we were born from the lakes, after all.

  It did nothing, clearly. I swim upstairs to her room, my mind ticking away. I own a ship that is capable of flight to Earth. I could go there, fetch a few intelligent humans away, and have them look into this even before the monarchy knew I was gone. Couldn't I?

  If found out, the sentence would be forced sterilization and exile to one of the many deserts that make up half the planet. With no water access, no food, and no care from the sterilization surgery, I woul
d probably die within a day or two. Infection sets in readily, and with the Neff completely uncontrolled, I have little doubt that it would take me quickly. I glance around my daughter's room and feel an invisible hand tighten around my too-often-broken heart.

  What do I have to lose?

  For the last time, I go to sleep in the home that I built to impress my mate. I sleep in my daughter's bed, dreaming of a better time. We went to a river once, when she was only a few months old. I taught her to swim that day. She took to the water like a scoo, diving and dashing like she was born to do nothing else. Now, I can only imagine what that may have brought her in a later time.

  Would she have been a diver, hunting for food in the depths? Perhaps she'd have been one of the few surgeons that care for those who preferred to live seabound--before the Neff killed them all.

  The weak sun wakes me, sending rainbows all around my daughter's room. For one fine instant, I forget that I will never hear her call me Telo again. She will never call her mother Ala in my hearing. I am bound for other ventures, other places--ones that I really can't quite imagine.

  I slip out of my home the hour before dawn. My neighborhood is deserted, though I don't expect my remaining neighbor to be awake at this hour. She is an elderly female, all alone. I hope someone will check on her when I am gone. Thinking about it, I leave a note. The nurses still come to check our homes for the dead. They will find her and care for her.

  "I'm sorry to leave without telling you goodbye," I whisper to the door. "But maybe, if I go now, I can save the few of us left."

  And maybe if I had gone sooner, I would have saved my family.

  I clench my jaw, my gills flaring at the very thought. No, I wouldn't have left. Hadn't the doctors assured us during the initial outbreak, telling us that they had everything under control? The Neff was little more than a tiny, annoying virus that would go away within one to three days and we'd all be back to our normal lives.

  Then three days later, people covered in pink spots started to collapse in the streets and blood ran in the gutters.

  I smack my hand on the opening panel and step into my ship. There's a constant food supply station filled with healthy foods that I'd prefer not to have. I snatch a package of my favorite sweet and sit down at the control panel.

  "Close up and prepare for launch," I mutter.

  "Of course, Rothren," the ship purrs back to me.

  My hand pauses within the bag. I haven't heard her voice in... a year? Has it really been a year now?

  "This flight will not be logged," I say, hoping to hear her voice again.

  My wish is granted. "It is against regulation to fly an unlogged vessel."

  "I know," I answer.

  "As you wish, Captain," the ship replies.

  It is such a temptation to do nothing else but sit here and listen to her repeat my commands, remind me of codes, or even just read the former log on this ship. For people like my neighbors, I don't have time for that.

  "Launch preparations complete," echoes throughout the cockpit.

  "Launch, destination Earth--1.9 gammat 2.06.0."

  This time, there is no reply. The engines rumble to life and, somewhere, a siren immediately starts to wail. In other times, there would be a bevy of guards running to shoot me out of the sky.

  With most of them long dead, my craft escapes upward and far out of reach of our weaponry with no issue. I watch as my hazy, dust-colored planet disappears behind me.

  The fires burn stronger than ever.

  2

  Marie

  Nine in the morning sees me at the clinic, every day without fail. There are too many people depending on me to be there to take advantage of the vacation days I've saved up over the years. Mrs. Johnson needs a poultice for her gout, Mr. Croft is having pain only a bottle of CBD oil could touch. At one point, I grew half of these remedies in my backyard.

  That was long before this place came to be. It's been the work of an entire decade, but we finally have a clinic that is just as sensible, just as productive, as any typical doctor's office.

  In fact, my sister's traditional office is right across the road. We work hand in hand, her sending me the cases that modern medicine can't touch and me sending her the people that think a tincture is going to cure their stage IV cancer. Sure, it will probably help with inflammation or pain, but she's got access to stuff that might send it into remission. I don't, no matter what you've heard about the latest craze with turmeric this year. Great stuff for people with arthritis--if they've been tested for a variety of diseases that might interact with the components that makes it work.

  We were raised by our mother, bless her. She was raised in the Appalachians, in a time when you still boiled down blackberry leaves to treat your baby's bad case of thrush. Mom had a healthy respect for doctors, but there were plenty of times when snow blocked off the mountain paths and what were you supposed to do then? She taught us what to do in those situations and I grew it into a business.

  Jessie ran off and used it to get through college, to become the kind of doctor most thought about when they considered the title, white lab jacket and all. We disagreed on the reliability of medicines, on the process of sickness in the body, and so on. If push came to shove, when we were lost, we turned to each other--and we did the same for our clients.

  Mom passed away a few years ago, but at least she got to see us turn her legacy into help for so many people. I like to think she's still looking down on us today, guiding the hardest cases through our doors because she knows we'll take care of them. I don't know if that's the case, but I hope.

  Somebody has to be sending me all these people, anyway.

  I flip through the paper, yes, even in this day and age, and skim until I find my astrology write-up for the day.

  "Scorpio," I read aloud. "Tonight will bring you such wonders as you never dreamed possible."

  My tongue pokes out as I grab my phone to take a picture of it. I have a hot date with some guy from Jessie's work. Dr. Scott, I think? It doesn't matter. According to this, I'll have a great time. Personally, that's all I need. It's Jessie that wants the kids, the family, all of that package. I have enough work as it is.

  People and faces pass through my office, simply thousands of them before it's time for my lunch break. I know that they say in your thirties, you're supposed to slow down on eating everything you want. Just because it's delicious doesn't make it worth the calories or the risk of heart attack. I agree with that whole-heartedly, but there's a square of coconut cake left and I haven't had that in a million years. I snag it, pay for it, and that's lunch.

  By the end of the day, I'm exhausted. I'm starting to rethink this whole date thing. I'm ready to just go home and crash, but Scott Warren is supposed to be some kind of Casanova and it'd be nice to let him buy me dinner. I head home and throw myself in the shower. It's a nice apartment, but I could afford better.

  I'm just trying to save up for a car that's not from my mom's era. I'd like something with real GPS, you know?

  I really get my nails into my scalp, enjoying the scratchy feeling as I scrub my head clean. I wear my hair longer than most of those in my line of employment, dyed green at the ends as I have since high school. It turns a few heads when I enter the office, grab my nametag and start calling people in for examination.

  Clean, I throw on a robe and walk to my closet. There's not much in here that isn't flowery, explosive in color, or otherwise something that you'd find at a Grateful Dead or Woodstock concert. It used to drive my mom bonkers.

  Flicking through the clothes, I spot a bit of black cloth on the floor. There's a simple little black dress down there, complete with a slender white belt tie attached. Easy. Delicate. Timeless. I throw it on without so much as checking my reflection, rake a comb through my hair and grab my purse as I head outside.

  "I'll be back in a little while, Trixie," I call to the calico queen sitting on top of my couch.

  "Mrrlt?" she answers.

  Then
she's right back to sleep. She could care less if I disappeared forever, so long as her automatic feeder stayed full. I suppose she and I aren't so different.

  I lock the door behind me and have all of a second to notice the weird blue light around me. Then the world is suddenly dark, full of stars and I'm staring at a thing that looks like it fell out of a terrible merger of Avatar and Beauty and the Beast.

  For some reason, I'm on the ground. Wasn't I just standing up? Horrified at this ugly thing, I throw myself to my feet and hurl my body away from it, off and into the nearest hallway. Why I'm in a hallway, I have no idea. Wasn't I just outside?

  "Wait," a polite, northern accent calls.

  I spin around, looking for the speaker but all that's there is this a six-foot-nine, hulking, partially furred blue-and-cream thing that's got horns and--are those gills? It opens its mouth and there are enough teeth in there to grind me to bits in a second.

  "Please."

  How does this thing know how to speak English, much less any form of human tongue at all? My fingers scrabble in my purse for a few seconds and I think that I've lost my can of mace just when my hand fastens around it. I whip it out and point it at the thing's face, pulling the trigger.

  Nothing happens.

  "What is that?" it asks, head tilting to one side.

  Its weird, wet, flat nose comes over to touch the metal, curious but not... entirely offensive. This close, this freaky animal-thing smells like the beach during winter. It's a rich, briny scent that reminds me of vacations with my grandparents.

  "It's mace. I'll spray you! Stay back!" I warn it.