It only took two minutes to learn that whoever had owned this book before had made copious amounts of notes in the margins. A messy chicken scratch was scrawled on nearly every page. I’d also learned that it was a firsthand account of miraculous healings from the patients’ points of view. A pretty cool and unique book.
Tarini Goodlock
The girl who fell.
I was twelve at the time. I’d fallen out of a tree and heard my leg snap. The bone popped out of my shin, and I almostfainted from the sight. The pain was so bad, I wanted to die. My mother was told by the clinic that they would have to amputate my leg, but then a master healer from the palace walked in. My mother told him I was a runner and to be bound to a chair for the rest of my life would kill me. He nodded and asked the other healers to step aside. He laid his hands over the bone, and the markings on top of them began to spin. My unbearable pain was suddenly numbed, and then he told my mother to have me bite down on something. He asked me to look away, and I did.
There was a snapping noise and a sharp slice of pain, but it was manageable. When I looked back, the bone was back in my leg, but there was a horrible, open, bloody gash. I watched in wonder as he magically stitched it up, the skin lacing together like tying a shoe. A month later, I was running again, and I never forgot the master healer who saved my leg.
My heart pinched at the beautiful story, and I peered across the room at Hayes and the marks that adorned his hands. I truly felt that being a healer was the most important of all the powers one could acquire, especially after reading this. To be able to take someone’s pain, to restore their heath, there was truly nothing more valuable. Even though I wasn’t a healer, I did have Ariyon’s gift for a short time, and I was honored to carry something so vital.
I quickly became engrossed in the book, reading story after story until I found one that made my breath stop. This one was different. This story was told by the patient, but the notes I glanced at in the margins appeared to be from the healer’s point of view, as if the healer had gone back, read the story, and told his side of things. What had me most excited was the mention of a Maven healer.
Addie Strong
The woman who died and came back.
I had chest pains so sharp that it took my breath away. It felt like a horse was lying on me. We lived on the West Side, and the clinic was full, but my husband convinced a student from The Academy, where he worked as a janitor, to help me.
One second, I was sitting in the student-run clinic trying to catch my breath, and the next, I was in the Realm of Eternity staring up at the Grim!
This student healer was standing over me, glowing marks on his hands spinning like crazy. I sat up and looked around, scared to death, when I saw that the Grim had come to claim me. What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. The healer, who I later learned was a Maven, was still learning. He’d not only hitched a ride with me, but he’d brought my entire body to the Realm. Something that was forbidden. Now confronted with the Grim, he was arguing how I should be let back up!
My heart leaped into my throat. This was exactly what happened with Ariyon and me. I had to control my breathing as I read the notes in the margins from the healer’s point of view.
I had no idea she was that near death. I was so new to healing at that serious of a level that I’d attached my magic to her body and soul instead of just the latter.
Of course! When Ariyon healed my dad, his body never went anywhere. Ariyon had followed my father’s soul down to the Realm of Eternity, but this healer was new, like me, and had accidentally brought his patient’s entire body down there as well as his own. Just like I had done with Ariyon.
I launched back into reading with renewed hope.
I watched in awe as they started to battle. The Maven healer fought the Grim for the right to restore me and allow me more life. But the Grim kept saying he’d broken a rule by bringing my body down there, that it wasn’t allowed, and that there would be consequences. I was paralyzed on the ground as theirpower rained down around me, and then all of a sudden, I was snatched up into the light and I woke up at the school, my husband hovering over me.
But the healer was gone.
Chills raced down the length of my spine. It was almost the exact same as what happened with Ariyon and me, except in reverse.
I desperately scanned the margins, looking for the healer’s notes.
I didn’t know there would have to be a sacrifice. I chose myself rather than her. She was a mother, a wife; I had no one and would die young anyway.
I closed my eyes, my fingers shaking as I stroked the page. My heart welled up with love for this young healer. He made the ultimate sacrifice. It was one of the things I loved most about Maven healers—their easy ability to put others before themselves. Opening my eyes, I looked at the last scribbled note. The healer obviously survived. He came back somehow and wrote these notes.
Little did I know, fate had other plans, and the Light is merciful.
“No!” I screamed, and everyone jumped. “Sorry,” I said with a wince.
He didn’t say how he came back.
No.
No.
No.
I was so close.
“What did you find?” Hayes moved beside me, and I handed him the book, unable to help the heavy weight of depression that settled over me. Hayes read it to everyone, catching on that there was a healer point of view in the margins, and read that too. I watched in sadness as everyone sat up straighter, eyes alight, smiles on, hope filled. And then when he got to the final part, they had the same reaction I did.
