Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 41 of 59

The first bed grew easy under Delia's hands. All week she and Nick kept moving. Travelers came up the path with fevers, broken wrists, coughs that wouldn't quit. She healed them one by one and asked no coin. Between patients she planted more of the garden, one green row at a time. By the sixth day her arms ached and her heart felt full. On the seventh morning she climbed to the locked office to grow a batch of drying root. The bolt slid back under her key. She set out her jars and reached for a knife to trim the old stems. Her hand slipped. The blade opened a line across her palm. Delia hissed and grabbed a strip of clean cloth. She pressed it down and turned toward the shelf for salve. When she lifted the cloth to wrap the cut, there was nothing to wrap. The skin lay smooth and whole. No line. No blood. Only a pink mark that faded as she watched. She stood very still. She pressed her thumb hard along the palm. Nothing hurt. She picked up the knife again and, before her nerve failed, drew a shallow cut on the back of her hand. The blood welled, then thinned, then stopped. The wound closed itself like water filling a print in the mud. She had grown plants from bare ground. She had grown plants she'd never seen. She had never once turned the gift on her own body. Her hands began to shake. She wiped the knife clean and went down the stairs two at a time. Nick was in the front room, stacking fresh jars from her worker's basket. He looked up when he heard her feet. "Delia?" She crossed to him and held out both hands, palms up. "Watch." She took the small knife from her apron and cut the pad of her thumb. Nick reached to stop her, too late. The blood beaded. Then, in front of him, the skin drew shut. Nick set the jar down slow. He took her hand and turned it under the window light. He pressed the healed spot with his own thumb. "When?" "Just now. Upstairs. I cut myself by accident." Her voice came fast. "It closed before I could wrap it. So I tried again. And again. Nick, it works on me. It always healed others. It heals me too." He was quiet a long moment. His jaw tightened the way it did when the stakes turned personal. "Then you can't ever bleed in front of the workers," he said. "Or a patient. Or the steward." He closed her fingers over her palm and held them there. "If the crown learns you can't be hurt, they'll never let you go." Delia looked past him at the beds she meant to fill, the garden she meant to grow. The gift had just grown larger, and so had the danger of it. "Then we hide this too," she said. "Same as the rest.” But Delia was wondering if it could heal others the same way.