Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 115 of 115

Kiersten mended, but she tired fast. She climbed the stairs now, yet by midday her hands shook again. Eduardo watched her sit down hard at the window one morning, out of breath. Mellani fussed in the cradle, pale beneath her braids. The town had carried them this far. But some weakness in both his wife and his daughter had not lifted. Eduardo knew he could not fix it with wood or wages. That afternoon he knelt by the cradle. "You're not well yet," he said. "Neither of you." "No," Mellani said. She did not soften it. Kiersten rested her head against the glass. "There's a pod," she said. "The healing kind. Mirelle told me once. It takes you all the way down and brings you back whole." She looked at him. "I didn't want to ask. Asking means I'm still broken." Eduardo took her hand. "Then we ask together. All three of us go." They walked there before dusk. The pod stood among ferns, taller than a man, shaped like an egg. Silver curves wrapped the glass. Colored panels glowed along its sides, soft as lit stained windows. A faint light breathed from inside. Eduardo had passed it before and never understood it. Now he understood it was meant for this. Kiersten hesitated at the door. "If I go under and don't come up right," she said, "you don't carry it alone. You ask for help. You've learned that." "I've learned that," Eduardo said. He opened the glass door. Warm light poured over them. Kiersten stepped in and sat. Eduardo settled beside her with Mellani against his chest. The door sealed. The glow deepened, wrapping all three of them, humming low through his bones. He felt the tiredness leave Kiersten first. Her shoulder stopped trembling against his arm. Color returned to her face, slow, like morning filling a room. Mellani's small body loosened. Her breathing steadied. The pale left her cheeks. Eduardo closed his eyes and let the light take his own weariness too, the months of fear and sleepless nights draining out of him. When the glow faded, Kiersten sat up straight. No shaking. "I'm whole," she said, surprised, like testing a floor that held. Mellani opened her eyes. They were bright now, steady. She looked past them both, toward something only she saw. "I'm reaching," she said. Kiersten frowned. "Reaching for what?" "Something bigger than this." Mellani did not explain. She had used the word before and refused to take it back. Eduardo held his daughter and felt her strong at last. But her eyes stayed fixed far off, past the glass, past the ferns. The healing had closed one wound and opened a new question he could not answer. His family was whole. His daughter was already looking somewhere he could not follow.