TWO HUNDRED NINE: Now Rest

209

******

“Look quickly!” Stuart’s eager voice greeted Alden as he arrived in a teleportation chamber much more breathtaking than the one he’d just left behind. “Alden, look! We’ll only be here in Vethedya for a moment.”

Holding onto his bags and turning in place, Alden tried to take in the view before they were sent onward. He stood on a floor the soft, lustrous white of a pearl, surrounded by no walls or ceiling that his eyes could discern, only sky. The clouds were dark-bottomed and rolling in an unfelt wind.

“The storm is supposed to pass over the city and give its rain to the land that way,” Stuart said, pointing in a direction that meant nothing to Alden when he had only a foreign cloudscape for reference. “Do you like it?”

“It’s beautiful.” His eyes caught a flash in the clouds over the Artonan’s shoulder. “Lightning.”

Before he could say anything else, they were teleported on toward their final destination.

For the sake of tradition and out of respect for the healers, Alden would sometimes walk the long way down the road to the House of Healing, but since his time was inconveniently synced with Yenu-pezth’s right now, it was okay to take an easier route. He and Stuart appeared in an alcove in the House itself. It was open to a receiving room that was empty of people and unfurnished except for a tall set of cabinets running the length of one wall.

“I just saw Worli Ro-den.” Alden stepped out of the alcove onto pale green tiles. “He was arriving at the cube as I was leaving.”

Stuart’s look of mild curiosity was quickly swept away. “Don’t <<gnaw>> on thoughts of him. Not in this place and at this time. You had plans for your healing when we parted yesterday afternoon.”

“I did,” said Alden. “I do.”

“That,” a voice said from the hallway, “is welcome news to these ears.”

Yenu-pezth appeared in the doorway as she finished her sentence. She looked much the same as the last time Alden had seen her. Hair in a dusty shade of purple was coiled around her head, and she was carrying a bread loaf, though it was in a basket rather than being shared with woodland creatures.

Alden and Stuart both gave her small bows.

“Your ears are a good color,” she said approvingly to Stuart. “Are you here to protect Alden from the dangers of the inward path’s grottos, or do you hope to contemplate in one of them yourself?”

She sounded prepared to tease both of them as much as she could.

“I promise to leave when I’m told to this time,” Alden said.

“I will not argue with your wisdom or worry about your carefulness with Alden’s mind,” said Stuart. “And I was going to use the path if it wouldn’t disturb anyone else’s healing.”

Alden wondered if Stuart needed a break from his family and time to himself after the reunion with his former schoolmates.

“You are always welcome, dear Stu.” The healer put both of her eyes on Alden. “How have you been since we last spoke? And have you become sure of any desires that were once uncertain?”

Deep breath.

“I’d like to replace the nightmare tonight. I think at least a couple of the new dreams I’ve imagined are good enough. If you agree.”

“I will be sure if you are sure,” she answered easily. Then she added, “I’ve spent the past several nights reading the opinions of your planet’s <<philosophers>> and scientists on the human mind, and the opinions of Artonan healers and philosophers on the same. I will develop my own knowledge as we go. But isn’t it a wonder? To have found thought so much more like than unlike our own in another part of the universe! Come. I am honored to be trusted as your healer.

“And, Stu, you go steep.”

******

They started their meeting in a private sitting room, having a conversation about Alden’s preparations, his wants, and his concerns.

“I feel like a—” paranoid asshole “—ungrateful person for insisting on as much mental privacy as you can reasonably give me. I’m sorry to be troublesome.”

She was sitting in the chair across from him, legs crossed and beringed toes on display while she ate bread with the honey he’d brought.

“It’s not an uncommon request,” she said, “and not as difficult to work around as you fear. Thoughts need not be clearly viewed to be competently changed. If I say to you, ‘Imagine being bitten on the finger by the ryeh-b’t Stu gave your name…there, see? Your hand moved. And those are only words you know to be untrue interacting with your brain. Spells cast upon the mind have much more power to shift a person.”

“I’m glad I won’t be a bad patient.”

“I once had to keep a mind intact for a time after the body had died. That was a bad patient.” She took another bite of her bread. “You’ve agreed to let me monitor your emotions, and you won’t answer my questions with lies while I make alterations. That’s enough for what we’ll do today. Let’s talk about some options for your comfort, and then we’ll go to the inward path. You’ll become more sure of yourself, and your mind will be more open to change after a walk there.”

She was going to put him to sleep and then induce the nightmare. The options he got to choose from ranged from the simple question of what he wanted to sleep on—a womb-mimicking float tank was available if he preferred that—to the more complicated ones of what types of drugs she could administer and how much stress and fear he was willing to put up with.

Since it was a nightmare being replaced by what were basically more realistic nightmares with happy endings, there would be moments when he wasn’t at all pleased to be trapped in the process.

“So, you consent to much too much distress, and I will be the one who decides on healthy limits,” Yenu-pezth concluded in a chipper tone as they finished up. “Let us go see the room and thank the <<attendant>> who is preparing it.”

I was trying not to consent to too much distress, though, thought Alden, getting up to follow her out of the sitting room and down a corridor. He’d been cautious about coming across as too casual with regard to traumatic experiences after the whole asking Big Snake for a mock drowning thing. It’s not like I like being terrified. I’m trying to get over it and never do it again.

He hadn’t known what to expect from the treatment room, and he was really glad to get a tour of it and an explanation of it all. The ceiling was mostly hidden by interwoven branches that had fallen from the trees in the healing grove that surrounded the House. They were festooned with organic materials and enchanted objects—spell ingredients in ornament form that Yenu-pezth could use as needed. When they arrived, the attendant was standing on a step ladder, carefully removing and storing some of the ornaments and adding others based on requests the healer had sent while she and Alden were talking.

The man was a contradiction in motion, practically flinging the ladder around to reposition it and then wrapping each ingredient in small cloths so gently Alden was convinced he could have bundled up a butterfly without damaging its wings.

He was a member of the ordinary class, and he had the air of someone who’d worked at this place forever. He welcomed Alden without batting an eye and told him not to worry about the temperature, because the bedding he’d be sleeping on was going to have a cooling mat. He’d be positioning the bed in the most <<salubrious>> location, and he’d personally go apply <<brain screws>> to some other man who’d just been tasked with prepping the potion injectors, if the fellow didn’t get finished on time. The attendant and Yenu-pezth both had a long laugh at that poor soul’s expense that Alden didn’t quite get, but he was relieved to depart with the impression that having your nightmares replaced wasn’t the kind of ordeal that fazed anyone here.

Other than me.

By the time they made it out to the inward path, he was glad to let the weight of it fall on him and clear his nerves.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Today the purpose of our walk is narrower than last time,” Yenu-pezth said. She faced Alden with both hands in her pockets, her shoulders relaxed and her expression placid. “Now is the time for you to acknowledge what you have decided to let go—to find and understand the strands of your life that have held it in place even though you wish for it to be gone. Now is also the time to welcome what will be built where the evil dream once stood. Do you agree that this is a good purpose for our walk?”

Alden’s, “Yes,” arrived a little late, slowed by the pondering that the path encouraged. He found himself relaxing into it even more smoothly than before. He started to have a thought about his promise to Stuart and Healer Yenu that he wouldn’t have to be dragged away from here by the front of his shirt again, but before he could follow that thought all the way to wherever it would lead him when he was in this state, Yenu-pezth was asking another question.

“You could have chosen many kinds of correcting dreams, Alden. You have chosen ones that are harder, in some ways, than the dream you already endure. Why?”

And so they started their walk into the sloping, curving corridor of the path, and Alden was barely aware of the walls rising around him as he looked more closely at his own answers, trying to find where the truths that were worthy of being spoken through the weight lay.