The small body in her arms jerked as she forced her power into it. The heart gave a sluggish beat and stilled. The lungs released a breath of air. The eyes stared at nothing. She blinked, her vision blurred with tears, and poured her power into it again. The heart gave another single beat.
She could use her power to force the body to react mechanically, force the lungs to breathe or the heart to beat, but her Healing Touch wasn’t healing anything. Her Vital Scan wouldn’t reveal what was wrong. Her Organ Knit was not knitting together organs.
She forced her power into the tiny body again. The heart gave another beat as her power squeezed. The eyes seemed to accuse her. Her hands were burning from using her power so often. Her breathing was ragged. The body twitched in her arms, but it was just a tremor as her power passed through muscles. She couldn’t find what she needed to repair.
The Voice, which came in her sleep each time she gained a new level, spoke to her for the first time when she was awake. This time, it didn’t tell her the names of Abilities and a level number. Instead, it broke through her mind to scold her.
Maria woke tangled in blankets on the floor of a large tent and lay still for a moment, tears streaming down her face. It was the same nightmare she had so often, the one where she tried over and over to heal her little brother, Felix. She couldn’t heal the dead.
She wiped her face on her bedding as her tears stopped falling. Grief Hardened Will, her level three Ability, had stopped grief from overwhelming her except when she slept. The level up had apparently been her reward for failing to save Felix. It had come with another Ability, too, one that let her shut down a body’s systems when the patient was too far gone to be saved. An Ability she had never used and never would, especially not since her level two rewards, Organ Knit and Crisis Calm, had come from saving someone at the very edge of death.
Or so she assumed. The level ups never actually explained what they were for, but they had come in her sleep the night of each of those events. Her birthday; when she saved someone from death; when she failed to bring the dead to life; and the first night she had slept in the church crypt. That last one was not like the others, but it still came with a healing Ability to fix bone injuries. The other Ability at that level seemed to be the key, though: Survivor’s Instinct was clearly a reward for surviving all the danger she had been through, given the first night she had slept in a safe place. It would be a better Ability if she knew what it actually did, but presumably it would help her survive somehow. Lead her to water in a desert, maybe. So, an Ability that was useless in England.
It was Grief Hardened Will that was her most important Ability, and the only thing that truly prevented her from falling apart. It felt like a weight in her chest that sucked in all her emotions, leaving her numb. Sometimes, it felt like she was underwater, moving slowly against a force that pushed back on her. At night, in her sleep, she’d relive her mother and brother’s deaths, but during the day the pain was muted, and she could function. She couldn’t be happy, she certainly wasn’t healed, but she wasn’t consumed with crying either. She could get through the day.
She could get through this day.
Maria sat up and looked around the huge tent. Isabel, the nearest person to her, was sitting up in her bedding, trying to brush her hair. It was an impossible task with her personal wind constantly blowing her hair around. Maria had asked, but Isabel didn’t know how to stop the wind.
Beyond Isabel, the massive form of Luis lay still, snoring quietly.
Seven of the eleven people in the tent were awake, including all three of the adults. Selene looked as if she had not had the best sleep. Well, she would just need to deal with it, Maria couldn’t heal tiredness. Probably. She’d never tried, but it wasn’t a wound, an organ, or a bone so it was doubtful.
She couldn’t heal death, she probably couldn’t heal tiredness, and she couldn’t heal herself. That was what she had learned so far.
She might have a better idea of the whole level system thing than anyone else she had spoken to. Isabel had only the two levels, the one from her birthday and the one from sleeping in the crypt. Beatriz had those two and a third, but she had no idea why she had a third. She insisted she hadn’t done anything the day she’d received it, except play around with her Ability to conjure a small ball of light above her palm. Dolores refused to talk about her levels or Abilities, for the most part, except to confirm she had the same two as everyone else. She wouldn’t say if she had more or not, and she had only been willing to demonstrate a single power. When Dolores asked someone a question, they couldn’t lie to her. It was impossible, several of them had tried it, testing its strength.
Mostly, Dolores didn’t say a word, not wanting to use whatever power she had in her voice.
Luis had two levels, the same as Isabel. Ana, who had cactus spines sticking out of her skin, had three. Manuel said he had six, but wouldn’t discuss what powers he had, if any. Other than his too long arms, his legs that bent the wrong way, and his humpback, Maria had noticed two things that might be powers. Well, one was definitely a power. After the warehouse, he’d refused her healing, and his wounds had closed up on their own. A powerful self-healing ability then, and potentially a secondary ability that let him see in the dark. He could go to the toilet in the middle of the night without turning on a light. Maybe it was a power to help him pee, but that seemed unlikely.
She’d tried asking others in the church what had caused them to level, but most of the people who weren’t Spanish refused to answer her, even after she’d healed them. She wasn’t just being nosy either, she needed to know.
Maria’s gaze found Rafael, standing at the back of the tent. He hadn’t slept, he didn’t ever sleep any more. He hadn’t slept a single night in the two and a half months since their birthday. She had to understand what was going on with them all if she wanted to save him, and she couldn’t fail. He was the last living member of her family, and more than that, they were twins. From the day they were born, they had done everything together.
And now his skin was bark and he didn’t sleep or talk and she could barely get him to eat.
Selene told them in Spanish to go out for breakfast. Maria blinked in the sunlight as she walked out of the tent, slipping on the dew wet grass. Isabel caught her by the arm and helped steady her. Maria glanced back to make sure Rafael was following them. Sometimes he’d just stand in one place for hours if no one told him to do something, but he seemed to enjoy being out in the sun.
Like a tree.
That was how she knew this Voice was not God. God would not turn her brother into a tree. But that didn’t mean she had any idea what the Voice was, even if she seemed to know more about the levelling system than anyone else.
The Romani women had baked bread on the fire, which Maria didn’t know was a thing that could be done. It smelled really nice, though.
Kannika was passing out cups of tea. Maria thanked her in Spanish when she was handed one, and the Asian woman said something in English, but Maria didn’t understand a single word of the language yet. That was something she was going to need to change. Out of all the teenagers, Isabel was the only one who spoke any English, and out of all the adults, Selene was the only one who spoke Spanish. It made conversations difficult between the two groups.
If she could speak English, she could tell the Romani children to stop staring at her brother. No one had told Rafael to put a blanket over his head today, so everyone could see that he had bark instead of skin. It hurt her, to have them stare at him so much. He didn’t seem to care, though. No, he didn’t seem to notice.
Like a tree.
“How long do you think it will take us to get to Wales?” Isabel asked quietly, her words a murmured whisper.
“I don’t even know how far away it is,” Maria whispered back. None of the teenagers had spoken above whispers yet. They didn’t know if the Romani had even realised they were Spanish, and it was better if they didn’t. They were guaranteed to have lost at least one family member in either of the two world wars that Spain had started. “Will you teach me English?”
“I don’t know how to teach a language.”
Maria tried to think back to when she had first started learning French. They had begun with her name, nationality, and asking directions to the library. “How did your French lessons start?” she asked Isabel.
“My parents spoke Spanish and French at home, so I never really had a lesson. My English lessons started with my name, nationality, and asking directions to the swimming pool.”
Kannika came back with freshly baked bread and scrambled eggs. Maria listened carefully as Isabel said something in English, and repeated the phrase.
“You just asked for more tea,” Isabel told her in Spanish.
“I thought you were saying thank you!”
Isabel started laughing, and a moment later Maria chuckled too. Her Grief Hardened Will Ability had an unfortunate name. It seemingly affected all emotions, not just grief. At least it only dulled her feelings instead of removing them entirely. She could still feel amused, and even though it felt like a betrayal of her little brother’s memory, the fact that she was betraying him didn’t burn as much as it once had.
The morning wore on. Selene and the Romani spent their time repairing clothes, wagons, and tools. The teenagers were left to sit, their help unnecessary. Isabel slowly taught Maria some English. By the time lunch was served, she could say yes and no, please and thank you, my name is Maria, and can I have more tea please?
She’d imagined yes and no would be important, because she could answer questions. It was hours before she realised she couldn’t understand questions.
Everything, including the two huge tents, had been packed away before lunch. After eating a very fine mushroom and rabbit stew, the five wagons started their journey again. That evening, they stopped along the bank of the Grand Junction Canal in Uxbridge, and this time the women didn’t go hunting. Instead, after taking care of the horses, the men and older boys took fishing rods from the last wagon and went to the canal as the sun slowly set.
Maria turned her attention to Dolores as they waited for dinner. “Will you please tell me more about your powers and how you levelled?”
Dolores sighed. “Why do you want to know?”
“If I can understand the system, I can help my brother,” Maria replied instantly, the words pulled from her by Dolores’ Ability-enhanced question. “You could ask people for me,” she added. “They have to tell you the truth.”
“No,” Dolores didn’t even consider it, replying instantly. “If people want to keep their secrets, I won’t take that away from them. I’ll tell you what I can about mine, but I don’t see how it will help with Rafael.”
“Please, Dolores. I don’t know what will help either, but anything could be the key.”
Dolores was silent for a moment. “The night of my sixteenth birthday, I received my first two powers. The first is Harmonic Voice. I can soothe and calm people with speech; it carries an emotion that affects others. The second was… it changed… my body altered.”
“How did it change you?”
“My height, weight, it’s not something I want to get into or even really think about. My second level came the very next night, and I… I’m not sure why it happened. All I can think is that that day, the day after my birthday, I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. And then I levelled up. It gave me Resonant Breath, which helps with singing, and it upgraded Harmonic Voice to Emotional Chorus, which is both more powerful and more limited, because it requires singing. After that, some things happened, and I was the saddest I’ve ever been in my entire life. I levelled up that night, too. It gave me Harmonic Posture, subtle changes to my body that improve my singing, and my Voice of Truth. And then the last time I levelled was the first night in the crypt. It gave me Vocal Endurance, so I can sing for longer, and Vocal Shield, and I have no idea what that does. There, everything. Does that help?”
“Yes,” Maria replied, instantly, the truth, even though she hadn’t realised that it did help. She hadn’t consciously connected the dots yet, but some part of her mind seemed to think the answer was helpful. She frowned. “Ask me how it helped, please.”
Dolores smiled. “Clever. I don’t know if this will work. Let’s see: how did it help you, Maria?”
“We can ignore your birthday. Everyone has the same starting point. After that, you levelled when you were happy, when you were sad, and when you were in the crypt.” Every single one of them had been taken from home by armed men, stuffed into railway wagons, and taken to a different country. After Stella had rescued them from their kidnappers, the first night in the crypt was the first night it was all over. “Relief?” she asked. “Maybe not relief, but certainly an intense overpowering emotion. I healed someone who was dying; I couldn’t heal my brother.” Those had certainly been intense emotions.
“Are you saying we level when we’re emotional?”
“I’m saying the evidence currently points that way.” She was going to ask what her next steps should be, but the men returned with a basket of eels they had caught, and distracted her. The scents that drifted over from the fire targeted her gut directly, and she realised she was starving.
Hopefully Rafael would have an eel, too.
That wouldn’t be tree-like at all.
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