Pearl Before Swine ch 6: The Healer

~THE PEARL~

In the time I spent sitting in the sand, creatures came, creatures left, and I could not follow them. In my early days with Terra before the golems made his necklace, I remained wherever I was placed, watching others come and go.

Now I have legs. I can move where I wish, yet I do not know where to instruct them to carry me. If I remain here, waiting as always, will Tulip return?

Eventually, the crowd thins, and I stand alone, crowned by an arch leading beneath the staircase, feet glued to polished stone. Did the students believe me an unthinking statue, art to be glanced upon, then ignored? Those who saw me skirted aside. Those that did not notice crashed into me without a word, no acknowledgement or apology, steps hastened as if I were a mere delay.

They have vanished, and as the hallway reverts to stillness, their smells linger—a whiff of fruit, a lungful of spice, a trace of rotting meat.

My stomach squeals, and as if in response, a quiet tune wafts from somewhere ahead, sharper than Pike’s flute, higher and slightly off-key. While just as quick, these notes glide with a lazy confidence, bouncing between octaves, and my feet do the same, tread light as I venture beneath the stairs.

At the end of the passage, a door is propped ajar, and a silhouette lurks beyond its small panes.

A distant command smothers the whistle, and the shadow departs, yet still I walk as if in a trance. Why do my limbs tremble like trees before the wind? The breeze through the open door possesses a chill, but it is a gentle touch against my bare skin, too weak to cut through my clothes.

I reach the exit, push it far enough to let me escape, and step into the waning light of evening. A day wasted. Or have I managed to accomplish something in the little part of today I did not sleep through? I am with humans. I spoke to Pike, touched him, embraced him even. Should I expect more on day one? Love is…

What?

The stories never define it, probably because humans instinctually know what it is. They do not record their tales with Creatures of Essence in mind, so I am left trying to piece its form together from what I see it do.

It drives humans to find one another, to want to remain in each other’s company no matter the inconvenience. It makes them see things that are not and ignore things that are. It is something they cherish and fear, crave and deny.

How I wish love were a tangible seed. I could plant it, always know where to find it, and pick its fruit as evidence of its healthy growth. As it is, how am I supposed to cultivate love in these humans, enough love that one will put aside the industry I saw today, the weariness and the rush, and return to Terra with me before the seventh sunset? How will I know that love is mature and ready to harvest?

Even if I understand it by then, will Mare? How will I prove I have delivered my quarry, not empty words like a villain’s?

Why do I stare at the sky as I think these things, squinting at the departing sun above the pointed trees as if it might give me the answers?

Metal clatters to my left, and I turn. He stands there, my tall, blue-eyed human, the one the dean said is from the islands. Swords and spears lay scattered at his feet, glittering as the shadows of dusk crawl closer, but I barely see them, lost amid the shock in his widening eyes.

“It’s you.”

“Are you displeased to see me?” My first words are a whisper and much more shrill than I intend.

A smile slowly stretches his lips. “No, of course not. I think you saved my life.”

With the rise of his brows, the scar on his forehead wrinkles, and I wonder how he got it. Caution is one thing he does not seem to have in abundance. Decorum is another matter.

He bows, fists meeting beneath his chest. “May I know your name?”

“Pearl.”

He repeats it, and I regret that I cannot touch his mind. As his mouth shapes the sound, does he picture the same night sky and sunsets as did the humans of old?

“A jewel of the sea.” His smile no longer reaches his eyes, and his brows drop, casting shadow over his lashes. His uniform, while cut like Pike’s, is a cavernous gray, not quite as black as his hair and the gloom that lowers his gaze from mine.

He kneels and scoops up weapon after weapon with a frenzied, unsure grasp. I mimic his pose and do the same, though my gathering stalls to study each blade. These are human tools. Humans do not have horns or claws, so they make them.

“You now know my name, but I do not know yours.”

“Jun.” His eyes jump from blade to blade, never landing on me.

“Pike said you were named after a tree.”

“Juniper. Oakson. But I go by Jun.”

“How is your wound, Jun?” I scoot closer to him, but still he does not look up.

“Not as bad as I thought it was. Just a scratch, really, and I know I have you to thank for that.” Arms full, he stands, and as I do the same, his eyes pierce me as if they, too, are a weapon. “Sorry, if I seem rude. Where I’m from, no one is named after things of the sea. Mare would—”

“You know Mare?” Mention of her name fills me with a sticky sense of dread mixed with the warmth of familiarity. I only met her yesterday, but she is of a world I know, an Essence like Terra.

He frowns. “Not personally. Do you seriously think the Koa—”

A summons from within the trees cuts off whatever guess he had of my thoughts. “Jun, what’s keeping you with the drill stuffs?”

“Coming, Auntie!” He scurries toward the call, gesturing with his chin at the blades I hold. “Bring those, too, will you?”

Before I can take a step, a dark figure drops from a branch behind him, arm curling over his shoulder and around his throat. He throws himself backward, head knocking against the cloaked attacker’s collar so he can spin free, but the shadow is faster.

A spear rolls into a tanned hand and swings. The pole sweeps Jun’s legs out from under him, and he falls flat, weapons scattered again as the javelin’s tip hovers above his heart.

“You don’t get to call me Auntie here, kid, especially when you’re dawdling over here, flirting with girls.”

“I wasn’t flirting, Professor.”

She looks at me, one eyebrow quirked above eyes equal to Jun’s. “Was he?”

I shrug. “I hope so.”

With a tsk, she redacts the spear and nudges her toes against his ribs. “Stand and clean up this mess, and if you delay class again, you sure as the tide won’t do it again.”

He does as bidden and quickly vanishes from sight in the denseness of the forest growth, though his footfalls still patter back to us. Uncertain what to do with my burden, I want to trail him, but the professor stares at me with ‘unwelcome’ written over her entire demeanor.

“Identify yourself, Healer.”

“My name is Pearl. I have some of the blades. May I follow him?”

Reaching to take the few weapons I recovered, she laughs, but the sound is nothing like Pike’s. Hers is deeper, sharper, with a coy irony chopping off the end of every huff. “Healer, there’s a reason I teach in the privacy of the copse.”

“I am not a medical student. I—”

The whistle returns, two low, slow notes punctuated by the snap of twigs as another approaches. Before I can see more than his outline between the brambles, he speaks. “So, this is the girl that saved Jun, huh?”

The professor’s glare softens. “That was you?”

I nod. “May I bring him the rest of his weapons now?”

She crosses her arms, but a smile much like his crinkles her blue eyes. “With the way Jun says you moved, I expected—or hoped maybe—you would be one of my students.”

“What do you teach?”

The newcomer chuckles as he stops alongside her. While not as tall as Jun, he matches the teacher’s height, and like me, he wears gold. “Can’t we let her watch, Professor?”

“That’s a bold suggestion coming from a freshman on his first day, but I suppose there’s little harm in it.” She turns her back and flits between the trees, mottled gray cloak fanning behind her.

The other rolls his eyes. His words draw and blend, vowels long and consonants like popping bubbles. “She’s trying to lose you. If you don’t feel like keeping up—”

I pass him, darting along the path of fading impressions in the bed of fallen pine needles.

With barely a pause, he is at my side. “I was going to say I know the way, but this is fun, too.” His eyes glimmer above his smirk, opaque as jade and the darkest green like the foliage.

When the professor reaches a glade, she stills, and if I had not kept my gaze upon her, I could now mistake her for one of the trees. Her presence balances with nature as if this is exactly where she belongs.

As the other student and I slow, our feet slide on the damp ground, uncovering half-decomposed needles and fresh mud.

In the clearing ahead, a dozen students garbed in dark gray mingle in small groups. Some sit on logs arranged around a sandy depression while others stand nearer the trees opposite us. Jun lines a wooden rack with the weapons he brought.

“Professor, you are a relative of Jun’s?” My heavy breaths muddle my tone, visible as short-lived clouds. The other student’s does the same, but the professor gives no evidence she breathes at all.

Her shoulders rise. “More or less. My mother is Koa. I’ve been to her homeland, of course, studied my craft among the warriors there. He calls me auntie because that’s how they respectfully refer to Koa women.”

My lips purse, and my head falls to one side. “The dean said that no Koa had come to the mainland in centuries.”

“Half-true. Jun is the first male Koa to step foot on Lemuria.” She sighs as her gaze slides over my shoulder. “Look at those useless fools. Not one of them has noticed us standing here.”

She snatches the weapons from me and charges into the meadow, bellowing orders. Every student stiffens, straightens, and scrambles to queue in front of her, all except the one who stands next to me.

I peek sidelong at him. Amid the deepness of the evergreens, his uniform’s gold is a pale, wilted color.

“Are you not part of this class?”

Following my sightline, he glances at his sleeves. “You can take classes that aren’t your major.”

I do not move, waiting for him to explain what that means.

Face twisted slightly to the left, he sweeps his bangs off his forehead, and one by one, the brilliant, white strands cascade back into place as soon as they escape his hand. “If you want to be a healer, great. And if combat interests you, too, go ahead. Learn it. Nothing’s stopping you.”

With an understanding nod, I step closer to him. “You study medicine?”

He takes an equal-sized step away from me. “What I’m interested in is the transference of energy, particularly in how the body uses it. If you want to call that medicine, then you have the same idea as my councilors.”

His slow words wash around me like an indecisive tide, few of them soaking in, and I believe that is by design. He dangles the topic above my head. Is it to test the height and flexibility of my intelligence, or because he wishes to keep the topic too far away for my inspection?

Beneath his forest-colored gaze, a fire burns in my forehead, a fuse leading straight to my heart. It burns with a logic I cannot explain. I want him to believe me capable of anything.

His eyes slide past me. “Shall we join them?”

Tracing his focus, I turn. Most of the students sit, distributed on the logs, while two face each other in the sand, a pair of blades crossed between them.

As the novice healer passes me, I search for words that will, if not impress him, at least catch his attention, assure him I have a brain and thoughts worth considering.

“You do not believe they are the same, concoctions harvested from nature and the power given when an Essence grants good health.”

He keeps walking, hands hidden in his pockets. “I didn’t say that.”

Biting my lip, I plod after him. Perhaps the color of my uniform is not so ill-fitting. Jun’s wound was more than a mere scratch. I recall the crimson river of his blood flowing over my arm, the sapphire crescents of his eyes as his lids slackened. Time had stilled, nothing in motion except his chest as he heaved in one more breath. How he looked at me as my energy vanished.

Did I heal him as Terra has healed so many?

I have fallen behind my fellow golden-clad student. “How much do you know about the Essences? Can you answer a question about them?”

With a soft whistle, he looks back over his shoulder. “Depends on the question.”

“Terra healed people long ago, when they asked, and Mare can as well, yes? Why have I never heard tale of her doing so?”

His stride hitches, and I pull alongside him as his eyes cut to Jun sitting alone at the end of a long log. “The Essence of the Sea is a dangerous topic.”

More dangerous than he can fathom, but my curiosity has become a boulder rolling down a mountain. It will not stop until it crashes upon an answer. “She has killed, I know, but has she ever healed?”

“She has.” He swallows. “She is very old and has a very long memory, longer than humankind’s. Most people don’t believe in the Essences anymore. Those that do are…”

He lets the sentence hang. Does he search for the word to end it, trying them one by one and finding none that fit? Or has he found it and simply avoids setting it free?

Either way, his gaze is so strong, I see it as a rod hooked in Jun’s back, just as deadly a weapon as the swords sliding into sheaths on the hips of the two students in the sand.

“May I ask another question?”

That perilous gaze slides to me. “Depends on what it is.”

“What is your name?”

He smirks, one huff serving as a laugh. “Friends call me Sal. You can, too, if you consider us friends.”

“Sal,” the professor barks from across the arena of logs and sand, “nice of you to join us. You’re up next.”

He winks at me. “Great way to make friends, right, using your name as bait? I’m probably about to die, so wish me luck, Pearl.”

My words of encouragement stick in my throat. I have not told him my name. Perhaps he overheard it when I told it to the Professor?

“Such dramatics,” she scoffs as she hands him a loaded sheath. “The weapons are dull. As long as you don’t get whacked on the head too many times, you’ll be fine.”

Even so, as he pulls his hands from his pockets and accepts the sword, he trembles, jaw locked. If this bothers him so, why is he here? If he desires to be a healer, why does he need to learn to destroy?

Continued in chapter 7: Second Sunset

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