Raising a Hero

Chapter 38

In the days before our meeting at the temple, Gus let me practice my magic on him. We were even able to do it in the open, on the cool floor of the cellar, which Hal had opened for me since another late season heat wave was passing through and it was time for him to recheck the stores. It was much more difficult than breaking a bone to take something that was in the body and move it somewhere else. 'Healing' came instinctively to me, since my body knew how it was suppose to be. But moving pigment around from where it had been left, well, my body didn't do that naturally, so I didn't know how to manipulate the energy to make someone else's body do it naturally.

It was especially hard since Gus had so little pigment to begin with, and something else entirely that I couldn't recognized colored his metallic hair.

He didn't understand why I found that so cool.

So I asked Milly to help with my experiment. Having gotten use to my regular brushes of my magic, when I wanted to check up on their health, she gladly sat with me in the quiet of the cellar before work was to start. I could even make out her smile in the half light coming from the trapdoor of cellar doorway and the candle-light.

"It's always so warm," she said. "If kindness had a feel, it would be this."

It was much easier with Milly. With thick black hair and eyes and darker skin, I found plenty of pigment to experiment with. By the time I'd finished making a fun little freckle on her hand, however, my head had started to pound in time with my heart. The little light in the cellar stung as I open my eyes.

"Huh," she said at the flower shape mark on her hand. It was a very ugly flower, but a flower nonetheless. "Now that's something."

"Many thanks for your dark coloring, Milly. Praise be to your ancestors."

She chuckled. "You have the weirdest humor, Lil'. You doing okay?"

"Just a headache."

"Dad has a quick fix for that. I'll get some herbs."

The quick fix turned out be me a puff of steam from his palms that went through a handful of rosemary, lavender, and coriander.

Sure enough, my headache eased.

"Luckily, it was the kind that this works on," said Hal. "Tension headache. Must have been concentrating on very small movements of magic. The smaller you try to get, the worse it will be. I've done quite a bit of my fair share of delicate magic, since that's the kind of magic us with small capacities are any good at."

My no-no list was getting bigger. Using too much magic at once: throw up and dizziness. Use up your magic: exhaustion ("And death," added Hal grimly, "if you're stupid determined, though most pass out before they can get that far."). Fine delicate maneuvers: headache.

"And a nose bleed," said Hal. "Do it for long enough you can rupture the vessels in your eyes too."

...That sounded pleasant.

So I gave myself a break off magic for the rest of the day and had a go at Gus's eye color in the morning.

It turned out to be stupid hard, because the only pigment he had was the bit his skin used to protect itself from the sun. Aka, the mini tan.

Frustrated, I tried to tug at the weird-pigment-something in his hair, but it wouldn't budge. It was like pulling on a statue cemented into the ground.

I had two options. I could make him sunbathe until he turned into a crisp piece of bacon, or I could hunt down the cells that made the pigment a stuff a bunch of energy into them.

Since he didn't have the time to bake with busy season on the inn, and because I was stupidly impatient to get his new red-eye-free life going, I dove back into hunting again.