Aden walked at nine months, and spoke clearly at fifteen. The Medicants saw his gifts and encouraged his parents to indulge, and stimulate his intellectual growth by reading to him, and playing games. Books were read and replaced faster than his dad could buy them, and it seemed that there was nothing that Aden could not do. The moment Tevin walked in the door to their cottage, Aden ran to him with some new book, puzzle, or game, and father and son would spend the rest of the evening together under candlelight.

Aden was four when his parents divorced. His father had come home one day and found his mom laid out bare breasted on the bed with another man on top. As far as Aden could remember, he never heard them fight or yell—he never sensed things to be going bad.

His parents separated and his father took him; Aden’s mom did not want him. After the divorce, Aden became cold and distant, and rarely spoke. His father tried, but could not rebuild the bond that he and his son had once shared.

The separation was devastating to his dad and to him, and the move from their large cottage in the country to a dilapidated tenement in the old city didn’t help to relieve the grief. Being so young, everything seemed to move so fast for Aden, and his emotions could not keep up.

Slowly his father diminished from the strong, youthful, vibrancy that Aden loved, to the dreadful, sickly mess that Aden cared for.

By the time Aden was seven Tevin never left his bed. Several times the doctor had been called for, but each time his father refused to see her. Every morning Aden would open the heavy door to his father’s room and bring him water and some medicine. Although he tried to disguise the smell with perfume and incense, the odor of waste and unwashed flesh still filled the room.

He would slowly draw the dusty curtains open and let the gentle gray light of dawn inside. It was the only time that his father would let the windows open—the rest of the time the sunlight was too powerful for his eyes.

For months this was the routine, and Aden became numb to his father’s pain.

One morning, Aden went to check on his father. He set the glass of water and red pills beside his bed and turned around to leave. A hand reached out and touched his arm—so gently. Aden turned and looked at his father; sunken face, weak, withering body, eyes deep and sorrowful.

There were no words spoken, final wisdoms past on to the younger generation, or tearful goodbyes. Tevin simply gave Aden’s arm a last squeeze, then closed his eyes.

His father’s death stole the breath from Aden’s lungs, and brought him to his knees--it was as if someone had hit him in the stomach with a club. It had been so long since he had felt anything and his pain was so immense that he vomited as his heart raced faster and faster. Gasping between wretches, Aden choked, inhaling and then coughing up the acid and mucus. Tears flooded his eyes and he could no longer see.

He collapsed to the cold dirt floor and lay there shaking.

When the emotion and pain suddenly ceased, Aden wiped his face with his father’s blanket, and became ashamed of the mess he made. He looked up and saw his dad’s arm, still dangling over the edge of the bed. The discolored spots, protruding veins, and the gray loose skin were each a story in themselves, monuments to the agony of his father.

Aden reached up and ran his fingers gently along the still warm surface of the skin. He pushed himself off the floor and kneeled beside the bed.

The urge inside caused Aden to reach into his pocket and remove and open the small, steel pocketknife. Softly, he slid the blade across his father’s wrist, squeezed open the wound, and drank the dead-life that poured out.

It was not totally the blood itself that was drawn to the wound, but the suffering, and illness that had accumulated in his father’s body; it was now drawn to Aden and released. It stung his esophagus and seared his empty stomach, but the child did not stop. With every ounce of the rancid black liquid that was extracted and swallowed, an ounce of life was breathed back into this lifeless body by Aden. Years of pain simply removed. Aden’s young body could not handle the added evil all at once, and he buckled to the floor once again.

Slowly, Tevin opened his eyes.

* * *

Across the lands, Aden became known as The Healer. The frail child had grown into a frail man—tall but gaunt. He had no home, and instead, wandered the lands, searching out those who searched for him. Sometimes a note would be left in a special place, a person would follow and beg for his help, or word of mouth would reach Aden during his journey.

Some people exalted him, some feared him, but there were very few who could deny his power. His patients were typically the ones who had long ago given up hope of a God somehow magically healing them-- saving them. They, like Aden, grasped that they were alone in this world.

His destination was the village of Merriam, where a woman named Fiona suffered terminally from a rare tumor inside her lung. The man had told him that she would be living in a small wooden shack, near the river. The Medicine Men could do nothing but give her herbal mixtures and drinks to help ease the pain while she died.

Aden walked alone through the town, down the muddy road, soggy from the year’s constant rain. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the locals who peered hostilely through the windows, watching this hooded stranger who encroached on their quiet town.

He knocked on the decomposing wooden door and a young girl answered. She peered up at him with large blue eyes, but didn’t speak. Aden could see that the rain leaked through the distended roof of the shack, and invaded every inch of the dwelling of this unfortunate family; the girl shivered in the damp cold and examined Aden. A gruff, bearded man picked her up, and stepped through the door.

“Come in. She’s in the back.”

Aden removed his soaking brown cloak and draped it over a chair. Small candles illuminated the corners of the shack, but were constantly being extinguished by the rain. The man pulled back the barrier of heavy blankets that hung from the ceiling, hiding Fiona, pale and sweating. She was a rather large woman, and shared the same beautiful eyes with her daughter. Even in her unimaginable pain, she smiled and tried to hug Aden.

“Relax, Fiona,” her husband whispered. He turned his head toward Aden, but did not take his eyes off his wife. “It’s her chest, she can hardly breathe. In her lungs is a—“

“I know,” Aden interrupted. “You need to leave now.”

The man looked quickly at Aden; he was scared and did not want to leave his wife alone. He feared Aden; Aden could sense it.

“Its okay, Zetetic. I’ll be fine,” Fiona breathed.

The man rose and took his daughter outside to wait. Fiona smiled again and extended her shaking hand for Aden. He moved closer and took her hand in his.

“I have heard about you, Healer. I have heard that you can make me well again.”

Aden nodded but did not look directly at her. “I will try.”

He removed a small gold knife from his pocket and opened the blade. Fiona began to breathe faster in short rapid wheezes; she did not take her eyes off the sharp metal.

“Close your eyes.”

Aden pulled Fiona’s sweat soaked blouse down and exposed her red, swollen chest. He examined her and placed his hand above her right breast, sensing her affliction. She winced as he pressed her ribcage down upon the diseased lung, inflating shallowly, then deflating.

Aden pressed the tip of the knife down on her chest. The cold metal cut cleanly through her skin and muscles. He pressed harder and forced the knife into her sternum, through and finally into her lung.

The black liquid oozed slowly at first through the hole and Aden pressed his mouth over it. Aden pushed both hands down upon her chest, forcing the diseased liquid from her lung and through the opening. It burned his throat and he became weak as his body began to absorb her pain and illness; he pressed and swallowed. When the flow was finally finished, Aden sat back and quickly covered up the wound. Fiona had long ago lost consciousness, but her mended body now drew full, deep breaths.

* * *

The tall wheat brushed his body as he walked throughout the damp field-- weak, tired. Although he felt it was his duty and responsibility to heal, it never came without a price for him. The years of relieving other people’s burdens had become his own; the pain, disease, and hopelessness of the people he visited had become concentrated inside his body, now lethargic and oblivious. It pained Aden to have to look at all the despair in the world.

From behind, he heard a shrill yell, and turned around to see a woman running to catch up to him. Her dark, mangled hair was matted from the rain and she struggled to stay upright as she darted through the thick, unleveled wheat field. She was tall, slender, and although young, he knew that the misery in her life was the reason for those deep lines engraved into her face, under her eyes…in her eyes.

“Please, wait!” she cried.

Slowly, Aden turned around, and removed the hood from his head; the calm breeze cooled his feverish head. The woman stopped running and doubled over as she tried to catch her breath. Although, he felt too weak to perform another healing, Aden saw that he had to; he was her -only- hope. It was her child; he knew it before she even spoke.

“Healer! Please, come with me. I need your help. It’s my daughter.”

She led him back into Merriam and to a large white house up on the hillside.

“She is so sick Healer, and so young. Kal is only seven and has hardly been well a day in her life. Thank you so much for coming with me. Thank you…”

They walked up the stairs and down the hall, to Kal’s room. Nurses tended to her, dabbing the sweat off her forehead with damp washcloths and feeding her warm chicken broth. This was a routine that they were all to use to. Her father sat in a chair nearby, reading.

Aden walked to her and knelt beside the canopy bed in which she lay. Although Kal did not appear very sick, Aden sensed that this girl was in more pain than anyone he had ever healed before-- even his father. And this girl was stronger than any of them. He placed his palm on her forehead and closed his eyes.

Under her skin, her body was chaos. Dark cancer invaded and multiplied in every cell and had destroyed her immune system; savage diseases roamed the entirety of her body, devastating with no mercy. There was far too much infection inside her body for him to receive, and surely a girl this delicate and petite could not handle such an excruciating ordeal.

For the first time, Aden was afraid. He walked to her mother and told her that there was nothing he could do for her.

The woman began sobbing lightly.

“Why…I don’t. Please you have….there’s something. You have to try,” she pleaded.

“I can’t help her.” Aden wished that he could show more sympathy, but the truth was all he had.

The father rose from his seat and came over to Aden. He spoke softly.

“Please, son. We have tried everything. We know she is going to die soon, and we only want you to try. Can you take away her pain.”

It was not a question. Maybe a demand or the final appeal from a weary man; Aden couldn’t tell.

Aden realized that there was nothing he could do for this girl, but a small part of him still needed to know if he could save her. He had to try. Yet still, Aden feared this child.

“I will try.”

Kal’s parents insisted on staying in the room; after all they had been through with their daughter, there was nothing that could separate them now.

Aden removed his knife, told Kal to shut her eyes, and pretend she was…but Aden could not think of anything positive and displacing for the girl. His voice trailed off; already he had failed her.

He took her small arm in his, and cut deeply, but nothing happened. Kal began shaking and whimpering—her mother and father moved to the bed and held her other hand. Again he cut through the moist skin, tendons, and veins, but the illness would not come. The girl cried, but even in this pain, did not draw her arm away.

Aden brought her arm to his mouth and began sucking on the cuts. A drop. Then another. Slowly, the fluid began flowing from her arm. Aden took a breath and sucked harder, and with an eruption, his mouth became filled with the malady and torment of the ailing girl.

It did not relent.

He swallowed again and again, but it wouldn’t stop.

He coughed, gasped for a breath, and pressed his eyes closed. More. More. Swallow. Aden began to feel ill, faint, but he didn’t stop. Burning. Piercing. But not stopping.

Then it did.

Aden swallowed the last of it and covered the girl’s arm with a white cloth. The world spun around him and he became nauseous. Flashes of light pounding his head. Aden wretched, but his body would not release the diseases.

Just before he passed out, Aden looked at the family and to the body of the little girl, whose life had now gone eternally.

* * *

When Aden awoke, he could feel the cool, damp wheat under his body but did not open his eyes. Something in the distance sounded like birds chirping, and upon his face he felt the anomalous warm rays of the sun. The sun, which he had not seen for so long. It had been so long since Aden had rested, that he relished this rare peaceful moment.

But inside his body, the evil, the vile, the caustic ravaged. He was no longer able to dispel that which he relieved from others and slowly it destroyed him. For too long had his body been the waste site for the world and it was taking its toll.

Aden opened his eyes. But there was nothing.

Solitary dark.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes, shook his head, looked around.

But only blackness.

The sickness inside of him had already begun killing his body. Aden tried to cry out, but his chest tightened up and he couldn’t breathe. His muscles began tightening and contracting, nerves fired randomly and he began loosing control of his body and mind.

Thrusting his hand into his pocket, Aden grabbed the knife and fumbled it open. He forced the knife into his forearm and carved a large gash. He put his mouth to the gaping wound and began swallowing.

The wicked liquid gushed faster than Aden could swallow it, but as soon as he did, the fluid began to digest, invade, and pump through his body once again. No one was there to help him, or comfort him; no one to support or listen to him.

He was utterly alone.

And as Aden sat in the field blind, crippled, hopeless, and dying-- only one thought ran through his head.