Kip’s gorge rose once more, but he stared at the sky again until his mind was a placid, still pond. He couldn’t bear it. Not sixty-some times. He lost the blue completely and was almost a beast again, trapped, trapped in his skin with leeches like he was trapped in a closet full of rats—
Like this.
Calm. Gentle. He took in blue, and more blue. He barely had the will to open himself, barely understood what the swirling color was doing almost of its own accord. It filled his body, found every tooth, every Y-shaped incision.
Gather your will.
He had no will. He reached toward sub-red for passion, toward green for wildness.
No, your will. Luxin is your tool; you are not its tool. Stand.
Kip still hadn’t gathered any will, but he stood, feeling persecuted. He knew what to do, but knowing what to do here was like knowing that all you had to do to climb a mountain is to walk. Orholam give me strength.
He already has. Use it.
Arms and legs outstretched, Kip clenched his fists, bowed his head. The power didn’t course through him in a scream of rage and omnipotence, but instead in drops of silent tears. It followed his blood, finding tiny mouths, shutting them, rejecting them, sealing the poisoned blood away from him, and forcing it out, too.
One by one, the leeches dropped off. Dropped off his arms. Dropped off his legs. Dropped off his chest. Dropped off his back. Dropped off his butt. Dear Orholam—dropped off his groin. Dropped off his face.
Kip was streaming blood from sixty-two tiny wounds. The leeches’ poison made blood run free. Kip wondered how much blood he’d lost. Several of the leeches nuzzled his feet, looking for a new spot to feed. He stepped away. He had no revulsion left. There were only problems, and fixing them.
Oh, simple. He drafted blue caps over every cut. As soon as he took a step, he dislodged a quarter of the blue caps. Of course. Blue was too stiff; if he moved, he would lose his bandages.
He leaned against a tree, sat, drafted a blue cocoon around himself, sealed it, sealed his wounds, and slept.
He woke twice to vomit, wasn’t sure if he remembered to draft his bandages or his cage anew.
He dreamt or he had visions or he did things barely aware. A quietly weeping woman, in the gray morning light, hair in a great kinky halo. “Why are you crying?” Kip heard the voice asking, only realized it was his own after the words were out.
“I weep because you suffer, and only the second sons of Am are entitled to feel pity without passion. And even then, not in life.” She stood and her aspect changed suddenly, flickering between this dignified woman and something entirely other. “Sleep,” she said, quietly radiant. “You won’t die on my watch.”
All faded into fever and nightmares and sweat and shivering cold and thunder and cool water. He heard the sounds of birds screeching, monkeys howling, something like a dog barking at him, but all of it fast, too fast, skipping along the surface of time as if he were in his father’s skimmer, light flashing across his face and disappearing like it was happening in seconds, when he knew it must be days. He had some recollection of holding a broad leaf to his face, funneling water to his lips as a mighty downpour shook heaven and earth.
When he woke again, he was himself.
He felt clear, but weak. He dissolved his blue cocoon, and almost vomited again from the touch of luxin, lightsick. There were paw prints in the mud around his cocoon, big ones, not wolves, though, he knew wolf prints from growing up in Tyrea. There were no human prints, though, not even his own. The woman had been a hallucination, a fever dream.
How much had been dream or delusion? He took a deep breath, checking himself, checking his surroundings. No leeches, no frogs, no storms. Not now anyway.
Kip stood on wobbly legs. He couldn’t tell how long he’d been here. The only indication of passing time was his cuts, scabbed over. So the leeches had been real. He examined the cuts. Leech bites usually heal more slowly than most wounds, but with the blue luxin helping, Kip guessed he’d been in his barely conscious state for less than a week.
The hunger had lost its urgency. Kip felt an odd purity, the serenity of saints and ascetics and the batshit insane. The clarity of a soul detaching itself from its flesh home, perhaps. He walked for an hour before he realized he was naked. His first thought when he became aware of it wasn’t embarrassment; it was protection. His skin was a poor barrier for the rigors of jungle travel.
He began drafting while he walked. He tried green first. It was so abundant, it was the most obvious choice. But he gave it up soon. Too heavy, too coarse to wear against his skin. When he came across a clump of trumpet-shaped dazzlingly yellow flowers, he stopped. He tried to weave cloth of yellow, but he always lost that perfect, fine mesh point where yellow would hold its solidity before he could get a sizable chunk. The smaller the amount of yellow he tried to make solid, the easier it was.