The snake’s fangs left my chest the moment they had injected the venom. And then the snake slithered down to the ground from the branch it had been on and then disappeared into some bushes. For a few moments I remained standing as I was. I didn’t even realise when Dani and Lia had reached my side. Slowly, a dizziness came over me, even as I began to feel like someone had set a fire over my chest.

Dani and Lia helped me to lie down on the ground. They were saying things to me, but I couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. There voices sounded like distant echoes that made no sense. Only one thought floated about in my mind, even as I began to loose control over my body. I should have stayed miserable, I should have remained at the spot where the Wahaki men had taken away my powers. I should have never followed Dani and Lia’s voices. It had been a mistake. Taking action had been a mistake. I wouldn’t have been bitten by the snake otherwise.

And then suddenly, I seem to come back to the world. I could hear everything clearly, even though my chest was still on fire and I could barely sense my own body. Lia had her hand over my heart and she was trying hard to heal me. The veins of her forehead had popped out in the effort required and her eyes were bloodshot. Dani was just staring at me with a pale face like she had accepted the fact that I was going to die.

Lia shook her head, shooting me a look of despair.

“It’s not working, Dani,” she said, “I don’t think I can heal him.”

It’s okay, Lia, I tried to say, but all I could do was think. My lips felt stiff and my tongue wouldn’t move.

“But we can’t just give up on him, can we?” Dani said, caressing my face with a shivering hand.

“Um, let me… let me think,” Lia said. The drowsiness was coming back to me again. Was this what dying was like? “Yes, yes, I think there might be a way to save him. Dani, go kill an animal and bring it to me. Go fast!”

“An animal?” Dani said.

“Yes, any animal, go!” Lia said, “My powers alone can’t revive him. Go fast!”

Dani nodded and sprinted away. The drowsiness was coming fast. Stars appeared in my vision. I thought of Rozy, who was with the sorcerer who intended to sacrifice her so that he can be all powerful. I had vowed to save her and failed.

Blackness took over my vision. I felt a sharp pain in my chest over my heart, which was quite unlike the fire-like pain that had been on my chest previously and it was the last thing I knew before I lost absolute consciousness.

“Get up,” a voice said, that sounded so much like that of someone I knew, “please. Get up!”

Someone I knew. Who could it be? It was definitely someone I was close to. Very close to infact.

Lia? Yes, she was my wife, wasn’t she?

A slap on my face brought me back to consciousness. I opened my eyes to see a rather angry Lia, glaring hard at me. Seeing me conscious her glare softened until she was sobbing. She began to kiss me and I felt more lips on my face and realised even Dani had joined in.

“Okay,” I said and was glad that my tongue was no longer stiff. “I guess that will be enough.”

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The two of them kissed me only more and it was a while before they let go of me. Their faces were quite red with emotion.

“So you healed me?” I asked Lia.

“Couldn’t have done without her,” Lia said, throwing her arm around Dani.

I looked down at my chest and saw a considerable amount of dried or drying blood over a wound over my chest. The sight made the panic alarm go off in my head and I almost stood up, but Lia and Dani pushed me back to the ground.

“Lie down for a while,” Lia said, “within a day that will be a mere scar and nothing.”

“What did you exactly do?” I asked my two wives. I saw a bloodied sword lying not far away and nearby the sword was a dead rabbit with an arrow sticking out from its neck. The rabbit’s chest was also covered in blood very much like me. I couldn’t not observe the parallel between me and the rabbit.

Lia looked a bit hesitant, so Dani spoke.

“The snake’s poison had gotten into your heart,” Dani said and even she looked very hesitant, but she spoke anyway thankfully, “so… she took out your heart.”

“What!” I spluttered, my heart beat spiking in the process. Wait, that made no sense. How could I have a heart beat without a heart in the first place if Lia had in fact taken out my heart?

“There was no other way,” Lia said, not looking at my face, “we were losing you. The only sensible thing to do was to remove your heart and to replace it with another.”

I looked at the rabbit.

“So… you replaced my heart with the…?”

“Rabbit’s,” Lia said.

“I… I never thought such a thing could be done,” I found myself saying. There were healers of far greater skills than Lia. What more, Lia being outside of the civilised realm barley had twenty or thirty percent of her previous healing powers. Even though there was enough proof of what had been done, I found it hard to accept it as feasible.

“I don’t know about that,” Lia said, “but I did it… to save you.”

Well, she had a point. I was alive and whatever she had done had been a success. I reckoned I would be better off without questioning it too much.

“So what did you do to my heart?” I asked.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see it,” Lia said, “so we buried it.”

I wished they hadn’t done that though. It felt almost like I had missed saying goodbye to my heart.

“When was it did you go away from us?” Dani said, “When we were sleeping?”

Her question took me back to the things that had occurred to me before I had been bitten by the snake. The sinking feeling took over me again, which had been mostly absent the entire while I had been bitten by the snake and Lia had performed her healing on me.

“I…” I began, but couldn’t find any words to express myself.

“What? Tell us,” Dani said, “You wouldn’t have left us and gone away for no reason, would you?”

I sighed and decided I would tell them everything that had happened.

“At night I woke up wanting to take a piss,” I said, “I went some distance from the clearing we were sleeping in. When I was returning back, someone shot a dart at me, which paralysed me for an hour.”

“And then?” Lia said with a face full of concern. “Who did it?”

“The Wahaki of course,” I said reliving yesterday night all over again in my mind’s eye, “they had a magical stone, given to them by the sorcerer. They placed the stone on my chest and… and…”

I couldn’t keep speaking anymore and burst into tears.

“It’s okay, Rabbi,” Lia said gently, “you can tell us.”

Neither Lia nor Dani had ever seen me so helpless so I reckoned they were really worried for me.

“The magical crystal took away all my powers,” I said, “all the spells and skills that I had acquired over my life are gone. I am back to level zero! Can you believe it? I am back to level zero!”

Dani gasped, while Lia stared at me fixedly as though she didn’t believe what I had said.

“But… But the sorcerer can’t make such a powerful crystal,” Lia said.

“But he did,” I told her. “All the work I had put in my entire life has gone to waste. I… am of no use now.”

For a few moments all three of us were silent. Lia and Dani seemed to understand why I was acting so miserably. The blow I had received was way too big. By now, thanks to the healing magic that Lia had applied on my chest, the wound looked like one that was at least a few weeks old. I pushed myself to a sitting position and then observed the dead rabbit for a while. It lay on the ground unmoving and I couldn’t help but feel a tad sorry for the poor animal that it had to die so that I could be saved.

“I think we should bury him,” I said to Dani and Lia. The rabbit was a male. “Without him I would be quite dead by now.”