Margaret, Bryan’s wife, quietly woke Willow early the next morning. The sun hadn’t even touched the horizon and already Willow smelled the savory notes of pork and eggs. By the time Willow washed with the small basin beside her bed and left the room, the house was already in commotion.

Little Benny was practicing rhyming games with his father, Bryan, who had gotten home late the previous night. At the sound of Willow’s door opening off the dining room, Bryan startled a bit at first and looked over his shoulder at her. Something about him had changed ever so slightly, in the way he looked at her. She wondered what it could have been that made him act so skittish now when he’d seen her at her worst on the caravan.

“Did you sleep soundly,” Margaret asked as Willow slowly made her way into the small room. She tried to dodge the many pieces of scattered furniture, but nonetheless suffered a hit to the knee that made her wince as pain shoot up to her hip.

“I did,” Willow gasped. “And thank you… for hosting me. After the examinations I’m sure I’ll be assigned a dormitory to stay in, so I shouldn’t be taking up the room for very long.”

“You’re welcome to it for as long as you need,” Bryan said, and when she looked back the mistrustful glance from earlier was gone. It was like it had never happened.

“Need, steed… bleed,” Benny tried, but wasn’t quite satisfied with his rhyme.

“Weed,” Margaret corrected, sitting a plate down before Willow as she gingerly lowered herself into the wooden chair. “We don’t need any talk of blood now, not while your father’s back. Leave that dark business out there, that’s what I say.”

Bryan raised his mug to his wife, and she leaned in for a kiss. Willow began to inhale her porkchop and eggs—much faster now that her hands were free of the usual aches and pains they suffered—and finished just before there came a knock at the door.

“That’ll be Leopold,” Willow said, and eased herself back from the table. Bryan crossed the small room and opened the door, greeting Leopold with a firm handshake and offering him a bit of breakfast, but he turned the offer down.

“We’ve got to get going, and soon,” he said, peering around the door to find Willow, who was just getting her sack cinched around her shoulders. “Examination starts an hour after sunrise and the sky’s already pale.”

“Is it that far away,” Margaret asked from the rubbish bin, where she was scraping Benny’s crust of bread.

“The Arcanum’s at the center of the city,” Bryan said. “Next to the hospital.”

“It’ll be quite a walk then,” Margaret said, and looked at Willow. “Would you like to take a lunch?”

“Actually, yes,” Willow said. “I wouldn’t mind more of that pork, if you could spare it.”

“Of course my dear, please, take another steak,” she said, and laid a slice down into a waxed cloth bundle. “Maybe a bit of bread as well.”

She sealed the bundle with the warmth of her hands and handed it across to Willow, who stood at the door with Leopold.

“Thank you very much Margaret, Bryan,” Willow said, then nodded at the small boy. “Benny.”

“Many, penny,” Benny said, and smiled.

“Whinny, you’d better be off,” Margaret said. “You’re a might ways off from the Arcanum. Hustle and you’ll get there in time.”

Willow and Leopold walked from the house on Grave street into the wan light of morning. For the first time Willow saw just how close it was to the massive wall which encircled the city. The sky was split neatly in half between morning light and pitch darkness from the seamless stone of the defensive wall. From where they were on the street, Willow thought she saw an irregularity up on the wall—perhaps one of the ancient cannons which were used in ages past to smite attacking warbeasts.

Leopold led them with a surety that Willow would have been unable to manage at that early hour of the morning in a city she’d never before traversed.

“I procured a map at the inn,” Leopold explained. “I spent all night studying it while I practiced.”

“I should have practiced,” Willow admitted. “I was just so damn tired by the time we got out of the hospital.”

“Well, you’ve been though a lot,” Leopold said. “And besides, it’s not like you can fail the exam. It’s more of a formality anyway.”

“Yeah, well,” Willow said, unsure as to if that would prove true for her. Even Leopold, who’d seen her in her hour of greatest need, wasn’t entirely aware of everything that might come up under examination. She suspected only the nurses at the hospital were.

True to Bryan’s word, it took almost an hour of trekking through the winding alleys of Durum before they came within eyesight of the Arcanum. Its polished stone caught the morning light and blazed like bars of liquid gold against the lightening sky. Only stone kept magically polished could gleam like that, she was sure, and it was a testament to their power that there were enough mages on hand to perform even this, the most minor of magical tasks.

The doors to the Arcanum were fully twenty feet tall and wide enough for three people to pass abreast. By the time they arrived Willow’s feet and legs were killing her, especially without her cane, whose loss she’d have to rectify sooner rather than later. There was a small trickle of young adults her and Leopold’s age making their way through the great stone lintel.

The doors were wooden and painted red, studded with what she could only assume was iron banding. As she passed, she saw that shining carvings adorned every inch of the banding, and she realized the doors were magically protected with swirls of copper inscriptions as well as being physically imposing. She’d heard that in the long-ago past the Arcana were the only things that kept those in the city alive from the lethal wilds. She supposed it made sense for the buildings to be set up as a last bastion against invasion.

Past the double doors was a soaring stone hall with vaulted ceilings fully thirty feet high, shining with some strange internal light. Whether through inscription or cast magic, the expense of illuminating this hall must have been enormous. The thin trickle of bewildered youngsters was making its way toward a severe woman sitting behind a heavy wooden desk; Willow and Leopold folded themselves into the line. It wasn’t long before it was Willow’s turn, Leopold positively vibrating with energy behind her.

The severe woman, who’s gray hair was tied up tight in a bun behind her head, looked Willow up and down when she approached.

“Name,” she said, barely a question.

“Willow Tremont,” she responded, and laboriously slipped the straps of her pack from her shoulders.

“Hometown.”

“Bridgewater.”

“Admission fee.”

Willow reached into her pack and brought out a tightly wrapped bundle of gold coins. They represented a full half of all the money she had for the next two years at the Arcanum, and the other half was already earmarked for next year’s tuition. If she wanted to eat, she’d have to find some way to make money in the city before next year’s was due. It was all her parents could afford to send her with, unless she’d wanted to wait another year.

She hadn’t.

The woman took the tightly wrapped bundle and quickly counted forty gold pieces before making a note in a ledger next to Willow’s name and consulting a ruled sheet beside the book.

“You’ll go to examination room fifteen,” the woman said without looking up. Willow got the distinct feeling she’d been dismissed, and stepped to the side for Leopold to advance.

“I guess I’ll see you on the other side,” she said, and tried to smile.

“See you there,” he said, just as the woman looked up again with a scowl.

🜛

By the time Willow hobbled to examination room fifteen, one of the many small doorways on that first floor of the Arcanum, she’d already finished eating the wrapped parcel of pork and bread. The examination room was closed with a heavy wooden door. With not a little nervous anxiety, Willow knocked at the oaken surface.

“Come in,” she barely heard a woman’s voice say from the other side, and Willow tripped the iron latch and walked through into what was clearly a repurposed classroom. Instead of desks it was set up with all sorts of measurement equipment, both arcane and mundane.

“Hello? I was told to come to examination room fifteen,” Willow asked into the room.

“This is fifteen. Come around the curtain,” the woman’s voice said from the other side of a freestanding white curtain. Willow couldn’t see any frame around it or rings in the ceiling. It must have been standing by magic alone.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Excellent.

When Willow rounded the corner, she saw a middle-aged woman in a white frock sitting in a chair beside a long tabletop—what would normally be the lecturer’s desk.

“I’m Mary. You can have a seat there,” she said, and pointed to the chair opposite her on the same side of the table.

“I’m Willow,” Willow said, and took her seat. Mary’s eyes glanced over her as she bent to sit, lingering on the folds in the fabric around her arms and legs. Willow felt a knot of anxiety tighten in her stomach, but she pushed through it.

“Last name?”

“Tremont.”

Mary took up a pen and, without dipping it in an inkwell, began to write on a fresh, lined piece of paper. In fact, there was no inkwell in sight. Was this magic too? How backwards had she been living out in Bridgewater?

“Alright Willow, I’m a nurse-in-training with the hospital, and I’ll be doing your physical examination. Afterwards I’ll try to figure out these instruments to get some of your essence readings. This is just for intake statistics, you understand.”

“Uh huh,” Willow said. “Any chance it would affect my admission?”

“Only if you were completely unable to do magic. But you are, right?”

Willow nodded.

“Yeah, the complete lack of magical ability is incredibly rare. Even the simplest farmhand can weave a knot-loosening spell in a few seconds. I can’t imagine how they get along though, those who can’t do it at all.”

“I suppose they just find mundane solutions to their problems,” Willow said, feeling a sheen of sweat stand out on her back.

Mary shrugged. “Alright. I hate to tell you to get up again so soon but…” she looked at Willow’s elbows again through the fabric of her blouse. “You’ll have to disrobe. Down to your smallclothes.”

And this was it: the moment she’d dreaded. She thought this might happen sooner or later, but hadn’t expected it to be part of the intake examination. More likely the result of nosy students and professors wondering why she moved like an elderly lady.

Willow began to undo the buttons on her stiff outer jacket.

She tried not to watch Mary’s face as each article of clothing came off until she was left there standing in just a thin shift, but as the other woman’s eyes grew as large as saucers it became more and more difficult to ignore what was happening.

How it made her feel.

Shame. Shame like she’d never felt at home, because everyone in Bridgewater knew about her. The doctor’s daughter. The waif. Everyone knew what had happened, how she’d been left looking so sickly. Expert tailoring helped, but invariably a shirt would cling where it wasn’t supposed to and for a moment she’d look more dead than alive. Everyone at home pretended not to notice. But not here.

Mary’s mouth opened and closed silently a couple of times, like a stranded fish, as Willow stood there in front of her. Willow tried not to blush with shame, but it was mostly a useless exercise.

“What…,” Mary finally got out, but seemed unable to grasp a second word.

“I was sick,” Willow said. “As an infant I got the Wasting. Now I’m like this.”

“You look,” Mary said, paused, and appeared to reword something in her head. “You look as though you’re starving to death. I’ve seen corpses with more flesh on their bones.”

Willow shrugged her shoulders and Mary winced. “I’ve always looked like this.”

“How are you even standing,” Mary whispered, then shook her head. “When was the last time you ate,” she asked in a stronger voice.

“Just before I came through the door.”

“And what… ah… was it?”

“Porkchop on bread,” Willow said and smiled at the memory. “It was supposed to be lunch, but I have a strong appetite.”

“You… do?”

“Always did. It’s just… how things are. Maybe the Wasting did something to my gut.”

“Something… but it wasn’t the Wasting. No one’s ever survived it.”

This was news to Willow. Other infants had died in Bridgewater of the Wasting before and after she’d survived, but she’d never heard this before.

“Are you sure? My mom’s a doctor and she was pretty certain—”

Mary nodded emphatically. “No one survives. It attacks the nerves at the base of the skull, cutting off all control over the body. The infected invariably suffocate as they lose control over their diaphragms. Their fate has been prolonged in some using magic, but the disease waits to rip apart all the healing work no matter how long the process is undertaken. Whatever it was you had, it wasn’t the Wasting.”

Puzzled, Willow stood there silently while Mary got up with a ruled tape and began taking measurements.

“I don’t think I can even do a skin-pinch test,” Mary said, and prodded Willow’s upper arm. Willow winced at the poke.

“Did that hurt?”

“A bit. It’s tender.”

“Are… all of your muscles tender?”

Willow nodded. “Everything except my hands. I just had them redone. They were torn apart on the caravan over.”

At that Mary’s attention switched to Willow’s hands, which looked strangely proportioned to the rest of her body. Almost oversized; she could even impressions of muscle under the skin, which hadn’t been present before the journey.

“Torn apart?”

Willow nodded. “There was an attack. Our caravan guard paid for the reconstruction at the hospital.”

Mary turned Willow’s hands over. “I cannot deny that your hands are different. Can you move your fingers for me?” Mary had taken Willow’s left hand firmly between her own, fingertips probing.

Willow wiggled her fingers and Mary’s eyebrows quirked up into an even more curious expression.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s just… I can barely feel your muscles. They hardly contract at all. Squeeze.”

Willow squeezed, expecting pain to bloom against the inside of her palm as it always did when she tried to grasp something too tightly, but it didn’t come. Only the smooth feel of pressure mounting against her skin.

Mary’s expression faltered.

“Ow, ow,” she said, and Willow quickly released her.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just not used to being able to grab anything. Usually the pain—”

“No, I understand,” Mary said as she shook her hands out. She never broke eye contact with Willow’s hands. “You’re stronger than you look.”

Willow sighed. “I suppose they’ll go back to the way they were after a while.”

Mary picked up the tape and took her height from the crown of her head to her bony heels.

“Five foot ten. And how much do you weigh?”

She was expecting this, and Willow almost didn’t cringe when she said the answer.

“Eighty pounds.”

Mary nodded and wrote down the figure. Willow appreciated how quick she was to feign indifference at her temporary patient’s disability.

“Alright, that’s all the physical measurements done. They’ve taught me how to use this set of essence meters, but don’t be surprised if it takes me a bit to get them up and running.”

Willow knew what it was like to be out of her depth. “No, absolutely. No problem.”

“You can get dressed again, I’ll be on the other side of the curtain.”

Willow dressed slowly, gingerly sliding each layer of fabric into place over the sharp angles of her body. She heard Mary muttering to herself and clanking on the other side of the curtain, and Willow’s curiosity finally overcame her embarrassment and drove her to do up the last few buttons and step out into the larger room.

Mary was sitting at a small desk and tapping on something that looked a lot like a crystal point of black obsidian. Willow could see illuminated symbols on the side that faced Mary, but she couldn’t read them.

“Blasted thing,” Mary said, and noticed Willow standing beside the curtain. “You might as well sit down here, I think I’ve almost got it working.”

Willow saw her reflection in the crystal’s depths as she sat down across from Mary. For a moment in the dark mirror-world she saw anew all of the things Mary must have seen, things that she long ago learned to ignore. The way her neck was too thin. The way it seemed to swim in her stiff overcoat. She looked away from the reflection, down at her hands, and prodded the muscles on their backs. They didn’t hurt yet, but she could already feel a tingling in the fibers. Soon enough, she was sure, they would flare with pain at the slightest touch.

“Alright, I think I’ve got it. You haven’t done any magic this morning, have you?”

“No. The instructions said not to,” Willow said. Mary nodded.

“That’s right. This thing is going to measure your essence capacity and regeneration rate. I’m told all you have to do is grab the crystal at the top and we can get started.”

Willow nodded and laid her palm against a facet of the device, wrapping her fingers around the rest of the gem.

“You’re supposed to push essence into the device now. It’ll store it and calculate the value.”

“How much should I push?”

“It says ‘a trivial amount.’ I’ll let you know when you’ve reached it.”

“Okay,” Willow said, and focused her will. She could feel the essence flowing in her body and visualized it as lines that ran up along her veins and circulated in her organs. At this time of the morning she still had a good amount of the flowing energy left. That would change as the day wore on and she got more and more tired, as experience told her.

She grabbed hold of the essence with her mind and attempted to direct its flow—as usual, it resisted her. Once she had complained to her father that channeling essence was like spitting molasses though a reed. Her father had told her that nothing worth having in life came easy.

A slow trickle of essence began to flow through her palm and into the crystal. Strangely, she could feel the crystal absorbing the essence, whereas with any other object it would just splash ineffectually against the surface.

Willow felt beads of sweat stand out against her forehead and her stomach gave a traitorous rumble. Mary looked up from the device.

“Are you… pushing yet?”

“Yes,” Willow grunted, and redoubled her effort. Her essence responded fractionally.

“Oh, we’ve got it,” Mary said. “You can stop now.”

Willow let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and leaned back into her chair. She tried to steady her breath to keep from gasping, and was only partially successful. She could feel Mary’s eyes on her as she regained her strength.

“What now,” Willow asked, afraid that the device would come back immediately with some kind of disqualifying mark. Although what that would mean, given that she’d already paid tuition, was beyond her. Surely she’d put out enough essence to qualify for classes?

“Now we just have to wait,” Mary said.

“Wait?”

Mary nodded. “It needs us to wait a certain amount of time, then it’ll return the essence to you. Apparently it’s supposed to feel pretty weird to have your own essence injected into your body. The directions said I should warn you.”

“Warn me, got it,” Willow said, her breathing finally under control again.

“You… can do magic, can’t you,” Mary asked, and Willow almost smiled before she saw that the other woman was serious.

“Of course I can do magic. Do you think I’d come all this way if I couldn’t?”

Mary shook her head, as if lost for words. “No, I suppose not. Ah, it’s all done waiting now. If you’d put your hand back on top?”

Willow assumed the same grip she’d had before, relishing the smooth feel of the device against her palm without the bruised tenderness of her wasted muscles, and nodded.

“Alright, here it goes.”

Mary had been right, it did feel weird. Like someone was blowing hard against her palm. She could visualize the essence building up against her hand, the pressure mounting, but before more than an iota had trickled back in the pressure released completely.

“Oh shit,” Mary said, and looked down at the written instructions she’d been following. “I don’t know what that means.”

“What? What is it?”

“It seems like the device malfunctioned. I’m going to have to call metrology to fix it.”