Ley Fever

Tak filled the bucket with cold well water. Lu’s recovery process was just getting started. Things were going to get much worse before they got better. He rushed back to the cottage, hoping Lu had the sense to stay in bed.

“Tak!” shouted Lu.

“Right here,” said Tak, as he rushed in, trying to catch his breath and slopping some water over the rim of the bucket, after setting it down too quickly. “Lie down. Please!”

“I’m going to be fine,” said Lu, trying to sit up. She clapped her hand to her forehead and dropped back onto the bed.

“Ley fever is serious,” said Tak. “Stay put. You will make things worse if you insist on pretending nothing is wrong. As it is, you’re going to have a spectacular case, if I’m any judge.”

“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” moaned Lu.

Tak snorted in disbelief. “Against all advice you anchored your boat over a convergence of seven powerful ley lines, stayed there for ten days, diving – using magic to go deeper than you should have – repeatedly. Honestly, I don’t know how you sailed the boat back.”

“I practically grew up on a boat,” said Lu. “I still can’t believe I didn’t find it.”

“And all for what?” continued Tak, ignoring Lu’s dismay. “To prove you were right.”

“It’s important!” insisted Lu.

“Only because proving yourself right means proving Endora wrong,” said Tak. “Finding the Sunken City serves no higher purpose.”

“That’s not true,” argued Lu. “We don’t know what secrets might be hidden down there.”

“Let’s see how warm you are,” said Tak, as he pressed his wrist against Lu’s forehead. “You’re burning up!”

“I feel fine,” retorted Lu.

Tak dunked a cloth in the bucket of cold water and wrung it out before pressing it into Lu’s hand and placing both cloth and hand over Lu’s eyebrows.

“This is unnecessary,” said Lu, putting her hand down.

Tak moved her hand back to her forehead. “Hold the cloth there. We need to cool you off.”

“I’m already cold,” said Lu, shivering suddenly.

“That’s the fever setting in,” said Tak. “Keep that cloth on your head while I move your valuables to another room. And I’ll be back with some dragon bone tea.”

Lu thought of a witty retort but was surprised to discover that she had neither the energy nor the desire to say it.

When Tak returned with her tea, Lu was asleep, though not restfully. The damp cloth had slid to one side and fallen over her ear. He put the tea on the bedside table and picked up the cloth. It was almost as hot as Lu. He freshened the cloth in the bucket of cold water and wiped the sweat from Lu’s brow. It was going to be a long night.

*****

Tak awoke with a start as cold water suddenly soaked him. “What –”

“Stay away from me!” shouted Lu, while gesticulating wildly. She was sitting up in bed, sweat soaking her nightgown and sticking her hair to her face.

Tak dodged the water ball Lu threw at his head. “Lu! It’s me, Tak!”

“You’re not going to tickle me to death!” screamed Lu.

“Tickle you?” asked Tak, puzzled. Another water ball flew at him and this time he was not so fast. His already wet clothes became wetter still. “Lu!”

Lu clapped her hands over her ears. “You can’t deafen me with your shrill whistle!”

Tak felt the earth tremble as the floorboards ruptured and dirt sprayed into the room. Small pebbles rained down on his head as he tried to reach the teacup on the bedside table.

“That’s close enough!” shouted Lu.

Tak hadn’t quite made it to the night table when he was forced to dive out of the way. Spears of ice crashed into the wall behind him. He winced as he heard Lu’s mirror crash to the floor and break. He hadn’t thought of the mirror. Hopefully it wasn’t special.

“Aaaaah!” Lu screamed as she launched herself off the bed and landed on Tak.

“Lu!” Tak shouted, trying to get Lu’s attention while she wrapped her hands around his neck to strangle him. Thankfully her burst of energy was already running out. He pushed Lu off him and picked her up, placing her gently back in bed. He used a little magic to warm her tea, but he only managed to get one swallow into her before she fell asleep. He checked her temperature. She was still too warm. He wiped her brow and face. It was generally considered unethical to love one of your patients, but he couldn’t help it. She was beautiful, inside and out. He dried his clothes and settled back down in his chair.

*****

Tak woke up as he hit the floor, just barely able to sense the already diminishing wall of air that had knocked his chair over. What now?

“That’s far enough!” shouted Lu, shielding her eyes from something Tak could not see. “Come no closer!” She was standing up next to her bed, trembling, with cheeks flushed and damp.

“What is it, Lu?” asked Tak as he picked himself up off the floor – another hallucination, he was sure, but he was still curious to know what Lu was seeing.

“You cannot fool me, basilisk!” yelled Lu, as she started to fold air and water together. “It may look and sound like Tak, but I saw you kill him. He was my friend. You will pay for that! But first, I will destroy your doppelganger!”

Friend? What? “No! It’s really me, Lu!” shouted Tak. What was going on here?

Lu didn’t even look in Tak’s direction. She hurled something at him that he couldn’t quite see. Suddenly he was encased in a bubble of water. Lu had somehow hidden it in air, so that it could sneak up on him. Then she had promptly forgotten him, believing him dealt with, to pummel her chest of drawers with surprisingly destructive water bombs.

Tak had no particular affinity for any of the magical elements. He was equally mediocre with earth, water, air, and fire. Hence his inability to follow Lu’s more intricate and complex spells and his own decision not to become a mage. Instead, he was a physician for mages, specializing in ailments caused by the neglect, misuse, abuse, and overuse of magic. His skills were adequate to enable breathing in the bubble, while he considered how to escape. He would need to do something soon. Once Lu was finished reducing her bureau into a pile of toothpicks, her attention would return to him.

Tak pushed the wall of the bubble with his fingers. It was firm yet flexible. Perhaps he was overthinking this. He reached for the small knife he kept sheathed on his belt, when the bubble suddenly burst on its own. A man made of mud grabbed him from behind in a bear hug and squeezed his chest, making breathing difficult.

“I destroyed your master,” said Lu. “You should have collapsed by now!”

Tak tried to insert a forearm into the vice-like embrace of the mud golem. Maybe he could force the muddy arms away enough to breathe a little easier. “Doesn’t … that … tell … you … something?”

“Yes!” crowed Lu. “The basilisk was more powerful than I thought.”

Tak saw the disk of shale that Lu had conjured and then hurled at his head just in time to duck. In doing so, he pulled the mudman forward and into the path of the shale plate. The mudman’s head was separated from the rest of his body, and he made wet, splatty sounds as he fell to the floor in several pieces.

“Noooooooooo!” shrieked Lu.

Tak took in great gulps of air as he waited to see what Lu would do next, but the loss of the mud golem seemed to have drained her energy. One knee dipped and Lu staggered sideways. Tak scrambled to catch her before she fell. He reached for the tea as he pulled the covers over her, and discovered the teacup had been knocked over.

When Tak returned with a cup of fresh tea, Lu was asleep again. He looked around her bedroom and sighed. It was a frightful mess. He could do some cleaning now, but his time would be better spent sleeping – rest while the patient rested – not that Lu looked especially restful. He righted his chair and sat down. He mopped Lu’s forehead with the cool cloth – still too warm. Lu twitched and jerked in her sleep, while muttering incoherently. Tak rested his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

*****

The next time Tak woke, it was to the sound of Lu retching. She was leaning over the side of her bed and emptying the meagre contents of her stomach onto the floor. He grabbed the cloth from the bucket and wrang it out.

“By the crucible of Trismagistus, what is that putrid miasma?” asked Lu, weakly. “And where is it coming from?”

Tak was not surprised by yet another hallucination. Ley fever was known to be brutally psychoactive. “Deep, slow breaths, Lu.”

“A harpy!” shouted Lu, sort of. Her voice was frail. “I should have known.”

As Tak lifted Lu’s chin up to wipe her face, she screamed, and the room filled with fog. Ice pellets the size of blueberries rained down on him and he lifted one arm to protect his head.

“Foul creature!” shouted Lu, her voice stronger now. She pulled away from Tak.

As Tak lost physical contact with Lu, a club of water, struggling to maintain its physical shape, sloshed through the air and collided with his head. While lacking the force of the ice pellets, it was still sufficient to knock him over. Tak, in turn, knocked over the bucket of water. He sat up cautiously, no longer certain of his orientation within the room. No matter which direction he looked, all was white mist. He sat very still and listened diligently, while healing the small, stinging lacerations on his arm, where the ice pellets had cut him.

“Birdbrain!” yelled Lu, as several spears of ice appeared in the air around Tak.

True enough, thought Tak, as he raised both arms to protect his face. He stifled a shout as one of the ice spears scored a ragged but shallow line along his upper arm. He should have been more careful about using magic around someone as skilled as Lu at its detection. On the plus side, Lu’s control over her magic was becoming inconsistent – a sign that the worst, at least for Tak, might be over.

“Where are you?” Lu’s voice pierced the mist. “Show yourself, coward! What do you want with me?”

Tak sat very still, letting his arm bleed. He would not make the same mistake twice. Unless Lu had moved from the bed, which he thought unlikely, he was facing the bedroom door. The humidity, he noted, was rising. Perhaps if it rained, the fog would clear.

Chain lightning suddenly arced through the room, sending energy sizzling through the air in several directions at once. As Tak was lifted off the floor with a jolt, he had just enough time to consider the puddle of water he’d been sitting in, before losing consciousness.

Tak woke to the sound of dripping all around him. He was shivering. Maybe that was because he was lying in water? Tak tried to sit up, but his limbs didn’t seem to be listening to his brain. There was a dim light in the room. He could see enough to know it wasn’t a room in his house. Where was he?

Tak closed his eyes to focus his mind and his other senses. He could hear another creature breathing in the room. Friend or foe? Difficult to know – although he seemed to be in no immediate danger. He could smell dampness, burnt flesh, blood, urine, and the unmistakable acrid odour of vomit. As his mind began to register a stabbing pain in his head and right hip, he realized that the burnt flesh and blood were likely his – perhaps the urine and vomit, too. So … was he in danger? Beneath the pain, he registered another sensation – his arms and legs were tingling. Next, he noticed a flutter in his heartbeat. It all added up to a lightning strike. Magical or real? Well, he was indoors, and the aftershocks of reckless and haphazard magic were still lingering in the room. So … magical. Presumably he was here, wherever here was, to treat a sick mage.

Tak put himself through a quick meditation, meant to clarify his thoughts and restore his short-term memories. These things would happen in due course, but he didn’t feel like waiting. He needed to tend to his own wounds and identify his troublesome patient. As the negative energies clinging to his mind and body sloughed away, his headache eased and he remembered his patient, Ulalume – or Lu, as she preferred to be called.

Tak was now able to move all his extremities but his right leg. He sat up painfully and surveyed the damage, surface burns on his thigh and buttocks, a dislocated hip, a long scratch travelling from his elbow to his shoulder on his right arm, and a lingering arrythmia. Well, he’d suffered worse in the line of duty. With an experimental sniff, he discovered the urine was actually his. At least Lu would never know.

*****

Warmed up, changed, and healed enough to now care for his patient, Tak was pleased to discover Lu’s fever had started to abate. She was still hot – in every sense of the word – but her fever was improving. Tak fetched fresh water, washed her face, and straightened out her bed sheets as much as he could.

Sunlight now streamed through the windows, revealing the extent of the destruction in Lu’s bedroom. Tak winced as he took in the disarray and debris around him. In all likelihood, Lu wouldn’t remember doing any of it.

“Tak?” asked Lu, weakly.

“Right here,” said Tak, as he kneeled by her bed and held her hand.

“I’m parched,” said Lu.

Tak plumped her pillows and helped her sit up, before leaving to fetch a fresh cup of dragon bone tea. When he returned, Lu was surveying her bedroom, her mouth hanging open.

“What the hell happened here?”