Chapter 24: A Remedy For Pain

Miko:

My body ached. Every part of my skin, every bone, every muscle, and tendon spiked in flashes of pain. I knew it wasn’t possible, but as I sat there in my shell of a body, I could almost feel the blood moving throughout. My sense of touch was not weakened; if anything, it was strengthened by the lack of movement. With nothing to distract my mind, every part of the ground touching me offered a different temperature and texture that I could individually track. Nomen, or Khronos, left me with much to think about it. Although, I had made my decision already. Even if no one could help me get there, I’ll climb that tree and heal Maleki no matter what it takes. I’ll take all the consequences of whatever happens, but no tale or story will stop me from doing the right thing.

I just have to figure out how to move, damn it. I have to. Khronos left me against the tree, with my only view being Maleki. Was that on purpose? My brother lay so still, his breaths continuously so shallow that I had to convince myself he was indeed alive. What do I have to do? I know what I will do next; I’ll climb that forsaken tree no matter what it takes. For now, I must find a way to regain some movement in my body.

The Aerth and Agni trial wore down whatever was left of me mentally and physically, but looking back on it, I can’t imagine what it did to Maleki. He basically had to go through three of the trials alone, without my involvement. I’m lucky to be awake right now. Maleki and I had differing challenges throughout the trial, but he was always better at the more physically demanding things, and I was better at analyzing info and figuring things out. Three months I slumbered when I could have sped up the journey. Instead, I was deadweight. Maleki might be okay right now if he didn’t use everything to get me here. I have to stop thinking like that; it won’t help me here.

However, something had bothered me since before we took that first step up the mountain. Why would the sick be tasked to travel here? This journey is difficult enough for a person in peak physical health. Intelligence can save you some time which does limit the effort needed compared to taking the straight and narrow path. The riddle didn’t call for a healthy or sick person directly, yet a cure and pain were mentioned. What does The Garden get out of this? Why does it need a person? I’m not sure what happened in the last trial, but the first four each represented the elements, and the next was the unnatural element of life, so it is safe to presume the last was end. The Garden is looking for someone who is strong of mind and will but not necessarily physically strong. Although, even a sick person who is extremely intelligent still has to be physically capable, so maybe two people are needed. Perhaps the bond or connection of two people would be required to complete whatever is being called for. That fills the gaps between what Maleki is and what I am in this scenario. If Maleki was strong enough in body and will, then I must be — wait, what if my mind was causing all of this in the first place? When my mind started to falter, and we entered into the outer rims of The Garden’s reach, I was weakened even further, and every further progression of the illness forced me to solidify my own fate before it arrived. If it is in my mind, it can be undone; I’ll just have to figure it out. It's not like I have anything better to do anyway….

With that understanding, I spent the entire remaining sunlight focusing on my fingertips. Hours of intent purely on isolated feeling in one of my fingers. The top of my hands lay flat against the ground as I sit slumped against the tree. The green grass and clovers were soft to the touch and gave me a feeling to latch onto. Sleep found me unknowingly at some point and gave me a chance to wake up with a newfound goal and renewed inner strength. My spine ached from not laying flat, but I had to ignore every other sensation or pain in my body in order to accomplish my current goal — reclaiming movement — limb by limb.

I saw the sun rise nineteen times, and on the twentieth day, I awoke to a twitch in my index finger — twenty days of concentration, twenty moons of sleep. I was very close to giving up before that happened. Thankfully, I do not grow hungry or tired; even sleep is unnecessary, but I gain comfort from the cycle when my body permits it. There are no distractions beyond the beauty of this place. From this angle, with the shade of the tree, I cannot even glimpse at the moons.

A twitch in my finger means it is possible to regain movement. I can work with that. No matter how long it takes to recover it all, I’ll keep moving forward. I could only move my finger from the joint in my hand and above. I kept focusing on the other fingers now, trying to repeat what had worked before. Another two suns and I could move my other index finger. I kept my focus daily for as long as possible on my fingers until each of them could be moved. I had now been at this a whole month and could show for it movement above both my wrists. I had to keep going — keep pushing for more. Limited movement in my forearms was necessary to move my wrists, and I quickly regained access to my entire left arm and somewhat of my right.

I wasn’t plateauing, but a month of focus had drained me mentally, so I needed a day to think. I didn’t need motivation; I had that in front of me. Maleki’s defenseless, unmoving body lay in front of me, unchanging with the passing sun. Today would be spent in relaxation to allow me to recharge and continue the daunting work I had ahead of me. How could I relax? All my belongings were in my bag, a few feet away from me, near where Maleki had fallen through The Garden’s gates. There was nothing to pass the time with, no indulgences to bury my head into, no books or scrolls.

There were stories in my head that had been told to me, but they were embellished, and that would only worsen if I tried to remember them. Listening was never as vital a tool for learning, but reading was more permanent in my experience. The words leap out of the pages and stay in my mind, and I can pull them out at any moment. Images and voices are the hardest to remember. What did Grandpa sound like, and was Mother’s voice truly that sweet? Their voices danced in my head, unable to find form, only wisps of what I might have thought them to be and likely embellished like the stories. I cannot even remember such simple things, yet a thousand words from books on those old dusty shelves sat in a single file line, cataloged to be pulled at a moment’s notice. That was the only relaxation I was granted. For hours, I pulled those books from memory and repeated lines in my head, trying to find a deeper meaning to their text. A month of loneliness had already felt miserable, but Maleki had suffered threefold my depression, so it would be disrespectful of his efforts for me to complain.

Fixating my focus on the rest of my right arm, a week passed, and I could move both arms again, but my legs and spine were restricting the most significant movements. If I wanted to climb that tree, I would need a lot more than arms. With that in mind, I looked down at my next goal. My legs were flat against the ground, so I grabbed above my knees and pulled my legs into an arch. This forced the soles of my feet to be pressed against the ground and limited the surface area I had to focus on. I repeated the same process as last time and focused on my toes individually. This worked for the big toes, but after two weeks of focusing, that’s all I had managed to regain. The toes are more supportive compared to the individual movements of every finger. I moved on from the toes and dedicated all my attention to the bone of my ankle that jutted out the outer part of my leg. I pried my legs into a crisscross position using my arms, which took a while without the assistance of my spine, and the end result looked more unconventional than normal. Three weeks later and I had everything below my ankles back.

I had time to think about what Khronos said earlier, and if the timeline is correct, my eleventh birthday passed during the last trial. The sun’s position in the sky confirms that it has been a year since our journey started, but it only filled me with sadness as I considered how much I had missed. Three months and all I had to show for it was my arms and ankles. I haveto speed this up somehow.

My pelvis, spine, and knees were inoperable even with this much time passing of pure dedication to repairing my body. This was unfortunate because I had not degraded so quickly, but it was so difficult to get back to where I once was. The joints in my shoulders were stiff, causing the movement to be sluggish and reduced in the range of motion. A tight grip was difficult to form or maintain, though it had gotten steadily better as the use of my wrist and fingers continued. I could feel myself breathing, and it was difficult to control, but that didn’t make restoring the use of my spine any easier. The order of things was odd, but my theory was that my spine was the primary issue, seeing as my neck, back, and hips down to my knees were uncontrollable. A few dozen nights per leg were what it took for me to fully get them back in working order; the process was slow, like descending into the water one millimeter at a time per day. I started with an itch in my legs; it was maddening, but it helped me isolate the skin and dig deeper into the bone and tendons. That took a single month altogether, but every time I felt defeat, a single twitch would stride through my calf up into the kneecap. Then I focused on my hips, and as usual, nothing is easy, so I had to use what I learned on regaining the first leg to speed up progress with the other instead of outright gaining access to both. There were days when I rested for a few hours, sick of the strain, of the monotony of the process. That sick reminder, the reason my heart pained itself, lay not ten feet away from me. Six months of this had dulled my senses to my surroundings. The Leviathan tree mocked me with its long branches, casting shade across the valley as the sun set to the west. This tree I was lying against had welcomed me as time passed, roots slowly growing around me as the long grass blades surrounded me in my own green prison. I had been here twice as long as Maleki had been alone, and I would be lying if I said the solitude had not affected me in specific ways. There were times when I mumbled aloud or drifted off into secluded thoughts, times when I had wished to be dead instead. The only thing keeping me lucid was my failure, the one that caused my brother’s slumber. I had to repent for that in some way. That conclusion had arrived to me at some desolate point in this miserable crawl; this punishment was suitable.

Nine months of hell. I was trapped here, unable to move from this spot, with only the sun and moon’s cycle to count. This Garden was beautiful, but after looking at the same damn thing for so long, I grew tired of it. My progress had slowed to a worse than a crawl in the seventh month, and I found myself sleeping for far too long — it was only during the visions of my sleep that I felt recovery of the mind and soul. Time withered my creativity, and even the books became difficult to call upon. The parts of me I missed existed in the library of mind that could be unwillingly unfolded in my sleep, granting me comfort when I could not find it in the waking hours. However, today, after a long and arduous process of intense concentration, I woke up with movement in my spine. I slowly adjusted the arch in my back, and the vertebrae cracked individually, loosening as a caterpillar removes itself from its cocoon. The ache intensified as I pushed the limits of my position, but I enjoyed it for once, as it was proof of how far I had come. For the first time since I was four, I had made some progress with this illness that no one else was able to guide me through or force with medicine or majik.

I brought my knees in and guided all my weight over them in a squatting position. With a few attempts, I had my back straightened against the tree and elevated from where I previously lay. I pushed against the tree, sliding up its soft bark, and the cool morning dew soaked my shirt through the back, which only added to the sensation I was feeling. My lungs rose in my chest, and I felt a sharp pain that sent me forward as all my weight fell flat against the ground. The grass was thick and soft, which protected my fall a little. My spine was still not recovered and needed some time to adjust from the position it had been in for so long.

My brother was twelve steps away, so I crawled over at the speed my back would allow until I reached him. He must have fallen into The Garden carrying me in his arms like a bundle of firewood. When I woke so long ago, I was a few feet away from him before Khronos moved me. I likely rolled out of his arms with the fall from the wall, but he fell forward onto his stomach. With all the strength in my body, I pulled one of his arms to me and flipped him over onto his back. It was my brother, but his hair was messy and filled with dirt and ash. He was covered in dry mud with a reddish-brown hue. After further inspection, it was certainly not mud. His hands and forearms were covered in the dark material. It looks like he had sustained some sort of injury from fighting or pulling something a long distance based on the damage to his palms and scratches on his wrists. He had bled during the last trial while I slept. How useless am I? I looked at my brother in this poor condition, and it only cemented my goal further. Sleep well, Maleki. You have earned your rest. Now it is time I earned my keep.

Pushing through the pain, I balanced my weight over my heels once more and drove my spine straight. I stood tall without the help of the tree and took three sharp breaths as I looked down at my progress. I was standing — I did it! Nine months of work, and I was standing. Then my whole world went dark, dizziness filled my eyes, and I fell backward flat on my back. I woke up with the sun rising from the sky as Maleki lay in a similar position beside me. I had pressed too hard for too long. I tried to sit up by pushing my hands against the ground, but my left arm was numb, and my weight slipped under the lack of distribution.

My left arm was not working. All this progress and I was back to square one again.

No, I could still move and feel my legs, spine, and one of my arms. This wasn’t square one. This is where I started, but now I know how to prevent it from worsening. Losing an arm wasn’t the end of the world. People have done more with less. Even if the cycle goes back, I can make this work. I just have to get Maleki better again.

Allowing my feet and spine to cover for my arms, I rose to my feet more confidently and much easier this time. After so long, I now had the freedom I hadn’t possessed in many years. I waited a few moments to see if I would pass out, but luckily nothing happened. The Garden around me felt fresher, and I was no longer bound to the picture frame that was locked in my eyes before. The trees were tall and colorful like in the vision Khronos showed me, but their colors and strong branches had been lessened.

I took one last look at my brother, “I’ll be back, Maleki. I promise. Just hold on a little longer.”

I turned my back and pushed forward to the center of The Garden. Everything down to the separation of each tree seemed to be methodically positioned. This whole place was flat and calculated. The breeze flows perfectly through the winding meadow. The trees were tall, but the symmetry of their branches was not like their positioning. Every tree twisted and turned in different ways, with branches that curved and curled. As I walked through The Garden to Arbor Majikae, I finally felt the magnitude of the whole place. This field of green was protected by a kingdom of mighty trees. Although, the only tree I cared for stood in the very middle. Nothing lied in my way or prevented me from staying on the path. I pushed forward and walked for two hours, looking up at the large tree whose crown spread across to the distant walls. The size of the tree’s limbs could hold small houses, but the more impressive feature was the trunk. It must have been around five hundred feet in diameter. I have no idea how to climb this damn thing. I’ve never even been the physically inclined one, and if Maleki were here, he would do this without any preparation or hesitation.

He’s not here, though, and It’s my job to figure this out. I owe it to him. The walk here was enjoyable. Every step felt deserving despite my ligaments screaming at me. My body hadn’t formed many muscles throughout the years, so I would need to start conditioning myself for extraneous movements. I had strayed away from doing anything overly active for a long time, so if I tried to climb a regular tree, I’d probably even fail at that. All the leverage you have of using your legs and arms to stretch to a branch and climb the trunk is gone. This will be more akin to climbing a mountain than a tree. However, there is an advantage; every aspect of the tree will be maximized, so I can utilize the breaks in the bark and malformation of the trunk to climb more easily. I say easier, but this tree looks to be larger than a full kilometer. This surely has to be the tallest thing in the world.

No better place to start than the beginning, I guess.