The Healer’s Touch — “The Turn of the Tides”
Chapter VIII/XIV
Silence reigned in the wake of a new day. She felt as if she had been forced to relive the horror of losing her children all over. And to what end? She had buried that pain long ago. What good did it to bring it up again?
There were flames in her soul, rising. When she looked at him she knew he could see this light of fury in her eyes. She was angry. It felt good, right.
“You shouldn’t have forced me to recount this time to you. I was a different person then. I lived a different life. All of this is now lost.” She staggered out of the cavern and broke through the virgin snow to find a day filled with light.
The Healer pushed back the blanket covering his legs and sat up. She turned and saw that he seemed rested at least, if still weak and pale.
He walked up to her and his gaze went over the high snow coat on the mountainside. Then he looked her in the eyes. As he spoke, he did so with great care. “No, it is not.”
The flames shot high inside her as if oil had been poured over them. “Pardon me?” Do you want to argue that the loss of my family did not change everything? How dare you …
“I can still see this anger in your soul,” he said.
Well, of course! “The memories triggered it. I shouldn’t have shared this part of my past with you. As I said, it is over.” She rushed back inside and gathered their diminishing supplies.
“Your anger says otherwise. It is a sign that you haven’t put it behind yourself.”
She strapped on her backpack. “How could I? All my children died! I was completely shattered and I would have died had I not replaced the grief with anger.” She stared up the snow-covered path. “It helped me survive!” she snapped at him before starting to tear a way through the snow. She half expected the ice to melt in face of her fury.
“Physically, yes,” said the Healer, following her, “but the wounds in your soul … they never healed. You pushed them back in the deepest corners of your heart, where you wouldn’t have to look at them. As a result, the pain, grief and anger faded over time and indifference settled in. But it was only a matter of time until those wounds would push to the surface again. They always do.”
She stopped short and stared at him in disbelief. “Have you ever lost a child?”
Looking up at her, he shook his head.
“Then how dare you assume that a mother can ever be healed of a wound like that?”
His voice was so soft when he answered that her anger lost all grip, as if she had tried to break through a door that turned out to be ajar. “Your children aren’t lost forever.”
She hesitated, her anger up in the air, unable to use him as a target for it. He looked strong and healthy as he stood there in the glistening morning light that broke through the niche in the mountain range they were trying to reach. “You are one of those who believe that there is life after this sphere of mortality,” she said and walked on.
“There is a reason,” he said, “why we fight against death and why we resist the idea of loss. We are all children of a divine father. We have come from him in the beginning and will return to him when we pass the veil of death. We are eternal. That’s why we hate endings.”
“I have heard plenty of this,” she said, finding an old enemy to cast her hatred at. “Priests who speak of a God who they say is all merciful and loving. A god whom I nevertheless do not know and who has never revealed himself to me. If you say there is such a being, if you say there is eternity that preserves our loved ones — then my children wouldn’t have died.”
She halted again and put her fingers to her head. He had taken away her pain, but had unearthed a layer of anger underneath. As she continued, her voice rose like a wave. “Where was this god when my village was raided? Where was this god when my newborn froze to death? Where was this god when we were taken prisoners to be sold on slave markets? Where was this god when I was raped? Where was this god?”
The mountains didn’t answer as the echo of her screams faded. She had spat the last words at the Healer like an insult to his belief.
She kicked at the snow, but her foot was met with resistance. A harsh thump broke through the silence directly followed by her outcry of pain. Her face wrinkled as she bent her knee to clutch her toes.
Then she saw his grin. “That hurt!” she protested.
The Healer continued to smile. “At least that means that your toes haven’t frozen off yet.”
She rolled her eyes and bent down to examine what her foot had hit under the snow and found a wooden plank. She dug further and revealed the corner of a horse carriage. Her face lit up as she drew her sword and tore off more snow.
“It’s one of the supply wagons of the army!” she cried out.
“Not much use without the horses,” he answered. “Unless we want to use it as a sled.”
She shook her head. “Look,” she tore a bag free from the wagon bed. With two quick bites, she pulled off her gloves and opened the frozen knot with some difficulty. “It’s wheat.”
The Healer had to admit, even simple porridge sounded pretty good at this stage. Most of the supplies had been hauled off when the wagon had been abandoned, but a good ration remained and delivered them dried meat and fruits in addition.
She stuffed her backpack as full as possible and bound two more bags to the outside with cords. “Seems like we finally have something to battle the winter.”
The Healer smiled. Here was this God, he thought, but didn’t say. The sudden look of hope and joy on her face made her appear so much younger.
She caught his smile again. What she said next made him wonder if she had heard his thoughts. “No. Don’t think I see this as a sign that this God is there for us. If so, he comes years too late.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t. That’s not how God works. You need to trust him first before he can come to your aid.”
Her eyes narrowed as she shouldered her bag once more. He sensed the fiery response on her tongue, but she swallowed it down and turned to move on.
They made it over the next ridge and were all of a sudden bathed in sunlight. It warmed their bodies and took away the harshness of the mountains. The pass felt more conquerable now. And as if nature was suddenly willing to support his faith in hope, they reached the pass’ high point shortly after the day’s zenith.
“It’s all downhill from here,” he said as he looked over the rolling ocean of clouds below them, pierced only by more mountain summits in the west.
“We won’t reach the valley before nightfall,” she cautioned. “We still need to find shelter.”
He agreed, but didn’t worry. Something told him good things lay ahead. And, as if to prove him right, a small hut broke through the snow cover along their way down. They had almost walked past it, since the snow covered it’s northside from ground to crown.
When she first saw it, she held her breath in wonderment. Then he felt her resistance return. The anger trying to reassure itself by resenting this blessing.
“Luck,” he said to ease her.
She broke open the door and they found a small bed towards one wall, a stone oven against the other. One window was embedded in the southern wall right next to the door.
She helped him to the bed where he collapsed. He hadn’t felt his exhaustion outside. But now that he allowed himself to rest, pain and fatigue returned with the speed of an avalanche.
“I will see if there is firewood,” she said as she tucked him under the blanket.
He nodded, but already drifted off to sleep.
When he awoke, heat welcomed him. He opened his eyes and found the room bathed in the light of sun and fire.
With his right arm, he managed to push himself into an upright position. He found her sitting in front of the fireplace and stir something in a pot over the flames.
“What is this wonderful smell?” he asked.
She startled and turned around. Her smile was the greatest gift he could have ever asked for in all his years as a healer. “I just threw everything together we had. Some wheat, dried vegetables and meat. I wasn’t able to find spices though, so do not expect a miracle.”
“We already had lots of miracles so far,” he answered.
Her smile vanished instantly.
“No,” he said, “don’t stop smiling. It suits you!” But the damage was done. He had returned her thoughts to the time when she had hit the carriage under the snow. The time before their conversation over her fury had broken off.
In silence, she poured out the stew into a bowl and a cup. “You slept for a long time,” she said while she brought him the cup and a spoon. “It is towards evening of the following day.”
He smiled and dug into his portion of the food with a forgotten appetite. She returned to the fireplace and sat on the floor, eating, lost in thought.
He waited until they had finished their rations before mustering the courage to pick up the loose threads. “If you’d allow me,” he said, calling her out of her melancholy, “I have to ask you a hard question.”
Her grey eyes settled on him as if contemplating whether or not to grant him his wish. But then she gave him a single nod.
He took a deep breath. There was no way around this. “Do you think it possible that pain and loss and sorrow might teach us greater lessons than deliverance, happiness and ease?”
He saw her work through this hard idea, her jaws grinding her teeth. “How can the loss of all my children and the accompanying pain be of any value to me?” She looked up at him. Her anger had returned.
Good, he thought.
She shook her head. “This is perverse!” she said.
“Only you can find that out. All I want you to understand is that I know your children aren’t fully lost to you. They are gone now as pertaining to this mortal life, yes. And I do not want to diminish your pain or grief or anger. No. All I want you to do is to lean against what I have experienced, namely my belief that you will see your children again one day.”
He saw her anger subside slightly as she considered his words. “How do you know?”
The Healer arose and walked over to her. He knelt down in front of this broken woman and once more felt the limitation of his gift. He took her hands into his. An anger so profound tore through him, that it threatened to rip him asunder. He had mended horrible wounds, but this torment was of a different source.
He forced the flow of hatred to slow as he worked through the pain so he could remain mentally present with the Killer in the room. “Here again, I cannot give you what you desire. This trust in a heavenly being, in the very Father of our spirits, is something no one can give or share. But you can discover it for yourself, because our Father is willing to reveal himself to all those who seek him.”
The fury was still alight in her core, but the pain fought with it again. “I cried out to him when I was fleeing my village, when I was running from the cold, the enemy. I pleaded with him when I tried to protect my children from evil men, winter and death.” Her eyes were merciless. “Why did he not answer?”
“I do not know,” he said and turned to the flames for a moment. “The Father allows his children, all of us, to act as we like. We are free to choose. And oftentimes the decisions of others inflict great pain on us.” He squeezed her hands and saw how the fire of hatred burned lower and lower in her soul, returning to sorrow. “Let me tell you, what I do know. God is able to heal also those wounds. Ultimately, he will restore every lost person, heal every broken bone and right all injustice with mercy and love.”
“I will repeat my question,” she said. “You may not be able to share the faith with me that you gained, but you must be able to show me how you obtained it.”
He nodded.
