Tolly meets the unicorns

Healing

Beginning

Previous

It took over 10 tries to get a reasonable image from Bing this time. I went with the anime version since that would at least make sense to have such a young-looking Tolly. And I couldn’t have it make the unicorns anything besides white. Possibly orange or rainbow colored manes but nothing else.

I hope there are some people out there enjoying my stories. I know I’m enjoying publishing these posts.

Glorina

I rested up and read and such as I had been ordered to, and wrote up my first report to my real boss. He would want to know everything. But I had found out a few jobs ago that he wouldn't necessarily know if I didn't tell him everything. Which was probably the only reason I was still alive. I had very carefully chosen what and what not to tell him. I let him think that I had started on my work immediately and not been ordered off.

I also didn't tell him about my fainting fit, which I still didn't understand. Even without eating anything, I should have been able to go on for another day or two without problems. But I had to admit to myself that getting some food into me had felt wonderful.

Interlude

Tolly sat in the car a long moment before getting out. He hadn't been planning on coming out today, as his leg had been doing well since last time he had been out here for a healing.

Until this morning, that is.

He didn't know if the unicorn, one who gave the name Hathan, would be available this morning, or all the way over on the other side of the RingGelf Forest. He hoped he was around. Some of the other unicorns lacked the patience to deal with all the problems of his leg, which would not heal right, no matter what they, or doctors, or anyone else, did to it. And it took far more magic than it should to do anything to it.

"Back so soon?" came Hathan's voice in his head. "What happened this time, Tolly?"

He was in luck. Hathan was nearby. He had never figured out the limits of the range of unicorns' mind voices. It seemed to vary not only from unicorn to unicorn, but also from time to time.

And some seemed to have trouble making words at all.

But with Hathan's voice so strong, he had to be nearby.

"I fell, and twisted it," Tolly said as he got out of the car. He knew other people who would talk to them without using spoken words, but that had never felt quite right to him.

"That's not quite what happened," Hathan said. He stepped out of the woods, a smallish (for a unicorn) brown unicorn, his mane and tail a darker brown, and cream-colored horn and hooves.

Tolly reached out and touched the tip of the horn, while the unicorn bowed his head to him. Tolly contented himself with just a nod. If his leg hadn't hurt so much, he'd have bowed back.

"Shall we tell the water-girl you are here?"

"Jelana? No. Don't bother her. I just spoke with her this morning. It's that time of year; we shouldn't bother them unnecessarily."

"Who is that small girl in your mind?"

"I don't know why I thought I could keep anything from you," Tolly grumbled. "She's here to catalogue my art. Just met her this morning."

"She troubles you."

"I don't know her well at all. But she fainted as soon as she touched my hand this morning."

"You think that she was being sustained by magic."

"Maybe. But if she was, it was without her knowledge. I'd swear to that part."

"Using magic on one unknowing, that is not good."

"You're telling me."

"Let me examine your leg, Tolly," the unicorn said. He touched his horn to Tolly's pant leg, where the old injury was. Tolly tried not to grimace with pain as the magic surged around his leg.

After a moment, Hathan stepped back. "Next time, I must remember to have a backup even for the examination part." His mind voice sounded breathless, which shouldn't have been possible.

"You say that every time," Tolly said.

"Well, next time I'll remember."

"What did you see?"

"You did twist it. The curséd metal cut through some of the scar tissue that we so carefully built up. It was wise of you to come here so soon."

"Didn't realize it was that bad," Tolly muttered. "Just thought I pulled things again."

"We don't want you to start to sicken again. That's so much harder to treat."

"Don't I know it!" Tolly said, with feeling.

"I will go prepare." Hathan vanished into the woods again.

"It'll be worse than usual," Tolly muttered to himself. "Not good."

He grabbed his cane from the car, and limped into the woods, on the path to the little clearing where the unicorns usually came to heal him.

They wouldn't heal just anyone, and Tolly wasn't entirely certain why they had made him one of the people they would always see, but he wasn't about to argue. In the past fifteen years or so, since the unicorns had returned to Tel and started treating him, he had gone from needing to use a crutch on his best days to needing a cane only on his worst. Sometimes he just carried one because he was used to it, and later Belinda or Jasin would round up all his canes that he had forgotten in various places, and deposit them in his office or apartment.

Five unicorns, all various shades of brown, stepped out and bowed to him. He nodded back, and touched the horn tips as they were offered to him. He didn't recognize anyone by sight except Hathan, though some of their mind voices seemed vaguely familiar. But over the years, he had noticed that the healers were usually brown. Not always, but usually. Just like the warriors tended to be reddish, and the king and queen, of course, were pure black and pure white respectively.

"You brought more than usual," Tolly said to Hathan.

"I would like for once to get through a healing of you without draining all of my assistants," Hathan said with some asperity. "We've got more standing on hand if necessary. I tire of this, Tolly. We should have been able to heal you utterly a long time ago. Even with your magic dampening and the curséd metal. There is something else fighting us that we don't know about."

"Believe me, if I knew of anything else, I'd tell you. I don't like this any more than you do."

"Less, probably," the unicorn said. "Are you ready?"

"Just give me a moment." Tolly took his mouth guard out of its container in his pocket, and put it in. Then he wrapped his arms around a tree on the edge of the clearing, and grabbed a branch on the other side. He nodded to Hathan, who then placed his horn on Tolly's leg. Other unicorns joined him, two others touching the leg, and the other two touching the first ones.

He closed his eyes and concentrated on holding on as hard as he could while his leg felt like a hundred lightning bolts surged through it.

When the pain eased, and he felt like he could breathe deeply again, the sun showed that at least an hour had gone by.

He let go of the branches gingerly, unwrapped himself from the tree, and stretched to get the kinks out of his arms and legs. For a moment when he turned around, he thought he saw about twice as many unicorns as he had seen before. But they left the clearing before he could really count them, leaving only Hathan behind.

Tolly spit out the mouth guard and put it away.

Hathan was the only unicorn left at that point, lying down, his chin resting on the ground, his horn looking faded.

"Hathan, thank you," Tolly said. "And thank your helpers and their families."

"You are welcome," Hathan said, sounding utterly exhausted. "There must be a better way of doing this than we have found. Overwhelming force is not my preferred way."

"I know you would much rather have finesse," Tolly said. "Overwhelming force is more my style."

Hathan just snorted

Tolly took a few test steps. Like usual, the unicorns had removed the memory of the pain they had inflicted from his leg. Not from his mind, but from his leg. It moved much more easily than it had before he came. He didn't think it moved as well as it had before it was injured, but that was so long ago that he almost couldn't remember what that felt like.

"Well done, like usual," he told Hathan. He picked up his cane again.

"Try to take it easy this time," Hathan said. "This takes far too much out of me to do so often."

"I wasn't planning on falling," Tolly said.

"Still, be careful."

"I'll try," Tolly promised.

As he continued to walk to his car, Hathan said to him, "Do you think you could arrange for the builder to make us a drinking trough in this meadow?" (Tolly got an image of a hilly field, with a stream on one side, surrounded by trees.)

"I will talk to Mattan," Tolly said. "See if he's willing. If so, he'll be out to talk to you in a few days.

"That is enough," Hathan said.

Tolly got back in his car, and went back home.

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