Healing the Broken

Part 2
Arjun
I woke up. The sun’s blaze shone in my face. The agonizing pain still burned through my veins, but I was able to sit up. I was behind a log and away from the location I had lost consciousness. Zey must have dragged me here. As I pushed myself up with my hands, I nearly fell back to my knees. The pain had drained me of all my strength. My hands were trembling. I didn’t see Zey, but I hoped she escaped.
I hope she was safe. I knew my mother would feel the same way too. When I read the book of her memoirs, I found out my mother left to find a cure for my disease. She didn’t think I would survive the disease so she went searching for answers. She met another seer that was also a merchant who sold her a queron stone which led her finding the enchanted forest. When she arrived, she unknowingly ate a forbidden fruit, and was turn into a nymph, trapped to live in the enchanted forest. After a year of being there, she learned the mystics of each fruit. She planned somehow to bring the vixa to me, but she didn’t know how so she a bird out of the enchanted forest tied to its claw. She hoped that someone would find the forest. Years passed, and my mother had visions of me. She wrote that in her vision that the disease had stop consuming me, and she saw me swimming in the lake with two other children. The vision didn’t show her my struggles of trying to survive. She decide although the disease had stop spreading, she wanted to send me the cure to heal me completely. She had the chance when Zey and the soldier protecting her arrived.
The reason why my mother’s visions were flawed was because she could change the future. Unlike most seers, when my mother tried to change something in present everything in the future would be changed. She had realized it for herself. She wrote that in a vision she saw a young woman with golden brown skin, green eyes, and golden curly hair. This young woman bore the mark of Leer—the double headed serpent. She would have a strong medicine to cure the great Leer from the verge of a fatal death. A couple days later my mother saw a vision child with the same features enter the enchanted forest. The vision fulfilled itself when that child did enter the forest with a soldier. My mother was sure that she was the same little girl that saved Leer after she saw the mark of Leer on her neck. She gave the little girl the vixa fruit to give to me, hoping this was same fruit that saved Leer. She was wrong. My mother wrote in her last memoir:
I have mistaken. If I don’t stop them from continuing the quest to cure my son, Tronzey will die. I changed something I’m not sure what. In my vision I saw the child captured, and then killed by a bandit. I must save them. Whether she cures Arjun or not, she is an innocent. She could save hundreds of people. She risked her own life to save a dying horse. I know I will die if I leave the enchanted forest, but at least I know my son is alive and maybe one day when this little girl is older she will heal my son and many other people.
“You,” a man called out to me. I realized it was a soldier from Zey’s lands. I remember seeing them escort her to the Black Widows when stalking them from behind the trees. There were two more of them behind him. “Stop right there.”
I tried to run, but it was useless. I clumsily stumbled so I stopped as he commanded. He and the two others approached me.
“Who are you,” he asked.
“An ill man,” I said.
“You’re not a man yet,” The soldier said, and scanned me. And spoke to the other two soldiers. “He could be one of the bandits. Take him to General Kashon.”
They each grab one of my arms and pulled me through the forest. I didn’t resist. I was too weak to struggle. We arrived at a river where more soldiers were waiting.
“Where’s Kashon,” one of the soldiers holding me asked the unit of soldiers.
“His still searching the perimeters,” a soldier said.
The soldiers tied me to a tree near a river. As I waited there, I wondered if Zey had found them, or if they had taken her back home.
Although my mother was wrong about the vixa curing me, she was right about Zey. Zey had saved my life so many times although I was going to sell her’s away to bandits. Zey’s heart was soft and kind. I realized that when she was willing to give up her freedom in exchange for saving the children taken by the Black Widows. It wasn’t until I bashed my head, and Zey tended to my wounds that I knew I wouldn’t be able to sell her. Finding my mother’s book of memoirs intensified that feeling of protecting her, though at first, I envied her. I realized how much my mother loved her for how compassionate she was. And I had turned out to be the opposite. However, this made me want to protect her more, because it made me realize what a horrible son I had been. I hated my mom most of my life and turn out to be a scoundrel of a son. I could at least do one thing right and let Zey go free if not for my mother than for Zey. She didn’t deserved to be sold us. And If not for either of them then for me.
I knew only the worse could happen to Zey. If she wasn’t killed by bandits then she would be the slave of Leer forever. I tried to tell Zey she would be the one to save Leer’s life. It would have hurt her, but she would have understood it was better for to save her life than to give it to Leer. . I knew she would do that to protect others, because she was going to give her life to protect those children. I couldn’t let that happen. I knew Jod, my mentor, would be furious I had fail this mission, but so be it.
As I waited for the general, a man stared at me. What caught my attention was he was missing an arm and wasn’t wearing the same attire as the other soldiers. He began to approach me.
“What happen to you,” he asked, genuinely concerned. “You’re covered in blood, and your shirt has gashes, yet, you have no wounds.”
“I was healed by a girl,” I said, I decided to tell the truth. Maybe it would help me out of this situation. “She healed me with fruit. She is from lands the soldiers protect.”
“Zey,” he said, scrunching his eyebrows, confused. “So you are one of the bandits that abducted her. Where is she?”
A pang shot through my chest. He knew her. She hadn’t been found. She must have been caught by the Black Widows. “The Black Widows must have captured her. They are bandits you are looking for."
"Where are they," The man asked, skeptically. He seemed unsure to trust me.
"They are probably taking her through the tunnels under the Neflexon kingdom," I said, I let the anxiety fill my voice. "You need to get to her, now. They are planning to sell her to Leer."
"Kye what information has he revealed," Another man approached us. His voice was calm, but solemn. He wore silver plate belt with a sword engraved in the middle that confirmed he was the general. "Is he one of the bandits?"
"He may be a bandit," the man named Kye said, turning my eyes from me to the general. "But his not one of the bandits that took Zey, your son, and the other children. He says that they are taking them to Leer through an underground passage under Neflexon."
"Can we trust him," the general asked him.
"I don't know," He said to him.
"What is in your bag," the general asked, me staring at the sack tied to my belt that I had fill with enchanted fruit.
"It's fruit from the enchanted forest. Zey brought me there, and we harvested fruit. If you don't go now, the Black Widows will sell them to Leer."
"Give me a good reason to believe you?" the general walked to me and place a dagger under my neck, the cold metal kissing my throat. "How do I know you're not working with these bandits you call Back Widows?"
“I know about her birth mark,” I said, and both of the men stared at me with questioning looks. “I know about the stone that allows her to enter the forest. I know about the woman, Danj, who use to protect her.” Kye seem to flinch when I spoke the name ‘Danj’. “If she had not trusted me, she would not have told her secrets. “If you truly know her. You know how much danger she is in. Even more so than the children the Black Widows took.”
“That means nothing,” the general said, “You could have torture her to get that information. Who are you exactly and how did you encounter Zey only for her to be capture by these Black Widow?”
I needed to persuade them fast before Zey was taken to the Neflexon tunnels. “You are right, I am bandit. I was supposed to take Zey to Leer’s clan myself, but I changed my mind because of the memoirs my mother wrote. It is in my side pocket. Everything is on the last page.”
Kye took the book of memoirs from my pocket, and then flip to the last pages as best he could with one hand. He read them carefully.
“I’m sorry I could not protect her,” I said, I could tell he was close to her by the way he hung on to every word I spoke with hope. Was he her Lover? “She was taken trying to save my life.”
“Why would Zey save your life,” The general said.
“Because that’s who she is,” I said. “I wish she hadn’t. Because the disease coursing through my veins is slowly killing me, and even the enchanted fruit cannot save me now.”
“His telling the truth,” Kye said, he had staring at and studying my expressions and everything I said. “I never told Zey the real reason why Bahara save her was because Bahara had made a mistake. Danj told me that before Bahara died had told her that she had led them on the wrong path that it was not their fate to cure Bahara’s son. I didn’t tell Zey because I knew she think Bahara and Danj died in vain protecting her so instead I told her they save her because she would heal others and Bahara’s son.”
So he was emotionally attach to Zey somehow. He was trying to protect her from her own guilt that was consuming her. “She still thinks it’s her fault,” I said. “But I think what you said to her is true. As you read, my mother hoped that Zey would still heal me and others, and that’s why she saved her.”
“You may be you’re right,” Kye said, and then looked toward the general. “We must leave now before the bandits sell them to Leer.”
“We’re heading out to Neflexon,” The general nodded his head and proclaimed to the soldiers. So he trusted Kye’s judgements more than his own. “The bandits are taking them through underground passage to Leer.”
As the general mounted his horse, Kye look toward him and said, “Kashon, I am coming too.”
Kashon shook his head. “I need you here Kye, if we don’t return I need someone to tell my wife and others at home. I also need you to watch the boy. I know you trust him, but we need to take precautions just in case he’s lying. Don’t worry brother I will bring all of them back if what he said is true.”
Kye nodded his head. “I know you will.”
The general Kashon and soldiers mounted their horses and trotted away. I only hoped that they would find her in time, because if the bandits sold her to Leer, it would be nearly impossible to get her back from him. Leer ruled the kingdom of Gulush at the moment and the no one had been successful in defeating its armies. Everyone who tried, died.