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Sinocia was working the night shift, as she had been more often than not—meandering up and down low-lit corridors, keeping an ear out for patients’ cries and doing nothing, really. She’d been restless these past few weeks, pinned under the thumb of a nameless malaise, feeling the pressure of the sea upon her shoulders. A funk she would just have to work through.
There came a rap at the door downstairs—several frantic, rapid raps. Sinocia was not afraid. She was trained to meet people in their desperation, to stem flows of panic as well as blood. She gripped her skirts and rushed to the foyer and, swinging the door wide, was startled to find an anguished, shivering, drenched Olruggio.
“What the hell happened?!” she said, informal with her friend, ushering him inside. “Usually I’m the one dousing you with water, but this—you’re soaked through!”
He was trembling, clutching his waterlogged cloak, rubbing his face and neck repeatedly, failing to soothe himself. His wild eyes found hers, briefly; he let his cloak drop. His shirt was ripped open, nearly in tatters, and darkened with blood. Sinocia snatched the nearest lantern and knelt for a closer look.
A huge swath of his chest and flank was seared with a massive burn. It was one wound on top of another; Sinocia tried a tentative touch at the ragged edge of the inflamed flesh. Olruggio winced, jerking his chin up.
“Did you cauterize this?” Sinocia asked him, grave with concern. A massive burn, but a deliberate one—a controlled one.
“He told me to come here…” Olruggio said through clenched teeth. “He said to wait here…”
“Who did? Qifrey?” Those two were thick as thieves.
Olruggio nodded, nearly moaning, “He said he’d…meet me here…did he say anything to—ngh!” He doubled over.
Sinocia would ask questions later. “Come on,” she ordered. “Treatment first.”
She took his hand, but he collapsed into her arms, covering his face with both hands, sobbing. Bewildered, Sinocia held him there in the foyer, her trepidation rising. She’d never seen him this distraught before.
“I’m sorry,” Olruggio choked out, “I’m sorry. It’s not…your problem. I’m sure…” But his voice only broke further. “I’m sure…he’ll come.”
Sinocia drew away and gripped his slight shoulders. “Your well-being is my problem,” she said gently. “Now come on.”
Olruggio slept, forgetting all his pain for a little while, and by his weary head Sinocia kept watch. For Qifrey, in part…but also over memories.
Ask her to name the witch’s apprentice she’d healed the most, and without hesitation she’d name Olruggio. Her memory was as sharp as a scalpel, threaded through with sheepish grins, singed eyebrows, smarting limbs. Yet in spite of this haphazard track record, Olruggio was growing up. He needed Sinocia’s help less and less often, although he’d still turn up from time to time. He stood at the edge of his life to come, on the precipice of graduation…he was almost a fully-fledged witch.
Both of them were.
Sinocia chewed the frayed tip of her braid, gazing through the narrow window into the dim blue dawn. Ask her to name the number of times Olruggio had shown up alone…she couldn’t count them on one hand.
She was sixteen, yet an apprentice herself and up to her eyeballs in studies and clinic duties, the day she met the little fire witch.
“Sinocia,” snapped her harried reporting nurse, “see to the boy, please! Minor burns on both hands and forearms.”
“Yes, sir.” Sinocia set down the dressing she’d been winding, snatched her first aid trunk from the floor, and marched to the receiving room. The boy was the only one there, engulfed by the high-ceilinged space. He bounced on his tip-toes, holding his arms in front of him like an offering statue, face twisted in pain.
“Ow ow ow ow—oh!” He fell back on his heels and raised a hand out of habit before jerking it back down. “Uh—hi—ow!”
“Hi.” Sinocia strode over stones to meet him, frowning and squinting at his hands. She asked in her matter-of-fact manner, “Want to tell me how this happened?”
“Er.” The boy stuck out a leg, folding back his heavy cloak and revealing a pointed hat affixed to his belt. So that’s where that egregiously long ribbon originated. “Magic. I’m getting better...”
Sinocia snorted, already digging through her kit for a vial of cool sterile water. “This is ‘better’?”
The boy flushed. “Hey! Fire magic is hard! I don’t see you trying it!”
“How could I try it?” huffed Sinocia, fluffing her uniform, raising her eyebrows. “I’m a doctor, not a witch! Hold still—”
The boy pouted but obeyed, wincing as she dabbed a dampened cloth over his knuckles, cleansing his wounds.
“Well—” he managed, “Any fire is hard to deal with—surely you’ve lit a fire before and—”
“Olly?!”
“Eh?” Sinocia paused; she and the boy both turned to the door. Was that—
“Qifrey?!” the boy—Olly, evidently—cried out, swiftly hiding his arms under his robes and assuming the most affected air of nonchalance Sinocia had ever seen. “What are you doing here?”
It was Qifrey, after all, hard to recognize under all that hair. How long ago was it that Sinocia had cared for the little and wounded and terribly frightened Outsider? No one else had wanted anything to do with the nameless boy from Thristas; they’d feared he was cursed. Let’s see—it had been toward the start of her training…had it been a year already?! Good gods…She was glad to see him, all the same. Against the odds, he seemed to be making his way in the hidebound world of witches all right.
(Well. Maybe not at this exact moment…)
“What are you doing here?!” Qifrey yelped, rushing right up to her patient, plowing through polite distance. They were clearly familiar. Qifrey stammered on, “I saw Alaira and—and she said you left the lesson and—and you’re not hurt, are you?!”
Olly fidgeted, still feigning indifference. “Hurt? Nooo…I’m alright. I’m just—picking something up—for, uh—” He shot a pleading look at Sinocia: Help me out, here!
“He’s just got a few minor burns,” said Sinocia. She gestured for Olly’s hands, ignoring his offended shock at her betrayal. “Hello, Qifrey. It’s nice to see you.”
Qifrey gasped. He honestly hadn’t seen her, so intent had he been upon his friend. He blushed and halfway-raised a hand, just like Olly had done. It was actually pretty precious. “...Hi.”
“You know this lady?” asked Olly, rather rudely. Sinocia tugged his hand back toward her with a bit more force than was necessary. “Ow!”
“Yeah,” Qifrey said, distracted, eye trained on his friend’s vividly red wrists. He wrung his hands. “That looks bad, Olly…does it hurt?!”
“Nah—ouch!!” Sinocia rolled her eyes as she rubbed in the lotion. This kid…
“I’m wrapping up,” she said, and meant it literally—she wrapped his palms and forearms in fresh bandages. The moment she finished, he coughed a quick thankyou, skipped several steps backward, and made a beeline for the door.
“Not so fast—you come back and see me tomorrow!” Sinocia ordered. “And I’m giving you some medicine to take home, in case you’re in a lot of pain!” She dug in her bag, aggravated. “Wait!”
“I’m fine!”
“You’ve said that this whole time,” said Sinocia flatly, “and yet I’m having a hard time believing you. Here, Qifrey—” She handed the bewildered boy a folded square of canvas fabric. “Take this to him, please.”
He replied with a frantic nod, clutched the parcel against his chest, and raced to catch up with his friend.
“You have to take it,” Qifrey called after him, dire as a doomsday prophet, but Olly waved a hand—more reassuring, maybe, if he hadn’t winced right after.
“I’m tough enough to handle it,” he insisted, rubbing his wrist.
“B-but—”
Sinocia planted her hands on her hips and cleared her throat, loudly enough to echo off the walls. The boys froze in the doorway; they timidly turned to face her.
“Olly, right?” she said, jabbing a finger toward him.
“Yeah. Olruggio,” he answered, squirming, impatient.
“Olruggio, then. And Qifrey?”
Qifrey ducked his head in shy acknowledgement.
Sinocia looked between them, still pointing, and told them with great emphasis: “Look out for each other, okay?”
They exchanged looks with one another, a silent confirmation of this promise they’d already made, consciously or not.
“Okay,” they said together.
A caravan full of visiting witches had accidentally backed through the Hall’s mist barrier and sent several of its startled passengers tumbling into the cold ocean. No one had drowned but many had come close, and Sinocia ran from bedside to bedside, proffering charmed blankets for warmth and enchanted bubbles full of extra oxygen. Was this her third or fourth shift in a row? It didn’t matter. She still had energy, and she was still waiting.
She washed her hands and scarfed down a pre-made, portable meal, little croquettes stuffed with vegetables and protein. She ate them cold. And as she ate she slipped past bustling colleagues down chilly, cerulean corridors, into the quieter convalescent ward, to the agitated bed of Olruggio.
He hadn’t woken up, but he slept badly, groaning, tangling himself in the sheets—as though even in dreams he struggled to suspend his disbelief. Sinocia wrung a cool cloth and spread it over his pinched brow. She wished she had good news for him; she wished she had a hand to draw into his scarred, grasping hand besides her own. But she only felt heaviness—only dread. Her recent uneasiness felt grimly fulfilled by this, somehow, as though her spirit had been trying to warn her.
You will be there to watch a cherished promise fall apart.
“Both of you?!”
“Look, shit happens, okay?!”
“I’m just—” Sinocia dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. “How…do you both get stuck in the same tree…”
“That’s not important,” said Olruggio, whose every patch of exposed skin was littered with scratches and dirt. Twigs poked out of his hair. “We just need the salve, please.”
Even as she prepared the ointment, Sinocia continued her haranguing. “Aren’t you witches?” she said. “Couldn’t you just magically get free from the tree?”
Olruggio scoffed. “Lay off, Sinocia—it’s not so easy—”
“Our arms were…pinned.” This was Qifrey, perched cross-legged on the treatment table next to Olruggio, equally scratched and scrubby. His attitude was less sheepish than Olruggio’s, more of a bullish, defiant So what? in nature. Both of them avoided eye contact like the plague; neither one of them could lie to save their life.
“I see,” Sinocia said, pushing two corks into the lids of two glass bottles, pop-pop! “Well, I suppose you don’t have to tell me what you were really up to. I’ll just leave the details hazy on the record.”
“Why does this have to go on a record?!” griped Olruggio, tilting his head back. “Nothing happened! We’re fine! It’s damned embarrassing…”
“Keep it off the record,” Qifrey entreated, softening his look into a piteous pout. “Please?”
Sinocia didn’t feel like telling them she never kept a record at all—this was too entertaining.
“We’ll see,” she said loftily. “Here you go.” She tossed them the bottles underhanded; both boys caught them with confident swipes, intent to show off. “Please be more careful.”
“Thanks,” said Olruggio, already leaping from the table, sights set on the exit. Qifrey hastened to his feet as well, scattering leafy debris and blocking Olruggio. When had they both gotten taller than she was?
Qifrey murmured, “Can you keep them in your bag? I left mine…” He held out his bottle just as Olruggio reached for it. Their fingers brushed; Olruggio murmured No problem; his changing voice broke. A rapid blush spread up his neck, over his ears. Qifrey blushed, too; he leaned into their lingering touch on impulse; the two of them seemed to hold their breath—
“Is that all I can help you with?” Sinocia asked with twinkling eyes, only halfway-fighting her cheeky smile. The boys fumbled apart, glowing red, mortified.
“Yesthanksgoodbye!!” Olruggio practically teleported from the room.
“Thanks, Sinocia,” Qifrey said over his shoulder, unsmiling but sincere.
Sinocia sent them off with a cheerful wave. The moment they vanished she squealed to herself, dancing on her toes, her silly grin bursting at its seams. Those two lovebirds! It ought to be illegal to be so adorable! She had to tell Ermile…
She bustled to the nearest window and wiped a hole in the fog with her braid, hoping to glimpse them on the street. Indeed, their gangly silhouettes appeared in moments, chatting and gesticulating, headed for the bridge. And just before they turned the corner, Qifrey reached a surreptitious hand behind Olruggio’s back and took secret hold of his hat’s trailing ribbon. He held it until they were out of sight.
Enchanted night lights dotted the city like flowers, ethereal blooms that flickered and danced from the corner of Sinocia’s eye. She might herself have been a ghastly apparition, slipping into the Healing Spire in practiced, procedural silence. She had pretended to leave, to rest, but she could not. She would change Olruggio’s dressing, at least; see if he had awoken. But only steps into the hushed convalescent ward, she froze: Someone had beat her to it.
Was she that exhausted, that she was hallucinating? For it was Olruggio himself bending over the body on the bed, pressing his nose against its forehead, whispering words as faint as traces of seafoam left by the tides. It was so dark—eerily dark—the light of her lantern felt swallowed by ravenous shadows. But that was certainly Olruggio—that was his serpentine ribbon, contorted and twisted in the light, that singular detail that glinted in sharp relief as it fell down his back, pooling on the bed.
If she didn’t know better, it might have been Olruggio’s ghost.
“Olruggio?” she breathed.
He stopped speaking, lingering for a motionless moment. Then he rose.
“I’m sorry. It's me,” said Qifrey. “I promised to meet him here.”
You promised two days ago, Sinocia thought, so tired that any shock she might have felt at his presence was muted at best.
A shift of fabric, a strange undulation, and the lanterns along the walls flared back to their normal life. The lantern in Sinocia’s hand sputtered in response. She raised it and approached Qifrey, illuminating his face. And for the first time, she was truly frightened.
He was smiling—rare enough to begin with—but it was not a smile. It was not quite a grimace. His eye was clear in the way a corpse’s eye might be—seeing her, seeing nothing. His polite posture felt propped up, like a marionette hanging from the ceiling. Wooden…empty…hollow…nothing. That word, nothing, crept over Sinocia, consumed her like fog.
“He’s sleeping,” she managed to say. “Will you come back tomorrow?” She wanted him gone. Her heart was in her throat, her whole body wound tight, like she was cornered prey. But there was no reason for this. This was Qifrey. She knew him. She was always the one defending him to all her peers. He only acts hateful to protect himself. He’s really very sweet. No…he won’t hurt you.
But in this moment, in this ward at the witching hour, Sinocia wanted nothing more than sullenness and hatefulness and troubled, angry frowns. This smiling shell was like a demon—separating her from Olruggio—plotting to take him away.
“Please come back tomorrow,” she amended, fearful but firm. “He needs rest.”
Qifrey reached up—Sinocia nearly flinched—and removed his hat, which now indeed was decorated with Olruggio’s ribbon. (How had she not noticed Olruggio’s hat? She knew this was significant for witches.) And Qifrey set his hat upon the table beside Olruggio, beside Olruggio’s hat, and wound the ribbon gently, reverently, around them both. He watched Sinocia watching him.
“So he knows I’ll come back,” he said, straightening up.
Sinocia nodded. “...Are you hurt?”
Qifrey’s empty smile gained a faint, wry edge. He shook his head. “You can’t help me.”
Sinocia wouldn’t attempt to decrypt his words. She said, slowly, “...I don’t imagine either of you will tell me what happened.”
Qifrey’s despondent gaze wandered to the nearest window. And at last an emotion arrived. It split his brow, crumpled his mouth. It was despair.
“If only we could,” he said.
He bowed his head and drifted past her, out of the ward.
Sinocia let her adrenaline ebb for a minute before hurrying to Olruggio’s bedside. He was breathing, calmly, in fact—a far cry from his prior, turbulent thrashing. She traced the dark locks of hair that were already brushed to the side; even his fever was down. Had he felt Qifrey’s presence? Even through the haze of unconsciousness, had that touch he craved, that person he loved, restored his spirit?
All her adrenaline abandoned her now, and Sinocia sagged against the bed. With a final look at the pair of hats, she took her leave of the ward, vaguely wondering if Qifrey had truly left. Somehow, Olruggio trusted him; she didn’t know if she still could.
She kept no written record, but in the years to come, Sinocia’s faithful memory would sometimes in the dark remind her: She had never seen them both together since that night.
Sinocia hadn't had time to think about that since they all dropped in the day before yesterday. Qifrey’s darling quartet of apprentices were off working on their make-up test; Qifrey lay recuperating upstairs; and Olruggio rummaged and swore beside her in the supply room, working his way through his worries, as usual. They both had that tendency.
“Y’know, you’re not supposed to be down here,” she said, tugging open the drawer at his elbow. “Not that that’s ever stopped you. What are you looking for?”
“Pliers,” he grumbled. “Surely there’s at least one goddamned pair of pliers around here?!”
Sinocia raised her eyebrows. “Pliers? You might have better luck at the artificer’s,” she said, “not the Healing Spire.”
“Every kind of workshop oughtta have pliers…”
“May I ask what you need them for?”
Olruggio rammed shut the drawer with his knee. He rubbed his temples, peering at her through his fingers, and from his belt produced a cracked and warped pair of glasses.
“Geez,” said Sinocia, poking their sharp edges gently. They were positively mangled. Whatever had happened at the cave, the call had been close.
“Yeah..." Olruggio heaved a hot, aggrieved sigh, like a boiler expelling steam. “I’ll check at the artificer’s. Or just go an' get my pair from home. I dunno.”
But Sinocia could feel his anxiety at the concept of leaving the Hall. Of course he wouldn't want to. She’d kept up with him a bit, and although she hardly ever saw Qifrey, she knew Olruggio lived and worked beside him. She smiled a little. Those two—from the beginning—like briars and roses. Thoroughly intertwined.
“Come to think of it, I know where a pair might be,” she said.
He brightened at once. “You do?”
“Wait here?”
“Alright.” He managed a half-smile. “Thanks, Sin.”
Sinocia flitted from the supply room. Her hunch was right—in the cleaning closet across from her office lurked a monolithic tool box, one she’d stubbed her foot on a hundred times. It liked to lie in wait around corners—had a mind of its own. She heaved the lid open and found the tool in no time.
“Ta-da!” she announced, bouncing back to meet Olruggio. But the room was vacant. She frowned.
She didn’t have to go far. Attached to the Spire was a courtyard, where patients were sometimes led to relieve their stress and revive their spirits. Dozens of finely crafted lamps hung from the lattice roof. Along the stone perimeter, surface flowers bloomed alongside coral and seaweed. Sinocia came here sometimes on her lunch break; it was the brightest corner of the Spire—maybe even the entire Hall.
Olruggio slumped on a low, engraved bench, slowly turning Qifrey’s glasses in his hands. Sinocia approached him with care.
“Olruggio,” she ventured. “I found a pair. Will these work?”
He didn’t look up. Had he heard her? Was he that worried about Qifrey?
She joined him seated, setting the pliers between them. “...You okay?”
Olruggio continued to rotate the glasses. He tilted his head, just a hair, in her direction.
“You ever get so far…on a project, or…or with a patient…” he said, to the glasses, “...and it seems like…like it’s goin’ fine. Maybe even great. But then, all of a sudden…fwoo—” His shoulders sagged; he seemed to exhale all the life from himself. “All of a sudden it just—falls apart? And it feels…outta nowhere…but then you look back…and maybe you remember a…a bad feeling. That you…ignored.
“Like you ignored the feeling til it went away…kept working…but…” His voice tightened; he sounded plaintive, like he was a child again. “But…but what else were you supposed to do?!” He grit his teeth; ground his wet eyes into his palm.
Was he talking about Qifrey? What happened at Romonon? Some commission gone terribly wrong? Sinocia did know what he meant. Her profession dealt as much in recovery as in fatal wounds and losses; more than once she’d been overtaken by that dread. A memory found her now, in light of everything: a lantern-lit ward; a look of despair.
There was so much she’d never know about the world of witches…about what these witches whom she cared for so dearly had to endure. She understood, as much as she resented it. Her job was not to pry, to press for why—her job was to patch them up in the aftermath. What went on in between would forever be hidden in mist.
Sinocia took the only step toward comfort she could: She put her arm around Olruggio's shaking shoulders.
“I know that feeling,” she said softly. “And I’m learning…I try to remind myself…it doesn’t all ride on me. Even when I do my best…” She closed her eyes. “I can’t fix everything. I can’t help everyone.”
Olruggio tensed; he leaned into her embrace. She heard him sob, twice—two quiet gasps that he seized and swallowed as soon as they escaped. She rubbed his shoulder.
“I can tell you, though,” she said, “Qifrey’s gonna be fine.” She offered a tiny, playful smile. “The number of times you’ve both shown up here a wreck…I’ve seen worse, believe me.”
Olruggio pondered the glasses one last time; then he slid them up his sleeve, wiped a hand down his face, and rose to his unsteady feet. His eyes were tired and hollow.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely, distantly. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Sinocia watched him wander from the garden and fade back into the Spire. Back to Qifrey’s side, she had no doubt. And after a moment alone, she stood to return herself. Lucky thing she looked down…Olruggio had left the pliers. She’d take them to him.
END