LITMIR.BIZ

      I went back to Dad’s room and kept vigil with Mom, Nieve, Fand and the Imp-healer, who I learned was named Bree. Minutes felt like hours, and as every one crawled by I wanted to ask how he was doing, but I knew they didn’t know, so I didn’t ask. I hate waiting, I always have, but that was the worst. I felt so helpless. Fand recited a healing mantra in Ogham and I asked her to teach it to me. I could feel the healing magic in the words but wondered if it was getting through Dad’s amber shell. As the afternoon moved on, we all five chanted it together.

      The curtains were drawn so I couldn’t tell if night had fallen but Mom and Fand both looked up at each other at the same time, as if they were alerted by some soundless alarm.

      Fand removed Dad’s sheet as Mom placed a small dollop of amber sap in her palm and held it over the Shadowfire that was burning on a table at the foot of the bed. She dripped the molten sap onto Dad’s foot. It was a darker shade of amber than his shell and I watched as it passed through the shell like water in a bowl of oil. The darker sap began to entwine and elongate, wrapping around the leg like a serpent and then continued to thin, until it wrapped his entire body with a fine line just under the surface of his glass-like sarcophagus. Fand placed her hands on either side of Dad’s head and incanted in Ogham. The dark latticework spiralled and pulsed darker. Mom held Dad by his legs and swung them to the left so his right foot hung out of the bed. Even though I had seen it before, it shocked me to see Dad’s whole body move as if he were made of marble. Fand released Dad’s head and Mom cupped her hands under the foot. The dark spiral retraced its path and when Mom pulled her hands back, in her palm was the dark sap.

      Mom held the sap over the Shadowfire and Fand, on the other side of the table, placed her hands under hers. Together they chanted words that sounded so strange I wondered how their tongues could make them. The sap dripped through their fingers and onto the Shadowfire. An image formed as they withdrew and as the vision cleared I saw it was my father, standing before me, upright, naked. His body was whole except for his right hand – it was in its proper place but detached from him by a few inches. The two Shadowwitches placed their hands into the vision and caressed Dad’s shadow-form. Mom had her back to me but I could see Fand’s face. Tears formed in her eyes – I didn’t know what that meant. A cry escaped from Mom’s throat and the two women reached for each other, breaking the vision, and embraced, both openly weeping.

      ‘What?’ I said, not knowing if I should speak but I couldn’t take it any longer.

      Mom turned and wiped the tears from her eyes but kept her hands over her mouth as she tried to compose herself. Finally she dropped her hands and crossed them on her chest. ‘It worked,’ she said.

      It wasn’t until it was all over that Mom allowed her fatigue and strain to show. Nieve and I had to help her walk to her chamber where she permitted herself to truly rest for the first time in a long while. I went back to check on Dad. Fand was still there, clearing up.

      ‘Does he dream?’

      ‘I do not know,’ she replied.

      ‘What happens now?’

      ‘Now we have time to find a cure.’

      ‘How long can he stay like this?’

      Her answer should have comforted me but instead it sent a chill down my spine. ‘For ever,’ she said.