"I'm going to extract the part that's hurting you," Hichy explained confidently. "I just have to isolate the infected matter. First I have to make an incision to let it all through. It's not like when I got bitten on the arm and the infection was on the surface. This is deep inside."
"Meaning what?" Inata asked in a weak voice.
"Well, cutting with a knife!"
"You're insane! It'll get infected. And how are you going to stitch it back up? Besides, it'll hurt me terribly. I'd need anaesthetic. You don't even know where it is."
The young woman fell silent and closed her eyes. She was too tired to argue and had already spoken far too much. The pain was less intense, but her mind was as though wrapped in cotton wool. For the first time in her life, Inata thought she was going to die. It was a strange way for her existence to end, after passing through so many ordeals, the stupidest of all. Life was terribly disappointing if one tiny scrap of flesh could pose a far greater danger than an Odilphin with sharp claws. A deep weariness came over her, and she resigned herself to dying in her brother's arms. She was at peace, ready to be done with it once and for all.
"I know a ... who can ..."
Her brother was talking to her, but she could not understand what he was saying. She felt like telling him to be quiet and leave her alone. He was shaking her and twisting her arm. She felt nothing anymore.
"Wake up!" Hichy insisted. "I know who can save you."
"Who?" she managed to answer, barely opening her eyes.
"You! You're the one best placed to heal yourself. You know where the infected bits of flesh are. There's no need to cut your belly open at all. It was the inverted humans who gave me the idea. Since it's in the intestine, all you have to do is make the infected flesh come out through your... Well, you understand me, as if you were going to the toilet."
What if, for once, she had been the triple idiot? She had desperately sought outside help without once thinking that she could save herself. What a brilliant idea from her brother.
"You're right," she managed to whisper.
Thanks to her power, she became aware of the matter of which her body was composed. She could feel every muscle, every bone. She felt the blood flowing through her arteries and her heart beating in her chest. Air was entering and leaving her lungs with difficulty. The swollen appendicitis was not very large, but she could visualise it better than with any X-ray. It was as though she could move about inside her own body like a tiny vessel. It teemed with life, her own, but also the viruses and bacteria living in symbiosis with her.
She seized the molecules infecting her and carefully guided them through her entrails without infecting any other part of her body. She regained enough strength to get up and hide in a thicket to expel those intruding elements. She was exhausted, but freed from her pain, as well as from the irreversible consequences it had been about to cause. The young woman noticed in passing that her liver could use a little cleaning and undertook a full overhaul of her body. Having gone so long without using a toothbrush, many cavities were forming in her mouth, which she healed in no time. A good descaling restored the shine of her tooth enamel. Not only was she cured, but in far better health than before. She was still very tired, but happy and grateful. She lay down on the grass and fell peacefully asleep.
Hichy, having understood the extraordinary advantage they could draw from their power, sat down and closed his eyes in turn. His teeth were in a sorry state, and his forehead had become covered with pimples, which he banished without effort. He scrubbed and refurbished all his organs, after which he turned to Helios's fleas and one of Melio's injured paw pads. Darok's coat too required a deep cleaning, and the boy noticed that he was suffering from a badly healed fracture in the leg. He managed to sand down the protruding ends of bone that were wounding the flesh from within and weld the two parts together even more firmly.
They made camp under the shelter of the trees and could go no farther that day. Everyone felt especially well and cheerful. Inata slept all afternoon and all night. When she woke, she was in Olympic form, ready to cover miles at a run. They were all brand new, beautiful, and clean as they had never been before.
They had now been travelling for several weeks. Every story in the tale book had already been read many times over. Darok was still just as enthusiastic during his mistress's reading sessions, and Melio never listened with more than half an ear. The wolf seemed as interested in the schoolbooks as in the stories and had gone through them all with Inata. As for the donkey, he preferred to keep to himself.
One evening, Hichy had the idea of drawing the twenty-six letters of the alphabet on the ground again. The wolf leapt all around him, wild with joy, as though this were something extraordinary. The boy struggled to finish, so much did Darok jump on him and lick him. Inata watched her wolf laughing. When the boy had finally finished, the wild animal carefully set his paw in front of each letter one after another. This time, he could express himself in full words.
"I...A...M...H...A...P...P...Y," he managed to write.
"That's all?"
"That's already enormous!" Inata cried. "What did you expect? That he was going to write a novel? He's the smartest wolf in the world," the young woman said, taking him in her arms. "It's not your useless cat who would have been capable of such a feat."
While she was stroking her wolf, Melio approached them in an offhand manner, tail in the air. For a moment the twins thought he was playing or chasing some imaginary animal, but it really was in front of the letters that he was placing his paws. When he had finished, neither child had noted the long sentence he had formed. The little cat looked at them with a dismayed expression and had to start the whole performance again, which he did even faster.
"Y...O...U...R...S...T...U...P...I...D...T...H...I...N...G...I...S...M...I...S...S...I...N...G...P...U...N...C...T...U...A...T...I...O...N...A...N...D...A...C...C...E...N...T...S"
Then he jumped out of sight, leaving them to ponder his acerbic remark. The little cat might never have shown it, yet he had retained everything Inata had taught Darok. Just because he seemed asleep did not mean he had missed the slightest crumb of lessons not even intended for him. It must be said that a cat is never truly asleep, and that its senses are always alert.
"I have to say, I'm stunned!" Hichy said to his sister. "I knew my beloved little cat was intelligent, but even so!"
"Darok is intelligent too."
"Of course. Obviously. The problem is, it's a bit tedious as a method. If they want to explain something to us, it's going to take hours."
"I understand them through their eyes too, and the way they look at us."
"I...A...M...H...A...P...P...Y," the wolf traced again on the ground, very proud of himself, before lavishly licking Inata's face.
"Yes, I think we understood that. We had already noticed without your needing to write it."
"And Helios?" Inata asked.
Only under pressure did the donkey, who had been peacefully grazing in the grass, agree to come closer to the circle of letters.
"Come on! Show us what you can do," the boy said to him.
Helios seemed interested in the letters for a moment and even placed his hoof in front of the J and then the E.
"J...E... Je! That's good, keep going," Inata encouraged him.
And yet he stopped there, and if he had scraped near those two letters it was only because they stood next to a tuft of grass. The donkey raised his head with a questioning look, not understanding what was expected of him. He did not dare move away, with the children staring at him so strangely. Then, seeing that no reaction was forthcoming, he went back to grazing in his corner, his great ears pricked above his head.
"Don't be disappointed," Inata said to her brother. "You're expecting too much from him. He's gentle and kind. Why want more from him than that? I have to admit something: I do not regret for a single second that we bought him. I would be sad if we didn't have a second donkey with us."
"A second? But who's the... Ah ha ha! Very funny."
In practice, the ability of their pets to express themselves proved of little interest. Darok did nothing but say he was happy, and each new sentence from Melio turned out a little more cantankerous than the last.
HP = 1, AP = 0, XP = 0, GP = 4
While their counters were almost all empty, they arrived before a gigantic mountain barrier serving as the natural enclosure of the country at the centre. Many roads converged toward large buildings that served at once as relays for horses and checkpoints. Goods wagons and numerous travellers all converged on that point. With the unpleasant impression of being the only ones who did not know what had to be done, the twins imitated the flock without asking questions, like lost sheep within the herd.
The guards of the Celestial army were numerous, heavily armed, and covered in thick augmentation suits. They guarded what turned out to be the entrance to a gigantic tunnel allowing passage beneath the mountains without having to climb them.
"Hey, you! Where do you think you're going?" barked an officer.
"Like everybody else," Hichy retorted, trying not to show his fear.
"Do you take me for an idiot? Not only do you not have the required sum, but you don't have the prerequisites. You need at least 10 Health Points and 20 Experience. Attack Points aren't necessary, though. As for you, you've got nothing at all. I've never seen that. Has no one ever told you that..."
"Yes, we've already been told," Inata cut in. "And how do we proceed if we don't have all that?"
"Like the others, by the twisting road over there, with the other beggars of your kind and the under-race. But I don't see how frail children like you could survive such a journey without any Attack Points," he mocked, slapping his own belly. "Two flimsy little children like you have no chance of coming out alive."