“You should really try to get some rest.”

My nursemaid had refused to leave my side for more than a few moments at a time, she insisted on sitting at my bedside and dabbing my face with a wet cloth despite the fact that it was effectively doing nothing. I had tried to reason with her that she didn’t need to keep refreshing the water and moistening my face, but in the end it didn’t hurt me and it seemed to make her feel better so I let her do it without a fuss. It was somewhat nice to have her doting on me, tucking and re-tucking me in, it reminded me of when I was very young and would come down with a fever or the sniffles.

“I feel like all I’ve done is sleep.”

“Then it’s what your body needs right now,” she said with a sagely nod, “no one gets better by sitting up and fretting about their illness. Your body wants you to sleep, so it’s best that you do, you will heal much heal faster that way.”

“I don’t know if it’s that’s simple,” I sighed. I had a deep, uncomfortable feeling that magic was at play and that rest, while it felt like I needed it, wasn't going to fix anything in the end.

“Of course it is.” She clicked her tongue and donned a very matronly expression. “You’ve been through quite a lot and that nasty woman went too far too many times. Once was too many times,” she muttered angrily, “but repeated injuries have made it even worse. If we do not choose a time to rest and let our body heal, the body will choose it for us.”

On any other health mater I might have conceded to her point, but this didn’t feel like just a simple physical issue that would mend with some rest and rich food. I had been a fool to mess with using my power to the extent I had, as much as I loathed to admit it, the cleric had been correct in her warnings not to extend my powers without someone to monitor.

“When is the healer arriving?” I asked.

“Soon, I hope. I told Martha to send for the one that nursed your father through a very bad fever when you were very young. It was very touch and go with him that winter, but the doctor was able to get him to pull through and have him back on his feet when we all thought he was a goner. If anyone in this kingdom will know what to do it will be him.” She turned her attention to the basin once again and dipped the rag into the bowl, then squeezed the excess water from it before placing it on my forehead and applying gentle pressure. “It will feel like he will get here much sooner if you just close your eyes and rest. Remember how I used to convince you to sleep the night before your birthday by telling you it would make it come quicker?”

“Of course and you were right, it did make it feel like it came quicker.” I had figured out it had been a ploy just to get me to sleep when I was still fairly young, but it still worked, I would cover up my head and lay begging my body to sleep despite being excited so I could wake up the next morning and run downstairs to see what exactly had been bought for me that year.

“Now close your eyes and pretend it’s your birthday tomorrow. I won’t move an inch while you sleep and be right here for you.” She positioned the cloth to comfortably lay over my eyes, then wrapped her hand comfortingly around mine. “Nothing is going to happen to you on my watch.” Her face dropped slightly and tears appeared in the corner of her eyes. "I won't let anything happen to you again, I may never forgive myself for not fighting for you at the very start of this whole terrible ordeal."

I was glad for the cloth over my eyes, it hid the tears welling up. “Okay, I will try to sleep now.” I didn't know what else to say, I didn't feel like I had the strength, physically or emotionally to try to comfort her in the moment. While I always just told myself she was mostly just a servant who had been tasked with raising me and was just kind to me, she had spent more time with me than she had any of her actual children. I felt close to her in a way I hadn't my parents and it pained me to see her so upset.

Between the cool cloth, the comforting hand on mine, and the nursemaid’s soft humming of a lullaby I was asleep in moments. My dreams were muddled masses of feelings and emotions more than images and sounds. It felt like I was free falling endlessly into a dark void where I could sense things just beyond my perception but couldn’t move or do anything to gain any clarity. There was an itchy tingle in the back of my consciousness that told me I was being watched, though I didn’t know how or by who. The feeling made me uncomfortable and no matter how much I fought to try to focus and make out anything in the undulating darkness, I was left ignorant and unable to do anything but let what would happen, happen. I had settled into a sort of unhappy comfort with the situation when a feeling of impending doom griped my chest, like I had suddenly become aware that I was rapidly accelerating towards the ground. I tried to thrash and fight uselessly and screamed silently into the void around me.

“Easy, easy,” said an aged male voice that cut through the darkness, “I’m here to help you.”

I couldn’t place the voice, it wasn’t someone I had heard before and the sudden presence of a voice made me feel even more uneasy.

“I need you to wake up,” they said gently, but sternly.

Wake up? Right, I had gone to sleep, this wasn’t real, I needed to wake up and get out of the nightmare I was stuck in. It felt so real though, like it had invaded my consciousness and taken me hostage. Maybe I would stay in the dream forever, be doomed to fall endlessly in a space where time no longer mattered.

“Florin!”

A violent shake brought me out of my dreams with a great gasp of air. My lungs burned and my neck hurt from being violently whipped back and forth.

“Oh thank goodness,” my nursemaid said, voice near a hysterical scream. “I thought we lost you!”

“I’m okay,” I managed to mutter out. My own voice felt distant and foreign like someone was pretending to be me in the same room.

“Now you are,” the man muttered, pulling my shoulders forward and forcing me to sit up. “Get the pillows piled up behind him, no more sleeping flat.”

The nursemaid jumped into action, hastily stuffing pillows behind me while I groggily tried to stay awake. The allure of giving in and going back to sleep was strong, almost like something was beckoning to me, whispering how wonderful sleep would be if I would just let it overtake me once more. Even though I was still very much out of it, I was conscious enough to be terrified that there was obviously something very, very wrong with me.

“We’ve got to get him more conscious,” the man said.

I let out a startled yelp as a spray of cold water drenched my face and front of my sleeping gown. Instantly I began to shiver and my teeth chattered together, it felt like I had no body heat of my own left.

“He’ll catch a cold like that!”

“I can cure a cold, but I need him to be alive first.”

My blood ran cold and I started to make a concerted force of will to break through the groggy haze that was enveloping me. Maybe this is what it felt like to die and I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I started by wriggling my fingers and really paying attention to the feeling of the fabric beneath them, then I started focusing on the cold water soaking my clothes, then the smells of my bedroom, taking every avenue I could to try to connect my mind and body back to the real world and convince it to leave the dreams behind. Suddenly my sight returned, which was really startling since I hadn’t even fully grasped that I had been blind at all. An older man whom I had never met before was staring at eye level with me, his lips set into a firm, worried line.

“Coming back to us?”

“Uh huh,” I replied weakly.

“Good, your eyes look more focused so I think you’re out of the worst part of it.” His voice sounded so calm and in charge that I couldn’t help but feel a bit safer.

“Coming out of what?!” She was still near hysterics.

“That’s something I’m going to be working on figuring out,” the man soothed, “nothing to worry about for now, he’s back and with us.”

Blinking my eyes rapidly a few times helped me to further surface and I felt connected enough to bring my hands to either side of me and lift myself up enough to readjust my position to something a bit more comfortable. Sadly my legs still sat as dead weight, they were refusing to wake up with the rest of me.

“Do you think you’re well enough now to answer some simple questions for me?”

I nodded to who I was going to assume was the healer who had been sent for me. He seemed about the right age, old enough for deep set wrinkles to have invaded his forehead and all of his hair to be an ashy white. Most healers had to be decently advanced in their age before they were truly trusted, poor peasants might have to accept a young apprentice to assist them, but only the most elderly and experienced healers would attend to a royal.

“Have you been more tired recently?”

“Of course he has,” she answered for me, “that nasty woman tortured him and broken his body more times than I can count.”

The healer turned to her and smiled gently, but firmly put a hand on her arm. “I need you to let him speak for himself right now, it can be dangerous to have words accidentally put in his mouth or him not tell me some symptom. The best help you can be right now would be to take this bowl.” He paused, picked up the now empty water basin and gently placed it into her hands. “Take it to the purest water you can find, nothing that’s been sitting around the castle for too long, directly from the well that you draw yourself most preferable. Fill it up, then bring it back. Before you do though, make sure you find the cleanest, softest cloth you can, the more pure and soft the cloth the better it’s going to help our young lord.”

She looked to me with concern and alarm, clutching the bowl to her stomach, but slowly she turned towards the door and left the room to complete her mission. As soon as the door closed softly behind her she broke into a quick jog, frantically wanting to complete her assigned tasks as quickly as possible.

The healer let out a long sigh through his nose, but there was a smile on his face. “Sometimes the hardest part of helping someone heal is getting people who mean well but are going to get in the way doing something that makes them feel helpful in a non-obstructive way. It would be helpful to me if when she comes back with the cloth and water that you really seem to appreciate the cool water on your face and perk up a bit if you’re able to every time she comes back after I have her change it out. I know it’s not doing much, you know that too, but she doesn’t need to know that. Alright?”

“I can do that,” I agreed. It was an ingenious solution that was an overall positive for everyone involved, I could see why he was widely regarded as the best there was in the kingdom.

“Good, now back to my question: have you been feeling more tired lately?”

“Yes, I took a very long nap early today, then I fell asleep again in a chair while I was working with the royal scribe. Particularly with the scribe I found it harder to wake up than what would be normal, he seemed concerned about it too.”

“Concerned?” the man raised his eyebrow in a questioning expression. “What was he concerned about?”

I furrowed my brow trying to remember his exact words, but found they had melted away from all the grogginess and disorientation from the dreams. It frightened me that I had so easily forgotten, it was not like me to start forgetting things that happened not so long ago.

“Something about how I was sleeping really deeply,” I answered.

“Having trouble with memory as well,” he said to himself, a contemplative look on his face.

“I guess so, though that doesn’t worry me as much as the fact I can’t walk anymore or feel my legs at all for that matter.”

“That will be the second problem we tackle,” he said, “you stopping breathing in your sleep and having a strong desire to return to sleep is a much more pressing issue.”

“I stopped breathing?” I asked in alarm. My heart pounded in my chest, what I had felt was the thick, suffocating embrace of death trying to drag me down. Perhaps it hadn’t been simply a dream at all.

“Let’s not panic, no good will come of that. It could be because you were laying flat, some people simply can’t sleep flat or they risk stopping breathing, though it is a bit worrying if you were doing similar while sitting up earlier.” He paused and felt around my neck, gingerly working his way around from the base of my jaw down to my collar bones. “Any congestion or cough recently?”

“Not at all, I don’t feel ill at all really, just groggy and sleepy.”

He nodded as if he already knew the answer, but had to ask anyway to make sure. “What about this business your nurse was talking about? Someone has been physical with you?”

I really didn’t know where to begin and part of me did not want to air all my dirty laundry to someone who I just met, but when faced with the idea that I had already almost died and he was trying to stop it from happening again, I decided to suck it up and tell everything. The words spilled from my lips and it ended up being easier to talk about than I thought, I suppose at some level I wanted someone to know everything and maybe understand. Part way through I started to wonder if he would even believe me, it all sounded ridiculous at some points, but his serious expression never wavered and he kept nodding his head to indicate that he was listening and processing.

“That everything?” he asked once I had finally run out of things to say.

“I think so,” I said quietly, anxious if he would believe all of it or not. If I was in his position I wasn’t sure that I would.

“Overall this might be a touch out of my expertise,” he said, “but I might know someone who can help a bit better.”

“You believe me?” I said in shock.

“What is there not to believe? The part about magic being real and such? I’m a healer, I’ve seen things happen that I can’t even begin to explain with normal logic. I’ve seen people I’m sure were possessed, mangled limbs that straightened themselves out over night, and blind people who got touched by someone with a ‘gift’ who could then see. I long ago stopped believing that reality was so cut and dry to be only the things I can personally see and feel. This woman I’m going to send for to come advise treatment for you, she spent one day with someone I was sure was going to be dead by dawn and by dusk the next night they were up and about their normal life like nothing happened. She claimed that she could heal them when I couldn’t because she had abilities that I do not, I’m inclined to believe her, so let’s have her take a look. If there is something like magic at play she’ll be able to help you much more than I can.”