Young Writers Society

Rana slept even better that night than she did the night before. She learned just how to bend to get comfortable on the ground and felt a stronger sense of security that Jayk didn’t plan on harming her while she slept. The next morning, she woke, ate, and helped tear down the camp.

She got braver as she walked amongst the men. She still tried to keep Jayk or Glynn in sight, but she found the courage to roam further away from them. She held various conversations with the men she met, getting to know more and more about her traveling companions.

“So… what do you all… actually… you know, do?” Rana asked, sidling up to Glynn as they walked.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you just roam around robbing people?”

“Well, that is kind of what thieves are notorious for doing…”

“So, the widow in Gnamrey didn’t actually end up with my purse of coins after all, did she?”

“Oh, no, she did,” Glynn said. “Jayk always gives a part of what we take to people who need it.”

“So… steal from the rich, give to the needy?” Rana said. “Like Robin Hood?”

“Robin Hood was a socialist jerk,” Jayk said, suddenly appearing to her right.

“And you’re not?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t steal from rich people just because they’re rich, just like I don’t give money to poor people just ‘cause they’re poor. Think of it as merit-based charity. I only steal from the ones who deserve it, and I only give to the ones who earn it.”

“And my father deserved it?”

Jayk lifted an eyebrow, looking at her skeptically.

“Fair,” she agreed, shrinking under his gaze. Her father did deserve it. He was greedy and didn’t care about anyone other than himself. She figured he’d throw a fit if he knew that she’d willingly handed over her gifts from Synakrein to the bandits the night she snuck out. He hated how freely she gave her money away.

“How’s your wrists?”

“They’re fine,” Rana answered instinctively, used to lying about how she felt.

“Let me see.”

Rana rolled her sleeves half-way up her forearms and carefully unwrapped the bandage on her right wrist. She wrinkled her nose at the smell once the bandage was free and had to swallow hard to keep from gagging at the sight. Parts of wound were crimson and scabbing over nicely, but parts of it were covered in yellow infection.

“Doesn’t look so fine,” Jayk commented.

“They’ll be okay,” she insisted. She took the edge of the bandage and wiped at the infection, trying to clear the wound out.

“How’s the other one?”

Rana hesitated, then unwrapped her left wrist. It was in a similar condition to the other one. She cleaned it as best she could, but then wrapped up the bandages and tucked them into her pocket to wash out later. Her wrists clearly weren’t doing well wrapped up, so she hoped airing them out would help them heal.

“Here, let me,” Jayk said.

“Let you what?”

“Just trust me, okay?” Jayk said. “Give me your hands.”

Rana hesitated, then held her arms out towards him as they walked. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she did trust him. If he claimed he could help her wrists heal, she was inclined to believe him. Jayk looked them over for a moment then nodded. “This’ll hurt a bit, but won’t last long, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jayk wrapped his hand around her wrist, causing a sharp pain to shoot up her forearm. He muttered some words under his breath, and suddenly it felt like he was calling fire down on her arm. The heat merged with a stabbing sensation, making the pain much worse than it had been.

Then, just as suddenly as the pain started, it was over. Rana jerked her arms away, out of breath, and looked at Jayk distrustfully. She hadn’t expected it to hurt quite as badly as it did, when he warned her that it was going to hurt. She glared at him. “Ouch.”

“It’s over now.”

“What did you do?”

Jayk silently gestured at her wrists. She looked down and stared in wonder as she saw the skin was perfectly repaired. There was no blood, no infection, no scabs. There wasn’t even a scar. In the place of the scrapes on her wrists she saw perfect, soft skin. “How’d you…?”

“The Vim,” Jayk said, shrugging. “It’s quite useful.”

“What is it?”

“Well, simply put, it’s the energy of the universe,” he said. “Everything has energy. You, me, that rock. And all you have to do is harness the energy in the Vim, and make it do what you want.”

“Why does it hurt so much?”

“I just did several weeks’ worth of healing in a few seconds,” Jayk said. “I can speed up the process, but I can’t dull the pain. So, you got those weeks of pain condensed into a few agonizing seconds while your skin repaired itself.”

“Wow… what else can it do?” Rana asked, staring at her wrists in wonder.

“Lots of things,” Jayk answered with a grin. “You can pick things up. Move things. It’s really quite useful.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Well… a rope, for example,” Jayk said. “If you get tied up. You can use the Vim to untie the knots. You can use the Vim to work the locking mechanism in cuffs so you don’t tear up your wrists like that, or to unlock a door you need to go through. Or you can use it to pick up a dagger lying on the ground and hurdle it at an enemy.”

“Cool!” Rana said. Her eyes lit up with excitement. She’d never heard of the Vim before. She knew there were various types of magic out there — some summoned spirits, some relied on potions and props, and some used a different force entirely. But Father was suspicious of all the types, and she’d never managed to learn about any of them. “Can you teach me how to use it?”

“I could,” Jayk said. “But why should I?”

“Well why shouldn’t you?” Rana retorted.

“What if you decided to use it against me?”

“I wouldn’t,” she promised. “Please teach me? I really want to know.”

Glynn chuckled. Rana reminded him of Jayk, when he was a lad. Now that he had a bit of age on him, Jayk liked playing it cool, pretending that nothing could ever get to him. But as a boy, he was every bit as desperate to learn everything he could as Rana was. He begged with almost exactly the same words for Glynn to teach him how to fight with his eyes closed.

“You think this is funny?” Jayk asked, turning an irritable glare on Glynn.

“Of course I think it’s funny,” Glynn said. “And I think you should teach her.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” Glynn said, grinning. “She’s eager to learn. She’s bright enough to pick it up. And I don’t imagine one lil girl is gonna to get strong enough for us to have to worry about, in the few weeks she’ll be with us. There’s no harm in teachin’ her.”

Rana looked towards Jayk with wide, hopeful eyes. In that moment, she would’ve given anything to convince him to agree. She was fascinated by this Vim, and she wanted to learn everything about it that she could. She couldn’t imagine anything more interesting than controlling the universe’s energy.

“Oh, fine, then,” Jayk grumbled. “But you’re gonna have to practice and do as I say.”

“Thank you!” Rana said, excited.

Jayk grunted in response. He bent and grabbed a small pebble as they walked, then held it in his open palm to show Rana. “Everything gives off energy. You can’t see it, but once you train you can learn to feel it. This little stone is vibrating in my hand. All I have to do is tap into its Vim. And then you can control it.”

Rana watched in wonder as the stone suddenly leapt into the air and levitated above Jayk’s hand. It hung in mid-air, perfectly steady. As abruptly as it rose in the air, it floated through the air and hung just in front of her face. Jayk gestured for her to take it.

Rana reached out for the stone, catching it as the forcing holding it in the air dissipated. Rana looked the pebble over, still surprised that it wasn’t some sort of gimmick. It was a perfectly ordinary stone, and yet Jayk could somehow hold it in the air without touching it.

“Go ahead and practice with that a bit,” Jayk said. “Once you can keep it in the air, we’ll get you started with learning useful skills.”

The next three weeks passed quickly.

Each morning Rana helped tear down the camp, then walked with the men all day. It didn’t take long for her to become a favorite in the camp. As her suspicion began to fade, her enthusiasm began to bubble. She started venturing further and further from Jayk, until she stopped looking for him altogether. Instead, she roamed amongst the men making new friends each day.

Each evening, Glynn continued training her. It didn’t take long for her to catch on, and soon she could even dodge and block a few blows with her own eyes closed. Some nights the other men would spar, and she’d usually talk her way into getting them to show her new techniques.

Each day, she’d catch up with Jayk at some point during the journey and get him to instruct her in the Vim. She picked up on it quickly. Jayk said that often people took many months to learn what she picked up on a few weeks. She moved on from making things levitate, to learning how to throw things using the Vim, how to untie knots without touching the rope, and how to unlatch locks.

By the time they reached Algnes, Rana didn’t want to go back. Her time with Jayk had been some of the most freeing of any in her life. Instead of continually telling her that she was never enough or wrong, the men encouraged her talents. They loved that she could fight so well and encouraged her enthusiasm. She loved that they accepted her how she was.

“Come on, Rana,” Jayk said one day, just after they’d finished eating lunch.

“Where are we going?” Rana asked, bouncing over to him happily.

“You’ll see,” Jayk said.

“Well what—”

“Stop asking questions,” Jayk interrupted, more terse than usual. “Just practice or something.”

Rana looked at him curiously. His typical, light-hearted demeanor was gone. Instead he walked with a stoic look on his face, refusing to look at her. She shrugged and pulled a length of rope from her pocket. She quickly tied half a dozen knots in the rope, pulling them as tight as she could. Then she used the Vim and one-by-one worked out each of the knots in turn.

“Jayk?”

Rana looked up from her rope as she heard a familiar voice calling. A moment later they pushed their way through a bush in the path, then found themselves in a small clearing. Aldik was standing in the clearing already, Glynn on one side and Drayan on the other.

“Aldik!” Rana said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”