Episode 62: Healing Time (Indigo)

Her own problems aside, Indigo had promised to look after Aadya’s needs today, whatever they were, and to go and meet Zach. Rhyss. Whatever his name was.

She dragged her focus away from the terror about Camilla, which threatened to overwhelm her ability to function, and set her mind on Aadya’s needs.

Indigo hadn’t been through a divorce. Her very boring, bland, former husband hadn’t survived her trial. If he had, she was certain they would have divorced.

She was also certain that if she’d divorced Gramm she would have mourned him even less than she mourned his death. They had never been in love. They’d hardly been in like. Losing him wasn’t a good reference for how Aadya must be feeling.

If she lost Zero, now, that was a different matter altogether. She tried to imagine how her days would progress if he left her. It was bleak.

What would help, ultimately, was distraction.

And Konrad had told her not to revive the distraction.

What a piece of work he was. Oh I am charged with protecting the kingdom and keeping it stable and secure, except when it involves keeping the royal marriage intact because it turns out that even though I’m gay I like queen sex. Until I don’t, and then I’ll pull out my entire support and become rigid and awkward while we both pretend I didn’t just crush your soul.

Not that Indigo was annoyed with Konrad for the way he’d treated Aadya, or anything.

Nope, not one bit.

She found Aadya in the garden, palm-deep in red dirt. “Do you have a bit?” she asked. “I need a favor.”

Indigo loved to paint, Aadya loved to garden.

Both of them loved their husbands and their children.

And Aadya had lost hers, and had no one to blame but herself and Konrad.

Indigo tried to soften her posture, to be warm and present.

Aadya dusted her hands off on her linen pants. “Of course. What do you need? How are you?”

Like Indigo, Aadya could queen through any crisis. It wasn’t phony, or forced, it was just a realignment of priorities that put the self last and the everyone else first.

The only difference between them, really, was that Indigo, though she had been trained to be disciplined and giving and loving as any queen, didn’t have a throne to rule. She’d lost hers. And she had no one to blame but herself.

It was an old wound, that Indigo didn’t care to pick at, but supporting Aadya meant revisiting those long-ignored feelings of deficiency.

“I’m stressed about Zach,” she announced. Aadya didn’t have a clue who Zach was. Indigo and Zero weren’t in the habit of drizzling their heartache all over the family for them to share in; they liked their troubles private, held between them. Even their children hadn’t known about Zach until this week, when Zero had gotten out a photo album and shared Zach’s story with the kids.

Robotic, Aadya offered, “Would you like to get tea or something to eat, and we can talk?”

Tea?

Why not. Maybe they could invite Giana along for added stress.

“He bought a house and it’s a falling apart disaster on the bay. I was hoping you could help plan some renovations, maybe help me bond with him a little. Zero says he’s angry.”

Aadya’s eyes glazed over the later details, but at least they’d sparked at the beginning, about the renovations. “Sure. Do you have blueprints? Are we allowed to enter the property?”

“I have nothing,” she said, like it was such a shame.

It was a shame, but she was also terrified of doing this. Hi, strange boy who hates our family, I’m your not-mom. I have no memories of you, but I love that you’re angry because it shows you have spirit and if you weren’t angry after what you’ve been through I’d be seriously worried about your mental health.

But she wouldn’t share her trepidation with Aadya; she was here to help, not to burden.

“Yes, we can enter the property. We might be kicked out right away, but it’s worth a try.”

She would love to be kicked out by Zero Junior, all the tenacity of Zero wrapped up in one firecracker of teenage hormones and justified indignation. That would be an adventure.

Aadya laughed, forced. “Is Zero busy?”

Zero had scheduled a cars playdate with Niels, which she suspected was done as a way to keep his mind occupied while he knew she was off ingratiating herself with Zach.

She told Aadya so, and then added, “And later today he’s helping Spence with that career fair.”

“So, no Spence either?” Aadya mused. “Do you think Spaden would be capable of a complex spell or should I see Sam? If we only have a short period of time, I want to memorize the house exactly as it is. Zero has done it before for me.”

Indigo was aware that her mouth was partly open as she stared at Aadya, but she’d just had an idea. A surprise for Zero while he went through all this stress, and a beacon for Aadya.

She’d never done wicca magic. She hated it, counted it as a reminder that this wasn’t her body.

But for Zero, for Aadya…

“I can do it,” she offered. She hoped Aadya got the message. I can change, I can adapt. Yes, I have lost, but I have also chosen to find.

She hoped she really could do it or it was going to go down as one of the worst metaphors in kingdom history.

“You can?” Aadya asked, surprise mingled with a tiny droplet of hope. “Okay. The spell creates a replica from memory. It’s applied as eye drops.”

“Do you need it before we go or after?” Indigo asked her.

“Before,” Aadya said, so they set off toward the palace, toward Zero’s office.

“Who told you about Zach?” Indigo asked as they walked.

Aadya shook her head slightly. “I don’t know about Zach. I just thought I was supposed to, by the way you brought it up.”

Well, that had failed.

Oh, well.

Indigo delved into the story of Zach’s death, revival, upbringing, and discovery of his identity.

Aadya, back in robot mode, replied, “Ah. I’m sorry. That sounds very stressful and confusing for you.”

Indigo rolled her eyes. Even though they were walking side-by-side, she hoped Aadya saw.

“Have you talked to him much?” Aadya asked. “Does he resemble either of you?”

“I’ve never met him,” Indigo admitted with forced joviality. If Aadya was going to play robot, Indigo was going to be obnoxious circus clown. “But Zero had a fun encounter. They stopped just short of telling each other where they could burn.”

Aadya nodded her head like she understood. “That’s unfortunate.”

If Aadya were Spence, Indigo would goad her a little now, force her to think. That probably wouldn’t work for her, so Indigo stayed silent. After a minute, Aadya asked, “Do you have any ideas for how to help him accept our help with the house?”

“Not yet.” And if Aadya didn’t step up and help, she never would. “I’m still sorting that. But in the meantime, I thought you should know that Zero’s teaching me magic.” It wasn’t really a lie because it was about to be true, now that she’d decided it, and Aadya needed to see her moving forward with her own life.

She opened the door and told Aadya – with confidence only because she knew Naomi had been a powerful wiccan before Indigo had taken over the body – “I can track and revive someone. We have DNA here.”

It stood to reason that if Naomi could do those things, so could Indigo. Different soul, same body, and Indigo doubted that Naomi had better focus than Indigo did. Her magic might even be better than Naomi’s had been.

It was time for Indigo to move on and accept that this was her body. It had been eighteen years, Zero loved her in this body. It was time she learned to love herself too.

“How are you liking it?” Aadya asked.

Indigo thumbed her way through Zero’s spell book, searching for one that looked like the memory spell he’d made Aadya. “It takes more focus than I expected,” she invented, and then she added as a joke, “I’m surprised Spaden’s as good as he is.” She felt a little bad for throwing that out there, but she needed to see if Aadya could even pretend to laugh. The answer was no.

Indigo turned, back against Zero’s counter, and regarded Aadya seriously. “Do you want me to find her?” she offered.

Now she laughed, but it was more from confusion than Indigo’s joke at Spaden’s expense. “Her?” she asked. Then her face grew taut and tired. “Oh. No, I don’t think so. Just the spell for the blueprints.” She reached around Indigo and slid the spellbook off the counter. She opened it to a page about a third of the way through, were a clarity-of-memory spell was written in Zero’s sloping hand. “This one.”

Indigo pulled the dried ingredients out of Zero’s cabinet and looked at them.

She was skeptical that a few dried herbs and some clary sage oil were a wise thing to drip into the eyes, but they were Aadya’s eyes, which would heal quickly, so…

She began the work of mixing the ingredients in order, sometimes turning the stirrer a certain direction, sometimes measuring small portions of different things. Spellwork was precise, she knew; at least as precise as painting and contracts. It was one of the many passions she and Zero shared; pride in a difficult task done well.

Someone else came into the room, and she stood up, prepared to explain her idea to Zero in a way that wouldn’t make it clear to Aadya, but it wasn’t Zero.

It was Konrad. He looked like he hadn’t slept well. He slapped a Babylonian newspaper on the table in front of Aadya. “You were right.”

Indigo did her best to look at the paper. Zero had a knack for disappearing when people had private conversations in his office, so Indigo tried to do the same.

“What was I right about?” Aadya asked. She’d stepped closer to him, like something was pushing her toward him.

He stepped closer to her, too. “It would have been easier to keep her here.”

They stood, frozen, inches from each other.

Wow.

Indigo really didn’t want to be there anymore, but she kept working on the spell.

Aadya snapped out of it first. She put her hand on the counter and stepped away from him, body rigid and eyes masked. “Oh,” she said in a flat voice, back to full-robot mode. “I’m sorry. What can I do to help? Or do we need to leave the situation be?”

“I’m tempted to ignore it at this point,” Konrad told her. He stepped away, too, his thumb over the hilt of his sword, tense. Then he asked Aadya’s advice.

Indigo didn’t think she’d ever heard him do that before; usually he made suggestions and Aadya either listened or didn’t.

Aadya picked up the newspaper and read it in silence for a moment. “I think the body should disappear,” she said, decisive.

“Alright.” Konrad released the grip on his sword. “I’ll have Spence bring it here.”

Indigo glared at the book. She knew Spence was training under him. She’d grown up in a palace, raised her kids in this one. Most of her life had been this world, and she knew the responsibilities unique to someone in Konrad’s position.

Spence had chosen that.

It was, without a doubt, the most baffling decision he’d made to date. Oh, yeah, Mom, I love doing the dirty work so I want that to be my future.

And then the gubernatorial plans, in addition to that.

How could she not worry?

How could she not grow anxious when Konrad discussed sending Spence alone to another realm to steal a child’s body from a secure location?

“I would like to handle it,” Aadya protested. “I’ll have an explanation for my absence.”

“Alright.” Konrad stepped toward the door. “As you like.”

Aadya shifted her attention to Indigo. Indigo pretended she’d ignored the whole conversation and made herself seem surprised that Aadya was talking to her.

“Would you prefer to do the house first or have me handle Nellie’s body?”

Indigo did her fake surprise, and then smiled warmly. If it came to a choice between hiding from Zach for a while more, versus a little girl being dead longer than she had to be, it wasn’t even a choice.

“She should come first,” she assured Aadya. “We can catch Zach another day if we miss him.”

“I’ll try to be quick,” Aadya promised. She had more fervor. Indigo felt excited. So, Indigo hadn’t managed to stir her from her funk at all, but Konrad had done it.

If it weren’t for the fact that Konrad wouldn’t have a clue how to do such a thing, she would suspect he’d faked the news story after regretting his decision yesterday.

Aadya looked at Konrad. “I’m willing to accept a guard if necessary, a fairy only.”

“I trust you,” Konrad said. His eyes had wandered until they found one of Zero’s medical posters that explained the anatomy of the brain.

“I’ll move her, then,” Aadya said from the doorway.

“Alright,” Konrad muttered, like he wasn’t even listening. He continued reading the poster.

Aadya left.

Indigo went back to her spell. The final instruction: Pour oil and water mixture over dry ingredients in three concentric circles, moving outward and deasil.

She stopped working long enough to look up what deasil meant and then completed the spell.

To her shock, everything dissolved into a faintly lavender, translucent mix.

She smiled at it.

Pride in a difficult task, done well.

She got one of Zero’s eyedroppers out of the drawer near the sink and added the mixture to it before she sealed it off and set it on the counter to be ready for whenever Aadya was ready to go, whether it was today or tomorrow.

“I read once that the sides of the brain control opposite sides of the body,” Konrad said, peering at another poster about the brain. “What do you suppose the caudate nucleus is?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Indigo said.

She also wasn’t sure why Konrad cared. He didn’t usually need to fill silence with small talk or pointless questions.

“You don’t want me training your son,” he commented. “Why not?”

“I never said that,” she said. It was useless to argue; he always knew. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

“I’m three thousand years older than you are and I’ve done this most of my life, without the Dragon protection.” He picked up the hand of Zero’s skeleton and studied it for a moment. “Pins. Are the bones real or some sort of chemically-generated material?”

“Probably plastic,” Indigo guessed, because wiccans were paranoid about how bodies were used. Or he’d gotten it in Babylon so that he could get a real one, but she doubted it.

“All these bones have names,” Konrad told her. He ran his hand over one of the thumb bones. “And every bone has muscles and tendons which connect it to the other bones, and all of those have names.”

“That is true,” Indigo agreed. She wasn’t sure where Konrad was headed with this one.

“And every animal has a unique set of bones and tendons and muscles and organs, which make it that animal and not any other.” He met her eyes. “Isn’t that fascinating?”

Indigo didn’t really care about bodies, as long as she had a working one. She remembered the horrifying transformation from her old, stick-insect body to her new curvy one, what a challenge it had been to get used to being so different, so much the same.

She didn’t know Konrad was prone to philosophical endeavors.

“To some people,” she hedged.

To her relief, Aadya returned then, carrying Nellie’s body. It was blue and swollen and reminded Indigo of why so many people feared death.

A body was a precious thing. No one wanted to imagine his own body, never mind the body of one they loved, in this state.

Indigo whipped her head to Konrad, harsher than she expected, “This would have been much easier yesterday,” she informed him hotly.

It was wrong to get Aadya’s hopes up again.

Still, she used the dragons to call out to anyone with a familiar who could possibly help with this. She sort of hoped Zero was still around, since he was skilled here and she was new to this.

Spaden came in first, directly from the apartment. “What’s up?” he asked.

“We’re going to try to bring this little girl back,” she told him. She watched his eyes skim over Nellie’s body as his focus shifted to doing serious magic. She loved watching Spaden shift into serious-mode, because he was so casual and goofy the rest of the time.

“Oh, cool,” he said. He started washing his hands. “What do you need me to do?”

Zero came in through the hall, not from the apartment. Her body hummed with the warmth of his presence, relief that he would take charge of this and wouldn’t unintentionally sabotage it.

“Change of plans?” he asked. He rested his hand on the small of Indigo’s back in greeting before he stepped further into the room.

“There’s been a complication in Babylon,” Indigo told him, nodding toward Nellie’s body.

“It’s been resolved,” Aadya assured everyone. She moved up by Nellie’s head and ran her fingers through Nellie’s wet hair. “She’ll be able to go back to her realm as desired.”

“How did you arrange that?” Konrad asked.

Indigo choked back a laugh; Konrad stood holding the skeleton’s hand like they were dating, facing the room together hand-in-hand.

“I convinced a family member to allow me to bring her back and care for her, in exchange for pretending she has a rare medical condition that mimics death.” Aadya went on to explain the complicated explanation she’d invented to justify Nellie’s survival.

“Alright,” Konrad said.

“Spaden,” Zero said, taking charge as always, “do you want to help your mom collect the ingredients we need?”

Spaden met Indigo’s eyes with surprise but also calm. “Sure,” he said.

They went out to the garden together, and Spaden explained, patiently, each ingredient they needed in order to do the spell, and why. He was quick and efficient and had a basket of supplies in just a few minutes.

By the time they’d returned to Zero’s office, Sam and Spence had arrived as well. They now had plenty of extra wiccans. A spell like this required five people. The only other time Indigo had done wicca magic had been when Spence died. She’d stood at his head on the perimeter of the pentacle and called to him.

They’d be doing the same here.

Except that Nellie’s mom wasn’t here to call to her. That was a tragedy of its own and might ruin the whole thing.

“Is the mother here?” Sam asked, looking around. His eyes settled on Aadya as the most likely candidate, because half her kids were as pale as Meldrick.

“She knows I intend to be,” Aadya said. She squared her shoulders.

“You should stand at her head,” Sam instructed. He used charcoal to draw a pentacle on the floor of Zero’s office, and together he and Aadya lowered Nellie onto the star so that her head was at one point and her hands and feet pointed toward the other four.

“Spence,” Zero decided, “You should be the one to sit out.”

“Okay,” Spence agreed. He sat against the wall and watched.

Indigo wondered, as she helped cut something that smelled like fresh cinnamon almost, why Zero had chosen Spence to sit out and not her. It was huge. She was terrified she’d mess it up and ruin things even more for Aadya.

Before she’d collected her nerves and reminded them to behave, Zero had put everything into a power blender and added the shimmering blue substance that could regenerate life from nothing.

Konrad and Spence stayed off to the side while the rest of them took points on the pentacle. They put the electric blue goop on their assigned parts of Nellie one at a time – Indigo was assigned the heart, which seemed too important for her to take, but she didn’t argue.

The blue absorbed into Nellie’s skin, which changed so that it looked normal and healthy instead of grey-blue and distorted and swollen.

Everyone called her name, starting with Aadya and moving clockwise around the circle until Zero said it last.

Then they waited, silent.

Indigo dreaded the possibility that she’d messed it up.

Nellie’s eyes flickered.

Indigo breathed again, relaxed, as Nellie’s eyes opened the rest of the way.

“Hi,” Nellie said, in a little girl voice.

Aadya was crying. Indigo stepped away from her point on the pentacle and leaned against Zero, let him absorb her relief while Aadya hugged Nellie.

“He said I’m going to be a princess and live forever!” Nellie announced. She sat up – or Aadya pulled her up, Indigo wasn’t sure – and hugged Aadya tightly.

“You are,” Aadya promised her. “You learned our language?”

“The angels can do anything.” Nellie explained.

Indigo wished Nell were here. When Spence had died, he’d met Drey, and Drey and Nell had dated for nearly seven hundred years. They’d been married, raised kids together, had a life outside of their roles as prince and king.

If Nellie had met Drey, she wanted her brother to know. A news update, anything.

“How do you feel, Nellie?” Zero asked. He knelt beside her, where she sat in Aadya’s lap.

“So good!” She touched her head. “My headache is gone. The angel said it would be.” She stood up, looking around at everyone.

“Would you like to go out for a treat?” Aadya offered, as she stood too.

Nellie jumped up and down and her arms flapped with excitement for a second. “Yes! Please!”

“Is that spell ready?” Aadya asked Indigo. “We can stop by quickly on our way.”

Right. Zach.

Indigo’s anxiety returned like a flutter of feathers settling back in place. “Yes.” She passed Aadya the eye-dropper she’d made and then glanced up at Zero. “I made a memory potion too.”

He kissed her, his hungry kiss that said We’ll continue this conversation later, in bed.

Once Aadya had moved away a little, she tilted her face towards Zero’s and whispered, “Konrad’s been weird this morning.”

“How so?” he asked.

She nodded toward where Konrad stood against the wall, still holding the skeleton’s hand, with a vague expression. “Distracted,” she said. “I’m not sure…” she didn’t know how to finish that sentence. Not sure about what? If he’d had a psychotic break? If he was remotely functional? He’d managed some things this morning.

But something was very off.

“I’ll look into it for you,” Zero promised. He kissed her again, more hunger.

“Later,” she teased, pulling away.

He laughed. “I know. What are you doing after this? The house still?”

Meeting Zach. She took a deep breath. “I think so. You have Niels?”

Later was going to be at the end of a long, exhausting day.

It couldn’t be coincidence that Camilla was missing the same day Konrad seemed so strange. Something was very off.

“I have Niels,” he confirmed. “I’ll see you later this afternoon.”

If they were lucky.

Aadya stepped alongside Indigo and grinned. “It’s a good thing you’re still in love with him,” she mused. “I wouldn’t want divorce to become fashionable.”

Indigo made eye contact with Zero over the top of Aadya’s head. A joke.

Aadya might not be better yet, but she’d get there. She would be okay.

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