Free The Fox's Quest by Anna Frost Page B

this, she’d be reinforcing the bad fusion.
    “Can… can you heal it, Ms. Fox?” Short Boy watched her worshipfully, likely recalling every story he’d ever heard about good spirits and miraculous healing. Half the stories told about white spirits involved raising the dead back to life, which proved you just couldn’t trust stories.
    What could she say? Never tried, don’t know how?
    It’d have to be broken anew, she said.
    “Break it then. I promise I won’t cry.”
    Sanae stared at his determined little face. He was, what, seven years of age at best? She wasn’t in the business of breaking children’s bones!
    “I can help!” Medium Boy, who was barely older but far more muscular, shuffled close. “My grandmother fixes people sometimes. I’ve helped her set broken bones.”
    Healing couldn’t be that difficult. The other spirits she’d met had more clouds than wits in their heads and they could figure it out. How could a smart girl like her not be able to do it?
    Let us try , she said, hoping she sounded wise instead of unsure.
    Medium Boy came close and seized Short Boy’s leg. “You need to bite down on wood or cloth or you might bite your tongue,” he said with the authority of a child who repeats what he’d heard adults say.
    A search of the alley turned up wooden twigs, the sturdiest of which was put in Short Boy’s mouth. Then, without much concern for the patient, Medium Boy grabbed the leg with one hand, the foot with the other, and twisted hard.
    Promise or not, the patient howled and kicked.
    “Don’t do that!” Medium Boy scolded. “Hold still. There, see? This is how it’s supposed to be!”
    Short Boy quivered, his face worryingly pale.
    The ankle looked properly aligned to Sanae’s eye so she hurried to the step of frantically trying to get the healing done. Healing, healing… Just grab the energy around and focus it, right?
    She let herself fade halfway to better direct her attention to energy that wasn’t part of herself. There were always currents of spiritual energy, like meandering little streams. She took hold of the closest one and pulled, diverting its energy where she wanted it, around the boy’s ankle.
    Short Boy sucked in a breath. “Ah, cold!”
    Hold steady.
    She pulled more and more, using the stream to create an artificial lake around the boy’s ankle. To her eyes the energy was swirling lazily, seemingly doing nothing, but the boy’s reaction said otherwise.
    “Cold, cold, cold!” He held still aside from a few shivers. Gradually, the tension of pain vanished from his face. “It doesn’t hurt anymore!”
    A moment longer, to be certain… Now, this should do.
    When Medium Boy released the poor ankle, it looked straight to Sanae’s eye. “Come on, test it!” Offering a hand, Medium Boy hauled the patient to his feet.
    Short Boy hobbled around, not used to his feet working together. There was a weakness in the ankle that would never go away, but the improvement was nonetheless vast.
    “It’s fixed! I can be a demon killer now!”
    “Maybe you can,” Medium Boy said brightly. “Then we’d be sohei together.”
    Because the level of worship in their eyes had grown decidedly uncomfortable, Sanae excused herself swiftly after tossing out what she hoped was a good piece of advice.
    If you have trouble when you go to the temple, ask for Master Toshishiro.
    She popped away feeling well near all-powerful. She could travel huge distances in a moment and detect evil swords from afar! She could attack bad guys and heal victims!
    If she could have eaten dessert, too, she would have called herself a god.
    Prancing, she sought her brother’s location to tell him what she’d learned. When she found his spark and popped in, she found herself in the baths. Akakiba was sitting on a bench scrubbing his body with coarse soap, and Yuki was busy doing the same to his dragon. They were sitting with their backs to each other, not talking.
    After emptying buckets of cold