Be Better
By Rhonda Parrish
Xenathea raced through the forest as fast as her little legs could carry her, which was surprisingly fast considering how surprisingly little they were. Just last week, on her twelfth birthday–with her father cajoling and she pretending that she was too old for such nonsense–she’d put her back straight against the trunk of the tree that crowned their home so her father could measure how much she’d grown. Stepping away, breath held in anticipation, she’d been overjoyed to see the mark was higher than it had been the year before–making her officially 3’1”. A full inch taller than both her grandmother and her father.
“Oh, ho, ho!” he’d said in that silly way of his. “You’re going to be the tallest in the village at this rate!”
And she’d laughed and thought how wonderful that would be–to be that exceptional, that special.
Now, though, she’d give that inch back in a heartbeat if it would make her the same as everyone else in the village. If it would make her fit in.
Her legs tired, lungs burning and tears blurring her vision, Xenathea collapsed in a heap at the base of a beautiful old oak tree. A blanket of its recently fallen leaves–yellow and orange and brown–provided something of a nest for her, and she curled into a little ball of sorrow and cried.
It was Orver. Again. Of course it was. It was always Orver.
He’d found a flea somewhere and he’d pretended to pull it off one of her ears–her lovely, fluffy fox ears, which were one of the only things she had in the whole world from her mother–and held it up for everyone to see while he squealed, “Ewww, Xenathea has fleas!”
And then Cormop had started the chant, “Xena-flea-a! Xena-flea-a!”
Before she even had a chance to react it was everyone–the whole big group of them who’d been gathered outside the school–shouting that name, that horrible, horrible, hurtful name at her over and over. “Xena-flea-a! Xena-flea-a!”
Xenathea had always been as proud of her name as she was of her ears–it sounded magical and mysterious–but now they’d gone and ruined it. Just like they ruined everything.
Her father said she should ignore them, focus on the things that made her happy, emphasize the positive. But that was easy for him to say. He was respected in the village, renowned even. No one called him names. They came to him to invent things to make their lives easier. A glider to let gnomes jump safely(ish) from hilltops and drift to the ground, spring-powered shoes to make them taller or various kajiggerwhatsits that light up or make noises. But did they cut his daughter even a little bit of slack? No, no, and no again.
The grown-ups looked down their noses at her–literally when she was younger, more figuratively now she was as tall as many of them–and half-whispered things Xenathea was sure she was meant to hear–half-breed or changeling or freak. And they could turn the word fae or fairy into the vilest sounding thing in all the planes.
Xenathea was an exceptionally bright little girl, but she didn’t need her extra portion of smarts to get the message. She was different. She didn’t fit in. And she never would.
Ignoring them wouldn’t help. But she tried. She focused on what she loved–tinkering with her father’s toys, taking his inventions apart and trying to put them back together again. Sometimes she was even successful. And what’s more, she’d developed a skill even her father didn’t have. He called it her gift–a present from her mother. Her magic.
From the time she was very small she could do a tiny amount of magic. A handful of simple spells which came from somewhere deep and instinctual inside her so that using them was as natural as breathing.
If she was here and she wanted to be there, for example, all she needed to do was will herself to step from one place to the other, speak a word she didn’t know how she’d learned and, so long as the distance was not so great, she could reach it in a single step. It was tiring and she could only do it once a day, but once a day was more than any of those meanies back at the school could do.
Maybe her dad was right, maybe they were just jealous, but that didn't mean that they had to be cruel. She didn’t taunt them because they were different from her. Didn’t go out of her way to tease them about their boring old normal gnomish ears and lack of magic.
No, Xenathea thought, pushing herself up from the nest of leaves and swiping angrily at her tears. No, she did not. So they had no right to pick on her either!
Her little pep talk for herself almost worked. She made it all the way up to her feet before reality slammed into her again. “And what are you doing to about it, Xenathea?” she asked out loud.
She didn’t have an answer to her question, and judging by their silence, the woods didn’t either.
Dejected, she started the long walk back home just as, from somewhere behind her, she heard a sound which didn’t belong. It was a shout, half there–more sensed than heard–and then gone.
It was none of her business, but she’d never actually been very good at minding her own business, so she wasn’t surprised at all when she found herself moving toward the noise rather than away from it.
As she drew closer, crouched down to half her already diminutive size and moving slowly through the underbrush, the sounds became clearer and clearer until it was unmistakable–there was definitely a fight going on. Something was snarling and snorting, growling deep and dangerous, while something else, someone else grunted and cursed.
Spreading the bushes apart, she saw Old Man Singlesong fighting a badger. But not just any badger, this one was so big that if Xenathea had no regard for her own personal safety she could easily have jumped on its back and ridden it.
Singlesong was swinging at the beast with his walking stick while the badger ripped through his tent and charged across his campsite, roaring and snapping its jaws.
Xenathea knew to fear that walking stick–Singlesong swung it at anyone who got in his way, and since that had included her a time or two, she knew how hard it could hurt when it connected. But she also knew it would take more than a stick to deter a giant badger.
It wasn’t too late to just mind her own business. She didn’t owe Singlesong anything–it’s not like he’d been any nicer to her than anyone else in the village. It would be easy to just go back the way she’d come… she could even go get help. Maybe.
But as she turned to go she heard her Dad’s words in her mind, “Be better, Xenathea.”
Last year when he’d caught her poking around in his workshop looking for something to use to avenge the latest cruelty she’d been subjected to, he’d wiped her tears, brushed her hair off her face and given her a big, big hug. “I know it’s hard for you, but you have to be better. Don’t sink to their level. Once you do that, there’s no easy road back.”
It had sounded noble and maybe a little brave when he’d said it, and she’d found some comfort in that. But it was easier to find the willpower to not take action than it was to summon the courage to act, and she continued to hesitate on the other side of the bushes while the old gnome and the badger fought.
She took a step backward, letting the bushes she’d parted begin to close, but she could still hear what was going on. The snapping. The snarling. The grunts of pain.
Unable to resist, she peered through the underbrush once more and saw Singlesong backed up against a tree, a slowly growing crimson stain on his shoulder. The badger lunged toward him and the old man cracked it across the jaw with his walking stick, but Xenathea could tell he wasn’t swinging it with his usual vigor. And probably the badger could too. It took another swipe and though Singlesong brought the stick up to defend himself he only managed to partially deflect the creature’s attack.
The giant badger’s sharp black claws, each as long as her entire hand, sliced through the gnome’s tunic and into his belly. Blood poured from his torso as he crumpled against the tree trunk, his stick no longer held at the ready but dangling from nearly limp fingers at his side.
Stepping closer, Xenathea glared hard at the snarling badger, willing it to miss its next attack on the old man. Magic words rose to her lips from somewhere deep within, twisting her tongue so much she bit it as she tried to spit them out. The tang of iron filled her mouth and infused her magic. She felt her intent flow through her and into the badger, and watched as it swung wildly, missing what should have been an easy–and probably final–attack on the helpless old man.
And then she eyed the remains of Singlesong’s campfire.
Pressing her palms together she imagined a ball of flame, small but intense, growing between them. And then she felt it–like a physical force pushing her palms apart as it spun and grew. But the flames she felt weren’t in her hands, they were in the old man’s broken campfire ring which just happened to be under the badger’s belly. As the force grew between her palms, the flame grew in the old campfire site, igniting it.
The badger lunged toward Singlesong, snapping at him with his sharp teeth, but missing as his target slumped, unconscious to the ground. The beast growled, and reached out to swipe at him just as the heat from the campfire reached it. Xenathea could smell its singed fur as it made a high-pitched yipe! sound, jumped and spun around. Seeing nothing, it turned to look in the other direction while its fur continued to smolder, before bolting out of the clearing. No doubt it was startled more than actually hurt but, regardless, it was gone.
Xen counted to ten, assuring herself that the beast wasn’t going to come back, and then scurried across the clearing toward the unconscious old man.
“Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh no, oh no...” The calmness she’d felt just heartbeats ago was gone and panic grew within her–what to do?
She reached for what was left of his blood-soaked shirt. Peeling away the strips shredded by the badger’s claws, she saw three great slashes across his abdomen. She could only identify them in the mangled mess of his belly because blood pulsed from them with each beat of his heart.
Pulling her cloak off she pressed it against the wounds, hoping to staunch their flow. “Oh please,” she whispered. “Please don’t die...”
Every other time she’d done something magical–light the campfire, magic step or will the badger to fail–she had conjured the power, the magic, up out of herself and shaped it. She had known what was going to happen before it did. She hadn’t known she’d be able to do what she willed, but she’d known she was attempting it. That was not the case now.
She hadn’t even paused to think she might have the power to heal, hadn’t considered inviting that flavour of magic to this party, but luckily for Old Man Singlesong, the magic didn’t care. It invited itself.
She felt it grow within her, deep in her belly like a seed of light that burst and grew, spreading out to her toes, to her fingers, pressing against the top of her head. She felt it fill her and then pour through her, through her bloodied cloak and into the dying gnome.
As soon as the power left her she sat back on the cold, hard ground, gasping and panting as though she’d just run a race, and watched the gnome’s breathing steady. Become deeper, less rattly. She watched the colour come back to his face and wondered, were she to look, if his wounds would have closed.
Before she could check, though, she heard a familiar voice call out from behind her.
Orver.
“Uncle Singlesong?” he called. “Where are you?”
Trust Orver to get lost trying to find his own uncle’s campsite, she thought.
The last thing she wanted was to face Orver covered in his uncle’s blood, so, with one quick glance at Old Man Singlesong she jumped into the bushes.
Orver stomped through the underbrush making more noise than a whole herd of giant badgers and then literally stumbled into the clearing.
Xenathea felt a tingle of smug satisfaction that she couldn’t tamp down as she watched him visibly panic at the scene before him–the shredded tent, the scattered but burning campfire, the bloodied gnome slumped beneath a tree. It wasn’t until Orver finally got himself under control and lifted her cloak off his uncle that she realised she’d left it behind.
“Uncle Singlesong,” Orver shouted, slapping the man’s cheeks loudly enough that Xenathea could hear it from her hiding spot. “Uncle, wake up! What happened?”
The old man came awake with a start–as though he’d been sleeping rather than dying–and struck out with his walking stick. He connected with Orver’s shoulder, sending him to the ground, and then scooted back toward the tree, looking around frenetically. Probably for the badger.
Seeing Orver knocked onto his back made Xenathea’s heart soar, and not just because it seemed Old Man Singlesong was going to be okay.
While some minor chaos played out in the old gnome’s campsite with him and his nephew shouting excitedly over one another and asking each other questions but not stopping to hear the answers, Xenathea looked down at her hands.
Even though her cloak had been between her and the worst of the old man’s bleeding her palms were crimson with rapidly-drying blood. They’d healed him somehow. She had healed him somehow.
Later that night, lying in her little bed and staring at the familiar forms of the tree roots that wound their way across her ceiling, Xenathea sighed. It was a complicated sigh.
The healing power that had surged through her had been immense and had brought with it a kind of thrill she’d never experienced before, but that was not the thing her mind kept returning to. Instead, it was the sensation of the flames growing between her fingers–there but not, warm but not–and then bursting to life in the old gnome’s campfire.
It wasn’t just the element of fire itself which called to her, but the choices, the possibilities. She could have turned that fire into something else. She could have lit it or snuffed it. Moved it around. She’d held so many potential futures right there in her hand, all existing and not at the same time.
It was awesome and she wanted more of it.
“What are you going to do with that?” a little voice whispered in the back of her head. And it sounded like her. And it sounded like her father. And it sounded like how she imagined her mother must. And she answered it aloud in the darkness.
“Be better,” she said. “I’m going to be better.”
Rhonda Parrish is constantly creating shiny new poems and stories (including many more featuring Xen!). She hoards them, like a magpie dragon, at https://www.patreon.com/RhondaParrish – the only place in the multiverse many of them can be found.