Butler, Octavia - Mind of My Mind

But she went right down to him. I followed, because I wanted to see her heal him. I hadn’t seen anything so far but her memories.

She knelt beside him and touched his face. Suddenly she was viewing the damage

from the inside, first coming to understand it, then stimulating healing. I couldn’t find words to describe how she did it. I could see. I could understand, I thought. I could even show somebody else mentally. But I couldn’t have talked about it. I began wondering if I could do it.

Rachel was still busy over Jesse when I left. I went into the kitchen, sort of in a daze. I was mentally going over a lot of Rachel’s other healings—the ones I’d gotten from her memory. What I had learned from her just now made everything clearer. I felt as though I had just begun to understand a foreign language—as though I had been hearing it and hearing it, and suddenly a little of it was getting through to me. And that little was opening more to me.

I pulled open a drawer and took out a paring knife. I put it to my left arm, pressed down, cut quickly. Not deep. Not too deep. It hurt like hell, anyway. I made a cut about three inches long, then threw the knife into the sink. I held my arm over the sink too, because it started to bleed. I stopped the pain, just to find out whether or not I could. It was easy. Then I let it hurt again. I wanted to feel everything I did in every way I could feel it. I stopped the bleeding. I closed my eyes and let the fingers of my right hand move over the wound. Somehow that was better. I could concentrate my perception on the wound, view it from the inside, without being distracted by what my eyes were seeing. My arm began to feel warm as I began the healing, and it grew warmer, hot. It wasn’t really an uncomfortable feeling, though, and I didn’t try to shut it out. After a while it cooled, and I could feel that my arm was completely healed.

I opened my eyes and looked at it. Part of the arm was still wet with blood, where it had run down. But where the cut had been, I couldn’t see much more than a fine scar. I rinsed my arm under the faucet and looked again. Nothing. Just that little scar that nobody would even see unless they were looking for it.

“Well,” said Rachel’s voice behind me. “Doro said you were related to me.”

I turned to face her, smiling, a little prouder of myself than I should have been in the presence of a woman who could all but raise the dead. “I just wanted to see if I could do it.”

“It took you about five times longer than it should have for a little cut like that.”

“Shit, how long did it take you the first time you tried it?” Then I thought I saw a chance to make peace with her. I had been in one argument after another with the actives since they arrived. It was time to stop. It really was. “Never mind,” I said. “You’re right. I did take a long time, compared to you. Maybe you could help me learn to speed it up. Maybe you could teach me a little more about healing, too.”

“Either you learn on your own or you don’t learn,” she said. “No one taught me.”

“Was there anybody around who could have?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Look, you’d be a good teacher, and I’d like to learn.”

“Good luck.”

“The hell with you, then.” I turned away from her, disgusted, and went to the refrigerator to make myself a ham-and-cheese sandwich. I was skinny at least partly because I didn’t usually snack on things like that, but I felt hungry now. I figured Rachel would leave, but she didn’t.

“Where’s the cook?” she asked.

“In her room watching soap operas, I guess. That’s usually where she is when she isn’t

in here.”

“Would you call her down?”

“Why?”

“I made Jesse sleep when I finished with him, but I could feel then how hungry he was.”

I froze with my sandwich halfway to my mouth. “Is he? And how do you feel?” I didn’t have to ask. I could read it from her faster than she could say it.

“Fine. Not drained at all. I—” She looked at me, suddenly accusing. “You know how I should be feeling, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

I was surprised to realize how much I didn’t want to tell her. None of them knew that I could read them through their shields, that nothing they could do would keep me out. They hated me enough already. But I had already decided not to hide my ability. Not to act as though I were ashamed of it or afraid of them. “I read it in your mind,” I said.

“When?” She was beginning to look outraged.

“That doesn’t matter. Hell, I don’t even remember exactly when.”

“I’ve been shielded most of the time. Unless you read it just now while I was healing … you were reading me then, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You watched what I did, then came in here to try it on yourself.”

“That’s right. Doesn’t it seem strange to you that you don’t feel drained?”

“We’ll get back to that. I want to find out more about your snooping. I didn’t feel you reading me just now.”

I took a deep breath. “I could say that was because you were so busy with Jesse, but I won’t bother. Rachel, you’ll never feel me reading you unless I want you to.”

She looked at me silently for several seconds. “It’s part of your special ability, then. You can read people without their being aware of it. And … you can read people without thinning your shield enough to have them read you. Because you weren’t open just now. I would have noticed.” She stopped as though waiting for me to say something. I didn’t. She went on, “And you can read people right through their shields. Can’t you!” It was a demand or an accusation. Like she was daring me to admit it.

“Yes,” I said. “I can.”

“So you’ve taken our mental privacy as well as our freedom.”

“It looks like I’ve given you something, too.”

“Given me what?”

“Freedom from the parasitic need you feel so guilty about sometimes.”

“If you weren’t hiding behind Doro, I’d show you how much I appreciate your gift.”

“No doubt you’d try. But since Doro is on my side, shouldn’t we at least try to get along?”

She turned and walked away from me.

Nothing was settled and I had one more strike against me. But at least I was starting to learn to heal. I had a feeling I should learn as much as I could about that as quickly as I could. In case Rachel tried something desperate.

Nobody tried anything for a while, though. There was only the usual arguing. Jesse promised me he was going to “get” me. He was a big, dumb, stocky guy, blond, good

looking, mean—a troublemaker. But, somehow, he was the one active that I was never afraid of. And he was wary of me. He told himself I was crazy, and he kept away from me in spite of his threat.

People began to get together in the house to do something besides argue.

Seth started sleeping in Ada’s room, and Ada, our mouse, started to look a little more alive.

Jesse went to Rachel’s room one night to thank her for healing him. His gratitude must have pleased her. He went back the next night to thank her again.

Karl said “Good morning” to me once. I think it just slipped out.

Rachel told Doro—not me—that I had been right. That she could heal now without taking strength from a crowd. In fact, she said she wasn’t sure she still could draw strength from crowds. She said the pattern had changed her, limited her somehow. Now she seemed to be using her patients’ own strength to heal them—which sounded as though it would be dangerous if her patient was in bad shape to start with. Jesse had merely eaten a couple of steaks when she let him wake up. Steaks, a lot of fries, salad, and about a quart of milk. But Jesse was such a big guy that I suspected that was the way he usually ate. I found out later that I was right. So, evidently, the healing hadn’t weakened him that much.