✶✶✶
“I’M hooome!” Johann’s voice boomed as he stepped through the front door, boots heavy from travel, his crew trailing behind him.
He was the head of the house. He had just announced his arrival. Yet, oddly, no one answered.
“I said I’m home! Daddy’s home!” he called again, louder this time, with just a hint of theatrics.
“Johann!”
His wife came running out to meet him, holding a baby in her arms for some reason. But Johann didn’t give it a second thought. Too enamored was he at the sight of his wife that he broke out into a broad smile.
“Oh, Sherlotte, my love—it’s good to be back. Look at this fabric! A real find. Picked it up as a souvenir just for you.”
He unfurled the cloth with a showman’s flourish.
But she didn’t even glance at it. Instead, she grabbed his arm and started pulling him along.
“What’s gotten into you?” Johann laughed, letting her pull him along. “Missed me that much, have you? Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled, but maybe not right here? Not in front of the boys?”
“Oh, hush, Johann Olzon, and listen to me.”
That tone, sharp and soft at once, snapped his attention in place.
“It’s Sophie.”
She was still dragging him, the ignored fabric trailing behind like a forgotten flag. Some of the crew began to murmur.
Sherlotte turned, tears shimmering in her eyes.
“Sophie might be healed,” she said breathlessly. “Come. Come quick.”
The vibrant cloth slipped from Johann’s hands, catching the air like a bird’s wing before floating to the floor.
Then came the uproar.
A joyful roar shook the hall as the sailors charged after their captain, storming into Sophie’s salon in a puzzling thunder of boots, voices, and hope.
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SOPHIE’S salon.
The shriveled, cucumber-like man sat in front of Sophie, holding his hands aloft before her—and before her big, burly audience.
“Hm…” he murmured.
“What is it, old man?” someone said.
“Shh!” came the swift rebuke.
The apothecary shifted his hands slightly. “Hm…”
“The suspense is killing me!”
“Shut it!”
He moved again. “Hm…”
“You still with us, old man?!”
“Be! Quiet!”
At last, just as the room brimmed with impatience, the traveling apothecary—Mr. Ganpo opened his mouth. “Young lady.”
“Yes?” Sophie replied. She was nervous but still met his gaze head-on.
“Are you aware,” Ganpo began, “that in people with magical talent, there exist, from birth, tube-like growths that protrude from your body? Small, chimney-like vessels that puff out mana from within the body to without?”
As he spoke, he raised a hand from his brow and traced a slow arc through the air, mimicking the flow of invisible vapors.
“I am not,” Sophie replied. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Ganpo gave a sage little nod as if to say, as expected.
“At this point, I may well be the only one who can still see them,” he continued. “But you are aware, I assume, that mages tend to have a natural resistance to magic, greater than ordinary folk? That’s because of these vessels. The mana they release forms a thin, constant barrier around the body. It serves as a kind of passive armor. A safeguard. Something evolved to help mages survive in combat, just a little bit better.”
He paused, eyes narrowing.
“But on rare occasions—and for reasons quite unknown—those vessels twist. Curl inward. Like an ingrown hair.”
The room fell utterly silent.
“And when that happens,” he said softly, folding his hands behind his back, “they pierce the mage’s own flesh. Something meant to protect…turns inward and begins to hurt instead.”
A strange hush moved through the room as if even the air were listening.
“I call it ‘mana’s ingrown eyelash.’”
Sophie blinked. “That’s… surprisingly intuitive and helpful imagery! And what happens when one has one of these?”
“It depends on one’s constitution.”
“Right.”
“But in your case…” He reached out and, very gently, touched her cheek. “You got off lucky.”
Lucky? Sophie nearly laughed. Her mouth twitched with the ghost of a sardonic grin, but she held it back. Instead, she met his eyes, waiting.
Ganpo went on.
“When mana expelled from the body is reabsorbed in its raw, undiluted form, the body eventually exceeds its holding capacity. And when that happens, the mana bursts from its banks and starts to course through the body with grave consequences. Wherever it goes, it wreaks havoc. It tears, it rips, it floods—destroying the mage from within.
“More than a few juvenile deaths are owed to this very thing. But you, young Sophie… Your skin’s been protecting you. It refuses—stubbornly, fiercely—to let the mana back in. Turns to stone if it has to. And when it can’t take any more, it flakes off… Only for the new skin beneath to harden again. An endless rotation. An endless war.”
Ganpo lifted a bony finger and traced something in the air, an unseen pattern.
“This ingrown lash of yours… It’s one of the thickest, most stubborn I’ve ever seen. You’ve lived with it for years, and yet, somehow, your body isn’t any worse for wear. Your skin alone has been holding the line, fighting day after day. One force trying to get in, the other keeping it out. A futile, painful, beautiful battle. Both sides only trying to protect their host. Both just doing what they were born to do.”
His finger hovered, then lowered slightly as if petting something invisible.
“You, the ‘ingrown lash.’ Yes, I’m talking to you. You didn’t ask for this, did you? You never meant to hurt your beloved Sophie. You just wanted to be like the others, shooting straight up into the sky like you were meant to. Oh, how sad. How sad that you’re the only one twisted this way.”
He then looked at Sophie.
“Please, young lady. I beg of you—don’t begrudge it. I imagine it more than anyone wished to be normal. Wished for no pain, no guilt, no sorrow. It didn’t choose this. It didn’t choose to be born this way.”
A single tear traced down Sophie’s cheek.
“Can you… Can you fix it?” she asked, her voice catching.
“I can,” Ganpo said. “It’s simple, really. I just bend it back into place. You’ll feel a slight pinch.”
“That’s… That’s it?”
“That’s it. Though, for you to have stumbled across perhaps the only person in the world who can do ‘it’—well. Be it coincidence or fate, it’s remarkable either way.” He gave her a little nod. “Give it a month, and your old skin should shed. In its place, normal skin will return.”
“It’s a good thing…” Sophie said, her lips trembling. “It’s a good thing I can heal the skin—and only the skin—then.”
“A great thing. Now, if I may.”
He lifted his hand toward her chin and then, quite suddenly, bellowed:
“Pa-pop!”