Robert saw them enter the tip of the metal stake into a concrete lined hole. They pressed it in until it was firm and then they laid wood around it in an organised fashion, with twigs at the bottom. The blades were pressed to his one side so that he was forced to walk towards the pole.
“Allow me to talk to her.”
“Permission not granted, only directors are allowed to speak. Silence him.”
As a gag was raised, Robert shouted, “Ntchizi, take her to Bobby’s home!”
Cherine staggered a step and as her body collapsed, it disappeared.
Her departure was met by panic and for a moment it looked as if C-E-O had lost control. It soon became obvious why his people feared and obeyed him. He went berserk. Shouting for order he jumped the table and slammed his fists into man, woman or child if they did not promptly sit down. He ended up before Robert, the stink of his rage palpable as if Robert had become a normal, but beneath it was a stench of corruption that called to his healer.
Robert expected to be hit, but he calmly stared at the raging eyes. Slowly the grim fire in them were banked and C-E-O turned back to his table.
As he took his position at the center of the table, Robert called out, “I demand to speak to your Director of Health. Before you fire me I must be allowed to perform my duty and heal all who need my help.”
Once Robert proved he could heal, the board of directors proposed and approved a postponement of his firing. Men were appointed to hold their blades against him while he was also securely tied to the metal pole. A line of people formed before him and Robert began healing.
It took eight days for him to heal them all as he deliberately instructed his healer to slow the healing process. The last to come to him was C-E-O.
“How do I know you will not use your healing power to kill me?”
“I can’t, I can only heal.” Inspiration hit him. “I can heal people and I can heal the land. Watch the ground before you.” Urgently water was summoned, but there were no seeds so nothing grew. The soil darkened and then it glistened and Robert closed his eyes, relaxing once water ran along the ground. “Take me to an open field outside the city and I’ll show you plants that you and your father before you have not seen.”
C-E-O pulled off his tattered shirt and Robert gasped in dismay at the sight of ulcers covering his body. “They stink so that no female will touch me and they itch to madness. Heal them.”
His voice tore from him, “My own heart forces me to, C-E-O, not your demand.”
The next day he was taken to a field and though they held the ropes that bound him, no blade pierced him. By the end of the day a large patch of tender green speckled the land and the field was surrounded by hundreds, all hungry for the future he offered them.
“You will learn which plants can feed you, for not all life was made to succour Man. Do not forget to allow space for those that are of no use to you for they are part of the cycle of life and they too are needed for our world to remain healthy.
Every person among my people can do this. We are healers of the land, killing the poison and bringing back what the old ones killed. We wish to carry our healing throughout the world. I told you that we are all mutants, for the poisons of our ancestors could not be avoided, we had to eat, we had to drink the water. Not all mutations are for the worse, some changes were good, as is our gift. However, the blades you pierce me with cannot force healing. Healing has to come from the heart, I have to care about those who suffer, I have to care about the earth that is dying. Instead of threatening me, just ask for my help and you will have it.”
“What other powers do you have?”
“Nothing that threatens your people.”
“I do not believe you.”
Robert smiled. “Are you suggesting I healed all of you so as to kill you? Do you know how much energy it takes to heal?”
“The board will meet to decide your fate tomorrow.”
He was fed, allowed to wash and then removed to the dark cellar where he was chained. His two guards sat either side of him and his familiar situation relaxed him so that he could sink into dreams of Cherine in his arms. Hours passed and then a movement, a sound as soft as a sigh, woke him. Within the dark he sensed shadows, but his guards did not move. For the first time, just for a fraction of a heart beat, he felt the blade that aimed at his heart.
With a quick warning to his healer he twisted slightly, just enough to save his heart without being noticed. The slicing of his flesh was a fire that brought a squeal of pain to his lips and then he lay limp.
In the morning his two guards were found dead and the blood that covered his chest spoke of what had been attempted. Without meaning to, their hands trembling too wildly for control, they allowed the bindings to slip off him and he came to his feet free of all restraint. He raised a hand in refusal when they made to correct their error and they withdrew, certain their lives were now forfeit.
Robert stood by the pole, relaxed but with his arms across his chest, a gleam of dark humour in his eyes, waiting for their board to gather. C-E-O made no comment about the lack of ropes and guards and took his place.
“This meeting has been called to…”
“I demand a shareholders meeting. You have remained in power beyond any period allowed by law.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
He grinned. “I guess one of your first leaders must have been a company executive. C-E-O, that can’t be a name, it must be your title. Well C-E-O, I accuse you of sending a murderer to kill me last night, for you reasoned the people would not agree to a firing. I offer them too much for you to just squander my life away. It is time your lands are healed so that the children grow up eating food that is healthy...”
Arthur, Philip and six armed Security Agents appeared. The men quickly moved apart and took position.
Robert tilted his head, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you were never coming!”
“You are a POL agent, we expect our agents to be capable of handling themselves in the field.”
Robert nodded. “He foolishly wore the camera he took from me all the time?”
“Correct. Robert, return home, Cherine needs you, we can handle this without you.”
As Robert arrived he saw the change in Cherine. Her face had new lines of pain, honed almost to the bone, so that he saw the child in her had been left behind, now just a memory. She did not come to her feet so he knelt before her and took her hands in his.
“As you once took love from me and gave purpose to my heart, I wish I could take your pain from you. I cannot take, but will you share with me? Let us be one in all things my Cherine.”
She took pity on him. “You still have a dream Robert, you must make a life of your own. Do not waste it by loving me, for I am empty now.” Her eyes left his face as they brooded on her inner landscape. “So much was promised Robert, I still sense gifts like a treasure hoard waiting to brighten all of life, but I dare not free them. There are evil people who would share those gifts from us and use them as weapons. I’ve been waiting for you to let you know I am moving to the mansion on my own.” Her hands pulled out of his. “I have one last favour to ask of you. My mind is no longer for sharing, it cannot give joy and love. Will you give a home and love to Ntchizi for me?”
Robert felt his life was draining from him and his eyes fell to her knees where his hands still rested, unwanted and unloved. He could not afford to indulge his pain so he looked into her eyes again. “Ntchizi, I have one boon to ask of you, more important to me than life. Answer me, will you grant it at whatever cost to you?”
“She answers she will.”
“Stay with Cherine, endure her dark thoughts as you must so that you help return her love to me. I do not think I could live if I am to live without it forever.” Cherine felt her eyes compelled to stare back at him as he continued, speaking to her now. “Last night, in the dark, a steel blade was thrust into my chest. That pain was nothing compared to the hundred blades you have stabbed directly into my heart.” He saw his pain reflected in the dark of her eyes. “The people who held me in the city, they told me that there is a god. They said that when Man was made, god forgot to put love in our hearts. To give a reason to our existence he enters us and we are able to feel and give love. The only problem is that god cannot be in all hearts all the time, so we keep on forgetting to love. I told them my god is named Cherine and she lives in my heart permanently, so I’ll never forget how to love.”
He came to his feet, his fear at what he was to say redefining the landscape of his heart. “If you must be alone to heal yourself instead of finding the healing by sharing with me, then go. If you wish to be alone so as to close your heart to me, then your decision will be no crueller than those of the men who killed Bobby. You too will be looking to kill something beautiful out of fear.”
Her eyes widened with horror and as they closed he realised she’d left her body. In despair he stood guard, unable to follow without her help. Hours later Arthur returned, took one look at them and with pain in his eyes he walked out. He returned with a tea for Robert and a snack that he forced him to eat. Another four hours passed before the fluttering of her eyelids warned them Cherine had returned.
With eyes fixed on his she came to her feet. The cool tips of her fingers lightly touched his cheeks. “You are a Boxee.”
He stared back at her, his adoration of her a nimbus around his soul. “And you are Cherine the numinous.”
“I forgot what a boxee is, Robert, we will share if you are strong for me.”
“Strong for us my love. May I hold you?” With his arm around her shoulder, her head leaning against him, they went to their bedroom without saying a word to Arthur. He poured a whiskey and raising it in a silent toast to them he swallowed half of it within his first sip.
Robert chuckled as he sat at the computer. Cherine glanced at him with a question, wanting to share his amusement.
“I came across an article by some crazy guy. He doesn’t claim to be a scientist, just a writer of fanciful stories. He asserts, you’ll love this, that our new healing powers only hint at what is to come. He lists a number of possibilities. For instance, he claims we’ll never be able to travel in time, but our healers can. He has decided that where the healing power does not have available to it the information it needs from the body, it can return in time to collect the information from a time when the body held such information. He gives as an example people suffering from brain damage.”
“Oh Robert, we have to try it.”
He kept his pleasure at the gleam in her eyes to himself, pretending to be dismayed. “If that’s how you’re going to respond to his wild ideas I better not read any more of them to you, his ideas only get crazier paragraph by paragraph. Do you think they’ll let us experiment on a brain damaged person?”
“Arthur will arrange it.”
They found a man who’d been damaged but was able to make a living and lead a fairly normal life. Arthur talked to him first. “Please understand that what they hope to achieve will not affect you, even should they be successful. If the cells and their connections regenerate, they might become useful over the years, but I am told that it is likely your brain has adjusted to the loss and learnt to work around the problem. If any memories existed in those cells, they will not return with the new cells. We need your consent, despite my warning, as success could make it possible for us to save lives in the future.”
“Get on with it, I asked nothing and am used to being the way I am.”
Cherine’s intended effort was of great interest to a large number of people so her healer found itself sharing with more than a dozen healers plus Ntchizi - her people had never foreseen the possibility of such a repair and she was excited. Cherine concentrated on releasing her healer of any self-doubts that belonged to her and not to it, and ordered it to repair the brain in the manner described. Lost in their fascination, they all shared, watching as the healer spun a web of energies that cleansed out the scar tissue and then coalesced into copies of the cells it saw in the past.
As she ended, Cherine burst into wild tears and was inconsolable. “If I’d known I could have saved Jivers and Bobby. They’re dead because of me.”
Robert stopped anyone from consoling her and waited until her grief had run its course. He took her tearstained face in his hands, “Come my love, I think it may be time we pay that crazy man a visit. Perhaps he can convince us the rest of his ideas are not crazy.”
Allan lives in a village within a part of the land that stretches out like a finger between two minor mountain ranges. Those who lived there could never ignore the barren lands for they scowled down upon them their constant threat and the village was one of the first to react to the gift of Cherine and men did their work and then climbed to heal land. Allan is almost oblivious to his surroundings. He owns a small shop that succeeds in earning him enough to take care of his few needs, despite his lack of interest and ability to run a business.
If he had studied and qualified to be a professor at a university, he would not have been of any use there either. His love for learning is undisciplined and his main pleasure is in taking facts and extrapolating from them, enjoying the directions his thoughts and imagination sometimes take him. He was dismayed when he found out why Robert and Cherine had called on him.
If you only joined us now, at post 20, welcome.
I think you have missed some beautiful parts of the story of Cherine and Robert.
This is a reminder, you can go to the top of this page and use the link to return to Post 01.
Thereafter, each post has the next link at the end of the story. Or else, from post2 onwards, all you need to do is alter the url, increasing the post number by one.
If you do enjoy the story, I do not ask that you resteem or upvote; those to me are just bonuses, a sign you enjoyed reading Boxee. All I really want as encouragement is that you recommend the story to all your friends, those you think would enjoy such a fantasy story.
I would like to add a personal note, which is also a hope of mine. You may or may not enjoy my way of keeping my writing simple where I can; you may or may not enjoy the style of the adventures experienced; but, I am very confident you will each grow to love at least one character.
Is that character going to be Cherine, Robert, Arthur, Bobby, the Fire Woman or her daughter, or one of the others you will come to know? I will not even try to guess, but I know you will, for I have loved each of them and written of them with love :)
Thank you.