Unburdening

They come for many reasons.

They come to absolve their misfortunes. That which cannot be resolved, they give away willingly. They come to bear witness to their desires upon the face of another; they recall what time cannot bring back via the empathy of their relievers. They shed their faces to reveal the burning flesh beneath, and she peppers those blisters with salve made of a sticky, fleeting kinship. And when all is complete (shoulders folded from the weight of the expelled, fingers loosening the grip held for days, decades, dynasties) …they leave.

They leave and she tidies in preparation for the next. Over and over her days stretch before her in this unbroken pattern. And why should today be any different?

First, she waters the plants that surround the shop, some vast and sweeping, others tiny and easily missed. She does not miss any. Next, she ensures the exterior curtains are drawn, made of sheer white and permitting a murmur of sunlight. A reminder that even sheltered away like this, there is a world of possibility just beyond the doors; a chance to recreate that which you now choose to live without. She ducks under another set of curtains, these heavy and ornate, a promise to absorb and keepsake your most precious memories. In the inner room, some adjustments are made to the many pillows and cushions and quilts that settle in the center, creating an intimate circle of space where just the two of them will sit. She lights the candles that will provide the ambiance for these encounters; during colder months she prefers to light a fire in the small wood-burning hearth set into the wall of the shop. As it is, the candles will do in their suggestion of intimate camaraderie and faith among companions.

I am here now and so are you. It’s just us. Tell me, what do you feel?

In the exterior room, behind the counter, among the menagerie of multi-colored jars of vast wisps of smoke, each moving at its own speed relative to many factors, she prepares the solution. She uncorks and pours and mixes and dabs and dribbles and stirs. Her fingertips graze the pale liquid causing it to take on a dark brown hue. A brief pause here. A hesitation…

It passes quickly. She removes her hands and settles the liquid with another substance, causing it to revert to the calm neutrality of a clear shimmer. She smiles, though it is a meaningless gesture. She must not neglect to practice even when she is alone.

Grabbing the wooden bowl, she brings it to the cushioned area and sets it on a small stone table in the center, belly-height if one were to sit cross-legged beside it. She and her client will sit on either side, the basin a harmony between them. With this vessel at their center, every client is her perfect match. Once everything is in order, she returns to the shop entrance where she places herself upon a stool. Here, she waits.

It takes maybe five minutes before the clack of heels against pavement catch her ear, followed closely by the ringing of the shop bell.

She is just as the shop owner remembers from their consultation, with her ruddy cheeks beneath the carefully considered makeup, and the thinning strips of shoulder-length hair beneath a moderately pricey hat. She is middle-aged with the air of wanting to be considered slightly less so. The rouse is a poor one but if believed by the wearer, who is the shop owner to say it is not? She only stands and smiles a welcoming smile.

“Healer,” the woman greets her, her smile small, unsure.

“Mrs. Sinclair,” replies Healer. She removes her client’s coat with a gentle touch like that of a familiar relative. She hangs it carefully on the nearby stand and guides Mrs. Sinclair to a two-tier tea cart made of simple silver. Healer gestures to the items, “Would you like tea, Mrs. Sinclair?”

“Journey,” she corrects. Journey Sinclair adjusts her grip on her handbag, swallows, and nods. “Yes, I’ll take…what types do you have?”

“I have black, lemon—”

“I’ll take that one. And sugar, please.” Journey clears her throat as if embarrassed by the sound of her own voice and looks away, taking in the plants and artifacts around her. Perhaps taking in nothing at all.

Healer turns to pour, first Journey’s tea, then her own. When she is finished, she carries both and gestures with her head to the heavy, ornate curtains separating the space. Journey dips in first and holds the fabric aloft for Healer to follow. She does, offering a grateful smile as they pass one another, and steps forward to set the teacups on a small table to the side of the room. There are two wrought-iron chairs sat across from one another with a circle table at their center. In here, just away from the vibrant green walls, the colorful jars, and random assortments of knickknacks, the soft ebbing of candlelight melds with the smoky fragrance of incense to create a mood ideal for the unburdening of feelings

Healer sits at the table and nods at Journey to do the same. The next moment is long but neither party exhibits an urgency to break it. Journey, because she appears to Healer to be in deep thought. Healer, because she hopes this is so. Her gifts can indeed be considered gifts if measured from one angle, but she has often found that from another, the term “gift” could easily be considered a stretch. So, she waits, quietly and without impatience. Sipping her tea, Healer watches as Journey’s eyes move back and forth endlessly as if reading a script in her own head as she absently presses tea to her lips. The jolt of steaming liquid brings about a sharp gasp and tea sloshes onto the table. Healer is already sopping it up with a napkin when Journey speaks.

“I don’t doubt this decision,” she says. Healer places the soiled napkin on the table and leans back in her chair, offering Journey her full attention. “It’s just…regarding the procedure—”

“I can’t undo it.”

She says it in a clear voice. Let’s it hang between them for a conciliatory, yet unbending moment. It settles slowly, a thin veil fluttering from above, until it resolves around their shoulders. A simple truth meant to be worn, if accepted, for all time.

It takes Journey a seemingly reflexive squeeze of her clamped hands and a firm jerk of her chin before she is ready to speak. When she does, she says only, “I understand.”

Healer nods. Smiles. Apologetic yet encouraging. “It’s entirely your choice to pursue this route. But I must ask, Journey,” A pause. “Is this the only way?” There is no pressure in Healer’s voice. Only curiosity and a foreshadowed acceptance of whatever the answer entails.

Journey’s answer comes quickly this time, “It is. I’ve seen him recently and…I can’t go back. I can’t.”

Healer nods and leans way, the irresolute resolved. “And so, you won’t. If you’re ready, let us begin.”

With that, Healer stands and leads the way from the two-person table in the corner of the room to the seated area in the center, surrounded by plush pillows and quilts, these surrounding the wooden basin resting on the stone platform. Healers sits, cross-legged on one side of the table and gestures gently to the spot across. With a somewhat clumsy effort, Journey clanks her glass down, gives an apologetic murmur, and hastens over. She mimics Healer and crosses her legs beneath her, her bag knocking forgotten against her hip.

“Did you bring the Evocations?”

“The…? Oh! Yes.” More fumbling with the bag. She retrieves a long folder, bulging just slightly from the width of some artifact sealed within.

Journey hands it to Healer with hesitation. Healer waits, allowing Journey her moment while neither tugging nor dropping the item. When she finds it is just her hands holding up the folder, Healer retracts them and begins carefully opening the lid. She extracts three items and lays them out on the stone table, one by one, making sure to acknowledge the sentiment of each as she holds them. She can feel Journey tense up across from her, the abrupt inhalation and resulting silence of the breathless following behind.

The first item is a bracelet, made of colorful yarn expertly braided with one notably shiny thread weaving through the fabric, unapologetically brilliant. A single thread of real gold dances through the otherwise cheap unassuming strands that make up the band. A thoughtful, yet gratifyingly simple, gesture. Meticulously hand-woven, to be sure.

The next items are less subtle. A picture and a recklessly scrawled letter, the words slanting across the page in near unintelligible order. The first depicts a couple, young and bristling with untapped potential, childish glee apparent on their faces as they look into their future in that second and see nothing of warning. Journey lets out a strangled breath and simultaneously Healer notices; the young girl laughing up at Healer is a vibrant light casting shadow on the middle-aged woman before her. Behind the carefully crafted blush, there is still a hint of the bare-faced hopeful that seemed ready to take anything in stride as long as the gentleman holding her was striding alongside. That gentleman matches her tit-for-tat in an expression of fearless yearning. If Healer could still feel deeply, she imagines she would have felt something like pity. Though she doesn’t know what for.

The last item seems to encapsulate an entire story on its own.

It is a single shoe. Tiny with soft soles, made for comfort more so than for walking. There is only one in the folder, the cause of the bulge Healer had noticed earlier. At the removal and setting down of this particular Evoc, Journey drops her head in her hands and breathes a shuttered breath into her palms. She is ready, Healer sees, and so she puts the folder aside and produces a thin vial from her pocket. Inside, clear liquid sways and beckons from its container. Healer sits it on the table between them.

“This,” she begins, “is a tonic. You’ll need to drink it to begin. This will help you focus on the emotions we’re here to celebrate and release.”

Lifting her head with deliberate slowness, a chance to compose herself, Journey stares at the vial. After a moment, she nods and takes hold. She downs it in seconds and hands Healer the vial to discard. One by one, Healer raises the Evocs and places them gingerly into Journey’s outstretched hands, pressing against the outside so that Journey’s fingers clasp reflexively around the materials. She jerks, as if to drop them, but Healer’s grip on hers holds them firm. Journey looks at her and Healer stares back.

“Now is the time, Journey. Look at these items, feel them in your palms, and reflect.” Reflection is a crucial part of this ritual. It is, in all actuality, the most crucial. “What do they mean to you? What do they represent? What will you lose if you let go—even more, what will you gain once you do? Reflect. And when you are done, set the Evocs down and gently place your fingertips into the basin so that they are submerged in the liquid.”

Journey reflects. One minute. Two. Five. Eventually, she does as instructed and drops her fingers into the wooden bowl. It doesn’t take long for the colors to begin. They start at her fingertips and meld into the thin liquid, ebbing out in swirling patterns. Some are more consistent than others—yellows and pale blues coming out in clusters while thin streams of varying greens putter along. The colors, unlike when Healer touched earlier, remain unbroken by their harmony. They do not meld to create one unifying hue but instead eddy out into their respective lines. Healer pays this difference no mind.

Leaning forward, her own hands hovering over the bowl, she says in the whispered tone of the co-conspirator she is to become, “I am here now and so are you. It’s just us. Tell me, Journey…what do you feel?”

And so, Journey tells her. And Healer does more than listens. She walks together with Journey on the winding road of a seemingly shared history. As Journey recounts falling for a boy in her class at a young age, Healer feels the flutters in her stomach, the racing of her heart as recollections of his smile, his warmth, his brilliance flow from Journey’s mouth. When she details his riotous sense of humor, from pranking friends to breaking into a Headmaster’s office to inquire about a date over the intercom, Healer splutters with laughter, her shoulders quaking as she and Journey revel in her telling. The feelings come naturally as if they are her own, so is the beauty of the basin. As the colors swirl across their fingers, from Journey’s to Healer’s, a representation of her emotional output, the two become connected. They were always old friends, weren’t they?

Journey goes on to describe years of poverty in their community, parents that did not agree with their courtship, that young boy deciding to leave the community to procure funds for their future. The hastily written letter, the bracelet, the promise to return. Journey falling pregnant, sending letters that are never answered. The stress, the disapproval from her family, the lost child. Here they cry together, their hands dipped in the basin as pink liquid spreads and ebbs around them. Healer feels her chest constrict, her stomach tighten into a thousand lumps of sand, her throat itch with the pain of it all as she wails. Journey watches the emotions she recognizes play out on Healer’s face and she sobers, finding some strange peace in Healer’s version of her pain. The empathy feels less like a performance and so much like an earnest demonstration of what Journey herself has not acknowledged in decades. And so, Healer cries and Journey watches, relieved, validated.

Next, she tells of the reason she is here today. He has returned, that boy of smiles and wonder and promise. He is older, calmer, but still himself. He has fulfilled the promise of procuring money, but he has come too late. Journey is married now with two small children of her own. She has chosen the life that saved her and does not want to abandon it. Healer bites her lip with anxiety over the conundrum. It seems, Journey states, that the feelings have never gone away and the sight of him has emblazoned something new in her. Healer feels that fire in her belly and her toes. Resentment aside, Journey knows it is only a matter of time before a damaging effort is made to return to the past. She cannot have these confusions. She mustn’t. She must live with her choices and he, his.

Healer understands. Better, Healer feels this.

And so, she listens. And once it is over, once the feeling has been pulled out and laid before them, a feast indulged in until only remnants remain, Healer removes her hands and Journey does the same. The liquid, once smooth and gently rolling, begins to smoke and bubble. Journey covers her face. But there is nothing to fear. The liquid vaporizes and the smoke whisps and dances into the air, the color solidifying into a dark red. Healer wipes her eyes, removes an empty vial from her pocket, and captures the smoke in one smooth gesture. It wiggles and swirls inside, a visual of hopes, dreams, intimacy, and heartache captured and soon forgotten. The basin sits between empty them.

Healer slides the cork into place and then fixes Journey with a red-rimmed stare. She smiles. “Journey, pick up your Evocs, please.” She does. “Tell me, what do you feel?”

Journey pauses, swipes her nose on her sleeve, looks closely at the items. A minute. Two. Five. She shakes her head. “Nothing. Well, not nothing but…it’s like…”

“An old memory?”

“Yes, that it. I remember everything but the yearning, the need to act…I don’t feel any of it. It’s like he’s just another person. Just like anybody else.”

“Well, then, it seems we have achieved our purpose. I’m so glad I was able to help you today.”

There is something like relief and confusion on Journey’s face as she gathers her things. To have something so close it burns be placed so far that you can barely remember it hurt is never an easy feeling. It’s one a person grows into. Perhaps there will be a day in the coming years when Journey will yearn for something out of this world and will reach for those memories…and will find only stagnant pictures. Perhaps in that moment she will resent Healer. Perhaps when she sees that baby’s shoe and can’t bring herself to feel anything for the tiny feet they belonged to, she will hate Healer. Perhaps.

Today Healer brings her to the door and waves her off with a smile. Always a smile. As the door shuts and the bell jingles, Healer goes behind the counter. She looks at the hundreds of other jars from those who required her services, and she lets out a sigh. Lifting the newest bottle to her nose, she uncorks it, wafts of red smoke filtering out and into her nostrils. She closes her eyes. She laughs, uncontrollable, then, overwhelmed, she begins to cry. The feeling starts deep in her belly and rumbles across her limbs and makes her feel alive.

She corks the bottle. Her smile drops, her tears dry.

She feels nothing.

She sets the bottle on the shelf and checks the clock. Another guest is due soon.

She tidies in preparation for the next. Over and over her days stretch before her in this unbroken pattern. And why should today be any different?