Chapter 29A — The Weight of Small Hands
Nellie's hands would not stop shaking.
She tried to hide it—fingers knotted in the edge of her cloak, thumbs worrying the hem—but the tremor kept traveling up her arms, into her shoulders, into the hollow place under her ribs where fear had taken up stubborn residence.
The Gate of Thorns loomed ahead.
Again.
She'd watched Aiden walk through it first, swallowed by mist and runes and something that had called him storm-child.
She'd watched Myra vanish after him, jaw set, eyes bright with a courage Nellie wasn't sure she would ever understand.
Now the Gate watched her.
Or it felt like it did.
The courtyard had thinned. Most of the first-years had already gone through in their assigned order. A few clusters remained along the outer edges—whispering, comparing stories of "their Hollow" and pretending they weren't all terrified of sounding weak.
Aiden stood to her left.
Myra stood to her right.
Runa was just behind, a solid presence like a boulder someone had accidentally carved into a girl.
The lightning pup sprawled at Nellie's boots, small head resting on its paws, eyes half-lidded—but its fur crackled with faint static every time her heart skipped.
"You don't have to go yet," Myra said quietly.
Nellie swallowed. "My token says otherwise."
She opened her palm.
The token's wood was pale—bone-white, smooth, etched with a spiral mark that looked like a coiled shell or a whorl of wind caught mid-turn. It pulsed every few heartbeats with a soft, warm light.
Not like Aiden's black onyx.
Not like Myra's amber shard.
Something gentler.
Something that still made her want to throw up.
She tried to joke. "Maybe it's broken. Maybe they'll say, 'Oh, sorry, no trial for you, too small, please go home.'"
"Yeah, because that's what they've done so far," Myra snorted. "You're the one who stopped three people from bleeding out on the road. They're not sending you home."
Nellie's ears went hot.
"That was just bandages," she mumbled. "And basic salves. I didn't… I didn't really fix anything. I just slowed the breaking."
"Sometimes that's the entire job," Aiden said.
She looked up at him.
He wasn't glowing anymore, not like right after he came out of the Gate, but faint traces of the vine-sigils still lined his arms under his rolled sleeves—green, like light through leaves. His eyes had that tired clarity he got when all the panic had burned away.
"How do you feel?" she asked.
"Like I got chewed on," he said honestly. "But I'm still here."
The pup yipped in agreement.
Nellie's throat tightened. "What if I'm not… enough?"
"For what?" Runa asked from behind her.
Nellie flinched. She'd almost forgotten the dwarf was there—Runa moved quietly for someone built like a compact avalanche.
"For… whatever's in there," Nellie said. "For what they expect. For what the Academy needs. For what you all need."
Runa snorted.
"Academy doesn't know what it needs. People with big heads and small hearts built half these rules." She shifted her hammer on her shoulder. "You're not here to be enough for them. You're here to be enough for you."
"That sounds very wise and completely unhelpful," Myra muttered.
"It's both," Runa said calmly.
Aiden knelt down so he was closer to Nellie's eye line. From this angle he looked too tall and too tired and too kind, and it made her chest ache in a stupid, sharp way.
"Hey," he said softly. "What's the worst thing you think that Gate can show you?"
Her imagination unhelpfully supplied an image of everyone she'd ever tried—and failed—to save.
"Everything," she whispered.
"Then you've already survived it once," he replied. "In your head. This is just… round two. And I've seen you work. You're allowed to be scared. You're not allowed to pretend you're useless."
The pup picked that moment to push its head against her ankle.
A tiny, sharp little bump.
As if seconding that.
Nellie let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "If I throw up in there, I'm blaming all of you."
"We'll accept it," Myra said solemnly.
"Try not to bleed in there," Runa added. "I can't punch the Gate a second time."
Aiden blinked. "You punched it the first time?"
Runa didn't answer.
Which probably meant yes.
The horn sounded from the platform again.
"Next!" Master Veldt's voice carried across the courtyard. "Nellie Tinkwhistle—step forward!"
Her knees promptly tried to escape in opposite directions.
Myra's hand found hers. Squeezed once. "We'll be right here when you fall out the other side."
"Hopefully not literally fall," Nellie squeaked.
Aiden's hand landed gently on her shoulder. Warm. Steady. "You already passed the hard part," he said. "You got here."
Runa just grunted. "Go, gnome."
The pup whined once, then trotted forward to stand in front of her like it might try to lead the way itself.
Nellie looked at all of them, heart pounding so hard she half-expected the Gate to complain about the noise.
Then she closed her fingers around the pale token and walked.
Every step toward the Gate felt wrong and right at the same time, like walking toward the edge of a cliff and a home she'd never seen.
The Gate of Thorns loomed above her, thorns dark and sharp, runes pulsing with faint green light. Up close, it smelled like old rain and cut wood.
It also felt… different.
When Aiden had gone through, the Gate had watched him like a predator trying to place a scent. When Myra stepped forward, the runes had brightened in a sharp, eager way.
For Nellie—
The mist inside the arch shifted.
Softened.
Curled inward like a hand cupping candlelight.
Her token warmed.
Pale light seeped between her fingers, gentle, insistent.
Veldt's voice was closer now, but distant too. "Tinkwhistle," he said, quieter. "Remember: this Gate does not care about your size. It cares about your choices. Make them."
That did not help.
She nodded anyway.
Nellie took the last two steps, heart in her throat, and held up the token with both hands.
The Gate leaned.
She felt it—not physically, not in any way she could point to—but in the way the air thickened around her, in the way the mist reached like slow water toward the bone-white token.
Runes flared.
Thorns gave a tiny shudder.
The token cracked with a soft, clean sound.
Light poured out of it—warm, golden, shot through with faint green.
It wrapped around her like a hug.
For a heartbeat—
Nellie smelled lavender.
And old linens.
And home.
Then the world yanked itself inside out.
The courtyard vanished.
The Gate vanished.
She fell without moving, dropped straight through the floor of reality and into—
—light.
Not darkness.
Light.
Warm, diffuse, endless.
Then it dimmed, shapes coalesced, and Nellie's boots touched down on solid ground with a soft thump.
She wobbled, arms pinwheeling, but caught herself.
She blinked.
She was standing in a street.
A familiar one.
The cobbles were uneven, patched a dozen times with mismatched stone. Lanterns leaned over narrow doors. Laundry lines crisscrossed between second-story windows. Someone had chalked a crooked hopscotch grid in the middle of the road.
Northroot.
Her old quarter.
Nellie's breath caught.
"This… can't be right," she whispered. "You're not allowed to be here."
The air answered by smelling even more like home—stale bread, boiled herbs, smoke. A distant dog barked. Somewhere, a pot clanged.
Her heart hurt.
Badly.
She turned in a slow circle.
Every detail was right, down to the chipped brick near the bakery corner, the crooked gutterpipe by the Tanners' place, the sagging step in front of the cramped healer's shop—
Her healer's shop.
The sign above the door swung in an invisible breeze.
TIN KWHISTLE REMEDIES & MINOR RELIEFS
The 'N' was still too small. She'd always meant to fix that.
Nellie's throat tightened.
"This is cruel," she told the Hollow. "You know that, right? This is very, very cruel."
The Hollow did not apologize.
It just opened the door.
The shop door, which had never not squeaked in her entire life, swung inward without a sound.
Warm light spilled out.
And with it—
The smell of copper.
Blood.
Nellie's instincts kicked before thought did.
She ran.
Inside, the cramped little room was full.
People hunched on low stools, leaned against walls, shifted near the counter. Faces she recognized from childhood—Mrs. Harlan with the cracked hands, old Jory with the limp, three different dockworkers with their sleeves rolled up and skin split from rope burn.
But they were wrong.
Too pale. Too still. Too quiet.
She heard it then:
The low chorus of muffled pain.
Not screams.
Not the loud, dramatic hurts.
The little sounds people made when they were trying not to scare their children.
Nellie's chest seized.
Her gaze snapped to the cot at the center of the room.
Someone lay there.
Small.
Still.
Wrapped in blankets already stained dark.
Her.
Nellie stared at her own face.
Paler, younger, hair matted to her forehead with sweat. Lips tinged blue. Fingers clutching the edges of the blanket like she was afraid of falling out of the world.
A woman knelt beside the cot—haggard, eyes red, hands shaking as she held a compress to the younger Nellie's ribs.
Her mother.
"Please," Hollow-Mother whispered hoarsely—but not to Nellie.
To the space where the real healer should have been.
"Please, just a little more, I know you're tired, but she's my girl—"
No one answered.
Nellie couldn't breathe.
"They died," she whispered. "You're… you're mixing it. You're mixing days."
The Hollow had taken the worst memory she owned and twisted it sideways.
In real life, she had been the one on that stool, hands too small, too clumsy, trying to pack herbs into a wound on her mother's side, while the real healer shouted orders and pushed her away and—
She shook herself.
This was a trial.
Not a memory.
Not exactly.
The air shimmered.
System text glowed faintly in the corner of her vision:
[TRIAL FORM: HEALER'S CROSSROADS]
[PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: CHOOSE WHERE YOUR HANDS GO FIRST]
[SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: ACCEPT WHAT YOU CANNOT CARRY]
Six patients glowed faintly in the room.
Her younger self on the cot. Her mother beside her. The old man in the corner clutching his chest. The dockworker whose leg was twisted wrong. The child with the rag over his eyes. The woman with the bandaged hands, fingers already swelling.
Each glow was a different color.
Each pulse a different rhythm.
She didn't know how she knew what they meant.
She just did.
[STATUS: CRITICAL] hovered over three.
[STATUS: STABLE / PAIN HIGH] over two.
[STATUS: FADING] above the cot where younger-Nellie lay.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, that's not—"
Her hands shook harder.
The Hollow didn't shout at her.
It didn't push.
It just let the timer appear.
Not numbers.
Not seconds.
Just a slow, dimming ring around each glowing status, shrinking with every beat of her heart.
She could not save them all.
She knew that.
She'd always known that.
But knowing and seeing were different.
The room blurred at the edges.
She staggered forward and grabbed the side of the cot. Her younger self's eyelashes fluttered. A soft, ragged breath escaped her lips, fogging the air.
"You're okay," Nellie said, voice breaking. "You got through this. I know you did. I remember. You can't be fading—you can't—"
Her own System whispered inside her mind, quiet as a hand on her back:
[HEALER PATH: CANNOT CHANGE THE PAST]
[BUT YOU CAN CHOOSE HOW YOU FACE ITS SHADOW]
She squeezed her eyes shut.
"I can't let her die," she whispered.
If she let this little her fade… what did that say about the current her?
About all the work she'd done to not be that sobbing, helpless child on the floor of a healer's shop?
But if she chose herself—
If she chose that bed—
She would have to walk past the others.
Past the man whose hand had steadied her when she'd tripped at the well.
Past the woman who'd once slipped her a sugar cube on a winter morning.
Past the child whose laugh she'd heard every day through the wall.
All of them waiting.
All of them needing hands.
Her hands.
Nellie stood there, tiny in the middle of the crowded, quiet room.
Her heart hammered.
Her eyes burned.
Her hands trembled.
Not because she didn't know how to set a bone or pack a wound or mix a pain-dulling tonic.
Because for the first time, the choice of who to save first was entirely hers.
No older healer to order her.
No mother to push her away.
No Aiden to stand in front of the monster.
Just her.
Just the weight of her own judgment.
The timer-rings kept shrinking.
She took a slow breath that felt like swallowing glass.
Then Nellie Tinkwhistle—tiniest almost-healer in two lives—forced her feet to move.
She walked past the cot with her younger self on it.
And turned toward the corner where an old man clutched his chest, his glow brightest, his ring almost gone.
Her voice shook, but it came out anyway:
"I'm sorry," she whispered—to her younger self, to the Hollow, to her own memory. "You lived. He didn't. I know that. I can't fix the past by lying to the present."
She dropped to her knees beside the old man, hands moving on instinct.
Checking pulse.
Counting breaths.
Listening.
Choosing.
The Hollow watched.
The rings around the glowing statuses kept shrinking.
The trial of Nellie Tinkwhistle had begun.