Healer Read Online Free Page A

soft voice, close by in the red dark. He looked up and saw a fat little girl with glasses. Couldn’t have been much more than six.
    â€œI’m all right,” he muttered.
    â€œNo, you’re not. But you will be soon.”
    â€œFat chance. Goes on all day like this. Nothing’s any good.”
    Barry could hear the whine in his voice. He loathed that voice.
    â€œShove off, will you?” he snarled. “Nothing anyone can do.”
    â€œThere’s something I can do.”
    She reached out and took his hand. He jerked it, but even that twitch of effort turned itself into pain, and she’d gripped him quite hard. When she took the other hand, he let her. Stupid kid.
    â€œShove off, I tell you,” he said. “I don’t believe in fairies.”
    â€œTell it to go away,” she said. “It will go away if you tell it. I’ll help you. I helped my granddad make his bad leg go away. Your nasty head is going away. You tell it. It’s going if you tell it.”
    Nothing really happened, nothing which made any sense. The swear was in Barry’s mouth to get rid of her but didn’t quite come; even feeling foul, he wasn’t going to line up with the Marsden Ash toughs. Perhaps that was it, or perhaps …
    Her hands were chilly, but heat was coming from somewhere: a strong warmth on the back of his neck and his shoulder blades, as though there’d been an electric fire close behind him; only the heat began inside him, growing there …
    â€œTell it to go away,” she whispered. “Help me.”
    The heat made him drowsy. It was like dropping off to sleep after a bad day, dropping into darkness, pain dwindling down a long corridor, a corridor that led right away, farther and farther. He gave it a feeble, sleepy shove, and it vanished completely.
    â€œBetter now?” she whispered.
    His eyes were shut. When he opened them, he really felt as though he’d been asleep all night after one of the bad days and was now waking with the ache gone and the sense of a well day before him. He eased his head from side to side, trying it out. The muscles of his neck, stiff with the remains of tension, creaked a little but didn’t hurt. The warmth was still vaguely there, but with a shiver to it now, like the feeling that comes when you are lying face down on the beach and a small cloud crosses the sun. He stretched.
    â€œWhew!” he said.
    â€œBetter?”
    â€œYeah. Thanks.”
    For the moment he had no doubt at all that she had actually done what she said: made the migraine go. She looked pleased, though she didn’t really smile. She had a round, flat, pale face which seemed too large for her body—or perhaps it was that her mouth and nose were so small. But the extra thick lenses of her glasses made her eyes look soft and huge. They were brown. Her hair was almost black, done in a pigtail. Her clothes were very neat but looked as if they’d been bought for somebody much prettier than she was.
    The secretary’s door slapped open, and the Pakistani girl came out, still snivelling, with a plaster on her knee. The secretary looked at Barry.
    â€œWell, what’s up with you?” she said.
    â€œI had a headache, but it’s gone.”
    â€œGood,” she said, not interested. She turned to the kid with the glasses. “And you’re in the wrong school,” she snapped.
    The door shut.
    The girl gave a puzzled sigh.
    â€œHow old are you?” said Barry.
    â€œGoing to be seven.”
    â€œYou’re supposed to be at the Infants’ still, she means,” said Barry. “Other side of the playground. You new here, too?”
    She didn’t say anything but took his hand.
    â€œOkay,” he said, “I’ll show you. One good turn deserves another.”
    On his way back along the edge of the asphalt playground Barry passed the wall of the Assembly Hall. It was built a bit like a chapel and had