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sliced into his ballooned skin. Teeth had stabbed through his lips and they were still oozing blood.
    This is not the prophesied one, Gaia thought. This is a mortal man. She turned to the elders. ‘He is not the one the oracle foretold.’
    Gaia leaned forward, and tilted the man’s head back, exposing the torn skin and ragged bone of his broken neck. Turning her body, she unsheathed her sword, holding it steady at her side. Living a life cloistered from the world had given Gaia all the time she needed to master most of her ancestors’ fighting skills. She was as adept with her sword as any knight had been. The jade on her hilt caught the sunlight, sending triangles of light bouncing off the rocks and a melody of flutes in Gaia’s mind.
    The man moaned.
    Gaia lifted her sword above her head.
    In the seconds before Gaia brought down her blade, the man turned his head and Gaia watched in astonishment as his neck healed and the back of his skull filled out.
    Letting her sword fall at her side, she dropped to her knees. Without knowing why, the elders followed their guide’s lead, and they too knelt.
    ‘Forgive me,’ she said to the man’s swollen face, his lips repairing themselves as she stared.
    He howled again. With every small tear that healed, every bloody wound that dried up, some agonising, mind-blowing pain seemed to be shooting through his brain.
    Recognising his suffering, Gaia reached into the pack the Priestess had given her. She slid out a gold mask like the helmet of a Conquistador, with a faceplate shaped like the sun soldered to it.
    He seemed to be aware of Gaia’s movements and the soft melodic lilt of her soothing voice, and his howls quieted. Crouching next to his head, Gaia slipped two cacao leaves from her sword’s pouch.
    She looked up at the sun. They didn’t have much time. The sun was already making its descent to the underworld, and when it reached Uku Pacha the gods would know this deity had escaped. They had to move quickly if they were going to get him safely to the village before night and prepare him for the mountain.
    She gently opened his mouth wide enough for her to press the two leaves on his swollen tongue. She poured water into her hands from her canteen then trickled the cool liquid from her fingers into his mouth, lifting his head slightly so he could swallow. Dripping more water onto her wrapped hand, she mopped his forehead and bathed his swollen eyelids. Then she rubbed soft wax across his cracked lips. He moaned again, softly, less agitated this time.
    Gaia thought he was trying to smile.
    She stayed at his side until his anguished moaning ceased and the coca leaves had calmed him. When he was silent, she was aware that his legs had healed themselves, bone no longer cutting through his torn trousers. Gaia lifted the mask from the rock above him and eased the golden sun over his face.
    Her task completed, she nodded to the elders that she was ready. The four women spread the sling open next to his body and then carefully rolled him onto the sturdy skin. Gaia noticed that his arms were no longer dislocated. The revelation that this man was able to heal his own body did not shock her. He was after all from the heavens.
    Lifting the poles onto their shoulders and with Gaia leading their descent, the women raced the setting sun down the steep canyon pass to the village.

10
    Langley, Virginia, present day
    DARREN CROWDER HAD been a journalist before the Miracle, a good one. He’d been working on the health desk of the
Washington Register
, an online weekly read mostly by policy wonks and government agency bureaucrats. As tragic as it had been, the Miracle had given Darren and his colleagues lots of ‘I told you so’ opportunities as the events of those terrible months had exposed flaws inherent in America and the world’s healthcare policies. When people finally began to die again, two significant global changes occurred as a result: governments increased the personnel in