“Wakey-wakey,” called a sing-song voice, as a blinding light burned through Jie’s cornea.
“I’m wake,” he mumbled, trying to push the bright light away. “I’m awake…”
“Oh, no you don't, mister. You’ve tricked us three days in a row. Wake up!” demanded a deeper, male voice.
Jie shook his head, feeling as if the world spun a bit too quickly and in different directions than it ought to. His stomach lurched. He felt his head guided by cool hands as retched into a bucket, his hair tied up and out of the way.
“That was a good call, little lilac, tying up his hair,” the male voice chimed with approval.
Jie leaned against his pillow, confused. He appeared to be in his old bed, which was now Dari’s. Briefly, he wondered if the past weeks with Dari had been nothing more than a fever dream, but there was the comforting hum of her touch as the hands that held his head steadied him, laid him back on a pillow, and replaced a cool rag on his forehead. Slowly, he opened his eyes to meet Dari’s, which were wide with concern. She sat on the corner of his bed, near his head. Crouched next to her, counting his pulse beneath the thin, charmed gloves covering her fingertips, was Lujain, Pickaway’s lone midwife. She wore the headscarf of her Baladian sisters, though hers was unadorned with embroidery, paired with a thin veil screening the lower half of her face, all in a light blue-grey that marked her a Daughter of Sister Hayet. Hayetian Cousins were not easy to come by--trained in both practical medicine and magic, most girls washed out to become hedgewitches or apothecaries. Jie doubted anyone in Pickaway realized how lucky they were to have Lujain, even if circumstances demanded she concentrate primarily on midwifery.
“There we are,” Lujain cooed. “You gave us a bit of a scare, there, Jie. All of us! What am I to do when the only other person in town who knows the first thing about medicine takes so ill?”
“You’re not going to just fall over on us again, are you, Jie? It’s been three days of you playing possum on us,” Breyjer chided.
Jie tried to sit up, opening his mouth to speak, but found himself pinned with ease by a gentle push from Dari. Pulling Dari close to his face, he whispered.
“What’s he saying? Do that sweet little parrot thing you do.”
Dari listened, her face intent, holding Jie’s hand tight. She turned to Breyjer and Lujain.
“Opossums do not play dead. They enter an involuntary coma-state beyond their control when threatened,” Dari reported, quoting Jie’s muttered words verbatim.
“Ok, he’s up,” Bryjer chuckled. “Sam! He’s up!” he called down the stairs.
A great clatter and muffled bickering arose from the room below, followed by thundering footsteps up the stairs.
“Mothers and Sisters, Jie!” Sam cried, dropping to her knees at his bedside, displacing both Dari and Lujain as she swung her arms to embrace her thin, wan ward. “You know how to give me a fright, I’ll tell you that!” she admonished, squeezing him to her chest. “It’s not like you to take sick, and three days of fever? If you’d have died on me, I swear, Jie, I’d have made offerings to Mother Hinenui until she let me kill twice!” Sam hiccuped, rocking Jie until he patted her back with a frantic hand.
“Excuse me, Sam, but Jie has been quite nauseous…” Lujian warned in her gentle healer’s voice, placing her muslin-gloved hand on Sam’s shoulder.
But Jie coughed, choking, and the grim remainders of his stomach splatted over her shoulder and down her back.
“Sorry, Lady-Lord,” he croaked.
“Don’t you worry your little egg-head about it, Jie, I’ve never been so glad to be puked on!” Sam said, easing Jie back onto his pillow. “Just really, really glad to see you’re ok.”
“Now, no one get ahead of themselves,” Lujain cautioned. “Three days of fever with no apparent cause is hardly ‘ok’. I’ve still a bit of work to do, I’m afraid. But if it doesn’t put you out, Sam, could you save just a bit of...that?” She pointed to the vomit on Sam’s shirt.
“I think she’s trying to kick us out,” Bryjer drawled with mock affront.
“When I kick you out of a sickroom, you’ll know,” Lujain said. “But soon, yes, most of you should clear out.”
“‘Latus?” Jie rasped.
“She had work. Couldn’t get out of it. She waited as long as she could, though, and swears she’ll be back tomorrow morning at the latest.”
The stairs creaked under footsteps unaccustomed to and unsuited for sneaking, drawing the attention of everyone in the room to the door frame, where just the top of a polished helmet, bushy eyebrows and bright, blue eyes had appeared.
“Mothers and sisters, Orm, you’re supposed to be watching downstairs!”
“What’s to watch? Bunch of drunks havin’ a hair o’ the dog, this time of day.” Orm insisted, thumping into the room, arms outstretched. Sam, Lujain, and Dari all raised arms to stop him. Seeing the black mess oozing down Sam’s black, he nodded in understanding, giving Jie’s shoulder a solid squeeze, instead. “There’s a lad!” he exclaimed. “No silly fever could keep Jie down, I tol’ ‘em. Knew you’d be up in no time!”
Jie tried to nod in appreciation, but thought better of it, instead offering Orm a weak hand-clasp.
“It’s a blessing I own the place, as much as he drank while you were out,” Sam sniffed.
“Am I made of stone, on account of being a dwarf, Sam? I ain’t supposed to have feelings? Dwarvish tradition, drinking feelings. It’s on my tab, besides!”
“Jie!” A Deliatus’ voice called from below. “Oh, Jie, I’ve just heard!”
“How?” Sam puzzled. Jie, too, wondered how Deliatus, off on an apparent business engagement, would’ve been able to hear of his waking, let alone make it to the Bough with such quickness.
Dashing upstairs, she pushed through the door, skirts swirling and jewelry jangling, to throw herself at Jie’s sickbed. Several out-thrust arms held her midair when she leapt to embrace Jie.
“Your clothes cost more than mine,” Sam explained, gesturing to her shoulder as she sat Deliatus back on her feet.
“Oh, poor, dear, dear, Jie,” Deliatus fretted, her kohl already running, troubling her rings and bracelets.
Jie gripped Dari’s hand, pulling himself up on his elbows.
“Five,” he rasped. “But slow, I can’t afford to replace anything you’re wearing.”
Deliatus squealed, clapped, and pressed a careful, gentle kiss on either of his cheeks
and three in a row across his forehead.
“Oh, my, but you still feel quite warm, Jie, darling,” she cooed.
“He is,” Lujain agreed, “Which is why I must have all of you out--the tavern is
downstairs, yes?”
The room buzzed with protests, all silenced with a raise of Lujain’s gloved hand.
“Deliatus and Orm, off with both of you. Sam, we’ll talk in a bit. Bryjer, why are you here in the first?”
Bryjer scoffed.
“The farm report! I’ve been looking after the animals since Jie took ill.”
Dari cleared her throat.
“Oh, of course, with Dari’s help. Sorry, buttercup, wouldn’t have done it without you. Probably could have, but also probably wouldn’t have. ”
“So? Report,” Lujain sighed.
“Oh. Well, everyone’s fine. Milked, cleaned up after, eggs collected.”
Dari mimed a hug.
“Yes, and all the chickens given cuddles and compliments, but that was mostly Dari.”
Jie smiled, leaning his forehead against Dari’s hand.
“And the rest of you, any medical training I am unaware of? Good, then give us some space,” Lujain waved the crowd away. “Not you,” she pointed at Dari, when the girl rose to leave. “You, you’ve been here. You stay.”
“I have one last test. It tends to unnerve onlookers,” Lujain hummed, fishing a glass bottle containing a sproted acorn out of her medicine bag. “Breathe into this.”
Jie puffed into the bottle.
Lujain replaced the cork and watched as the white root thrusting out of the acorn shriveled, turned black and receded. The acorn rattled, as if it exhaled. The root, white again, replaced itself.
“Ah. See?”
“Perhaps,” Jie said, “But it seems a bit fanciful.”
“What do you ‘perhaps’ see?”
“Oak is incorruptible. It’s quite good for clearing up bad magic, failed charms and the like. A sprouted acorn would be, by barest definitions, an oak. Reacting thusly, it seems to have taken in a spot of bad magic, purified itself, and done away with the magic.”
“A quick study, for one who claims to know little of magic,” Lujain grinned. “Though I object on principle to terms like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ magic. You can poison a man on water in the wrong proportions, no?”
“I fear I don’t follow,” Jie said. “Why should my breath induce any manner of oak to purify magic?”
“Because you’re magic-sick,” Lujain said, as if the fact were self-evident. “It’s a poor explanation, but really, the only one left. You’ve no signs of plague or the more common poxes, you’ve been thoroughly leeched, letted, cupped and every other diagnostic method available to us which did not necessitate the slaughter of a chicken, which I did suggest, but Dari quite adamantly opposed.”
“Mmm,” Jie hummed, turning his head to press his forehead against Dari’s thigh. “Well done, Dari. Hold on, magic sick? I’m not a handler, and we’ve not had any magic handlers through in months. Where would I even find magic to get sick off?”
“An excellent question,” Lujain frowned. “It’s a bit like smoke inhalation, in practice. People escape fires and expect they’re out of danger, only to fall ill a few hours or even a few days later from inhaled smoke and airborne poisons. If a person unaccustomed to magic finds themselves in a high density of it, quite frequently they’ll feel fine for a day or two, but it tends to catch up.”
“Huh. Interesting,” Jie coughed.
Lujain frowned.
“Is there anything you would like to tell me? Anything that could possibly assist in healing you?”
Jie clung to Dari’s hand, looking up into her imploring violet eyes, the worried set of her mouth.
“No.”
Lujain tugged a glove off to squeeze the bridge of her nose.
“Is there anything you probably should tell me?”
Dari nudged him. A small sliver of truth would do.
“We were in the forest. Quite far back,” Jie said. “Not certain how helpful that is.”
“Ah. We,” Lujain echoed. “Dari, how have you been feeling?”
Dari’s eyes darted down to Jie,
“Dari has some linguistic issues, you see,” Jie began. “If you phrase questions…”
“So I’ve heard, and so I’ve seen,” she answered. “She’s hardly left your side these past three days, you know. If I wasn’t certain she couldn’t be coaxed away from you, I’d take her on as an apprentice like that, ” Lujain snapped her fingers. “But, three days is longer than it seems, and I’ve spent a good bit of time listening. Dari? How have you been feeling?”
“I am having the feelings to tiredness, only,” Dari said. “To sleep to the floor is the difficult thing.”
Patients were so odd, Lujain mused, always insisting on inserting tiny lies into a massive confession. Multiple times over the past few days, she’d cracked the door just enough to check that Jie was breathing to find Dari asleep, her head on his chest, a hand slipped under his shirt to rest over his heart, as if she’d fallen asleep listening to his breathing, monitoring his heartbeat. She’d heard Dari speaking quiet, confusing Kanglais through the door, only for the girl to fall into silence and echoes on opening it. Patients’ lies were part of medicine, Lujain shrugged, and pushed forward.
“I refer to the forest, Dari. If I’m not mistaken, you were there, also, yes?”
“Yes,” Dari echoed, feeling Jie pinch the soft space between her thumb and forefinger.
“There is…old magic, there, I’ve been told. Odd little ley lines humans can’t always feel until they’ve been crossed, if Bryjer is to be believed. In this matter, I’ll defer to him as an elf and as someone mad enough to go so far into the forest. If the truth is half as dire as the stories, it would more than account of Jie’s illness. If the truth were anywhere near the stories, it’s nothing short of a miracle Jie is even alive. But if the forest is the source of Jie’s illness, it does not account for your apparent health.”
“Bryjer is having the thought I might to be having to the little bit of fae,” Dari ventured, despite Jie’s protests.
“Ah,” Lujain said, digging in her medicine bag, uncorking another bottle containing an acorn. “Breathe, won’t you?”
Dari concentrated, exhaling a gentle, whispery breath into the bottle. The acorn sat still and silent.
Lujain squinted at the bottle and shrugged.
“Magic sickness is a bit out of my wheelhouse. We did a rotation on it before my cezo was sacked, but our Alta Daughter was Brekan, you see. Hence more of a focus on childbirth and the like. I’ll give you a general course of recovery, but if we don’t see improvement in the next day, I’ll need to send word to Jolo. I know the Alta Daughter at the Lostro of Zamani there, if it still stands.”
Jie shivered, drawing closer to Dari, who petted his hair.
They’d be quite precious, Lujain thought, if they weren’t so frustrating. She sucked her teeth and pulled her veil down, pointing a gloved finger at her throat.
“Jie,” Lujain groaned, gesturing to her bare face and neck, “You must recognize this as an enormously stupid gesture, but it is not possible that you understand the full the breadth of a Hayetian Cousin's numerous oaths, is it? This little scar, do you see? It’s an oath. I am not physically capable of breaking a patient’s confidence, do you understand?”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“That’s quite an oath,” Jie said, eyes fixed on Lujain’s scar, away from her knowing gaze.
“Quite,” Lujain snipped. “So you are certain there is nothing either of you would like to tell me? Dari, don’t look at Jie like that, I wouldn’t trick you. You became my patient when you breathed on that acorn.”
Dari’s eyes pleaded with Jie, but he held firm.
“Nothing. Thank you, cousin,” Jie said.
“Don’t ‘cousin’ me, you lying old thing,” Lujain huffed. “Just let this one take care of you and get better. I’m low on pain-catchers and could do with a quart of your peppermint hair oil. I haven’t got the time to puzzle out your little mysteries, tend to all the mothers and make things on my own,” she said, snapping her medicine bag shut with an annoyed clip.
“A quart?” Jie repeated hazily. “How often do you even show your hair, Lujain?”
Lujain held her stomach, a musical laugh shaking her entire body.
“Ah, Jie, see this--this is why it is difficult to stay cross with you for long. Alright, then. Sam!” she called. “We need to get our little joker outdoors!”
Though Orm put up a fight, Deliatus convinced the dwarf that while yes, he was likely stronger than Sam, his height would prove a challenge in carrying Jie. Jie, for his part, was simply glad that at midday, only a smattering of gossipy widows and women bawdy enough to pass as widows occupied seats in the Bough.
They would, at least, have more colorful details in their retellings. A deep-down, tavern-bred part of him prickled with pride that he could offer a gift so priceless with no real effort. He only needed to lie limp as a mass of greens a week out in the stewpot as Sam carried him downstairs and outside, Lujain before her, Dari after, carrying a basket.
“The white oak,” Lujain pointed. “Set him up there.”
Jie began to protest, only for Lujain to shush him.
“I know, I know, the charm graveyard. But surely you know oak works quite the same on living things afflicted by off-kilter magic, yes? No? Well, now you do. White is best, your less successful charms shan’t interfere. If the world was perfect, we’d have an Amaranthine and you’d be on your feet by dinnertime, but we have the world we have,” she tutted. “Dari, see that he eats a bit--only a bit, mind, and drinks as much as you can persuade.”
Sam laid Jie at the foot of the white oak, ignoring his weak protests.
“Until sundown, yes? If you’re not better in two days time, you’re one of the Daughters from the Cezo in Jolo’s problem. If it’s still there, of course.”
Dari knelt beside him, offering a square of what barley bread might look like if it had given up its ambitions.
“Eats a bit,” Dari parroted.
Glaring at all of the women with as much annoyance as he could muster in his weakened state, Jie took a nibble, broke into a spasm of wracking coughs, and waved desperately for the tall crock of dandelion and ginger tea Dari carried in her basket. She poured a small measure out into one of his own teacups and passed Jie the sharp, bitter smelling liquid. He gulped down the small cup, still coughing and waved for another.
“Dari appears to have you well in hand,” Lujian said, pressing her right palm to her left breast and ducking her head. “Sister Hayet guide you, Mother Zamani keep you, Mothers all watch over,” she recited the traditional departing words of a cousin of Hayet to her patient.
“You’re certain she couldn’t be persuaded?” Jie heard Lujain ask Sam as the pair walked back to the tavern.
“Like I’d try,” Sam laughed.
Jie opened his hand to ask for another cup of tea to find one waiting. In one hand, he took the teacup, with the other, he reached for Dari.
“Thank you,” he said, hoarse. “What in the darkness was that? It’s like eating baked clay.”
Dari brushed a strand of Jie’s hair away from his eyes.
“Sea bread. Brjyer is telling to me it is the bread with very a lot of nutrition, but it is not having the strong flavor. I was having the thought it could to convince to you to drink very a lot of the tea, to give to you the strength.”
“Clever trick,” Jie groaned. “But I doubt it will work more than once, unless you have something else in your basket.”
“Stew,” she answered. “To put to the sea bread to the stew would give to the sea bread the more pleasant tasting and feeling, but it would not to upset to your stomach.”
“Carry on, Cousin Dari,” Jie agreed. He could be imagining it, but he felt better already, the white oak doing its quiet work, the sun warming his arms, his bare legs cool beneath the thin blanket Sam had wrapped him in.
He turned to look at Dari fully, without the thick haze of heavy fever, for the first time since waking. She wore, perplexingly, breeches and a man’s workshirt.
Specifically, his breeches and workshirt.
“Ai ya!” he swore. “The Dead and Sleeping both, please tell me Orm, or, at worst, Sam, peeled those off of me! It seems too much to ask that they were laundered before you put them."
Dari looked down at her erstwhile clothes.
“Deliatus told to us ‘it isn’t as if I haven’t seen all sorts, it’s no trouble, darlings’ and put the shirt which was Sam’s onto you,” Dari said, dunking a square of sea bread into the crock of stew. She offered it to Jie, who ate from her fingertips, dismissing the possibility of feeding himself. This second bite was more palatable than the first--already, he could feel himself returning.
“‘Latus is well enough, with her professional detachment,” Jie agreed.
“Yes,” Dari agreed, “I was having to this thought, as well. Deliatus said to us to the professional way she could not to tell us the reason to the pink color to her cheeks. She told to us just ‘I was a bit surprised, is all. It’s really too bad for the other girls at the guild he’s so awfully private.’”
Jie sighed.
“That does sound quite a lot like her professional discretion. I don’t suppose you understood any of that?”
Dari shook her head, her lips a careful, straight line. She offered him another square of stew soaked sea bread.
Jie groaned.
“The animals!”
“It was as Bryjer told to you. He took care to them, and showed to me how to take care to them as well.”
“The goats were milked?”
“The bucket to this morning is covered, left to the part to the larder with very a lot of coldness and darkness. Bryjer read to the notebook to your part of the kitchen and told to me the way to boil to the milk with the vinegar and wrap to it with the cloth.”
“Did it seem to be turning out well?” Jie asked, his voice cautious, not wishing to sound ungrateful, but neither wishing to lose three days of milk and cheese.
“I have the thought, yes,” Dari said. “Deliatus ate very a lot of it with her morning eggs.”
Deliatus was unlikely to eat anything out of good manners, Jie thought. She’d been staying over more often than usual--it was not odd to find her waiting after his chores, famished and complaining in Sam’s workshirt.
“I gave to making to the butter very a lot of effort, but Sam told me to stop and Orm gave to the men watching to me very a lot of the scoldings.”
“Which, I take it, is when you started wearing my clothes?”
Dari nodded.
“There are very a lot of the eggs. And Snetchy misses to you."
Jie relaxed.
“I’m feeling a bit less nauseated. Do you think perhaps I could try the stew without the sea bread?”
Dari chewed on the inside of her mouth.
“You can to do to this only if you drink very a lot of the tea, as well.”
“As you command,” Jie said, raising unsteadily. Dari grasped his shoulders, holding him up long enough to settle behind him, propping his head in her lap. He lay a long moment in Dari’s lap, staring up at the spiraling branches of the white oak. Much had been written about the incorruptibility of oak, volumes praising the extinct amaranthine oak in particular. Jie suspected writers' claims to be exaggeration, citing his present recovery under his plain white oak. Whatever purification it performed, it did so after passing through the red clay soil beneath him or Dari behind him, and already, he itched to try standing.
Dari held a little mug of stew and a spoon, as if offering Jie the choice to eat or be fed. Recollecting Dari’s dexterity with utensils, he took them both for himself with thanks, but it was a close thing.
“So, still, no one has told Jie about the versatility of his hair oils?” Lujain asked, watching through the window near Jie’s charm table.
“Jie’s a bit shy,” Sam said.
“Shy?” Lujain scoffed. “I may’ve believed as much before, but he’s out there with his head lying in that girl’s lap.”
“Well,” Sam nodded toward Deliatus, “he did spend the thick of his teenage years with ‘Latus here. His notion of polite affection from women is a little off, but he’s shy of them, all the same. We worried if he knew ladies were using his ‘hair oils’ other ways, he’d get funny about making them.”
“The spearmint tincture is a perfectly valid medical application. Used properly, it does wonders for elasticity during birthing. Certainly, he’s not shy of simple medicine.”
“Oh, naturally, he’d not mind medical applications,” Deliatus said. “But in no time, he’d be asking questions about the rosemary oil, too. Which mind, is also marvelous as hair oil, but I cannot go back to the way things were before the guild kept it on order. I simply cannot, with a clear conscience, inflict such cruelty upon my guild sisters.”
“Well enough, well enough, so Jie continues to produce oils for all manner of vaginal catastrophes in perfect ignorance?”
“In the correct amount, they really do perform admirably as marketed,” Deliatus said, toying with a stray curl.
“Oh, I'm aware,” Lujain agreed. “Sam, you did save what you could off of your shirt, yes?”
“Yeah,” Sam blanched. “Not sure how salvageable the shirt itself is. I’ve been puked on plenty, but is something else,” Sam pushed a small, cracked bit of crockery congealed with blue-black muck at Lujain.
“Actually, all of this got me to thinking. You’re curing Jie by just propping him up against a white oak, right? If that’ll do for magic sickness, you know old Guo…”
Lujain shook her head.
“No. Poor Guo is not magic-sick. Whatever afflicts him is complex. His passenger objects to the existence of Cousins or Daughters of any order, which makes examining him further a bit of a challenge. Aydin keep him, Jie’s paincatchers are the best to be done for him, I’m afraid.” She snapped her fingers, drawing the muck closer.
“See,” Lujain said, “even if it’s not bad magic, as a layperson may call it, over-imbibed
magic tends to come out a bit pungent. Old magic, doubly so.” She dug in her medicine bag, drawing her hand back with a string of Baladian swears. She pulled the glove off her left hand, shaking it until she heard a soft ping of a shard of glass somewhere on the stone floor. “Tch. I must’ve broken a bottle. My, that smarts! And it’ll take ages to clean up, depending on what broke,” she said, adjusting a thin, gold tube fitted with curved glass lenses at either end, Lujain squinted her right eye closed, pressing the left to the tube to peer across the surface of the blue-black substance. “Hm,” she hummed, as Sam and Deliatus watched. “Have you any kitchen matches, if it isn’t trouble? A really, really fine strip of firewood, lit at one end, will do in a pinch.”
Sam fetched a smoldering length of kindling and handed it off.
Lips moving silently, Lujain made the sign of the star, rattling off a complex prayer Deliatus was disappointed to realize she did not recognize before dropping the dying ember onto the substance. Lujain stood, impassive, as a flame leapt from its surface. Sam and Deliatus, less nonchalant about fires in Jie’s half of the kitchen, leapt against the wall.
Sam coughed, stepping out of the kitchen and behind the bar.
“Tch-tch,” Lujain sucked her teeth apologetically. “My apologies, Sam, I get a bit absorbed. But this isn’t so bad,” the midwife assured them. “This is good. It’s just old, is all. Old can be dangerous, as far as magic goes, but old is better than vengeful.”
“S’ all right,” Sam hacked. “But I thought you said there wasn’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’ magic. That feels pretty bad.”
“The morality of vengeance depends heavily upon what’s to be avenged, and who it is imposed upon,” Lujain said.
“My, but that’s a weight off, isn’t it?” Deliatus trilled. “It’s terribly simple to stay well away from the deep parts of the forest where one finds such things!”
“Why wasn’t Dari affected?” Sam asked.
Lujain tapped the tiny scar on her throat through her veil.
“I couldn’t tell you, even if I knew.”
“You can’t seriously be implying Dari is any manner of threat!” Deliatus demanded. “She’s a bit mixed up, but she’s been nothing but lovely since the day she came to us!”
“Lovely’s a bit of an oversell, ‘Latus; she’s helpful and sweet but she’s almost as much hassle as Jie. But it’s odd.”
“Then why all of the dark looks and suspicious tones? You are Sensitive, Sammy! If she were anything dangerous, you’d have felt it.”
“Deliatus is right. If Dari were a magical danger herself, I’d have been here treating you within a few days of her arrival. Sensitivity comes in different stripes and strengths. Yours was never properly identified, nor cultivated, but by your family history, I’d suspect you are really only afflicted by things that present clear, present harm, magical and otherwise.”
“We have kept inns and taverns and the like for more than a few generations,” Sam said. “Stands to reason.”
“It does. And since it does, I’m not suspicious of your pretty new stray,” Lujain said, leaning to look out the window, where Jie now sat upright, back against the trunk of the white oak, eating straight out of the crock of stew they had left for Dari to feed him. “But I am curious. Perhaps her people are somehow predisposed against magic sickness?”
Sam rubbed the back of her neck.
“Sam, honestly, you think Sumayah hasn’t kept all of us up to date on your mysterious stranger? I’d say she’s a worse gossip than Deliatus, if Deliatus wasn’t her source for much of her information.”
“Gossip!” Deliatus tutted. “I merely keep dear Sumayah abreast of current events. Not everyone is so lucky as to have a close, personal relationship with the local tavernkeep. And how much better are you, listening to all the latest ‘news’?”
Lujain laughed and opened her arms to Deliatus.
“Perhaps I am only jealous that my role in your news exchange has very hard limitations,” the women embraced, kissing the air by one another’s cheeks.
The healer turned to Sam, placed her right palm on her left breast and bowed her head. Sam returned the gesture, keeping a careful distance.
“Keep me updated, won’t you? Directly, if it can be managed--these are strange days, I never know whether to believe Sumayah’s little flourishes. Sister Hayet guide you, Mother Zamani keep you, Mothers all watch over, Sam.” Nodding goodbye to Bryjer, who idled at the bar with an already tipsy Orm.
“So who won?”
“Who won what?”
“Me and Orm had a bet going. I said he was magic-sick off of something old and weird out further in the forest than any humans--or dwarves, Orm, I didn’t forget you--have any business going. Orm here thought it was some vicious spirit in particular that latches onto young men, or something, I forget,” Bryjer said with a dismissive wave.
“Now, you made my bet sound right stupid on purpose,” Orm bristled. “It’s folklore! Melikkis ain’t vicious, just lonesome and persistent enough so’s it’s right hard to tell the difference. Had ‘em back when I was a boy, when there was more forests to be spoken of. You wears a little scrap of wood with your own blood on it--blood come by honestly, mind, from chopping or carvin’ --to show ‘em they’d got you already. Still gots mine, someplace,” Orm hiccupped.
“What was the bet?” Sam asked, crossing her arms.
“Five gold and a round,” Bryjer drawled, leaning back on his stool.
Sam grinned.
“Hate to tell you, fellas, but it was too close to call. Could’ve been one or the other, but treatment shakes out the same, either way.”
“So’s we both lose?” Orm grumbled.
“No, no, no. We both win. I buy you a round, you buy me a round, I give you five gold, you give me five gold,” Bryjer corrected with a sly smile.
“That sounds like a trick.”
“By the glamor that keeps the hair on my head, I swear, no tricks.”
“Right, then. Can I borrow five gold? I’ll pay you back right fast,” Orm conceded.
Sam stepped away to fill tankards for both, shaking her head.
“Oh, sweet Sammy, I’m so terribly pleased dear Jie is on the mend. He had me quite frightened,” Deliatus cooed, looping her arms around Sam’s waist. “And you were so good to look after him”
“Dari did most the work,” Sam admitted. “Everybody was pretty helpful, really. Even Orm,
If you can believe it. He’s good at managing a crowd.”
“Oh, of course everyone wanted to help,” Deliatus cooed. “Where would any of us be without you, hm? And Jie’s a dear, of course.”
“By the looks of it, he ought to be on his feet by nightfall. Might should take him some breeches, at that,” Sam said. “Say, didn’t you have work today? Your fella, what’s his name?”
“Anson? Well, he was hardly ever ‘my’ fellow, sweet Sammy, simply a generous and genial companion. I canceled, with apologies.”
“You canceled? In person? Doesn't the guild have some sort of moon’s blood guarantee you girls abuse something awful?”
“Oh, yes, we do, though I would hardly say we abuse it ‘something awful’,” Deliatus said with a playful swat.
“I merely wished to end our professional friendship quickly and amicably. He took it quite well, all told. He presented me with a very cordial parting gift, and I came back, straightaway.”
“‘Latus, now, I’ll admit to having some trouble keeping some of your gentlemen straight, but unless I’m real mistaken, Anson paid for your rooms at Mrs Machen’s?”
“And so he shall, for the next year or so,” Deliatus smiled. “Dear Anson is all the way over in Eastlynn. It’s simply too far. I can’t be gallivanting all over anymore, Sammy. I’m not as young as I once was.”
“Latus, if you are one day over thirty-three I will eat my teeth,” Sam said.
“Oh, sweet Sammy, see, this is why I absolutely love you, do you know that?” Deliatus grinned.
Sam stood, slack-jawed, as Deliatus brushed a kiss across her cheek. She was Deliatus’ ‘favorite’, of course. She knew Deliatus cared a great deal for her. But as effusive, as affectionate, as generally handsy as she tended to be, ‘love’ was not a word which left Deliatus’ lips.
“Besides, sweet Sammy,” Deliatus soothed. “It isn’t as if he was half as important as dear Jie’s well being. Poor Anson is only a duke.”
If anyone else had been nursing him, Jie would’ve requested breeches and tottered back to work by the time the sun took on an orange tint in the few hours before sundown. There was still a certain weakness to his limbs, but not so pronounced that he would, under most circumstances, approve of lazing underneath a tree while his chores were foisted off on others.
But as it stood, he laid his head in Dari’s lap, an arm slung around the skinny trunk of the white oak.
“Dari, I have some other questions which may prove more difficult to answer,” Jie began, choosing his words with the care and precision of a jeweler setting diamonds.
“I did speaking to Lujain for the reason she is being the cousin and cannot to tell to anyone the things I said to. You were having very lot of the sleep for the long time. I am not having understanding to your reasoning why I should not to talk to anyone in the way that is not like to the parrot.”
“Can you speak thusly without touching me, yet?”
Dari paused.
“This is not the thing I have tried to do to it.”
“Then please, Dari, just a bit longer. I have more research to do. I want to be able to offer some sort of explanation, you see.”
“As it is for you to say to it,” Dari grumbled. “But I do not have the thought this is the idea with very a lot of fairness to me.”
“It isn’t,” Jie admitted. “But just a bit longer, ok?”
“Okays,” Dari said, combing her fingers through Jie’s hair.
“Now,” Jie said, trying his best to hide the accusation in his voice. “I’m finding it odd you haven’t asked me the last thing I remember.”
“Should I to have asked to you this?”
“Most people do when someone wakes from a lengthy fever.”
“Oh. I did not have to the memory to ask to this,” Dari lied.
“I’ll ask about her, even if you don’t ask me first,” Jie said, tilting his head backward to meet Dari’s eyes.
Dari clucked her tongue.
“The word ‘her’ you use to describe to it, this does not seem like the correct idea. The voice you heard to it in the forest has very a lot of oldness, very a lot of loneliness. These are the bad feelings and can give to anyone the cruelty, if they do not give to their thoughts very a lot of carefulness.”
“Can it hurt anyone? Worse than this, I mean?”
Dari chewed a thumbnail, a posture of thoughtfulness.
“I do not have the thought harm was meant to come to you. This was the accident, I have the thought.”
“You spoke to her. Your voice sounded different. More confident. As if it was your mother tongue.”
Dari puckered her lips to blow the crescent-moon of thumbnail she’d chewed off into the grass.
“Yes.”
“Just yes?”
“Just the yes. I will not to give to you the lies, Jie. I do not remember to the name to this language, or how do I know to it, or how did I know to speak to the voice with it in the way that had the efficacy. Memory has very a lot of strangeness.”
Jie nodded.
“But it won’t come out of the forest?”
Dari laughed.
“The forest? Jie, the place you found to me is not being ‘the forest’. It is being very a lot deeper to there, very a lot older,” Dari sighed, dropping her hands on Jie’s chest. “I have the thought, you ask to me, ‘how do you know to this’ and I must to say to you ‘I do not have the knowing as to how”. You have wanting to ask to me, ‘why did you to run to this place, if you are not having the knowledge of it?’ and I can to say to you ‘memory has very a lot of strangeness. This place is being the place I have memory to it before I met to you and to Sam and to Deliatus and to Orm. I had very a lot of the fear and very a lot of the shame, I had the thought, I cannot to belong to the place that is Pickaway, I must to go back to the place I have the memory to.”
Jie scrabbled, trying to raise himself to sit next to Dari, to dab her glittering eyes. Dari blinked and pushed him back down.
“Do you know what that place was? I’ve always heard of ruins out in the forest, but ruins are nothing special, on their own. The continent is lousy with them, by now.”
Dari paused.
“Can you give to me the trust when I tell to you I am not having the words to explain to you what can I understand to it?”
“Dari, we promised, as friends. Tell me whatever words you have, we’ll sort it out.”
Dari shook her head.
“This is having the difference. Can you trust to me to tell to you the truth?”
“Of course,” Jie answered, soothed to the point of sleepiness by the steady rhythm of Dari’s heart, the even rise of her breathing. “Of course I trust you.”
Do you know what she is?
The question had steeped in his mind, but Jie found it troubled him less and less--perhaps it was part of the magic sickness. Perhaps it was draining from him. Or perhaps--just perhaps, he only cared that Dari was his friend.
Late in the evening, after Jie had been carried, protesting, back to his old bed for a final night of convalescence, after Dari had wriggled back into a dress befitting her job description and resumed her post, Lujain unwound her headscarf and tossed her veil into a simmering pot of peppermint, cloves and bay. She stretched, glad Sam had sent her away with a crock of stew for dinner. It had been a long, strange day; cooking would’ve been both too exhausting and too mundane to tolerate, and yet, her three onyx-haired little daughters ate like fire, just the same.
She’d set the crock next to her medicine bag, which lived in a little alcove by the door, always ready to be snatched at the first word of sickness in Pickaway. Or Alderson. Or Cajah. Remembering the broken glass, that the bag would need cleaning, Lujain groaned. She needed an apprentice. At twelve, Arwa showed no interest in medicine, and Lujain knew better than to force it. Life as a healer was difficult enough for those who chose it with their whole hearts.
She was wearing herself into exhaustion hallucinations, if the little sapling, its leaves iridescent and well-formed, peeking out of her bag was any indication. Waving her hand to disperse the vision, she felt young, springy branches. Shaking her head, she replaced her charmed gloves and grasped the leaves and branches in her fist. In one decisive motion, she yanked what, for all appearances, was a year old oak sapling out of her medicine bag. Making the sign of the Star, she called for little Fulwah to fetch a trowel and slightly larger Abier to go plant the mysterious tree in the small space outside their front door, well away from the herb garden in back. Lujain wasn’t certain what would become of the strange sapling, but for all her oaths to protect life, she was certain its care was her responsibility.
Watching her oldest, Arwa, show the younger two how to pack earth around its scrawny trunk, Lujain rubbed the tiny scar on her throat. If she could break her oath, she still would not. But all the same, she’d keep watch over the odd girl at the Bough.