The old physician came to the outer yard daily during spring harvest season. He chuckled as he knelt in the furrows of my small herb garden.

“You can certainly grow herbs, Ansei, but you’re going to lose a hand trying to harvest them with your long sword.”

He reached up to hand me a small harvesting knife and I thanked him for it. Using the dull and ancient blades we had on hand in the barracks was butchering my hands.

We lapsed to silence as we worked, but I was growing bolder with the doctor, questioning him in ways I had never dared question anyone.

There had never been a parent to whom I could put life questions—save my mother—and she could hardly be relied upon. Gradually, I found in the doctor a friend both sober and trustworthy.

“Was your father a physician?”

He glanced sideways in surprise at my abrupt question. “No. My father was a soldier.”

This surprised me. I had always supposed he had followed his father’s profession. “Where did you learn? How did you learn to care for creatures—for people?”

He gazed off into the mountains on the eastern horizon. “I don’t know. Part of it was in me, I suppose. Nature is always modeling some extraordinary tenderness at odds with its alternative harshness. You work out which path you want to follow on your own.”

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“I look at my spider’s nature and see only cruelty.”

“Truly?” He chuckled. “I look at your nature and see the most heroic father in all creation.”

I snorted at this explanation. “He never lifts a finger for his offspring.”

The doctor frowned. “He offers his whole life. Both sexes are about as giving as they can be. Mother spiders die soon after their eggs hatch. There’s lovely symmetry in spider lives, you know.”

I had never considered this view, and it didn’t satisfy me now. “There is tension between spider and humanity. They should never combine.”

The doctor rooted up a weed and tossed it in my direction.

“Perhaps. But how do you know? The best lives are lived between extraordinary tensions.”

I snatched the weed up and tossed it into a pile. “What do you mean?” The doctor’s unconventional responses had irritated me, but had also goaded my curiosity.

“Is it better to make a show of strength or to use a kind word? Either response might be correct at different times. How will you get it right if you use only one approach? You may avoid tension, but you will miss the middle path, too. The middle path is always taut with tension.”

I nodded silently, thinking, and gazing back at the doctor from a plane I’d never visited. “You’ve taught me to doctor typical battlefield wounds, but someone in my situation needs more sophisticated remedies.”

The old doctor raised his brow.

“I need an anti-venom.”

He chuckled. “Yes, you do. But the cure you are seeking doesn’t exist.”

“Then maybe I’ll develop it myself.”

“I think you’re as likely as anyone to succeed, but I don’t know if it’s wise to hang your hopes on it too heavily. Remember, Nature loves symmetry.”