THEY TOLD ME YOU CAN HEAL
1561 4D
Tiurin ran, staggering, through the spring night rain from his borrowed cart toward house of the two old women. If only this were a nightmare, and he could wake up. It was all his fault.
His five-year-old daughter Virrani lay in his arms, broken and bleeding, her body dangling as if a huge beast had chewed it into a rag. Jagged bone ends jutted from her shattered limbs; blood soaked the tatters of her small coverall. One eye, its lid ripped back, stared emptily into the night. These two old women were his final hope for her; her heart wasn’t beating.
He hammered at the sturdy house door; a dog barked. Even if he didn’t believe the stories his cousin told him, there was nowhere else to turn. Tears and rain streamed down his face.
A short, plump woman opened the door and peered at him.
“Hurry,” he puffed, trying to keep Virra’s head from lolling out of his arms, “She fell into the separator. It just mashed her to a pulp.” Water poured off his wide-brimmed hat as he pushed his way in. “She’s lost a lot of blood and I called the doc and he told me she’s dead. Can you do something? They told me you can heal. Please?” He sank into one of the room’s soft chairs, water dripping from his cape, and cradled his little girl tenderly.
“Follow me,” the woman said. “Deen! Deen, wake up!”
A thinner, taller woman with a narrow face poked her head out of another room, blinking. “What?”
“This one looks bad. We’ve got to hurry.” The first woman beckoned to him, bustled ahead. “Come in the kitchen and put her on the table. Yes, right there. Now you’ll have to leave.”
With Virrani in his arms, he struggled to his feet, and said, “I’m not leaving her.” This business didn’t feel right.
The little woman folded her arms and faced him squarely. “We won’t work with anyone else present.”
Tiurin rebelled. “What do you do, invoke spirits or something? Call in the devils like the Kai Ren? You aren’t doctors, I know that.”
“No. But we’ll bring her back. Our way is the only way we can work. If you don’t leave soon, she’ll be dead forever.”
A hand gently took his arm, and the Deen woman drew him out into the front room, then disappeared into the kitchen, closing the door on him. He moved quietly nearer the door and listened.
If they started chanting or burning things he’d just go in and get Virrani and take her home and face his weeping wife with the awful truth: he’d taken his eyes away from the separator’s flails for one second too long.
Deen‘s voice said, “It’s your turn, Marra. You’re better at these nasty ones. Here’s the sharvain.” He racked his brain — sharvain was a long-leaved herb his wife used for tea. That was okay.
“That’s not what I want. Where’s the scopolia?”
“Oops. I gave most of it to Cara in a wine blend, for her husband. She says he’s oversexed.”
That would be Firisso. The woman was right about him — he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, nor his pants. Tiurin shook his head — what were they doing, clinking all that glass?
“She’s just lazy. So where’s the rest? Hurry up.”
“She is not lazy! He’s been after a couple of girls in Drevill.”
“Deen. Where. Is. It.”
“You never listen to me. It’s right in that black jar.”
“Go out and see to the father.” Tiurin backed away from the door and turned away, then turned again as Deen came out to him.
“We’re getting started now, but it will be at least an hour. May I bring you some brewed herbal tea? It’ll soothe you and warm you — that rain did you no good.”
“Uh, all right. But is she still—?”
“She’s still in danger.” Glass and metal clinked in the kitchen; he tried to look in past the slightly-open door. The first woman, that was Marra, drank down some dark fluid and bent over Virrani on the table. The woman Deen slipped into the kitchen again and shut the door on him.
The tea came; he sipped it until it was cool, listening, hearing absolutely nothing but the dog scratching at a door somewhere outside. What were they doing?
