Chapter Forty-Nine. Sister.
Forty-Nine
Sister.
As I make my second trip through the rain to the herbist shop, I’m back in the red felt outfit and I have its hood up to protect Ronl.
He’s leading the way, and all I can say is at least what comes out of the gray sky is no longer horizontal and most of the orange lightning has stopped.
I’ve never seen a storm last this long, and feel compelled to express this, but between all the water falling and the wind that can’t seem to choose a direction, there’s no conversation between myself and Lena’s husband. Not that he’s looking for any.
There’s much mud, however. So much mud.
Felt shoes would be nice. Or maybe a rowboat.
When we get to the shop after what feels like quite a trek, Ronl jumps ahead and unlocks the door with a big key.
“Is she in the—”
“She’s in the—”
As if she’d be anywhere else but the bedroom.
Rushing down the aisle, I skip around the counter and the register of cash, and see nothing of the kitchen on my way to the open doorway—
When I get a view of the bed, I stop so fast, I trip and nearly fall on my face.
Across the gray-boarded space, sitting up against the headboard, Lena is smiling as she cradles her infant to her chest. Ronl’s beloved wife has freshly braided hair and is in a clean white shift.
Likewise, the bedclothes have all been changed, and there’s a smoking dish of incense sweetening the air with the scent of phosies and trill.
“My sis—” I stop short, remembering my place.
For all we shared the night before, I remind myself that we are but strangers in the light of day, only my inner loneliness linking us now—
Lena holds her steady hand out to me. “Come, see what you helped into the world.”
For a moment, I’m not sure I’ve heard right, and I’m vaguely aware of Ronl stepping in behind me. But then Lena sends her husband a radiant smile and holds out the bundled bairn to me.
“Come, see.”
An utterly unfamiliar feeling of warmth and friendship envelops me, all of it coming from her. In response, it’s like I’m on a cloud as I go over to the bed, and when Lena pats the mattress beside her, I sit down.
After which I find myself holding her precious child.
I hate that I must avoid the eyes of the little girl, because the face staring up at me is so perfectly formed, I want to take note of each and every feature. As it is, I linger on the tiny little mouth and the button chin, the chubby dark cheeks and the dusting of fine, dark curls.
I want to believe this precious gift will live forever. So I cannot bear to meet her stare.
“Oh, Lena.” I glance over, keeping my eyes just above the new mother’s head, on the tight braids of her dark hair. “She’s so beautiful.”
“She is called Gloriana, after my mother.” Lena’s voice chokes up. “I lost her just a year ago.”
Closing my eyes, I shake my head. “I am so sorry.”
“Thank you. I will honor my mother’s memory by raising my daughter to be a healer, like us.”
“Your mother was also one?”
“No, like you and me. We are healers.”
I go very still. I suppose the word fits, but I can’t say as I’ve ever known what I am. Refocusing, I glance at the bowl of astringent that still sits on the table nearby. It, too, has been changed, the water clear, no longer bloody.
“Ronl said you needed to see me?” I look at the stitching on her bed dress’s bodice. “Are you having difficulty?”
Lena shakes her head. “You did what the mistress who taught me would have done. I’d have helped myself in just the same way, but I didn’t have the strength.” She reaches out and touches my knee. “I cannot thank you enough. If you hadn’t come to the shop when you did…”
“It was fate.” I run a forefinger across the bairn’s chubby cheek. “And sometimes the invisible ropes that link strangers can be kind.”
Lena’s smile is luminous. “Yes.”
And then she gets serious: “But you came into the shop for your own reason, and Ronl told me the three things you asked for. You referred to them by different names, but I know what they’re for—two of them you used for me. Who is hurt, you or your husband?”
“Husband? Oh, he’s not my…” As I flush, I take a deep breath and nod at my forearm. “I was … scraped. And I know that some things must be treated. But Ronl gave me soap which I have used to good effect.”
I say this more out of gratitude to her than any examination I did this morning. There was no time to check under the wrapping before I left.
“Will you let me take a look at it?”
I blink. A couple of times. In all the years I’ve treated others, never once has anybody asked after my welfare—much less cared enough to do something about it.
“Ronl?” Lena smiles as her husband reappears in the doorway. “Will you please take your daughter?”
The herbist’s husband is right and ready for the job, happily coming in and accepting a transfer. He is clearly enchanted with the infant and I contrast his warmth with the farrier’s disinterest in progeny of the so-called fairer sex.
On his way out, he closes the door most of the way, and it’s then I feel Lena’s full attention.
The way she looks at me, with steady, clear-eyed regard, tells me more than any explanation involving words that she has, in fact, come through the birth well enough.
She’s certainly of sufficient strength to direct her own care from this point—strong enough, too, to direct mine, apparently.
She sits up higher in her bedding. “Where are you hurt?”
Inhaling a deep breath, I undo the fastenings on the felt jacket, and I can’t hide the wince as I remove my outer layer.
“Your forearm, then?”
I nod and pull up the sleeve of the under-shirting.
With care, I begin to unwrap the sheeting I’d bound it in after my bathing last night, and I have to stop halfway through.
Closing my eyes, I will the pain level down so that I can continue, acutely aware that this woman beside me knows even more than I do about physical agony.
Compared to labor, this is nothing. I need to toughen up—
“Take your time,” she says softly.
Am I nodding again? I don’t know. What I do know, as I get back to the unwrapping, is this is all a very bad sign. And I can feel the heat already.
Lena lets out a gasp as the binding finally drops away, and I glance around the bedroom to avoid looking at my arm.
“How did you do this?” she asks.
“I … ah, I fell.”
“When.”
“Yesterday.”
As I risk a glance at the wound, all I can do is curse under my breath.
The swelling has made the outer ring around the injury form a valley, and like the Lake of Lost Souls, the flesh in between is bad news: An infection has not just burrowed in, it’s spreading, the redness no longer localized, but running the length and circumference of the lower part of the limb.
Lena’s voice gets very no-nonsense. “You must be honest with me, if I’m to treat this properly. How did this happen?”
What does it matter, I think with exhaustion. There are lots of travelers that come through here, why would my identity be sussed out? And if it somehow were, and word traveled back north and east, would my village really have the resources to come find me?
Although Julion might. If he decided he needed to force that service he wanted from me.
Still, I tell her what happened.
“We crossed the Lake of Lost Souls yesterday.” I shrug, trying to be nonchalant as if that will have any effect on … anything. “A big black bird of prey came out of the sky and attacked us—”
The gasp that Lena lets out is loud enough so that Ronl reenters the room. “Are you okay—”
“A skystalker?” she grits. “You survived an attack by a skystalker?”
Ronl tucks the infant closer to himself and covers her ear as if the bairn can understand what we’re saying. “A skystalker? No one lives through such a thing—thank the moon your husband was with you—”
“Oh, no. He’s not really my husband. And actually, I had to draw the bird away from him.” I focus properly on the wound. “He was fighting the bird off with his broadsword, but then he found himself on the ground. So I got the bird to chase me—”
“You did what—”
“What did you—”
I shrug again. “They like flashes of light so I held my knife over my head and spurred our horse. The bird—skystalker, I guess—went after me.”
There’s a strained silence, and I glance at them, thinking perhaps they believe I lie? But no. They seem utterly dumbfounded.
“How did you get away?” Lena breathes.
“I ran it into a boulder.”
Ronl is squeezing his infant so tightly to his heart, the little one lets out a squawk. “I do not understand? You did what…?”
“I threw the knife.” When I go to mimic the motion, my forearm contracts with pain and I wince as I bring the limb back down.
“It wanted my knife. I galloped the horse toward a boulder grouping and I … when we got in range, I threw my blade into the rocks. It went for the flash of light.” And fates, I wish I still had the weapon, if only for nostalgia’s sake.
“Anyway, yes, I ran it headfirst into a rock. And my injury happened just before that. One of its talons scored my arm as it came down at me.”
Lena glances at her husband. Then she rubs her face as if she’s collecting herself. “I have never met anyone who has lived through one of those attacks.”
“Nor I,” Ronl echoes. “And there are many who come here from the Lake of Lost Souls route. In fact, I know many who have lost members of their traveling parties out in that territory to those birds of prey.”
The awe they show me is nothing I’m used to, but at least Lena moves on fast. “Such a wound is very dangerous. They carry disease because they are necro-eaters, and they use those feet to gather the dead that are their meals.”
With that, Lena falls silent, but she’s not looking at me, her husband, or her newborn. She is staring into the air before her, her mind clearly working.
It’s a while before she speaks, and when she does, it’s in that language I cannot understand. And “speaking” is the wrong word. She’s barking orders at Ronl, and he’s nodding. Then she holds up her arms and he puts the baby into her outstretched hands.
Ronl has proven to be a gentle soul, but there’s none of that as he turns away for the door. He’s going to battle, under the instructions of his wife … for me.
“I don’t want to be a bother,” I say in a small voice.
“You helped me keep my life and made sure my baby survived. I pray that I am not returning that mortal favor unto you, but I worry that I am.” She shakes her head. “This is very serious, this wound—and you know it. I will do all that I can.”
Abruptly, Lena sits farther forward, even though she grimaces as she does so. Taking my hand in her own, she says, “Do you always cry when people are kind to you?”
“I’m sorry?”
She reaches up and brushes my cheek, turning her fingertips around so that I can regard the tears she collected.
“Do you cry when people are kind to you?”
I wipe my eyes and try to hide how I tremble. “I wouldn’t know.”
She squeezes my palm with her own. “You are family to me now. What is the word in your voice? ‘Sister,’ I believe it is.”
Lowering my head, I watch as my tears fall on our entwined hands.
“Sister,” I repeat roughly. “Yes, that’s the word.”