Wrapped Wrist hesitated. Gods, did he come right out and say why? Choices, choices—he’d never been good at choices.
Spots spoke first. “We need only to find a Healer for our friend. He … well, he was mauled by a bear, you see. The attack fevered him, and his souls are loose while his body fights the evil Spirits the bear put into him.”
It sounded lame even to Wrapped Wrist. He glanced down, seeing one of the round cobbles at his feet. It was a little larger than his fist. If he could just reach down, grab it up, it would give him a weapon. Crude, yes, but something he could throw, or use to club the old man.
He stopped short as the man’s piercing eye seemed to burn right through to his souls. The lips hardened, the slanting brows lowering. “Don’t even think it.”
“Think what?” Wrapped Wrist almost squeaked.
The thin lips relaxed the least bit. “Do bears normally crush the joints of a man’s fingers? Hmm? And from the watery blood leaking from his mouth, I’d say someone knocked his teeth out.” His head tilted. “Why is there blood on the blanket over his crotch?”
“He was pierced with yucca,” Spots blurted.
Wrapped Wrist almost growled as he pulled his friend back behind him and strode toward the man. “If you’re with the Blessed Sun, either let us go, or try and kill us. My friend, here, needs help and we’re going to find it.”
The man’s thin smile widened, the breeze playing idly with loose strands of the snowy hair. “There, at last I can see your soul, boy.”
“I’m no boy! I’m of age. A hunter!”
“Yes, of course.” The grizzled stranger turned, placed fingers to lips, and blew a shrill whistle.
Men appeared out of the very grass around them—muscular, dressed in dirt-and-grass-streaked capes that blended with the ground. They held long bows backed with something that looked like horn. Unlike the cane arrows of the Blessed Sun’s warriors, theirs were made of solid chokecherry stems, each tipped with a glittering obsidian point. Within a few desperate heartbeats, he and Spots were surrounded.
“What are you going to do with us?” Wrapped Wrist demanded, to cover his building fear.
“We’re going to fulfill your wishes, young hunter.”The man gestured to the litter. “Firehorn, Yucca Sock, take the litter.” To Wrapped Wrist, he added, “You two, walk with me.”
“Who are you?” Spots demanded. “Where are we going?”
“I’m the Blessed Sun’s worst nightmare. And you young men are going to see the Mountain Witch.”
Twenty-three
HEALING
Healers are of two kinds. There are Healers who strive day and night to keep dying people alive for as long as possible. And there are Healers who work as helpers, holding a lamp in the darkness, leading the way.
I have watched the first type of Healer very closely. I call them Deceivers, for they are very much like witches. They try to get the dying person to look the other way while they work their magic. Almost always their magic requires so many Spirit Plants that the sick person’s afterlife soul drifts in and out of her body, either floating in a stupor, or shivering in a pain-racked body while she fights to bear the horror reflected in her loved ones’ eyes. Most of those patients died in their beds like lost children, abandoned and alone.
My heart shrivels when I try to imagine what they must have been thinking and feeling.
I started out being the first kind of Healer. For many summers, I fought to keep people alive for as long as I could. Then I was called in to Heal an elderly woman that no one else dared to approach. Her name was Little Flower. She seemed to hate everyone. Whenever a Healer entered her house, she threw things at them and cursed them. No matter how much of her dwindling strength it took, she always managed to drive her Healers away.
I was called in at the very end. Her sobbing daughter came to me and begged me to try to Heal her. When I arrived, Little Flower knew it immediately. She began shouting for me to go away even before I entered her lodge. I was standing out in the village plaza when she apparently heard me speaking with her daughter and had a fit.
Nonetheless, I clutched my Healer’s bag and ducked beneath her door curtain.
It was very difficult to feel compassion toward a woman who so obviously did not want to be Healed, but I was determined to try. The instant I saw her, however, I understood what her desperate family refused to see: that my efforts would be fruitless. Truly, she did not need a Healer, and Little Flower had known it all along.
As I approached, she gave me an evil look. Her wheezing filled the firelit darkness. But when I sat down beside her, I could tell the rage was a disguise for terror. It was a way of crying without tears, without evoking pity, which she obviously loathed.