The Medicine Woman

Old Aonae laid the back of her fingers across the man's brow.

The room was hot, smoky, and smelled of sweat and sick; his brow was no different, soaking wet and burning hot. In her strange tongue, she spoke. "Kio ok'elo," she said. "Bad fever." The shepherd's eyes rolled to face her--exhausted, all weeping whites. She thinned her lips. Worn fingers reached for the bucket; the rag was soaked, twisted, streams of fresh water pouring away. There had been a storm, days ago. The Water-Bearers had gathered much rainwater and in this, at least, old Haleho was lucky. He would not die to dehydration, at least, or uncleanliness.

She wiped his face, and left the rag laying across his forehead. Her earth-brown eyes flicked to the single, dusty, warped window. 'Can I risk letting fresh air in? Or will the chill kill him?' she wondered. She settled for a compromise. "I will give you some fresh air--but not much. If it gets too cold you must close this, yes-? But the fire should keep you warm, for now. There is an herb I must gather from the slopes higher up. Rest, and I will bring it."

She knew that Haleho was badly-off when he did not argue with her. Any other day he would have been respectful, humorous, and certainly urging her never to go up the mountain on his behalf. But he was half-mad with fever, and any relief would seem worth it--if even he were capable of considering the risk, right now.

With the window wedged a little open, Old Aonae pushed out the door, letting it fall shut behind her. For a moment she squinted out, giving her ancient eyes some time to adjust.

The herd of Slatewalkers in the muddy pen were hungry and unkempt. She didn't know how to care for the beasts, really, but she knew enough to walk over and scatter some of their dried grass across the pen floor. It would keep them from starving, at least, but it wouldn't clean the mud from their coarse grey fur. They were low-slung creatures, woolly and with reptilian gaits, with fatty meat. They gave milk, when appropriate, and in all were the only livestock that Soani'ka tended to keep. With a herd of perhaps a dozen animals, Haleho kept maybe a fifth of the village's stock. And like the other herders, he kept his farm well outside--and above--the village itself. The animals stank, and they did not like crowds.

The Slatewalkers fed, Aonae turned her gaze down below. She was adjusting her old dress, the pants beneath, preparing herself for the trek ahead. It would be a dangerous one, and so without really realizing it, she was bidding Soan'ika farewell--just in case.

The village was cozy, a few dozen wooden homes--most with little figureheads and carvings of squid and fish; even Haleho, way up here, had an octopus across his doorway. Steam rose from the Water-Bearers' cauldrons, and Aonae was fairly sure she could see a few Gatherers out on the mudflats, spears dipping into the tidal pools. The ships had gone out early, and so the sea--sparkling its light through the village--was empty of them, from here. The scraggly, marshy fields on the village outskirts stood nearly bare, as always; the low-slung trees in the orchards didn't grow much, and the soggy farms were home only to scattered vegetables and salty grains. The seafood was far more reliable; the farmers were hopeful idiots.

With a grunt, Aonae turned, and looked the other way.

The mountain slope stretched forward and up: it was precarious, at the best of times, with shifting slate shelves and slippery mud slopes. But here and there a flower or herb sprouted from the muck, and it was a variety of these--at a much higher elevation--that she was after. "Bastard things," she muttered, for the damned flowers refused to grow at sea level. Minerals or air--she didn't know--but it meant that the trek to gather one was dangerous.

And it was a trek she now had to make.

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An hour had passed.

Huffing, puffing, panting. Her dress and leggings were mud-soaked, her cloth shoes completely slippery and drenched brown--but she didn't dare take them off for fear of the sharp edges of the black shale shards. At times she had to drop to all fours, hands gripping the stones and feet scrambling to propel her upward. "If the damned leaves dried properly," she complained to herself, irritably, "I wouldn't be up here. Imagine-! At my age, climbing the Mountain!" Huff, puff, grunt.

The medicine men and women of the village were few, rarely more than a couple at a time. There was a younger man living in Soan'ika itself that she'd in part helped to train, so if she did die up here she was relatively confident that they'd be in good hands. Well--"Unless they need a poultice," she muttered. "Tal'ule is terrible at wrapping a good poultice."

It seemed only an old woman, grumbling bitterly, but this old woman was almost a half a mile up a rocky, muddy mountain slope and climbing. Her gait was hurried, exhausting even, but it was a necessity: that kia ok'elo of Haleho's would be the death of him, perhaps within a day, if she did not return with this herb. A miraculous thing the "bastard thing" was, too; she'd never had a fever that hadn't quickly responded to a Pe'lo plant tea.

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Two hours. Old Aonae had slowed. She was tired: her arms and legs sore, the old woman cursing herself for not making this trek more often. It was only now that she realized how terribly out of practice she was: and the higher she climbed, the harder it was to catch her breath.

But she would go on; feet slipping, hands too, and with stumbles more often now, she didn't give up.

Haleho was counting on her.

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Three hours. Her slippers had been cut through, and she'd at last thrown them aside. Her old feet and wrinkled hands were cut in many places, and she'd drawn her own flint knife and cut away strips of dress (that's what it was there for, after all: spare cloth) and wrapped both palms and feet before continuing. That short pause, with a few long draws from her canteen, was all the rest she'd allowed herself.

But now, at last, she needed another rest: and with gasping breaths she set herself on the next dry stone she found, and sat there trembling with exhaustion.

She gazed out across Kaiale. "Home," it meant--the word they called their world. Mostly vast ocean, with her village and its archipelago merely a little blink below. To her left stretched the single vast, dark continent of Kaiale: the place they called the Bad Dream, the place none of them ever ventured. It was a world of cracked, dried dark mud that stretched on for a hundred miles--maybe more; no one had ever gone to the other side, so far as she knew, and returned. When it stormed, the earth flooded and anyone caught out there was almost always drowned, but the water was too full of mud and too churning to be hospitable to a small boat--and the big ones weren't to be risked on such a venture. Anyway, from up here, one could observe easily that there was only darkness, lifeless and hostile, as far as the eye could see. There was no point in going that way, for any of them.

Aonae twisted around to look up, behind her.

That was almost as bad. Sheer hills, each stretch every bit as rocky and muddy as the last. "Damn it," she muttered, and pushed back up to continue.

And noticed, as she did, that--from behind the mountain's peak--a fog was rolling in.

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By three and a half hours, the fog's blanket was nearly complete. She was cursing, old Aonae, swearing up and down at whatever gods now struggled to obscure her sight of the lifegiving herb. Her hands and her feet throbbed. Her muscles shook, and her watery eyes squinted in the dimming light.

She slipped. She fell. She cursed, but it was breathless. She gasped for air. She began, for the first time, to truly worry for her survival up here. This was like trudging through a nightmare, like fighting with every slipped grip and stumbled step to advance deeper into it.

Had it been foolish, to come alone? Should she have sent someone younger, someone stronger-? No; I know this mountain best. And someone else might mistake the Pe'lo. The plant was far too easy to miss.

It would be cliché to say that she found it just as she gave up. Old Aonae never gave up, anyway, no. But she was weary beyond belief. Shaking, drops of blood soaking through the bandaged feet and joining with the mud below. Fingers trembling as their weathered skin reached for the twist-leafed little herb growing fuzzy and dull green from a crevice between two rocks. The dainty white flowers she left alone. She took two leaves--and then, as if in afterthought, she took two more. Enough in case a third dose was needed. And her mind was on her feet--on the mud seeping into her cuts, on the fever that might hit her in a day or two if she gained an infection from this.

Yes; foresight. Now... for the journey down.

Old Aonae turned, and peered down the steep and muddy slope. She was already so terribly weak and tired... and going down was infinitely harder than going up. "Eh, can't live at the top," she muttered, a mere croak accompanied by a shrug.

She pulled her thick but tattered dress closer around her, against the chilling mist, and started the journey.

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Again, she fell. It had started perhaps a third of the way down--maybe a quarter--it was impossible to tell, really. She couldn't see more than a dozen meters, and that was when the fog cleared away. It was clouds, she knew that--clouds curling around the mountain and passing her by--but did that matter? Fog was only lazy clouds drifting to the earth, after all--so the stories went.

The first fall hadn't been bad. A slide gone out of control, a short tumble that had luckily landed her in nothing more than mud. She'd sat up, and with presence of mind granted by long years of experience, patted her pouch to be sure it (and the Pe'lo) were still there. She then tested her limbs, and found nothing broken. Back to her feet, then. Back down through the falling light and the churning fog, with the world become nothing but rocks and mud. Brown, and gray. Gray, and brown. Why does something so dangerous have to look so damn boring? old Aonae thought.

The second fall had been a little worse, but not by much. Her foot had slipped in the mud and she'd fallen into a rock. Her shin was bruised, and cut, but nothing more. Cursing, she'd pressed on. Should she just sleep here-? The weather wouldn't kill her, not if she covered up with a little mud, and Haleho would last until morning... well, probably. And you know you'll never forgive yourself if he don't. Come on, you're tougher than Slatewalker wool. Let's get down there, Aonae had urged herself.

A third fall left her sliding farther than was easily ignored: a long, long slip, on her back, sometimes head-first as the mountain took her and tumbled her down its mud slope. She'd hit her head hard enough to draw blood and to daze her and picked up half a dozen scrapes and cuts and what was at least a sprained wrist.

At least it wasn't her leg, she reasoned, and pushed up weakly to carry on down.

It had been a foolish choice--she knew that. The climb up had weakened her more than she'd expected. And the more battered and tired she became, the less her muscles kept her stable, the more she fell...

And fall, again, she did. This fall was by far the worst, leaving her with a gash up one side of her calf that stung like wasps and left her crying out and balling fistfulls of mud into her fingers as she waited for the worst of the pain to pass.

She wrapped it, eventually, though it wasn't clean. Mud would stop the bleeding, at least.

And then she carried on.

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She had looked out at what they called The Bad Dream. Then she had trudged through her own. At last, the ground suddenly evened out--became just a little drier--and she smelled smoke. "Thank you, sky and sea," she muttered, more with relief than with reverence, though both were definitely there. Only now did she realize how much the fear had begun to grip her--now, as the worst of it faded, as she felt her heart slamming in her ancient chest.

She swore, and stomped her feet out (and winced at the pain) along the dry earth as she followed the twisting scent of smoke. The few muttering, groaning sounds of the penned Slatewalkers confirmed her direction.

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Old Haleho woke to the sounds of clinking: of carved stone spoon against carved stone cup. There was a strange scent in the air--something like hot, wet grass or leaves, something mysteriously herbal. And mud--there was the stench of mud, too.

Aonae suddenly appeared, her face looming where before he'd seen only the slate-covered roof above, thatched beneath with straw. Weathered, weary, muddied and even bloodied, her ancient face was yet sharp with focus. "Drink," she commanded, and raised the cup to his lips. He obeyed, choking only a little where he lay--and it seemed to him that a strange, cool lassitude at once overcame him. It was as though the pain were simply... flowing away, the aches in his joints fading.

"Am I-... dying..." he croaked out, and coughed again.

Aonae chuckled. "You're going to be fine," she reassured him. "And I'm sleeping here tonight. Not because you need it, but because I have done enough of climbing for one day," she added, and turned to make herself at home.

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Outside, night had fallen. Below, the village lay still, quiet, with a thick blanket of fog near-obscuring it from vision, and from the sky.

The Slatewalkers in their pen had gone silent with the darkness, and now their eyes shifted skyward. Each great pupil gleamed with the reflection of the sky: with the light of the twin blue moons and then, as the third moon passed across them both, with its lurid orange gleam.