Healers (11 page)

Studying the stitching on a small coin purse he felt someone’s eyes on him. Looking up, he saw the frowning eyes of an older woman regarding him. She had some cloth in one hand and a needle, thread, and thimble in the other. “If you worry at my stitches ‘til they come out, I’ll expect you to pay for that purse whether you wanted it or not,” she said irritably.

“You made all these items?” Joe asked, waving a hand to encompass them.

“No,” the woman said, without further elaboration.

Joe grunted, “Well, who did then?”

“Me or Edith,” the woman said. “Are you going to buy something, or are you just set on wastin’ my time?”

Joe barked a laugh, “Are you always this rude? Or did you
choose
this particular day to drive away customers?” He felt an ache appear in his right flank.

“Oh
excuuuse
me,” the old woman said acerbically. “I’ve gotten used to thinking of customers as people who
buy
things, not ones who stand around asking stupid questions and worrying at the goods until they come apart.”

Joe rolled his eyes, “And I’ve gotten used to thinking of merchants as people who…” He reached up and put the heel of his hand against his flank as a wave of agony ripped down his back. “Unhhhh…” he said, grasping at the small table at the front of the merchant’s stand with his other hand. His knees buckled and sweat popped out on his brow. He looked woozily behind him, wondering if someone had stabbed him with a knife.
Oh, damnation on all the gods,
he thought
. What’s happened to me?”

The old woman appeared by Joe’s side. She grabbed him by the arm, threw it over her shoulders, and steered him into the shade of her little stand. Settling him onto a large pile of cloth, she helped him recline until he was flat. Her eyes, so harsh before, and now looked softly down on him, “You been sick like this before?”

Joe shook his head, another wave of pain in his back preventing him from uttering any words.

The woman looked up from Joe’s side and out into the crowd. “Jason,” she barked, “get Eva Hyllis. This man’s got somethin’ bad wrong.”

Joe cast his eyes to the side and saw a man in a guard’s leathers turn and trot quickly away. He wondered if he could ask someone to go into town for his brother or son. Looking up into the woman’s worried eyes, he grunted, “Henry Roper,” between waves of pain. When the next wave passed, he said, “Henry’s a friend.”

The irascible old woman snorted, “I thought Henry had better taste.” Joe’s eyes sought hers and saw she still looked worried. She said, “Don’t worry; I’ll get Henry for you, once there’s someone else here to stay with you.” She lifted her eyes to look out at the people walking the stalls. “Sure as hell
I
don’t wanna stay here with ya!” she muttered.

Joe would have laughed, if not for the waves of pain still radiating from his flank.
Whoever left
this
woman in charge of their sales should have their head examined!

The woman looked down at him, “I’m getting’ you a lot better care than you deserve. Eva Hyllis has been curing my cancer, and you know damn well there ain’t any other healers can do that!”

Joe closed his eyes.
There aren’t
any
healers that can cure cancer, you sour old bag,
he thought.
What kind of charlatan have you sent for anyway?
A corner of his mind wondered if whoever the old woman had sent for knew about Realth’s laws regarding healers.

A few minutes later, Joe felt a presence at his side. He looked up through watery eyes and saw the guard in his leathers standing at the entrance to the stall. A pretty young woman in her thirties knelt at Joe’s side.

The irascible old woman stood up and said, “Eva, I told this SOB you’d fix him if anyone could. Claims Henry Roper’s a friend of his, so I’ll go look for Henry, though I don’t know who’s going to sell my goods while I’m gone.”

Joe looked up at the young woman and said, “Is she always…” he grunted through a wave of pain, “so pleasant?”

The young woman’s eyes twinkled, “Oh,
you’ve
caught Ms. Gates on a good
day!” Her eyes turned serious, “Has this ever happened to you before?”

“No… But my mother has attacks in one side or the other of her back… I suppose they’re the same.” He gasped as a particularly bad cramp rolled over him. “She takes poppy… until she’s stupid… eventually the pains go away.”

“Okay,” the woman said, placing her hands, one on his abdomen and the other on his back and closing her eyes. “Let me see what’s going on here.”

Tempted to close his own eyes, instead Joe watched the young woman. She did essentially nothing, but a moment later her eyes opened and she said, “You’re passing a kidney stone.” Eyes round with sympathy, she said, “That’s supposed to hurt
really
bad.”

“No shit?!” Joe grunted. A couple of Joe’s mother’s healers had diagnosed her with kidney stones. Other healers had diagnosed other entities, from back spasms, to deep abscesses, to little devils. All that had been before the new laws that enslaved healers when things went wrong. The people had thought the laws were good things when they first came out, but that was before all the healers stopped doing anything except selling medicines. You had to pick out your own medicine and the people themselves seldom knew of anything besides willow bark tea or poppy.

Joe’s mother kept a stock of poppy on hand for her attacks, and he supposed he would have to get home and help himself to it. Since he didn’t feel like he could possibly walk, he wondered how he would get there. Looking up at the young woman, he said, “Do you have… any poppy?”

She nodded slowly, then asked, “If I give you poppy and you take too much, killing yourself, will they make a slave out of me?”

Giving her a weak grin, Joe said, “Not if… you
give
it to me.” He closed his eyes for a bad spasm. “But… you
can
even sell it to me safely. As long as… I’m asking for it… and giving it to myself… you’ll be okay.”

“What if…” she frowned, thinking. She looked at him for a moment then continued musingly, “What if we made your stone go away, but didn’t charge you for it?”

“Yeah…” Joe grunted, “You’d be fine… ’Cept no one… can do that. Just get me some poppy already… I’ll pay… anything… reasonable.”

“Okay,” she said, getting up and brushing out her skirts.

Henry Roper appeared at the door of the little stall with the sour old woman behind him. “Joe…” he said hesitantly as the young healer woman walked away.

“Hey Henry…” Joe grunted. “Got any of the ancient’s… Magical healing machines… in your inventory?”

“Man, the lengths you’ll go to, trying to get a better deal!” Henry said, in a weak attempt at humor. “Sorry buddy. Do you know what’s wrong with you?”

Joe shook his head, “But my mom… she has the same kind of attacks… I think. She just takes poppy…’til they go way… I guess I’ve got to do the same.”

Henry’s head swiveled as he looked in the direction the young woman had gone. “Did Eva go to get you some poppy?”

“I think so… Know anyone who’d… load me in a wagon… and haul me home?”

The irritable old woman turned away from the window of her stall, “Hell, I’d throw you over my shoulder and carry you home myself. You’re scarin’ away my customers!”

Joe rolled his eyes at Henry. “I think…” Joe muttered, “she scares them away… just fine… by herself!”

Crinkles appeared at the corners of Henry’s eyes and he glanced back at the woman. “I’m sure I can find a wagon to haul you home as soon as Eva gets back.” In a low voice he continued, “I’d hate for you to have to ride home over Mrs. Gates’ bony shoulder.”

The old lady apparently heard, as she said, “Not as bony as it used to be afore Eva started treatin’ my cancer.”

Eva came into view then. She had a slender boy with her. The boy looked effeminate. With shaggy, dark-blonde hair and arrestingly blue eyes, the boy had no facial hair and slender girlish arms. Even with smudges on his face he looked handsome.
Would have made a pretty girl,
Joe thought, feeling sorry for him. The boy knelt at Joe’s side and closed his eyes while Eva opened a jar and spooned out a small dollop of paste. Eva said, “Here’s a bit of poppy for you.”

She held the spoon out to him, rather than putting it in his mouth. He realized she intended for him to administer it to himself in an attempt to negotiate Realth’s law about harmful treatments. “Thanks,” Joe grunted, taking the spoon. As he lifted it to his lips, the effeminate boy stood up and stepped back. Like a wave of peace rolling over him, the pain in his flank eased. Joe paused, the spoon halfway to his lips. He looked down at himself and his eyes widened with relief…

As they walked back to their stall, Eva glanced at Daussie. “You took the stones out of his other kidney too? We wouldn’t want them to cause problems some other day.”

Daussie nodded. She said nervously, “You think refusing his payment will keep us safe?”

Eva shrugged, “I don’t know. I hope so. It’s against my ethics to let him suffer when you could fix him.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Unless you accidentally removed some of his ureter with the stone I really don’t see how he could have been injured by removing the stones.”

“I didn’t, but I’ll bet people sometimes blame you for things that aren’t your fault.”

Eva sighed, “Yeah, they do.”

***

Pizzas were a huge hit in Realth, like they had been in every other town where the Hyllises sold them. Because they had quite a bit of relatively expensive cheese on them, the Hyllises charged much more for the pizzas than they did for a bowl of beans.

In every town, Eva thought surely people wouldn’t buy very many pizzas because of the cost. However, each time they sold out early and people begged for more. “Tarc,” she said as they were cleaning up from the evening meal, “We’re
already
running low on cheese. We’ll need more cheese, and you’d just as well get us some more of these dense, spicy sausages.” She held one up so he could see which one she spoke of. “The grocer said they keep well, so you could get lots of them.”

Tarc nodded as he emptied their laden coin drawer. The bigger denomination coins would go into a hidden compartment in the wagon. Some of the small ones would remain in the drawer to make change the next day, the rest he would take to the grocers with him in the morning.

As Tarc walked to the wagon to put away their money, he saw Lizeth and Sam sitting on the tongue of the guard wagon. They were talking quietly, then Lizeth laughed about something. Sam must have been the guy she was kissing the other night.

A swell of sadness rose in Tarc. Thinking ruefully of Mrs. Gates’ advice, he wondered,
How am I supposed to tell her she’s pretty when she’s always with
him
?

After dinner that evening, Joe Lee described his attack to his mother. Pointing to his flank, he told her of the waves of crampy pain he’d had.

She nodded, “Sounds the same as what happens to me. I hope you don’t have more attacks like I do.”

“They brought me a healer who said it was a stone in my kidney.”

“A healer!” His mother said, looking surprised. “Don’t those folks know what happens to healers here in Realth?”

“This is apparently the healer’s first time here. I did try to warn her.”

“So, did she still try to charge you for some kind of healing?”

Joe slowly shook his head, “No. She was going to give me some poppy for free, for me to administer to myself, but the attack went away before I even took it.”

Joe’s mother leaned back, her eyes wide. “Went away?! How long was this attack?!”

“Ten or fifteen minutes, I’d guess. It
felt
like forever. I think it was a lot shorter than your attacks. Have you ever had a short one like that?”

“No! Tell me what the attack was like again?”

Joe described it to her, trying to give more detail this time.

She leaned back, staring at him. “It sounds just like what happens to me, and mine were much the same as your grandfather’s attacks. But they’ve always lasted longer than that!”

“That’s the thing,” Joe said. “She seemed to have heard she could get in trouble trying to heal someone if they got worse, because she asked whether she could get in trouble if she gave me poppy and I took too much of it. I told her she wouldn’t get in trouble if
I
administered too much of it to myself…” he paused, thinking, “then she asked if she’d get in trouble if she removed my kidney stone, but didn’t charge me.”

His mother lifted an eyebrow, “As if she thought she could
actually
take a stone out of you?!”

Joe shrugged, “She asked it very matter of factly, like it was possible. I told her it couldn’t be done and asked her to just please give me some poppy.”

“And… what? Did she shake a rattle over you or something?”

Joe pursed his lips, “No. She went and got her poppy. When she came back she had a boy with her and he knelt beside me like he was praying. She got out a spoonful of poppy for me, but before I took the poppy the boy got up and the pain just went away. No rattling involved.”