Tears of Salt

Farmer Pinner's ox had stepped on his foot, and I was terrified that I might need to amputate it.

Sweat slicked my hair into messy skeins; my forearms burned and my back ached.

The farmer's voice was hoarse from screaming, despite the sum of all my tincture of Valerian that he'd gagged down between swigs of execrable pear brandy and the bouts of eyebrow-raising curses he'd shouted at me, his sons and the unlucky ox.

He'd been on my table for well over an hour.

His sons were strong, but even they were now flagging and struggling to keep him flat. His eyes were wide and his neck sinews bulged taut as cables...

My cheek still ached from where he'd lashed out and caught me with one of his loaf-sized fists. A stupid mistake - I should have known better than to be where I'd been. But Farmer Pinner was one of the few men of the village who seemed to approve of my presence here in this muddy pustule on the backside of beyond... so I would risk much to save him and, by extension, this tenuous home I'd fashioned for myself.

I'd set some of the minor bones, but the worst of the fractures would not cooperate. I'd been wrestling it for the last half an hour, and my strength was fading.

If I could not fix it...

"Come on, come on!" I gasped. "Move, you... bastard..."

Click

Farmer Pinner screamed, arching bodily up from the table... then slumped back down again, gasping for breath as his bestial desperation ebbed.

"That's it," I panted. "That was the one we needed. The rest is just small bones - less critical. He'll keep the foot."

"Thank Belfana," said one of his sons. The elder, the darker one. Rufus, my exhausted mind reminded me.

"Will he walk again?" asked the younger, Balan.

"With a limp, but... he'll walk."

I shifted my aching thumb, eased my shoulders, marshalled my strength...

Click. Click.

Two of the remaining little bones moved back to where they should be. He'd arrived in a cart, incoherent and mad, with nothing but a swollen mess of tissue and broken bone attached to the end of his right leg. And now he would leave my hovel with something that almost approximated a foot.

The swift easing of the pain allowed the Valerian to finally overcome him. He relaxed and, soon enough, started to snore like the bear that he in many ways resembled.

The boys shared a rueful chuckle, then turned to me with abashed grins.

"Sorry he punched you, Mistress Willow," the elder of the two said. "Are you alright?"

I shrugged. "It's all part of the fun," I said, letting any implied obligation slide away and getting another embarrassed chuckle from both.

No favours. That was my rule. People hated to owe outsiders like me any favours. I'd learned that early and often along the road between... there and here.

I checked my patient's foot; noted the healthy flush of returning blood to the little toe. The skin was already warmer to the touch.

Relief rushed through me.

I lowered his limb to the table and started my clean-up. I splinted his leg with two ash staves and some lengths of the threadbare linen that Widow Oldberry had gifted me when she left Longbarrow for the last time. And I gave a soft but firm refusal of the three copper coins Rufus Pinner tried to force on me - a prince's ransom in this barter-based society - but gave a grudging accession to his request that when winter came around they be permitted to repay me with sausages and other preservable bits of pig.

(I loathe pork - but beggars cannot be choosers, and it was the smallest of obligations to a animal-rich family like the Pinners; one I felt I could safely accept)

I stood watching as the boys carried their father back to the cart. They lifted him and slid him gently in the load bed before encouraging the shamefaced ox off into the gathering dusk; I could hear Farmer Pinner's snores long after they and the creaking wheels had faded into the shadows.

Job done.

I sighed, raised my fingers to my jaw, and bit down hard against the shooting pain.

Was it fractured? Or just cracked?

I probed the line of bone under my right eye, the Chirurgical processes running on automatic...

No, neither - just bruised, somehow. I was extremely lucky; Farmer Pinner was an incredibly strong man and his punches would probably make even an angry bull reconsider.

Exhaustion descended like a curtain; I sat down on my rough stone threshold and slumped sideways against the weathered wood of my rickety door's frame. I stared up at the swift inner moon and her pocked and shattered face. It would be an hour yet until her larger, more distant sister rose.

A wave of homesickness took me - a desire for the tall pines and white stone of the Imperial City, a desire to once more watch the stars from the great orrery on the School's western rooftops...

A tired, mocking grin and a few brief tears of self-pity were all I allowed myself. Daughters of Umbriel were not allowed regret. Regret was for the weak, for the common man.

Not for us.

My stomach growled and interrupted my bitter thoughts; I remembered that I hadn't yet eaten. I had the makings of bread, but hadn't had time to make dough this morning because I'd needed to find herbs; so all that was left was the two-day-old wild onion and barley soup that simmered on my little dirt hearth beneath the bundles of plants on my improvised drying racks above it.

I permitted myself a moment to hide my face in the crook of my arm, and another moment to think of the sumptuous feasts I'd known as a child...

I felt a presence.

I raised my head.

Two beady eyes glittered in the moonlight, a beak clicked in irritation.

Then Lamira honked at me and flapped her wings impatiently - her cream feathers pale against the coming night. She wanted her own meal; she'd been patient with me but now I'd exhausted her willingness to wait any longer.

I allowed myself one more indulgence, one more moment of self-pity.

Then I clambered to my feet, and dug her seeds from the little canvas sack that hung on the hook behind my so-called door.

I filled her carved tray for her and stood, listening to the noises she made - the soft, happy grunts of a feeding goose, the rustle as she fussed with her wings and shook her tail feathers in delight.

I turned away, and stared up at the moon above us...

And wished, once more, that Aurora could have been merciful and just... killed me.

Dawn brought an insistent and irritating nibbling from Lamira; her rough reminder that she wanted to go out and explore.

My body ached; both from setting Farmer Pinner's foot and from the inadequate support of my grass-and-fern-stuffed canvas sleeping... lump... that I pretended was a mattress.

A flash of memory - the azure and white star-and-swan-dappled silk that wafted over my enormous feather bed, in that long-ago life...

I stared up at the low, warped rafters of my hut.

Oh, how far I'd fallen.

A honk, an indignant peck.

I sighed and rose, heedless of my nudity, and fumbled with the door toggle on its short length of poorly-cured leather.

I opened the door; Lamira forced her way past my shins, clucking and griping softly to herself.

I took my robe from its peg and wrapped it around myself - another gift from Widow Oldberry, a moth-eaten green silk that was still far, far too rich for this... rural wilderness.

She'd been so kind to me. I'd done my best for old Master Oldberry, but even a lapsed School chirurgeon cannot banish cancer.

So I'd eased his final days, and helped her shrive and prepare him, and stood beside her as the small congregation of local men entrusted him to Belfana and covered him with six feet of rich Longbarrow loam.

And I'd watched as they hung the little iron bells around his grave to keep him there.

An old superstition - the Bells of Belfana - but a powerful one. Especially out here in the Wild.

I peered out, breathing in the cool morning air.

Mist still clung to the ground, obscuring...

... a patch of shaman's mushrooms! I could see them just breaking through the soil. A good omen; they were a powerful weapon in my limited arsenal, and I hadn't seen any for a while. Three days, and I would be able to harvest them.

A Vee of wild geese cut the sky above me; honking faintly as they began their southwards flight away from winter.

Lamira watched them for a brief moment; I tried not to acknowledge the relief I felt as she returned to the remains of last night's seed with no further visible interest. She was just a goose - a wilful and impossible bird at best - and yet she was my closest friend and, some days, the only one who seemed pleased to see me.

The dawn brightened into morning.

I washed my face in a bowl of cold water, my unscented, home-made soap harsh on my skin.

The ripples died away and I stared at my faint reflection in the scummy surface - at my tired eyes and straggling off-blonde hair and the lines that were starting to gather at the corners of things...

I suddenly realised that I was nearly twenty-six.

I'd survived two hard years here... and now winter was tapping his fingers and smirking on the threshold once more.

I would need to gather more firewood. And more medicines against winter chills. And... luck willing... a fox or a wolf I could trap for the fur for gloves and, maybe, a lined hood...

Winter in Longbarrow was a different kind of cold - and I was and would always be an outsider here. The locals would come to my hut - close to the trees, safely distant from the village - when they needed medicine or herbalism or some little bit of my hoarded lore.

But mostly what they gave me was a gentle, benign neglect, punctuated by brief moments where they remembered I existed and brought me small helpings of whatever they didn't need but couldn't be bothered to throw away.

They'd miss my skills were I to die. They'd bury me and perhaps put bells around me...

But they'd not mourn me, of that I was quite certain.

I poured the apronful of wild chestnuts into my wonky reed basket and paused to wipe sweat from my eyes. A warm day; quite likely one of the last we'd have as the nights began to draw in.

Comfrey, wild sage, dagger root and sweet lady all dried in rows on my rough stick racks. A bough of wind-fallen ash lay where I'd dragged it, taunting me. Beside it, my axe - no saw, no bench for me, nor even the loan of one, no. If I didn't want to freeze I'd have to earn the privilege of fire.

Next year I'd try to make a saw-horse and trade a saw from a tinker, if one came. But there was no time this year; the axe would have to do.

I dropped the few wild onions and morels I'd harvested beside the basket and stretched out my back.

To the axe, then. No time to forage more today, not if I wanted to be home before dark. This would have to do.

I began the dull, monotonous, exhausting work of reducing bough to firewood.

And, as always, my mind drifted free.

I remembered people I'd cared for, both pre-and-post exile. Those I'd loved. Those who'd taught me. Wounds I'd closed, bones I'd set. Different hurts I'd in turn received - to mind, to heart. To soul...

Each a separate experience, each with its gifts and its curses - the gold and pewter sides of the coin of Life.

My axe had dulled. I sighed as I added another unwelcome chore for tonight. But in the meantime, it was still good enough to section and split lengths of wood for the pile that ran the width of my hut beneath a meandering shingle rain shield. I needed to triple the size of my log pile if I wanted to eke my way through winter, and so every day involved an hour of monotonous chopping...

"Mistress Willow!"

The voice was faint, but I could clearly hear the desperation.

I paused and lowered the axe as I glanced around. Then my breath caught as I glimpsed Kimble Turner cresting the rise in the lane. Even at this distance I could see his face was red from exertion.

"Mistress Willow!" he screeched, voice cracking and groaning with his coming adolescence. "Come quick, it's... someone's..."

He tripped and fell face-first in the dirt. A heartbeat and he was up again, mud on his face, running... no, limping hard, his urgency framed in a nearly comical way...

Experience doused my brief moment of levity. Someone was hurt badly enough for this mad sprint by one of the quickest of the village youths...

Oh, gods, let it not be a fire...

I cast my axe aside and dashed for my hut. I grabbed the little bag with my most immediate aids and remedies. I slung it over my shoulder and sprinted towards him, the hem of my heavy flax skirt encumbering me as it always, infuriatingly, did.

"Where and who!" I shouted as I closed, trying not to let the anxiety take me. It was important I remain calm.

"Girl!" he gasped. "Near... shrine..."

And I was off. I might be a woman, but I was still quicker than all but two men in Longbarrow, and nimbler than both combined - even in this rough, rural clothing...

Up the rise I dashed, then down the far side, vaulting over the slippery logs of the cow gate and charging across the uneven turf of Farmer Pinner's lower pasture. As I neared the dry-stone wall I visualised my attack - where I'd place my hand, when I'd vault, how I'd place my foot on landing and resume my dash without the slightest check...

I felt alive.

My heart raced, my pulse roared in my ears, panting gasps of dry air savaged my throat as I skidded round the bulging wall of our down-at-heels temple nook and reached the huddle of folk... and the bundle of dirty cloth that lay before them in a pool of...

Blood. Fresh blood.

A hand lay in the dust, curled partly into itself, attached to an arm that disappeared under the rags... the clothes, I corrected myself. A girl's hand. Nails bitten to the quick, old dirt...matted midnight-black hair that fell over exquisite, delicate eyebrows that were like the curves of eternity made real...

"Help me," I gasped as I dropped to my knees beside the stricken girl.

Nobody moved.

"Help me save her, for Belfana's sake!"

Reluctant hands joined mine; I panted curt instructions, not caring who I bossed or angered - this girl was near death and I could not - would not - fail her.

I rooted around beneath her filthy clothes and underclothes and found the source of bleeding - an awful, diagonal slash over back and shoulder, soaked with blood, with more welling swiftly from the wound beneath it.

"Fuck," I whispered. Then, louder, "I must close this. Hold her still."

Attack by blade from above, added my analytical inner self. Deep but clean and no major artery or vein... she's lucky. There's a chance she might still live.

"What happened to her? Who is she?" said someone.

"I don't know and I don't care. It's not what matters right now..."

I rummaged in my emergency bag and found the tools of my trade; I unrolled the waxed linen on the dirt by my knee.

"... and it won't matter if I can't stop the bleeding."

Silk thread - the last of what I had, and cured gut to follow it with. Powdered moon-leaf as a ward against infection, with whole leaves to seal the wound, if she lasted long enough to need them. Weavemoss and old-man's-beard as a dressing; it had taken an entire precious day to gather this little bit of the second...

I committed them to the fight with no further thought of the cost.

I tore her rags open, exposing the slash in her back to the sky and the curious eyes of my unwilling if ghoulish helpers.

I snatched up my good copper needle - already threaded, because I was a stickler for being prepared.

I found the topmost end of her wound and wiped it clean.

And I began to sew her closed.

Behind me a man retched, a woman let out a muffled cry - of sympathy, or horror, or perhaps both.

Medicine at its most desperate was neither kind nor gentle.

The girl's skin was so pale and she was so cold to the touch...

"Hold on," I panted desperately. "Hold on, precious one, just give me time, just fight for just a little longer..."

The blood slowed as I tied my sutures. The horrific gash narrowed. I packed her wound with moon leaf; it stuck to the clotting blood and darkened as it formed a seal.

And at last I was done. She lay there, pale under my bloodied hands. I stared hard, and shuddered in relief as I saw her ribs expand and ease.

She was still breathing. There was still hope.

"Does anyone have a coat or shawl I can borrow? Please!"

"Why?" said a man.

"I must strip her to wrap a bandage around her. She will be naked..."

Muttering; then someone offered a garment.

"Thank you," I said, seizing it gratefully.

I covered her, and tore her rags beneath the cover, and worked, my mind's eye guiding me as I positioned and wrapped and, finally, tied. I arranged her destroyed clothing as best I could to preserve what little modesty remained to her and handed the bloodied coat mutely back upwards.

Someone muttered an curse, but softly and without anger. The girl's fate overrode all other concerns, and coats could be always be washed clean.

I finally felt like I could take a breath.

"Thank you. Belfana set stars above all of you. I need to move her. Will someone help me carry her to my hut?"

I said the words with hope. But I didn't expect help. Longbarrow folk do not like outsiders. Longbarrow folk do not offer much charity to those not born here, and that which they offer must be... earned.

Longbarrow folk detest change.

And yet... they are still capable of the greatest acts of grace.

A man kneeled. I peered up at him through my mess of sweaty hair.

"I will carry her, Mistress Willow," said Balan Pinner.

I had not even realised that he was there.

"I will help you, Master Pinner," said Brewer Fowler.

"I will fetch a trestle for you," said Baker Morrow. "You can carry her on it; it will keep her still and make your task easier."

"We will carry her for you, Mistress Willow," said Balan Pinner.

And they were true to their word. They gently slid her onto Baker Morrow's wooden trestle top, lifted her and carried her as carefully as if she were one of their own daughters - while I walked behind them, fretting over every gentle bump they gave her.

We reached my hut; I scampered forward and held the door open. Balan and the brewer carried her in and set the trestle down on my mud floor. The girl was pale and still. Balan put his arms beneath her and, blushing red, lifted her, eyes shut tight to avoid seeing anything he felt he shouldn't.

"Put her in my sleeping place," I said, and he did.

I swiftly covered her as Balan backed away.

Then he and the brewer stood there, clearly curious but also unwilling to stay too long in my home.

"Master Pinner?" I said, softly, thinking of a graceful way for them to leave.

"Yes, Mistress Willow?"

"I have a favour to beg of you."

"Name it, Mistress Willow."

"I will need water and fire to tend to her. Can you fetch the logs I've chopped and draw me some buckets of rain water? I will repay your kindness when I can."

"There is nothing to repay," he said. "You saved my father's foot."

He turned and went outside, and the brewer ducked his head to me before following.

I shrugged. I would not insist on incurring a debt that was not wanted.

I fetched my little rough stool, put it beside my bed, and stared down at the stricken girl.

"Who are you?" I wondered, softly.