Fish Tails

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Sometimes plants are elements of spells,” said Jinian. “But when we—­I mean the circle of women I work with—­when we speak of herbal remedies, we mean things that are made of plants only, no so-­called enchantments added. No prayers to or invocations of any outside force except the acknowledgments that all practitioners of the art make to other powers.”

  “I remember the curse words well enough,” snarled Mavin. “They were the last ones I heard before I became rock.”

  “They have the same effect,” Jinian said. “But they are not interconnected. They imprison the mind and the spirit as well as the body.”

  “I’m so glad that’s been cleared up. Now, if someone will just pay attention!” muttered Silkhands.

  Needly’s patience cracked. She cried angrily, “Can we please quit talking about the rock solution? It doesn’t matter how it is made, or how the antidote is made, or who knew how to make it. All that has nothing to do with Willum’s problem! It’s not the rock solution or the herbs or the recipe that’s the problem, it’s that Willum will bleed to death if we un-­rock him!”

  Everyone gave her sympathetic looks. Precious Wind asked, “When they used the antidote on Willum, did they pour it into the wound after the shaft was drawn out?”

  “No. They sprayed it on his body.” Grandma began to describe in great detail what had been done, what had been tried and failed . . . Needly made a gesture of complete frustration.

  “Is it warm where you have the boy now? Is he close by?” Silkhands asked very loudly, staring at Arakny.

  Arakny looked up, startled. “He’s in a room here; no, it’s not very warm in there.”

  Abasio said, also loudly, and with a sidelong glance at Silkhands. “Then, since our visitors have come, at least in part, to help him, why don’t we bring him in here?”

  Released from pointless politeness by Abasio’s voice, Silkhands said, also loudly, but in her sweetest, most patient voice: “Oh, that’s such a good idea! Now that we know every aspect of what the problem is and every detail of what’s been tried, why don’t we have a look at the boy who is suffering, though I know no one in this room but me hears his spirit screaming for release!”

  “I hear him,” cried Needly in an agonized howl. “I’ve been hearing him ever since that arrow hit him!”

  Silence fell like a stage curtain. Wide Mountain Mother put her hand over her mouth in embarrassed awareness. There was a healer here who knew more than any of them, and they’d gone on talking around her, ignoring the boy, thinking of him as though he really were only stone. She was momentarily ashamed, then resolute. She would make up for it. She would . . . find a way to make up for it. Until now she had rarely needed to consider whether someone else might know more about things than she herself did. Especially . . . extraterrestrials. She realized suddenly that she had been pushing them into the same class into which she had put the Oracles, who, from her experience, knew little or nothing.

  Xulai, Abasio, and Needly, however, had risen and gone immediately into the neighboring room to fetch Willum. He had been put on the bed just as he was, clothed as he had been when the arrow struck him. Rock or not, Needly insisted they cut off his bloody clothing and put pajama trousers on him before they wrapped him in a blanket and brought him to the place Mother had cleared for him, on the floor in the center of the room, in front of the fire. He was resting on one shoulder, one hip, and one elbow. His rock-­hard body was cold.

  Silkhands asked for pillows to push under his elevated portions so that he didn’t look so uncomfortable, explaining as she did so that even though she knew his body was feeling nothing at all, if he looked uncomfortable, she felt uncomfortable, and that was no way to feel when you were fiddling about with ­people’s insides! “The agony is there!” she remarked with a certain deliberate brutality. “It is not physical. It’s like being crushed in a cage.” She looked around her at a circle of horrified faces. “He won’t remember that part,” she said. “I can promise he will not remember, even though he was left like this for a very long time.” And maybe next time they’d concentrate on what was important instead of on how nicely little Cecily draws pictures of kittens and how cute Booboo is in his bunny suit.

  She folded the blanket with ostentatious care and put it to one side. Needly held out a bottle and whispered, “Put some of the antidote on your hands, Silkhands. Whether there is magic involved or not, the intention is still part of the mixture, is it not?”

  Jinian overheard her. “It is indeed, but who told you?”

  “It just seems logical. So much of magic and herbal lore seems to be in what is meant.”

  It could do no harm, Silkhands thought, putting a few drops on her palm and rubbing it into her hands, then laying her hands on the boy. If he were closer to the fire he would be warmer. She let the feeling penetrate, sending ghost fingers to carry the antidote into his flesh. Into his rock. She could get in there, but oh, it was difficult. Like drilling into stone. Yes, they had been right about that . . . she would need the antidote. Make a mental note. Chatter is not always irrelevant. Ouch! Finger pricked on that one! Something in there not fleshlike.

  “Ah.” She looked up to locate her fellow traveler. “Jinian, I know it’s difficult if you’re working alone, particularly in a strange environment, but if you can summon a little witchery, we could really use a pulling spell. This wound was supposedly washed out, but there are splinters and sharp little shreds that were embedded. That’s probably why nothing that’s been tried has worked. The debris is all along the wound, and while I might be able to pull on the bits and splinters, I want them to come out of the hole, not through flesh. That would only make things worse . . .”

  Jinian thought for a long moment, feeling herself at the center of everyone’s attention. Well, that would help. She could use that focused attention. Perhaps “like to like” would work under these circumstances. “I need a clean cloth, a small one, maybe a handkerchief. It must be very clean, white, if possible, no dye or perfume. And it would be very helpful to have the shaft that was pulled out. Was it kept?”

  Yes, the pieces of shaft were in the room where Willum had been. Someone went to get them while Wide Mountain Mother offered a folded, very clean, and neatly ironed handkerchief from her pocket.

  Jinian looked around the room, stopped at Needly, nodded to her, saying, “Spread the handkerchief out on Willum’s belly. Abasio, this was what? An arrow shaft? I need a little piece of it, please?” Abasio went to the fireplace and used his knife on a piece of the yew shaft, letting the dust fall into the fire. He brought Jinian a fragment. She laid it on Willum’s chest, near the wound. “Silkhands, you’re right-­handed? Put a little of the antidote on your right hand, put that little piece of wood between two fingers of that hand, then hold that hand cupped, palm down, over the top of the wound. Visualize bits of sawdust rising into your hand. Try to hold that thought. We’re going to summon like to like. Now, please, don’t talk, anyone.” She cupped her own hands before her face and began murmuring into them, her voice rising and falling, sometimes pleading, sometimes commanding. Then she turned slightly toward Silkhands. “Raise your hand, just a little. Now move it over the cloth.”

  Jinian murmured again, and a tiny shower of sawdust fell from Silkhand’s fingers onto the handkerchief.

  “Don’t anyone touch it,” said Jinian. “I bind it where it is, using it to summon the rest. Now, to loosen the rest of it, a ­couple more drops of the antidote on your hand, Silkhands, and when your spirit fingers go in, think of them pushing the antidote ahead of them and then around and behind the wood, to loosen it. Ready? Now, we’ll try that again.”

  They did it again, producing another, slightly larger shower of sawdust that included several actual splinters, then repeated the process thrice more. The last time there was nothing.

  “Feel any more at all?” Jinian asked Silkhands.

  Silkhand place
d her hand over the wound and after a moment shook her head. “Just rock. I can tell you what I’ve found so far. My talent won’t touch the stone, so the antidote is necessary; you may make note of that fact for future healers if this stone medicine becomes well known. I can’t unlock the flesh without it. But, as we all know, if we unlock the flesh, he will bleed. So far I have unlocked only tiny places behind splinters and dust; now we need to think of some way to put just a few drops of the antidote halfway down that wound. Help me think of a way to keep him stone except for that one little place.”

  Wide Mountain Mother said, “I have some straws, hollow ones. You could suck some of the stuff into the straw, put your finger over it, and let the stuff out inside him.”

  “It’ll just run out,” said Needly.

  “Not if we turn him so the line of the shaft is level,” murmured Jinian.

  “Chairs,” said Arakny. “If we put his top on one chair and his bottom and legs on another, we can turn him and brace him with pillows until the channel’s level.”

  “We could test it with colored water first,” said Needly. “To be sure it’s level before you use the real stuff.”

  “Why don’t we make something smooth the same size as the shaft and just insert it from the back?” said Abasio. “That’ll hold the antidote where you want it.”

  “A moment,” said a new voice. “I think I can solve your problem.” Fixit thrust an arm between two of them. “Look at finger, please. Finger is extensible. Finger is softer than something we might carve.”

  A finger, the middle one of three on the hand, visibly grew in length. It really looked more like a tentacle than a jointed finger, being very smooth, the tip completely flat, like the cross section of a cylinder. “Can this be inserted? Is swat finger. Never mind, Abasio will tell you what it is for. Assuming antidote will not dissolve finger, I can maintain length for some time.”

  “You didn’t show me that trick,” said Abasio.

  “Did not seem necessary to go on at length about swatting willi­moxies . . .”

  “No, I think we’ve pretty well covered that subject . . .” Abasio muttered. There was absolutely no reason why thoughts of swatting willimoxies should make one feel as if one had been caught by one’s mother reading . . . what was it called? Pro . . . Por . . . He couldn’t remember, except that it was supposed to be naughty. On Balytaniwassinot’s world, being naughty was evidently holiday fun! NO. WRONG. On Balytaniwassinot’s world, there was no naughty, only good, healthful, very public, multisexual exercise. With difficulty he brought his mind—­recently almost totally occupied by images of hundreds of wildly, ecstatically gyrating Fixits—­back to the present problem.

  “Put it there,” ordered Silkhands, who waited while the galactic officer positioned himself behind the boy and helped her shift Willum’s body until the fingertip surface was level, allowing the antidote to touch the stone evenly all the way around. She placed her hands on the boy’s chest, murmured “Now, Fixit, push just a tiny bit farther toward me, that’s it. Hold it just like that. Now, nobody move, please.” She tipped one drop of the antidote into the hole in the boy’s chest, then laid her hands over the hole and closed her eyes. “Oh, very good! That made a nice soft place there, right there, and the softness almost circles the hole. Needly, can you put in one drop more? Good. I’ve found a vein needing repair. I’m doing that.”

  Needly watched her closely. She didn’t move. Her eyes were closed. But Needly could feel something . . . as though Silkhands was panting from extreme effort. Needly’s own muscles tensed in sympathy. Silkhands was reaching for something. Jinian moved to stand between the fire and Silkhands and laid one hand on Silkhand’s shoulder, barely touching. Needly felt Silkhands drawing something . . . power from somewhere, from Jinian. Jinian was getting it . . . from the fire. How did they do that?

  Silkhands murmured, “. . . another one. Poor little guy did get messed up in there, but he was lucky. His heart is only the thickness of a fingernail away from this hole, but that tiny bit makes all the difference. All right, I’ve done that one. Now we’re going to convince some lazy cells that they need to multiply very quickly and fill in across the gap to make a little plug. Hold your finger there just a little longer, Fixit. It takes a little time, everyone think nice thoughts.”

  Someone said, “We could sing something?”

  “Do not sing!” said Jinian hastily. “Just be very calm. Very, very calm. Think of things that join, ­people holding hands, glue sticking two pieces of paper together, two clouds melting into one, a stream flowing into a river . . . Yes, yes, there. Very good, it’s joining.” She leaned back for a few moments, her hands still. “Now he has two holes in him, one from front, one from back, but the middle has a very thin little partition across it. Thank you very much, Balytaniwassinot. You may remove your finger now. Wash it, please, just in case there’s any of that stone stuff on it. I detect you are part, perhaps the largest part, vegetable, so you should be immune, but that’s only an impression. When we have finished with this, I would like to touch your interesting flesh again.

  “Now, Abasio and Jinian, turn the boy to the left—­no, the other left. I need access to the hole in his back. Thank you. More antidote please, just a drop or two on my fingers. Thank you, Mother.” Silence, and more silence broken by Silkhands’s murmuring, “Ah, we have encountered a nasty. Tsk. Not really broken, just pushed very brutally to one side, bruised. I can fix that. And again, more antidote.” She held out her hand and Mother put several drops on the palm. Silkhands laid it on Willum’s chest. “Nothing really bad there, just . . . Someone mentioned healing stuff that did a very good healing on the Griffin’s wings? Does anyone have it? Needly? Will you fetch it, please? No, no, Arakny, I’m fine. I’ll just hold it until she gets back.”

  Silence. ­People breathing very softly until Needly returned. “That’s wonderful,” said Silkhands, sniffing the open bottle. “If you’ll put some in a very clean spoon, just a tiny bit. Yes, now drip it in. One drop at a time. Right. Now I’ve fixed all the bleeding places, starting at the skin on his back, working between the ribs in back, fixed the wounded places in the lungs, alongside his heart, still forward, and now we’re at the ribs in front. Turn him over, please. The arrow went right between them, both front and back, which was good. Very good! That means no bone splinters!”

  Needly thought laughter. Willum had told her the rib story. She would tell Willum they had counted his ribs. From the inside.

  Silkhands turned her head, stretching neck and shoulders without moving her hands, as though she were in pain. “We’re closing off those little places that would bleed, moving toward his skin, getting close.” Abasio leaned forward with a clean cloth and wiped her forehead, which was beaded with sweat. She thanked him with a smile as she turned toward Grandma. “Grandma, I don’t want him to wake up for quite a little while after I’m finished. Every cell of his body that touched that shaft is going to need a little time to knit together, and there are nerves there that will scream. Though the stone medicine affects the whole body, I find that flesh becomes a different kind of stone than bone does. It’s like the difference between sandstone and basalt. When the shaft was pulled out from between the ribs, the rib-­stone—­which is more abrasive than flesh-­stone—­rasped splinters and dust into the wound. We’ve disposed of those, but the stone that preserved his life complicates things now. If we use much more of the antidote, he’s going to . . . lose the rock that’s keeping him steady. We need to keep him perfectly quiet until all those frantic little cells along the wound manage to extend into the gap.

  “Does anyone know of something I can get into his blood that will make him sleep? I can put it in from where I’m working right now. I can put him to sleep myself, but he’ll struggle against it, so I’d have to sit right beside him for hours and it’s very tiring and there’s only one of me, so something material rather than mental would be more reliable . .
.”

  The clinking of bottles drew her attention to Needly, who had not left the room this time but was shuffling beneath her skirts. Which was evidently where she carried them? What an assortment! No matter. “Oh, Needly, thank you. Now, what’s in this? Poppy, right? I know about that. We have that on Lom, from seeds brought from Earth originally. And there’s no other ingredient? And no liquid but clean water?”

  “Distilled water,” muttered Grandma.

  “Perfect, Grandma. You made this? Well then, you know the efficacy of your materials. This is going to go directly from the wound into his bloodstream a tiny, tiny bit at a time. Will you decide how much would be needed to keep someone his size asleep for several hours if given as an injection rather than by mouth? Better yet, if possible, is there a dose we can give him safely that will keep him asleep for up to a day or so? If that would be too much all at once, we can do a series of doses, whatever we can do most safely. Measure the largest safe dose, then put a little bit of it in a very clean little spoon. We’ll need to dilute that, will we not?”

  There was a scurry as Mother went to fetch a spoon and, from a neighboring room, a slender glass cylinder obviously made to be used for measurement. There was a quick discussion of using boiled water to dilute the poppy juice. Jinian volunteered to purify the water and did so by murmuring at the cylinder. The water moved into two distinguishable layers, and the bottom bit pretended to be a solid while Jinian poured off the purified top. Arakny handed Grandma a clean towel on which to polish various items. Grandma received this with a nod of thanks, and she, Silkhands, and Needly muttered together. The antidote would be needed to de-­rock the veins while Silkhands moved the blood. Needly poured some of the solution into the glass; Grandma regarded it thoughtfully, gave Willum a calculating look, added a few drops more before transferring some of the liquid into the small spoon.