by Guy Antibes
“You do the same?”
Harrison nodded. “I always keep a notebook of what happens during my tour, and then it becomes my report to Baskin.”
~
Ten days later, Harrison showed up with a horse and a covered wagon. The healer said it sported Wheeler’s tires over the iron rims. Sam helped him load the gear, including the new bag of clothes that Harrison had bought while Sam recuperated. All that Sam possessed was the golden-tipped wand that Mark had poked into his thigh. Even the torn and bloody clothes from that awful day fending off Mark’s attack had to be thrown away.
Harrison went through some elaborate procedure to protect his home by installing wards. Of course, Sam couldn’t see a thing. They left the cottage and headed northwest towards Mountain View, the closest town to Cherryton. On the way, Tru stood by the side of the road while they rolled through a little forest.
“Come on down, Sam. I’d like to have a word.”
“Go on, lad. Take as much time as you need.”
Sam hopped off the wagon. He felt nearly healed. Harrison was right about his recuperative powers. Sam had never been really hurt before, and the healer said a normal healing period would take months, not weeks.
Tru took him ten paces or so into the woods. Sam looked around to see if Mark was around to ambush him.
“Looking for Gob or Wally?” Tru said, with a faint smile.
“Mark. He hates me worse than anyone.”
Tru nodded. “He does, and he has mother twisted around his finger.”
“Father, too,” Sam said.
“Not so much,” his oldest brother said. “I’ll be leaving Cherryton soon enough, too. I’ve taken a position in a large smithy in Baskin,” Tru said. “When you return to Dimple’s cottage, I won’t be in Cherryton. I can’t stay and be forced to swallow the way Mother and Mark treated you. I lost some respect for Father along the way, too.”
“And Addy?”
Tru shook his head. “Addy is Addy. She is in love and has forgotten you for the time being. Don’t worry about her. She holds no malice towards you; if anything, she is distracted.”
“And you?”
Tru pursed his lips. “We’ve never been close. Our age difference saw to that, but I never disliked you. Perhaps indifference would define my feelings until recently. In the last year, you’ve grown up quite a bit. At least I’ve noticed you more. I wish we could have been closer, but I’ll always regard you as my kid brother.” He pulled out a purse and a little sack. “Here.”
Sam looked into the purse and found it full of silver foxes, the principal silver coin exchanged on the continent of Holding.
“What is this?”
“Father couldn’t bear to leave you without some kind of legacy. It’s not much, but if you are careful, you can last for six months on that, even in Baskin. He feels guilty and trapped by mother. She forced Mark on him as an apprentice before I had even finished my own and now Father is boxed into a corner. He respects you more than you probably can understand right now and wishes you well. If you write home, address your letters to him, and don’t put your name on the outside.”
The purse shocked Sam. His father became pitiable all of a sudden. “And in the other sack?”
Tru smiled. “Look inside.”
“Gold?”
“Gold tips for your wand. These are more robust than the gold paint or gold foil. It’s a going away gift from both of us. The gold leaf on your wand will wear off soon enough. You can put these on when that happens. The more gold, the more pollen hates it, you know. Try to avoid selling these tips.” Tru put out his hand. “Good luck.”
Sam took it. “If I get to Baskin?”
“Potter’s Decorative Iron,” Tru said. “He has four journeymen working for him, five including me. I’d be happy if you visit. I won’t turn you away like the others.”
Sam put his arms around Tru in the first hug he had ever given his oldest brother. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“I do, a bit.” Tru patted Sam on the back. “Think of Father, Addy, and me. We will be thinking of you.”
Harrison called from the road. “Time’s up, you two.”
“I’ve got to go,” Sam said.
They walked in silence back to the road. Sam climbed to his seat next to Harrison. He looked back to wave at Tru, who waved back before the road turned and his brother was lost to view.
“I can pay my way,” Sam said, bouncing the fat purse.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll make sure you earn your keep while we are on the road,” Harrison said. He looked at the smaller bag. “What’s in there?”
“Gold tips, but I didn’t look at them.” Sam opened the bag with the gold tips and pulled out a folded note.
Sam,
I’m not much for writing, but I wanted you to know that I disagreed with your mother about making you leave. Good luck with your life. If you come back to Cherryton, you won’t be welcome at home. Send me a message, and I’ll shake off Mark and find a place to visit. Sorry, your life took such a bad turn.
Your father.
Mark was the source of all his problems, Sam thought. He even turned his mother against him.
“So what’s inside the bag?” Harrison said, pulling Sam out of thinking bad thoughts about his brother.
“Gold tips.” Sam reached in to pull a tip out.
Harrison whistled. “Each one is probably equivalent to a gold lion. There are others?”
He looked in the bag and counted four more. They looked like they were solid gold. That would make one of them worth more than the purse of silver coins. “See?” Sam put the tip in Harrison’s hand.
“A gold lion is worth one hundred silver foxes. That’s five hundred silver foxes. You can live for a few years in Baskin with that. You put those on the tip of your wand? A good pair of pliers can secure it, but you’d want to keep your wand in its case most of the time. There are people who would steal it for the gold.”
Sam nodded. “My father showed me how to replace tips. I think the present tip is gold paint or something, and it will wear off.”
“There is a big difference between their effect on pollen. Gold is pollen’s bane, it is said. The more solid the gold, the more quickly it destroys pollen. Shall we test it?”
“Sure,” Sam said.
“When we have a chance,” Harrison said.
Sam plunked the tip back in the bag and put it away. The wand was the only remembrance of his entire childhood. No matter what happened, he vowed to keep the wand and at least one tip.
CHAPTER NINE
~
“W E WILL TRAVEL TO MOUNTAIN VIEW ON SOME BACK ROADS,” Harrison said. “There are a few villages that I can check on.”
He tended the small fire of branches that Harrison ordered Sam to collect when they stopped at a well-used campground surrounded by an extensive wood. Sam had thought they had traveled in the middle of nowhere, but Harrison drove them directly into the clearing. There were wooden logs for sitting and a stone fire pit. Their dinner consisted of a hearty soup consisting of potatoes and dried beef, sopped up with Washjoy’s bread that was beginning to get a little stale.
“Don’t the villages have their own healers?”
Harrison nodded. “Most do, but I’m paid to make sure nothing has happened to them.”
“Who pays you?”
The healer just smiled. “Baskin. I will say it is enough to keep me fed for the year, plus enough for a few trinkets here and there. I do get paid for my healing, although I only get the worse cases in Cherryton.”
“What makes up a worse case. Me?”
Harrison shook his head. “Infectious diseases, healing gone bad, compound fractures where the bone has broken the skin. On second thought, with your aversion to pollen, one of the town healers might have sent you to me. I generally visit the sick rather than have the sick visit me.”
“Where did you learn to heal?”
“The worst place possible,
in the army. I was a soldier, and not by choice. A skirmish with Gruellian invaders left some of my comrades injured and our healer dead. I’ve always had a talent for fixing myself, and suddenly, I was the new healer. I was allowed to return to Baskin on the condition that I would attend the royal medical college for six years. I was an army healer for a few years after that, but I was a reluctant soldier in the first place and left. After some years as a healer in southern Toraltia, I traveled to Mountain View, but circumstances forced me to take up residence in the little cottage not far from Cherryton.”
“Are you better than the town healers?”
“Better?” Harrison shrugged. “Probably. I’ve more experience treating injuries and the kinds of diseases that afflict soldiers. I haven’t delivered many babies, if that is what you meant.”
Sam laughed. “I didn’t. How much healing involves magic?”
“Pollen? I use it for splints for broken bones and for sutures. A suture is a thread of very dense pollen used to sew up wounds. Sometimes I make air pathways I stick down someone’s throat if they can’t breathe. Half of my training was making pollen medical tools and devices. If you use wooden or metal for such things, they can get dirty, and dirt infects wounds. Magic saves lives because when you make your implements when you need them, they are clean, and that’s why you can’t become a healer. You can help, but my apprentice would have to make such things for me.”
“I wondered why,” Sam said.
He didn’t know if he was disappointed or not. He didn’t really have an interest in healing. Finding a place after their summer tour was foremost in his mind, and he still didn’t know if he had made the right decision. Perhaps he should have headed directly for Baskin, where he might have been able to disappear in the capital.
“How can I help you?” Sam asked.
Harrison shrugged. “Fetch and carry, mostly. Sometimes just listen to my ramblings. It gets lonely sometimes, and having you along will make this year more interesting.”
“Am I a good deed?”
“Charity?”
Sam nodded.
“Yes, I’ll be honest, but I wouldn’t drag you into the mountains if I didn’t think you were up to it. I do good deeds from time to time, to make up for some of the bad ones I’ve done in the past,” Harrison said.
“Living seems to be a bad deed for me,” Sam said.
“You are looking at it the wrong way. Finding what you are going to do with your life is where you are having trouble. It’s not you. Miss Featherstone said you are smarter than the rest of your seventh-year class. You’ve managed to survive most of your childhood, including the beating you took. Take what life gives you for a bit. React for now. It won’t always be that way. If you learn anything on our little trek this summer, try to get a feel for when you need to be assertive and act first, and when you just react to what is around you.”
Sam thought about Harrison’s words for a bit. “I suppose I’ve already done some of that. I learned how pollen makes shadows, so I can detect pollen veils, for example.”
“Pollen veils is a talent that is likely unique to Toraltia. Women in most other countries, in Holding, anyway, don’t wear veils. Followers of Havetta wear the veils, and since most of Toraltia follows the goddess, all women wear veils. You won’t find so many in Baskin, for example. I think it is time to test out how gold leaf and solid gold affects pollen. You will need to know,” Harrison said.
Sam grabbed his wand, while Harrison rummaged around a box in the back of the wagon and came up with iron pliers.
“Pollen pliers are not appropriate for this job,” the healer said, walking up to Sam.
“I’ll make some veils to start with.”
Sam watched as Harrison closed his eyes and opened them, spreading his hands. Sam could barely remember how he manipulated pollen when he was small. It was a matter of exerting your will, once you invoked your magic. Everything was mental until the pollen began to collect in the way intended.
Harrison took a breath. “I’ve made four of them. They aren’t pretty. Your mother would probably spend three or four times as long to make one.”
“I can’t see them.”
The healer laughed. “Of course. Here.” He scooped up a handful of dust and tossed it on the ground, before picking up each veil and laying it on one of the log benches. “Can you see it now?”
“I can see the dust.”
“Good. Let’s see what your wand does with the painted gold tip, first.”
Sam pulled the wand out of the long sheath and touched the first veil. It shriveled up where the tip touched the tip, leaving a hole the size of a fingerberry.
“Can you change the tips?”
Taking the pliers, Sam put a solid gold tip on and barely squeezed the gold.
“Next veil.”
Sam took a deep breath and touched the tip to the next veil. It was like pouring hot water on ice. The veil shriveled, but the quickly-formed hole continued expanding, even after Sam withdrew the wand.
“It threw off most of the dust,” Sam said.
Harrison picked up the pollen cloth and tossed some more dust on it. The hole was near to the edges. “The solid gold worked better than I expected. Let me try,” he said.
The healer touched the gold tip to the third veil and counted to five. The veil scrunched up, but the hole was about twice as big as the foil hole that Sam had made. “Hold it to the last veil for five seconds.”
Sam touched the veil for the same time that Harrison had, and the hole expanded to the edges like the first time Sam had used the golden tip.
“One more time. This time use your finger. No wand.” Harrison made one more veil and dragged it in the dust.
Sam could only see the dust stirring until it clung to the pollen cloth. He put out his finger and touched the cloth. There wasn’t a hole, but the veil had deformed where Sam had touched it. “Like soft wax,” Sam said.
Harrison looked at it. “For some reason, you were able to project your aversion to pollen through the wand and made the gold react more strongly. Touch the veil again with a cloth between your finger and the veil.”
Sam grabbed a cloth towel that Harrison had used with their soup pot as a barrier between his skin and the veil. He couldn’t see change.
“There is a slight deformation, but nothing noticeable unless you looked for it. That means you could wear gloves and not react to pollen. If I ever need to put another cast on your arm, I’ll wrap a cloth bandage around your skin, first,” Harrison said.
Sam looked at the dusty veils. Seeing only the contours, he was surprised about the difference between the gold foil and solid gold. “I guess I am doing something to disrupt the pollen,” he said.
“It is no different from your casts, but the gold amplifies whatever causes the pollen to disintegrate. That is your uncommon talent. It isn’t your lack of magic, but how you interact with it. I suggest you think about that during the summer.”
“I am not without talent, then?” Sam said.
“You are correct. As I said, the task is to find your niche in the world.”
Sam made sure he recorded the experiment in his notebook, as well as the conversation with Harrison. He underlined the part about finding his own way.
CHAPTER TEN
~
M OUNTAIN VIEW SAT IN A RIVER VALLEY. A waterway was something Cherryton lacked, and Mountain View was nearly large enough to be called a city. It spread out on both sides of the river. From their perch on a rise overlooking the town, Sam noticed three bridges that spanned the river. It seemed artificially wide, like a snake digesting a mouse.
“Mountain View is much older than Cherryton,” Harrison said. “The original residents set up the city along a small lake, and as time went on, people began to build along the banks and then began to encroach into the water, and now all that is left is the bulbous part. It is called the bay, but as you can see, the lake is gone.”
“Why are we coming here? The villages we p
assed through weren’t exactly on the way.”
Harrison snorted. “This was one of the places I used to call home. I lived in Mountain View when I was a younger, but I was cast out. I come to visit from time to time.”
“You have family here?”
Harrison shook his head. “An incident happened, and I was removed from the city, not asked to return, much like you.”
“The army?”
Harrison nodded again. “I exercised poor judgment. There was a girl I liked. She liked someone else, and such a thing sometimes leads to tragedy. It did in my case.”
“You were sent to the army rather than to jail?”
Harrison clapped Sam on the shoulder. “Do you want to know every sordid detail?”
Sam shook his head. “I’m nosy, but not about that kind of stuff.”
“I won’t give you all the gory story,” Harrison said. “But yes, to give you an answer. I was sent to Baskin, ordered to enter the army. See? I can identify with your plight. I have a few friends in the city, but they moved from Mountain View long after I left.”
Sam thought the healer’s untold story dripped with sadness. He could tell Harrison had suffered an emotional wound that had never healed. Sam knew his own was still very raw.
“Is the town like Cherryton?”
“Not really,” Harrison said. “It’s bigger. The streets are mostly paved. There is crime here that doesn’t plague Cherryton very much. It is more like a tiny Baskin, including a town lord who runs the place.”
They made their way down through the ramshackle buildings that made up most of the town on their side of the river and then on across the bridge. A guard post stopped them.
“Business?” the guard said.
Sam sensed that something long and thick hung from the guard’s belt. A pollen weapon?
“I’m a healer about to start my summer tour of the mountain villages. We’d like to spend the night in Mountain View before we move on.”
The man walked around the cart and waved them through.
