Having found a healer, we had to stay in the port for two days while she worked on Ursel. The healer’s place was full of mostly good smells of herbs. It was light and cheerful, just the opposite of what I’d imagined. She had quite a large number of people in her home waiting for their turn to see her. As soon as Ursel hobbled in the door, however, the healer brought her into another room despite the grumbles of many waiting there. She had an assistant triage the others.
“Is it really bad?” I asked her after several minutes had passed in silence.
“Mm,” was her response. I couldn’t tell from the sound of it whether it answered my question in the affirmative or not.
“It does not pain me as it once did,” Ursel added. I think we were all hoping for more conversation.
The healer turned to the glass jars lining the walls in this room. I took in the surroundings - to one side was a wood block table upon which sat various implements including very sharp-looking knives and multiple sizes of mortars and pestles, along with a pitcher of water. A small fireplace, not really large enough to heat the entire house, but certainly useful for heating things, like the poker I saw resting in the deep orange embers. What was that for?
“You had a tangle with Shadows I see,” the healer finally said not looking back at Ursel but at her jars instead.
The three of us looked at each other. How did she know it was a Shadow wound?
“Do not be too surprised,” she said, “the Malefici have been all around the land and I know what Shadows can do to people.”
She dropped some green dried herbs into a large mortar, added what looked like shriveled mushrooms from a second jar, and began grinding down the mixture. She looked over at Artio.
“You are her lover, are you not?” she asked Artio.
Artio nodded.
“Ah. Bear women. So strong. Too strong sometimes. I am going to ask you to hold her down,” she said as she added a little water to the mash she was making.
“And you, captain,” she said, nodding toward me, her hands still working the herbs which were now a thick paste in the mortar, “you will do something for me too.” She motioned with her head for me to come to the table.
“See that knife there,” pointing with her lips, “no, the one in the middle.”
It was one of the smaller ones, but the edge looked as sharp as a scalpel. I picked it up carefully, the metal gleaming in the light.
“You need to clean it,” the healer said as she massaged the paste of herbs which she placed on a cloth on the table, “run the blade across the hot end of the poker. Do it until you feel the heat rise from the handle to your hand. Then it will be clean enough.”
Ursel watched the whole proceedings up to this point without so much as a twitch of anxiety passing on her features. But passing by her with the knife, she flinched, perhaps realizing for the first time what the healer meant to do.
“I need you to lie here,” the healer said as she spread a rough wool blanket on the floor.
Ursel did as she was told, wincing slightly as she maneuvered her body from sitting to lying down. Artio stood nearby waiting for instructions from the healer.
“You. What is your name?”
“Artio.”
“Artio. You are fierce and strong. But I am going to do something that will make you want to kill me with one of those bear hugs of yours. Obviously, you cannot do that if you want Ursel to heal.”
Artio nodded.
“You will need to lay almost entirely on Ursel’s body to hold her still. I think you know how to do that, right?”
Artio and Ursel looked at each other, blushes on both of their faces.
“You will put all your weight on Ursel except for her wounded leg. Your captain will hold that leg while I work. You understand?”
Artio gave a vigorous nod. The healer looked to me and I nodded my understanding as well.
“Ursel, I will not lie to you. This will hurt. It will hurt more than when the Shadow did this to you. You have permission to roar as loud as you want. You have permission, do you understand? You bear women try to be so stoic, but you do not need to be so here. No one will think you are weak if you cry out.”
I could see Ursel’s shoulders relax some with these words. She looked at Artio who nodded and kissed her forehead. The knife was getting hot in my hand. I dropped the poker back into the glowing coals.
“Bring it to me,” she gestured for me to come, as she knelt beside Ursel. She motioned for Artio to do as instructed. The two women fit like hand in glove.
“Hold her other leg.”
I did so, having handed the scalpel-like knife to the healer. I could feel a tremble in Ursel’s limb though she showed no sign of nervousness on her face.
“Wait. You’re not going to give her something for the pain?”
“I have nothing for the deep pain,” she looked at Ursel, “do you desire something on your skin so you do not feel the knife cut?”
I thought that a bit harsh, but Ursel only shook her head. I could almost read her thoughts - I am bear, I do not let the pain get to me.
The healer began singing something. Not really singing, more like chanting but with a harmony to it. She started off softly, barely audible, but her voice grew stronger as she prepared herself for her work on Ursel. The more I listened, the more I thought she was singing in Italian. Italian?
With Ursel’s wound exposed, I could see the tender flesh surrounding the slash, which had turned nearly black with old blood and whatever else Ursel’s body was throwing at it. At the first cut, Ursel tried to pull her leg away from the healer’s knife. That’s when I was reminded of how strong she was - I wouldn’t be able to hold her down unless I pressed my body weight onto her leg. Although this was a more difficult position to maintain, I was relieved not to have to watch the healer cut away damaged flesh and the blood oozing from the wound. There was a time when I was younger when I wasn’t squeamish about such things, thinking I might be a nurse one day. But now, I don’t even like a nosebleed.
The roaring started a few minutes into the procedure. The healer was silent as she worked. Artio spoke in a low, soft tone to her lover. I’ve never heard a bear in the wild, only on television, so I can’t say she was roaring like a bear. She was roaring like the bear woman she was. As the healer kept working, Ursel thrashed and tried to throw Artio off her body but it did no good.
“How much more? How much longer?” Artio shouted to be heard above Ursel’s cries.
The healer glanced at Artio and then back to her work. Her lips were pressed together now, her chant stopped. I looked back to see sweat had plastered her hair to the side of her face and neck. I felt sweat dripping off of me too from the exertion of holding Ursel in place. But it would be over soon. Mercifully soon, I hoped.
A hissing sound arose and I wondered if Ursel was beyond roaring anymore. But the sound was not coming from Ursel, at least not from her throat. It was closer to me than that. I couldn’t help but look once more, hoping nausea wouldn’t make me abandon my job.
“There!” the healer said, pulling her hands away from Ursel’s cut flesh, “iniziare con te! Begone with you, dark beings!”
Shadows rose from the opening in Ursel’s leg. Although they were lethargic compared to the ones that attacked us in the past, a misshapen form grew grey and floated quickly toward the ceiling, bouncing off the wooden cross beams until it found a small crack in the roof. Like smoke, it curled and compressed around the miniscule opening. Then was gone, escaping into the air beyond the building.
Ursel lay still, whether simply exhausted from the pain or unconscious, I couldn’t tell. Artio lay beside her, stroking her hair, whispering something intimate. The healer placed the herbal paste in the wound and washed the blood away from the rest of her leg. She placed a folded cloth against the cut and asked me to help wind a narrow strip of cloth around her leg to hold it in place. Ursel didn’t wince or move on her own as I lifted her leg so the binding could be passed underneath.
“She will be fine now,” the healer said to us, “she should rest before you take her back to your ship. I will give you some herbs to mix with water as you saw me do, to put on her leg. She will need to learn to protect herself from the Shadows because they now know they can wound her. She is vulnerable and they will smell it.”
“Even after she heals?” Artio asked.
“For the rest of her life.”
“Good Gaia!” I said, “so no cure? Just stay away from Shadows? But she’s a warrior, how will she be able to keep fighting?”
The healer shrugged, “Her decision. I cannot say. I cannot do anything to help beyond what I have already done. You cannot keep her from fighting nor can you keep her in the fight. Only she can decide what path she walks.”
I watched Artio rearrange the blanket that covered Ursel. Losing Ursel probably meant also losing Artio. Great. We lost Nkiri and her crew to the call of their homeland. I lost Aurie to the pledge she made to the Brother in Aki Niris Bay. That brought me down to a troupe of four - Isobeau, Ruis, Toci and me. Four of us to face the Malefici and Maddalena. Great, just great.