Owlsight

village and no particular interest in seeking further - and possibly more lucrative - venues took full advantage of it. For some people, it simply wasn’t worth the effort to travel long distances just to make more money from their goods; they’d rather that other folk did the traveling and took the extra profit. As had been the case in the past, there were plenty of traders willing to do just that, so the weekly market was usually visited by at least one far traveler from spring to early winter. And three of the quarterly Faires - Spring Equinox, Midsummer, and Harvest - brought traders in their dozens.

Errold’s Grove was more prosperous now than it had been in its earlier heyday, with dozens of trappers and dye-hunters working the forest and hills. None of them was actually from Errold’s Grove; the villagers were still far too wary of the forest to be tempted by the possibility of profit hidden in its depths. But the Hawkbrothers were here now, and to some people, their presence meant increased safety or, at least, a smaller likelihood of being eaten by misshapen monsters. So the dye-hunters and all the people who supported and profited by them were back, as well as a new class of folk who actually specialized in trapping the strange new creatures created by the Change-Circles. The population of Errold’s Grove had swelled to half again more than the village had ever held before.

They even had their own temple and priest, so now the children of the village got proper lessons in the winter, instead of being home-schooled or taught by one of the old women. For most of the children, that was a mixed blessing, as the priest took his duty seriously and wasn’t as easily distracted as a mother or as prone to doze off as an old granny.

They still didn’t have a fully trained “official” Healer, though, and Keisha served in place of one, wearing her ordinary clothing rather than even the pale-green robes of a Trainee. Healers were in short supply still, and so far, there hadn’t been a real need to have one posted to Errold’s Grove. Lord Breon had a Healer, and according to Healer’s Collegium, he could take care of anything here that Keisha couldn’t.

Though never selected for her Gift by a fully trained Healer in the approved and official manner, Keisha had begun showing her talents at the age of five, by taking care of the ills of the stock on the farm, then moving on to patching up the childhood hurts and illnesses of her brothers and sisters. It got to the point where they came to her instead of their mother, since Keisha’s remedies were far more likely to set things right and taste better than their mother’s book of recipes from her granny.

Things might never have gone any further, but fear of the Changebeasts and longing for other human company together drove Keisha’s parents to resettle in the village. That had happened a few months after the barbarian invasion when one family decided they’d had enough of Errold’s Grove and a house fortuitously fell vacant. Not long after that, once she widened her circle of “patching up” to the rest of the children and their pets, the villagers discovered Keisha’s talent, and a concerted effort began to turn their new citizen into a fully educated, fully stocked, fully prepared Healer.

As she and her sister passed the home that had drawn them here - now silent, with the rest of the family out working the fields and tending the stock - Keisha grinned a little. Maybe if her parents had known what was going to happen, they wouldn’t have been so quick to leave the farmstead! Her mother and father hadn’t stood a chance against the will of the village, and they’d lost Keisha’s labor at the farm before they knew what had happened. They might have tried to fight to keep Keisha (and her two sturdy hands) theirs alone, but the arrival of a Herald on circuit put an end to any thoughts of making the attempt.

That golden moment was a cherished memory, the point when Keisha became something other than “ordinary” in her parents’ eyes. The Herald - oh, he was fine to look at, all white and tall on his silver Companion. . . . He took one look at me that went right down to my bones and declared, in a voice like a trumpet, “ This girl has the Healer’s Gift.” Much to Keisha’s bemusement, before he left for the rest of his circuit, he had arranged for Lord Breon’s Healer, Gil Jarad, to give Keisha instruction. Several weeks later a trader delivered into her hands copies of every book used by the Trainees at Healer’s Collegium, courtesy of that august body, and a polite note reminding everyone that the books were worth, not a small fortune, but a rather large one. Enough to buy half the town, and theft or harm to the books counted as a crime against the Crown! With the books had come three sets of the pale-green robes of a Healer Trainee, lest anyone doubt her acceptance. Keisha still preferred not to wear them, though; it seemed a pity to get them as stained and dirty as they would be if she donned them for her regular work.

No more weeding and mowing for her; the letter that came with this library told her that she was expected to study those books any time that she wasn’t tending the ailments of man or beast, or brewing medicines for same. She already had the skills needed to make most medications and had lacked only the knowledge of what herbs were needed - the books supplied that, with good pictures to guide her when she went hunting for them in the forest and fields, and detailed instructions for each preparation. Along with the books came a box of seeds for those herbs that did well under cultivation, all carefully labeled with planting and growing instructions. It was obvious that she was expected to become self-sufficient, and quickly.

For a while, Keisha had used the kitchen of the family home for her workroom - and her mother had seen that as a possible way to discourage this new career.

Mother should never have complained about my “green messes “ in her kitchen, telling everyone she was afraid I was going to poison the family, Keisha thought, with just a touch of self-satisfaction. I know she thought that the Council would agree that I should stop, but it had the opposite effect!

In fact, the Council didn’t wait for her to complain directly to them; the moment the Village Council got wind of the complaints, they assigned Keisha her own workshop, a sturdy little stone building that had once been the home of the village savior and hero, Wizard Justyn. They even went so far as to make a special day of preparing it for her, organizing a village-wide cleanup and repair of the place, presenting her with a cottage scoured inside and out, roof newly thatched, all the bits and pieces still littering the interior taken out and broken into kindling. She had only to say where she wanted workbenches and shelves, and they appeared; had only to ask for a place to lie down and a fine feather bed and a pile of pillows and quilts showed up in the sleeping-loft. The people of Errold’s Grove had learned their lesson about treating a Healer right, having had to do without a Healer of any kind for so long after Wizard Justyn died.

Heady stuff for a fourteen-year-old youngster, she thought wryly, from her distant vantage of eighteen. I’m surprised my head didn ‘t get too big to fit a hat. She waved at the blacksmith’s oldest apprentice as they passed the forge; he waved absently back, but his eyes - as all the eyes