Owlsight

trainee Healer-tunics had been, but if she could bleach all the stains out and redye the tunics that color -

It wouldn’t be a bad thing to get people used to seeing me in green. I could ease into it. Besides, sooner or later I’ll have to wear the trainee uniforms, and the moment I do, I just know I’ll get them stained, too.

Maybe she could get herself used to being in green at the same time.

Meanwhile, while the tunics soaked and her experiment in bleaching worked - or didn’t - there was the garden to tend.

She left all the windows open as well as the door, even though it was a little nippy, for the bleaching solution gave off fumes she was suspicious of. In her oldest and shabbiest tunic with a canvas smock over it, she went into the herb garden and knelt down beside the rows of seedlings, a bucket beside her.

Immediately, she felt good: calm, happy, and productive. The garden had that effect on her nearly every time she worked in it. These sprouting shapes under cones of cheesecloth loose enough to allow them sun but heavy enough to protect from frost and heavy rain were from the new seeds she’d gotten from Steelmind. Since she hadn’t known what they were going to look like when they came up, she had very carefully dyed handfuls of splinters and stuck one into the ground right next to each seed before she covered it with earth. Now as she worked beside each row, she pulled out anything sprouting that didn’t have a colorful little splinter beside it. Of course, this was far more work than anyone would want to do normally, but it was only for these new plants. Her perennials, of course, were already well-grown, and it was no work to pick out the annuals she knew from the weed sprouts.

I’m just glad these new ones are all perennials, she thought, as she pulled out sprouting weeds that were barely visible and dusted them into her bucket, replacing the cones over her precious new seedlings as she worked. There will only be one season of this kind of care.

She pulled weeds until her back ached, and her hands had grime ground under all the nails. Then she judged that she’d done enough, and called it a done task. She dumped the bucket of weeds onto her compost heap and took the empty bucket into her workshop.

The fumes weren’t as bad as she’d expected, and the experiment in bleaching was a qualified success. Once she’d rinsed out the tunics and wrung them dry enough to dye, she looked them over carefully and judged that the dye she’d prepared would probably cover the faint stains that were left. Even if if didn’t, she wasn’t any worse off than she’d been before.

The dye itself simmered in a big pot over the fireplace; she’d left it there all night to strengthen. Now she built up the fire a bit and dumped the first tunic in, stirring it with a peeled stick until it reached the color she wanted. Shortly after that, a line of gray-green tunics flapped beside the line of white underthings, and Keisha had replaced the pot of dye with one of soup fixings.

That was when she got her first patient of the day.

A knock on the doorframe made her look up, as Ferla Dawkin came in with her five-year-old in her arms, blood splattered liberally all over both of them.

By now, Keisha was a shrewd and instant judge of situations. Ferla wasn’t hysterical, wasn’t running, wasn’t even out of breath. Therefore, the situation wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it looked.

Ferla’s words confirmed that. “If you’re not busy, Keisha, Dib’s gotten into a fight - ”

“Bring him over to the fire and lay him down on the rug,” she said, and his mother put the boy down while Keisha got clean rags and a fresh bucket of water. The boy had been quiet right up until the moment that Keisha sat down on the floor beside him; then he set up a howl like a Pelagir monster before she’d so much as touched him. He was a sorry sight, face red, blood in his hair and oozing from his nose and mouth, angry tears running down his fat cheeks. Keisha ignored the tears and the howling, she was used to them; she went straight to work, gently washing off the blood until she could make an accurate assessment of the damages.

“Well, Ferla, he’s lost a tooth, he’s got a nosebleed, and he’ll have a fine black eye in a bit, so I’d say he was the loser in this battle,” she finally told the anxious mama. “Here, Dib - ” She made him lie down on the floor and pinched a rag over his nose. “You lie there and we’ll see if we can’t get your nose to stop bleeding. Who’d you take on?”

“Maffie Olan,” came the muffled reply. “He called me a dumbhead.”

“Well, that’ll teach you to ignore people who are bigger than you are when they call you names, won’t it?” she asked matter-of-factly as one big brown eye gazed at her around the rag held to his nose. “Do you know what I used to say when my brothers called me a dumbhead?”

“Huh-uh,” the child replied.

“I’d say, ‘It takes one to know one, so what are you, then?’ Try that instead of tearing into a bigger boy next time.” She winked at him. “Maffie’s not so dim that he can’t work that one out for himself, and it’ll make him madder than you. Remember, if he comes after you and hits you first, then he’s a bully picking on you littles, and you can tattle to his mum, for she won’t put up with Maffie turning into a bully. And you know his mum will tan his hide for him.”