Owlsight

grounds, and not as a servant either! She’ll be back every long holiday, you know she will. After all, you couldn’t keep her away. Which one of us always throws herself into the holidays, hmm? Shandi, of course! Just because she’s going to be a Herald, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her family!”

Oh, but I’m getting very close to not loving my dear family right now. . . . All of this excitement had given Keisha a pounding headache; she felt as if all her nerves were scraped raw and someone was pouring saltwater on them. Her stomach was so sour she probably wouldn’t be able to eat any supper. But Shandi was the baby - my baby sister, the one I looked after and picked up after - and if I didn ‘t have to help calm Mum down, I’d probably be the one bawling like a bereft calf right now. I can’t do that, and make sure Mum gets through this and starts to look on the bright side -

But right now, given the least sign that her mother was getting over her hysterics - or at least that some of her mother’s friends were going to come help console her - Keisha would be only too happy to get out of the house and go somewhere - anywhere - else.

Evidently she had been good enough and patient enough that for once her unspoken prayers were answered. As if the thought had been a summons, relief came bursting through the kitchen door at that very moment.

“Sidonie! Ayver!” Three of the neighbor women came bursting into the kitchen like a force of nature, all three of them managing to squeeze in at the same time, not waiting to be invited inside. “Is it true? A Herald? A Healer and a Herald in the same family, how proud you must be!”

A Healer and a Herald! she thought, startled for a moment by the phrasing. Oh, my - bless them for noticing!

Like the people in the market, they were all talking at once, but since there were only three of them, they didn’t step all over each other’s sentences so much that it all turned into a confused gabble. They surrounded Sidonie and Ayver, faces flushed with excitement at being so close to the great event. “Oh, Sidonie, just think! Our little Shandi is going to be so important!”

Sidonie took her face out of her husband’s shoulder, and though it was tear-streaked and red with weeping, it seemed that the arrival of her friends pulled her the last few steps out of hysteria. She wiped her face with her apron, and began to look more like her normal self.

Keisha deemed it practical at that point to remove herself.

But she hadn’t gotten more than a single step out the door - in fact, she was still standing on the threshold - before she ran into another of the Fellowship women, one whom she knew well. Alys was in charge of the health of all of the herds, and as such, she and Keisha had spent plenty of time together dosing the animals for a variety of illnesses and other problems. This afternoon Alys looked hesitant as she approached the house, and great relief spread over her blunt features when she saw that Keisha was just leaving.

“Oh, Keisha - I’m sure this is a bad time, but that chirra I was worried about has definitely got wet-tail - ” she began; Keisha didn’t give her a chance to say more. She took Alys’s elbow and pointed her toward the workshop, just as she spotted four more women bustling in their direction, heading for the Alder house.

“It’s always a bad time when a beast gets sick, you ought to know that!” she said, making a joke out of it. “They never choose reasonable times to have problems! No worry, I’m going to be the last creature Mum thinks about for a while. Not only will I not be missed, I can make you up what you need in no time; you’ve caught it early, so you should have a cure by tomorrow.”

The more distance she got between herself and the house, the better she felt, and chatting with Alys about the beasts of her herds was such a commonplace matter it could not have been a better antidote for the hysteria she’d just endured. Alys was a calming person to be around anyway; she had to be, as the animals she worked with were quick to sense agitation and become upset themselves. She was older than Sidonie by a year or two, sturdy, brown, and square, with a friendly face and open manner. Like all the women of the Fellowship, her workday clothing was fairly drab, not unlike Keisha’s, except that the tunic and breeches were of a better fit and not hand- me-downs.

The two of them entered the workshop, and Keisha began pulling down the boxes of herbs she needed as Alys went on about the most recent births. The sharp and pungent scents of herbs filled the air as Keisha worked, and the cool of the workshop allowed her headache to ease. It occurred to Keisha that Alys’ arrival provided not one, but two excellent excuses for staying away from home for a while. After all, it was spring, and that meant insect season; in particular, the fleas and ticks that would infest the Fellowship herds, given half a chance. So as soon as she had finished the wet-tail potion Alys needed, but before the woman could pull out her purse to pay for it, Keisha made her an additional offer.

“Look, this year I’d like to get ahead of the bugs instead of trying to catch up with them after your beasts are scratching themselves raw,” she said, trying to be as persuasive as she knew how. “Why don’t I make you up some batches of that repellent dip we talked about last year and a good supply of the kill dip. You can try the repellent right away, and if you see it isn’t working, you’ll be able to dip them all again with the kill before it gets to be a problem.”

Cautious, and frugal as always, Alys wrinkled her forehead and bit her lip cautiously. “That would be very helpful, but - ”

Keisha already knew what she was going to say; at the moment, the Fellowship’s coffers were pretty bare. They wouldn’t have made any major sales to traders since the Harvest Faire two seasons ago. “We’ll just make it a credit against a shawl trade later for one of my brothers - at least one of them is bound to settle on a girl by Harvest. Or if you’d rather, when the traders get done with you at Spring Faire, you can pay me