across her pain-lined face. 'I'm sorry about your boy. So sorry.'
'Don't be sorry. He's found. Late last night, he wandered into camp. He's sleeping at Ristin's tent right now.' Just sharing the news made Tillu smile again. She trailed her fingers lightly over Ketla's brow, and watched the lines of pain smooth away. Touching could often ease pain, even if it could not erase it completely. 'Does your belly hurt?'
Tillu asked gently as she stroked Ketla's face. 'Do you feel like vomiting?'
'A ... little.' The woman panted the words. 'I'm just so cold.' Her eyes opened again.
'Kerlew's safe. So glad ... for you.' She tried to smile, but her pain pushed it away. 'Can't you help me?' she asked piteously.
'In a moment. Just a moment. As soon as the water is hot. Capiam?' Tillu glanced over her shoulder to find the herdlord standing anxiously over her. 'Can you do this?
Touch her face like this while I'm mixing the medicine? It helps the pain. See. You press gently on her temples, and then stroke your fingers across her brow. Like so.'
The man knelt awkwardly and reached with gentle hands for his wife's face. But his thickly calloused fingers rasped as they slid across her dry brow, and Ketla winced at the touch. 'I should have thought of it before,' Tillu said aloud, wondering at her own stupidity. 'I should have wakened Kari and brought her with me. Pirtsi! Fetch Kari. Tell her I need her right now.''
The boy looked at her, puzzled. He made no move to , obey her, but only turned questioning eyes to Capiam. It was the herdlord who asked, 'Why do you send for Kari?'
'To help me!' Tillu exclaimed impatiently. 'Do you think I can grind and mix herbs and rub your wife's face all at once? If Kari wants to be a healer, here is her beginning.
She has the mind for it. Now let her try her hands at the work.'
'No.' Capiam's voice was firm. 'I'll not have that girl becoming any stranger than she is already. You are the healer. You take care of Ketla.'
Tillu raised incredulous eyes to him. 'Stranger? How is becoming a healer going to make her stranger?'
Capiam shrugged uncomfortably, looking like a reindeer shuddering off stinging flies. 'It isn't what she needs. If she becomes a healer, she will use it as an excuse to be alone, to wander apart from everyone, to sit and stare and be idle. I won't have it. That's no life for a young woman. When we reach the Cataclysm this year, she will take Pirtsi for husband. A man and children—that's what she needs. A married woman can't always be wandering about with a strange look on her face, can't be saying rude and nonsensical things to her folk. She will learn to lead a rajd, to pitch her shelter and to sew clothes and cook and weave. She will be useful. And she will be happy.'
Too late Tillu recalled her promise not to speak of Kari's apprenticeship. Now she understood the reason for the promise. 'How can she be happy in a life she doesn't choose, with a man she doesn't love?' Tillu asked recklessly.
Capiam's eyes were cold. 'Choose? Haven't you lived with her? How can you talk of her choosing? She makes no sense, she runs about like a little child, she has no pride, no ambitions, none of the hopes a young woman should have. She would choose ridicule and poverty for herself. And so I choose for her. I chose Pirtsi for her, who will make her a woman and a mother. She will learn to be happy. She will.' He turned aside from Tillu's unbelieving face with a gesture of rejection. 'Do not talk about it. Don't ask me about what you cannot understand. She is my daughter, and I won't see her throw her life away.'
'Please. Please stop!' Ketla sobbed suddenly, clutching at her temples. It seemed to Tillu that it was not the pain in her head that grieved her now, but the pain in her heart.
The healer turned aside, dippered up boiling water from the pot, and set out her herbs and roots and grinding tools. She said no more of Kari. How could her parents be so blind? Kari would never be happy with Pirtsi. As she chopped roots and crumbled leaves into steaming water she tried to imagine Kari with children clinging to her, needing her attention. Would she suckle a babe at a breast marked with Owl's claw?
Tillu shook her head as she mixed and measured. They should let Kari go, let her be what she needed to be. She was not an animal to be broken and harnessed.
When the ingredients steeping in the hot water had released their benefits, Tillu dipped up a measure of the tonic.
'Help her sit up,' she told Capiam. Without a word he slid an arm under Ketla and wrestled her to a sitting position. She wailed in discomfort as the covers fell away from her fevered body. 'Come now. Drink this. It will help,' Tillu coaxed, and got her to sip at tonic. As Capiam eased her down Tillu added, 'Bring her an empty bucket. Just in case.'
He had barely handed it to her before it was needed. Ketla coughed, gagged, and rolled up suddenly onto her knees. Tillu thrust the bucket before her just in time to catch the spew of vomit. Gush after gush of foul liquid and chunks of half-digested food spewed from her nose and mouth. Tears rolled down her cheeks with the force of the paroxysms that wrenched her. Sweat burst out on her face. For a moment the spasms eased, and Ketla took great, shuddering breaths. Then, again, it hit her, and once more her body ejected gouts of vomit. This time she continued to gag long after her stomach was empty. Tillu damped a handful of moss in water and gently sponged her face.
She eased the quivering woman down. Pirtsi took the bucket away, his nose wrinkled with disgust. Ketla's eyes were already closed, her breathing deepening. Tillu touched her face. The fever was lessened. A few moments later Ketla pushed irritably at her burden of skins. Tillu took some away. In moments she was sleeping, her lips puffing in and out with each breath.
'She'll sleep now,' Tillu told Capiam. 'If she awakens and is feverish, come and get me right away. But I think she'll be fine now. Perhaps she ate something spoiled? Was there anything she ate last night that no one else shared?'
Capiam shook his head in bafflement, glancing from the healer to his peacefully sleeping wife. 'Nothing. Nothing I know of. She cooked some ducks that Pirtsi brought, and we shared those. Then later Joboam brought a dish of new greens and chopped meat that we shared. I did not care for it, but we all ate it, and juobmo and cheese.
Sometimes she eats again, later, after our meal, but I do not recall that she did last night.
She will be fine now?'
Tillu shrugged. 'After she rests. Whatever poisoned her, her body has thrown out. I will leave a packet of herbs with you. When she awakes, brew her a tea from them. It will cleanse her body, and renew her strength. And let her sleep, as long as she likes. All day, if she will.'
Capiam shook his head slowly. 'Soon, the folk will be waking, and preparing for the day's travel.'
'Cannot we stay one day in one spot, while she rests?' Tillu asked incredulously.
'What harm is there in one day's delay?' She held the packet of herbs out to him. He took it absently.
Then Capiam shook his head, his decision hardened. 'The stinging flies will come soon. I am surprised they have not come already. They come in clouds, they bite the reindeer and drive them mad. Many will die, or race away and be lost unless we are at the Cataclysm by then. We cannot delay, not even for a day.' Then, in a gentler voice,
'Did you think I would refuse to wait for your lost son, but halt the caravan for my sick wife? I know some speak against me, but no one would say I am as poor a herdlord as that.' He glanced over at Ketla, and worry creased his face deeply. 'If she cannot walk,'
he said, more to himself than to Tillu, 'I will make a drag for her to ride on. It won't be a pleasant journey for her, but she will not be left behind.'
There seemed nothing for Tillu to say. She nodded gravely, and crossed the tent to lift the door flap. Just as she ducked down to leave, Capiam's voice halted her. 'About Kari.'
Tillu paused, looking up at him blandly.
'I am glad she has had this time with you. Whatever you have taught her will not go to waste. You must understand that you cannot know her as her own father does. You may think me cruel, but I am not. It would be crueller to let her go as she has. I will die before her. I don't want to die knowing that she will grow old alone. Kari will always need a family to care for her. If not a father and mother, than a husband and children.
Ten years from now, she will not be able to imagine a different life. She will be happy!'
He spoke so fiercely that Tillu dared not dispute it. She only looked down at the trampled wild grasses that
