Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 54 of 59

The unicorn followed them home and settled in the field. Delia meant to keep her promise. She would make the garden bigger. But the beds she already had were more than she could stock alone. She sat with Nick at the long table in her healing house, its walls draped in blossoms, and spread her worn herb book open between them. "If I want more," she said, "I need more hands." Nick pulled the book toward him. His finger traced a page of dried leaves and roots. "You trained six," he said. "Train more. Teach them everything." He looked up, blue eyes steady. "More healers means more people helped. And it frees your time. You cannot grow the garden if you spend every hour grinding powders." Delia turned the idea over. She thought of the mornings she woke before dawn to fill jars. She thought of patients waiting on the porch while she worked alone. "So I don't do it all myself," she said slowly. "I make more of me." "Yes," Nick said. "You already proved it works. Your workers treated a patient without you. The knowledge lives in the book, not just your hands." Delia stood and walked to the shelf. She lifted the reference book she had written for her staff. Then she looked at her grandmother's old herb book, thick with names and warnings. She had memorized most of it long ago. "I'll copy it," she said. "A full one. Every plant, every dose, every danger. One for each new healer." Her voice grew firm. "I'll take on ten more. Teach them here, in the beds, the way I taught the first six." Nick closed the book. "Then do it." They did not wait. That afternoon Delia sent word through her patients that she needed workers. By the next morning, a line stood outside the blossom-draped house. Farmers' daughters. A cadet's sister. An old man's grandson. She walked the row and chose ten. She led them into the field and knelt in the dirt, her flowered apron folding under her knees. She showed them the fever herbs first. She crushed a leaf and passed it hand to hand. She named it, named its dose, named the harm of too much. Her six trained workers moved among the new ten, repeating her words. By dusk the field hummed with voices learning. Delia stood at the edge and watched sixteen people do the work that had crushed her alone. "It's done," she told Nick that night. "They can heal without me now. My hands are free for the garden." But as she spoke, a rider came up the path with a sealed letter. The note carried the court's stamp. The nobles wante Nick and Delia at court. They need to deal with the returning magic.