Elara Rootwhisper's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

Elara woke to voices. Not one or two, but a crowd. She sat up on the cot and listened. Feet shuffled on the packed dirt outside her tent. Someone called her name. Someone else pounded the pole by the door until the whole frame shook. The corked pot on the table rattled. She stood and reached for it before she reached for her shawl. She pulled the flap open a hand's width. A dozen faces pressed forward. A woman held up a shaking child. A man behind her waved a coin purse. Word had spread. They had heard she brewed the cure again, and they had come for it before dawn. She counted the pot in her head. Four doses. Maybe five. She counted the crowd. More than twenty, and more coming up the path. "Back," she said. "Back from the pole." The man with the purse pushed forward instead. His shoulder knocked the tent frame. Inside, a jar of dried moonflower tipped and rolled. Elara caught it against her hip. If they came through the flap, the pot would go. The herbs from the hill would go. Months of work on the floor in one push. She stepped outside and closed the flap behind her. She kept her back to it. "Listen," she said. She raised her voice the way her old teacher had taught her, low and flat, not shouting. "I have four doses. Not twenty. Not ten. Four." The crowd went quiet for one breath, then started up again, louder. The woman with the child pushed to the front. A boy at the edge of the crowd caught Elara's eye. He was pale and blue-lit at the edges. He watched her, waiting. Elara made her choice. "The sickest first," she said. "Show me hands." She had watched hands her whole life. She walked the line and took wrists. She turned palms up. She looked for the curl, the tremor, the cold skin. She marked four: the child, an old man leaning on his son, a woman whose fingers had already hooked, and a girl of maybe twelve whose thumb jumped on its own. The rest she sent back with the promise of a second brew and the name of the plants she still had. The pale boy stayed by the tent pole while she dosed the four inside. He said nothing. When the last cup was empty, he stepped closer and set a small vial on her table. The glass caught the lamp and threw a milky shimmer on the canvas. She did not know the vial. She knew who had sent it. The pale woman was paying another debt, or opening a new one. Elara corked the empty pot and sat down. The crowd outside had thinned to a murmur. Four were saved. The rest would wait on a brew she was not sure she could make twice. She picked up the vial and turned it in the lamplight. Whatever was inside, she would need it before the week was out.