Linnea's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

By noon the field held more people than Linnea had ever seen. Word of the guardian beasts had pulled them from every corner of the province. The panther still paced the lane. The cow held the far edge. But Linnea pressed bloom after bloom to cracked lips, and their hands began to shake. Sweat stung their eyes. Each cure drained a little more from them. The line stretched past the trees and did not end. Linnea knew the truth now: no matter how much medicine grew in the barn, one healer could not touch every mouth before dark. Soraya saw it first. They caught Linnea's wrist mid-reach. "You're gray. Sit down." Soraya had managed the logistics since the beginning, clearing crowds, building the cellar, always steady when Linnea faltered. Now their voice cracked. "If you drop, they get nothing. We need more hands." "There are no more hands," Linnea said. "Only mine can call the magic." "Are you sure?" Soraya pulled a cutting from their pocket. A single pale-petaled bloom, already dosed. "You made these. The medicine is in the flower, not in you. A person doesn't need magic to give a sick man a flower to swallow." Linnea stared at the cutting. All this time they had pressed each bloom themselves, sure the touch mattered. But the healing lived in the petals. Anyone could carry them. Linnea stood, swaying. They raised the potted plant with the blue and purple blossoms, the one that marked their door for people who moved through the world differently. "Who here is well?" they called. "Who came only to help someone sick?" Hands went up across the field. A dozen. Then thirty. Families who had carried the dying now stepped forward. Soraya moved fast, loading arms with dosed cuttings from the barn shelf. "One flower, one mouth," Soraya told each helper. "The sickest first. The beasts will show you the lane." The field changed. Helpers spread through the crowd, kneeling, pressing petals to lips. The panther guided them. The winged creature darted overhead, chirping people into rows. Linnea sat on an overturned crate and watched dozens of hands do the work of one. Coughs eased. Fevers broke. The line began to shrink. By dusk the field was clear. Linnea had healed only a fraction with their own hands. The rest had healed each other. Soraya sank down beside the crate. "You won't wear yourself out now. You built a thing that runs without you." Linnea nodded, too tired to smile. Then a helper approached, an older woman with mud on her sleeves. "There's talk in the province," she said. "A lord in the stone castle heard of the beast-guarded healer. He's sending men to bring you to him." She lowered her voice. "Not to ask. To take." Linnea looked at the barn, at the plants that now saved lives without a single spark of their magic. The wearing-down was solved. But the healing had grown too large to stay hidden.