Railiana Monroe's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

At dawn Railiana walked to the village with her cloth bundle of glowing plants. She asked at the tavern where a healer might live. A woman pointed her down a lane to a timber-framed house hung with drying herbs. Bright bottles lined the window ledges. The place smelled of medicine before she even reached the door. This was where the apothecary worked, folk said, a girl who healed burns and sat up all night mixing cures. Railiana knocked. The door opened to a young woman with long pink hair and tired eyes, a smear of green paste on her sleeve. This was Aria Whitewood. She looked at Railiana's bundle, not her face. "I grow medicine," Railiana said. She unwrapped the cloth. The red root and blue flower glowed faintly on her palm. "I want to sell these. But I have no paper to prove they're safe." Aria did not smile. She picked up the red root and turned it. "Glowing plants killed a man two villages over last winter," she said. "His wife trusted the seller. I won't sell what I don't understand." Railiana's chest tightened. She had feared these words all week. No stamp, no merchant's word, nothing but her own claim. She could beg, but begging never moved a careful person. So she chose the only proof she had. She cut a thin slice of the red root with her own knife. She chewed it in front of Aria. "I ate every one of these," Railiana said. "This one eases pain. Test my pulse. Watch me. I'll wait here as long as you need." Aria's tired eyes sharpened. She pulled Railiana inside and sat her at a worktable. She counted Railiana's pulse against a sand glass. She asked what each plant did, and Railiana told her plainly: the pod for sleep, the vine for hunger, the flower for cooling. An hour passed. Railiana sat steady and well. Aria pressed the root to her own tongue, waited, then swallowed a sliver. Heat spread; her stiff shoulders loosened. She stared at the root. "My fever cure has failed for two years," Aria said. "Three people died in the next village. I've tried every herb I own." She held up the blue flower. "This cools. I have never had a plant that cools like this." She set coins on the table, more than Railiana had asked. "I'll buy the whole bundle. And I want every root you can grow." She looked up. "But I need to see your field. If this is real, I need to know it won't run out." Railiana closed her hand around the coins. She had her first buyer, and a healer's trust. But Aria's words followed her out the door. Every root you can grow. Her plot held one small planting of strange crops. Now a healer was counting on far more than she had.