Tariel Kavtaradze's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Three children lay fevered on the floor of the longhouse, and Tariel Kavtaradze had until nightfall to name the spirit that had cursed them. Tariel knelt over the smallest, a boy no older than five. His skin burned. His parents watched from the doorway, and Tariel felt their fear like a cold hand on the back of the neck. As head shaman, Tariel led this tribe. If Tariel failed here, those parents would carry their sick children elsewhere, and the others would follow. Tariel pressed a palm to the boy's chest and closed their ice-gray eyes. The sickness had no smell of poison, no rash, no swelling. It felt hollow, like a fire with no wood. Tariel had treated fevers before. This was not a fever. Something had reached into these children and taken a piece. "You've drummed all day," the boy's mother said. Her voice shook. "The spirits aren't answering you." Tariel stood and pushed aside the door charms. Outside, the great red stag waited beneath the pale, ice-draped trees. The stag had followed Tariel since childhood, and it went where the shaman could not. Tariel gripped its antlers and looked into its dark eye. "Show me where the children walked." The stag turned and led Tariel through the frost-covered grove. It stopped at a hollow between the pale trunks. There, in the roots, a small white shape trembled. An antlered hare, its leg twisted and broken, too weak to run. Tariel understood at once. The children had found the creature. They had cornered it, frightened it, perhaps thrown stones. Its spirit had bitten back, drawing warmth from the ones who hurt it. Tariel lifted the hare with slow hands. It did not struggle. "They are only children," Tariel murmured. "Take back your anger and leave them." Tariel set the broken leg straight and bound it with a strip torn from the blue coat. The hare's breathing eased. Back in the longhouse, Tariel laid the mended hare beside the sleeping boy. The mother gasped and drew back. Tariel raised a hand for quiet. Slowly, the boy's fever broke. His skin cooled under Tariel's palm. The other two children stirred and opened their eyes. The parents wept and pressed their foreheads to the floor before Tariel. But when Tariel carried the healed hare to the door and released it, the creature would not run. It sat in the snow and stared back, ears turned toward the grove where it had suffered. The children had wronged it, and the tribe had let them. Tariel watched it limp into the pale trees, still marked by what was done to it. The sickness had lifted from three small bodies. The reason it came had not lifted from the tribe, and Tariel knew the spirits would remember who cast the first stone.