Read Firethorn for Free Online Page B

grain sack, she’d never stolen the food from between their teeth. It rankled me, this backward praise. I thought of how the Dame and I had gone into their crofts, bringing remedies for their ills, how she’d tended women and children with her own hands, how they’d blinked and looked away in the darkness of those stinking huts, shuttering the whites of their eyes. I’d supposed them shy, perhaps bewildered by her kindness, surely grateful. Now I heard their ingratitude and distrust. But I said nothing.
    They talked about me as well when my back was turned. Az was too kind to tell me what they said, but Halm and Betwyx, the wives of Az’s sons, told me how the tittle-tattles clucked that Sire Pava had tried me and found me lacking—though a few said I’d run off to bear his child and bury it. I felt shame that such tales were bandied about. Perhaps they wanted my own account of it, good currency among the other wives, but I wouldn’t oblige.
    I gave the gossips another cud to chew, for I never said where I’d spent the year away. Neither the truth nor a lie would do, and that left only silence. Some took offense, saying I supposed I was too good for them. But all agreed that wherever I’d gone, I’d come back strange.
    Word got about that I was god-bothered and the questions ceased. The Blood who are touched by a god are sent to the temples to serve as Auspices, or, if their wits are too addled, to be tended with care. Among the mudfolk, the god-bothered may become wandering Abstinents, pleasing their god by mortifying their flesh, or revelators who tell fortunes in the marketplace, or servants at a temple, drudging for the priests of the Blood. Most stay in their villages, sometimes shunned, sometimes sought after for their gifts of healing, hexing, or foretelling. Always pitied. It’s said the gods most love those they most afflict. This I doubt.
    As one of the god-bothered, I might have done anything—raved of voices and visions, fallen down in fits or gone naked—and no one would have been amazed, save Az and her sons. But I wished only to be unremarkable. If Ardor spoke to me now, it was no more than any woman might hear when she roused up the fire for the morning porridge: the fire song of Ardor Hearthkeeper.
    A few women came to me for help, and then a few more. One pleaded for a blight to mar the smooth skin of her rival, and I sent her off with my rage at her heels; another asked for a charm to make her next child a boy, and I turned my back on her. But I did my best to soothe those who came to me with pains. I filled Az’s hut with drying herbs, and her kitchen with tinctures and salves, and daily I brought home beneficial plants from hedgerows, fields, orchards, anywhere my duties took me.
    I’d been mistaken to think the Dame was the only healer in the village. Every mudwoman knew simples and the charms that went with them to treat everyday complaints, but there was also a midwife and a woman who could cure a baby’s colic with her spittle. The men had their own healer, of course; a woman could ease a man’s aches, bruises, and fevers with a poultice or tisane, but if she touched his open wound, she’d sour his blood and cause the wound to fester. The men’s carnifex, named Fex for short, came to his calling by way of gelding calves, colts, and hogs; his remedy for everything was leeches and more leeches.
    They called me a greenwoman. I only did as the Dame had taught me, but they trusted me more now that they thought I was touched.

    One morning Az saw three crows land in the yard while she was weeding the kitchen garden. The one on her left flew away over the wall; the middle one preened; the one on her right went into the byre and came out with a beakful of straw. I was next door with Halm and her baby and her daughter Lilt when Az called us to come and look. By the time we came, only one crow remained, strutting in the dust.
    Az was