With her healing gift now active, and safe at the monastery, Alandra was able to start working in the healing side of the Temple. Novices did no healing hand work; they were limited to fetching and carrying for the petitioners and professed, and other small useful jobs. But they had all had time in the herbarium, and that meant they rapidly learned where things were kept.

  Some things they kept made up and stocked. mothers with new babies often came for stomach soothers. There were minor coughs and rheums every winter, and some took fever and needed a febrifuge as well. The Summer brought heat sickness and sunburn and bowel complaints. People often needed the tea that helped tired muscles be less sore, or the one that helped the worried mind relax into sleep. There were the thousand and one things that go wrong with the body that lead one to consult someone who knows more than the sufferer. And of course, there were the festivals.

  There were eight festivals through the year. SunHeight and SunDark were the biggest and fell six Moons apart, but Spring and Fall SameNight were also celebrated between them, as were the rituals for the four parts of life. Childhood was celebrated in early Spring, the entry to adulthood at early Summer, the elders were honored at the Summer festival, and the dead were remembered at the late Fall festival. Alandra remembered the festival for the dead as decorous, fun, but also solemn in places. A trip to the graveyard to clean the memorial stones and urns up, then a procession to set lighted candles upon the memorial stones of the dead, and remember them...then followed a feast of all the good things that wouldn't keep over the Winter. Alandra's mouth watered remembering a delicious blood sausage that one woman in the village had made.

  Of course, some people used it as an excuse to get drunk. And in a city, well, there may not have been more of them but it certainly felt like it.

  They got drunk and fell over things and hurt themselves. They got drunk and took a word wrong and started a fight, and beat someone up, or got beaten up. They got drunk and sick with it. They did idiotic things that seemed a good idea at the time, and all of them were there at the Temple. The morning after was scarcely better. Medicinal teas to rebalance the humors were in great demand. People woke up with injuries they couldn't remember getting. Women showed up upset with their partner for how they were treated, to prevent a pregnancy, see if one had started, or make sure the one they were carrying was okay. And inevitably a couple of babies would choose to be born in the chaos, some people would have heart pains, and others would be suddenly ill and need care just as normal, for illness takes no account of festivals. In short, it was all hands on deck on the festival days, and everyone was needed who had a gift, great or small.

  As the youngest and smallest of the Healers, Alandra was being protected by shadowing one of the other Healers. She fetched things and handed him things as needed, but mostly she just watched how he worked.

  Using Healing energy was like spinning, she realized. You pinch off a bit of it and draw it out like thread, a little at a time. It was rarely necessary to grab any more than that, much less flood it like dumping a bucket. Even on the leg wound that came in broken in two places, and with the bone sticking out! The magic that reached in and squeezed the blood vessel shut wasn't big, and the one that shifted the bone fragments into line before he tacked them together temporarily wasn't even Healing, it was just Push and Pull. She knew Push and Pull! She got the splints and packing and rolls of linen wrapping together, and had them ready while the Healer was running his hands down the leg. She saw he was using a thread of Healing to soothe the great nerve that runs down the leg and runs messages to the toes and everywhere along it. Then the man was lifted onto a stretcher and taken to a bed. He was someone else's problem now.

  "You saw what I did there, Alandra," the Healer said.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  "It's not one big thing, it's a lot of little things! And Push and Pull!"

  "Yes. You know that our insides shouldn’t be exposed to the outside, because humors that are fine outside are corrupting within. I was taught that if you must move things like that in the body, using Push and Pull are better than putting hands and fingers in. For no matter how clean we are, we still have outside humors that could be introduced to the body." He thirstily drained the glass of water and said, "I need the necessarium. Whichever one that comes next, look them over and reassure them till I get back."

  She nodded.

  The helpers brought her back a girl with a cut head and an eye that was rapidly swelling and blackening. She also said that her stomach hurt where someone had kicked her. She looked like a tavern worker, clothes smelling of the ale that spattered them, and dirt round her hems. But she laid down, wincing, on the bed without any fuss. Alandra drew a thread and thought "CALM" at her, and laid hands on her abdomen.

  She did not gasp aloud when she saw what was going on, having learned that things like that scared patients. But this was one for her mentor. What she could do while she waited for him was to reach in carefully with her magic, just above the spot that the vessel was torn, and pinch it shut. It was fine, fiddly work, and once done, she just stood there, hand on the girl's belly, and waited for her mentor to return. She wasn't sure she wouldn't fall over.

  "Good work, Alandra," said Stephan, returning and assessing the situation.

  "Good evening, miss, I'll have you right as rain in just a moment."

  He murmured to Alandra, "Good job pinching off that artery. Hold that while I repair it downstream."

  Alandra's mind followed his and saw how he encouraged the body to reform the pipe for blood where it had torn.

  "Now you can let go, Alandra," he said, and she let loose of the pinch and felt a little dizzy. "Go have a drink of water," he said, and checked the girl further.

  "You're going to have a beauty of a black eye for a few days," he said to her, "but nothing's actually damaged. Same thing with the cut on your face. I'll tack it closed, and you leave it alone but to pat it with the cloth as you wash your face. It should heal up and never even show. Your belly won't feel right inside for a couple days, and while you feel that, you rest and eat, and don't lift and fetch and carry. Your body is still repairing itself inside, and needs good energy for that. If it isn't better in eight days, on Middle Day, you come back."

  The girl nodded. "Kin’ you write somethin' I kin’ show ‘ter Missus?"

  He nodded, and headed off to a side table to do so.

  "I didn't know Healers took childern," the girl said. "Course, I be runnin’ drinks in Pa's tavern at your age, so it ain't like ya couldn't be used."

  "Well, it's not like I'm treating anyone by myself," Alandra said. "Mostly I fetch and carry and watch how it's done, so I can learn."

  "Well, I don't feel great but I don't feel as bad as I did," she said, accepting the paper from the Healer. "Thank'ee sir, and bless ya."

  "Go with the gods," said the Healer, giving her a hand off the bed and smiling at her as she walked towards the door.

  "She got caught in someone else's fight," said the Healer to Alandra, as she stripped off the sheet and tossed it into a soiled linens bin. "Good thing she was aware enough to come in."

  "If she'd kept bleeding, she'd die," Alandra said, nodding seriously. "Blood's supposed to go round and round, not all everywhere inside." She was efficiently laying a sheet over the bed again, ready for their next patient.

  "That's right," he said. "It doesn't matter to the body if you're losing it inside or outside, if enough of it doesn't stay on the paths, you can't work your heart or your brain and you die. You did the right thing, Alandra."

  She smiled, blushing. "The cut wasn't big. She just knocked her head on something a little. The black eye will heal on its own, and I left looking at it for you. But her belly just... felt wrong."

  "That is a sense to cultivate," said the Healer approvingly. "You should always listen to that inner voice of the Goddess." He glanced behind her. "And they're bringing us another one."

  Alandra took a deep breath and got ready to help again.