Nothing could stop the child from dying. Even so, a simple statement of the facts would be bad for business, so she made a show of it. She would not waste the rare stash of pills, smuggled from the city and carefully hidden around the half-tent-half-hut she made her home. No, potent as they were, they would only delay the inevitable. She grabbed instead a pinch of jewelweed, a large sprig of willow, and a faceted bottle with an iron clasp that, despite all appearances, contained nothing more than highly distilled hooch. Then, the performance, the flamboyant manipulation of the mortar and pestle, the holding the bottle up to the light, the mumbling of mystical and to be honest, nonsensical words.
The child's mother watched with misty, hopeful eyes, the father fidgeted in obvious discomfort, and the child herself was giggling, occasionally shushed by her mother, poor thing, not understanding at all the severity of her illness, nor the implications for her short life. It was just the smallest patch of iron, right behind her left ear, in a place only a mother would find, stroking the child's hair with affection, feeling a cold rough patch, and knowing in less than a heartbeat what she would find, what it means, the future and the pain, remembering the long path she walked to get to this moment of lovingly stroking her child's hair and knowing it will all be lost soon.
The witch handed the mother the bottle and clear, if somewhat overprecise instructions: drink only at such and such hour only after a full meal, don't let her sleep for some time, afterward even though she will get sleepy, not too much sleep or the consequences could be traumatic. The mother and father nodded, and the witch turned away and began cleaning her hut. She pointedly ignored the lingering family, knowing why they hesitated, hoping they would get embarrassed and leave on their own without asking.
“We came to you because…” the mother hesitated, trying to find the right words. “We heard that you…”
She used to sigh at this— a deep full sigh as cold as a winter gale, an expression of deep purpose and weight. She halted her breath, for what use would it be, adding yet another burden to those who sought her small hut and the even smaller hope contained within?
“The father will need to leave,” and without a word, the young man turned to go, catching his wife's eye for only a moment, a gaze full of both hope and fear.
“I make no promises this will help. You understand this, yes?” The mother nodded, the child still oblivious to the seriousness of the scene, giggled and shook her head no.
“Shhh… Koko.” The mother gently stroked the child's hair. “Listen to the nice woman”
The witch was not a nice woman. Niceness did not cut off arms, green and rotting, so that the logger who suffered a poor mishap could live another day, though robbed of his livelihood. Niceness did not have a flock of glamas slaughtered and their bodies burned to save the town from a terrible fate of black vomit and death.
She went and lay down on the bed. No need in prolonging this. “Bring her here.” The witch opened her cloak, exposing her left breast, the skin metallic and shimmering with fine scales. “Lay her down here. Ear down.”
The mother complied. They always did. She concentrated, slowed her breathing to a deliberate and measured rate, unfocused her eyes to a point several miles above the roof of her humble dwelling. She rode the waves, a slow pulse of the metallic scales that had long ago replaced her entire breast, a trembling sacred spiral. The mother's eyes widened with fear and hope, combined into a single expression of shock.
The witch, however, understood it all to be mere theater. A parlor trick. An aesthetic.
She had never really lied about this to anyone. She had never claimed that her undulating breast could cure anyone. People made assumptions that she did not correct, especially with all the recent gossip out of Tiago and the general human tendency to turn deep mythology into modern truth.
She never stopped people from spreading lies about her, justifying to herself that such wasn't her responsibility. Folk had to find their truth.
So she was as surprised as the mother to see the patch of ironblood on the child behind the ear start twirling with its own pattern.
Shit. People will be bringing their children here for years to come after this gets out.
After a few moments of this, the witch nodded at the mother, who pulled the girl away. Together, they looked at the back of the ear, where the silver scales continued to move and weave, until the edges of the patch, rough and ragged, began expanding, only slightly, into a thick, solid, and perfectly square border, settling into a stable, flat immobile form.
“Well then,” said the witch, betraying none of her feeling with her flat tone. “Give her the tincture I made. Two nineday as we discussed.” The mother opened her mouth to speak, saw the grimace on the face of the witch, and then grabbed her child to leave.
The child said to her mother, in a loud whisper, “She smelled real funny.”
“Hush, love.”
The witch sat still for a long time after they left.
She used to believe what she did was real, when she was an apprentice to Mother Mina. Before she realized the mummery behind the cures. Before she saw the holes in Mima's own rituals and faith, her own admissions of guilt and shame. That was a lifetime ago. A lifetime of expecting the worst, and celebrating any small victory. A lifetime of knowing every rumor and believing none of them. A lifetime of knowing how to give hope, and knowing when that hope was false.
Nothing could stop the child from dying, that's what she believed. It's been true for so long, how could she ever deny it? Sentimental hope be damned.
She busied herself with work, cleaning things that already were clean. Rearranging her meager furniture and then putting it back to where it started. It was of no use. Hope is sticky. Selfishness had its place, she was not denying that. It would bring much power and treasure to be a true miracle healer.
Three days passed. Then three more nineday. Then three months. For the child with the ironblood behind her ear, the infection stopped spreading. Instead, the word spread, and the witch had regular visitors to her hut. Though she never asked for a single thing, not even a yam, her larder remained full, her roof stayed patched, and she had three different outfits for the winter.
She felt like a fraud. She lost count of how many children she saw in the last few months, but a reaction she saw with the first girl happened less than half the time. And with no rhyme or reason. Ironblood would refuse to budge on the saddest cases, with the sweetest children, and the most caring parents. A patch on a loudmouthed brat would react instantly to the swirls on her breast. The next week, it would be the opposite.
So she sought the rumors, asking tradesman, the Fedar, any traveler, even those who did little more than gossip at the pub. The stories were extraordinary as always— of unspeakable monsters, of pirates and jewels, of dark, forbidden lore gone horribly wrong. And there was one tale that kept repeating, a motif of sorts, of a young woman with an arm of iron who, in addition to fighting those aforementioned horrors, pirates, and jewel guardians, and rescuing children from forbidden temples, had somehow unlocked the secret to this disfiguring disease. Some were already proclaiming her a saint, or higher.
Which obviously is a pile of glama shit.
The days were shorter. She sent the last visitor home with an ointment and a prohibition against certain spicy foods, and fastened her door against the approaching chill. She sat on for bed,
slightly more padded and clean them when she first sat, lost in thoughts all those months ago. Folded her hands in her lap. They were so wrinkled of late, a map of years of work and abuse, trails of joy and pain and tears and screams. And laughs, of course; how long has it been since she allowed herself a real laugh, or a real cry?
"Great Mother," she said before the words stuck in her throat. Aloud, the phrase seemed hollow, insincere, kitsch. She instead bowed her head. The words were unnecessary. She removed the reigns she kept on her feelings and allowed a torrent of rage and fear, sadness and grief, those she saw lost, the years lost to faking wisdom, the self-imposed isolation, the anger of old lies, the hope of new truth. A whirlwind of repressed emotion that escaped as less of a prayer and more of a frustrated and frenzied wail.
And then a peace, like a hug from a long-familiar lover, and she remembered something Mother Mina said long ago— you don’t need to know everything, but just enough to know more than everyone else. She realized this was only half true. You need to know just enough to take one more step.
She nodded, wiping tears from her eyes. The next step was dinner. Then cleaning the hut, then bed, then seeing anyone who found their way to her door and helping if she could. It may not be for her to know why. But if even one more parent could see their child grow, then she could take the next step.
She thought of the girl from the stories, the one who unlocked the secrets if rumor was to be believed. A girl who fought in the only way she knew, in a way the witch could understand.
"Thank you," said the witch. And this time, the prayer rang true.
