*
“How is your woman?” Sparrow asked, when he stepped into her.
A child was sick, and for the past days, the old woman nursed over the child with herbs and prayers to the spirits to heal the child. It hurt him to see the fragile child take slow and deep breaths.
“She fares well. How is the child?”
Sparrow’s face fell, a sign that all was not well. This was not the first child to die of such symptoms. Moons ago, another child had died with the same disease. And the moon before. However, this was the third time this moon a child would be sick with the same illness. The people thought it was a curse. A warning from the spirits. They had tried to appease them with sacrifices in the past, yet it persisted. He feared it was not from the spirits, and that it would continue to spread amongst the children until a cure was found.
“I have not seen anything like this,” Sparrow said
She had vast experience, and it foretold that danger brewed ahead. If the disease spread, how would it be handled? He recalled an illness that had spread moons ago when he had been a boy, at a village thousands of miles away. All the children, except few had died in a matter of weeks. That would not be their fate, he prayed. They would find a cure to this illness, and put an end finally to it.
“How long does she have?” He had been there when the little girl, Ela was born. He had been there at her naming. He had watched her play around with the other children. And now she laid as a little sick bundle. Her mother was in a devastated state, crying all day as she prayed to the spirits not to take her child. She would be broken if the spirits did not heed to her prayers.
“Two days if we do not find a solution,” Sparrow said, her voice ladled with sadness.
He emerged from the teepee with a sad aura. He wished he could help the child, but what could he do? Sparrow had tried all the herbs she knew. They had sent for the shaman in the next village, he had come and gone, saying the child was gone, the illness was a curse and could not be healed. It seemed the child’s state had been sealed.
“What troubles you?” Hannah asked when he entered the tepee.
“A child is dying. Ela,” he said.
Her eyes widened. She knew the child. Ela played with her, but she had not seen the child in the past days. “What happened?”
He explained to her about the recurring disease every year amongst the children, and how there was not a cure for the illness.
“What are the symptoms?”
He stared at her blankly.
“I mean, does the child cough? Sweat?”
Now he understood her. “Fever. Shaking. Rashes.”
Her ears perked up at the last. Those symptoms sounded quite familiar to her. “Can I see the child?”
He looked at her warily. She was no doctor. Neither was she a nurse. But she had a younger brother, and two step-siblings, so she knew her way around children.
“Follow me,” Bear Claw said.
The parents of the child were outside when they arrived. He spoke to them about Hannah seeing the child. The mother shook her head several times. She mentioned white devil repeatedly, and Hannah could tell she didn’t want her around the child.
“Your daughter is dying. What do you have to lose?” Bear Claw asked, with a firm look.
That made her burst into tears, resting on her husband’s chest, who glared at Bear Claw. But he was just being honest. At this moment, the child was close to the other side. Anything they could do mattered.
“Let her see her,” the woman said in tears.
He took Hannah’s arm, gently leading her into the teepee. This was the first time Hannah would be inside. She had heard tales of it. Everyone, including the brave young men kept away unless they were ill and needed Sparrow’s attention. They respected and most of all feared her. Dark magic, Deer Fawn had said, she associated with. Someone had once said they saw her in the full moon naked in the forest with the blood of a goat all over her. She didn’t know if the rumors were true, but she was in awe of the woman.
The tepee was jam-packed. Every inch was covered with bottles, pots or one storage item or another. There were statues, wooden totems that gave her a chill. Hovering above a child with a plant was the woman murmuring some words.
The last time she had seen the girl, she had looked healthy. Now she was frail, with rashes all over her body. Tears welled in her eyes, and she could not help but understand what the child’s mother had been going through ever since her child fell ill. She may not be a mother, but she had a younger brother she worried about.
“She wants to help,” Bear Claw said, standing behind her.
Sparrow’s eyes flung to her. She gasped at the intensity of her gaze. It was like the older woman could see right through her. In that moment, she could not help but accept that some of those rumors had some truth to them.
