I wheel around to Merc. “I…”
Our stares meet, and then he asks, “What do you need.”
I can’t answer him. I just stand where I am, frozen like Ronl was, my breath getting short, my—
“You can do this,” I hear him say as if from a great distance. “Sorrel, you’ve made it this far. What do you need to do.”
“Stop… the bleeding… I need to stop…”
“And what here will do that for you?” he says calmly.
It’s just the way I spoke to Ronl, and as I got through to the husband, Merc gets through to me: All at once my brain kicks back into gear and I glance to the shop entry.
“Lock the door. We don’t need anyone else in here.”
“I already did.”
Wheeling around, I locate the three bags the shopkeeper was going to use for me as well as his scoop and the jar he almost dropped. My eyes then circle every container in the place, assessing their contents, sifting through what I know with surety, what I guess with some certainty, and what I do not recognize at all. Once the cataloguing is complete, I go into action.
“I need you to bring that down… and that down. Please get me those, and… that. Bring it all into the kitchen—”
The husband frantically appears in the doorway. “I can’t rouse her. I don’t know what to do. This is her shop, these are her medicines—”
“Help him bring me the jars I asked for.” Grabbing the scoop, I squeeze his arm in reassurance as I rush past him. “Hurry.”
Back in the kitchen, at the herbist station, I find a mortar and pestle of good size, as well as a bowl and some string. The men deliver exactly what I’ve asked for, and I scoop out the various dried leaves into the bowl, trying not to spill them.
“Crush one of those roots,” I order, not caring which of them does it.
“How much?” Merc asks.
“The biggest one in that jar there.” I turn to the husband. “Go back and be with her and your daughter. Talk to Lena, try to get her to wake up with your voice and keep her with you.”
“How much longer—”
“Go,” I cut him off.
Merc and I work side by side, and the pungent smell that rises from what he is crushing calms me down. The scent is right. And when I mix up the leaves with some water, I feel further in control. The aroma takes me back to—
My head stings with a sudden pain.
Hide.
I drop whatever memory tickles underneath my consciousness and the pain at my temples fades like a yell descending into silence. I stay resolutely inthe present as I finish the preparation by adding in the root that Merc has, no surprise, crushed into a pulp.
“Cut me six lengths of the string. They need to be as long as your forearm.”
He does so readily as I finish the preparation. Then I bring the bowl and the string with me into the bedroom. The wife looks very bad. She’s cradled in her husband’s lap, her mouth slack, her eyes closed, her lips drifting into the gray color her bairn was right before it roused. On her chest, the baby is nuzzling for her breast, and she does not respond.
Moving fast, I order Merc to wash his hands and then rip me up some bedsheets. He hesitates at the door for only a moment before jumping over to the basin and then grabbing a folded pile of sheeting I didn’t see.
“Not strips,” I tell him. “I need squares—this big.”
As I air the dimensions with my hands, the sound of the tearing mixes with the bairn’s cries, the newborn’s struggles for its mother an instinct as ancient as time itself. After I wash my hands once again, Merc is by my side, holding out what he’s done as he averts his eyes to the ceiling.
“More?” he says as if he wants a job.
“Yes,” I return, even though there’s a sufficiency. But it’s the kindest thing I can do for him.
