Wendel was frantically trying to recall the things he had not paid attention to in Herbal Medicine and Application. It was a boring class, he was trying desperately to justify his ignorance to himself. Ignorance that might mean the difference between life and death for this girl. Wendel had paid attention learning healing spells. He knew the charm for Healing Hands by heart, and he even knew how to use Healing Blossom though he lacked the permit to do so. He would have needed Dr. Medes to sign off any spells he did cast. Before she left she had emphatically told him he was not to cast a single charm. “Not even a cantrip,” she had said. The part that scared him was that the girl was getting worse. If she dies the guilt will surely kill me.

Wendel was flipping through pages in a book. Dr. Mendes had told him that he was not to let the girl get too hot. He had been replacing wet cloths on her forehead. The book he was flipping through was not his spellbook. He thought that if he was a certified wizard it would be his spellbook. He’d flip through the pages, find the right spell, and the girl would be saved. His spellbook was at the bottom of his travelpack, and he was reading a book about herbs, their identification, and their applications. He glanced up at the girl who was thrashing in her fevered sleep.

Wendel looked at the girl’s father who was standing in the corner of the cave they had moved her to, “Salix alba? Salix alba? Birchum, did she leave us with any, do you know?”

His voice was gruff, and his gaze seemed distant when he answered, “I don’t think she’s coming back. I’d wager she could have saved her, but she didn’t. She left us with you.” The man spat in Wendel’s direction, “She left us with you and the way I see it, that makes you responsible. If she dies.” Right, Wendel thought, the guilt won’t have to kill me.

Wendel tried to keep the whine out of his voice unsuccessfully, “She’ll be back, I’m sure of it. You said it was two days ride by horse both ways. Well it’s only been two days and she didn’t even have a horse. Now, look at this drawing and tell me if she left us with anything that looked like that in the bag of medicine she gave you.”

The huge man crossed the space of the tiny cave in three steps and looked over Wendel’s shoulder at the picture in the book, “Don’t know about no Sally Alba, but that’s willow. Are you daft, boy? I think there’s some growing down by the stream a ways.”

Wendel read and then reread the excerpt about the salix alba, and how to make a tea from it. It would have been easier if the girl was awake. It would have been a simple matter of having her chew on the bark. Being that she had fallen out of consciousness yesterday and not returned, he figured they could brew the tea, and force her to drink it. He hoped that it wouldn’t make things worse.

Birchum instructed a few of the more able-bodied men to go and gather the willow bark, and Wendel kept up the appearance of reading the book. He did not want to appear to be idle, and he also did not want to go with them. He was wondering if the order against magic applied to cases of his own life being in peril. Such as an enraged father attempting to insert a dull knife into his stomach. What he had learned from his short time travelling with Dr. Medes, was that it probably did.

An eternity passed, Wendel removed the now warm dry cloth from the girl’s forehead and replaced it with another cool wet one from the bucket nearby. The men that had been dispatched returned with the bark. They looked to Wendel for agreement that it was the correct bark, but before he could answer the bear of her father spoke up. “Is it willow bark boys?”

They said that it was, and now asked Wendel how they were supposed to prepare it. He proffered the book, and started to explain before he was cut off again by Birchum, “Don’t bother trying to point to them words in that book. Ain’t a one of us that can read it. And before you go making some comment about ignorant hillfolk not being able to read, remember which one of us didn’t know a willow tree from the pitcher.”

Wendel pulled the book back, and started, “I would never say something so offensive to those that had offered me their hospitality while I made a dangerous journey through the countryside.” His eyes moved from one dirty face to the next, before they returned to the book, “It says here that we can make a tea from the bark if we steep it long enough in boiling water. Do you have a pot we can use?”

They did have a pot, and a fire was built close to the dry cave where the girl was resting. Wendel was forced to be the one to actually put the bark in the water. In his mind, it seemed like any one of them could have done it effectively. Shouldn’t they have a medicine woman amongst them? He decided it couldn’t hurt to ask about this while the bark steeped in the water.

Birchum seemed to be considering the question for a long time before answering, “Aye. We did have a healer in our village. Medicine woman and midwife she was. Aggie, though most of us just called her Grams, on account of her being the one what brought the lot of us into the world. Kind of like a second mother to everyone.” He spat and stared into the fire, it crackled and popped waiting for him to continue, “Grams, ya see, she didn’t much care for the Baron’s taxes. Oh she paid ‘em fine the first time, but that was enough for her. When they came back the second time and said we all had to pay again on account of the tax collectors being robbed, she told them she wasn’t going to pay. She said she already paid once, and if they lost the money then that was their problem. They set fire to her house. And they barred the door before they did it.” Birchum stood up and made his way around to the other side of the fire, he stared into the sky as he finished the story, “She had an apprentice you know. My brother’s daughter. She was beautiful, took after her mother she did.” Wendel glanced up to see the man smiling at the sky, “She went a’runnin’ at the door of the burning house, clawing at it with her hands, but the brutes just snatched her up. Bound her hands and feet, and threw her over one of their saddles. They waited until Gram’s place was just a pie of ashes before they took off. My brother, he made his way after them, said he was going to get his daughter back. Never came back, and I know I wouldn’t have either if I’d have gone with him like I should’a. That was just the second time they came for the taxes.”

Wendel was dumbstruck. He stirred and stirred and inside him something hard and cold bloomed. Even if it kills me, I’m not going to let this man’s daughter die. Birchum walked off without another word, and Wendel tended the tea. After about an hour he figure there wasn’t much else that could be steeped out of the bark, and so he set it to cooling. The girl’s condition looked about the same when he checked, and once the tea was cool enough to handle, he did his best to strain it through a cloth and into a bowl.

Getting her to swallow it was another challenge in its own right. Wendel was very aware of the possibility of the girl choking on the liquid and so he took his time with the ladle. It felt to him like a drop at a time went down, but eventually half of the tea he had made was gone. Now it was just a matter of waiting to see if it had any effect.

Back at the University, Wendel thought he knew about stress. He thought that stress was studying for a final exam in a class he considered boring. He thought stress was asking a girl to dance at one of the annual formal galas. Not that he ever actually asked a girl to dance with him, but just the idea had been enough to set his heart aflutter and leave him rattled and shaking. That night Wendel learned what stress was. He saw it Birchum’s face and felt it in his heart as the two spent the night in near silence changing the cold cloths on her forehead.

Birchum was finally the one to break the silence. “Her name is Nadez.”

Wendel was startled from the fog of his worries, “What?”

“Nadez, her name is Nadez,” Birchum repeated, “I just thought that you ought to know. And, well, thank you. I know that this isn’t your problem and we kind of made it yours, but I can tell you really care. Thank you. I’m not holding you responsible when it happens. You did your best boy.”

Wendel went to replace the cloth on Nadez’s forehead again, it had been long enough that he expected it to be dry and warm. He had achieved a sort of rhythm in the two days that he’d been tending the girl. It was still wet and cool. “I think that it might be fine if you held me a little responsible. I think the tea is working.”

Relief swept through the room, and Birchum was on his feet and over the girl with his hand on her head in seconds. “Aye boy, ya did it!”

Time seemed to finally start moving again now that the fever had broke. Wendel convinced Birchum to get some sleep, promising to alert him if there was any change. Nadez was still sleeping, but she no longer thrashed. Wendel watched her all through the night. He kept changing the cloths, but now he was certain that the girl wasn’t going to die. When the morning light began to filter through the opening to the cave and fell on her face, she stirred.

Wendel was up and over her when her eyes opened, and she asked weakly, “Papa?”

Wendel could not in all his life ever remember feeling such relief, he exclaimed,“He’s here Nadez, he never left your side!”

Birchum was shaken awake, and there were tears. The rest of the camp was roused by the celebratory shouting, and in their revelry they did not hear the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Dr. Mendes surveyed the situation from atop a glorious white horse, with a brown horse following her on a lead. She said, “I think that it’s best I came back when I did. Didn’t I tell the lot of you to lay low and stay quiet? And here you are, hooting and hollering at the dawn like roosters.”

Wendel came running out of the cave, and stared up at her on the horse. “I am so glad to see you! I’ve never been so afraid in all my life, I thought she was going to die!”

Dr. Mendes dismounted and looked him up and down, she asked “When did you last sleep?”

“Uh, in the cave, not this one. The ice one. But she’s recovered. Or recovering. I just know it, she’s going to make it!”

“You need rest Wendel. Luckily the Baron was kind enough to grant us the use of two of his finest steeds, so we can make up for the time we’re going to lose while you sleep.”

The fatigue of three and a half days coupled with the relief of knowing Nadez was going to live crashed into him all at once with her words. He felt himself slipping into sedation as if he’d been hit with a sleeping spell in a practice duel. It took the last of his depleted reserves to follow Dr. Mendes as she made her way through the celebrating people, quieting them all with sharp reprise as she went. When she finally entered the cave, and after a cursory examination of Nadez, she began to explain what had happened with the Baron to Birchum.

Wendel was dead on his feet, but he was as desperate to hear the story as anyone. He felt everything slipping in and out of focus as she told it. She wove a tale of intrigue and barter. She had apparently made her way to the Baron’s keep, and explained to him that she was there to help investigate the losses of the taxes that were owed to the king. She had explained to the Baron that it seemed like a matter of incompetence, not being able to get the tribute from his keep to the capitol safely, and that she would be inspecting the keep to make sure that the taxes hadn’t accidentally been left there. It would be a terrible thing, she had explained if the king were to find out that the taxes hadn’t actually been lost to bandits on the road but had been lost in the Baron’s coffers.

Wendel couldn’t keep track of all the details, apparently at some point the Baron decided that the people from the razed village should take up residency in the keep. He would be leaving very soon to visit some distant relatives, far far away.

It wouldn’t have mattered, he thought wishing that he wasn’t too tired to follow her words, she’s not telling them the truth. She’s telling them what will become their truth.