Every Glistening Night

Chapter Five

I stayed on high alert the rest of the day, quite literally watching my back. I made it through the evening without being seized by guards, or even another summoning from Nal m'se. When night finally doused the sunlight, I lay awake in bed for hours on end. Physically, I was exhausted, but a niggling worry burrowed into my brain and kept a buzz of energy going. The relaxation techniques I've been taught didn't help. Eventually, I succumbed to sleep, but woke even more tired than the previous day. No surprise there, as I had two bad nights in a row.

By evening, my frayed nerves began to knit back together. Surely if someone did see me, they would have revealed themselves, their intentions. It doesn't benefit them to taunt me from afar, unless their goal is to drive me mad.

I snap out of my thoughts as a gust of wind tousles my hair. I rub my arms to generate heat. It's a particularly chilly summer night. The fire in the center of the fractured cliff should warm me up, but I'm not sitting close enough to it. Instead, the rest of the tribe members huddle around it, wrapped in blankets and sipping warm teas.

Orange flames lick the darkness. The trees behind me cast shadows over the fractured cliff. A woman's voice rings through the clearing over the crooning crickets in the background.

"The healer should've smelled the acrid odor in the water," Ellna, the tribe's storyteller, says. She hunches over a cane, her face angled toward the sky. "But a recent illness numbed her senses. But she knew the river had been tainted the moment the sour liquid touched her lips. She tried to spit it out, but it was too late. The poison was already coursing through her veins, turning her blood against her."

A few children whimper, yet most stare at the old woman with rapt attention, regardless of whether they've heard the tale before.

"Her beau ran to the lady of the forest," Ellna continues. "He begged her, saying 'surely you have something to help her.' The lady of her forest, true to her word, came to the healer's side. It was horrendous seeing the healer passing to the other world, the color draining from her rosy cheeks, the life ebbing from her hands — the same hands that had saved so many. Her healing touch was leaching away, moment by moment."

"What happened?" a boy murmurs. A series of shushes silence further comments.

"The lady of the forest shook her head, telling the healer's beau that it was too late. Her beau sank to his knees and pleaded with her." Ellna somehow manages to drop her voice an octave. "'Surely there's something you can do.'"

"Please let there be something," a child wails. More shushes ensue.

"'Perhaps there's one thing,' the lady of the forest says. 'I may have a cure for this poison that has contaminated your water.' The problem was that she didn't have enough for the healer and the river. Come spring, rocks and the earth would filter out the poison. But the tribe might die of thirst, especially once most of their water sources froze for the winter. On the other hand, the healer would die if she didn't receive the cure.

"But the healer—" Ellna, the tribe's storyteller, raises a shaky, withered finger, her shadow mimicking her on the ground. "The healer couldn't choose both. She could either save her life or the tribe's. Her beau begged her to not succumb to the poison, to choose life, to choose him. But the healer shook her head." Ellna pitches her voice up, taking on a sweet quality uncharacteristic of most elderly I know. "'My duty is to the health of my tribe. Let this be my last act to care for them.' The lady of the forest used the only drops of the cure on the river."

The healer pauses, her eyes returning to those gathered around the fire. "However, the healer's sacrifice did not go unnoticed. Because of her sacrifice, she was granted a place to live in the stars. She may not have her same healing touch, yet she still nourishes us with light on the darkest nights, when no moon shines upon us and when no fire can expel the shadows. Most importantly, the healer, who we now call Ae, will live on forever in our memory, in our hearts, and in the tribe."