Vessia
Vessia found Danumoro the Wandering Healer in a place where people lived on three hills. They called it the Tors of Yellow Bear tribehold.
The people there wore a lot of gold. They laughed at Vessia when she walked between their houses. She wore no gold at all.
"Another grubby exile from the Rainbow Labyrinth," the women said loudly as she passed.
"I don't mind the outtriber Initiates," one woman said. "At least they pay their way. But the exiles are too much. Dirty beggars."
Danumoro, however, looked happy to see her. The only thing that made him sad was that she had not come to marry him.
"The secret society here knows I am a Yellow Tavaedi," he told her. "But my dances are different from theirs, so I don't dance with them. Still, they don't stop me from dancing healing dances. That's how I trade for what I need."
"When I first came here, I healed Hertio. Now he is War Chief of the whole tribehold. He still counts me as a friend."
Vessia nodded. She didn't understand. The way people included and excluded each other seemed like fallen leaves in the forest. They covered up everything beneath. She couldn't see what was true anymore.
"You can come with me on my rounds," he said. "Do you know any healing dances?"
"I don't know."
"I can teach you. I know you can dance Yellow. I've seen you."
"I dance what I dance," she said with a shrug.
So, wherever he went, she followed. She watched him. She learned.
She learned not only the dances, which seemed stiff and simple to her—but also how he treated people, which felt deep and complicated.
Sometimes Danumoro spent a long time with people who had only small sicknesses. He did very little for them, but when he left, they gave him food—corn, meat, shells—even pebbles of gold. He said gold was the most valuable of all.
"Why do you dance so long for them?" Vessia asked. "You could heal them with one gesture."
"I know," he said. "But if they think my tama takes a long time, they give me more. They don't want to hear they are spoiled squawk birds. They want to be treated like they matter. That's why they fill my basket."
"So what matters is filling the basket?" she asked, trying to understand. "But then why do you also help people who don't give you anything?"
He made a face. "I treat the rich so I can afford to treat the poor. If I could, I would only help the ones who have nothing. But I have to eat too."
Many of the ones who gave nothing were the "dirty beggars" that the gold-covered women hated.
These people really were dirty. They begged. They slept in the streets. Most were exiles from the Rainbow Labyrinth.
Hertio, the War Chief, had found a way to keep them from doing nothing all day. He let anyone work by carrying dirt and stone to help build a new tor, not far from the other three. For this, they got a handful of corn gruel at the start and end of the day.
But some were too young, too old, too weak in body or mind to work. These were Danumoro's patients.
She watched how he healed. He used herbs, leaves, teas, and wraps. But that was only part of it.
Every person had an aura of light, like a woven basket. Danumoro touched the aura with his hands. For serious sickness, he pulled strands of the aura into his dance. He reshaped it and gave it back to the person.
"I never really heal anyone," he told Vessia. "They heal themselves. I just show their aura how."
But sometimes, even that didn't work. One time, a child with hollow eyes would not wake up. Danumoro danced and danced, but nothing helped.
In the end, he cried like a child himself.
"Some wounds never heal," he said. "Sometimes you have to let go. But it's hard, Vessia. It's hard to let go, even when it hurts us more to hold on."
"Why does it hurt you so much?" Vessia asked.
"Eight years old is too young to die," he said. He wiped away his tears and punched the air.
"The Bone Whistler murdered that child, just as if he did it with his own hands. I wish I could kill that monster."
Another time, Danumoro treated a man with painful boils under his arms. But instead of dancing, he told the man's family, "The plague yeech have already won. You must send him to the Tor of the Stone Hedge right away. Burn his house. Or more yeech will come."
"What does it mean to go to the Tor of the Stone Hedge?" Vessia asked, after they left the house and the crying family behind.
"It means the man is already dead," Danumoro said. "I can't help him. The Deathsworn must finish it before others die."
"The Deathsworn?"
"Sometimes," Danumoro said, "a person is too sick or too hurt to live. Some are old and have no family to care for them. Some are criminals. Some are witches who break the laws of light and shadow. Those people go to a place marked by a black stone."
"The Deathsworn come to take them."
"Take them?"
"Kill them, Vessia," he said softly.
She could not understand. Why did some try so hard to save a life—and some so hard to end a life?