Maida's gaze was as sharp and probing as a needle. She studied Darren for a long moment, the silence broken only by the chirping of crickets and the soft clinking of the stones in her granddaughter's hands. The pouch of coins sat on the edge of her grinding stone, a silent, compelling argument.
"Pay?" Maida finally said, her voice raspy like dried leaves. "The herbalist's trade is not bought with coin, child. It is learned through patience, observation, and respect for the life within the green." She gestured to the herbs hanging from her eaves. "You cannot rush them, and you cannot command them. You listen."
"I want to listen," Darren insisted, keeping his tone even and respectful. "I will be patient. The money is not to buy your knowledge, but to compensate you for your time. Time you could be spending on other things."
This was a carefully constructed argument, one he and the AI had rehearsed. It framed the transaction not as a crude purchase, but as an arrangement of mutual respect, acknowledging the value of her expertise.
Maida grunted, a sound of reluctant consideration. She picked up the pouch, feeling its weight. It wasn't a fortune, but it was more than a handful of copper. "The work is not easy. It is hours of foraging in the woods, long afternoons of grinding and drying, and nights spent by the beds of the sick, breathing in their fevered air. It is not a path to riches."
"My goal is not riches, but understanding," Darren said, repeating the line he'd settled on. It was true, in its own way.
"Hmph. Understanding." Maida looked him up and down once more, her eyes lingering on his frail frame. Perhaps she saw the truth in his words—that a boy this weak had more reason than most to be interested in the arts of healing. "Very well. Come back tomorrow at sunrise. And bring a strong basket. If you are to learn, you will begin with gathering. My granddaughter, Elara, will show you what to look for."
She gestured with her chin toward the young girl, who had been watching the entire exchange with wide, intelligent eyes. Elara offered a shy, fleeting smile before turning her attention back to her stones.
"Thank you, Maida," Darren said, bowing his head slightly. He had secured his entry point.
"Don't thank me yet," the old woman grumbled, turning back to her mortar and pestle. "You may curse me by week's end."
The next morning, a rare sight greeted Darren in the dining room. The elderly matron, a woman so reclusive she was almost a phantom in the orphanage, was seated at the head of the long table. A bowl of porridge sat untouched before her. She looked impossibly ancient and frail, her skin like parchment stretched thin over her bones, her breath a shallow whisper in her chest.
Darren accessed Kael's memories. In the early years, this woman had been a pillar of the orphanage, active and firm, her presence a constant. But year by year, a creeping sickness had stolen her vitality, leaving her a shadow confined to her room. Now, seeing her in the open, Darren felt a cold knot of dread in his stomach. This was not a social visit; it was the slow, final flickering of a candle. The AI, with its cold, diagnostic logic, could probably estimate her remaining time in weeks, not months. A wave of purpose washed over Darren. He was going to learn about medicine. He was going to find a way to help her. This was no longer just about his own survival; it was about saving the woman who had founded this place.
After checking on the progress of the garden—the neat rows of green shoots a testament to his methods—he grabbed the basket he'd prepared and made his way to Maida's hut. The first day was much as he expected. Maida delegated his education entirely to her granddaughter. Elara, who was quiet but not unfriendly, led him into the nearby woods. She pointed out various plants—this one for fever, that one for poultices, another to soothe a cough. She explained things in simple terms, the way they had been passed down to her. Darren listened intently, his AI cataloging every leaf shape, every flower colour, every name and stated use into a flawless, cross-referenced database.
The next day was much the same. Maida seemed to observe him from a distance, testing his resolve. She assigned him menial tasks: grinding dried leaves into a fine powder for hours on end, scrubbing pots with sand and water, and sorting tangled roots into neat piles. It was tedious, back-breaking work for his small body, but Darren performed each task with quiet diligence, never complaining. He understood this was a trial. He was a resource, patiently cataloging everything he saw, every word he heard, building a foundation of this world's botanical knowledge.
After nearly two weeks of this routine, a shift occurred. Maida must have been satisfied with his perseverance, for she finally began to instruct him directly.
"You've been gathering sun-flecked moss," she said one afternoon, her tone brusque. "Why?"
"Elara said it is good for dressing wounds, to keep them clean," Darren answered promptly.
"And why is it good for that?" Maida pressed, her eyes sharp.
"Because it soaks up the bad humours and keeps the air from fouling the blood."
Maida nodded, a flicker of approval in her expression. She began to explain the properties of the herbs he had been gathering, demonstrating how to prepare them. She would hold up a root or a leaf, detail its use, and then quiz him days later, trying to catch him off guard. Darren, with the aid of his perfect mental database, never failed to answer correctly. His recall was so precise that it began to earn him looks of grudging respect from the old herbalist.
As time went on and his knowledge grew, Darren began to see the world through two sets of eyes. One was the apprentice, Kael, dutifully learning the ancient traditions of the village. The other was Darren, the man from a world of science and technology, and he saw problems everywhere.
The first and most obvious issue was hygiene. Maida was not an unclean woman by the standards of the village; she washed her hands and kept her hut tidy. But her practices were rife with invisible dangers. She would use the same grinding stone for different herbs without a thorough cleaning, potentially cross-contaminating her remedies. She mixed poultices with water straight from a rain barrel and applied them with her bare hands. She never boiled her tools. To Darren's mind, steeped in the germ theory of disease, it was horrifying.
Secondly, he couldn't help but feel that many of the remedies were questionable, if not outright nonsensical. Some were logical: a soothing balm for a burn, a bitter tea to settle the stomach. But others bordered on superstition. She insisted one particular root for curing fevers had to be harvested under a full moon, and a tonic for melancholy required stirring it only in one direction while chanting a quiet verse. Darren had yet to see these remedies in action, and he supposed anything was possible in a world where magic was said to be real, but a deep-seated feeling told him he was right. The principles of chemistry and biology, he suspected, were not so easily swayed by moonlight and whispers.
He was faced with a monumental problem. Maida's knowledge was a tangled mess of legitimate folk medicine and ineffective tradition. To save the matron, to truly help anyone, he had to separate the wheat from the chaff. But how? He couldn't trust anecdotal evidence. The placebo effect was a powerful force, and what seemed to work might just be coincidence.
He realized with absolute clarity that he couldn't advance any further with simple observation. He needed to test these compounds. He needed to isolate their active ingredients, verify their effects, and determine proper dosages. He needed to experiment, to control variables, to record results.
He needed a lab.