Preserving the Ingenairii (44 page)

“I remember the first raft I made,” Alec began a story about building a raft, and discovering it was too heavy to drag to the water.
 
“So we had to take it apart and move the pieces to the water’s edge!” he laughed at himself.

“So now you know better?” Jeswyne asked archly.

“I do; I can learn from my mistakes, most of the time,” Alec agreed.

They practiced swimming in the ocean, though both kept their clothes on, and after Jeswyne commented on the state of her clothes, Alec explained the need to regularly rinse the salt out of the cloth, so they took turns going to a small brook where they could rinse themselves and their clothes in fresh water.

When the boat was ready to assemble, three weeks later, Alec paused in that chore to go in search of the yellow quartz.
 
He led Jeswyne to the site that would one day become a quarry.
 
There were rocky outcrops all along the north side of the hill, which was steeper than the rest of the hill.
 
Alec and Jeswyne used sharpened sticks to begin digging near one outcrop that Alec thought looked promising, but abandoned it several days later without any success.
 
They began in another location, and found success within three days.

“These will have to be ground into pieces as fine as sand,” Alec said as they harvested nuggets and carried them back to their hut.”

“How much will we need?” Jeswyne asked.

“A lot, maybe three times as much as we’ve got here,” Alec said as they dumped their load on the ground.

“You need that much medicine?
 
Your stomach will explode if you have to take all that,” Jeswyne exclaimed.

“It’ll work, don’t worry.
 
We’d be best off making too much instead of making too little,” he answered, aware of the dangers of the cure he planned to try, though he wasn’t willing to share the details with Jeswyne yet.

Even while they spent days gathering the quartz, their other lessons continued, both swimming and fencing for Jeswyne, and history and geography for Alec.
 
Neither of them ever spoke about their kiss on the beach.

“Let’s launch the boat today,” Alec said one morning as they stepped out of their hut.
 
Jeswyne looked at him with eagerness.
 

“You think we’re ready?” she asked.

“We’ll only go out a little way, as a test,” he answered.
 
They walked down to the beach and dragged the pieces of the raft together in front of the approaching tide, then assembled the segments and waited for the water to reach it.
 
Together they pushed it into deeper water, holding onto the sides as they swam and pushed, until Alec thought they were far enough.
  
They scrambled up, and Alec pulled out the nets Jeswyne had woven.
 
“Let’s see what’s out here,” he said, and he heaved the net outward as he remembered watching Plad do during Alec’s apprenticeship.

Jeswyne helped him haul the net back to the raft, and he began picking through its captives, releasing most but keeping a few.

“See this?” Alec asked, holding onto a small fish.
 
“This is a blue belly.
 
We need to catch a whole bunch of these.
 
But now we know we can do it!
 
Let’s head back to shore and eat some lunch.”

“What about those other fish?” Jeswyne asked.
 
“Why are you keeping them?”

“I will fix those for your dinner tonight!” Alec exclaimed.
 
“You in particular need some protein, a lot of it actually,” he said speaking as a healer.

“Why do I need protein?
 
Don’t you need it too?” Jeswyne asked.

Alec pretended not to hear her as he dove into the water and began pushing the raft back to shore.
 
Jeswyne rode atop the raft for a few seconds, then slid in the water and helped him push, so that within minutes they were wading and dragging the raft up onto the beach.

Alec pulled out the blue bellies and began to slice them open, seeking specific particles of flesh, which he laid on the raft, while he pitched the rest of each carcass far into the water.
 
Gulls soon gathered and began raucously diving for the scraps of food.
 
Once his few blue bellies were quickly eviscerated, Alec turned to the small cod they had caught, and cut several generous fillets from the bodies, then tossed aside the wastes from them as well.

“Those birds are so noisy!” Jeswyne commented, after sitting quietly and catching her breath.

We’ll need their feathers,” Alec told her.
 
“It’s good for them to get used to thinking of us as a restaurant they can come to.
 
Here,” he unceremoniously dumped the fillets in her hand.
 
“You carry these, and I’ll bring the rest,” he said as he picked up the small glands and organs from the blue bellies.

“Thanks,” Jeswyne said drily.
 
“How many fish will you need to catch?”

They were traveling along their path to their hut.

“We will need to spend at least a week catching blue bellies, and a lot more than this each time,” he replied.
 
“And then we need to catch a bird and pluck its feathers, and also grind the quartz.”

“And then we’ll be ready?” Jeswyne asked.

“You’re in an awful hurry to get away from me, aren’t you?” Alec teased.
 
He turned his head to see the smile on her face, but was surprised to see a hurt expression.
 
He hurriedly changed subjects.
 
“You get the fire going again when we get to the hut, and I’ll put these glands away in a safe place.”

Soon Alec was frying the fillets on a large flat rock in the fire, and serving out fragments to Jeswyne and himself.

“This is good,” Jeswyne complimented him.
 
“How long has it been since we had anything besides greens and roots?
 
What are proteins, anyway?
 
You didn’t answer me back on the raft.”

“Proteins are the good things our bodies get from eating meat, like this fish,” Alec said, having thought the topic was dropped.

“Why do you say I need them?
 
What do they do?” she continued, sensing something that wasn’t explained.

Alec sighed.
 
“Your body needs them because you’re growing.
 
You know,” he paused awkwardly, “you’re getting those curves we talked about once.
 
Your body needs protein while it’s busy working so hard for you.

“That’s probably all I should say about that, Jeswyne,” he concluded lamely.

Jeswyne rose and went into the hut, then returned with her arms full of her tea set pieces.

Alec sighed again.
 
“You probably need to be careful and know that I put the blue belly glands in your teapot.
 
It seemed like a safe place,” he said apologetically.

Jeswyne gave him an exasperated snort, but it came out louder than she expected, and Alec began to laugh.
 
She looked hurt momentarily,
then
grinned as well.
 
“Perhaps that wasn’t my most ladylike moment,” she said.

“Perhaps,” Alec agreed.
 
Her ego was less fragile than it had seemed when they first came to their exile, and he decided to say more.
 
“Would you like for me to begin listing events, and we can decide which are the least ladylike, and which are only slightly unladylike?”

“I am about to do something very ladylike and solemn here, and you are not going to be invited if you keep it up!” the emperor’s niece replied with her head turned away to hide her smile.

“Now, you know the tea ceremony very well, I’ll admit,” Jeswyne said.
 
“Someday we may need to do a certain variation of the tea ceremony.
 
I’m going to practice it with you tonight.”

“What’s it for?” Alec asked as Jeswyne placed the last tea pieces in place.
 
“When will I need to use it?”

“Never
you mind
for now.
 
And don’t ever do this unless I tell you to.
 
This will be something we can keep for ourselves if we really need it,” she said mysteriously, and refused to say more.
 
They started going through the intricacies of the usual ceremony, until they came to the time for Alec to pour their tea.
 
“Now, you stand up, and walk around the table, and take the teapot, and pour my cup for me, then return to your seat like so,” Jeswyne explained.

“Then I stand up and pour tea for you, and return to my seat,” she explained as she did so.

“After that I come pour milk into your tea,
then
you come around and pour milk in my tea.
 
Then we’ll do the same thing with the honey.
 
After that, you pick up your cup of tea and bring it to present it to me, and then I’ll present my tea to you.
 
Finally, we’ll each drink a sip at the same time; which just leaves the last step, when I return your cup to you, you return my cup to me, and we each take another sip.

“Can you remember all that?” she asked.
 
Alec nodded.
 
“Then let’s do it one time through to make sure,” she insisted intently.
 
Twenty minutes later, they had completed the ceremony, and Jeswyne seemed particularly satisfied.
 
“Thank you, Alec,” she said with a mysterious smile, and went inside to sleep.

Chapter 35 – A Desperate Effort to Heal

Ten days later, Alec judged that the seaweed and quartz and the fish and the feathers were finally ready and prepared.
 
They had all been ground and torn and mixed to a fine consistency.

“Do you need my drop of blood now?” Jeswyne asked as Alec inspected their work.

“We need to wait for a full moon.
 
And we need to gather a lot of firewood in the meantime,” he replied.
 
They walked up and down the beach collecting driftwood, and dragging in pieces from the forest.

“What do you expect to do with so much wood?
 
Burn a hole through time?” Jeswyne asked as the wood became a circle of fuel twenty feet wide and five feet deep.

“This is what we must do,” Alec answered.
 
He knew he was drawing upon and combining elements from the most arcane forms of healing prescription that had been implanted in his brain, and he prayed that it would work as he expected.

“Tonight’s the night,” Alec told Jeswyne one morning soon thereafter.
 
“Everything is set, and we just have to wait for nightfall.
 
Let me take you up to Ingenairii Hill for a tour today to pass the time,” he suggested.

Together they climbed the hillside.
 
Alec led them straight up to the top, where they finally stopped and gathered their breath.
 
“The view from up here is wonderful,” Jeswyne replied enthusiastically

“This is where the warriors will live,” Alec told her, pointing to the dull badge on his arm.
 
He strolled a few feet down to the ocean side.
 
“This will be where Rubicon’s house will be someday.
 
It’s where I learned to use my powers.”
 
He thought about healing Cassie’s legs in a room there, the first great miraculous healing he performed.
 
They walked around and down.
 
“This is where the healing house will be.
 
It was my own house, but only for a short time.
 
I never really got to settle in there,” he said reflectively.
 
“I had so many plans.