Teleporter (a Hyllis family story #2) (18 page)

Daussie’s eyes widened, “You mean… take a cancer out in little chunks?” She said excitedly. “Let me try…” She looked down at the ground and picked up a stick. She held it on her knee, focusing on it. A moment later a hole appeared in the side of it and, over on her other knee, a small round wooden ball materialized, then rolled off. She lifted the stick and looked at the hole while Eva caught the ball rolling off of her leg. The hole in the stick was approximately the same size as the little ball, and the ball had a small patch of bark on one side. “Wow!” Daussie breathed.

“I’ll say! That’s a real wow!”

Daussie frowned, “But if I start popping chunks out of a cancer, isn’t it going to start bleeding?”

“Mmm,” Eva said, thinking, “maybe. But there are other diseases. You could remove pus from an abscess without lancing it. Maybe…” Eva’s eyes practically crossed, “maybe you could pluck a blockage out of an artery?! You might be able to save people from strokes and heart attacks if you got there soon enough!”

Daussie’s eyes dropped from her mother down to the stick with the hole coming out of it. “That sounds like it could be… pretty dangerous. If I missed and took out the wall of the artery, the patient could die right away. A lot of people survive a heart attack.”

Eva shrugged, “Well, you’d certainly need to
practice
first.” Her eyes dropped to the stick that still lay in Daussie’s lap. “Why don’t you try taking the wood out of that stick while leaving the bark on it?”

Daussie looked at the stick, actually a small branch, narrowing as it divided. “Okay.” She leaned down to the stick.

Eva said, “That looks kinda weird, you leaning down into your own lap for no apparent reason.”

Daussie straightened back up as small balls of wood rolled off her leg in the region of the stick, bouncing to the ground. “It’s a lot easier if I get my head near it though. I think it would’ve looked weirder if I was holding the stick up to my head.”

“Mmm,” Eva said, acknowledging the truth of Daussie’s statement while she reached out for the stick. She picked it up to look and see if the bark had been perforated anywhere. Although the stick had
looked
perfectly intact, when Eva lifted it, it promptly collapsed in the region where Daussie had removed the wood inside the bark. “Oh!” Eva said staring wide-eyed at the broken stick. She set it back on Daussie’s knee. “Do another section. This time I’ll check it with my ghost so it won’t break before I can see if the bark is intact.”

Daussie leaned down again. Before she straightened back up, Arco’s voice came over her shoulder, “Are you smelling your knees?”

Daussie jerked back upright, cheeks turning red and ears burning. “Um, n-no, smelling this little branch,” she stammered.

Arco grinned at her. “Interesting method. Most people would have lifted the stick to their nose rather than vice versa. But,” he looked back and forth from Daussie to Eva, “I just came by to express the caravan’s appreciation for your service this morning.”

Still blushing, Daussie said, “I only did what you told me.”

“Not true!” He grinned at Daussie, “I hear you helped turn wagons and organized a team to get a wheel loose. The caravan owes you its gratitude—which you’re getting from me.” He leaned down closer and spoke in a low tone, “You’d probably rather have the caravan’s coin, but you’re not going to see that!” He stood back up and grinned, “It
is
made up of merchants after all. You know how they pinch coppers.” He stood and winked, “So, you’ll have to be satisfied with my gratitude.” He turned to leave.

Daussie said, “What are we going to do?”

Arco turned back, his smile gone. “I wish I knew. It hasn’t been decided yet.”

“What do
you
think we should do?”

He shook his head, “There really aren’t any
good
options. We’re just trying to figure out which would be the least bad option and it’s hard to get agreement on something like that.” He sighed, “I suspect we’ll be dithering about it for a few days yet.”

This time when he turned to go, he kept going when Daussie called out, “But…!” behind him. Daussie glanced back at Eva who gave her a little smile.

Eva said, “No holes in the bark!”

Daum returned from the Prichard’s place with a side of pork for the evening meal. “I was worried they wouldn’t deal with me because Norton and Prichard aren’t getting along. But Prichard said that life must go on whether we can agree or not.”

Tarc had just arrived back with more deadfall from the woods. He said, “They’ve got their scouts back in place out there.”

Daum’s eyes widened, “You stayed well away from them?”

Tarc nodded.

Daum sighed, “So much for the hope that they’d had enough this morning, eh?” He got out his big knife and started cutting up the pork.

Tarc started shaving a nice dry piece of wood for a fire starter. “Yeah… I think I’m going to have nightmares tonight. Even though those guys were…
awful
human beings, shooting them seemed…” he trailed off, not sure what to say.

Daum knew what his son was saying, he felt it himself. He cast about for something to say to ease Tarc’s mind. He hadn’t thought of anything that sounded convincing to himself yet, when Lizeth approached them.

“Mr. Hyllis?”

Daum nodded at her, wondering what she might want.

“Um, I’m thinking about going out to scout the raiders place tonight.”

Daum’s eyes widened a little. He said, “Okay.”

“If we’re going to decide what to do, we need to know more about them,” she said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself to some extent.

Daum waited for her to say more, but then finally said, “I guess that sounds reasonable. I don’t know very much about this kind of business though.”

“It’s not a business,” she said darkly. “It’s more like a war.”

Daum shrugged, “Just a saying.”

“Anyway, it’d be nice to have someone along to watch my back. An experienced fighter.”

Daum said, “I’m not an experienced fighter!”

“You expect me to believe that after the shooting you did this morning?!”

Daum sighed disconsolately, “Last week was the first time I’d ever killed anyone. I’m pretty good with a bow, but that’s about it.” He glanced around the landscape, “Do you even know where to start looking?”

“Prichard’s folks think they’re camping on a farm a little farther along the road.”

“Why aren’t you taking one of the other guards?”

Lizeth glanced back over her shoulder, “Arco doesn’t want us to go. If two of us left, he’d be sure to notice it. Besides,” she scuffed a toe in the dirt and looked back up at him with a weak smile, “none of them want to go.”

“Well, neither do I. I’m good at shooting arrows, not at skulking around in the night. You’ll have to find somebody else.”

She nodded at him, “Well, thank you for considering my request.” She turned and left, spine stiff but obviously disappointed.

Tarc stood from where he’d been working on the fire and stepped closer to his father. “Dad! You’d be
great
at skulking around in the dark! You’d know if anyone was nearby, and your talent would help you choose a quiet place to set your feet.”

Daum stared at his son, “You
want
me to risk my life scouting?”

“No!” Tarc looked down, then back up, “We’re
all
risking our lives with this mess! I just don’t think it would be that dangerous to go with her.”

Slowly Daum said, “
Arco
doesn’t think we should try to scout them and he’s the one that knows the most about this business. If
he
doesn’t think we should do it and won’t commit himself or any of the guards to it,
I
don’t want to do it.” He studied his son for a minute then blinked, “And, don’t you decide that
you’re
going to go with her either!”

That evening, after the Hyllises had finished serving dinner to about two thirds of the caravan, Amelia Prichard showed up at their wagon. She was carrying a round metal dish with steam rising off of it. A big smile on her face, she walked up to Eva and said, “I owe you an extreme debt of gratitude. I feel
so
much better since you treated me last night.” She held out the metal dish, “I brought you an apple pie.” She lifted her other hand, “And this cheddar tastes really good with it.”

Daussie had stepped closer to Mrs. Prichard, eager to examine her. Even in the lamplight she could tell that the woman’s sallow complexion had markedly improved. Sending her ghost into the woman’s abdomen, she saw that the dilated biliary duct system was back down to a nearly normal size.

Eva exclaimed over the pie and the cheese, and even more over the silver that Mrs. Prichard pressed into her hand. She settled Prichard on one of their small folding stools. Soon Eva had cut slices of the pie and slivers of the cheese for each of the Hyllises as well as for Mrs. Prichard. As they ate they spoke cheerfully of virtually anything but the presence of the raiders in the area.

When everyone had finished eating, Eva leaned forward and said, “Although we took out the gallstone that was plugging your ducts last night, I think it’s important that you understand you still have a lot of stones in your gallbladder.”

Prichard smiled, “Well, I wouldn’t know about that, all I know is that I feel fine.”

Eva said, “We have a new treatment that… we think would work to remove your gallstones. Getting rid of the rest of them could keep you from having attacks for a long time. At least until you formed new gallstones.”

Amelia narrowed her eyes and studied Eva’s face. “You ‘think’? How many times have you done this?”

Eva shrugged, “You’d be the first.”

“I don’t know about that,” Amelia said slowly. “These stones are inside me here?” she said pointing at her abdomen.

Eva nodded.

“And how are you thinking you’d get them out? You’re not talking about cutting me open are you?”

“Um, no. We have a trick involving a cup with some moonshine placed right over your gallbladder.”

Mrs. Prichard stared at Eva for a moment then broke into a smile, “You’re kidding right?”

“No, we’ve been…”

An acerbic voice came over Eva’s shoulder, “She’s not kidding. They’ve been doing it to me for my cancer for a while now. Even though I thought it was a complete load of crap, just like you’re obviously thinking, I am feeling a lot better.”

Eva and Daussie looked back,
Mrs. Gates!

“In fact, I’m over here hoping to get another treatment myself.” She snorted, “Honestly? My head
still
thinks it’s a load of crap, but my body… wants to keep feeling better.”

A little while later, they had Gates lying on one side of the trailer with Tarc holding a cup containing a splash of moonshine over her pelvis. Amelia Prichard lay on the other side of the trailer with Daussie leaning over her and holding a cup against her abdominal wall right over the liver. The gallstones were small and it was only a few inches from her gallbladder to the cup, so Daussie could move one or two per second. Unfortunately, there were a lot of them.

When Daussie was done, they pulled the cup away from Amelia’s side. Tarc and the four women stared into the cup. It held a slushy pile of dark green gallstones, ranging in size from pebbles to sand.

Amelia said, “Well, I still wonder whether you might have used one of those tricks I’ve seen magicians do with their cups at the fair. But if it wasn’t, I guess I’m pretty glad you pulled all those rocks out of me.”

“Unfortunately,” Eva said, “you’ll probably keep making more stones. So, you’ll probably have the same problem again someday.” Wistfully she said, “Maybe we’ll be back on another trip and can take out some more of them then. In the old days they took peoples gallbladders out to prevent recurrence, but we don’t know how to do that anymore.”

***

Tarc was getting ready to go to bed. It was earlier than his usual time, but he had to stand a watch again tonight. He’d taken off his boots and was about to crawl into the tent when he saw Lizeth walk up to the little single tent she slept in. He walked barefoot over to where she was taking off her own boots. “Lizeth?”

“Hmmm?” she said, glancing at him, but obviously still thinking about something else.

“I’ll go with you.”

She frowned, obviously puzzled, “Where?”

“On your scouting mission, the one you talked to my dad about.”

“Oh!” she said, obviously surprised. “No, no need. It’s probably better if I go by myself anyway.”

“Oh come on!” Tarc said, exasperated. “You need someone to watch your back!”

“Yeah, but someone experienced. Sorry Tarc, I like you and all, but you’re just a kid.”

“That’s just crazy. What are you, eighteen? That’s only a couple of years older than I am.”

Lizeth sighed, “Yeah, I’m eighteen, but I’ve grown up in the school of hard knocks. A
lot
of experience has been packed into
my
eighteen years. This is your first time away from Walterston isn’t it?”