Sisters

by Laurence Dahners

  The woman nodded, looking as if she were unable to talk. She dropped to her knees on the other side of Marissa. Her head leaned against her sister’s as she slid her arms around for a long hug.

  Marissa’s eyes turned questioningly to her son’s, “How’d you find my sister?”

  “She’s the healer we went to find,” Hareh said slowly.

  Marissa blinked, not understanding at all.

  “Your sister…” he swallowed, obviously having difficulty talking, then huskily continued, “got married. Her last name’s Hyllis now. And, and… she’s just as amazing as the rumors said.”

  Marissa turned questioning eyes to her sister, finding Eva’s eyes filled with concern. She looked up at her husband, standing anxiously behind Hareh. She found herself wondrously happy to see her sister after all these years, yet so disappointed to learn that the person everyone thought was such an amazing healer was her little sister. Disappointed to learn that Eva’d turned herself into one more of the charlatans roaming the country, making a living out of pretending to heal people. Not wanting to embarrass her sister over her inability to heal a real disease like cancer, Marissa smiled at Eva and chose her words carefully, “Little Sis… It’s so good to see you again after all these years. I know you can’t possibly help someone riddled with cancer like me, but I’m… so glad to get to see you again before I’m gone.”

  As if she’d read the doubt in Marissa’s mind, Eva smiled and softly said, “You might be surprised Big Sis. But,” she cleared her throat and waved at the teenagers behind her, “let me introduce you to your niece and nephew.”

  The strapping young man was Tarc and the surprisingly attractive young lady was Daussie. To Marissa’s surprise, the young people didn’t seem at all put off by Marissa’s illness, greeting her warmly. In her recent experience, teenagers were often unable to conceal their distaste for her sunken cheeks, swollen abdomen, and sallow complexion. These two seemed to view her with interest. My gods, Marissa thought, Eva’s got them following her in her gruesome career. Apprentice vultures of the unwell. Nonetheless, she smiled and told them how glad she was to meet them. “And coming all the way from Walterston! I appreciate that as well.” Having said that, she realized that people in the business of bilking the sick probably had to move on to new locations with a certain frequency. Once they’d fooled too many people in one location, they’d have to move on so they could find a fresh crop of fools.

  Hareh interrupted Marissa’s train of thought. “We came from Clancy Vail, Mom. There was trouble in Walterston, so the Hyllises moved to Clancy Vail.”

  Marissa’s first thought was, Of course, they had to move, just the way she’d been thinking all charlatans would. Then she remembered that the government of Walterston had been overthrown, so, doubtless, there’d been other “troubles” than just their own angry patients. She began to say, “Sorry you had some difficulty down there in Walterst…” then she tracked back to the fact that Hareh’d said they came from Clancy Vail. She turned to stare into Hareh’s eyes, “You promised me you’d stay off the Clancy Vail road!”

  His eye’s flicked to Eva, “Um… we wanted to get here as fast as we could, in case…”

  Bitingly, Marissa said, “I’d a lot rather you got here after I was dead than you died on the way!” Then realizing that, after all, they’d made it, she sighed, “I’m sorry, I guess you came with some big caravan which is a good second best to avoiding the road completely. I’d rather you’d avoided that road no matter how big the caravan but…” she waved wearily, “what’s done’s done. All’s well that ends well.”

  Hareh was glancing at Eva as he said, “Um…” but Eva brightly interrupted, “I’ve heard things’ve gotten better on that road recently.” Her expression turned serious, “How long ago did you first notice a lump in your breast?”

  Marissa’s first reaction was that she couldn’t believe Eva was talking about her breast in front of her son and Eva’s own children, then she blinked and glanced down at her chest, wondering how Eva’d known that the cancer started in her breast. Then horror struck, She’s using her witchery! Witchery Marissa’d desperately hoped she herself would have a talent for when they were adolescents. Witchery she’d developed a revulsion for when it turned out she didn’t have such talents. Witchery that’d driven the sisters apart because of Marissa’s jealousy when her sister proved to have some talent. Marissa’s emotions were like surging waves, washing back and forth between dismay that her little sister might be using witchery to hoodwink people and a desperate hope that maybe… just maybe her sister could do something about Marissa’s cancer. Quietly, as if Hareh wouldn’t be able to hear it, she responded to Eva’s question, “A few years now. At first, it was just a lump, getting bigger and bigger. Then, recently, pains in my back, loss of appetite, weakness, this yellow skin…” Her voice broke for a moment, then she spoke as if reporting an embarrassing confidence, “Lately I’ve been getting confused.”

  Eva was still holding her tightly. Now she snuggled in even closer and whispered in Marissa’s ear, “Will you let us treat you?”

  With a bitter laugh, Marissa said, “Why not? You can hardly make me worse.” Then Eva’s words caught up with her, “What do you mean, ‘us’? Did you bring some more…” Marissa cut herself off before she could say “charlatans?” Instead, she said “healers?”

  Eva drew back and gave Marissa a lovingly reproachful look. “There really is a lot we can do. But I don’t need to convince you of that. As mom used to say, ‘the proof’s in the pudding.’ We should be able to make you better. If and when we do, that’ll be soon enough for you to believe your little sister might actually be a healer.”

  Suddenly weary, Marissa reached up and patted Eva’s cheek, “Sure you are Little Sis, sure you are.”

  Despite Marissa’s protests that it could wait, Eva insisted on getting started right away. She told Hareh and Eva’s son Tarc to help Marissa to her feet and move her into her bedroom. Eva and her daughter went outside with George. As they went out the door, Eva was asking where they could stable horses and mules.

  Marissa was uncomfortably—she was always uncomfortable—ensconced in her bed when Eva and her daughter returned bearing piles of cloth-wrapped bundles. As they bustled around moving and reorganizing everything else in Marissa’s bedroom to make room for their gear, Marissa looked up and saw George standing in the doorway.

  He cleared his throat. “I thought you were done with healers?”

  Marissa grinned wryly. “And I was quite emphatic about it, wasn’t I?” she asked.

  He nodded, then stepped close and bent down so he could speak privately, “Remember how miserable and weak all the other healers made you. This may be your sister, but that doesn’t mean you have to let her… feed you potions to make you puke or force you to breathe smoke till you gasp. I heard you tell her there’d be no harm in trying her cures…” he slowly shook his head. “But I’m not so sure about that.”

  Marissa patted his hand. “Thank you, George. I agree. None of those kinds of treatments.” Speaking louder, she said, “Eva, I don’t want to have any treatments that’ll make me miserable. No emetics, or purgatives, or vapors that make me cough up blood. Nothing painful.”

  Eva sat down next to her and gave her a serious look. “We won’t be giving you anything to make you vomit or move your bowels or affect your respiration…” she worked her chin back and forth a moment, “but some of the treatments will undoubtedly hurt.”

  Marissa grabbed the front of Eva’s blouse, pulling her ear down next to Marissa’s mouth. She whispered somewhat angrily, “Are you going to be beating this cancer with a stick or something?! I’ve had that, and it didn’t work!”

  “Um, no,” Eva said, then looking somewhat chagrined, she shrugged, “we’re going to take it out. It won’t hurt while—”

  “You’re going to butcher me?!” Marissa interrupted.

  “No,” Eva said, shaking her head, “No cutting. Daussie can—”
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  Marissa cut her off again, “Is this one of those things where you chant some mumbo-jumbo, then show me the guts of a chicken you’re going to claim’s my cancer? Because I’ve had that done too, and it didn’t make me better either. In fact, when I recognized the gizzard in my cancer and confronted that so-called healer—”

  Eva stopped her rant with a soft hand, stroking her forehead, “Marissa, it’s me. Your Little Sis. It’s Eva. Not someone who’d ever cheat you.” She nodded at her daughter. “Daussie has a talent that has to be seen to be believed—”

  “Witchery,” Marissa said with loathing.

  Eva nodded calmly, then spoke softly. “Call it that if you want. If it’s witchery, it’s good witchery. We’ve learned to use it to save people’s lives. We’d like to save yours.” She took a deep breath, let it out, then said, “can we show you what Daussie can do on something besides your body? Perhaps on a potato?”

  Somehow Marissa found that hilarious. After a good belly laugh, she wound down to a few giggles, then said, “Sure. Show me on a potato. I didn’t like chicken guts so let’s use a vegetable.” She looked at her husband, “Can you get ’em a potato?”

  George nodded and left the room. When he returned he pointedly handed it to Marissa, not to Eva, but Marissa meekly handed it on to her sister. In her turn, Eva handed the potato to her daughter.

  The girl took it uncomfortably, then asked, “What are you wanting me to do with it?”

  Eva said, “Oh, I guess it’d help if I told you, wouldn’t it? I’m hoping you’ll demonstrate how you could remove pieces of her tumor without cutting her open. If you’d just port an irregular chunk out of the middle of the potato…?”

  “Irregular?”

  “So they can be sure what you ported out came out of that potato.”

  “Okay,” the girl said, holding the potato up to her forehead.

  Marissa had been disturbed by Eva’s talk of removing “pieces of her.” Just the idea of it sounded nauseating. But when the girl pretended not to understand and then their patter devolved into something as transparent as the “irregular chunk” Marissa found herself softly snorting. Seeing the girl standing there holding the potato to her head had Marissa biting her lip against laughter. Despite this sickness, it would appear I can still be amused, she thought.

  After her niece’d been standing there, looking ridiculous, holding the potato against her head for most of a minute she slowly brought up her left hand so it was just beneath the right one that held the potato. Then, while Marissa’s eyes were focused on the girl’s oddly positioned hands, something white suddenly appeared in that left hand. The girl reached out her hands, the potato still in her right hand and a smaller, glistening-white replica of the kidney-bean-shaped potato in her left.

  Marissa stared at it, wondering how the girl had made the smaller, white, replica of the big potato appear in her hand. However, she reminded herself that she’d seen enough traveling caravan magicians to know there were tricks that could make things appear in what seemed to be impossible ways. The girl was holding them out to Marissa though, as if she wanted Marissa to take them. Feeling weird, Marissa did so, then bobbled the actual potato because it felt lighter than she’d expected. Lighter than it did when George handed it to me, she thought. Suspiciously, she asked, “What am I supposed to do with these?”

  Eva pulled out a knife, which looked like an everyday work knife, and held it out. “Split the potato longitudinally so you can see that its center fits correctly back into it.”

  “You split it.”

  Eva laughed a single “Hah.” Then said, “No, as suspicious as you are, you think I’d engaged in some kind of shenanigans.”

  “Both my hands are full.”

  “Set the center of the potato down in your lap and take the knife.”

  “It’ll get my dress dirty.”

  Eva sighed, “I’ll wash the damned dress. This is important! We’re trying to save your life.”

  Marissa set down the white object that looked and felt like the center of a potato and took the knife. She sliced the knife through the original potato longitudinally, grateful she was able to do it smoothly, without the recent trembling that had been interfering with everyday tasks. She held the knife out to Eva who took it, then she slid the two halves of the potato apart.

  Despite the fact she’d known through the entire endeavor that there was supposed to be a hole in the middle of the potato, she still felt shocked when she saw one. A defect suspiciously similar in size to the smaller white potato-shaped object laying in her lap. The wall of the half potato in her palm looked about eight millimeters (0.3 inches) thick and looked as if it were that same thickness everywhere around the longitudinal circumference of the potato. When she turned over the other half of the potato it looked the same.

  With hands that did tremble now, she set half the potato down in her lap and picked up the white center with her right hand. With half a potato and its supposed center, one in each hand, she ran her thumbs over the glistening meat of the potato. They felt the same. Then she turned the center in her right hand and fitted it perfectly into the defect in the center of the half potato in her left.

  Perfectly.

  She paused to think. That potato didn’t fall apart as if it’d already been cut. I’m the one who cut it into two halves. This piece that Daussie supposedly removed from the center fits perfectly. Marissa picked up the other half of the potato and it indeed fit perfectly on top of the half in her left hand. How’d the girl do this?! she wondered.

  Marissa looked questioningly up at her sister.

  Eva said, “So, that’s how we’d remove the big pieces of your tumor. No cutting with a knife, but… it’d be something like cutting, it’s just that it’d be done with Daussie’s talent. Or her witchery if you want to call it that. Whatever it is, it’d get big chunks of the cancer out of you without cutting into you from the outside and risking an infection.”

  “That still sounds like it’d hurt.”

  Eva nodded slowly. “I can give you some poppy paste for the pain.”

  “What if you give me too much poppy and that kills me?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Eva said somberly. “To try to keep that from happening, we’d need to give you small doses to begin with. There’ll be more pain until we figure out the right dose. Not too much poppy, yet enough to help with the pain. Even after we adjust we won’t be able to stop all the pain.”

  Marissa waved dismissively, “I’m already hurting. A little more pain’s not going to be the end of the world. But, if you’re not taking out the entire cancer, it’s just going to grow back, right? I’ve always heard that cancers grow back… or, is that just the excuse charlatans make when they fail?”

  Eva nodded, “Probably some of both. The important thing is that they do come back unless they’re completely removed. That’s where Tarc comes in. He can heat the remaining areas of tumor. He won’t cook them, he’ll just heat them hot enough that the tissue dies.”

  “He can… heat things with his talent?”

  Eva turned to her son, “Can you heat her finger?”

  Despite what’d been done with the potato, Marissa started to roll her eyes in disbelief.

  The eye-roll stopped when the tip of her left index finger suddenly felt hot. Hot enough she plunged it into her mouth—a long-standing reaction to accidentally touching hot things on the stove. They really do have some uncanny powers, she thought.

  After she’d paused for a moment to glare at her apparently unrepentant nephew, Marissa turned back to Eva, “What if he misses some tumor?”

  “Then he’ll heat those when they get big enough he can find them. He almost always misses some. A few cells that’ve broken away from the main cancer and migrated to other locations inside your body. The ancients called such pieces of a cancer, ones that’d traveled to other parts of the body, ‘metastases.’” Eva gave her a serious look, “You have them in your spine and your liver. They’re causin
g your back pain and turning you yellow.” Eva touched Marissa’s arm, “You’ve got some small ones in your brain too. They’re probably causing your confusion.” Eva took a breath. “Tarc can find the cancers because they’re slightly different from the surrounding tissue, usually a bit warmer with a little different consistency. When these metastases have recently broken away from the main cancer they’re so small he can’t find them. He has to wait until they get bigger. Unfortunately, by the time they get that big, newer metastases might’ve broken away from the enlarged one he’s just found. Therefore, he needs to keep checking you for new cancers for a long time. Until we’re sure you don’t have any more of them hiding away somewhere. You’ll either have to come back to Clancy Vail with us, or he’ll have to stay here for a while, giving you more treatments. After that that he’d have to come back and check on you. He’ll just keep heating the new metastases when they get big enough that he can find them. He’ll do it till they stop happening.”

  Marissa sat looking at the sister she’d loved so much. The same one she’d become jealous of and driven away. The one she’d missed so much over the years. Can Eva also be the sister who saves my life? she wondered. She refocused. Unless she cures me, I’m going to die soon. It’d be ridiculous to refuse treatment because I’m afraid she might make me worse. She smiled at Eva, “Thank you for coming all this way to try to help me. It truly makes me feel loved. When do you want to get started?”

  “Now,” Eva said, smiling as she held out a spoon.

  Marissa let Eva slide the spoon into her mouth. Closing her lips over it, she pulled off a gritty, tasty paste that seemed to melt in her mouth. That’s good! She thought, surprised since all the medicines other healers had given her had tasted terrible. I wonder how long it’ll take this stuff to take effect…?

  Eva leaned closer.

  “Wait…!” Marissa said in consternation, suddenly certain Eva actually meant to start that very moment. Then waves of peace washed over her…

  Marissa found herself waking up. There was an aching pain in her right breast, a pain that had a ‘distance’ Marissa’d learned to associate with extracts of poppy and marijuana. Despite the distance, it still hurt. Instinctively, she reached a hand up to rub at the painful area. It’s smaller! she thought, realizing after a moment that it was the large, hard, painful lump in her breast that was gone. The breast that remained felt similar in size to her left breast.