Mohan was silent for a moment. “It’s complicated,” he said at last. “Perhaps when you’re older.”
Raffa put his hands under the table so he could clench his fists out of Mohan’s sight. When would his father stop treating him like a baby? He swallowed his anger. “How do you know if something is a yearning?” he asked.
“To fly like a bird? To become wealthy in an instant? Surely it’s clear that no concoction could have such powers!” Mohan’s brow tightened with displeasure.
“Yes, of course,” Raffa said hastily. “But what about things like—” He searched his mind for a good example. “Like sleeping infusions?”
“What about them?”
Raffa spoke slowly in an effort to sound grown-up and thoughtful. “People who don’t sleep well—their lives are miserable because they’re always tired, right? And then someone discovers combinations to help people sleep better. But before that, if someone had said, ‘I wish I could sleep well just one night in my life,’ would that have been a yearning?”
Mohan looked surprised. Salima clapped her hands. “Well done, Raffa!” she said. “Your question is a good one. Someday, your father and I would like to study ailments that cannot yet be cured. The yearnings for such cures are deep and desperate. But if a desire has nothing to do with health, then it is a foolish yearning.”
Raffa nodded once, then reversed himself and shook his head. “Couldn’t something seem foolish at first, but then, after we experiment and try things and learn more, it turns out not to be foolish after all?”
“That is precisely the point!” Mohan said. “These things take much time and thought. You cannot rush in and experiment like a reckless wobbler. No good comes of it!” He glared pointedly at Raffa’s cheeks.
Raffa lowered his head. Why couldn’t Da have told him about the yearnings cabinet long before this? He had never known that his parents were even vaguely interested in experimentation: His father’s sole pursuit had always been the treatment of patients, with the usual combinations. Why wasn’t he excited about discovering what apothecary could do to help people even more?
Raffa seethed. As long as he was under Mohan’s watchful eye, he would never be able to make those kinds of discoveries, either.
Mohan and Salima left for the market. Raffa went out to the dooryard. It was a clear autumn day, both breezy and sunny. A perfect day for an outing, he thought with a sigh.
Raffa sat on a bench under the eaves and began to carve wooden stoppers for his jars, smaller versions of those kept in the cellar. He wanted his own stock of botanica, separate from that of his parents.
Cork dust and crumbs fell at his feet. As he was finishing the last of the stoppers, he heard a noise overhead. It sounded like a kitten mewling. Raffa looked up, puzzled, just in time to see a small dark blob fall out of the sky straight toward him.
He ducked and covered his head with his hands. Something hit his elbow, and he flung out his arm to cast it away. A moment later he heard a sickening thud when whatever it was hit the partly opened wooden shutter and dropped into the cabin.
Raffa leapt to his feet and peered into the window. But it was too dark; he saw nothing but shadows on the floor. The mewling had stopped.
He hurried to the door and stepped inside. There it was, on the floor beneath the window, a dark heap no bigger than the palm of his hand.
Raffa approached slowly. He saw a little movement and heard a single mewl, much weaker and fainter this time.
“A bat,” he whispered.
About the size of a field mouse with wings, the little bat was badly injured. Its wings were torn in several places, the left one barely more than ribbons and tatters. Raffa guessed that it had been attacked by a bird of prey. His guess proved correct when he discovered an owl feather clutched in one of the bat’s tiny talons.
The right wing had at least two broken bones in it—which could have happened, Raffa realized, when he flung the bat away. He immediately felt guilty about having added to the creature’s suffering. The poor thing had to be in terrible pain.
Could he treat the bat for its injuries? On his own? He had been preparing combinations as well as making poultices and infusions for years now, but always with one of his parents—usually Mohan—at his side, watching and commenting on what seemed like his every move. Most of what Raffa was allowed to do was simple and repetitive, standard combinations for common ailments that were bothersome but hardly life-threatening.
The bat seemed almost like a gift: a chance to work on serious injuries by himself, and to prove that he wasn’t a garbler! But what if he failed? Or made things worse?
The bat let out another sound—a weak but agonized squeal. The pitiful sound decided things for Raffa: He might fail, but he had to try.
Select the right botanica. Prepare the paste. Apply it to the bat’s injuries. Bind every one of the many rips and tears. Splint the tiny wing bones.
For splints, Raffa used matchsticks, the smallest and straightest pieces of wood he could find. Then he carefully moved the bat, which he now knew was a male, into a box lined with milkweed fluff. Finally he draped the box with one of his mother’s woolen shawls.
Raffa lost all track of time. He only realized that he had spent most of the afternoon treating the bat when his neck and shoulders cramped up from being bent over the tiny creature for so long.
As he straightened and rolled his shoulders, he heard hoofbeats, followed moments later by his mother’s voice.
“Raffa? We’re back!”
Mohan and Salima came in carrying sacks heavy with market goods. “Oh, good,” Salima said. “That strange boy with the blue-veined cheeks is gone, and our Raffa is back again. We missed you, darling!” She ruffled his hair, and Raffa knew that she, at least, had forgiven him.
In his preoccupation with the bat, Raffa had forgotten all about his cheeks. He realized how lucky he had been that the effects of the poultice were so short-lived, and he hoped that Garith’s jaw was back to normal as well.
“What’s this?” Mohan asked, nodding at the box.
“A bat,” Raffa said. “It’s wounded. Badly.”
“In that case, thank goodness you used my best shawl,” Salima said drily.
Mohan strode across the room. “You’ve already treated it? By yourself?” He lifted the shawl and inspected the bat.
I don’t see anyone else here, do you? Raffa wanted to say. He drew in a breath to stop those words and chose others instead. “I used the combination for slashes,” he said. “But I added some arnicullus.”
“Why arnicullus?” Mohan’s face was expressionless.
“Because, um—” Raffa searched for a way to answer without telling the whole truth: that he had seen the wrong colors in his mind. His intuition had told him that the poultice needed something more.
“I’m pretty sure it was attacked by an owl,” he said. “That’s not the same as being slashed by a blade. So I—I thought to add another healing botanical.”
He saw his parents exchange glances.
“I don’t suppose you knew,” Mohan said slowly, “that arnicullus is combined with burdock and zinjal to treat a rare sickness transmitted by birds?”
Raffa shook his head.
“Hmph,” Mohan said. “Well. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Raffa took the bat’s box to a warm corner near the stove. As he began to help put away the market goods, he kept his excitement to himself. His first real experiment! Well, his second, really, if he counted the garble with the jar from the cabinet.
Would it be a success? Da was right about one thing, anyway: He’d have to wait and see.
CHAPTER THREE
THE next morning, Raffa opened his eyes in the earliest light of daybirth. He crept to the end of the pallet and peered into the box.
It was too dark to see clearly. He heard no sound, nor did he detect any movement, and yet . . . the bat was still alive. He didn’t know how he knew—just a feeling that the stillness in the box was
not the stillness of death.
Carefully he carried the box to the window ledge and opened the shutters. A swash of sunlight fell over the little mound in the box, and Raffa saw movement under the corner of the linen rag that his mother had given him after rescuing her shawl.
He lifted the rag and saw that the bat was indeed still breathing. The matchstick splints had held during the night, and Raffa felt confident that the wee bones would knit and mend.
But a cautious peek under one of the bindings revealed the other wing to be a fearsome sight, the webbing a ragged mess. If the bat lived, its wing would be useless. What good would survival be to a bat that couldn’t fly?
Raffa listened to the bat’s labored breathing a few moments longer. Then he went out to the garden to find his father. Mohan always rose before dawn to begin his work; some plants were best harvested while still pearled with night-dew.
He found his father in the califer bed, harvesting the seedpods used to make califerium, one of the most useful of botanica. Depending on what it was combined with, califerium could soothe tremors, calm anxiety, or induce sleep, but by far its most important property was its ability to ease pain.
In the wrong hands, it could also be extremely dangerous. On its own, a dose of pure essence of califerium could be fatal. It required other botanicals to balance its deadly effects.
Raffa had a particular pride concerning califerium. Local lore had it that the califer plant was unknown in the region until the Santana family—his own ancestors—brought seeds of the plant with them from the far southwest, when they migrated to Obsidia more than two hundred years before he was born.
“Da?” Raffa called out as he approached.
Mohan’s hands did not stop moving, but he nodded by way of greeting. “Did the little thing make it through?”
So Mohan had not checked on the bat himself. Raffa was glad that his father wasn’t interfering, but to his surprise he also felt a shudder of doubt. The bat was so badly hurt, it would need the best of care to survive, and didn’t that mean someone older, wiser, more experienced than himself?
He nodded. “But his wing still looks really terrible, Da,” he said. “The paste I made was good, I think, but he needs something even better.”
“It was very badly injured,” Mohan said gruffly. “You know well that there are times when our art, even at its best, is not enough.”
Raffa put one hand in the pocket of his tunic, as if he were keeping his courage there. “Da,” he said, “I want to go to the Forest. To see if I can find something that might help.”
Mohan shook his head. “Your mother went only three days ago. She would not go again so soon. And I cannot spare the time.”
Raffa had expected this response; he had never been allowed to go to the Forest of Wonders by himself. Salima went there to gather wild plants at least twice monthly. Uncle Ansel was among the few who ventured into its deepest heart, where there were no paths, little light, and much that was unknown. But Mohan hardly ever visited the Forest, preferring to work with garden botanicals.
It wasn’t that the Forest was a perilous place so much as it was utterly unpredictable. The main danger was losing one’s way: Raffa had heard of people who had entered the Forest and never been seen again. New and mysterious plants appeared at capricious intervals; a familiar path might look completely different from week to week. Large beasts of prey were rare, but there had been sightings of bear and wolf. Those who would visit had to observe keenly, step lightly, and keep a steady compass in their heads. And Raffa knew that his father did not believe him capable of all that.
He tightened the fist inside his pocket. “I was wondering,” he said, “if I might go on my own.”
Mohan had begun shaking his head even before Raffa finished his sentence. “How will you find your way? You might wander into the interior and lose yourself there. No, you will have to wait until your mother’s next trip.”
“But, Da, it will be too late!” Raffa rushed on before his father could say anything more. “He’s fighting so hard to live, and—and if there’s something in the Forest that might help, I want to try to find it. And I’ll be really careful and stay on the paths and only go to the places I know, and I’ll be home way before it gets dark.”
“Home from where?”
Salima had come out of the henhouse and was walking toward them. Raffa knew that his only chance was to get her on his side.
“I want to go to the Forest, Mam. To try to find something that might help the bat.”
“And what does your father have to say about it?”
For answer, Raffa stared at the ground.
“We could do it by stages,” Salima suggested. “The next time I go, Raffa, you could take the lead and I’ll follow. Perhaps even out of earshot. What would you say to that?”
Raffa clenched his jaw to make sure that he spoke his next words carefully. “It’s a good idea, Mam. But I have to go today. I know it’s only a bat, but you’ve seen how sick he is and—and I’m the one who’s been treating him, so he’s my responsibility. If I can’t find something to help him soon . . .”
They stood in a triangle of awkward silence. As the silence lengthened, Raffa’s despair grew to match it.
At last Mohan plucked one final pod and threw it into the barrow. “There is a vine,” he said.
Raffa frowned, a moment of confusion followed by bitter disappointment at the change of subject. Yet more evidence of how his father saw him—as a child whose requests didn’t matter.
Mohan went on, “It has great powers of healing. Years ago, my grandmother found it, and used it to save a badly burned child. It seemed to have potent abilities to heal injured flesh. She had only a small supply, and she never found the vine again. Your mother and I look for it every time we go to the Forest, but we’ve never been able to find it, either. We think it may be a plant that leafs out only rarely.”
Why was Da telling him this?
“You have done fine work with the bat, Raffa,” Mohan said quietly. “And you have convinced me that your request is made in the spirit of a true apothecary.”
“Agreed,” Salima said, with a nod and a smile.
Raffa felt a pinprick of hope. Was it possible—could they be considering—
“You may go to the Forest to search for the vine on one condition,” Mohan said, raising a cautionary hand. “You cannot go alone. Garith must go with you.”
“Oh, lovely idea,” Salima said. “They may as well sail the Vast together while they’re at it. What are you thinking—that at least they’ll have each other’s company while they lose their way?”
“Garith is a year older,” Mohan pointed out.
“Yes, but not a year wiser,” Salima responded.
Raffa would have smiled if he weren’t so anxious to hear her decision.
“But I think you may be right,” Salima said, after a pause. “Between the two of them, they ought to be able to string together enough sensible moments to get there and back in one piece.”
Raffa’s mouth fell open. He felt like whooping and capering right there in the califerium patch. Going with Garith was the perfect compromise.
“Where did your grandmother find it?” he asked eagerly.
“Perhaps a half morning in,” Mohan said, lifting his chin toward the north, where the Forest lay. “The stem and leaves are scarlet, axils pale green. Small fleshy leaves that grow in profusion close to the stem, and I seem to recall that they were opposing, not alternating.”
“If we find it, we’ll bring back as much as we can carry,” Raffa said.
Mohan nodded. “Be home well before nightfall. Banish all rashness. And do not leave the paths.” A pause. “You have the mucking to do, but you may begin tomorrow.”
Raffa had already turned to go. “Mam, Da, thank you!” he called over his shoulder as he raced back to the cabin, his feet barely touching the ground.
With a picnic lunch in his rucksack, Raffa hurried to his cousin’s cabin on t
he other side of the pother settlement. Both he and Garith knew the path between their homes so well that they could walk it sure-footed even on moonless nights. The boys had apothecary lessons with Mohan together, and it was rare for them to spend longer than a day or two without each other’s company.
Garith, whose jawline was back to normal, readily agreed to the outing. He had never been to the Forest on his own, either, but not for the same reason as Raffa. Uncle Ansel would have allowed him to go by himself anytime, but Garith was too social a creature to want to make such a trip alone.
The boys started off on the lane that cut through the heart of the pother settlement. To Raffa’s surprise, there was a sizeable gathering in the square, even though it wasn’t a market day.
On the steps of the meetinghouse, which served as an informal outdoor stage, two men were waiting for the crowd to assemble. By their fine clothes, Raffa could tell that they were city dwellers, probably from Gilden, the capital, which was a good half day away by wagon and ferry.
“What are they about?” Raffa asked Garith, who shrugged.
“Dunno. Maybe we should go back and tell my da.”
But there was no need, for they turned to see Ansel on the path behind them, already on his way to join the crowd. He waved at them, then stopped to speak to someone in the square.
“Should we stay and find out what’s going on?” Garith asked.
Raffa considered for a moment, then shook his head. “I promised Da I’d be home well before dark, and it might take us a long time to find the vine.”
As they continued through the settlement, they saw people they knew, some of them apothecaries or their children, others who were patients. To Raffa’s great annoyance, Mannum Zimmer, the cobbler, greeted him by chucking him under the chin, then held up his hand to match palms with Garith.
“Off adventuring, boys?” he said.
“Yes,” Raffa replied as he took a step away from Garith, hoping to make the difference in their height less noticeable. “To the Forest.”
Mannum Zimmer made an expression of mock horror. “Visit the Forest, come out the sorest,” he said, repeating a silly saying used by city folk.
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