Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

“I promise you that it’s all your own fault,” she said severely. “You are more than old enough to know better than to play a fool’s trick like that, and Shandi wouldn’t thank you for catching pneumonia and dying! Only idiots in ballads get sick and pine gracefully and painlessly away for love, Piel. I can guarantee that pneumonia takes longer and hurts a lot.”

“Bud - somedimes I thig id wouldn’ be a bad thig - ” he said forlornly, his voice trailing off, as she turned away and got some of her stronger medicines.

“Oh, you don’t, do you?” She was not going to let him wallow in self-indulgent misery, not in her workshop. “And just how would your parents feel about that? How would Shandi, may I ask? Just how do you think I’d explain that to her, that I let you die of a stupid chill? Idiot! It isn’t as if she left you for another suitor! And it isn’t as if she flew off to the moon!”

“Bud she mid as well be on da moon!” he cried plaintively. “Why wadn id you thad wad Chosen instead ob her? Why couldn id hab been you? Nobody’s in lob wid you!”

“I will have none of that nonsense here!” she told him briskly, turning around with a particularly nasty-tasting potion in her hand. She was in no mood for any of this, and he had, by the Havens, earned a good scold. “First off, if I had been Chosen, who would be taking care of you this minute? Second, it’s none of your business, and nobody asked you who should and should not be Chosen; you leave that to the Companions. Third, if you’re so desperately in love with Shandi, you’d do far better by spending your time thinking of a way to make a good livelihood in Haven where she is, than sitting around on hills moping! Showing up in Haven in a good suit of clothing with the money in your pocket to take her to a fine inn for supper would charm her and finally impress my father. Dying stupidly would not, and moon-calfing about on hills in the rain when other folk are working doesnotl”

Not that I expect him to exert himself that much, she thought scornfully, for she shared her father’s opinion of Piel. The fellow was in love with the idea of being in love, and with Bardic notions of romance, not really in love with Shandi. It’s easy to lie around on hills and weep. And it impresses other fools with how deep your feelings are. One month from now, he ‘ll be desperately in love with one of Shandi’s friends, or one of Lord Breon’s maids at the keep.

“Here,” she said abruptly, thrusting the mug at him. “Drink this. All of it. Now.”

He looked from the mug to her face, saw no hope of reprieve, and gagged it down. It was truly awful, and she’d made no effort to sweeten it.

“Now go home, get into bed, and sleep,” she ordered. “When your mother gives you soup and tea, don’t play with them, drink them - I know she’s already got the medicine she needs for you, she came to get it last night.”

Piel gave a long-suffering sigh, and draped himself with his rain cape as if it were his shroud. She saw him to the door, and nobly refrained from slamming it behind him.

The rest of the day was spent in dosing similar illnesses - and in listening to the complaints of the sufferers. Most of the complaints were actually more fretful and pathetic than anything else; neighbor Tansy pretty well summed them up when she came for cough syrup.

“I wish young Darian would get back here and set himself up like he’s supposed to,” she grumbled. “Even if he couldn’t have sent this storm elsewhere, he’d at least have been able to warn us about it, and he’d be able to tell us how long it’s likely to last!”

When darkness fell, she finally made a dinner for herself - a good one, not just the soup but a nice slice of fried ham and some scrambled eggs and toast. The only thing she’d had all day was those seedcakes and a couple of bites of soup in between patients, and she was so hungry she was close to being nauseated.

She didn’t let her irritation with Piel spoil her meal either, though she’d been damned annoyed with his self-indulgent bleating. The sheep didn’t make that much of a complaint, she told herself, as she took careful sips of the hot soup. And as for that business of “why weren’t you Chosen, nobody is in love with you - ” Ooh, I could have strangled him if I weren’t so tolerant, and he weren’t a patient!

The rain still hadn’t let up, though it had lessened a bit. A storm this big will probably get Haven, too. I wonder how Shandi is doing? It was too soon for a letter, but Keisha couldn’t help wishing one would come.

I wish I had someone else I could talk to. She sighed and took her dishes to the sink to wash. If I’d been Chosen, I’d have my Companion -

Fantasy, foolishness. There was never a chance that she’ d have been Chosen; any hesitation on the part of the Companion had been her imagination. Why would any

Companion Choose me ? she thought sourly. Not only is nobody in love with me, nobody even likes me. There wasn’t a chance that Companion would have Chosen me; Mum and Da named me right. “Keisha,” that’s me, the tree all over thorns and no fruit worth anybody’s effort. If people didn’t need me so badly, they’d never come near me.

Uncomfortable thoughts, uncomfortable feelings, and she knew if she didn’t get her mind off them she’d sink into a well of self-pity as deep as Piel’s.

So she picked up one of her Healing texts and put her mind into study, until she was so tired and sore of eye that she practically crawled up the ladder to her bed.

After four days, the rain finally stopped; the sun put in a brilliant appearance in cloudless skies, and a dry, warm breeze made colds - or at least, complaints of colds - disappear. It never failed to amaze and amuse Keisha that a couple of sunny, warm days in spring or fall could make everyone forget about feeling ill. Unless, of course, they were very ill indeed.

Piel did not put in a second appearance, nor was he anywhere in the village when Keisha was about, which either meant he had taken Keisha’s lecture to heart and was actively seeking a way to make his living in the greater world (not likely) or that he so feared another tongue-lashing that he wasn’t going to come anywhere near her (far more likely). The sheep got over their illness, and there were many more to herd out of the barn than went in, for many of the pregnant ewes took the opportunity to drop lambs. The folk from the Fellowship took such good care of the threshing barn that the Mayor declared they could make free use of it whenever they had another such emergency.

In short, everything was back to normal.

Everything but Keisha herself, that is.

Since the onset of the storm, she’d felt edgy most of the time. Whenever she treated a patient, she’d start to reflect the emotional state of that patient herself, and it wasn’t pleasant. The only reason she’d even known that she was being influenced in that way was because she’d been perfectly calm and contented on the third morning of the storm, and had her mood utterly reversed by the first patient to enter the door. Once someone left, she was fine, but while they were in the same area she had to keep a steady head and remind herself that she was not the one feeling rotten. It was worse if she had to touch the patient; that opened her up to all manner of things she didn’t understand and did not in the least like.

This was making things unexpectedly uncomfortable at home. Rain made the trip to and from the farm pure misery, made chores at the farm a burden, and kept all the boys in the house when they weren’t at the farm. Cooped up like that, for lack of any other amusement, they picked fights with each other. When the boys argued, she found herself getting angry for no reason at all; when her mother got upset, her eyes threatened to overflow. She discovered that beneath her father’s calm exterior, he often suffered from a tensely knotted, aching gut, by experiencing these things herself. That, at least, was useful; she took him aside and convinced him he needed her help unless he wanted to start spitting up blood one day. At least he stopped suffering and felt immensely calmer after following her prescriptions, even if she didn’t.