Chapter twenty-six
The woman who answered the door was exhausted; she had been caring for her daughter since the incident. She was a widow; her husband, the girl's father, had been killed a few years earlier in a farming accident. It had been a happy marriage, and the result of that was five children of whom the girl was the oldest. This meant that in addition to caring for a traumatized fourteen year old girl, Leisha, who frequently woke up screaming and spent a good deal of her waking moments sobbing, she had four younger children to cook and care for and clean up after, in addition to her work as one of the candlemakers for the town. Her second child, another girl of about twelve, had been doing the best she could to help with her younger siblings – a ten year old boy, a seven year old boy, and the baby of the family, a four year old girl – but she was just a child herself, really, and it was too much for her. The eldest daughter, until this happened, had done most of the housework and childcare, and was clearly not up to the task at this point.
"Hello," said Whitestar. "My name is Whitestar, and this is my lifebonded, Taia. We are here with the Heralds, and we thought that while they sort out the legal issues of what happened to your daughter, I am a Healer, and can help her to Heal. With your permission, of course."
"Oh, by the gods, thank you," said the woman, named Meli. "I've done the best I can with her, but it's nearly impossible to do alone!"
"I will help your other daughter with the housework and the child-minding, if you permit, and you can get some rest," said Taia. "It looks like you need it, if you don't mind my saying."
"Well, you don't look like you know a lot about child-rearing or housework, but I'd be grateful nonetheless!" laughed Meli.
"I assure you, I have done more of both than it appears!" Taia laughed.
"Well then, I believe I will do just that," said Meli. "I was wondering how I was going to keep my eyes open for even one more candlemark, let alone an entire day; I'll be in the hayloft, that way noise won't disturb me. Just send one of the boys to fetch me if I'm needed."
"I'm sure we'll be fine," said Whitestar. "Get some rest. Leisha will be doing better when you wake."
Meli walked out the door and headed to the hayloft to sleep; Whitestar went to the backroom, where Leisha was resting fitfully. Taia would feed Whitestar energy throughout the day, but wasn't sure she could actually handle seeing the poor girl; she knew well the look that would be in the child's eyes, and did not want to be confronted with that mirror.
"So," she began, addressing a frazzled looking girl. "You're Nesha?"
The girl nodded. "Yes," she said. "This is Par, that's Tien, and the little one is Kili. What would you like from us?"
"Well," said Taia. "First, I'm going to whip up some breakfast for you while you get washed up. The little ones, we are going to play a game where whoever gets their toys put away and their hands and faces washed first gets an extra treat! But no skimping – if you aren't clean, you get to do it again! Go!"
Nesha grinned and went to change her clothes and clean up. She hadn't had a chance to so much as brush her hair in several days; she wanted a bath, and she was going to take one. A quick one, to be sure, but a bath nonetheless. Par and Tien ran around the small house picking up their toys and helping Kili with hers – Taia was happy to see that they were a wonderful bunch of kids, caring more about each other than they did about a treat – and Taia swept the floor up quickly before washing her hands and rolling out some pastry dough. It was true that Whitestar was the better cook, but that didn't mean Taia couldn't whip up a fruit pie now and then. She found some berries and wrapped them in the pastry, made about ten of them and put them on the stove to bake while she whipped some cream and made some kava for the children to drink; then she cleaned up the kitchen while waiting for them to come back. Apparently, Nesha had decided that they all needed baths as well, so when she finished with her own she dunked her siblings. All four of them came running back to the kitchen at about the same time, just as Taia finished cleaning the kitchen and the fruit pies were done; she handed them each a cup of kava and set the pies on the table to cool.
"Good job!" she said. "And all finished at the same time, so all of you get extra cream!"
The children smiled. Taia passed around little bowls of berries that were left over from making the pies and told the children stories about childhood on the Plains while they waited for the pies to cool. When they were cool enough to eat, Taia spooned cream onto each pie and passed them out. She kept them enraptured in her stories until they finished eating, washed all of their hands and faces and then sent them outside to play. She quickly washed the dishes from breakfast and then headed outside herself to watch them play. They were playing some version of a game involving a ball, a stick and running around in a circle before the opposing side could 'tag' the runner 'out' while she cleaned a couple of pheasants Jyus had brought her for lunch. The children were busy wearing themselves out, which was exactly her goal; she wanted them so tired by the time their mother woke that they wouldn't be able to create much work for her to do. She rather enjoyed herself, much to her surprise; after spending so much of her life doing anything but domestic work, she was enjoying the opportunity to sit back and just enjoy younglings at play.
Meanwhile, Whitestar was in with Leisha. When Whitestar had first entered the room, the poor girl was sleeping, but fitfully; it was obvious that she was having nightmares of her experience. Whitestar extended her Healing Gift and sent the girl into an actual sleep, one that would be dreamless and allow her to truly rest; there hadn't been much of that. When the girl was sleeping peacefully, she began her work. She first made sure the girl was properly shielded, so that her stray emotions couldn't get in the way of anyone else's work; then she began the MindHealing. She used her own Gifts to enter the girl's mind, careful to leave anything unrelated to to the trauma safely private. She softened the 'edges' of the girl's pain and helped her mind to process it properly, so that the girl could heal and reclaim her life. It was difficult, painstaking, and painful work; the girl herself whimpered in her sleep a few times, and Whitestar found herself crying more than once.
In order to perform MindHealing, Whitestar needed to help the girl relive her experience and process it; much like any other kind of Healing it didn't skip anything that wouldn't happen on its own, it merely sped up the process through the use of Whitestar's – and Taia's – own energy. She was able to direct the girl's thoughts towards progress, rather than cycling through the same harmful thoughts repeatedly as was so common in rape cases, but that was as much as she could do. She had to see for herself, and feel for herself, everything that the girl went through in order to Heal her of her trauma; this would have been painful enough, without the memories of having done exactly the same thing for Taia so many years ago.
Finally, she had made enough progress that the girl slept peacefully without intervention. There was still more work to be done, but both Whitestar and Taia were drained; they needed to keep enough energy to keep the girl's Gift shielded, so the rest would have to wait. Whitestar rose from her seat next to the bed and nearly moaned out loud; she had lost track of time entirely, and had been sitting in the same position for several candlemarks. Taia was serving lunch, at this point; melted cheese sandwiches with vegetable soup. The pheasants were spitted and were roasting over hot coals of a fire; that would be for dinner, likely when both Meli and Leisha would wake.
"Heyla," said Taia. "Fancy seeing you here, come have some lunch. Maybe you'll want to check the pheasant after you eat, I tried to spice it how you like but you'll probably want to make some adjustments!"
"Sure, and thank you," said Whitestar. "I'm starved. Leisha is sleeping comfortably now, and won't have to be spelled into it anymore. She will probably still have some nightmares, but they will be fewer; and when she wakes, she's going to be able to get up and move about. I gather she hasn't been able to since it happened."
"Leisha hurt bad," said Kili. "Leisha cry all the time, not want to play."
"I know, sweetling," said Whitestar. "But she's going to be better soon."
"Well, she should have known better than to go down by the river on her own," said Par.
"Now just you wait a second," said Taia. "Nothing that happened to your sister is her fault. Nothing. There is nothing she could have done that would make her deserve what happened to her."
"But mama told her not to!" Par said. "Mama told her, there were strange people down there, take Nesha with! And she went anyway!"
"And if she had taken Nesha, what then?" said Taia. "You would likely have had both your sisters get hurt. She went to the river to what, get water, right? For you. And your sisters, and your brother, and your mother. Is what happened to your sister your fault, for needing water? Or your mother's? No. The only people responsible for what happened to her are the people that did it. Period."
"But mama said – " Par continued.
"Mama said the same thing Taia is telling you now, Par," said Nesha. "You're just repeating what you've heard the villagers say, and they're ignorant. They could have helped us, after Papa died, to manage the farm and the chores, but they didn't. If we're going to blame Leisha, blame them, too. If they'd helped, maybe one of them would have been fetching water, and maybe they would have been hurt. It doesn't end, and either way, no one deserves that."
"You've been feeling everything she felt for the last few days, right?" asked Taia.
"I don't know, all I know is since Leisha got hurt I've been really angry, and really sad," said Par.
"And 'shamed. Like I did something I shouldn't have, but I've been good, honest!" said Tien.
"It hurt," said Kili. "But I don't have an owie."
"Was that what was happening?" asked Nesha. "Were we feeling what she felt? That was horrible. But how was that possible, and why did it stop?"
"Good questions," said Taia. "And we'll answer them. But first, Par, those things that you felt, no matter what Leisha may have done – did she deserve that?"
Par paled, and shook his head vigorously. "No," he said quietly. "No, never."
"Good," said Taia. "Now. You have heard of Heralds having special powers, right?"
"Like being able to talk with their minds!" yelled Tien.
"Or move things," said Par.
"Is Leisha going to be a Herald?" asked Nesha.
"Maybe," said Whitestar. "We don't know, yet. But people other than Heralds have those powers – they're called Gifts. And the one Leisha has makes her able to feel what other people feel. Unfortunately, she also has the kind that lets her make other people feel what she feels."
"But why did she do that to us?" asked Nesha. "Why would she want us to feel those things, we didn't do anything wrong!"
"She didn't do it on purpose," said Whitestar. "She doesn't even know she has the Gift. It was likely awakened by the trauma of what happened to her; she doesn't know she has it, and she hasn't learned to control it yet."
"She will learn, though; we will start teaching her as soon as she's awake," said Taia.
"You have those Gifts, too?" asked Tien.
"Yes," said Taia. "And a few others. Which is why you aren't feeling her feelings anymore; we put a wall around her, called a shield, so that she can't make other people feel those feelings anymore."
"Can you make one so she doesn't have to feel them, either?" asked Nesha.
"Unfortunately, no," said Whitestar. "But one of my other Gifts is Healing, and part of that is MindHealing; I spent the morning helping her feel better."
"Good," said Par. "I'm sorry I said it was her fault. I was wrong, and no one deserves to hurt like that. Least of all Leisha."
"I know you didn't mean it," said Taia. "You were just angry that it happened at all, and it's easier to blame the person in front of you than the nameless, faceless animals that hurt her. But it's always a good thing to remember, think before you blame anyone for anything. You might be looking at the wrong person."
Par nodded, very seriously. Taia had a feeling this was a lesson he wouldn't soon forget. "Alright, you rascals, lunch is over, everyone wash your hands and outside; we're going to have horseback riding lessons!"
"Yay!" Kili cheered. Nesha tried to look less excited and more grown up than her little sister, but every girl loves horses, and she was excited too; Par and Tien were grinning, too. Whitestar laughed and went to check the pheasants while Taia cleaned up in the kitchen; just as Taia expected, she added spices and adjusted their position on the spit. Then both women grabbed a child and hauled them up on the horses' backs in front of them. They took turns with each kid in turn, walking, trotting, canter and even a gallop across a field; the children squealed with delight at that, even Nesha. Taia knew they would; she was a middle-aged adult herself, and still loved nothing more than an all-out gallop across a field. When they returned, she taught the children how to brush out the horses and let them help feed them, and by then Leisha was awake. Whitestar went to help the girl get something to eat, get bathed and dressed; Taia took a deep breath. The challenge for her had only just begun.