Chapter 3
It wasn't long before Madam Sundew arrived. She was a tall, slender woman with an hourglass figure, a flowing blue sleeveless dress that came down to her ankles, bare feet, and white flowers braided into the red hair that hung down her back.
"Alright, Sprig, what did you do to yourself this time?" she asked automatically, knowing how clumsy her frequent patient could be.
"Oh, I'm just fine, Madam Sundew. It's her you should be worried about," Sprig said, standing up and making Anne's presence known. Madam Sundew gasped.
"Oh my! Who is this?" she asked.
"This is Anne. I found her caught in one of my mantis traps. She said her leg got hurt in a shipwreck, and I think the swamp water infected it. She's burning up!" Sprig explained. Madam Sundew unwrapped Anne's makeshift bandage to find that her injury was oozing with pus, confirming Sprig's suspicions. She then summoned her daughter/apprentice/eventual successor.
"Ivy, sweetie, fetch me some sleep syrup to prevent any discomfort, marshwort to clean out the infection, and my special tincture to bring down her fever, would you?"
While Ivy ran off to retrieve the requested items, Sprig said, "If you have a handle on things here, I'm gonna go get the fresh mantis carcass I left behind to bring her here. I'll be back soon." With Madam Sundew's assurance that Anne was in good hands, Sprig set out for the clearing where he had first met Anne.
The carcass was precisely where he had left it and was left untouched by the island's various scavenging creatures, so Sprig took out his hunting knife and a special mallet to harvest the useful parts before they spoiled. Using the mallet, he cracked open the armor plating of each of the six legs and carved out the meat with his knife, doing the same with the abdomen. The sharp serrations of the two front legs could be lashed to branches and used as harvesting tools, so he cut them off of the body entirely and lashed them together with rope. He then carried the meat and claws back to the village, specifically to the farmhouse where he and his younger sister lived with their grandfather.
"Well, it's about time you showed up, Sprig! You should've been back from your hunting trip two hours ago!" scolded Hopediah Plantar (known to his grandchildren as Hop-Pop), a short, older man with sagging, leathery skin, a small bump of a nose, and no hair except for wild gray tufts behind his ears. He wore a green jacket over a stained off-white shirt and green pants with leather sandals on his feet. He was in the kitchen stirring a bubbling concoction in a pot on a wood-burning stove. Sitting at the kitchen table shucking ears of a bizarrely colored, corn-like vegetable was Sprig's younger sister Polly, who looked like a much younger, female version of Sprig. Her carrot-red hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she didn't wear much aside from ill-fitting blue overalls that looked like they could slide to the ground if she wasn't careful.
"Sorry, Hop-Pop, but something came up. Can you put this mantis meat in the icebox while I go to Madam Sundew's place?" Sprig asked, impatient to see how his new friend was doing.
"Now, hold on just a minute, boy! You can't just run off without a good reason, so out with it!" his grandfather demanded. Seeing he had no choice, Sprig explained everything that had happened that day.
"Does that mean you have a girlfriend?" Polly asked innocently when he finished.
"I've only known her for three hours, Polly, so no," Sprig said, rolling his eyes.
"Polly has a point, Sprig. A handsome young buck like yourself should start courting sooner or later," Hop-Pop pointed out.
"Leave my love life out of this, Hop-Pop! I have to go check on Anne," Sprig said irritably and walked away without another word. When he arrived back at Madam Sundew's house, the medicine woman was just tying off the stitches that now held Anne's wound closed. Anne herself was peacefully slumbering with a bandage wrapped around her head, looking far less flushed than she had when Sprig left. "She looks better," he noted.
"Yes, the tincture worked even better than I thought it would," Madam Sundew agreed, snipping the thread with a pair of scissors before wrapping gauze around Anne's leg. "Either that, or the infection wasn't that bad and she just easily lapses into delirium. She had a big bump on the back of her head, so that could have been part of it." She stood up and brushed her hands together, admiring her handiwork. "The problem is, if what you say she told you is true, it means she's not native to Amphibia. Meaning someone in the village has to take her in and care for her, at least until her leg heals."
"Maybe I can convince Hop-Pop to let me look after her? We have plenty of room now that...it's just...the three of us now." Sprig looked down sadly, and Madam Sundew patted his shoulder sympathetically.
"Room for what?" asked Hop-Pop, who leaned against the doorway, out of breath from running after Sprig.
"Hop-Pop! Hey! We were just talking about you!" Sprig said, sheepishly grinning with sweat forming on his brow. Hop-Pop sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Boy, I know I'm not gonna like what you're about to suggest, so get it over with," he groaned.
"So, turns out Anne's not native to the island. Since she's not from around here, I was thinking she could stay with us for the time being, in one of the spare rooms," Sprig voiced his thoughts. "Before you say 'no,' remember that you're always telling me and Polly to treat others like we want to be treated, so you'd be a hypocrite by refusing to help her." Hop-Pop was about to retort when he realized Sprig was totally correct.
"That's a fair point. Oh, alright, she can stay with us. But she has to pull her own weight once her leg heals!" he warned. Sprig agreed to his grandfather's terms and carried the still fast-asleep Anne back to his house, laying her on the bed in the single empty bedroom in the house and tucking the blankets around her. He then went about his evening chores until Hop-Pop called him to dinner.
...
Make no mistake, Madam Sundew's sleep syrup was potent stuff, meaning Anne was able to sleep through the night without any difficulty. With the exception of the periodic throbbing of her left leg, Anne felt just fine when she woke up. She panicked for a moment, having woken up in a bedroom that wasn't her own, but then Sprig came in through the door with a tray of food, and most of the previous day's memories came flooding back.
"Oh good, you're awake! How are you feeling?" Sprig asked, setting the tray on the bedside table and sitting on the side of the bed.
"Better than I was," Anne replied. "Where am I?"
"I brought you to my house after Madam Sundew stitched up your leg and cleaned out the infection. She says not to put any weight on it for a while, by the way."
"Eh, that's fair. Sorry if I made you worried, I just get really loopy when I'm sick. Even a cold will make me blabber nonsense until the symptoms go away." Sprig then remembered why he came to the room in the first place.
"Oh, I brought you some breakfast! I know you're not from around here, so I hope everything I made is palatable for you." He retrieved the tray and placed it in Anne's lap. On a plate was one sunny-side-up egg, the yolk of which was more green than yellow; some fried slices of what she assumed was an oversized mushroom; and a chunk of cooked and seasoned meat. "The meat came from that mantis I saved you from yesterday. The mushrooms here get really, really big, so you can cook them pretty much however you want. The egg is from a type of winged lizard that we keep as livestock," Sprig explained each item.
Not all of the food sounded especially appetizing to Anne; however, she was a big fan of the phrase "don't knock it 'til you try it." Plus, she'd sampled a few of her parents' experimental dishes that had insects as a main ingredient, so how different could this be? She stabbed her fork into the mantis meat, cut off a sliver, and placed it in her mouth. Her face lit up as she chewed, and she hummed appreciatively before attacking the contents of the plate. That one bite had reminded her just how hungry she was after her trek through the swamp the previous day. Sprig just stared at her, dumbfounded.
"Wow. I guess you really were hungry," he chuckled awkwardly. Anne's plate was squeaky-clean in a matter of moments.
"Sorry. It doesn't help that everything was delicious," she apologized before letting out a massive belch. She blushed and covered her mouth, but Sprig whistled and applauded. "Dude! Not cool!" she protested, blushing even harder.
"No, no, it's okay," Sprig reassured her. "I don't know about anywhere else in the world, but here, men and women both have the exact same roles in society. Pretty much everything we do for fun around here is gender ambiguous, including belching and spitting contests. And that, my friend, was a top-tier belch!"
"Oooooooookay. Can you help me out? I don't wanna just stay in bed all day, you know?"
"Oh sure! I understand completely!" Sprig sat down on the bed. "Just put your arm around my neck and lean against me. I'll help you get down the stairs." Anne sat up and did as Sprig suggested, and the two of them hobbled down the stairs to the living room, where Sprig deposited her on the sofa. Anne looked down at her leg, which was expertly wrapped in green-tinted gauze held together with pins made from long thorns. "Your leg was infected pretty bad from the swamp water," Sprig said as if sensing her thoughts. "Thankfully, Madam Sundew was able to clean it out and bring down your fever. The wrappings are infused with an herbal extract that will help it heal."
"Hey, Sprig! Hop-Pop says to get your rear in gear if you wanna get anything done!" Polly said as she walked into the room, causing Sprig to facepalm.
"Ugh, that's right! I still need to work today!" he groaned. "Sorry, Anne, I gotta go. If you need anything, Polly here can probably help you out." Sprig walked out the front door without another word and closed it behind him, leaving the two girls alone. Polly crawled onto the couch and sat next to Anne.
"Hi, I'm Polly! Sprig's my big brother!" the little girl introduced herself, holding her hand out. Anne smiled and shook Polly's hand.
"Nice to meet you, Polly..."
