Bonesetter (20 page)

Pell thought the hag
was
probably the oldest human he had ever seen, and wondered if this meant that her medicines were successful
since
they had kept her alive so long.
Perhaps they weren’t any good or they would have kept her healthier in appearance.
“Um, no, no one is sick at present.”

“Then you should at least get some of this tea here.
It keeps away the evil spirits and so
it
will help to
keep
everyone healthy.
You may also want some of this tea.
It relieves pain.
Injuries are
bound to happen
, and this tea will keep until someone need
s
it.”

Intrigued with the concepts of the medicines, Pell thought her suggestions to be practical.
He felt pretty certain that the main ingredient of the pain reliever would be willowbark.
Unfortunately he had no idea how to prepare willowbark
himself
and so its ready availability did not mean he could make his own pain medicine.
For an instant he considered asking the hag what part of the willowbark was used in the teas but knew she would laugh at such a question.
“Maybe later” he mumbled, suddenly worried that he hadn’t appeared to be as uninterested as Tando had suggested.
He moved on to the next
area
, consciously moving away from the flintworker’s area.

As he stepped away his eye was drawn back to the old hag’s area.
A most beautiful creature had walked up, set herself down and begun talking with the hag.
She was slender
but not skinny, rather muscular. She moved
like a tawny young cat in its prime.
Her skin glowed
and
she appeared
to be in
the very prime of health.
She had long, golden brown hair sleekly combed and
braided. It was
tied
and had no
snarls.
Her eyes sparkled with amusement over the story she was relating to the old woman.
As she laughed Pell saw clean healthy white teeth.
Pell tried not to be caught staring but couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away.

“Hey, watch your step, fool!” a voice barked at him.

Pell looked around to where he had nearly trod on some carvings laid out at the next site.
He stepped hastily back and gazed unseeingly at the carvings.
He didn’t think he could afford to trade for carvings, no matter th
eir beauty or spiritual power. But, w
hether he wanted carvings or not, he didn’t want to go any further from the beautiful
girl
at the medicine woman’s area.
With furtive glances, he watched them and decided that the girl and the hag were related. Now they appeared to be talking business from the hushed voices they used as if talking about trade secrets.
After a few more moments, the beautiful young woman stood and walked away.
Pell’s eyes followed her until she disappeared from sight.
Now, at last released to continue his shopping, he left the carver’s site, mind spinning, to go on about the different sites and take in the wares on display.

He stopped at a site where a woman quickly and deftly
was stiching
a stack of soft leathers into various items of clothing.
As Pell watched, one man was fitted for a pair of winter pantaloons.
He stood, legs spread, while the woman laid various leathers against his legs and waist, deftly cutting them with a sharp flint.
He paid her with a stack of cured skins, agreeing to give her even more skins when the pantaloons were complete.
The woman eyed Pell’s ragged leather loincloth with distaste and when he made no offer to trade, went back to her stitching.
Laid out on her leather were some examples of her work, including some short summer pantaloons, a vest and a winter hat made of fur.
There were also leather items that didn’t need to be fitted which were already made up.
Carrying bags, pouches, sheaths for flint knives and most interestingly, a braided leather rope!
Pell dropped to his knees to examine this.
Thick strips of pliable leather were twisted back and forth around each other in a manner he could not fathom.
Every so often he could see a place where a strip was joined to another by cutting holes in both strips and sliding the tail of each strip through the other’s hole to make a longer thong.
He had done this himself but it always made a weak link where the thong would break.
Somehow Pell had a feeling that the braiding of many thongs together made it much stronger than several thongs merely tied into a bundle as he had seen done in the Aldans.
With a rope like this, he could make a snare strong enough for a boar or a deer!
He would have to get Donte to look at it, perhaps she could braid one without Pell’s having to purchase one, after all the braiding did look similar to the
braiding
that Donte often
did in
her hair.

Pell moved on past a family selling bead jewelry, another woman with medicines, a group roasting a boar which would be sold in pieces later and a man with waterbags made from the stomachs of various animals.
He came to another flint worker.
There were serviceable scrapers and awls displayed.
The knives and spear points were thick and somewhat clumsy looking and while Pell was watching the flintworker cursed exasperatedly when he broke a blade that he had been working on.
Pell thought back on some of the blades his father had made.
Beautiful blades—blades that had been revered by the Aldans.
Pell wished again that his father had lived long enough to teach him that skill.
The flintworker, though obviously not a great talent like Pell’s father, had many nice sharp flakes that would make perfectly serviceable general cutting tools. And, Pell thought, probably at a much lower cost than some of the better products from the better flintworkers around the marketplace.

When Pell moved on he encountered Tando circulating the area and they conferred briefly.
No one appeared to be offering sea salt, so Tando felt that Donte’s salt should prove valuable in trading.
Tando had seen two other flintworkers and the one near the medicine hag seemed to have the best products.
Pell asked, “Should we get some general purpose medicines and some clothing?”

Tando snorted, “I saw you looking at that medicine girl!
In fact, the whole marketplace probably saw you slavering after her—you looked like a man, weak with hunger, looking fondly
at
a freshly roasted piglet!
You didn’t think we needed medicines
until
you saw her did you?” He laughed, “But you’re our ‘bonesetter,’ if
you
think we need to trade our hard earned goods for medicines just so that you might have a chance to talk to a beautiful girl, go ahead.”
He winked at Pell.

Embarrassed, Pell stared at his feet and mumbled, “
I guess
we shouldn’t
until we’ve obtained more
important
items
.”

The roasting boar smelled good but they decided that they should probably do without until they knew what value their
smoked
meat and salt would have.
They decided to try trading some
smoked
meat for a few small items to gauge its value and moved on in separate directions.

Pell decided to try trading some of his
smoked
meat for some simple flint products at the next flintworker’s sites.
A dour looking woman sat behind a skin laid out with various flint implements.
The flintworker himself sat leaning against the bole of a tree detaching flakes of flint from a thick spearpoint.
Pell tried to appear disinterested as he looked over the products and finally picked out a simple scraper.
He could probably make something similar,
if
he had a large supply of flint so that he could afford to make mistakes.
But, that fact meant that the scraper wouldn’t have a high bargaining price.
“I’d like to trade for this,” he said to the woman watching the wares.

“What do you have to trade?”

Pell pulled out a bundle of the tougher, “traveling”
smoked
meat and, selecting a small piece, held it out.

“What do I want with a small stick?” she said suspiciously, eyeing the
smoked
meat.

“Oh.
It’s not a stick.
It’s ‘
spirit
meat’.
Here smell it.”

Still not touching it, she leaned forward and sniffed.
“It does smell a little like meat.
But why would I trade for meat that’s been ruined like that?
It looks like it is so overcooked that it’s hard!” She was shaking her head in disbelief.

“It’s not ruined,” Pell said in exasperation.
“It’s been preserved with a powerful spirit magic.”
This was the ploy that Tando and Donte had recommended.
“This rabbit was killed four hands of days ago and the spirit meat is still good to eat.”
Pell took a bite to prove his claim and then held the rest of the “spirit meat” out again.

Having seen him eat some of it, the woman took a little nibble herself.
As she slowly chewed, her eyes widened over the salty, smoky taste flooding her mouth.
“It tastes funny,” she remarked, as if put off but the taste.
Pell noticed, however, that she kept chewing and did not offer the remainder of the piece back.
“How do I know it’s really four hands of days old?”

Donte had anticipated this question and had suggested that they would have to leave small pieces of spirit meat with various traders for a day or two to prove their claim.
“Keep the rest until tomorrow, you’ll see that it doesn’t spoil.
I’ll come back then to trade for the scraper.”
The woman nodded, sniffing the piece of meat she held again.
Pell moved on.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the woman walk over to her mate, the flintworker and casually hand him a small fragment of the spirit meat.
She whispered a few words to him.
He put the fragment in his mouth and a delighted grin flashed across his face.
She tucked the remainder in her pouch, apparently they would test Pell’s claim against spoiling on the morrow.
As Pell was covertly watching them, the flintworker moved and he noticed that his leg was deformed.
It was bent just above the ankle and he noticed that it was twisted outward as well.
It must have been broken and healed in that awkward position, Pell thought.
It would make it difficult to walk and hunt, the man was lucky that he had the skill of flintworking and could trade for food.
Unfortunately he wasn’t a highly skilled flintworker and so would have difficulty trading his wares strongly against some of the other flintworkers who were present in the trading area that day.
As Pell mused on this, he wondered whether his own trick for reducing bones would have worked for this man.
Even if he couldn’t have
put
an entire leg back into place like he had with the fingers and Tando’s wrist, perhaps he could have held it straighter than it had eventually healed with a splint like the one he had applied to Tando’s wrist?
The flintworker saw Pell staring at his leg and quickly drew the ankle back under the edge of the skin he had across his lap.
The skin ostensibly protected him from flying flakes of flint but the man wouldn’t want anyone knowing he only worked the flint because his leg left him unable to hunt. Pell’s father had probably started working flint because of his clubbed foot, but he had had a tremendous skill for it nonetheless.

Pell moved on.

Pell didn’t see anything else of great interest until he got to the third flintworker’s site.
There he was amazed at the quality of workmanship of the blades available there.
Though he tried to hide his interest, the sharp knives, excellent spear points, fine sewing awls and perfect hand axes practically had him drooling.
Realizing suddenly that he had spent too long admiring the flintworker’s wares, he moved on again to the medicine hag’s display.
There he expressed cautious interest in the general health tonic and the all-purpose pain reliever.

“What do you have to trade?” the old woman asked.

Once again, Pell pulled out a piece of his
“
spirit meat.
”
Again, he had to explain its nature.
The old hag expressed extreme doubt regarding any meat preserving magic.
She took the attitude that, if such magic existed, she would surely already be aware of it.
“Well, at least taste it,” Pell suggested.