Medicine Boy

(Revised version, fixed currency problem.)

It hardly ever gets below freezing here but it can get pretty damp and miserable. My new math book proved to be fully worth its price. It taught me about fractions, which were used in all of my potion books. The dictionary helped too but the math book made an almost immediate improvement in my work.

All of my wards were stable for at least four months and most were good for five which was a lot better than what the Witch had been able to do. I would walk the island every few days with eight fresh wards in a sack. Any time I found a round with its sigil weakening; I would simply replace it and then refresh the weakening ward sign in my home and at my leisure. That winter I finally managed to fix the floors in the second and third stories. It looked very rough and ugly but the floors were strong.

I tried making a bow but my first effort was a dismal failure. So, I’ve been catching swamp pigs with snares and finishing them off with a very crude spear. I know the villagers think of them as cross between a swamp rat and a pig but I think they are good eating especially when smoked. Their hides and fur are in my opinion excellent stuff and I made myself a nice warm coat, gloves and boots from them, though my stitching is pretty awful.

I’ve read about many useful potions, in my magic books, that Lauren never made and I have to wonder why? Two of the potions that I really like are for quick and superior tanning of a hide and the other is for waterproofing. Both potions have been of great use to me.

I’ve decided to master everything in my books on wards, runes, and potions before delving into pure spell casting. But I have been occasionally glancing in my spell books, just to see if there is anything in them that can help me out with my other studies.

The winter ended and I went off in search of ingredients for the potions ordered by Mack. This time though I had a full set of wards to better protect me while harvesting. I would hang them in an area and be able to work with a lot less worries. I took the larger boat and I felt far better equipped. My baskets were already woven and I had a rune; that made my boat lighter so I could drag it further ashore and sleep in it while under a canvas water proof cover.

Gathering and potion manufacturing went smoothly this time and I made very few mistakes. I loaded up my boat with the finished products and left for the village. Mack happened to be at the dock when I arrived and he went to fetch his cart when he saw me coming in. He had ordered sixty fever potions.

“Hello Mister Phelps. I’ve got your potions for you plus a few others that are new. They are samples that I made myself and I’m hoping that you can sell them. I’ll be staying an extra day this time as well.”

We hauled my trade goods to his shop and I showed him what I had. “Fifty of the fever potions my mistress helped with and I did another fifteen on my own. These other flasks are some potions that do different things and I made you two of each. One potion can make any material waterproof for at least eight months. There’s another that you can use to quickly and easily tan a hide.” I held up a flask. “This third one; is a glue that will even bond metal and is supposed to last for years. I have another two potions that can purify a well that has been poisoned. Sometimes a well can be poisoned with shit or dead and diseased animals. Other times it can be poisoned with salts and metals. One potion handles the first type of poisoning and the other handles the second kind. I also have a potion that is supposed to cure the kind of blindness that comes to people in their old age but I haven’t been able to test it. I know that it doesn’t hurt my eyes. You can have these samples at no cost and place an order with me either before I leave or the next time I come by if you decide you want any of them. The waterproofing potion is fifteen coppers a flask. The tanning solution is one silver coin per flask but it should be more than that since it’s so hard to make. The glue is a silver piece per flask. The well purifying and blindness potions are twenty silvers per flask and they should be more too because of the level of difficulty in finding the right ingredients and in making the concoctions. But while it will take a whole flask to cleanse a poisoned well, one flask of the blindness cure should treat at least five people like my other medicines do.”

“James if these potions do as you say they will, then I’ll definitely be placing some orders with you. How quickly do the potions take to work?

“The waterproofing potion takes two hours and the glue takes five minutes. The tanning potion allows you to completely tan a hide in slightly less than a day. I’m not sure that it will be a big seller or even if it’s worth my time making it, if I’m only selling it for a silver. The well potions take one to two days to work depending on how badly poisoned the wells are. The blindness cure should take no more than two hours. I am working on a potion for bad hearing but I am having some trouble with it.”

“Why hasn’t your mistress ever offered me these kinds of potions before?”

“I don’t know and I’m afraid to ask. She might take the lash to me again.”

“James because of these samples, I am going to forget what you owe me and pay for your room at the inn. In addition I’m going to pay fifteen silver coins for your fifteen fever potions so you can spend your money wherever you want to instead of just at my store.”

“Mister Phelps you pretty much have the only store in town. I have nowhere else to spend my money.” He just grinned at me.

After stopping by the inn, I then visited Marcus Daniels the village blacksmith. He had a crossbow and the two boar spears ready to sell to me. The crossbow was old but he had completely repaired it and it came with forty bolts. I bought the bow, spears and a good dagger for sixty-five silver pieces. With the crossbow, I finally had something that could maybe kill a crocodile from a distance.

I was staying an extra day to give Mack time to test my new potions. Ester’s village did have a school teacher and I paid her three silvers to teach me for the next two days, it was money well spent.

Before I left, Mack placed an order for forty water proofing potions, four well purifying potions, four blindness potions and forty of Lauren’s health potions. I did warn him that the well and blindness potions would probably soon be going up in price from twenty silver coins per flask to at least forty or maybe even eighty silver pieces which was the equal of one gold coin. The ingredients, for those potions, were rare and hard to find; plus it was a lot of exacting work making them. I probably wasted three times the ingredients needed, in botched attempts, to make the two samples of each that I had given Mack.

The water proofing potion was easy to make, so it was a real money maker. I estimated, that it would only take me three days to make the forty water proving potions that Mack had ordered and that’s with making the clay flasks for the potions too. Upon delivery, he would pay me six hundred copper pieces, when most people make less than seventy-five copper coins per day. Using my new math skills, I divided six hundred by the value of one silver coin, which was fifty coppers, and got an answer of twelve. Twelve whole silver coins for three days of easy work! Maybe the next time I went to town I would buy some flasks or small jugs instead of making my own, digging and firing clay was a real time waster.

For that entire summer I kept working and studying. I mastered a handy new rune that allowed me to propel my boat without poling it anymore. Another rune when placed on a wooden shield formed a protective man tall and three man wide barrier when the rune was invoked. My attempts at making a bow were still awful, even with my magical glue. My home was becoming quite comfortable nowadays. I think I’m going to buy some new blankets when I go back to the village this fall.

Out of boredom, I began to study spell casting when I felt like looking at a different book. Two spells interested me, one was a little spell for lighting fires and the other was for drying things out, since I lived in a swamp that last spell greatly attracted me.

That fall I returned to Ester’s Village. I used my new rune to speed my way along but just before coming into sight of the little village, I switched back to poling my pirogue. The new propulsion magic was great! Instead of arriving around dusk, I easily got there at noon and I wasn’t exhausted either.

Mack was happy to see me. Most of my special potions he had already pre-sold. “James there is a family, who lives west of the village, named Adams. I don’t suppose you have ever heard of them?” He looked at me strangely.

I shook my head. “No, I can’t recall ever hearing that name.”

He sighed. “I guess you wouldn’t remember them. The well purifying and blindness potions you made; have really helped them. I tested them at their place for free. About eight years ago someone poisoned both of the wells on their property. There were some suspects but no one knows for sure who did it. It was a truly evil thing to do, to some nice people. Everyone in the family got awfully sick and nearly died. With both wells poisoned and no place to dig another one, it nearly destroyed their farm and their family. Recently, both the parents of Mrs. Adams, who were living with her and her husband, developed extremely poor vision and needed to be cared for. So knowing their misfortune, I took your potion samples out there and they both worked exactly like you said they would. The well purifying potion worked so splendidly that it’s become famous and those potions I ordered are already sold. Contaminated wells are rare but they do happen, sometimes through natural means and other times unnatural. I just wish I had told you to make more of them.”

“That’s great Mister Phelps but while I’ll sell the potions I just brought you at the agreed upon price, I am going to have to increase what I charge for them, just like I warned you. But as you extended me credit, for those books, I will do the same for you. That’s just in case you have a customer who needs a potion right away but doesn’t have the money to immediately pay for it. The purifying potion will be two gold pieces and the blindness cure will be one gold coin per flask but with that potion there are ten or more doses in each bottle, so that’s at least ten eyes that can be treated. The ingredients, for those potions, are just too hard to find and the concoctions are very difficult to make successfully.

I was wondering; if I can buy jugs or flasks from you? It seems to me that I could better spend my time by making potions rather than digging up clay and making my own bottles.”

Mister Phelps had a frown on his face. “You warned me that the price would be going up but I didn’t think that it would happen this fast, however I am grateful that you’ll sell them to me on credit. Most people don’t have that kind of money lying around. As for selling you little jugs, I’ll sell you clean used ones for a copper coin each or you can buy new ones for three coppers per jug. They’ll even come with corks too. Jugs are really much better than your flasks; they don’t break nearly as easily. I’ll give you some job advice, stick with magic and stay away from making pottery. How long are you going to be in town this time?”

I should have been offended by Mack’s criticism of my homemade bottles, but they had been pretty awful. “I’ll be leaving in three days. That’s great about the jugs, my mistress is running low on them too or at least I haven’t been able to find anymore in her keep. How many do you think you can get me?”

“How many do you want?”

“What I want is two hundred of them. What my boat can carry along with my other purchases is only about a hundred.”

“I should be able to dig up that many in old and new jugs. But why don’t you start coming by here more often? That is if your mistress will allow it? If you come back in a month or two, then you can have potions for me to buy and I’ll have more jugs for you.”

I had never really thought about coming to the village more than twice a year since that was the way that the Witch had always done it and because the journey was dangerous. But with wards on my boat and a propulsion rune that made it move faster, the trip became safer and easier. “I’ll try and do that Mister Phelps so long as my mistress allows it. But if I can’t make it, you’ll have to understand.”

He started to answer me when a big man burst into the shop with a small golden hair child in his arms. “Where’s the Swamp Boy?” He screamed out.

I was suddenly fearful that I was going to be getting a beating. I hadn’t been yelled at, hit or lashed since the Witch had disappeared. I could feel my knees start to shake. It was funny; spiders, snakes and crocs didn’t scare me but a yelling adult did.

“Jacob what’s wrong? Is that little Gloria?”

“She got bit by a big white spider. Her leg is already turning purple. I heard the Swamp Boy is here. He’s got to do something.”

I had my shoulder bag with some of my emergency potions in it. I pulled out a little cup and filled it with a dose of a spider anti-venom concoction that would work for white spider bites. I guess I should charge for it but I wasn’t going to let someone die because they didn’t have the coin. The man was blubbering and yelling at me to do something. Mack was telling him to calm down and that there was nothing that I could do when I suddenly held up the little cup, offering it to the girl in his arms. Both men suddenly shut up.

The man, Mack had called Jacob, knelt down with the little girl and I slowly fed her the potion. “I’ll need to look at the bite too. Can you put her on the table? Mister Phelps, I’ll need one of those health potions that I just delivered to you. The poison has already damaged her body and she’ll need the potion to fully recover. The potion I gave her just stops the poison; it doesn’t fix the damage the poison causes.”

Mack’s voice took on a harsh tone. “Boy, you’ve got a cure for white spider bites and you’ve never even offered it to me?”

I cringed. “I figured that since you never bought them from my mistress that you just didn’t need any anti-poison potions.”

Jacob intervened, “Mack we can talk about this later. Right now he needs to treat my little girl.” He placed Gloria on the table. Her pants were already slit open so I could easily see her leg. I made two tiny cuts by the site where she was bit, I very slowly poured another dose of the anti-venom potion on the cuts and using a trick, that I could barely call a minor spell, I forced the liquid into her blood. Mack brought out a health potion jug and I had her drink a dose. I waited about twenty minutes and then I forced another dose of the same health potion through the cuts I had made in her leg. Upon examining her limb, I saw that everything seemed good and that it might even heal without a scar.

Mack and Jacob had been talking the entire time, while Jacob had held Gloria’s hand and I had worked.

“She’ll need some food now but only something light, like thin soup. Later on she’ll be really hungry and as long as she doesn’t get an upset stomach you can feed her whatever she wants. Sometimes two potions administered at nearly the same time can make you throw up but that health potion is a good one and it really shouldn’t cause that.”

Mack’s daughter, Diane Phelps had been watching. She rushed off towards the family living quarters while saying, “I’ll warm up some soup for her right now.”

Mack turned to me and growled. “James, I asked your mistress years ago for potions that could help us against the snakes, bugs and frogs. She said that she had nothing to sell me. Now, I see you pull a potion out of your bag and cure a little girl who should be dead. Why didn’t you tell me before?” He roared. “Why didn’t the Witch? So many people have died here because of bites and no cure. You had to know! You’ve been bringing me glues, and waterproofing potions, damn it. Why haven’t you been bringing me medicines?” He was screaming at the end.

I was trembling with fear. I answered him very quietly. “Mister Phelps I’ve only been here a few times and during those times I never heard of anyone dying of a bite. So I just assumed that since my mistress never made you any poison cures that you must have your own ways of taking care of people that get bit. I just thought that you wouldn’t want any of those potions so I never brought them up. If I had known you needed them, then I would have made those potions for you. I just didn’t know.”

“James your mistress is a horrible person.”

I wordlessly nodded my head. I took off my shirt and showed him my scarred torso and back. While I hadn’t been beaten or burned in a long time I still had plenty of old scars. The eyes of both men grew wide.

Gloria’s mother came rushing in, she and Diane slowly fed soup and tiny bits of bread to the little girl. When they were done, the Hansen family took her home. After they left, Mack and his daughter made me sit down. Mister Phelps began talking. “James we are out here on the border of the Gulf Kingdom. We are at the ass end of nowhere. Mages and healers just don’t come out here because they can make a much more comfortable living someplace else.”

I tried to imagine a more comfortable living than what I had right now. I had plenty of food, a safe place to sleep and no beatings. Nope, I just couldn’t imagine a better place than my swamp.

“The Swamp Witch has been our only source of potions that could help us, that is without us paying more than we could possibly afford. Up until recently, her potions haven’t even been that good and I had been considering buying the more expensive stuff. I checked around and found that by going through other sources that I could get fever and health potions but the heath potions were extremely expensive and beyond the reach of most of us. Besides that, the Witch’s work has improved greatly since you’ve begun making the deliveries. As for anti-venom and anti-poison potions, I was told that they were next to impossible to find anywhere in the Kingdom and if I could buy them that they would be too expensive for us to afford.”

I was curious why he had said anti-venom and anti-poison potions. Weren’t poisons, venoms and toxins, all the same things, I was confused? He had stopped talking. Mack had moved his furious face a hand away from my own and he was looking at me very oddly, his eyes glittered. I did not like his expression, and I looked away from him in fear. “You know James; the potions in your flasks are just as good as the potions in the Witch’s jugs. I can’t even tell them apart. If you happened to pour one of your potions into one of her jugs, I would never know the difference.”

I kept looking away and I heard couple of muffled words from Diane to her father but I couldn’t understand them. Then she softly asked me a question. “James what other kinds of anti-poison potions can you make?

I started ticking the potions off on my fingers but then I ran out of fingers. Mister Phelps and Diane were very quiet and I wasn’t looking at them.

“How much would you charge us for those potions, James?”

“The ingredients are plentiful and easy to find but it’s a little dangerous making them because I need the actual venom as a component. So it would be two silvers a flask with five doses per flask.”

Mister Phelps cursed; I think he thought my price was too high. I had better explain. “Mister Phelps those potions are more than a simple anti-venom cure they will also grant you limited immunity to the poison for one to two years after drinking it, depending on the circumstances. So really two silvers isn’t too much money to ask and I’ll sell them on credit too, if people really need them. I don’t want anyone to die because of a lack of money.”

Mister Phelps started swearing even louder, Diane finally got him to quiet down then she asked me another question. “James, I assume that you’ve taken the same potions, to protect yourself from poisonous bites. If that is the case, why do you still carry a jug of it with you?”

“Well the potion will work against one or two bites at the same time but if you get bit more than that, then there’s too much venom in your body and you can still die. So if you get swarmed by spiders or step into a nest of water snakes you need some more potion in order to save your own life.”

She grew very quiet. “James have you ever been swarmed by spiders?”

“Yeah, just three weeks ago while I was getting ingredients for your order. I put too much trust in my new wards and six of those big black jumping spiders somehow made it past them. They all got a piece of me and it really hurt too. I seem to get bit by a mess of things at least once a year. This year because of my wards I thought it wouldn’t happen for once.”

They both grew very quiet again. Diane asked, “What is a ward?”

“Oh it’s a magic symbol that I engrave on something or put on a piece of wood like a sign. The sign acts like a magic fence in the direction that it is facing. It seems to work for about forty steps to either side of the sign and eighty steps straight out. The wards I make, only last for about four to six months before they need to be refreshed. Then too, I’ve got to make a different one for each creature. I make ones for cats, snakes, spiders, mosquitoes, flies, ticks, crocs, and dragons. But the one I make for dragons has never really been tested and it’ll probably only work against swamp dragons and not the greater kinds. While wards do work, they don’t work all the time and creatures sometimes make their way through, under, over and around them. If you try to push the nasties out too fast from an area they can break through your wards or if you leave the creatures no other place to go they can do the same thing. You see wards aren’t a physical barrier they just frighten things away. Wards don’t work very well if they’re moving like on a boat but they’re better than nothing.”

I heard some really loud unintelligible angry muttering from Mister Phelps. I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes. I was scared and I expected him to hit me at any time.

Diane was trying to calm her father down. Finally he got up and left. I figured I should do the same thing. I guess I was done coming to this village. Word must have spread quickly. There were a lot of angry faces looking at me when I left the store. With the first thrown rock, I started running. I ran by the inn when a rock to my head knocked me down with a glancing blow. I was lying on the dirt road and trying to get back to me feet when I saw two sets of well made boots enter my vision.

“Why are all you people, throwing rocks at this boy?” A loud male voice demanded.

A voice screamed back. “He and that witch let our people die when they had a cure all along for those poisonous spiders and snakes.”

The first voice asked, “Is that true boy?”

“I didn’t know that they needed them. I have only been here a few times and my mistress never made them any anti-poison potions, so how was I supposed to know? I never heard of anyone dying during the times I visited here. As soon as I saw that a girl was bit, I gave her the potion from my bag. It’s not like I hid it or even asked for any money first or afterwards.”

I was hauled into the inn and people started questioning me. I learned that one of the people with the fancy boots and the one that had spoken to me was Lieutenant Smith with the Royal Army. Mister Phelps hung in the background but Diane spoke up frequently explaining things.

Finally she told them to shut up. “James got sold to that witch eight years ago by a desperate family when he was only three years old. At that time the Witch told his family and us that she was going to foster the child and raise him benevolently as her apprentice. We didn’t see him again for six years and when she did start bringing him around she never left him out of her sight, so he had no chance to talk with us and learn about our daily lives. James, please take off your shirt.”

I looked at her and she glared at me, so I did it. There were some gasps and the room quieted down.

“It’s not his fault that he doesn’t know what we need. My father only saw a barely trained apprentice and my dad didn’t think to ask James for what his mistress had told us couldn’t be made or done. James, will you please make anti-poison potions and wards for us, so long as we pay you fair value for them?”

I nodded my head. I was too scared to speak.

“You see, all we had to do was ask. Instead you threw rocks at him. What happens if he flees into the swamp and never returns or if his mistress gets angry at us for damaging her property? Without her fever potions, it would be hard for any of us to keep living here.”

Mister Phelps spoke up. “I don’t think we have to worry about his mistress anymore. Almost two years ago the boy started coming here by himself. At the same time the potions got better, much better than they had ever been before. Now thinking back and after some of the answers he gave me just today, I have to wonder. What did you do boy, did you kill her after one too many beatings?”

The entire crowd of people gasped. I covered my head with my arms and spoke very quietly. “No sir, I didn’t kill her. Every day she used to at least slap me. I would get lashings or burnings at least twice a week. She would drink my blood and drain my magic, so I felt weak all of the time.” The gasp this time was even louder.

“While I harvested her ingredients, prepared them and saw her perform magic she never taught me anything beyond that. She didn’t even teach me to read or do simple math. One day she realized that she hadn’t done anything to prepare for Mister Phelps’ spring order. She had been drinking a lot of whiskey and poppy tea along with my blood at the time. She had been acting even crazier than normal and had stopped taking care of the wards on her island. The Sorceress only had a few wards for crocs, dragons and spiders that were still barely working. I warned her that I had been seeing too many crocs lately but that just got me another beating. She then sent me off into the swamp to get ingredients for the potions we needed to make. She told me not to come back until all the gathering sacks were full. All the islands close to the keep had been picked over long ago. So I had to go deep into the swamp. I didn’t even know how to do wards at the time, so it was really dangerous. It took me four days to get what she wanted. I actually enjoyed it because I ate better out in the swamp than in her keep.

When I got back to her island, I found that crocs were all over it and she was gone. Using what I remembered seeing her do and by looking at her potion book I made the fever potions that Mister Phelps wanted. I figured the village would need them and the Witch would be angry with me if I failed to make the delivery and she came back. But she never came back. I’ve been slowly teaching myself magic using her books and the books that Mister Phelps got for me. When I came here the first time I told Mister Phelps that I had to be careful because the Witch always knew wherever I was and could kill me at any time. That is true, I think it’s because she drank so much of my blood and magic. In the past with a single thought she could leave me wracked with pain and puking out my guts worse than any beating. So I could never escape from her and honestly, killing her never occurred to me.”

The villagers didn’t know whether to believe the words of the small boy or not, but his exposed chest and back filled with scars convinced them that he might indeed be speaking the truth.

They began talking about what they were going to do with me. I spoke up loudly. “No, I am not leaving my island. Since she left, there is no one to harm me there or even speak harshly to me. Nor will I be someone’s slave, making potions and wards for them without compensation. I know that I am young but I stopped being a child the moment the Witch bought me. I like my home now. There is plenty for me to eat and safety for me. My magic may be slight but it is more than enough for me to escape if I’m given enough time. And if you force me to stay here, then once I escape, I will never return.”

The still angry crowd looked at the new bloody wounds on James’s body, that they themselves had inflicted and slowly stopped talking.

Some of them tried to convince me that I should stay in town with this or that family but I refused, then most of the crowd quietly shuffled out of the room.

The innkeeper offered me a free room and meal for the night, which I took because I aching with pain. Sadly, a healing potion was yet beyond my skill.