It didn’t matter how skilled she was at healing, how many wounds she had stitched or how many broken bones she had set, how many fevers and illnesses she had chased away. It didn’t matter how many years she had dedicated to her craft, walking the line between life and death. She had been too late to save this one, and as she closed the boy’s milky eyes Sidra was reminded of the danger of the sea.
“We were fishing on the shore,” said one of the boy’s companions. The cadence of his words was hopeful as he stood beside Sidra. Hopeful that she could bring his friend back to life. “One moment, Hamish was upright, on that rock over there. And the next thing I knew, he slipped and went under. I told him not to swim in his boots, but he refused to take them off!”
Sidra was quiet, listening to the ebb and flow of the tides. The foamy roar of the sea, sounding both angry and perhaps apologetic, seemed to say it was not the water spirits’ fault this boy had drowned.
Her gaze shifted to Hamish’s feet. His tanned-hide boots were tethered up to his knees while his friends were barefooted, as all isle children who swam in the sea were supposed to be. Her nan had once told her that most healers hold the gift of premonition, that she should always follow those feelings, no matter their oddity, and now she couldn’t explain the gooseflesh that suddenly rippled over her arms. She nearly reached for the boot tethers, but then stilled her hand and turned instead to the three boys who stood around her.
“Lady Sidra?”
If I had only been here a few moments sooner, she thought.
The wind was blowing that afternoon, bearing hard from the east. Sidra had been walking on the northern road, which skirted the coast, carrying a basket of warm oatcakes and several bottles of herbal tonics, squinting into that keen wind. The boys’ frantic shouts had drawn her attention, and she had rushed to aid them, but in the end she had been too late.
“He can’t be dead,” one of the lads said, over and over until Sidra reached out and took hold of his arm. “He can’t be! You’re a healer, Lady. You can save him!”
Sidra’s throat had constricted, too narrow to allow her to speak, but her expression must have conveyed enough to the boys gathered around her, shivering in the wind. The air turned somber.
“Go and fetch Hamish’s father, his mum,” she finally said. Sand had gathered under her nails and between her fingers. She could feel it coating her teeth. “I’ll wait here with him.”
She watched as the three boys dashed along the shoreline to the path that snaked up a grassy knoll, abandoning their boots, packed lunch, and fishing nets in their haste. It was midday, and the sun was at its zenith, shortening the shadows on the coast. The sky was cloudless and scathingly bright, and Sidra closed her eyes for a moment to listen.
It was high summer on the isle. The nights were warm and star-soaked, the afternoons storm-swept, and the gardens full of soft, dark loam, their harvest imminent. Berries grew sweet on wild vines, winkles gathered in rock eddies when the tide was low, and fawns could often be seen on the hills, trailing their mothers through bracken and knee-high wildflowers. This was the season in Eastern Cadence known for its generosity and peace. A season of both labor and repose, and yet Sidra had never felt so hollow, so weary and uncertain.
This summer was different, like a new interlude had slipped between solstice and autumn’s equinox. But perhaps it felt this way only because things had shifted ever so slightly to the sinister side and Sidra was still trying to adjust to how her days should be now.
She could hardly believe four weeks had come and gone since Adaira departed for the west. Some mornings it felt like yesterday that Sidra had last embraced her, and others like years had passed.
The tide surged and took hold of Sidra’s ankles like a pair of cold, long-nailed hands. Tugging her back into the moment. Startled, she opened her eyes and squinted against the sun. Her black hair had come unbound from its braid and was dripping seawater down her arms as she listened to her intuition.
She began to unlace Hamish’s damp boots.
The left one peeled away to reveal a pale leg and a huge foot that the boy was still growing into. Nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps Sidra was mistaken. She almost stopped her investigation, but then the tide came again, as if urging her along. Foam and broken conchs and the hook of a shark’s tooth swirled around her.
She removed the right boot, the tanned hide falling away with a splash into the shallow water.
Sidra froze.
Hamish’s entire lower leg was mottled purple and blue, similar to the appearance of a fresh bruise. His veins were prominent and shimmered with gold. The discoloration seemed to be creeping up his leg and was on the cusp of claiming his knee. He had obviously hidden the ailment from his friends beneath his boot, and he must have been concealing it for a while, since it had spread so far.