The next few minutes were a nightmare. The abscess was sensitive and painful; the boy jerked and began to thrash as soon as he felt the knife touch his skin. “Hold him still,” ordered Will, grinding his teeth together and praying he wouldn’t faint himself.
The second attempt was more successful, although his cut was slightly ragged due to Joey’s movements. The pus emerged in a sudden rush, followed by a thin, sanguineous fluid. The smell made Will’s stomach turn, but he forced himself to keep his eyes on the wound as Tracy poured clean water over it.
Will could see a deep hole where the pus had been, one that rapidly filled with blood whenever the boy’s mother stopped pouring water. He suspected his mother might have tried cutting deeper, to make sure the wound was clean, but he didn’t have the nerve. This will have to be enough. “All right, stop,” he said.
He reached for the mortar filled with bruised lilac, but he kept his eyes on Tracy. As soon as she took her eyes away, he picked up the small bundle of spider silk and pushed it into the wound. Then he covered it with a handful of ground lilac leaves and put a clean cloth on top of that.
“Will it be enough?” asked Tracy.
“I don’t know,” said Will, but he had a strong feeling it wouldn’t. In some strange way, he could still feel the sickness in the boy’s body. Cleaning the wound had been a good start, but it wasn’t likely to be enough. The lilac and spider silk felt right to him—they would stop the wound from festering—but they couldn’t reach the poison already circulating in the child’s bloodstream.
He’s going to die, thought Will. It would take a day or two, but it was a near certainty, and when it happened they would probably blame him. For the first time, he began to understand the burden his mother carried every time she went to care for the sick or deliver someone’s baby, and he felt a new respect for her.
“I can do that,” suggested Tracy, indicating the hand he was using to keep the poultice pressed against Joey’s leg. “You’ve done all you can.”
“Let me hold it a while longer,” he answered. “Then we can wrap it in place with a bandage.”
She nodded and sat back, but Will couldn’t relax. Staring down at the little boy, he wished he could do more. He could feel something stirring within him, a desire to reach out, but he didn’t understand it.
Closing his eyes, Will kept his mind on the wound, and in his imagination it seemed as though he could almost see the essence contained in the spider silk and lilac flowing outward, ever so slowly, but it wasn’t enough, and it wouldn’t travel far.
There needs to be more, he thought, and then he began pressing harder on the wound, but not with his hand. From deep within, he felt something move, flowing through his hands and cloth and into the poultice. It was as though his own life was pouring into the boy.
It wasn’t quite right, though; it needed to match the feeling he got from the lilac, from the spiderweb. He imagined it shifting, becoming more like the essence within the poultice, complementing and expanding it.
I’m delusional, he thought, but in his mind’s eye he could see it working. The essence was expanding, moving through the small boy’s body, and wherever it encountered the sickness, it eliminated it.
A quarter of an hour passed, and Will grew steadily weaker, as though the strength was leaving his body. He felt as though he had run several miles without stopping. That’s all I can do. Letting go of the poultice, he looked up at Joey’s mother. The woman was watching him with a strange look in her eye.
“I think he’s going to be all right,” he told her. “Can you wrap it? I’m really tired.” Standing up, he started to leave the room—he needed some air—but after only a few steps the world began to spin, and the floor rushed up at him. He was unconscious before he landed.
***
Erisa and Joseph Tanner showed up sometime after midnight. They were surprised when it was Tracy who answered the door to let them in.
“Thank goodness you’re here,” said Tracy with obvious relief.
“How is our son?” asked Joseph.
“He’s much better,” said Tracy Tanner, but her face retained its worried expression. “But something happened to Will.”
“Will?” said Erisa, looking past the other woman’s shoulders. “Where is he?” Tracy stood aside, and they entered. Erisa found her son moments later, stretched out on the floor beside his bed. A pillow had been placed under his head and a blanket covered his body. Joey slept peacefully in the bed itself. “Is he sleeping?”
Tracy shook her head. “I don’t think so. He passed out after putting the poultice on Joey. He had the strangest look on his face. I haven’t been able to wake him since, so I did my best to make him comfortable.”
Erisa checked Will’s breathing and listened for his heartbeat, reassuring herself that her son was still alive. Then she shook him and called his name several times but failed to rouse him. Opening his eyes, she watched to see if they dilated in response to light. They did, which was a relief, but he still showed no signs of waking. Looking up at Joseph, she asked, “Can you help me get him into my bed?”
Joseph Tanner was a slender-built man, but he didn’t lack for strength. He bent and lifted Will before carrying him to Erisa’s room and laying him gently on the bed. Once he was settled, Erisa turned to Tracy. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Tracy described Will’s efforts, from lancing the abscess to preparing and placing the poultice. Erisa was somewhat surprised that her son had had the courage to take a knife to the wound, since he had never done anything like that before, though he had watched her a time or two in the past. She felt a quiet sense of pride in her son, while simultaneously hoping he hadn’t made the wound worse through his inexperience.
Tracy wasn’t finished, though. “After that, he held the poultice in place for a while. It seemed a little strange, almost as though he was praying over him. It was maybe a quarter of an hour, then he told me to wrap it up, but he passed out as soon as he stood up.”
Erisa’s heart sped up as she heard the story, but she tried to keep her face calm. “Would you mind making some tea for us, Mrs. Tanner? You’ll find everything in the cupboards there. I’ll check on Joey in the meantime.” She left the two of them and went into Will’s room, where Joey lay, shutting the door behind her.
Her first impression was that the little boy’s condition wasn’t nearly as serious as his father had described. Joey was sleeping peacefully, and when she laid her hand on his brow, she felt no sign of fever.
That wasn’t too unusual. If he had been on the mend already, his fever might have broken naturally, but it didn’t match up with what they had told her. Chewing her lip, Erisa began to unwind the bandage around the child’s leg, her eyes widening when they saw the wound.
It looked as though it had been healing for several days, with no signs of redness or swelling. The edges of the knife cut Will had made were already puckered and starting to draw together. “No, no, no,” moaned Erisa. “This can’t be happening.”
Examining the poultice, she recognized the lilac leaves. “Why did he use this?” she muttered to herself. “The yarrow would have been better.” She shook her head to clear it. There was no time for wondering at what he had done. Her first priority was covering her son’s tracks.