I awoke later to a cool cloth on my head and feeling someone changing the bandages on my arm. The wound was probably infected for puss and greenish ooze flowed out of it, but I did feel better. My eyes fluttered open to see my sister, Seda, tending to me as she usually did since as long as I remembered.
"Here drink this," she said, seeing I was awake, and handed me a flask.
I sat up slightly and opened the cap and took a small sip of it to see what it was. It tasted sweet and of cinnamon. I knew it at once it was not the watered-ale that I was used to.
"What is this?"
"Cinnamon mead – a gift from the king to speed your recovery and as a thank you for saving his son."
"Have you tasted this?"
She smiled. "It is for you brother. Not for I."
I took another sip of it before offering it to her.
"Try it."
She shook her head.
"Try it. You're tending to me and helping my recovery."
She took it from my hands and took a small sip of it. Unlike most of my tribe, Seda was not a drinker and had learned at an early age how to make our water clean enough to drink from the wells. After her small sip, she handed it back to me and I took another few swings before replacing the stopper back on and sitting it on the crooked table beside me.
"Is it infected?" I asked.
My sister licked her fingers and thumbed through the book she had made that helped her with healing people. The shaman only took non Raksheesh usually so we were left to the fates or finding someone who learned how to heal in secret. My sister was a natural at this- a gift my mother said was a gift from the virgin Goddess of Healing called Naimah.
"No. For it to be oozing and festered with puss means that the poison is coming out, thanks to the Shaman's remedy of bleeding you and the medicine to help cure it out of you."
I let out a sigh of relief. "That's good."
My sister was betrothed to a guard that was away taking care of a conflict to the north and would marry this spring. She was eight years older than I and would be considered an old hag soon if she didn't marry. I had met her betrothed once – a childhood friend of hers - and he seemed well enough. His name was Asher and before he had been a guard, he had been one of the boys who helped on the trade route and was gone for months at a time with his father. If I remembered right, he was only a year or two older than my sister.
"People have been talking about what you did for the prince."
I said nothing.
"It was really brave of you."
"Thanks," I mumbled relaxing back onto my cot.
She finished bandaging my arm and ran her fingers through my hair. "When you're more awake later, I'll cut your hair. It's gotten long again."
My hair usually reached my lower back before Seda realized how long it was and offered to cut it. Most of the boys wore their hair long and braided just because we didn't have time to sit and let our sister or mother cut it, but I will admit I loved it when it was short for I got hot easily.
"Thank you," I said.
She smiled. "Get some rest, Jaspen."