nervously. “Are you sure?”
No, thought Will. I’m not sure of anything. He nodded confidently instead. “I don’t know if we can save him, but I know if we don’t clean it out he will die for sure.” I can’t believe I just said that!
Something about his attitude convinced her, and ten minutes later they were sitting by the bedside where Joey lay. They had already coaxed him into drinking some of the bitter willow tea, though not as much as Will thought he needed.
Will took up the knife. “Try to keep him still. I’ll make a small cut. After that, you pour some of the water over it.”
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