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.
She returned to the main room and gathered up a fresh cloth bandage from a drawer and went back to the small boy. Judging by the progress of the wound, it needed only a light dressing. Air would be more important than herbs at this stage, so it could dry out and close properly. She wrapped it carefully and went back to the Tanners.
“Joey should be fine in a few days,” she told them. “It wasn’t