Free Time of the Eagle by Sherryl Jordan Page B

Hena?”
    â€œIt’s the old conflict—they try to steal our lands, so we fight.”
    People were beginning to leave, now that the meal was over, and Ramakoda stood up, saying, “I’ll go and talk with myfather, and do battle with Gunateeta over my daughter. Wish me luck, Shinali woman.”
    He limped around to the place where his father was. The holy woman was still there, with a few other members of the chieftain’s family. Again, Ramakoda knelt before his father. I could not hear what he said, but it made the people turn around and stare at me. The holy woman, standing just behind the old man, pointed at me and said some angry words, but I could not make them out. People who were leaving began to turn back, to find out what was happening. The chieftain raised his hand and said, very loudly so all could hear: “Who will heal your child, Ramakoda? Choose carefully.”
    Ramakoda replied, “I choose the Shinali woman, Avala, as healer for my child. And as healer for myself, as my cuts need to be sewn up.”
    The chieftain gave a command, and a girl brought him a bowl of water. In utter quiet he washed his hands then flicked his fingers hard, shaking off the drops. The bowl was taken away, and people stood around in silence, waiting. They all were watching the holy woman. She spat onto the ground and hobbled away.
    Ramakoda bowed again to his father, then came back to me. “The healing of my youngest child, it’s yours,” he said.
    â€œYour holy woman is not pleased about it,” I remarked. “Nor your father, I’m thinking.”
    â€œHe does not like crossing Gunateeta. He needs her to pass on her skills, else we shall be without healer and priestess when she dies. So he tries always to keep the peace with her, and sheknows it, and holds a little power over him. It is the only power she has, these days.”
    â€œWhy does he not command her to teach what she knows?”
    â€œHe has, but she said the spirits were angered and would depart unless she chose freely the one to follow in her shoes. And who can argue against spirits?”
    â€œYou argued against them,” I said, “in asking for my healing for your child.”
    â€œI love Kimiwe,” he said. “Love is stronger than fear.” Suddenly he grinned, and added, “Besides, Shinali woman, I’m counting on your munakshi to protect us.”

6
    When I was with the Shinali I had the opportunity to help their chieftain, an old man called Oboth, who was in a great deal of pain. I did not heal his illness, for that is incurable; but I did ease his suffering for a time. I felt then that, of all the pains I had ever eased, the soothing of Oboth’s was the most wonderful. In the eyes of my nation, Oboth and his people were my enemies, and yet with them, with the Shinali, I felt only a great peace, even a sense of belonging; and the healing of Oboth was like a greater healing, a healing of age-old enmity and wrongs, a breaking down of walls that were more than pain, more than one man’s disease. It was a healing of hearts, his and mine.
    â€”Excerpt from a letter from Gabriel to his mother, kept and later gifted to Avala
    I was nervous, afraid, and worried about the priestess; yet when I knelt beside the child Kimiwe, there was nothing in my mind save pity. She had been terribly neglected. My mother had taught me that cleanliness is vital in healing; it was a thing my father had told her. Yet the child Kimiwe had not been washed or treated in any way, so far as I could tell, and I marveled that her burns had not become infected. Awful wounds they were. Her chest was burned, part of her hair, and one side of her face, though her eyes were spared.
    I had her placed on a clean mat near the entrance in the chieftain’s tent, in good light, for the skies had clouded over and it was dim inside. Then I asked for a fire to be lit and water to be boiled, and for the sharpest,