Free The Healer of Harrow Point by Peter Walpole

was a small ravine that led gradually up into the woods that I knew. We were a mile or so from my home. The trees were thinner here, up top, affording the nearest thing to a panoramic view we could have in such a wooded area. The sun was a squat orange ball, low in a cobalt blue sky. Emma's face was aglow in the light of the setting sun. I don't think I was exactly getting it, that I was understanding what she had said. But perhaps I did, after all. For as long as I could remember I had loved the beauty of the woods, and the quiet.
    “These are your woods,” Emma said.
    I nodded. We stood a while longer, just a minute or so, when the quiet of the evening was broken by a loud snapping sound. There were deer, four or five of them, walking along the bottom of the ravine. They might have been a hundred yards away—much farther than it seemed from the sound they made. I could just make them out as they moved among the trees.
    “Wish them well,” Emma said. “Try to hold them in your heart and wish them strength.”
    I looked at her a bit quizzically. I mean, it was not as if I would wish the deer ill. We watched in silence as they passed out of view. I put up a hand, as if to wave goodbye to them, which immediately felt like a foolish thing to do. We stood together, watching the woods where the deer had been. It felt to me that the day was over.
    “Thank you for ...” I shrugged. “For showing me stuff today,” I said.
    “You're welcome, dear,” Emma said.
    “So, you know,” I began, feeling suddenly nervous, “will I see you after school this week?”
    I already knew the answer.
    Emma sighed, sounding somewhere between tired and exasperated.
    “I have to rest,” she said. “Let's say, the week after.”
    I frowned. The week after would be after my birthday. It seemed a long, long time away.
    “I've been trying to cram you full of things all day,” she said.
    “That's okay,” I interrupted.
    “... so let me cram in just a little more. Thomas, what I showed you today, working with Abigail, it's not something you could learn, like learning anything; I don't know, like learning to play the piano. It's not a skill by itself. It's something ...” she stopped, her hand gesturing vaguely. She looked at me, and chuckled.
    “I'm not very good at explaining these things,” she said with a wry smile.
    “Just tell me,” I said.
    “It's part of a life, a way of living and seeing andbeing that, well, it's different for everyone but it's not that different, really.” She chuckled. “Now that makes sense, doesn't it?”
    She was smiling. I shrugged.
    She shook her head. “It's about intention,” she said flatly. “You have to live your whole life around this intention to help, an intention to help and to heal. But it has to come from this simple and humble place. That's the difficult part, for me anyway. Everything you do has to help that intention. It can get away from you so easily, all the details and problems and nonsense that comes from being alive. Just this little nuisance of them painting my cabin—it's such a simple thing and such an aggravation. Somehow amid everything, all the distractions, you have to nurture this clear intention to help and gradually, gradually you grow into it. But Thomas, it's so hard to do. Believe me, it's hard, and you never, ever finish. You never quite get it right. But for the love of everything, the sake of everything, you can never stop trying. Every time you feel yourself failing, falling away from where you should be, you have to try to return to that clear, humble space, to live from there. Do you understand at all what I am saying?”
    “I don't know,” I said, or almost cried. She was asking too much of me.
    Her voice dropped a notch. She stepped closer to me.
    “Do one thing for me this week,” she said.
    “Okay,” I answered, after she had stared at me hard a moment.
    “Before you go to sleep tonight, I want you to imagine a circle around you, wish for a