Harold the Healer Brings Home a Dog

"Never underestimate the power of a massage," Harold advised Dan, with a wink towards their son. "Of course, both parties can benefit," he concluded, getting them to switch places so he could demonstrate it to Greta, who proved to be just as fast a learner as her husband.

"Come and get it!" Willa's voice bellowed from the kitchen. No time was wasted in responding to the command, and soon they were all seated at the table with a bowl of oatmeal and raisins, buttered toast and bacon on plates, a glass of milk and a mug of coffee. Conversation was genial, involving plans for the day, speculation on the severity of the coming storm (Harold obligingly closed his eyes, concentrated, reached out to feel the air, and pronounced it would be enough to shut things down for a day) and whether or not Nell should take the chance on going to school because of it (I'll take her in the buggy and bring her back - it shouldn't be too far advanced when school is over, announced Bill, getting the stink-eye from Nell).

"I wish that I could linger, but I have to get on the road soon if I want to even have a hope of getting to Magwitch before things get too bad," said the Healer regretfully, looking out the window at the bleak landscape under the leaden sky.

"Your Leila will be waiting for you," said Willa, making him cough and splutter over the last of his coffee. "Hey, you think that we don't know about you? Word gets around. She's a lovely lady and an excellent Healer. And masseuse," she added with a knowing wink. That just made it worse. After he'd finally regained his ability to speak, Harold replied,

"It was pretty much love at first sight. Which does happen, believe it or not. Our daughter will be seven this coming Summer Solstice. Let me help with the dishes." He zapped them with a Clean spell with a loud rattle and clatter that made them jump. "That was a delicious breakfast. Thank you very much! I'll just make a quick trip to the privy and be on my way, if you don't mind." He borrowed a coat and hastened out to the structure that was several yards from the back door. While he was gone, Willa and Greta made a sandwich each with some beef and cheese from the icebox and a couple of apples, which he gratefully accepted, along with filling his water canteen from the kitchen pump.

"You're going to need these," said Willa as they all gathered by the front door, where Harold had his heavy pack and battered ash staff with various interesting carvings on it waiting and was putting on his boots. She was holding a green knitted wool sweater and matching hat, which he put on.

"Wow, they're just the right size," he said, surprised. "And I'd better get outside soon before I roast myself! They're really warm! Thank you very much!" He put on his hooded, dark brown, down-filled coat that extended below his ass, and with a grunt of effort got his large, heavy pack on his back.

"What's in that thing?" Nell demanded. "It weighs a ton!"

"My 'official' working clothes, which I seldom bother with unless there's a formal occasion that I have to attend, my medical kit for dealing with things that Magic can't, extra rations in case I get stranded, and lots of books," he groaned as he adjusted it. "One of my jobs is to deliver updated editions of various books to the local Healers on my route. This thing was even heavier when I first started."

"Thanks for stopping by," said Dan, shaking his hand, followed by the others. "We'll be sure to practise the massage techniques you showed us. Strained muscles are a part of farm work." The hungry look that Greta gave him did not pass unnoticed.

"I hope you make it to Magwitch before the storm does," said Bill as he opened the door.

"Me too," the Healer replied, stepping outside and turning. "I have my Ward to keep the wind off me and the lovely sweater to keep me warm, so I'll be all right even if it ambushes me." The door was hastily closed because the wind, albeit still light, was cold, and he turned and walked down the long driveway before stopping at the Magwitch Road. With a final wave in the direction of the house, he turned and began to walk, the light tapping of his staff on the frozen ground marking his progress.

The breeze was coming from the southwest, was cold, and smelled of rain. The centre of the storm was going to pass to the north, somewhere between Magwitch and the Capital, and the really cold air would sweep in behind it. It promised to be one of those that started with rain, then progressed through various combinations of water and ice to snow. The Healer figured that he had a couple of hours of wiggle room in his walk to Magwitch, and he intended to make the most of it, settling into the cadence that maximized speed while minimizing energy, as much as the frozen, frequently rutted, road would allow. Normally, he walked past the Provis Town Cemetery, about a mile out of town, without a second glance, but today he saw smoke wafting across the road from a fire in the grounds. Intrigued, he walked in on the wide entrance road and made his way through the rows of gravestones to the part that was still accepting new arrivals. A simple pine casket lay on the ground next to the fire, which had been carefully laid to cover a rectangular area that was the size of a plot, and probably not by coincidence.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he addressed the two burly men, who were dressed in warm, worn coats, hats, boots, gloves, and heavy trousers. A pair of shovels, a pair of picks, and a pair of long straps made up the collection. "You are the first signs of life I've seen here since I started walking this route. What's with the fire?"

"You must be one of the Healers," replied the taller one, who had a rough blond beard and mild green eyes. "You deal with the living, trying to keep them from coming to us." They both chuckled, rather more theatrically than necessary, Harold thought, suppressing an eye roll.

"I'm Harold Moser, Senior Healer of the Order of St. Thrimble," he introduced himself. Dave Skolnik was the one who'd first spoken; the other was Joe Green.

"We're thawing the ground so we can plant this fellow before the storm comes," replied Joe in a surprisingly deep voice. He had black hair in a pony tail, dark brown eyes, and a black beard liberally sprinkled with gray. "The picks don't do too well otherwise."

"That makes sense," Harold replied, walking around and examining it with a professional eye. The fire had now burned down to mostly embers and ash. "The vast majority of burials that I've participated in were in warmer climes in warmer times, and the hole had always been ready ahead of time, with no sign of the people who'd made it possible." He leaned on his staff and looked off into the distance, before turning back to them as they poked and stirred the embers. "Gentlemen, you and your brethren are the unsung heroes of the end-of-life. Nobody sees you or hears you, and your work goes unrecognized." He gave them a respectful bow, rather carefully because of the heavy load on his back, that they received in some surprise. "I should get on my way. I have to get to Magwitch before the storm hits." He turned to go.

"Wait a moment," said Dave tentatively. Harold stopped and turned back. "This is, or was, Paul Marchand," the man said, pointing to the casket. "He died about a month ago, but nobody knew until a bill collector came out to his farm and found his remains in his kitchen chair with half a cup of coffee on the table. He must have had a heart attack or something. Anyway, he'd always kept to himself. We don't know if he had a family or anything, but we have to plant him before the storm hits."

"Would you care to say a few words for him, Healer Harold?" Joe asked, stirring the remains of the fire. "Seeing as there's nobody else to?" They saw his gaze shift far away in distance, far away in time, as the words, so often spoken, returned as fresh as they had been on the battlefield.

"Paul Marchand, I wish you all the peace and happiness in the next life that you didn't have in this one. In the name of the Goddess, I give your remains back to the Earth so that your spirit may walk amongst the stars until it returns to a new life here." They removed their hats and bowed their heads and Harold saluted him in the military way, with his right fist over his heart. After a few moments, they looked up and put their hats on against the chilling breeze. "The Engineering Mage in my unit in the Carcosa campaign taught us a spell that helps move earth by doubling the capacity of a shovel but not increasing the weight. If you like, I can cast it and Ward you against the wind."

"Sure thing," said Dave, "anything that will get us home faster. And we've never seen real Magic at work before." They got the shovels and Harold cleared his mind, recalled the spell that hadn't been used for so long, and cast it. The shovels started glowing a dull red and blue shifting pattern.

"That's pretty cool," said Joe, who usually was not impressed by anything. "Let's give it a try, Dave." Harold got out of the way to give them room and wove a Ward on their windward side, which greatly helped against the cold. The two gravediggers were quite surprised to see that the spell worked as advertised, perhaps even a little better, and within half an hour they had a hole four feet deep and a big pile of soil next to it. "I think that'll do," he said, puffing hard from the work and looking at the sky, which had somehow become even more gloomy. "Let's put him in and be done with it." They got the straps under the casket, maneuvered it over the hole with grunts of exertion, lowered it in, then pulled the straps out. Harold got his staff and tapped the casket three times.

"Mighty or weak, we all wind up back in the soil," he said the final words as the others began shoveling the dirt back into the hole, the loads hitting the casket with hollow thuds. "Come back again, and may your future be better than your past." He saluted again, then put on his pack, which he'd taken off, with a grunt. "Gentlemen, may the Goddess guard your steps, and those of your families." He saluted them, and they returned it. "Maybe I'll see you again."

"Thank you, Healer Harold," said Dave. "Maybe we will." They returned to their job, and Harold walked away through the cemetery and back to the waiting road. Though the road's unevenness required some care, the empty fields and leafless forests had little to attract his attention, and as usual when he was walking, his mind wandered.

An Enchantment is a self-sustaining spell that draws the energy required to sustain it from the Natural or Magical Environment, rather than some or all of it from the caster. Mages with the true knack for Enchantment were a rarity, always in high demand, and often made major contributions to the field. About sixty years ago, Nora Patterson figured out how to bind Purify Water to a section of pipe and use the kinetic energy of the flowing water to power it. Suddenly, the Capital's sometimes unreliable water supply from wells could be drawn from the infinite supply of the ocean with the aid of the then-nascent steam engine pumps. Even more significant was the ability to clean the water from the sewers so that the harbour would not be too foul to even consider using. Of course, the filth had to go somewhere, and suitable spots downwind of the cities were found and engineered to contain, process, and eventually tame it. As news and applications spread rapidly through the world, water-borne diseases dropped sharply and average lifespans improved. Nora's portrait hung front and center in the main halls of all of the Mage Academies and she had been able to research many more advances in the field with the money she had been given by grateful nations.

He was one of the many whose abilities did not lean towards Enchantment, but reading of Nora's paper on that spell had led him down a path that had resulted in his finding a way to enhance the Ward spell so that it could absorb kinetic energy from wind and rain, and incidentally kicks from uncooperative horses and livestock, and weapons wielded by hostile people. He'd gotten an A+ in his Year 9 Independent Research project, several awards, including some surprises from foreign realms, and eventually its success led to him and the other Mages all but shitting their pants as they led a desperate cavalry charge against the forces of the Yellow Autarch of Carcosa. Because of the Autarch's repression of anything Magical in favour of his "Religion" (save for the water purification pipes which even he wasn't stupid enough to destroy), his army had not had anything to deal with the Ward Wedges that had smashed the lines and allowed the "real" cavalry and charging foot soldiers to destroy the position in a muddy, bloody cacophony of death and destruction. The many burials over which the Mages had presided came later after the last resistance in the city had been finally overcome.

The freshening southwesterly wind had finally reached the point at which it could support his Ward completely, which made him a lot warmer. He still had to leave the area from just below his boot tops to the ground uncovered so that the air inside would remain fresh. Four hours of walking and melancholy thoughts brought him to the halfway point and it was well past time to eat his sandwiches. He sought shelter in a half-ruined old barn several feet off the road. After a much-needed piss against the lee wall, he made his way inside to eat his lunch, allowing his pack to slide off his back to land with a thud on one of the few patches of dirt that weren't covered with some sort of rubbish. The gloom from the outside through the door hole hardly made an impression on the shadows and murk within. With a groan, he sat next to his pack and opened the top to retrieve the two sandwiches, which were generous portions of smoked beef, cheese, and preserved tomato between thick slices of brown bread. The first one disappeared quickly, washed down by generous swigs of water from the canteen that he'd kept under his coat to keep its contents from freezing.

"Thank you, Willa," he said to himself. He had just lifted the second one and opened his mouth for the first bite when he heard a whimper from nearby. "Who's there?" he demanded, looking and not seeing anything, then conjuring a moderately bright Mage Light to combat the darkness of the building. The head of a dog had emerged from under a pile of debris about three feet away, and it was soon followed by the rest of it. It was medium-sized, dirty, wet, and thin, and the extended teats and bulging belly required no veterinarian skills to tell him that it was a female, and very close to her time to give birth.

"You poor thing," he said softly, noting how her dark brown eyes were fixed on his sandwich. She whimpered again, licked her lips, and made a tentative step forward. "Come here, I won't hurt you." He tossed a piece of meat at her and it was snapped out of the air and devoured. A piece of cheese met a similar fate as the dog came close enough for him to pet her head. She leaned into an ear scratch and gratefully accepted another piece of meat. "You're a total mess," he said. He stood up and gently pushed the dog a couple of feet away, walked back to his pack, and adjusted his Ward. Then he hit the dog with a combination of Clean and Banish Water, causing a big spray of filthy water to shoot through the dilapidated barn. The dog shook herself, happy to be rid of it. He followed up with Flea Buster, which poofed her medium-length black, white, and tan fur out and sent a large number of smoking sparks in all directions. Worm Buster was cast on the last piece of meat that was eagerly devoured. She was not in the least bit interested in the apples, so he ate them, knowing that he'd need all the food he could get.

"Let's have a look inside," he continued, casting the Window and giving her a quick once-over. Five puppies were waiting to be born, but aside from that, her state of near-starvation, and the worms in her gut that were rapidly being annihilated by the spell, she seemed healthy enough.

"Now, how am I going to get you home?" he asked himself as the dog lumbered up to him and stuck her nose in his crotch. "There's no need for that!" He could see hope in her eyes, which had likely been a non-existent commodity in her short life. "You are too big and heavy to carry." There was no way she could walk all the way in her condition. The air had just come alive with the sounds of rain and sleet striking the walls and what was left of the roof and dripping down into the structure. After weighing a number of options, he decided on Air Sled, which was a variant of the Ward, except that it was a shelf parallel to the ground whose height could be adjusted as needed.

"How would you like a ride home with me?" he asked the dog, which sat back on her haunches and scratched herself. With words and gestures, he cast the spell, making a platform large enough to hold the dog and his pack, shading it gray so she could see it. The loud pop it made as it appeared made the dog jump back and bark at it in alarm. When nothing else happened, she stopped and carefully approached, sniffed at it, then looked at Harold and made an inquisitive whine.

"Get on. That's your ride." She was reluctant to get too near this strange thing that had appeared out of nowhere, so Harold had grab her and put her onto it. He felt an initial drain on his energy as the platform adjusted to the dog's weight, but the spell used the same trick as his Ward in using the force being applied against it to mostly power it. He closed his pack and added it to the platform, then extended his Ward to cover it and himself. "You may be wondering why I don't use this for my backpack all the time," he said conversationally as he elevated the platform to chest level, causing more energy drain, and pushed it through the doorway into the storm. The dog looked around in wonder as rain and sleet washed off the Ward and the wind blew around the protective bubble, then laid her head down to rest peacefully, perhaps for the first time in her life.

"I don't know if it's the interaction between the force of gravity and being pushed, or the planet's magnetic field that interacts with its forward motion, or some other damn thing. Either way, it means that after a while the spell destabilizes and starts draining more and more energy from me until I have to cut it off. Moving at about this pace," which was a brisk walk, made treacherous by frozen ruts that were filling with slush, "maximizes the distance that I can travel." As Harold had intended, the dog was now sound asleep, which he figured was as good a way as any to delay the start of labour.

The Healer balanced his staff across the front of the Sled and slogged on through the storm, carefully monitoring the flows of energy in his spells, siphoning some from the Ward as it was collected from the wind and precipitation and putting it either into himself or the Sled. "There's got to be some way to keep this stable," he muttered as he felt and directed the various energies. "Can't I make some sort of negative feedback to dampen the oscillations? Anything?" The Air Sled Problem was always presented in third-year Air Spells class as being unsolvable "as far as we know, but if you do solve it, there's a huge prize in it for you." There was a long list of "conventional approaches" and their variations that had failed, but had at least managed to extend the life of the spell by varying degrees. There was a shorter list of "unconventional approaches" and their variations, some of which extended the life of the spells and several others which had created trips to the Infirmary for either the casters or nearby unfortunates, including him.

"Why can't we just make a horizontal Ward?" Harold complained after another mile had passed, as many others had over many years, as he made his way along the middle of the road. He had no worry about encountering traffic. Hell, the stagecoach that ran a similar route to the one he walked never seemed to run at the time he needed it. "Because the mathematics won't allow it," he replied in a mocking falsetto. "The Ward won't work at an angle less than 45 degrees and it took mathematicians and physicists a hundred years to prove why," he continued, changing his voice to mimic one of the Professors back in his day. The dog moaned quietly and kicked a bit, obviously dreaming. "We can't use The Cheat on Levitation." The Cheat is the twist that allows environmental energy to be used to at least partially power a spell.