It worked! With a gasp, she saw the world about her as a web of light and energy. She got up and went to the window that overlooked her garden; it was unbelievable! And not only could she see the light, but -
“I can tell which plants aren’t doing well!” she exclaimed.
“And if I were ill, you would see that,” Nightwind agreed. “Now I want you to touch the place where the light is strongest - no, with your mind, not your hand! Touch it, and bring it into yourself. Here, watch me.”
Obediently, Keisha used this new sight to watch her teacher; it took some time before she caught the trick of what Nightwind was doing, but when she tried it tentatively, she had yet another surprise.
Not suddenly, but slowly, gently, a warmth and well-being began to fill her, in a way that defied description. The closest was to sitting by a warm fire on a cold night, or in the sunshine on a spring day after a long, hard winter. It was not a rush of feeling. This was more like the easy misting of a good, soaking rain, permeating the thirsting earth. It filled places she hadn’t known were empty until now.
Nightwind said nothing, waiting as Keisha sat with closed eyes, very nearly in a trance. Finally it was Keisha herself, feeling that she had been “filled” to capacity, who opened her eyes and spoke.
“What did I just do?”
“What every Healer does; you replenished yourself from the earth,” Nightwind told her. “Now, the next thing you need to know, and urgently, is how to shield. This will put a barrier between you and other people. If you are going to stay sane, you will have to make this as much a part of you as breathing, and only let it down when you want and need to, in order to sense what is wrong with a patient. Now - here I put an artificial “edge” around you. See it?”
It was a “thickening” of the glow around her, as thin as a piece of paper. Keisha nodded.
“Now take your own energy, and put it there. Make it into armor - make it tough, flexible, and strong. Concentrate! Make it tough enough to keep me out of you. I will begin pushing on it, and you must keep me out.”
Impossible to describe in words, except the ones that Nightwind had just used - but very real and very palpable - Keisha “felt” the barrier she was creating. As she made it stronger, she “felt” something outside of it, pushing on it; in response, she poured more of her energy into it. She sensed it trying to tear a hole in the barrier, she responded by doing something she couldn’t even have described, making the outside slippery, too slippery to catch hold of. The presence outside changed tactics, hammering blows on barrier; rather than hardening it, she responded by making it elastic, giving under the blows and absorbing the force.
Nightwind laughed, and the force vanished. Keisha waited.
“That was very good for a beginner,” Nightwind said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “In fact, I suspect that you have been doing something all along, learning how to partially shield just under the pressure of the people around you. That would also be typical for a partly trained Healer. Leave the barrier in place, Keisha. You need it.”
Keisha had been about to try to make the barrier go away, and obediently left it alone.
“Now drop your Oversight; just look at the world again.”
Keisha had to close her eyes to do that, but after a moment of effort, when she opened them again, the world went back to looking normal. Nightwind smiled cheerfully.
“This will be much easier than either of us thought,” she assured Keisha. “So - pack up enough for a trip of a few days. You will be coming back to k’Valdemar Vale with us.” She actually grinned as Keisha’s mouth dropped. “Oh, you are about to receive some very intense training! And do not worry about your village; we will make certain that if you are needed, we will have you here in time to help. And this is a better compromise, I think, than sending you far away to the great Collegium. Yes?”
Keisha could only nod dumbly. After all, hadn’t this been what she wanted? Now she would actually get the training she needed without having to leave the area.
But going to live with Hawkbrothers - She could hardly imagine it. And what would the villagers say?
Mum is going to have a litter of kittens.
“I am going to rejoin the rest of our group,” Nightwind told her. “I will inform your Mayor and so forth that you will be coming with us when we leave.”
Well, at least I won’t have to!
“I will tell him that this is also at the orders of Healer Gil and Lord Breon,” Nightwind added, and her eyes twinkled with suppressed laughter. “I suspect that will put an end to any objections before they start. Pack carefully. Take only what you think you most will need and will not find in our Vale. We will take care of most everything, even clothing, if you like. I will come get you when we are ready to leave.”
With that, Nightwind rose and left, leaving Keisha feeling as if a real wind had blown in, turned everything upside down, and left again.
But, oh - it felt so good!
Keisha decided that the most important things to pack were her books - the ones that had baffled and frustrated her for so long. Hopefully Nightwind would be able to explain them as well as she had explained shielding She wrapped them carefully, then packed up enough of her clothing for a few days, and as an afterthought, added her workbasket. She doubted that she’d have any time to do any fancy work, but if she found herself with time on her hands and nothing to do, she’d be angry at herself for not bringing it.
That didn’t take very long, and she looked around for anything else to take with her. Plants? Seeds? Presumably the Hawkbrothers had plenty of medicinal plants of their own -
The Herbal. We can compare notes, and if they don’t have some of my plants, we can get young plants out of the garden when they bring me back.
So into the bag of books went the Herbal, and she considered bringing a gift with her. After all, that was the only polite thing for a guest to do, bring a guesting-gift. But what could she bring that they didn’t already have and plenty of it? “
The scarlet dye! After all, everyone liked a good, strong scarlet, and she had a brand-new cake, bought at a very generous discount, besides the ample portion left from her experiments. She wrapped the cake carefully in paper then in a scrap of cloth, and tucked that in with the rest.
With nothing more that she could think of, she went out to set up the garden to take care of itself for a few days. She and the potter had an arrangement. All of the big storage jars that came out of the kiln with hairline cracks became hers, and she tested them to ensure that the leaks were very slow indeed. Then she moved them into the garden and placed them at intervals along the rows of plants. Normally she kept them covered and empty, but if she knew she was going to be busy for several days running, she filled them with water and left them. The slow leaks would drip water into the ground, keeping the plants watered without her needing to ask someone to tend them.