Agatha accepted the few coins the young woman placed carefully into her palm. The payment was small—barely enough to purchase the herbs Agatha had used—but she closed her fingers around the coins as though the woman had given her something valuable.
Across the room, the young mother’s little boy slept peacefully beneath a thin woolen blanket. His cheeks were no longer flushed with fever, and the painful wheezing that had filled his lungs only a day earlier had finally disappeared. His breathing was now slow and even. Healthy.
Agatha smiled as she watched the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Only yesterday, the child had been too weak to open his eyes. His mother had carried him through the rain, crying and begging Agatha to save him after the village healer admitted there was nothing m
