The Hollow

The cottage sat at the edge of the village, tucked between a grove of silver-barked elderwood trees and a stream that sang day and night over smooth stones. It was not much to look at—weathered gray stone, a roof patched with moss, smoke curling from a crooked chimney—but it was home. Sheraya knelt beside a cot in the back room, her hands pressed to the chest of a young Fae soldier. Her hair fell across her face as she worked—a cascade of reddish-brown shot through with strands of pure silver. It was a rare color, one that drew stares wherever she went. Fire and moonlight. She had never known where it came from. Her father, General Aldric, had silver at his temples but not in his youth. Her sister Nola had dark hair, ordinary and plain. But Sheraya's hair was different. It had always been different. She did not question it. She had learned not to question things. The soldier's breathing was shallow, ragged. A deep gash ran from his collarbone to his ribs, the flesh already turning black at the edges. Poison. She closed her eyes and listened—not with her ears, but with something deeper. Something she had never been able to name. There. The wound. The torn muscle. The poison crawling through his blood like living things. Her light brown eyes opened. Warm. Honey in sunlight. They were not the eyes of a warrior or a noble. They were the eyes of a healer—soft but observant. She saw more than she should. She always had. She reached for the jar of crushed moonfern and silverroot on the table beside her, mixed a pinch into a bowl of warm water, and began to work. Her fingers moved with a certainty that surprised even her sometimes, pressing the poultice into the wound, feeling the flesh begin to knit beneath her palms. "You have a gift," the soldier's mother whispered from the doorway. Her name was Elara, and she had walked three days to bring her son to the healer everyone whispered about. Sheraya did not look up. "I have steady hands and good herbs." "That is not all you have, child." Sheraya said nothing. She had heard such words before. She did not believe them. She was nobody. A healer in a small village, raised by a father who never spoke of his past. She had no magic—or so she believed. Just a skill for healing that she could not explain and did not question. The soldier gasped as the last of the poison was drawn from his blood. The black edges of the wound faded to pink. Fresh skin began to form. Sheraya sat back on her heels, wiping her hands on a cloth. "He will live. Keep him still for three days. Change the dressing each morning with the salve I will give you." Elara wept with relief. She pressed a pouch of coins into Sheraya's hands—more than the work was worth—and promised to tell everyone she knew about the healer in the elderwood grove. Sheraya smiled, thanked her, and saw them to the door. When they were gone, she leaned against the doorframe and let out a long breath.