Chapter
41
The Healer of the Mountain Woods
And perhaps in this is the whole difference;
perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed
into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of
the invisible. – Joseph Conrad
The amount of the universe a human can
experience is statistically, like, zero percent. You’ve got this huge universe,
trillions of trillions of miles of empty space between galaxies, and all a
human can perceive is a little tunnel a few feet wide and a few feet long in
front of our eyes. So he says we don’t really live in the universe at all, we
live inside our brains. All we can see is like a blurry little pinhole in a
blindfold, and the rest is filled in by our imagination. So whatever we think
of the world, whether you think the world is cruel or good or cold or hot or
wet or dry or big or small, that comes entirely from inside your head and
nowhere else. – David
Wong
Regenulfa waited for Ugar, but his time he
was not coming alone. He was bringing
his sick mother. So the daughter of
Merovingian kings was much closer to civilization than she had grown accustomed
to in the long days since she had fled from Carcassonne, as she knew a sick
woman could not make the journey into the deep woods where she called
home. They had selected the spot
together, she and Ugar, as one being not so far and not too near: A small clearing two thirds of the way up a
mountain several miles from Ugar from the waterfall which she had considered
the boundaries of her wild kingdom. She
petted a young hare as she waited, exchanging woodland gossip with her furry
friend to pass the time.
She heard Ugar’s call before his
coming. Regenulfa gulped hard to calm
her quaking nerves. She who lived
unaided in the forest, who counted bear and wild boar amongst her closest
friends, was afraid of a middle aged woman.
She chuckled at the realization.
She straightened her leafy gown and prepared to meet her first human
patient.
Ugar greeted her warmly, but not quite so
as was their normal manner. His mother
looked at her fearfully, as though she was some spirit of the forest. She had not wanted to do this, but Ugar had
begged her. She bowed her head to the
woman in greetings. Ugar’s mother looked
pale and tired. Her eyes were deep set
and her cheek bones protruded from her face in a ghastly manner. She clearly had been sicker than she had let
Ugar know.
Regenulfa addressed the woman in French,
the language Ugar used. “Please dear
lady, please come and sit next to me here.”
Suspiciously and casting worried looks back
at her son, the ill mother made her way towards the woodland healer.
“What ails you, madam?”
Saying nothing, the woman pulled down her cloak
and gown exposing a breat with a deep wound and tumor. Regenulfa immediately placed both her hands
gently over the wound and concentrated.
“Holy Father, Lord God, Master of All
Things, I beseech you to cure this woman.
She recited the Lord’s Prayer as her mother had taught her in the Vulgar
French. Ugar’s mother was awestruck to
hear the words, and recognized them, though she had only heard them in Latin
previously. The princess held her hands
more and more firmly over the wound, and repeated the prayer as though it were
a mantra.
“Thy will be done on Earth, as it is in
Heaven,” she concluded after twenty minutes of this.
She removed her hands. There was no trace of wound or tumor. Ugar’s mother, whose color quickly returned
to her complexion and whose appearance looked less gaunt, gasped in
amazement. Ugar’s jaw dropped. His mother fell on her knees, crying in
Regenulfa’s lap, tears of joy, or wonder.
Ugar likewise fell to his knees.
Tears streamed down his face. He
looked up at her and mouthed, “Thank you.”
copyright 2017 Diana Hignutt
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