The pass

Straight up noon. Midsummers Day. The shadows lay like thin pools of night around the bases of the tree trunks. As small as they would ever be. Like silken gowns fallen from the shoulders of beloved ladies. A whole forest of them.

Hanemm laughed at the image in his head, then sobered. This was not brothel he imagined. It was only one woman, really. It was only one beloved woman, and he had just left her this morning. Miles now stretched between them. But so their livelihood demanded. She would keep the farm in good working order. He would carry these parchments, these books of jeweled pages, over the pass and down into the city. They had been apart many times; he made this journey twice every year, at Midsummer and in the late fall, just before the first heavy snows.

He nodded to the last of the shadow-footed ladies as he stepped across the tree line and trudged up the switchbacks to the pass. The trip was going according to plan. A little ahead of schedule, even. He would be in his lodgings and behind a tall cool ale all the sooner. As soon as he thought of this, he chided himself. This was just the kind of daydreaming that tempted fate. He focused his mind on the trail. He was puffing now at its steepness. He was a young man still, but this was the price for hours a day spent at his copy desk, staining his fingers with his wife’s perfect and beautiful inks.

The sun passed over the mountains in front of him and now shown upon his destination. Soon he would see the plain of many rivers spread out before him.

The grit of the trail crunched under his boots as his steps grew slower and slower. He was breathing heavily now, faster and faster. Louder than the wind moaning through the pass.

Moaning?

It wasn’t the wind.

His heart, already pounding from the climb, began to race. He stopped. Composed himself. Closed his eyes. Listened.

There it was, up among the first shadows of the pass. He walked on, more carefully now, as his mind warned of tricks played on gullible travelers by spirits he didn’t really believe in but seemed just a little more plausible at the moment. Tricks played by bandits were more likely, and didn’t require belief when there was so much experience to be had. But not usually in this part of the country. It was too remote and there was too little to steal.

He halted a few yards down from the narrow slot that marked the beginning of the pass and listened. Something didn’t feel right. The stone guardians on either side of the slot seemed to glow with a sickly red sheen. He’d sensed the presence of bandits waiting in ambush before, but he’d never seen anything like this. He was not a fighter and only carried a short knife. If bandits had really come to the pass, he would have to go back home and wait for a traveling party to join before risking the trip again. He started to turn back downhill.

“Don’t leave me! Please!” came a voice. His vision seemed to clear. The stone guardians looked as they always did, the dull gray of weathering granite.

Trick or no trick, and he might be the biggest fool on this side of the mountains, but he could not just ignore someone in need.

Just past the guardians, he a donkey lying on her side, one of her legs bent back unnaturally. And beside her wept an old man. Tears streaked his face and damped his beard. “Please!” he said again.

Hanemm realized that the man hadn’t even seen him, probably didn’t know he was there. He spoke to the donkey. The bent leg told the tale.

“Old father,” Hanemm called quietly. The man continued to weep. He stroked the donkey’s face and began to croon a lullaby.

“Old Father,” said Hanemm again. He walked around to the other side of the man to let him know he was there. The man showed no sign that he noticed him at all. Hanemm placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Sir—”

The man startled and half rose and captured Hanemm’s wrist in a grip like an iron band. Hanemm felt a tingle as if a small portion of vitality flowed out through his skin at the same time something flowed from the man into him. The man’s expression changed immediately and he opened his hand.

“Holy one, forgive me!” said the old man. “ I thought you were a bandit come to finish the job.”

Holy one? thought Hanemm, shaken by the sense of exchange. He rubbed his wrist where the man had gripped it. “I am no bandit,” he said. “Neither am I holy. But I do have some gift for healing. May I see if there is something I can do for your donkey?”

“I would be entirely in your debt if you could ease her passing.” Again his tears flowed.

“What is her name?”

“This is Morningstar. But she answers to Mora. Or just about any word spoken in love.”

Hanemm nodded and placed one hand on the Morningstar’s forehead and one over her heart. He felt her life ebbing away. He reached deeper and asked her where she wanted to go. Instantly his mind filled with pictures of green pastures, edged by distant fences. A full manger and a blanket. Hanemm nudged her mind and the image flowered into the face of the old man. A warmth suffused his awareness. With her permission he took one hand off her heart and placed it on her broken leg. He gently brought it back into alignment, then sank into the bone to knit the jagged edges back together smoothly. He cleared out the blood clots and reconnected the blood vessels, while soothing overstretched tendons.

“Rise, Mora,” Hanemm said as he leaned back on his heels and lowered his hands to the ground. He spread his fingers and raised his hands. And as he did, the donkey collected her legs beneath her and stood up. Shakily first, careful of her still-bloody leg, then all the way, firm, strong, and confident. She shook her head and butted her master lightly in the chest. The man reached into one of the saddle bags that he had removed from her back when she fell and pulled out a handful of grain. Hanemm opened his water jug and poured some into one of the old mans pans. Morningstar drank before lipping at the grain. The two men stood quietly as she whuffled and chewed.

Hanemm then hitched his pack up higher—he’d never even taken it off—and began to bid both man and donkey a good trip and safer travels.

“But no!” said the man. “We cannot simply part! You must have some reward. Let me see what I have that you may like.”

“No,” said Hanemm. “Do not reward me for a gift that was given to me by the gods. I earn nothing by putting it to use. But perhaps you could tell me how Mora came to be in this state. Were you attacked?” He looked around. There didn’t seem to be any sign of a fighting, and there was nowhere she could have fallen from to cause such an injury to her leg.

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Indeed. 

I see a slot cut through the stone ridge to make a level path. The sides are sheer, and there is no path on either side up above. Could the old man and donkey be bait set by bandits? The donkey would never be so affectionate toward the old man if he'd been the one to injure her. 

Could this be a telaportation gone wrong? Maybe she got splinched. What universe are we in, anyway?

A manuscript illuminator with healing powers? Living in the remote outback instead of in the city where he could be wealthy beyond imagining on the strength of his talents. 

Why not.