Handling Herbs

Broken Herbs

Kat gently stroked her calf's head, resting on her knee, as she slowly blended some herbs into a soft paste. She unwrapped the bandage from the calf's leg, carefully worked the paste over the healing gash, and wrapped a fresh bandage around the wound.

The calf sighed, a high-pitched trill Kat found endearing and reassuring.

"Hey, Big Sister Kat."

She looked up, to find the boy standing at the edge of her stall. "I thought you had decided to go to class."

"Nah. I wanted to help you. Here." He thrust a smashed pile of herbs at her, most of the plants mangled beyond easy recognition. "It's an old family recipe we use when our animals are sick."

Kat eyed the pile. If she could identify more of the plants, she might have felt better. But old folk remedies were just that - old, abandoned recipes. Jonah's experiment to save old Gnelli several minutes earlier seemed proof of that.

But as the boy stood there, hand still out, Kat thought about Minde and her farmgirl knowledge. Tentatively, she sniffed. She couldn't even smell the herbs just a few feet from her. "If they were whole, maybe we could do something with them..."

"No, this is what we do, just like you did with that paste." He shoved the herbs at her face.

She still couldn't smell them, but she took them gingerly, trying to not further destroy the plants. The stems on most of them were broken, snapped in such a way she wasn't sure she'd be able to get anything useful from them. "Is that what you do with it? Mash them up into a paste?"

The boy nodded eagerly.

Kat sifted through the plants with her finger. If what he said was true, then he should have known she couldn't use damaged plants. Whatever essence had been in these plants had likely drained out all over the boy's hand. "All right. I've just cleaned the wound, so I really don't want to do anything else at the moment. But I'll keep them for this afternoon. Thank you."

The boy scowled for a moment, and then, "The herbs might not work if you let them lay around cut all day."

"It will just be until after lunch. I'll wrap them up so they'll be fine." If the boy knew herbs weren't effective long beyond their cutting, why didn't he know better than to maul them?

"Okay," the boy responded sullenly. "See you later, Big Sister Kat, and good luck."

"Thank you," she set the herbs down, far away from her animals, and threw her bag over them for good measure. Then she sat there and stroked the calf, who was twitching for a moment before settling back down under Kat's attention.

=====

When Minde stopped by to check on Jonah, Kat waved her over and showed her the pile, "You know old remedies. Do you recognize any of these herbs?"

Minde sorted through the herbs, turning some over to get a better look. "Have you used these already?"

"No, they were brought to me like that."

"Brought to you?"

"Yeah, there's a first year running around. But there's something off about him."

"Yeah?" Minde pulled out one herb, and gave it a good shake before smelling it.

"Yeah. Like he wants to be nice and helpful, but he claims to have come from a family that relies on old remedies..."

Minde caught on, "...but doesn't know how to handle materials." Kat nodded. "And he doesn't know his herbs. This one," she shook the isolated herb again, "would have killed your calf. It causes a... severe gastronomic purge... I think that's what our professors would call it."

"He tried to kill my calf?" Kat sputtered. "Why would he..."

Minde shrugged, "I don't know, but maybe we should tell the professors."

"And warn Jonah. This kid is particularly interested in Jonah."

"Who isn't?" Minde winked. "Do you want me to get rid of these?"

"No," Kat gently shifted the calf's head to the ground and stood up. "We should take those to...somebody... If this boy's walking around handing out deadly herbs as a remedy, someone has to talk to him about why that's not funny. And if he did it deliberately..." Kat closed her eyes, unwilling to think about that.

"Don't worry. We won't let him get away with this, one way or the other."