“The hand that heals must first understand what it touches.”
— An Elune teaching
The following morning, Khepri found himself studying a skull that had already suffered a great deal at his hands.
He had studied skull anatomy seventeen times: once with permission, and sixteen times using the teaching shelter’s anatomical model without asking. Several of its removable pieces had gone missing during his attempt to construct a mechanical bird.
The bird had failed to fly. The model had required extensive repairs. Aunt Sẹ́ni had suggested that his own head might serve for the next lesson.
The teaching skull now wore replacement hinges in three different colours, and Khepri knew exactly whose fault that was.
“Khepri,” called Physician Màíra, “since you’re so interested in the brain, tell us what you’re looking at.”
He turned to find every apprentice in the shelter watching him.
“The brain.”
Màíra rested her wooden pointer against the table. “That is a label, not an explanation.”
“I thought you wanted its name.”
A few students laughed. Màíra waited until Khepri’s satisfaction with the joke faded.
“Explain its work.”
He faced the model. Coloured lines mapped the folded surface of the brain; narrower cords ran through the neck into the spinal column.
“It takes information from the senses, stores memories and helps control movement. Nerves carry the signals between the brain and the rest of the body.”
“And Chi?”
“Chi can support bodily function, but it doesn’t replace the nervous system.”
Màíra raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”
He considered a quick answer about movement, then discarded it. The body was more complicated than that.
“Someone can have strong Chi circulation and a damaged nerve. I’d check both before deciding why an arm won’t move.”
“Correct. Why did your mechanical bird require the model’s left temporal section?”
The other apprentices laughed.
Khepri stared at her. “That seems unrelated.”
“Does it?”
“The hinge was unusually well made.”
“And how did you return it?”
“In pieces,” Khepri conceded.
“Six pieces,” Màíra corrected. “Sit down.”
He returned to the bench beside Simi, her black braids gathered neatly behind her head. She had his deep-brown skin and thoughtful dark eyes, set in a softly oval face, though the amusement shining in hers was entirely her own.
“As my older sister,” he whispered, “you should defend me.”
“Against the evidence?” she whispered back.
At fifteen, Simi enjoyed reminding him that she had five more years’ experience of the world. Khepri considered this a thin basis for superiority, especially when she used it to side with his teachers.
Around them, students of several ages waited with writing boards on their laps. Some boards bore old repairs and initials carved by apprentices who had trained here long before them. Their earrings showed which were still Roots and which had begun serving the clan as Branches. Khepri and Simi both wore theirs on the left.
Màíra placed a hand beside the model.
“When we examine someone who cannot move an arm, the arm may not be the source of the problem. The injury might lie in a nerve, the spinal cord or the brain. Different causes can produce similar signs.”
An apprentice at the front lifted his hand. “Wouldn’t examining the Chi circulation tell us?”
“It would tell us about the circulation. The nerves require a separate examination.”
She moved to a bronze instrument mounted on a second table. Translucent lenses nested above a small Chi stone, each ring of the housing capable of turning independently.
“What if circulation appears normal?” she asked.
“Then the injury isn’t related to Chi?”
“Not necessarily. The injury could lie elsewhere, or the instrument could be misaligned. A reading is evidence. It does not replace an examination.”
Khepri leaned forward.
The instrument was beautiful and irritating. Three rotating assemblies surrounded the lens chamber, two of them apparently performing the same adjustment. He raised his hand.
“Why do the outer rings turn separately?”
“To view different depths and orientations.”
“Wouldn’t one ring do?”
Màíra stepped aside. “Come and test that theory.”
Simi caught his sleeve as he rose.
“Don’t dismantle it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“That’s what you said about the skull.”
He gave her a wounded look and hurried forward.
Beneath the instrument lay a prepared specimen. Màíra guided the inner ring, and pale structures appeared under the lens, enlarged by a controlled current of Chi.
Khepri turned one outer ring. The image changed direction and several details sharpened. He adjusted the second, expecting another change of angle.
For anyone checking provenance, this was copied from the author's page without approval; reading the chapter there supports the person who wrote it.
Instead, structures that had overlapped became distinct.
He tried again. With the first ring fixed, the second brought a different layer into focus. If both assemblies moved together, the information would overlap once more.
“Oh.”
Màíra watched him. “Still want to remove a ring?”
“Yes,” he said automatically, then considered. “No. Not that one.”
“Why?”
“Because the adjustments perform different jobs. My version would be simpler to build and worse at measuring.”
“Precisely.”
He bent towards the lens again. The design no longer looked wasteful. Its separate movements served a purpose he had overlooked.
He checked the independent rings once more. One of the joints was finer than anything he could currently make with Assembly. He resolved to find its maker.
* * *
By midday, the heat beneath the woven teaching roof was oppressive. The apprentices had moved from anatomical models to specimens, nerve pathways and methods of comparing ordinary physical observations with patterns in Chi veins.
When the others began packing their boards, Khepri returned to the diagnostic instrument.
Màíra spotted him before he reached it.
“What now?”
“How do you know it stays aligned?”
“We test it against references.”
“What if a reference is wrong?”
“Then the test can be wrong.”
Khepri frowned. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It is. Especially if the physician trusts the reading more than the patient.”
He examined the bronze housing.
“Could it correct its own alignment?”
“How?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then perhaps you should learn.”
He looked up. “May I take it apart?”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that he almost laughed.
Màíra opened a cabinet. “We have a retired instrument in storage. You may examine it under supervision, once you can explain what a failed measurement would mean for a patient.”
Khepri considered the offer.
“So I learn how it measures before I touch the parts?”
“You have already damaged one model.”
“Would the retired instrument have the same outer rings?”
“The same design, with different wear. Learn to measure it before you adjust anything.”
She returned to her work while Khepri left the shelter with an entirely new problem to solve.
* * *
Simi found him beneath the great tree beside the Elune wagons. His resonance reader lay open across his knees; a delicate ring of silver fragments hovered above his palm.
“Khepri.”
He startled. The fragments fell. One struck his forehead.
“Ow.”
Simi sat beside him. “How much Chi have you used today?”
“Not much.”
She inspected his unsteady fingers.
“Then why are your fingers shaking?”
“I’ve been working on it since the lesson.”
She did not reward that answer.
He gathered the fragments, this time without calling on his Spark, and fitted the little ring into the reader’s housing.
“Didn’t you repair that yesterday?” she asked.
“The needle moves, but the housing catches if I turn it sideways.”
“Was the repair bad?”
“No.”
“Then why—”
“The ring holds at one angle. If I change its seat, it should hold at all of them.”
He turned the instrument. Its needle slid smoothly from one mark to another. He looked pleased enough that she could not bring herself to scold him further.
“Are you going to become a craftsman?” she asked.
“Possibly.”
“Like Ibara?”
“I want to understand how she measures the load before she cuts anything.”
“Ask her. She’ll tell you exactly what you’ve missed.”
“I will. After I finish this.”
Simi watched him examine the reader. His hands settled whenever he concentrated on a mechanism. It was strange, she thought, that someone could spend hours adjusting one tiny part and still refuse to fold his bedding properly.
“Have you thought about medicine?” she asked.
“I like the instruments. I haven’t decided about treating patients.”
“I mean treating people.”
“Of course I want to help people.”
“Then why are you always happier with an instrument than with a patient?”
He glanced up. “The pain isn’t always where the problem starts.”
“And machines aren’t?”
“With a mechanism, I can check the pieces. With a person, I’m frightened of missing something.”
She gave him a look.
“I don’t know enough yet,” he admitted.
“You don’t have to decide your whole life at ten.”
“I know. I still want to understand all of it.”
“Everything?”
“As much as possible.”
Simi laughed. “Then you had better start by learning how to rest.”
Their conversation ended when a woman cried out from the southern road.
A boy stumbled beside her, one hand pressed to his head. Two men followed carrying his belongings. People made way as the group approached the medical shelter.
Simi stood.
“Khepri, put your tools away.”
He looked towards the newcomers. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She was already running.
* * *
The boy was called Meka. He was twelve, slight, with warm-brown skin, short curls and wide eyes that wandered uncertainly around the shelter. He had fallen on the stone steps above the southern orchards and become confused on the way to Elune.
Simi helped his mother settle him on an examination couch. The boy was conscious but slow to answer, and his left arm moved differently from his right.
“Where did you fall?” Simi asked.
“Near the house.”
“Which house?”
“The one with the wall.”
His mother shook her head. “The orchard steps. He was climbing near the upper terrace.”
Meka touched the bandage on his forehead, troubled by the disagreement.
“Did you lose consciousness?” Simi asked his mother.
“They found him lying still. We don’t know how long he’d been there.”
“Has he been sick?”
“Twice.”
Simi kept her face composed. That morning’s diagrams had been so orderly. She wished the boy on the bed would hold still long enough for one of them to make sense.
“Meka, lift both hands for me.”
He raised the right at once. The left followed only partway.
“Again, please.”
He tried, frowned and lowered it.
Simi’s heartbeat quickened.
Physician Tàlé entered as she reached for another question. His grey hair was braided close to his head, above a narrow, medium-brown face. His slight shoulders made him look less imposing than Màíra, but his calm manner was a comfort to apprentices and patients alike.
Simi gave her report without embellishment. The fall. The altered memory. The weakness. The vomiting. She specified what the mother had seen and what nobody yet knew.
Tàlé checked Meka’s responses and asked for the larger diagnostic lens.
Its bronze frame was heavier than the teaching model, but the rings worked in the same way. Simi watched as he examined one orientation and then turned the outer assembly to separate the overlapping details.
He did not rush.
“Meka,” he said at last, “what’s your mother’s name?”
The boy looked at her.
For a moment, he almost smiled.
Then his face changed.
His mother leaned closer. “Meka?”
He could not answer.
Tàlé lowered the instrument.
“Simi, please bring Màíra and Sẹ́ni. Tell them Meka’s responses are getting worse.”
She ran.
The market was still full of people. Cooking smoke drifted between the wagons, and children chased one another beside the well. The ordinary sounds seemed impossible beside the fear she had just left behind.
Sẹ́ni was treating a swollen wrist when Simi reached her.
“What happened?” she asked, seeing her expression.
Simi delivered the same report, careful to distinguish what she knew from what she suspected.
Sẹ́ni set down her instruments. “Go. I’m coming.”
Màíra was closing the teaching shelter when Simi found her. This time Simi included the weakness, repeated vomiting and uncertain period of unconsciousness without waiting to be asked.
Màíra listened, then moved at once.
Back at the medical shelter, Meka lay still on the couch. His mother stood beside him while Tàlé studied another reading.
Màíra took the diagnostic instrument.
“Opposite orientation,” she said.
Tàlé adjusted the rings. The image changed. Neither physician spoke for several moments.
Then Màíra looked towards Sẹ́ni.
“I suspect bleeding inside the skull. The pressure may be increasing.”
Sẹ́ni nodded. “The signs are consistent.”
Meka made a faint sound. His mother caught his hand.
“Meka?”
He did not respond.
Tàlé assessed him again. “Prepare the surgical shelter.”
The attendants moved without argument.
Simi remained beside the mother, who seemed unable to follow how quickly the room had changed.
“But he was walking,” the woman said.
Tàlé crouched so he could speak to her at eye level.
“Some head injuries worsen after the fall. Someone may be able to talk and walk at first, then become much less responsive as pressure increases.”
“He knew who I was.”
“I understand.”
“Will he be all right?”
The question settled over the shelter.
Màíra joined them. “We believe an operation is his best chance. We have experienced physicians and the equipment to attempt it. We must act quickly.”
The mother looked from one physician to another.
“Can you promise he’ll recover?”
Màíra did not look away. “I can promise that we will use everything we know to help him. I cannot promise what happens afterward.”
For an instant the woman appeared unable to speak. Simi found a chair and helped her sit.
The mother gripped her hand.
“Please,” she whispered. “Help my son.”
“We will,” Màíra said.
Simi released the mother’s hand only when another healer took her place. The pressure of those fingers stayed with her.
She followed the physicians towards the next shelter, carrying the diagnostic instrument with both hands.