As curious as she was, Ebra asked no questions of Iza, and none of the other women had enough status to consider it. No one disturbed a medicine woman when she was obviously working her magic, and Iza was in no mood for idle gossip. Her concentration was directed at the child who needed her help. Creb was interested in the girl, too, but Iza welcomed his presence.
She watched with silent gratitude while the magician shuffled over to the unconscious child, looked at her thoughtfully for a while, then leaned his staff against a large boulder and made flowing one-handed motions over her, a request to benevolent spirits to assist in her recovery. Illness and accidents were mysterious manifestations of the war of the spirits, fought on the battleground of the body. Iza’s magic came from protective spirits who acted through her, but no cure was complete without the holy man. A medicine woman was only an agent of the spirits; a magician interceded directly with them.
Iza didn’t know why she felt such concern for a child so different from the clan, but she wanted her to live. When Mog-ur was through, Iza lifted the girl in her arms and carried her to the small pool at the foot of the waterfall. She submerged all but her head and washed away dirt and caked mud from the thin little body. The cool water revived the youngster, but she was delirious. She tossed and writhed, calling out and mumbling sounds like none the woman had ever heard before. Iza held the girl close as she walked back with her, making soothing murmurs that sounded like soft growls.
Gently, but with experienced thoroughness, Iza washed the wounds with an absorbent piece of rabbit skin dipped in the hot liquid in which the iris root had boiled. Then she scooped out the root pulp, put it directly on the wounds, covered it with the rabbit skin, and wrapped the child’s leg in strips of soft deerskin to hold the poultice in place. She removed the mashed clover, the shredded alder bark, and stones from the bone bowl with a forked twig, and set it to cool beside the bowl of hot broth.