The Gift They Claimed

The first man through the crowd reached for Neris’s collar.

Solon caught his wrist before he could close his hand. The movement pulled hard through Solon’s left arm. His fingers nearly let go.

“Leave her,” Solon said.

The man stared at him, then at the girl behind him. Neris held her newly healed forearm against her chest. A moment ago, it had been crushed beneath a fallen cart wheel. Now she stood upright, breathing through her teeth, with only a smear of dirt on her sleeve.

“You spent it on her,” the man said.

Around them, the villagers crowded into the lane. Solon knew the set of many faces. He had seen them in his shelter, bent over cots, waiting for him to come from one bed to the next. A woman whose son he had treated stood near the well with her arms folded. A farmer he had helped through the winter had brought a length of rope, though he kept it looped at his side.

“Her arm was broken,” Solon said. “It’s healed.”

“That’s not what he means,” someone called.

The man whose wrist Solon held twisted free. “There are sick people in this village who need you. People who’ve done right by you.”

Solon’s arm throbbed with every beat of his heart. He kept it close to his body. “I’ve treated the people who came to me.”

“And now you treat her.” The woman by the well spoke without raising her voice. “You know what she is to us.”

Neris watched the woman, then Solon. Her face was pale, her jaw set. She had not asked him to heal her. She had been trying to drag herself out from under the cart when he reached her.

“I know she was hurt,” Solon said.

A murmur moved through the crowd. There were people here who had waited days for him, who had given up on sleep and work because a child’s fever would not break. He knew what it cost them to watch him choose. Their fear had made a narrow place for anger, and anger had found him.

The farmer raised the rope a little. “You’re always telling us to bring the sick to you. We brought them.”

“And I treated them.”

“Then why her?”

Solon’s answer came slowly. His breath had gone shallow. The ache in his arm had sharpened to something deep and clamping, his hand beginning to tremble against his coat. He pressed his elbow to his ribs until the tremor eased.

Neris noticed. Her eyes stayed on his arm.

“She needed help,” he said.

The man moved again, this time toward Neris. Solon stepped between them. A sudden flare of pain made his vision blur at the edges. He held his ground until the lane came back into focus.