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Isolated as they were, even Susitnu Valley heard about Katara’s ban on bloodbending. Good, the villagers said calmly. Bloodbenders are monsters who turn innocent people into puppets for their own sick enjoyment. It is only right that the skill be banned.
The men all murmured agreement, and gray-eyed Qaniit started passing the teapot around again. Then a child burst into the tent, asking for Master Iluak, please, my mother is going into labor, and the midwife wants you, she thinks this is going to be a difficult birth…
Iluak nodded and rose to his feet. The other men patted his arm as he passed, smiling and nodding to show their wishes for good luck. Iluak himself did not speak until outside the tent, and then only to soothe the child.
“Calm yourself,” he told her. “Your mother is strong, and Pitsiark is an excellent midwife. And look,” he said as they hurried through the village. “See how full and bright the moon is tonight. Tui will surely bless us.”
Back in the tent, the conversation had started up again. Distantly they all approved Katara’s decision, but there was no real understanding of it. Why should there be? There were no bloodbenders in Susitnu Valley. There was only Iluak, who restarted Cikuq’s heart when he collapsed in the middle of a hunt. Iluak, son of Atka, who kept Massak alive after a bad fall slammed the bone through his shin. Atka, son of Sivudlerk, who saved their headman’s life.
- - -
It was Sivudlerk who discovered the skill.
The raiders must have been supremely confident to attack on a full moon. They had overwhelming numbers, steel weapons, and a host of firebenders that made the night blaze scarlet. But the village responded quickly. With jets of water and bone spears, they drove back the invaders. One by one, the fires went out. Against all the odds, Susitnu Valley had won a breathing space tonight.
None of this mattered to Sivudlerk as he knelt on the ice beside Kesuk, whose breathing was fast as a bird’s wings and whose glazed eyes stared blankly at the round moon. Kesuk was his friend, his milk brother, and this was Kesuk’s blood that pooled dark on the ice. It frothed on his lips, it stank on the air, and it gushed out over Sivudlerk’s desperate hands. There was so much blood, and nothing Sivudlerk could do to stop it. He was a waterbender, for the love of Tui, the strongest in their clan, and yet there was nothing he could do.
Blood. Water.
Sivudlerk didn’t know if he could do this. He only knew that he must.
Keeping one hand pressed firmly on the gash in Kesuk’s side, he raised the other. Flowing motions were used to guide water, but he didn’t want to guide the blood. He wanted to stop it.
Sivudlerk twisted his hand, sank his mind deep into his friend’s blood, and willed it to stop.
The healers found him collapsed on top of Kesuk. The two men were soaked in blood and a vessel had burst in Sivudlerk’s eye, but they were both alive.
“I don’t know how I did it,” Sivudlerk told the healers later. “I don’t know how I did it, it just…came to me, and – is Kesuk going to be all right?”
Yes, they told him. But really, how did he do it?
“I told you, I don’t know.”
He was telling the truth. He had no idea how the knowledge had sprung into him. Everyone knew that healing was a woman’s province; men had no place in it. But for the next month, Sivudlerk begged every book he could from the healers. And when the raiders returned, he was ready.
He was ready that full moon and every other for the rest of his life. At first the villagers balked and looked sidewise at a man who certainly seemed to be healing, even if he claimed otherwise, and even if his technique was like nothing seen before. Kesuk might use his headman’s authority to forbid outright aggression, but he couldn’t stop the people from thinking.
Their tension eased a little when they saw that Sivudlerk never asked to learn the art of healing water or used the smooth gestures of a traditional healer. His movements were jerky instead, harsh and awkward, like a child’s mimicry of waterbending. But they worked. A healer couldn’t go to the front lines and heal wounds as they were inflicted. Sivudlerk could. A healer couldn’t lift people out of inaccessible ravines when they fell. Sivudlerk could. Even internal bleeding, the bane of the most skilled healers, Sivudlerk could heal.
For the first dozen cases, Sivudlerk was unnatural. For the next dozen, he was odd. After that, he was accepted.
Sivudlerk never realized just how accepted he had become until a rough, thickset hunter knocked on his door.
“Master Sivudlerk,” the man said, clasping his hands and bowing. “I want you to teach me.”
“Teach you…what?” Sivudlerk asked in bewilderment.
“I want to heal like you do.”
Sivudlerk’s eyes widened. After a pause, he stepped aside and said, “Come in.”
The man’s name was Kenai. He was already a strong waterbender: not quite on Sivudlerk’s level, but still very skilled. In return for his lessons, he hunted with Sivudlerk to bring in extra meat and carved ivory to trade with the villagers. He was a good hunter, and Sivudlerk increasingly fretted about repaying him. The lessons, simply put, were not going well. No matter what Sivudlerk tried or how well Kenai memorized the diagrams, every full moon, all Kenai ended up with was a bloody nose and an exhaustion that took hours to sleep off.
“It’s no use,” he said one dawn after a year and a half of training. “The spirits must have blessed you.”
“I’m sorry,” Sivudlerk said.
“Don’t be. It isn’t your fault, Master Sivudlerk.”
“Don’t. Don’t call me that.” At the surprised look in Kenai’s eyes, he tried to explain. “If I’m not teaching you anything, you shouldn’t call me master. Just…call me Sivudlerk, like a friend.”
“Friend. Hm.” Kenai tilted his head and studied him. “All right, Sivudlerk. What do you say we go back and get some sleep, then go hunting for some ptarmigan? Deal?”
Sivudlerk grinned and clasped his shoulder. “Deal.”
Later that day, as they were carrying home their birds, Kenai said, “Do you want to meet my sister?”
“What?”
Sivudlerk wasn’t sure. He was still unsure as Kenai led him back to his village, two days up the river. Then he met Chulyin, and was suddenly very sure that he wanted to keep meeting her.
Their meetings led to a wedding, and the wedding led to a son. One full moon night the son came running home with a hurt dog in his arms.
“Dad, can you fix him? Please?”
“Of course.”
Atka stayed close by his side as Sivudlerk stopped the bleeding in the pup’s paw and scabbed the wound over before binding it with cloth as a ward against infection. This was the first time Atka had ever seen his father use blood healing, and his eyes widened in awed delight. As the pup ran around their feet, wriggling and yapping for joy, Atka clung to his father’s sleeve.
“Show me,” he begged. “I want to do that too.”
Sivudlerk hesitated. Ever since Kenai, he had not taken on another student. But this was his son. Surely…if the spirits had blessed him, might they not bless Atka too?
“Come here,” he said, settling down in the furs by the fire. Shrugging out of his parka, he nicked the top of his sinewy arm with a knife and offered it to Atka.
“Think of the blood like water,” he said, watching his son’s intent face. “Remember how water flows? You don’t want this blood to flow. You want to stop it. What do you do if you want to stop something?”
Atka frowned down at the shallow cut. Tentatively, he raised his arms, turned his palms outward, and thrust them forward.
Sivudlerk could feel the blood as it stretched across the cut. For a moment it held, like a net holding back a struggling fish, before the blood started seeping again. But they had both seen it stop.
“Spirits,” Atka said, his eyes round. “Oh, spirits!”
“Spirits indeed,” Sivudlerk said quietly, his heart singing with joy. There would be a healer after him. Susitnu Valley would not go back to the old days. “Thank all the spirits indeed.”
- - -
The moon was a sliver less full than it had been when Iluak emerged from the tent. For a moment he swayed where he stood, and covered his eyes with his hand. It was done. Anana and her child would live.
It wasn’t enough. For every person he saved at full moon, there were ten more who were hurt during another time of month. Heart attacks, seizures, even the simplest broken bone: he was helpless if the moon was anything but full. People had died because of that.
“There has to be more,” he said aloud, his breath making clouds in the night. “There has to be.”
The winter sky was still bright with stars when Iluak rose after a few hours’ sleep and peeked out the tent flap. He glanced at the moon: still large, but distinctly past its peak. There would be no better time to begin training.
From the storage chests in his bachelor’s tent, Iluak found a flat wooden board and several leather ropes. He lashed his left arm to the board, wary of cutting off the circulation but still taking care to immobilize the arm. Tracking the flow of blood in the body was the first lesson a blood healer learned, followed by gently pushing it to where one wanted it. That would be his first trial today.
Sensing the blood was easy. Once learned, it never quite left, not even during the new moon when it was less than a whisper on his consciousness. Moving it was more difficult. Moving it, in fact, seemed impossible. No matter how Iluak pushed, there seemed to be a barrier between his waterbending and the blood that pumped smoothly through his body. He could bring all his skill and raw power to bear on it, but the barrier still held.
The untended fire had nearly burned down to ashes by the time Iluak grew aware of his surroundings again. His nose had started bleeding at one point, and dried blood streaked his lower face. Beneath his parka he was soaked with sweat. This wasn’t working. He was still exhausted from the birth, he had kindling to gather, the dogs to feed, and here he was chasing the impossible. No. This would not do.
As he fumbled with the knots on the ropes (spirits, he was stiff all over; how long had he been sitting here?), Iluak could taste the dried blood on his face as it flaked onto his lips.
Heart attacks, seizures, the simplest broken bone.
Iluak closed his eyes and let his chin drop to his chest a moment. Then he took a breath, straightened up, and tried again.
- - -
It was grueling work. Iluak’s cheeks and temples grew hollow, and his back became as hunched as an old man’s. Some nights he was so exhausted that he collapsed into the furs the minute he got home. After a few hours, though, some dark spirit of obsession began plucking at him, so that he had to rise and fetch the board and ropes again. He came to hate the sight of them, but he hated still more the empty feeling of his arm on nights when he heard Pitsiark or one of the other healers running from house to house. He had to master this. He had to.
“Iluak, you look exhausted,” Buniq said one day as they hauled in the first of the salmon run. “Are you feeling well?”
He smiled tiredly at her. “No, I’m not feeling well. Yes, I’m all right.”
The next morning, as he staggered out of the house, Iluak stumbled over a bowl in the doorway. When he lifted the wooden covering off it and took in its contents, he nearly groaned with pleasure. The bowl held akutaq whipped smooth, with at least two kinds of berries. He was tired; he couldn’t count. But he could definitely eat, and he could guess who had left the bowl.
He was waiting by the river when Buniq came with two buckets in her hands. Her narrow face flushed slightly when she saw him, but she still managed to meet his eye and smile.
“Thank you for the akutaq,” Iluak said without preamble.
Her eyes and smile spoke volumes, but all her voice said was, “You’re welcome”. Iluak stepped in and filled the wooden buckets for her, making her color deepen. As he began to step back on the path to the village, still carrying the buckets, Buniq said, “Take care of yourself, Iluak.”
“Why would I need to do that?” he said without thinking. “You’re doing a wonderful job.”
Buniq couldn’t quite cover her mouth or hold back her giggle fast enough. Iluak turned red, and trudged back to the village in silence. He blamed the lack of sleep.
Buniq ran to catch up with him, her boots crunching quietly in the snow, and caught up the handle on one of the buckets in silence. Iluak glanced at her sideways, saw a wisp of black hair flutter against her forehead and her bead earrings beat gently against her cheek.
She glanced back at him and quickly looked away. This time they were both blushing.
- - -
The nights were lengthening again by the time Iluak managed to make the blood swell and pool in his fingers. For a moment he thought exhaustion was deceiving him, as it had so often before. He flexed his right hand again. His left hand immediately pulsed with blood.
Iluak sat there staring at his hands. Had…had he done it? Really? All these months. Sitting up at night. Nodding off at odd hours. Chasing the impossible. Had he done it?
He had.
Iluak whooped and sprang to his feet, dancing around the room. Even now there was a healer’s caution in the back of his mind, saying he hadn’t learned everything yet, there was still refinement and control to be mastered, but far overpowering that was the mind of a young man and a dreamer who had suddenly seen the first steps of his dream come true.
His dream. His dream. Oh.
He stood stock still in the middle of the room with the board still strapped to his arm. Then he started tearing at the ropes. He couldn’t propose to Buniq with a wooden board hanging from his arm. She’d think he was mad. Well…she probably did already. Oh well. Appearances counted. What did young men do when they went to propose? Comb their hair, probably, bring gifts for the family, go hunting to prove their prowess…nobody had time for that. He certainly didn’t.
The board and ropes dropped to the floor, and Iluak bolted out into the street. As he ran down the village to Buniq’s house, he was laughing, and the waning half moon rose pale over his right shoulder.
- - -
He had done it. Well and truly, he had done it. Now when blood clotted or rocks crushed, when a child stuck in the womb or an elder clutched at their heart, people ran for Iluak as quickly as they ran for the healer. The periods of hectic exhaustion that used to come once a month could now come at any time. No matter whether the moon was full or new when they came knocking at his door, or even if there was no moon at all but the sun shining clear, Iluak came.
He still hunted with the men. He still hauled in nets of slippery, struggling fish throughout the weeks of endless sunlight, laughing and backslapping the other fishers in congratulations for the catch. He still rubbed noses with Buniq, stroked her cheek in passing, carved her trinkets to see her smile. But Iluak healed as well. He went where no man could go and was welcomed. He cleared clots in vessels, saved fingers contorted by frostbite, pumped blood into hearts that had gone still and helped them stutter back into life. He served his people. He was content with his life.
And, like his father and grandfather before him, he taught his son.
- - -
“As they go out further from the heart, arteries and veins branch off and become smaller, so you must take more care when working in the hand than in the – “
Iluak broke off with a sigh. He knew that look on his son’s face.
“Yakone, are you listening?”
“Yes, Father.”
“What did I just say?”
“I have to be careful when working in the hand because…Father, why am I learning this?” Yakone demanded. “This is woman’s work. I don’t want to be a healer. I want to be a warrior. I want my name to live on forever in the stories.”
“And it will,” Iluak said soothingly. “You’ll be famous as the greatest healer in history, just like great-grandfather Sivudlerk and grandfather Atka – “
“Not in this village I won’t. Not tending breech brats and fools who don’t even know how to keep themselves safe.”
“Yakone!”
“Father, I want more! I want – “
“Enough!” Iluak snapped, then stopped. He silently counted to ten, and then said, “We are both very emotional right now. It would be best to return to this conversation when we’ve calmed down.”
Yakone glowered darkly at him, his face contorted with anger unfitting for one so young, then rose and stormed out. The door slammed behind him.
- - -
Hidebound fool. How dare he? Didn’t he see? His father might be willing to rot in this village like his idiot grandfather and idiot great-grandfather, but Yakone wasn’t.
He stormed through the village, ignoring the irritated remonstrances of the people he barged into. What did he care? Rural bumpkins, the lot of them. He aimed a kick at a basket of fish. How dare they insult him, when he had the power to stop their hearts in an instant?
As he passed by Qaniit’s house, the dog tethered in front jumped to its feet and started barking at him. Yakone scowled at it, his hands curling into fists.
“You be quiet!” he ordered. His dark eyebrows rushed together when it kept barking defiantly, and Yakone wrenched its tail to the side with a sharp gesture of his hand. The dog yelped in pain and backed away – too slowly. Yakone inhaled and formed his hands into claws. Slowly, he lifted the dog into the air, grunting with effort and drawing his lips back in a snarl of pleasure as its yelps grew increasingly shrill. When its leash was stretched taut and it was writhing in terror, he slammed it down with a vicious jerk. The dog landed on the ground with a thump and lay still.
Yakone smiled.