The Warded Man

the pharmacy grinding herbs.
    “A shine?” laughed Kadie, one of the younger apprentices. “He’s not shining, he’s in loooove!” The other apprentices in earshot burst into giggles.
    “I think he’s cute,” Roni volunteered.
    “You think everyone is cute,” Leesha said. Roni was just flowering, and boy-crazed. “But I hope you have better taste than to fall for a man that begs you for a rag bath.”
    “Don’t give her ideas,” Jizell said. “Roni had her way, she’d be rag-bathing every man in the hospit.” The girls all giggled, and even Roni didn’t disagree.
    “At least have the decency to blush,” Leesha told her, and the girls tittered again.
    “Enough! Off with you giggleboxes!” Jizell laughed. “I want a word with Leesha.”
    “Most every man that comes in here shines on you,” Jizell said when they were gone. “It wouldn’t kill you to talk to one apart from asking after his health.”
    “You sound like my mum,” Leesha said.
    Jizell slammed her pestle down on the counter. “I sound like no such thing,” she said, having heard all about Elona over the years. “I just don’t want you to die an old maid to spite her. There’s no crime in liking men.”
    “I like men,” Leesha protested.
    “Not that I’ve seen,” Jizell said.
    “So I should have jumped to offer Skot a rag bath?” Leesha asked.
    “Certainly not,” Jizell said. “At least, not in front of everyone,” she added with a wink.
    “Now you sound like Bruna,” Leesha groaned. “It will take more than crude comments to win my heart.” Requests like Skot’s were nothing new to Leesha. She had her mother’s body, and that meant a great deal of male attention, whether she invited it or not.
    “Then what does it take?” Jizell asked. “What man could pass your heart wards?”
    “A man I can trust,” Leesha said. “One I can kiss on the cheek without him bragging to his friends the next day that he stuck me behind the barn.”
    Jizell snorted. “You’ll sooner find a friendly coreling,” she said.
    Leesha shrugged.
    “I think you’re scared,” Jizell accused. “You’ve waited so long to lose your flower that you’ve taken a simple, natural thing every girl does and built it up into some unscalable wall.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” Leesha said.
    “Is it?” Jizell asked. “I’ve seen you when ladies come asking your advice on bed matters, grasping and guessing as you blush furiously. How can you advise others about their bodies when you don’t even know your own?”
    “I’m quite sure I know what goes where,” Leesha said wryly.
    “You know what I mean,” Jizell said.
    “What do you suggest I do about it?” Leesha demanded. “Pick some man at random, just to get it over with?”
    “If that’s what it takes,” Jizell said.
    Leesha glared at her, but Jizell met the gaze and didn’t flinch. “You’ve guarded that flower so long that no man will ever be worthy to take it in your eyes,” she said. “What good is a flower hidden away for no one to see? Who will remember its beauty when it wilts?”
    Leesha let out a choked sob, and Jizell was there in an instant, holding her tightly as she cried. “There, there, poppet,” she soothed, stroking Leesha’s hair, “it’s not as bad as all that.”
    After supper, when the wards were checked and the apprentices sent to their studies, Leesha and Jizell finally had time to brew a pot of herb tea and open the satchel from the morning Messenger. A lamp sat on the table, full and trimmed for long use.
    “Patients all day and letters all night,” Jizell sighed. “Thank light Herb Gatherers don’t need sleep, eh?” She upended the bag, spilling parchment all over the table.
    They quickly separated out correspondence meant for the patients, and then Jizell grabbed a bundle at random, glancing at the hail. “These are yours,” she said, passing the bundle to Leesha and snatching another letter off the pile, which she opened and began to read.
    “This one’s from Kimber,” she said after a moment. Kimber was another of Jizell’s apprentices sent abroad, this one to Farmer’s Stump, a day’s ride south. “The cooper’s rash has gotten worse, and spread again.”
    “She’s brewing the tea wrong; I just know it,” Leesha groaned. “She never lets it steep long enough, and then wonders at her weak cures. If I have to go to Farmer’s Stump and brew it for her, I’ll give her such a thumping!”
    “She knows it,”