The three young women dragged their load around through the sapling gate and down over the hill to the clearing where the horses had been watered that first day. The tree branches were still bare against the cool blue sky, but the buds swelled red, and a few low weeds winked green in the flattened and brownish grass. It was at last made plain to Fawn why the medicine tent’s kitchen was always so busy. After concocting enough remedies for the needs of the camp, the herb master and his helpers produced yet more for the local trade. Some medicines were not so different from what Fawn’s mama and aunt Nattie compounded, but Maker Levan himself did groundwork on others that made them much more effective and—he seemed to think this an important point—uniform. Unlike the cure-all nostrums Fawn had seen hawked in the Drowntown market, which Dag claimed were mostly spirits—you might still be sick, but you’d be too drunk to care, Barr had quipped—the Lakewalkers made limited claims for their medicines.
