2.0

April 15
Marketa says I must write this because I am to be a healer, and healers must document their knowledge. She says when I write a formula for an elixir the difference between a tincture stored in a barrel and a tincture stored in a clay pot could be the difference between life and death. “But Marketa,” I say to her, “surely only a fool doesn’t know that water is stored in ceramic jars, and a fool will not be reading my formula.” But Marketa says that my documents may be passed down to a generation that does not know such things. So I must practice documenting my methods very thoroughly.

I did not see the point of writing when I first met Marketa. It seemed to me that you could find out what jars and barrels held simply by opening them, and likewise you might remember what you owed to someone simply by thinking about it. But Marketa has taught me differently, and I admit that when I am to die (unwholesome thought!) I would like for future descendants to read my words, and to know thus that water is stored in ceramic jars.

These are some of the many things Marketa has taught me: how to cast bones, dice, and leaves; how to reduce urine into devil’s silver; how to purge the odor of spilt urine; how to prepare and heat a chest poultice; how to stay silent for longer than two hours (for which my grandmother thanks her); and how to find the secrets hidden in her letters. Indeed, Marketa says that she left me letters to help me find her, and hidden in these letters were all sorts of coded secrets which she has taught me. But I found her without any letters, simply by remembering her long drunken stories about her time in the north, so I laughed at her for this. Then she grew angry, but I am not afraid of her anger anymore. Anger is simply one of her methods. It prevents her from brooding.

Now we are on a journey to cure her heart’s malady, which is related to the woman who left her. We travel north to the healer Tove, who will teach us how to find the Cave of Regrets. There Marketa will go to another place and time, where her heart will not be wounded. She tells me that I do not need to follow her, but I tell her: It will be an honor to document her departure, to be the last person she sees before her new life.