I was still puzzling over the question Anthracyda had posed of “What is a human?”. I wondered if a healer had any insight. I’ve been here for four years and the woman who had been the healer in the village had died two years ago. Sussana Beckworth was her apprentice and is just now stepping into the role. Although she’s just 18, she stayed up all night with some travelers as one of them was dying, so she’s conscientious. I guess we’ll find out whether she’s any good. It won’t hurt to ask her anyway. I decided to stop in at her house after school.

I knocked on the door and her mother called out to come in. The inside of the cottage was full of hanging clothing and linens partially completed. Sussana’s parents were a tailor and a seamstress, so that was to be expected.

“Is Sussana here?”

“I expect she’s in the garden.”

I bid her parents, “Good day” and backed out, then went around to the extensive garden in the back. Sussan had her back to me and was crouched down between rows of some herb.

“Sussana?”

She turned and raised her hand to shield her eyes. “Miss Potter?”

“How do you decide what medicine is good for a human and what is good for an animal?”

She stood up and started walking up the rows towards me. “Observation and recipes. And leaving recipes for your successor.”

“So you try something and if it works, you write it down, and if it doesn’t work, you write it down?”

Sussana frowned a bit. “It’s more than that. First you match the symptoms and the patient. Heaving stomach horse is different than heaving stomach person. Then you look at what the patient ate or breathed or touched. Is that different from someone who isn’t ill and has been near them? If you are lucky, you have a recipe that matches the case. Then you try it and see if that works. If it doesn’t work you ask yourself what is different? If you don’t have a recipe that matches, you look for a partial match. If you don’t have a partial match, now you have to be creative. It’s like being a good cook. A good cook looks at what they have and decides what taste will change if I add this herb or more water or different vegetables. What happens if I cook something longer or shorter, closer to or farther away from the fire.”

“What if I asked you what is a person? What would you say?”

She shrugged. “I’m a person, you’re a person. This bee here” as she pointed towards a flower “is a bee, not a person. I can make a list of the differences between a bee and a person, but I can’t tell you what is a person. Why?”

“I asked Anthracyda what it was, and it responded that it would tell me if I could tell it what a human was.”

“Isn’t it a hillside spirit?”

“Yes. But what is that? Demons are fallen angels, but it doesn’t seem to be a demon. I don’t know any other spirits in the Bible that are not angels, but it doesn’t claim to be an angel either. If it isn’t in the Bible, then what else isn’t in the Bible?”

She looked almost angrily at me. “There are lots of things that aren’t in the Bible. Like a good recipe for fever. I have to get back to my weeding. Good day.” She turned away and walked back down the rows.

I called after her. “Sussana, you tried. God wanted to take her to paradise, there was nothing you could have done.”

She whirled around. “I don’t see any signs from God as to what he wants. Telling me everything is God’s will is too easy.” She stomped back up the garden rows towards me. “In that case, why bother doing anything? Why bother to eat? Either God takes us or we live forever without needing to eat. Why bother to weed if weeds or no weeds are God’s will?”

“Because you are an instrument of God’s will. He acts through you.”

Sussana actually shouted at me. “I failed last week. If I’m an instrument of God’s will, that means he failed last week. Either that or you’re telling me I killed her because he wanted her dead. And I didn’t kill her. I just didn’t save her. If he killed her, he did it in spite of me. Don’t you dare tell me I’m an instrument of his will.” She turned back around and walked away.

I didn’t know what to tell her. She hurts, but I didn’t expect the conversation to go this way. I don’t want her to lose faith and be condemned. How I can turn her around?

Next - Sussana Goes Back to the Stones (September 7-10, 1643)

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