Changing the Prophecy Chapter 5 Episode 2

 Chapter 5 At the Dome -- Episode 2

“Why do you suppose Sissrath doesn’t want people communicating?” Jasper wondered aloud.

Doshmisi answered, “Think about it. Last year we mobilized all the people to rise up against him. If we can’t connect with people then we can’t do that again.”

“We should have killed him when we had the chance,” Jasper blurted.

“But the whales said violence would only lead to more violence and I agree with them. We found a way to defeat Sissrath once and we’ll find a way to do it again,” Doshmisi asserted.

Jasper shrugged. “We didn’t completely defeat him, did we? He’s back to his old scheming ways already.”

Just then Mrs. Jelly returned with dinner plates heaped with spinach-and-mushroom lasagna that smelled heavenly. Except for the Mountain People, everyone in Faracadar was vegetarian. Doshmisi used to eat meat, but she had given it up after her visit to Faracadar the previous summer, and she didn’t miss it. The people in Faracadar cooked delicious vegetarian food and Mrs. Jelly was no exception. The lasagna was heavenly.

After dinner, Jasper suggested to Doshmisi, “Maybe you should use some of that color change powdery stuff to make yourself green; you know, so that you aren’t so obvious.” The year before, Grandmomma Clover had given the Four a powder that would put a color in them like the regular people of Faracadar. The Four were royalty, born from the royal line through their mother and her ancestors, and as such their skin appeared plain brown. The powder had given them each a bright aura of color so they resembled the ordinary people in Faracadar:  Sonjay yellow (like the Mountain People), Maia blue (like the Coast People), Denzel red (like the People Beyond the Lake), and Doshmisi green (like the Island People).

“I wish I could,” Doshmisi replied mournfully, “but Maia has the powder in her backpack.”

“While you’re here,” Mrs. Jelly said to Doshmisi, “would you please take a look at my cousin Jewel? She twisted her ankle yesterday morning.”

The previous year, Doshmisi had used the herbal book to help her heal many people. When she put the herbal on a person’s chest, it opened to a page with instructions about a remedy for the sickness from which the person suffered. The herbal usually gave a recipe for a medicinal cure, but since it was an enchanted object it often acted in unpredictable ways. Doshmisi had developed the skill of figuring out how to use the herbal to heal people. She agreed to take a look at Jewel’s ankle without hesitation.

Leaving Jasper with Jelly and Jack, Doshmisi followed Mrs. Jelly upstairs to a room in the inn where Jewel sat propped up in bed, knitting, with her swollen foot high on a cushion. A vase of forget-me-nots stood on the night stand alongside a blue pitcher of water and a glass. A glow-bug lantern cast an amber light into the room.

“Jewel,” Mrs. Jelly said, “we’re in luck. Guess who showed up? Doshmisi. And she has the herbal and she has come to take a look at your ankle.”

During the year while at Manzanita Ranch, Doshmisi had spent every spare moment studying about medicine, health, and the human body. In fact, she didn’t need to use the herbal to figure out what to tell Jewel about how to treat her injured ankle, but she proceeded to place the book on Jewel’s chest anyway. The herbal opened to a page and Doshmisi leaned over to read the words. The page looked completely different from anything she had ever seen in the herbal before. She stared at the page in astonishment. Instead of providing instructions for a recipe or a quick diagnosis of the problem, the herbal had opened to a dense paragraph that began with the words, Insects remain the most enduring species because of their adaptability. If people could change to meet new circumstances, they would have more success at survival.

“Hold on,” Doshmisi told Jewel, “the herbal is doing something peculiar and I have to read this page.”

“Does it say something bad about my ankle?” Jewel asked in alarm.

“No,” Doshmisi reassured her. “Strangely, it has nothing to say about your ankle. Let me read this right quick.” Jewel and Mrs. Jelly exchanged an anxious glance and fell silent as Doshmisi began to read down the page. Before she could read more than the first few sentences, the herbal slammed shut of its own accord and she could not reopen it. She did not know what to make of this.

“I can’t seem to get the swelling to go down,” Jewel told Doshmisi. “I twisted it pretty bad.”

“You should put ice on it and stay off it,” Doshmisi instructed. “The more you ice it, the faster the swelling will go down and then it will stop hurting. Stay off it and keep it iced and elevated. I’ll write a recipe for arnica cream to rub on it that Mrs. Jelly can make to help it heal faster; and drink four ounces of dark cherry juice every day.”

Jewel thanked Doshmisi for the advice, then Mrs. Jelly and Doshmisi returned to the dining hall. Doshmisi wrote out the recipe for the arnica cream while Mrs. Jelly took an ice pack upstairs to her ailing cousin. Doshmisi kept wondering about the strange behavior of the herbal. She hoped it would not happen when she needed the herbal to act right to help her in a more serious situation.

After Doshmisi wrote the recipe, Jelly showed her and Jasper to their rooms and bid them goodnight. Alone in her room, Doshmisi attempted to open the herbal again, but it would not cooperate. She wondered what it had tried to tell her with that story about how insects were more adaptable than people. Before the book had slammed shut, she remembered reading something about people letting go of outmoded ways of operating, and that people needed to engage in innovative thinking. She decided that for the time being she would keep her discovery about the herbal to herself. Maybe the next time she tried to use it to heal someone, it would act the way it normally did. Or maybe it had morphed into a totally different book altogether, which scared her.

Early the next morning, Doshmisi, Jasper, and Jack took their leave of Mr. and Mrs. Jelly. They wanted to make it to the Passage Circle at the Coast Settlement before nightfall. Jasper could tell that Doshmisi was distracted as they rode through the Marini Hills, fragrant with the scent of flower blossoms, but he didn’t bother her. He figured she needed to work something out in her head; after all, she was one of the Four. He took care not to interrupt her thoughts. Doshmisi continued to try to make sense out of the weird story fragment the herbal had offered up to her the previous day.

By late in the afternoon, Jasper, Doshmisi, and Jack emerged from the Marini Hills and started the descent toward the Passage Circle that formed a link between the Coast Settlement, near the beach, and the Island Settlement, that spread out across the ocean in a string of islands. Weary of travel, and no closer to guessing the meaning of the words she had read in the herbal, Doshmisi felt relieved to reach the end of the day’s journey. Perhaps tomorrow, she thought, I’ll have a glimmer of insight about the herbal.