When Klara Preuss arrived home from the hospital, a hospital bed had replaced her old one. It was Mary who looked after her, but it was Curtis the old woman asked for. "She says you can help her," Mary explained.
"But I can't talk German!"
"She says bloodstoppers can help bones knit."
Curtis blinked at that. Probably he could. Certainly he shouldn't have overlooked the possibility. He just didn't think like a shaman, he told himself. Between Arbel and Omara, he'd learned, if not always fully mastered, a number of healing techniques, procedures, and principles. And from those could infer others.
He started by examining the fine structure of Klara's aura, and as a basis for comparison, examined and imaged mentally the thread-like energy lines around his own body and Mary's. Then he adjusted—normalized—the energy lines around Klara's.
They didn't stay normalized long, but while they did, healing progressed at a much increased rate, and normalization persisted longer with each treatment. At the end of her first week at home, Dr. Wesley visited, and commented on her surprising progress. At the end of the second week, he said he'd never seen anything like it before. After the third, she spent much of her time in her new wheelchair, and ate in the dining room or kitchen with whoever else was home.
Meanwhile the auric field around his father-in-law's right arm was quite distorted. Fritzi admitted that it ached chronically, especially when he tried to sleep, and agreed readily to let Curtis treat it as he had Klara's. The results were excellent, and surprisingly quick.
Macurdy began to feel quite proud of his shamanic skills, especially when Klara began relying on her cane almost entirely, inside the house, taking to her wheelchair mainly for trips outside. He was doing with the help of analysis what Arbel had done largely by intuition.
Mary had anticipated problems with her Grossmutter—that having run the household for so long, she'd try to enforce her ways on her granddaughter. To Mary's surprise, however, Klara seemed pleased to let someone else run things. Not surprisingly, the old woman delighted in her grandson-in-law. His only shortcoming was that he spoke no German, so she set about to teach him. When they were in a room together, she'd point at or touch or slap an article and name it: der Tisch! the table. Die Kaffeekanne! the coffee pot. He was not only to repeat it, but pronounce it correctly, even if it took a dozen repetitions. Her repeated admonition was, "Du musst das richtig sagen!" (You must say it right!)
He enjoyed it, as a game and a challenge. It was easier than learning Yuultal had been. In fact, German grammar had parallels in Yuultal, and he discovered that quite a few German words were recognizably similar to English words meaning more or less the same thing.
Then Mary began working with him on verbs, while Fritzi taught him everyday phrases and simple sentences. Curtis began stopping at Sweiger's almost daily, for coffee and to exercise his expanding German on someone outside his own household. They teased him a bit about his baltisches Deutsch pronunciations, sometimes amusing word choices, and often clumsy grammar, but enjoyed and respected his interest and progress.
They never mentioned how Hansi was doing, or even if they heard from him, and diplomatically, Macurdy never asked.
By summer he understood quite a bit that was said at the supper table. Of course, the others spoke more slowly and carefully than they might have, but it seemed to him that before too long he'd be modestly competent with the language.
One of the first things Fritzi had done, when Macurdy came on the job, was introduce him to the .38 police special—show him how to use and care for it. And talk with him about when, and more importantly when not to use it.
Although Macurdy had never before held a side arm, he proved a natural marksman. On occasion, off-duty deputies would get together on the department's makeshift firing range in what had been the Nehtaka Livery Stable, and before long he was firing the best scores in the department.
One day the following spring, Fritzi sent him with his undersheriff, Earl Tyler, to take a prisoner to Portland. After they dropped the man off, Curtis bought a large picture postcard showing Mount Hood, then wrote on it:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I am traveling and today have stopped in Portland. I can see this mountain from the city. It is even more beautiful to the naked eye than in the picture.
I am feeling fine and doing well. I hope you are the same. Give my regards to Frank and Toodie, to Julie and Max, and to Ferris and Bob and Hattie. Also remember me to Trapjaw and Blaze.
I intend to get home someday for a visit, but it will likely be awhile. It is hard to get away from work long enough, and while I travel on the job, I never travel very far east.
Your loving son,
Curtis
He gave them no address. Actually he seldom thought about his parents, or Indiana or Yuulith, or even Varia. Though occasionally he dreamed of her, the dreams invariably including sex.
Mary never asked if he dreamed of his earlier wives. If she ever should, he told himself, he could truthfully say he dreamt more often of Vulkan than of Varia—of a half-ton great boar more often than of his beautiful first wife. He'd never told Mary about Vulkan; that would be a little much even for her, it seemed to him—a sorcerer in the body of a giant wild hog! He could never remember much about his dreams of Vulkan, but somehow they seemed meaningful.
His dreams of Varia, on the other hand, he remembered clearly. They were always in the same place, a kind of gazebo on a seashore. They'd talk—about what always escaped him within moments of wakening—and then they'd make love, and when they did, he loved her as much as when they'd married. Maybe more, because now he wasn't spooked by her powers.
He couldn't honestly say which of his three wives he'd loved most. When he'd been with Varia, he'd been a different person, ignorant and naive, while his marriage with Melody had been passionate, occasionally even tempestuous on her part. But his new marriage was the happiest, beyond any doubt.
No doubt Varia could say the same thing of hers. Cyncaidh was as good a man, or as good an ylf, as anyone. Along with being wealthy and powerful, he was honest and thoughtful, and had integrity.
He wondered if Varia ever dreamed of him—if perhaps they dreamed of each other at the same time. He rather thought they did.
The next March, Mary came up pregnant, but soon afterward miscarried. They were both disappointed, but not deeply so. There'd be other pregnancies; they made love often enough.
Macurdy had been reading auras for several years—since he'd learned to see them. With Arbel's help, he'd learned to read emotions, character, to a degree even intention from them. Now, for the first time, he made a study of them, and his readings became more refined and precise, enabling him to avoid or deal with trouble as a law officer.
Fritzi was careful not to favor his son-in-law unfairly on the job, but with a year under his belt, Curtis was easily the best of his deputies, except perhaps for the undersheriff. So he promoted him to corporal.
The duties weren't often dangerous, or even particularly onerous. With the repeal of prohibition, several bars had opened in Nehtaka, and drunkenness became more common, or at least more open. The Moose Hall quickly got a liquor license, followed promptly by the Swedish Club, the Sons of Norway, and the Finnish Brotherhood.
Public drunkenness, fighting, and traffic violations made up most of the work load, and the brawlers in particular could be hard to handle. So in 1935, Fritzi sent Macurdy to Seattle for three weeks of intensive jujitsu training under a Japanese who advertised in law enforcement journals. Macurdy came back with a certificate of completion, another as "best student," and an excellent basic grasp of principles as well as very useful techniques. Fritzi then had him train the other deputies, and afterward, Macurdy claimed that teaching had been almost as helpful as taking the course in the first place.
More important, he had a definite talent for cajoling drunks and others out of violence, and when cajolery wasn't adequate, onlookers were invariably impressed with his new physical skills, which augmented his previous reputation nicely, and helped make cajolery effective.
At the jujitsu classes, Curtis Macurdy met a Jack McCurdy, a deputy sheriff from Lewis County, Washington. Jack McCurdy's uncle kept saddle horses on his place near Morton, Washington, and on three different summers, Curtis and Mary went with Jack and his wife on horseback trips into the wild high country of the Cascade Mountains. They'd pack in to a lake and make camp. It was the women who fished, while the men explored the craggy higher country on horseback and afoot. Jack asked Curtis where he'd learned to ride so skillfully. Curtis didn't tell him it had been in a world called Yuulith. He thought it best not to.
He never imagined the experience gained in those Cascade outings would prove valuable, a few years later.
Traffic accidents increased with the constant increase in cars and speeds, and Macurdy had occasions to use his shamanic skills to save a life.
In addition he'd received valuable first-aid training as a deputy, but more interesting was the help he got from Doc Wesley. Fritzi had bragged to the doctor about his son-in-law's work on his arm and Klara's leg and hip. The doctor loaned Macurdy basic texts on anatomy and physiology, with the comment: "If you're going to mess around with healing, you'd better know something about bodies."
Much of the physiological material was over Macurdy's head. His only actual instruction in science had been in the eighth grade, in the one-room Maple Crossing School, which was innocent of a laboratory. But he found the anatomy text, and the more general physiological discussions both understandable and interesting. Particularly since on several evenings, Doc Wesley took the time to answer and even discuss his questions.
In 1937, Mary got pregnant again, and again miscarried. Macurdy wondered if perhaps he was snake-bit on the subject of fatherhood. Or if the ylvin strain in his ancestry might have something to do with his family tendency not to beget many children, at least with regular humans.
By that time he was reading a German language weekly paper, the California Demokrat from San Francisco. Reading it aloud, because Klara could no longer see well enough to read newspaper print. He'd read all of it that interested her, with only occasional corrections of pronunciation. Fritzi told him he had a talent for German, that if he ever went to Germany, he'd get along just fine.
In the fall of 1937 they got a new young preacher at Holy Redeemer, Pastor Jacob Huseby. Pastor Huseby's wife, Margaret, was said to have an eye for men. It was even rumored that in Huseby's last church, she'd seduced a teenaged parishioner, who'd become so guilt-stricken, he'd run away. Macurdy was skeptical; wishful thinking, he told himself. Margaret Huseby was well-built and sexy, and he'd heard men say they wished she'd seduce them.
In the summer of '38 she swam too far out in the river, and went under before she could make it back to shore. Her husband swam out to rescue her, while someone drove to a phone and called an ambulance. Macurdy, hearing the siren, sped after it in his patrol car.
When he arrived, the trauma of Melody's drowning kicked in, and he brushed aside the ambulance driver, who was about to begin artificial respiration. After Curtis's futile efforts to revive Melody, not so many years before, he'd talked with Arbel about how to revive drowning victims. He'd never before had an opportunity to test Arbel's advice, but he soon had Margaret Huseby conscious, and she was taken to the hospital for observation.
And that, Macurdy thought, was the end of that, because he seldom went to church. But seeing him in his '35 Chevy one day, getting gas at the Sinclair station, she asked him for a lift home—she'd just left her car for a major tuneup—and he said sure. Before he got her home, she was groping him. She wanted to repay him for saving her life, she told him, and her husband was out of town.
What really shook him was how tempted he'd been. He told himself he wouldn't go to church again till after Pastor Huseby was transferred to another parish. Something else would happen first, however, that made his resolution irrelevant.