The Bone Healer
Her only teacher was her god.
She was born with a caul.
The membrane covered
her head like a shawl
and her hands like gloves.
The mid-wife removed it
with sacred care
and swore her parents to secrecy.
She told them that one day
when their baby girl
began to bleed monthly,
the dreams would start.
Her parents were poor
and she could only
finish second grade
but it was time enough
to learn to read and write.
And once she started
to wash clothes
on a rock by the lakeshore
alongside her mother and aunts,
the dreams began.
She would meet pregnant women
and people pleading for help
as she wandered
steep, cobble-stoned streets
winding up to the central plaza,
the open air market,
the old church built over
an ancient temple,
all eyes turned toward her
bright with expectation.
Her dreams frightened her
because she felt unworthy
of their calling
so she prayed and prayed.
Her god kept telling her
that she must use
her gift to heal broken bones,
but still she felt unworthy.
Then down by the water
she found a shining object
filled with power
beckoning to her
in a crying voice.
She ran home but that night
her dreams were filled
with the shining object
following her thorough
the pregnant women
and pleading people.
The next day
she went and picked it up
with trembling hands
and sewed it up in a cotton cloth.
She always carried it with her
but never showed anyone
her secret bone
nor did she yet dare
use it like her dreaming god bid her.
She married her only boyfriend
but nothing seemed to ever
go right for their little family.
Then he fell from
a three-story building
and broke bones
in a dozen places.
One by one, twelve angels
came to her in dreams that night
bidding her to live her gift
or the young father of her babies would die.
She woke in a sweat
and gripped her cloth bound bone
and prayed for her god
to work through her.
And upon entering
her husband’s sickroom,
she went to his side
and laid hands upon him
and found each fracture.
She rubbed each break
with her secret bone,
pushing pieces back in place,
praying, blowing puffs of breath
where the hurt was worst,
treating him with all her faith.
For three days
she worked on her husband
learning as she prayed
how to use her secret bone to heal
and on the fourth day,
he stood and walked slowly
out under the open sky
to offer thanks to his god.
And since that day,
taught by prayer alone,
she’s healed all comers
of broken bones.
People come to her
from all over the lake
and even as far away
as the capital city
and foreign parts
to be made whole again.
She asks for nothing in return;
therefore, she lacks nothing.
But never,
even to her husband
or her daughters,
has she revealed
just exactly what
her secret bone
is made of.
Her family only knows
that upon her own death,
it must be thrown
back into the lake.
Marc Ladewig
Author of Odysseus-The Epic Myth of the Hero
