The Apothecary of Epidaurus: I'll Just Be an Apothecary
Winged sandals. A staff with two serpents coiled around it.
Slowly, I raised my head.
"Your trade would be that of a messenger, wouldn't it?"
"Yep. Correct."
The young man giggled, looking as though every last twitch of my reaction might actually kill him with delight. I studied that face for a moment, then let my gaze drop to his feet. The wings beside the sandals seemed to notice and folded themselves in.
They're real. Hermes—god of trade and travel, god of messengers. And, if I remembered right, god of thieves as well. So even a god's feet can hurt.
I swallowed once, dryly, and spread a folded cloth on the floor.
"Set it down here for now, please. And take the sandals off."
God or not, the work in front of me was the same. Turning a treatment over in my mind, I went to the water jar and washed my hands.
Hermes sounded intrigued.
"Washing up because you're in front of a god?"
"No. Because I'm about to treat you."
When I came back, the sandals were off his feet, and the two wings beside them hung limp against the floor. The urge to touch them once surged up in me, but I reminded myself that curiosity killed the cat and barely held it down.
"Your feet hurt even wearing those?"
"I end up walking on the ground more than you'd think."
"Do you?"
"Yeah. You wouldn't like it either if I flew all the way into the room, would you?"
Well. He had a point. Let a breeze catch the herbs and send them flying, and I'd have a disaster on my hands.
"May I ask one more thing?"
"Ask away."
"The gods eat ambrosia and nec— nec-something, don't they? And that's why you don't age or die?"
Hermes blinked twice. Then the usual smile found its way back onto his face.
"You mean nectar, right?"
"Yes. Nectar."
"Well, like you said. We don't age, and we don't die."
His toes drew back in a long stretch.
"Doesn't mean nothing hurts, though."
"So you can catch colds, too?"
Hermes made a sound somewhere near a hollow laugh.
"Not as a rule. If I'm worn out enough, sometimes."
"I see."
So they neither aged nor died, and the pain stayed exactly as it was. The gods have it rough, too. I was beginning to understand why Apollo, god of medicine, was so popular.
"Thank you."
I bowed my head, then looked at the foot.
"When does it hurt the most?"
"Morning. The first step. It eases once I've walked a bit, then starts up again around evening."
"Where?"
"Here."
He pointed at the bottom of his heel. I nodded.
"And you land often, after flying?"
"Well, yeah."
"Any tingling? Any swelling?"
"No."
No tingling, no swelling. No wound I could see, either.
"Excuse me."
I took his ankle and set the foot on my knee. Hermes's eyes widened a little.
"Awful bold."
I decided there was no need to answer that. I compared the two feet, then pressed carefully at the inner heel he had indicated.
"There."
Hermes drew a short breath. When I tipped the big toe back, I felt a band draw tight along the sole, and he said that hurt as well.
Plantar fasciitis. Textbook. Just as the name promised, it was a condition in which strain piled up in the tissue that held the arch, until pain came with every step. Keeping a hand on his calf, I turned the ankle slowly. The muscle felt like stone, and the range when I flexed it upward was narrow.
"Your calves have shortened, too."
"......You're saying I got shorter?"
"They've only tightened until they shortened. Then the sole gets pulled in their place, and the strain is what hurts."
If I were handing out medicine, an anti-inflammatory would be about the extent of it. Those were hard to come by here, though, and without an X-ray I couldn't rule out a problem in the bone either. For now, better to lighten the load on each step and watch how it goes. Settled on that, I let go of his foot.
"For the time being, please don't walk too much."
"Then should I run?"
No hesitation at all. It brought back a patient from my training days who, told to ease off the soju, had immediately declared he'd switch to beer.
"......You can't cut back on the work, can you."
"Hah. Tell you one thing and you figure out two."
I swallowed a sigh and looked away. The wings beside the sandals lifted their heads, as if they had felt my eyes on them.
"Then let's start by fixing those."
"Those?"
Hermes tipped his head and peered down. One beat. Two.
"You mean to put your hands on my shoes?!"
He flinched and leaned back, and the sandals' wings shot their feathers stiff, like a cat that had just been shown a cucumber. I pointed at them and shrugged.
"I only want to lay something soft inside."
"Wait here a moment, please."
With that I left the apothecary at a quick pace. When I came back a little later, there was sheep's wool in my hands. This much, even Hygieia won't notice, will she? I had pulled it from the cushion of her chair in the back garden.
The god of thieves greeted me with a whistle.
"Pretty sure that isn't yours."
"When you're treating a patient, what does yours and mine matter?"
I crouched in front of him again and nodded at the sandals.
"All right if I touch them a little?"
"Go ahead."
Hermes tapped the wings with the end of his staff. The bristling feathers settled off to one side. Some kind of pet, honestly. I laid the folded wool flat inside the sandal, then gathered more of it and built the heel a little thicker.
"Something to hold it in place..."
"Use this."
He drew a clean scrap of cloth from his belt. I wrapped the wool flat in it, then tied the bundle to the sandal's leather straps so it wouldn't shift.
"This should take a little of the impact off."
"Looks like it."
"And before you start work in the morning..."
I stood, set both hands against the wall, and showed him the posture with one leg stretched long behind me.
"This."
A stretch to ease the calf out gently. Then I sat again and took my bare foot in both hands.
"And this, please."
This time, a stretch that drew the toes back by hand. Hermes, who had been staring straight at me, quietly reached out.
Poke—
"?!"
Contact. A finger. Right in the middle of my sole. I startled and half-rolled backward, and Hermes wore a mischievous smile.
"It just looked kind of squishy."
"......Pardon?"
An answer fit for cat-shaped jelly. I frowned, honestly, and Hermes seemed a little abashed himself, because he coughed, loud.
"Anyway. Those two, every morning?"
"Yes. And when the work is done, soak them in cold water. Ice water, if you can manage it."
"Ice water. Got it."
"Of course, the best thing would simply be to walk less."
"Can't. If I'm not around, my uncle down below has a terrible time of it."
The uncle down below—Hades, then? I did seem to remember that Hermes was the one who guided the dead to the underworld.
"Then do the rest of it, at least."
I pushed the sandals toward him. He slipped his feet in at once, stood, and walked slowly around the room.
"How does it feel?"
"Not bad. Definitely less irritating than before."
Even to my eye, his gait had eased. I stood as well and straightened my back.
"Anything sliding inside, or pressing under the straps?"
"Nope."
"Then let's try it this way for now. If it keeps hurting, or seems to get worse, come back."
"If it heals all the way, I don't have to?"
"No. But it won't get better quickly. Even if the treatment takes, it'll only hurt a little less as time goes on."
Hermes tipped one corner of his mouth.
"Brutally honest."
The sly look drifted, all at once, to the floor. There my black snake had lifted its head and was staring straight at Hermes's staff.
"What, keeping an eye on the competition?"
He offered the staff, playful, and the two serpents wound around it flicked their tongues.
They were alive?!
I snatched my snake up and cleared my throat.
"For payment, I'll take bread, fruit, or olives."
"Don't have any mortal food on me."
"......"
I stared at him. He giggled and drew something from his belt.
"I'll give you this instead."
"What is it?"
"Bronze, weighed true, with my mark stamped on it for proof. A pain, hauling out a scale for every trade, isn't it?"
A small, flat piece of metal, no bigger than a fingernail, with a design struck into one face. That's a coin. I took it before I quite realized I had.
Hermes stamped a foot lightly and went on.
"And I'll grant you one question, too."
"A question?"
"That was the price in the mortal world. This is the reward for treating a god."
Oh-ho. So the books were kept exact. I dropped the coin into a bowl on the shelf.
"Where is the master of this sanctuary now?"
"Asclepius?"
I met his eyes and nodded.
"Why?"
"There's something I'd like to ask him."
A way back home. And if even he didn't know one, then at least I wanted a proper confirmation that I was not the real Panacea. Hermes made a thoughtful sound, studying my face, then sat back in the chair and crossed his legs.
"He's dead."
"......Huh?"
I only blinked, dazed, and his voice went on.
"Lightning got him."
"A god... by lightning?"
"It was my father's lightning."
"But he was surely..."
"Yeah. My brother Apollo's son."
Hermes's voice had gone a degree more serious.
"He kept raising the dead. My uncle was furious clear to the top of his head, so my father didn't have a choice."
For a moment I had no words. Not people who were dying. People who were dead. A feat only the god of medicine could manage—one no other god would dare to match. And the reward for it was a thunderbolt?
......From here on, I live quietly.
If you called cardiac arrest death, then starting a heart again with CPR could be called bringing someone back from it. I had no idea how this age pronounced a person dead, and I had no wish to go looking for that line with my own life laid on it.
"There was no need to frighten the child quite that badly."
The sharp remark came from the doorway. It was Hygieia. The tray in her hands held bread and a thick meat porridge.
"The kid asked first. What was I supposed to do?"
Hermes uncrossed his legs without a trace of surprise. Hygieia looked from him to me and back, then set the tray on the table.
"I didn't know you'd already opened the apothecary."
"Well..."
"Eat once the guest is gone. Wash your hands clean before you do."
And with that, Hygieia left at once. Hermes tore a corner from the bread and went on.
"You looked after a child in Athens, didn't you."
Lykos. No need to say the name aloud.
......Don't tell me.
Before I knew it, my fingertips had begun to tremble. Hermes looked down at them, snorted a little laugh, and popped the torn bread into his mouth.
"Relax. He hadn't been entered in the ledger yet."
"You mean..."
"Keep to that same line from here on."
He tore off another piece and held it out to me.
"This is a message from my uncle to you, as well."
I took the bread carefully and met his eyes. The same eyes as before—and yet he looked a little different from the man who had taken off his sandals and offered up a hurting foot. The god of messengers. I thought I finally understood why he had been the first to seek out an apothecary whose doors weren't even open.
"......I understand."
There was still so much I wanted to ask. What if a pulse had stopped for only the briefest moment? What if there was still something to be done, and only the breath hadn't come back? But there was no patient in front of me now, and I wasn't bold enough to pick a fight with a god over a situation that didn't exist.
"I'll do that."
Besides, I had a far simpler way at hand. Blame if I failed to save them, a thunderbolt if I succeeded—a dilemma with no clean exit, and a very light way of stepping clear of it.
From now on, I'll keep calling myself an apothecary.
No one asks the person who compounds their medicine to raise the dead. Hermes, reading my face, rose with his usual mischievous grin.
"Yeah. Definitely better."
"It may hurt again when morning comes."
"Then I'll just fly around anyway, even if I have to force it."
Staff in hand, he settled his hat. He stamped his foot once more, then set a hand on my head.
"What'd you say your name was?"
"Pana."
"Pana. Right."
His fingers pressed my hair a little, then let go. He pinched my cheek lightly after that and headed for the door.
"Got it. See you later, then. Little apothecary."
The winged sandals went out the door and kicked lightly off the ground.
......So I'm the little apothecary here, too.
I sat back down and looked at the bread he had left unfinished. He already knew what they called me in Athens. Why go out of his way to ask my name? I worried at it for a moment, then simply shrugged. Well. Even Hermes must not know everything. He was the god of messengers, not the god of wisdom.
I cleared the cluttered table and unrolled the clay I had set aside for a patient chart. Please. From tomorrow on, let it be ordinary people. I hesitated a moment over what to call him, then wrote a single word at the very top, in Hangul.
And the next morning.
"This the apothecary that young fellow talked about?"
"Heard it's something remarkable?"
What greeted me when I opened the door, tight with nerves, was a crowd of old folks packed solid across the front of it.
......Am I supposed to count this as a reward, too?
An elder with eyes gone blood-red. An elder limping. An elder staring into empty air and holding a conversation with someone who wasn't there. A splendid roster that blew straight past the very notion of a specialty.
"Everyone."
"Eh?"
"Form a line first. Single file."
Whatever else the day held, I wouldn't have to worry about a shop so quiet that only the flies came to call.