Ujurak struggled to clear his head, but the heavy smell of the smoke made it hard to think. His vision kept blurring, and the room swam around him as if he were looking at it through water. A brightly coloured mask on the wall seemed to leer at him, then faded back into mist.

‘Don’t try to talk,’ the healer went on. ‘I’ve taken the fishing line out of your throat, but the wound needs time to heal.’

Reaching into the shadows, he showed Ujurak a small bowl that held a long length of almost transparent fishing line, with a wicked barbed hook at one end. A couple of clots of blood still clung to it. Memory drifted into Ujurak’s mind: the pain in his throat and his desperate efforts to breathe.

‘It’s all over,’ Tiinchuu reassured him. ‘I have given you shepherd’s purse to stop the bleeding, and echinacea for the infection.’

Rising from the side of the bed, he moved away from Ujurak’s range of vision. When he returned, he carried another small bowl with a few tiny white things at the bottom of it.

Ujurak flinched, pressing himself into his pillows. ‘What are they for?’ he croaked.

‘Don’t be afraid.’ Tiinchuu smiled again. ‘There are many ways of healing, and these pills will work with the herbs to make you better.’

Gently he raised Ujurak up with an arm around his shoulders. Ujurak felt that he was expecting him to do something, but he didn’t know what it was.

‘Take one of the pills and put it on your tongue,’ Tiinchuu explained after a moment. ‘Then you can swallow it with this water.’ He reached for a cup from the table beside the bed.

Nervously Ujurak picked up one of the tiny white pills; it was hard to grasp it with these unfamiliar flat-face fingers.

‘It will hurt to swallow,’ Tiinchuu said as Ujurak hesitated, staring at the pill. ‘But you need to do it, and you’ll feel better later.’

Ujurak gave him an uncertain nod. He put the pill on his tongue; Tiinchuu held the cup for him and tipped water into his mouth. In spite of the pain in his throat, Ujurak managed to swallow.

‘Good,’ Tiinchuu said. ‘That will do for now. You can have more later.’

Ujurak didn’t feel any different after he swallowed the white pill. But from what Tiinchuu said, it must be powerful for healing. Maybe the white stuff came from a different sort of herb, one that grew hard white berries. Ujurak would look out for it.

Tiinchuu let Ujurak lie down again and retreated from the bedside; Ujurak heard him moving around the den, the sound pulsing loud and soft as waves of heat and cold chased one another through Ujurak’s body.