, I knew what it was--perception at a level a TK can't match.
The real healers feel the nerves themselves. I'd been worked on before.
The more hysterical healers, some really creepy witches, had given me
some signs of relief, but none could ever find the real "weak place," as
she called it.

She was mumbling to herself. I guess you could call it an incantation. I
got a picture of a nubile waif, too freakish to fit where she'd been
raised. What had her Hegira been like? In what frightful places had she
found herself welcome? From her talk, it could have been an Ozark
backwater. I didn't want to know what backwoods crone had taught her
some mnemonic rendition of the Devil's Litany.

Her hands passed up beyond my shoulder, to my neck. "It's in yore haid,"
she said. "In yore darlin' haid!" Fingers worked over my scalp. "Oh,
there!" she gasped. "Hit's ahurtin' me! Hurtin', hurtin', and I'm a
draggin' it off'n yuh!" Her backwoods twang sharpened as she aped some
contemporary witch.

Hurt? She didn't know what it meant. She fired a charge of thermite in
my head, and it seared its way down my arm to my fingers. My right arm
came off the bed and thrashed like a wounded snake. She wrestled it,
climbed onto the bed, and held it down with her boney knees. Her fingers
kneaded it, working some imaginary devil out through the fingertips,
till the hurt was gone.

* * * * *

We sat close together on the edge of the bed at last, as I worked and
moved my arm, one of us more in awe of what had happened than the other.
It was weak--with those flabby, unused muscles, it had to be. But I
could move it, to any normal position.

"I never done like that before," she breathed. "Jest small ailin'."

"You're a healer, all right," I said. "And a prophetess, too, from what
I saw at the dice table. You know what a Psi personality is?" I asked
her. "Say, what is your name, anyway?"

"Pheola," she said. "Yes, I've heard of them," she said.

"You're one," I told her. "You can heal many people."

She shook her head. "Only could do it because I love you, Billy Joe,"
she said.

"We'll teach you," I promised her. "Would you like to learn? You've
heard of the Lodge, haven't you?"

"Lordy!" she gasped.

"You're as good as in it," I told her. "Now tell me, what am I going to
do tomorrow morning?"

She got up and started to pace the room, sniffling. "Why would you do
that?" she said at length. "You are going to th