Phyllisia
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In the elder days there dwelt a healer accursed, who, as the tales tell, gave unto many a death untouched by pain. The name of that healer was Phyllisia. She was born in a village of the elves, quite an ordinary one, of the sort you would find anywhere in those parts.
Yet there was nothing at all ordinary about the look of her.
For from the hour of her birth, a parasitic tree had struck deep root within her flesh. There was a wrongness in the look of her and the folk of her village were filled with a great dread. As the maiden came into her years, so too did the tree, until in time she was named among them the 'Accursed Child.'
"This blight may spread to others of our kindred," the elven Kinlord said, and he laid it upon her mother and father that they should cast their daughter out. And so with bitter tears, both father and mother resolved to yield up their daughter.
Given into the keeping of a peddler, the young Phyllisia was borne afar, and abandoned in a land she knew nothing of.
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There she collapsed upon the road and rose no more, and when at last she woke it was among a folk of healers that she found herself. It happened that a healer had come along that road by chance and no design, and had taken her up from where she lay, and borne her home to his village.
The elderly healer of that village tended her, nursing the frail Phyllisia with untiring devotion, seeking to heal not her flesh alone, but the very spirit within her.
"Give ear unto my words, Phyllisia. There is a power of healing harbored within leaf and stem. Most especially those that take root upon living beasts?such hold a mighty virtue. Which means, my brave child, that your very body overflows with a virtue of healing. Let thy heart be at ease, O child of blessing."
And then did it seem to Phyllisia that she had come at last to a place where she belonged. And it was that, for want of lore concerning the elven-kind, the healers of that village paid little heed to her strange appearance. Far from it?following the manner of the aged healer who was now her foster father, they extolled her flesh as a 'wondrous virtue.'
Desiring also to repay the kindness she had received, Phyllisia resolved in her heart that she too would become a healer and bring deliverance unto others.
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Determined to fulfill the hope of her foster father, and for the sake of the village-folk who had granted her refuge, Phyllisia labored with all her heart to master the arts of healing. Wise and gentle of spirit, she gave all her days unto unceasing study and training, and mastered in swift turn every skill of the healer.
Whensoever a smile returned unto the afflicted, Phyllisia felt deep within her heart why she had become a healer, and knew it more deeply than before. At length she grew to be a healer of such grace that all named her saintess.
And alongside these deeds, she searched out deep lore whereby she might sunder and cast off the parasitic tree that clung unto her. Yet in the secret depths of her heart there lingered ever a longing for her native land, and she thought: 'Were but this tree sundered from me, I might yet return unto my true home.' Yet it troubled her long, for she could not tell whether such a wish were not a betrayal of the village, and of the old man who had made her his own foster child.
But for all their searching, hers and her foster father's together, the growth of the parasitic tree was not stayed, and upon her back there grew a wood fashioned like unto wings. Whensoever she was sore afflicted by the encroaching blight, her foster father would decoct a draught of healing herbs and bid her drink thereof. And when she drank of it, her torment abated. Yet neither the growth of the tree nor the creeping of its blight through her frail body was ever stayed, and no sign that Phyllisia's hope of returning unto her native realm should ever be fulfilled was forthcoming.
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Thereupon came a day when her foster father tarried long in the neighboring village, and Phyllisia, deeply troubled, deemed that many were those that lay sick in that place, and so took up further draughts of healing and set forth herself unto the settlement. Yet upon her arrival, an abominable and ghastly horror was laid bare before her.
For she beheld folk ensnared by the parasitic tree, warped beyond all human semblance, yet suffering in a hideous living death that would not end, and therewith her foster father, reaping the vile flowers that bloomed, drawing their sustenance from the living torments of the damned.
All too well these dread flowers were known to her. For they were the selfsame blossoms, never absent from the draughts her foster father brewed for her and bade her drink.
A cold and mirthless smile played upon her foster father's visage as he at last turned his gaze upon Phyllisia. "This tree of yours, you must know, bears fruit only when it hath taken root within a vessel attuned to its nature?fruit that is the very substance of a draught for ageless youth and length of days." And even as he spoke these words, tears flowed unbidden from the eyes of her foster father. "I am sore adread of death. You... You will grant me deliverance, will you not? O Phyllisia, my beloved daughter."
And there, standing before her foster father as he spoke, she communed in silence with her own spirit.
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If it be the essence of a healer to deliver living souls from anguish, how then might salvation be wrought for those whose very lives were an unending torment?
Rending a spur of the parasitic blight-wood from a soul half-dead, she turned upon her aged foster father and plunged the sinister growth deep into his breast. Obeying the sovereign will of the mother-tree, the graft grew apace, as though drinking up the very life-essence of Phyllisia's foster father.
"Stay?slay not that mortal man. Grant him length of days, even as his heart desired, and bind him fast unto this soil until his very life become a loathing to him." And, so saying, Phyllisia caressed the young shoot. And thereafter she passed among the folk whom her foster father had fashioned into seed-beds, withering them each in turn as she walked. And upon the desiccated faces of those slain folk there lay a serene and unbroken peace.
And in the quiet of her heart, Phyllisia understood at last. That to grant deliverance or to deal death are in truth but twin paths to a single end: peace. And that none save she alone?who bore the sovereign tree within her?held the doom to bestow either gift upon others.
Thus did she become a calamity incarnate, holding in her hands the doom of both life and death. At whiles she brought deliverance unto a great multitude, and at whiles she dealt death to as many. And folk handed down in song and lore the tale of that healer who had become a grievous scourge, speaking ever of her with fearful awe.