Stagmother

Marilyn made it to her rescheduled appointment on time. The extra rest had done her good— she didn’t feel better, but had staved off the usual progression of worsening symptoms as the day wore on— and she channeled her gratitude into a pleasant, deferential demeanor that helped her navigate the clinic staff’s painfully apparent expectations of trouble from her.

In the waiting room, all white and grey, she studied the miniature shrine they had constructed for the Stagmother. Depictions of the goddess typically came in three forms: a great stag, a robed figure with the body of a woman and the head of a stag, or a woman with extraordinarily large antlers. Each had sixteen points on her antlers. To Marilyn’s relief, this clinic chose to display the stag form. Seeing the woman form always upset her. Though her own antlers had eight points, they were of a similar size. Only the goddess was meant to look that way, as she carried the sorrows of the world; in the eyes of some, doing so yourself was an insult to the Stagmother that might even amount to blasphemy.

“Marilyn,” a staff member called her. She smiled and followed obediently.

They brought her through a series of hallways narrow enough she had to turn her head. The staff member asked in a tone of pleasant reminiscing, “Newborn at home?”

“No.” Marilyn was used to the question. New parents often experienced growth spurts in their antlers.

“Oh.” The front desk hadn't warned them; they'd have been much more cautious around this new patient if they'd know she had no good reason for her antlers. Without another word, they dropped her off at a curtained room well in the back of the building.

There, Marilyn stepped onto the familiar platform, folded her hands, and stood waiting under buzzing lights for the healer to arrive. Stagmother images watched her from posters, figurines, and paintings around the room. She went over her symptoms in her mind to be sure she wouldn’t forget anything.

“Marilyn?” A middle aged woman in healer’s robes stepped into the room, bringing with her an air of authority and calm.

“Good afternoon,” Marilyn answered. She found herself suddenly too exhausted to straighten her posture, but kept herself from slouching further.

“How are you feeling today?”

Marilyn theorized that healers always began a session with this question in order to gauge their patient’s mindset, not their wellbeing. She’d yet to be wrong. “I’m certain it could be worse,” she replied.

“Couldn’t it always? My name’s Healer Fenton. I was going over your information this morning. You’ve been tired and sore, yes?”

“Maybe more than tired,” she corrected Fenton meekly. “I’ve been having some symptoms I can’t shake— a long time,” Marilyn added, losing her place, flushing with anxiety. “Sorry. Let me start over. I have fatigue, muscle aches, and headaches on a daily basis. I can’t stop sleeping. I get ten or more hours of sleep at night, and I still fall asleep during the day.”

“Yes, this makes sense. At their size, your antlers are rather a lot to carry around all day. I’d imagine you feel exhausted from the weight.” As she spoke, Fenton looked from the clipboard in her hand to Marilyn and back again.

“They’re quite light, really.” Marilyn moved her head around as if to demonstrate, feeling ridiculous as she did so- the healer had no way of knowing what her antlers felt like to her.

Fenton surprised her with an approving nod. “A statement like that is just what I anticipated. Indeed, I would have been surprised to hear anything else from you.” She set the clipboard down and stepped closer to Marilyn. “As soon as I saw the gauze on your antler, after reading about your long struggle with their size, I knew what to expect from you. Yes, I see the other antler is shedding, too. It’s exactly as I thought. You’ve made tremendous progress. You’ve learned to see the world in a positive light, and I’m sure that within this new mindset, your antlers really do seem like they weigh nothing at all. That’s the power of positive thinking that you’ve finally discovered for yourself.”

Marilyn openly gawked at the healer, her careful composure giving way to bewilderment. Not one figure in the long line of professionals tasked with helping her had ever interpreted her words as positive. Not once. Hardly realizing it, she touched the gauze and asked, “I’m okay?”

“Oh, sweetheart. You’ve been working so hard. I can see that. This is a good thing!”

“I just, I had never heard of anything like this before.”

Fenton smiled. This was the most rewarding part of her work: counseling and guiding her patients. Not just healing them, but reshaping them into happier, healthier people who didn't need healing. “It’s no wonder you’ve had such a difficult time with your efforts. Even when something good happens, you worry about it. But look, it’s simple: your antlers are far larger than the average pair, and they got too big to shrink away like most people’s do. Deer lose their velvet when their antlers are done growing. It follows that yours are done growing, too, and you’ll soon shed them completely if you continue on this course.”

“You’ve seen this before?”

“I’ve read about it,” Fenton explained. “Quite a rare phenomenon. Certainly some people lose their antlers through gradual shrinking, or never grow much of a pair to begin with, but yours may well be a unique case. Was there anything different about your antlers before the velvet began shedding?”

“I did notice that they seemed to have hardened,” Marilyn offered.

“Precisely what we would want to see. Yes, this is very good. Now, why don’t we go ahead with the scan? No harm in making sure everything else is running smoothly, hm?”

Fenton gathered her energy to perform the spell that would run through Marilyn’s entire body to reveal its workings, laying bare any deviations from a normal, healthy system.

Marilyn had had half a dozen such scans in the last two years. None revealed anything to the healers who’d performed them. But this healer was different. Marilyn’s heart pounded with confused, pained hope as she gripped Fenton’s praise tighter and tighter in her mind.

Marilyn’s antlers grew warm as the healer concentrated, and she asked, “Do your antlers ever feel like they’re heating up?”

“No, but of course ours are remarkably different from each other. That may be a symptom of yours hardening and preparing to shed. Given the unique nature of your situation, you should keep note of everything you experience. Science will surely thank you. But for now, I’m ready to begin- shall we?”

Nodding, Marilyn relaxed in order to ease the spell’s movements through her. She’d once overheard another patient describe the procedure as like hearing every cell in your body speak, but in a language you couldn’t understand. This was the first time Marilyn had ever understood what they meant. Maybe she had never managed to fully relax in previous sessions. Could that be why none of the healers had found anything wrong with her? Could it mean she would finally, finally have an answer?

Indeed, as Fenton performed her spell and received the data it collected, she found a clear diagnosis laid out before her. A textbook case of Foxboro Fade. Considering that all of the young lady’s previous scans had come back clean, the most recent of which being less than eight months ago, it would have manifested recently. Those with larger antlers were well known to be more susceptible to disease. The stress of their negative mindset often wreaked havoc on their health. It was no surprise to find her carrying some form of illness.

The timing didn’t strike Fenton as any coincidence. Miss Marilyn here had only just begun to make real progress after more than a decade of professional intervention. Without a doubt, contracting Foxboro Fade and experiencing genuine hardship for the first time had pushed her to make to the necessary lifestyle changes she’d lacked the willpower to enact before.

The Fade wasn’t much fun in its early stages: its aches and exhaustion surely took their toll. Nonetheless, it wasn’t anything serious until the second or third year. Curing it before then was a simple matter of performing the three hour advanced healing spell every healer learned in year one of their training.

Fenton considered the best course of action. If it really was the disease that had spurred Marilyn to improve herself— and it had to have been— then healing her at this early stage in her recovery might strip away all motivation to continue improving. Marilyn might lose all her hard-won progress. This was the difference between a good healer and a great one, Fenton had been taught: you don’t just treat the disease. You treat the whole person.

She would hold off on healing Marilyn.

“Good news,” Fenton announced as the last of her spell wound its way back to her. “You’ve got yourself a clean bill of health.”

“Really?” Marilyn drew her arms in, her body unconsciously returning to a state of tension now that she had no specific reason to relax.

“Indeed. You’re working very hard right now, and you can expect to still feel the challenges of that work, but I urge you to push through. Your life is going to be so much better for it. I’d like to keep an eye on you, Marilyn. It’s really quite rare for someone with antlers your size to lose them. Your journey could help many others. Come back to see me in two months.” Fenton would heal her then.

“Okay. I, um… I don’t know how to thank you. Thank you so very much, Healer Fenton. You don’t know what all this means to me.”

Fenton gave a satisfied smile. Gratitude was a sure sign of a healthy mind. Marilyn was going to be just fine, she knew. “It’s my pleasure, dear.”