The Healer's Daughter

By Leah Cutter

Ayumi has a magical talent for healing.

Unfortunately, her father, and society in general during Heian era Japan, won't allow women to work.

Can Ayumi find a life for herself that doesn't involve an odious marriage and wasting away, shunned and hidden in dim corridors like most women? Or does she have to take her own life, as her mother did?

Prequel to the novel, "A Sword's Poem." 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Oct 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516379651

Leah Cutter

Leah Cutter--a Crawford Award Finalist--writes page-turning fiction in exotic locations, such as New Orleans, ancient China, the Oregon coast, ancient Japan, rual Kentucky, Seattle, Minneapolis, Budapest, etc.  Find more fiction by Leah Cutter at www.KnottedRoadPress.com. Follow her blog at www.LeahCutter.com.

Book preview

The Healer’s Daughter

Ayumi carefully mixed the black paste together, adding just a touch more of the dried peony, gray with pink flecks. The mixture smelled of the fiery peppers she’d added, dry and toasted, along with the sweetness of dates and the tanginess of orange peel.

She put the bowl–like suribachi that held her paste down on the skinny wooden workbench that she stood in front of, giving it a final stir with the stick–like surikogi. Then she tried it.

The sweet taste lingered on the front of her tongue, covering up the bitterness of the dried flowers, while her throat heated when she swallowed, the warmth lingering, stirring her blood.

Maybe a touch more mushroom to strengthen the heart. The mixture had to be just right. It was too important for a single mistake.

On the two shelves above the workbench stood rows of her father’s herbs in their small earthenware jars, all firmly corked. The jars were ordered according to the general properties of the herbs, were they hot or cold, summer or winter. None of the jars had any other markings on them: Ayumi had had to watch carefully to learn where each herb was placed.

She reached for the kanoji mushrooms, cut and dried into long strands, their earthy smell wafting out when she uncorked the jar. She took merely two, so Father wouldn’t notice them missing, then shredded them finely before adding them to her mixture.

Ayumi shifted from one foot to the other as she stirred her mixture with the surikogi, tired of standing. The workroom was closed in, a