Face-Slapping13 min read
I Woke Up in a River Village and Couldn’t Go Home
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I opened my eyes to birdsong and clouds that looked like cotton. For a second I thought I was still in the hospital, because I had just come out of surgery. I blinked. The air smelled of wood smoke and river mud. My head ached.
I pushed myself up. My white coat was gone. Instead I wore a long dress with wide sleeves that nearly tripped me. My glasses were gone, too. I touched my nose. My sight was sharp, clearer than ever. I thought, I must be dreaming.
A child’s scream cut the air. I ran toward the sound without thinking, because old habits die hard. A woman was on the ground, clutching a boy who lay limp, his face gray. He had water in his lungs. I dropped into a crouch and tilted his head down, flicked the water from his mouth, and began mouth-to-mouth. When his chest moved, my relief was quiet and sharp.
“Thank you,” the woman kept saying when she could stand. She grabbed me and hugged me tight. “Greta! Where’ve you been? You scared your old mother to death.”
Greta. The old woman called me Greta. It woke me more than anything. I had been Dr. Greta Espinoza in my life before surgery. Here, the name fit. For a strange instant, I felt rooted. But I had no memory of being this particular girl. The village called her “Greta” as if I belonged. A small boy ran up and called me “sister.” He was only eight or so, grin full of river mud. He held two cold buns in his hands and offered one to me.
“Are you really my sister?” I asked the boy.
“Andres,” he said. “I’m Andres Adams. Eat. Don’t be stubborn.”
I ate the bun like someone coming back from the dead. I tasted salt and flour and the little warmth of human kindness. The boy’s mother, Danna Sjostrom, watched me with wet eyes. An older woman in a plain dark robe — Lenora Palmer, they called her — came out of the house. Her eyes were sharp as flint.
“You’re back,” Lenora spat. Her voice cut like a wind that bites skin. “You thought you could run away from the marriage I arranged? You think you can leave the clan?”
I froze. Marriage? Clan rules? I tried to explain I had been a doctor just a day ago, but my words felt thin. Back home I had a city, a hospital, machines. Here the river and the fields claimed the world.
Someone pointed at the yard and began to shout. A round woman with greedy eyes pushed forward. “Pay up, Lenora! My son laid his life on the line. That marriage is still a bargain. Two hens for compensation.” She smirked like she owned the air. “If you refuse, the clan will do what the clan does.”
I understood then how small currency could be. One family gave a pig for a bride. Another wanted more.
“You can’t speak for me,” I said. The words tasted like iron. I had been a doctor for years; I knew how to hold my ground.
Lenora’s voice rose as if to a battle horn. “Bring the midwife. We will check her.”
When Lucille Said, the midwife, came and declared what my body already knew — I was unbroken — the greedy woman, Karen Werner, folded her face into a lie of outrage.
“If she is honest, then pay back the pig,” Karen said in public. “If she is false, then who will take her? A girl who ran off? No one will take her.”
A crowd gathered. Someone called the handsome clan leader, and Rafael Burnett walked in. Young, lean, his dark hair tied with a plain pin, he moved like he belonged to water and shadow. He watched the scene without hurry.
“You make accusations too quick,” Rafael said quietly. His voice had woods in it. “We will not decide in the square. Today we have witnessed much. I will be the judge.”
I had no wish to be married to anyone I did not love. I had no wish, either, to be trapped by old rules. I said, “If the marriage is cancelled, pay me for the trouble. The pig is not ours.”
They argued until the pig was returned to our yard by force of words and the village’s opinion. Karen’s face grew hot with hate.
Days later, I sat up late building a bamboo raft. I wanted to leave. If this was a trap, I would make my own way out of it. I learned how to cut and to tie in the moonlight. I was clumsy, but I had hands that knew bones and knots. I would leave the river and look for a town.
“You can’t just stroll out,” said Bruno Wagner, the slow, earnest man who had been promised to me. He was not cruel. He was not bright. People in the clan called him simple, but he was kind. He hefted the raft like he had been born to carry things.
Karen heard of my plan and sought to ruin me. Her greed had teeth. She had set a trap. The next morning our family's pig was dead, frothing at the mouth, and Karen stood with a face like an offended queen.
“You poisoned it,” Lenora screamed. “You poisoned what we gave! You stole from us!”
Karen’s jaw tightened. She had been the one who begged the clan to marry me, and now she wanted to squeeze more for it. She wanted to shame us and take more.
That day Rafael visited. He stood in the cool shade of the yard and watched like a man watching weather change.
“If there is no proof, stop making trouble,” Rafael said.
Karen found more trouble to make. She went to the town square and said, loud as stone, that I had been out wandering with men, that I had lost my honor, that our family would be shamed.
“Shame!” she cried. “If the clan hears this, who will take a dishonored girl?”
I felt the ground shift under me. A pain like a fever burned in my chest. I had to act. I was a doctor: action is cleaner than fear. I called for the midwife and for Lucille to speak. I said to the crowd, “If you slander me, then check me.”
I told Rafael about the nightly patrols, about how the clan had rules because their elders feared outsiders. He listened with a face like carved wood, then he surprised me by saying, “Stay in the house. I will not let a lie destroy someone who cures people.”
He left then, and our quiet seethed like water under ice. I spent my days making medicines for the old and the sick, ridding the village of fever. I cooked fish for Rafael and his sentinel, and for a wounded man I found on the mountain — Ellis Franke, soldier by the look of him — and nursed him back to health. Each time I cured someone, a little rumor of trust grew.
But Karen's hate was a living thing. She began to spread the story that I had killed off the real Greta — a body was found on the slope after a storm — and that I was a spirit. One night her voice led a group to the hill where a muddy corpse lay. The body bore my face. People gasped as if their world had been rearranged.
“We saw you earlier today,” many said to me. “How can this be? Ghost or witch?”
That accusation was the moment the village became brittle. The crowd wanted a monster. Karen wanted a scapegoat. I wanted truth.
I went to Rafael. He was pale but steady.
“Rafael, I am not a spirit,” I said. “Let me help. Let me prove myself inside this village by healing who I can. If the clan believes I am a danger, send me away. But if not, then leave me a chance.”
Rafael stared at me, and in the look I saw confusion, worry, and curiosity. His finger found the hem of his sleeve and twitched. “You saved my aunt’s breath when she collapsed,” he said. “You saved a child. You have made no secret of your skill. I will place you in the guest room. You will not be harmed.”
It was not kindness alone that kept me sheltered. The days that followed, I fixed more than coughs. I touched what people would not: a chest that coughed blood and a woman with a fever that burned like glass. I made tea of roots and bark, I placed bronze needles in the right places, I told people to sleep and to cover. When the boy Andres’ cough cleared, they began to watch me with different eyes.
The town we went to had a notice pinned to a board: reward for a doctor who could cure the town leader’s child. I tore the notice down with a hand that could not help but dream of silver. We walked into the manor. The child took my medicine and soon the fever dropped. The reward was five silver pieces, enough to buy tools and medicine to last months.
When we returned, Karen snarled at me as if victory could be taken by spit. She called me witch, thief, liar. Things bubbled. I had had enough.
I went to the market and asked that a meeting be called. Rafael stood with me beside the open square.
“Show everyone the whole truth,” I said. “If someone lied and poisoned our pig, let us see proof. If someone slandered me for coin, let them stand in the square.”
Karen laughed like a hound. “You want proof? I will give you proof of the family who sold their honor. I will make you pay in front of everyone.”
When she stepped up with her mouth full of bullets of certainty, the villagers felt the air tense. I had not expected what would come next. I had not expected Bruno Wagner — the man once promised to me — to take a step forward.
“Bruno,” Karen had said once, in private, “let the old woman be pushed. Take what you can.” Bruno was clumsy and kind. He had been beaten down by a life that taught him to accept. But he had watched me stitch a boy’s eyelid and find a pulse where others saw death. For him, the return of the pig and the healing of his brother had been a revelation.
Bruno stood now with a scrap of paper in his hand. “I am tired of her lies,” he said. “I saw her pour something into the trough at night.”
The crowd turned like a wheel. Karen’s face shuddered into a different shape: fear, then anger. She threw back her head. “Lies! Lies, that is all!”
Rafael raised his hand. “We moved the pig yesterday to test the tale. We had a watch. Who else saw this?”
Silence. Then a voice: “I did.”
The village fell into a hush and a hum and a slow, surprised clap of gossip. One by one, people came forward. They told of Karen slipping in under the moon and of a small sack of herb crushed into the pig’s feed. A boy recounted that Karen said the pig would “run me dry of livestock if I do not secure the bride.” A neighbor said Karen had offered to pay more if the family withdrew their complaint.
Karen’s cheeks went from beet to ash. She laughed like water boiling. “You are mad,” she hissed. “I would not stoop to such a thing. You want my money, you want my land.”
Rafael’s voice cut through her like stone. “We will test the truth. Bring Karen here to the square.”
I felt fear like a cold wind. I had wanted justice but not blood. The clan had an old way: public shame. It was slow, it worked like teeth. Karen marched to the square with head bowed and mouth a hard line. Her supporters had retreated. She had miscounted the village’s courage.
“Karen Werner,” Rafael said, “you accused Greta of shame and poisoned the pig to shame the family. You said the bride was tarnished, and you wished to profit. We have witnesses who saw you. What do you say?”
Her eyes were glass. For a moment she looked like a woman unmade. She stepped forward and tried to steel herself. “This is slander,” she said. “I— I only worried for my son’s future. I said nothing. I—”
“Enough,” Bruno said, and his voice was low and bright. “You will tell us everything. What did you do? Why the poison? Where did you get it?”
She took a breath that smelled of old wine. Her voice began high, then cracked. “I wanted them to give up the wedding. I thought if the pig died, the elder would give me new terms. I… I wanted the pig back. I put a bitter root in the trough. It was an herb. The pig ate it and died.”
Her face grew red with the smallest shame, and the crowd’s murmur hardened like stone.
“You did this to get two hens?” I asked, my voice thin because I had been careful and calm for so long.
“No,” she said, and then laughter skittered out like a trapped bird. “No. I wanted the pig to die. Then I said it was someone else. I wanted coin. I want more than this village can give me.”
Her arrogant certainty crumbled in the square like an old wall. She went through stages in a few breaths: first proud, then shocked when witnesses mounted, then denial, then pleading.
“You lie!” she screamed suddenly at the crowd, panic loud. “You all lie! No one saw me! No one saw me!”
“No!” cried a woman who had been quiet until then. “We saw you, Karen. We saw you at the trough. You cursed the pig and laughed.” That woman’s voice was steady and sharp. Around her others nodded. The evidence gathered like rain.
Karen staggered back. Her eyes hunted the crowd as if hunting a handhold. She spoke quick now. “I did not mean— I did not mean harm! I thought the pig would sicken and that we would have ground for more bargaining.” Her voice rose. “Please, please! I only wanted to secure my son. I thought you would all agree!”
At this, the crowd did something I did not expect. Instead of sympathy, there was noise: a handful of women and men pushing forward to demand she repay the pig’s price in full and to hold a public penance. A boy raised his hand and took out a scrap of rope. An old man banged a stick to call order.
“You will stand in the market and tell all you said,” Rafael ordered. “You will apologize to the family and you will give back as, and you will take two days of public labor to rebuild what lies you broke.”
Karen’s face collapsed. Her tone slid from haughty to awful pleading. “No! Not in the square! Not in front of them! Don’t— I can’t— I can’t!” Her hands fell to her knees. “Please. I have no money. I— I will work. I will work. I’ll pay. Take my land. Take my house. Don’t—”
She fell to her knees in the dirt as all eyes turned and a hush fell like a curtain. People murmured. Someone began to clap. The clapping was slow at first, then louder, like thunder gaining strength. Others began to shout, “Shame!” and “Let her own what she did!”
She begged. “Please, no public shame. I will do anything! I am sorry! I am sorry! I am sorry!” Her voice repeated like a struck bell. She crawled, then she drew herself upright and flung her arms to the sky.
“Nobody help her!” Bruno shouted. “You lied to us and you killed our pig for your selfish hunger.”
A crowd gathered at the market, and someone brought a bowl of water and a scrap of paper with a simple drawing of the pig. A child put her hand on Karen’s shoulder and said, “You will speak now. You will tell everyone you lied.” Another woman pulled off her apron and held it out like a token.
Karen knelt, and her face went from red to gray. There were cameras in no cell phones — only eyes, only mouths. They recorded the scene for themselves: memory taking the place of devices. People shouted details. Someone who had read her secret letter to a distant cousin read it aloud. People listened and clucked and then began to chant, “Return what you took! Return what you stole!”
She keeled over, hands clawing at the dirt. “Please! I will do anything! I will kneel forever! Please! Please—”
Her voice lost shape. A man took off his hat and offered it to her; she sobbed into it like a child finding a blanket. She mouthed syllables I could not understand and yet the sound of them was all the same: a sudden hunger for mercy. It was the end of a long cold thing.
By the time the sun went down, Karen had repaid more than wood or coin. She had stood in the square and told every lie she had ever told. She had kneaded bread with others for two days. She had worked in the fields she had slandered. She had asked forgiveness by the river where Andres played. The village would judge her again if she slithered back to hate, but the square had made the first cut.
I walked home with Rafael at my side. We were quiet. The air smelled of onion and the river sang a long steady note. Bruno walked behind us and hummed under his breath.
“You did right,” Rafael said, and for once his voice was soft as a stitched seam. “You could have run. You chose to stay.”
“Because I had to,” I said. “If I leave people will still hurt one another for coin. If I stay, I can fix things.”
He looked at me, and then he laughed a small dry laugh. “You speak like a true doctor.”
Days turned to weeks. I cured fevers and knitted lungs with tea. I taught Lucille how to clean wounds with ash boiled and how to make poultices. I taught Bruno how to tie a knot so it held. I learned the clan’s rhythms: how they fished, how they prayed, how they hid things from those who did not live among the rivers.
We fixed the old with root and needle. Rafael’s cough eased. Bruno found something he could do with wood. Andres learned to stitch.
Then strangers came. Black-clad men with light on their weapons swept through the valley like a storm. They hunted something we did not know we had. They took men and burned stables. Rafael stood and fought, and still he was brave and still the clan fell like wheat.
“Run!” Rafael told me once the smoke took not just smoke but the bones of houses. “We must go now!”
We ran into a hidden trapdoor he had once built in the yard. A priest’s old hinge and a rope took us down to a passage that smelled of mold and old secrets. I clutched Rafael’s shoulder and felt his ribs like a wooden ladder. People slid stones, and at the last moment some men stayed to hold the gate. We crawled in the dark and felt the world compress until at last the passage spat us out on a mountain foot.
We walked until our legs melted into the earth. My shoulders burned. His face was pale but he held a steady hand on my shoulder.
“Who started it?” I asked. “Who would send such men?”
Rafael’s jaw set like metal. “Someone who wants the clan’s things. Someone who has power to call soldiers. We do not yet know.”
We reached a town. My hands were blistered and my feet ached, but in that town I saw a notice by a board: “Wanted — Two strangers.” People stared at us as if we were trouble with a price.
Rafael carried himself like someone who had lost so much but kept a small thing: his honor. The town’s people whispered. I rubbed my sore hands and thought of home. The river. Andres. Lenora’s sharp eyes.
That night I slept on the edge of a road, my back against Rafael’s coat. He dug in his pack and took out a scrap of the pig’s hide Bruno had kept. He handed it to me.
“For luck,” he said. “And because you saved us more than once.”
I thought of medicine and the long stitch work of the life I had been thrown into. I thought about the market and the clapping, the way a village can become a court with one angry voice. I thought of Karen’s fall and her pleading. I thought of how ugly greed looks when exposed.
“Will you stay?” he asked suddenly. The moon made his face like a soft coin.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I woke up in a river and learned stitching and knots in a week. I have skills to share, and people to protect. But I also have a life I can’t remember and a city I belonged to.”
He laughed softly. “Stay a little longer. Let the medicine you make here be a name. Let the river know you.”
So I stayed. I kept an eye on the clan’s secret and on the town’s notices. I taught the midwife how to tie a tourniquet, and I taught the boy Andres how to make a clean bandage. I kept Rafael’s chest warm with soups and ginger and I listened as he said nothing of his own sorrow.
One morning months later, a man appeared outside our bought house with an old paper, the mark of the county. He bowed to Rafael and said, “There is word from the road. The black-clad men were paid by a magistrate to seize a small relic said to be in this valley. They took what they could. But they failed to find everything.”
Rafael’s face tightened. “They will not be left unpunished.”
That day the village rallied. It was small revenge, not of fire but of law: a farmer who had seen the men got a witness to a town constable. The magistrate who had paid them lost his post. The men were forced to work in fields they had burned.
Karen watched from the window. Her life had not been made whole. But the village had shown it could be its own judge.
Some nights I still dream of hospital lights. I wake and see river fog. I still have flashbacks to the operating room and to a city that is now only a bright box in my head. I keep a small kit of needles and a jar of herbs. I keep Rafael’s jacket folded on a chair. I keep a place at the floor mat for Andres when he comes in wet and laughing.
The village knows me as Greta again, but now I am both: a doctor who learned to sew bone and a woman who learned where the river turns. The square taught me something I already knew at the base of my palms: truth matters, and lies hurt people. Justice in a village looks like work and shame and repayment. It looks like people rising together and naming what was done.
On the night I set a raft afloat and watched it drift under a moon like a coin, I thought I could leave. Rafael stood beside me and said, “If you go, know that the river will always remember the hands that built a raft for it.”
“I thought I’d live in a hospital forever,” I said. “Now I know hospitals are built of people.” I watched the raft go, and the moon cut a bright line across the water that ran right into the past.
“Greta,” Rafael said, “if you ever want to go back to that city, I will go with you to the water’s edge. But for now, stay.”
I had come from one life and fallen into another. I had a choice. I let the river answer me with its sound. I turned and stayed, because to heal is to attend, and to attend is to stay.
The End
— Thank you for reading —