Maia was having a strange day. First there was the injured horse that wasn't a horse, along with a badly injured woman, and then there was the discovery that her brother was a bandit. Now she's stuck in the Forest of Sorrows, trying to take care of the injured with only the animals she can speak with for help. It would be nice if more of her helpers had hands. This story originally appeared in the anthology Changing the World in 2009.
Author
Elisabeth Waters sold her first short story in 1980 to Marion Zimmer Bradley for The Keeper's Price, the first of the Darkover anthologies. She then went on to sell dozens of short stories to a variety of anthologies. Her first novel, a fantasy called Changing Fate, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award. Its sequel is Mending Fate, published in 2016. She currently writes short stories and has edited the Sword and Sorceress anthology series, which ended with Sword and Sorceress 34. She has also worked as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera, where she appeared in La Gioconda, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, Khovanschina, Das Rheingold, Werther, and Idomeneo.
