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the scarecrow
and slandered the magical
liquid. It was said that she
took great delight in vilifying it
and spat in disgust whenever
her girlfriends mentioned it.
The sorceress’s patience with
her neighbor was exhausted,
and she decided to teach
the fool a lesson that only a
practitioner of sorcery can
deliver. She wandered in the
northern badlands by night
and conversed with the
heaven’s stars. Lovers tarrying
in the wastelands heard her
loud debate with jinn demons
but did not fathom the reason
for the dispute till some days
later when ischuria afflicted
her wretched neighbor, and
this human liquid was retained
by her haughty body.
The herbalist drewmany herbs
from his satchel and gave her
lots of liquids to drink, but her
urine retention persisted. So
the woman was burning with
fever and began to struggle
with bouts of insanity.
Finally the herbalist admitted
he couldnot cureher—as every
desert apothecary does when
he realizes that a condition’s
etiology is mysterious. He told
the woman that herbalists
were created to treat physical
ills the wasteland spawns, but
that wasteland inhabitants
would be obliged to search
for a cure for Spirit World
illnesses from the masters
of the Spirit World. Then the
arrogant neighbor woman
was forced to descend from
her high horse a second time;
she summoned the sorceress.
The sorceress entered her
neighbor ’s tent and was
surprised to find there—
instead of her neighbor—a
specter ...a shriveled, pale,
unkempt female jinni, whose
large, protruding eyeballs
glowed with anxiety, pain,