On Bihab which was known as the Island of Cures, everyone lived way past 100 and died of old age. There must be “something” in the air or “something” in the soil or “something” in the water, the islanders said to one another, unaware that three Wise Women were living among them. They were the healers, but only their relatives knew who they were. Besides the usual maladies, they cured alien hand syndrome, water allergy, persistent sexual arousal syndrome, excessive hair growth, and walking corpse syndrome, a condition in which one believes one is dead, decaying or has lost vital parts of one’s body.
Over time, Alexis, Violet and Emily grew tired of secretly curing the islanders. They had not asked to be Wise Women. They had been chosen at birth. Though they were the offspring of humble folks, their roles kept them from enjoying the common pleasures and so the fantasy of the beautiful man was born, but they knew their fantasies were good for only one year.

Their fantasies were so real they were barely aware that the island of Carilia had started a war with Bihab. The Carilians wanted the secret to the cures, but when they saw the Bihabi dying in battle and from bites of venomous assassin bugs they introduced to the island, they didn’t know what to think.
The relatives of the Wise Women wondered why they did nothing to help them. Had Alexis, Violet and Emily been paying attention, they could easily have cured the insect bites and healed the battle wounds of the Bihabi.

The Wise Women only realized a year had passed when their fantasies failed despite their best efforts. The beautiful man standing in the central square of the largest village no longer belonged to them. Alive, he was cold, aloof, and unapproachable but otherwise as beautiful, in fact, even more beautiful than he had been in their fantasies. No one dared ask where he was from, why he was here, or how he had come to Bihab since all the boats in the harbor were accounted for and there was no other way to reach the island.
The beautiful man walked with purpose through the village, as though he knew where he was going. Islanders followed at a distance. Most could not keep up. After passing the last village, he walked for miles over petrified sand dunes before making his way through a forest of gnarled and twisted trees over 2,000 years old. Few islanders had ever walked this far and none so fast, but nothing slowed him down. Only when he reached a clearing did he stop by a palatial mansion with a large pool. A maid greeted him at the door. When the last two Bihabi familiar with this part of the island arrived hours later, they swore the mansion had not been there before.
While the war raged on, Alexis, Violet and Emily squabbled among themselves over what to do next. Wise Women were forbidden to fraternize with islanders. Only Alexis, who considered herself beautiful—though no one else did—was brave or foolhardy enough to approach him.

One day she turned up at his mansion. Surprised, he looked at her hard. “Don’t I know you?” he said. “You look familiar.” She shook her head no and smiled. As though he knew exactly why she had come, he took her hand and led her out to the pool. Beside it, they lay down and he undressed her, at which point Violet and Emily who were watching, turned away, too jealous to see more.
When Alexis and the beautiful man were satisfied, the maid came running to tell him he had an urgent message. As soon as he left her, Alexis began to age, but by the time he came back, she was gone, so he didn’t see her shriveled skin, her dry cracked lips, the long wiry hair around her wrinkled face. When Violet and Emily saw her, they were horrified and afraid they would be seen as accomplices and suffer the same fate, but as the days passed, they watched Alexis gradually return to her everyday self.

They knew better than to contact the beautiful man again, so they tried to focus on the war, but they were not yet ready to give him up. Over the course of a year, they watched him day and night. Every expression, every mannerism, everything he did and said was known to them: his short-lived affairs, his gambling, even his close friendship with the Carilian leader. But none of this fazed Alexis, Violet and Emily. The Wise Women were only distraught when the Bihabi caught the beautiful man plotting with the Carilian leader and imprisoned him in the cellar of his mansion.
By then, so many Bihabi had died, the Carilians decided that the cures were nothing more than rumors. Though the relatives of Alexis, Violet and Emily had made a vow, they finally felt compelled to reveal their secret. At first, when they shouted in the main square that three Wise Women living among them were healers and could’ve saved the islanders, no one believed them, but the relatives were so insistent the Bihabi finally took notice. They realized that no one had been cured since the war began.
An angry mob gathered, chanting, hurling insults, throwing stones outside the house where the Wise Women lived, so they had to act quickly and chose their most powerful amulet, an alabaster stone incised with the figure of a rearing cobra. Each one held it and felt its vibration before they mimicked in unison the slow, mournful song of the Common Potoo. Before their eyes, the Carilians began to shrink. Soon they were the size of the smallest assassin bugs. When their leader saw how powerful the Wise Women were, he surrendered at once, but his surrender didn’t stop them from shrinking him as well. Their last task was to punish the beautiful man, but they couldn’t bear to shrink him or expose him to the deadly assassin bugs, so they drowned him in his pool.

Though Alexis, Violet and Emily hung their heads in shame, or what looked like shame, most but not all Bihabi could not forgive their cruel disregard for their fellow islanders. The Wise Women offered no resistance when they drowned them in the pool. At least the Bihabi thought they had drowned, but the Wise Women did not die. Underwater, they were able to bring the beautiful man back to life. Free of constraints, they abandoned themselves to desire.
The Bihabi who had opposed killing the Wise Women argued that now they had no defense against disease and early death while others pointed out that at least they were safe from attack. What no one disagreed about was the murder of the beautiful man who, unknown to them, was having the time of his life.