Arc 8: Rest and Refuge

“In those parts of our beauteous land that remain wild, untouched by the gentling hands of civility and township, there dwell things of such horror and wonder to haunt the dreams of even the most stolid, unimaginative mind.”

Montrose Rainsford's Concise and Accurate Encyclopaedia of Araya, Her Peoples, and Her Varied Environs.

- - -

The man gives his name as Milo, and tends to our wounds with skill and care. His kit is spread across the span of the dining table. It is broad in its variety of treatments, meticulously organized, and well-kept. There are rolls of bandages, freshly smelling of some cleansing ointment or tincture. Below those, little jars of thick and sturdy glass, each one sealed with a brass lid and held in place by loops of leather. They're filled with salves that span the shades of gray and smell strongly of medicine when opened. Thin, dark threads of horse hair and curved needles for stitching wounds. Of all that's spread in front of me, it's the needles that keep drawing my attention. It's them that I fear I'll need.

The wound on my back, the long cut given me by the gentle trace of a wicked-curve talon, cracked its scabbing as Clarke and I stumbled towards the light. I can feel the sluggish trickle of blood on my skin. Looking at the needle, it's not the talon that I see, but the pain. Milo salves bruises and bandages small cuts in relative silence. When he speaks, it's to murmur instruction. Put your finger here, he'll say, and secure the loose end of a bandage while it's held in place. For a freshly salved bruise, he'll advise to keep it dry until you can't smell it anymore. For a wound re-opened and trickling blood, he'll say nothing, but hiss a breath through his teeth.

All the while, the woman watches from her post at the counter. Her green eyes are watchful, their wariness clear in the light of the lamp. Is it of us, and the story we've told? Probably not, given that story's illustration across our bodies. Our intent, then. Her arms are folded, one hand lifted to the lapel of her robe, pinching its edge between her fingers. Milo then says, with a confused lilt to his words, “You said this happened recently?”

“Yes,” I murmur. The glint of those curved needles draws my eye again, and again I force myself to look away. I look at Clarke, her head pillowed in the cradle of her arms. She fell asleep in the seconds after Milo had finished treating her. It's why I insisted she be first.

His confusion deepens. “This is days old,” he says, “but the rest of your injuries are fresh.” Only now does the woman move, unfolding from her distant posture and pacing around the table, suspicion new in her gaze and a growing tension in the line of her jaw. She paces around the dining table and joins Milo to take her own measure of my injury. “See?” he says to her, and she hums. Of me, he asks, “How?”

I shudder, not from their understandable confusion or their commendable wariness, but from the relentless, heart's-beat throb of dull pain in my shoulder. There is no tolerance of it left within me, no reserve of grit from which I can draw. I swallow thickly, throat rubbed raw by the cold night air's keen edge. I see the needles again, through the blur in my eyes. “Can it wait?” I plead, barely above a whisper. “I promise, I'll tell you, I just–”

The soft curl of a woman's hand on my shoulder, my good shoulder, stops me. Gentle pressure turns me to face them. I am sore and scared and so very, very weary. The woman sees the entirety of my pitiful state, and the look in her eyes softens. She looks me over, as if to truly see me for the first time since I stumbled to the steps of her home. She nods, and to Milo, says, “She's dislocated her shoulder. We should start there.”

They look in each other's eyes, and a wordless conversation passes between them. It reminds me of those nights in which Edith, Clarke, and I shared dreams, of the closeness and clarity between us that came so easily. He dips his head, then turns to me with a lifted hand. “May I?” he asks, reaching for my loose and useless arm. I nod, and though his touch is gentle, the simple of moving it wells further tears to my eyes. He lifts it, a careful frown on his face, until it forms a line with my aching shoulder. “Brace yourself,” he warns.

Then, before I can do any such thing, he twists his entire body and yanks my arm away from me. The woman catches me around my waist before I can stumble, and I give a choked, breathless gasp as a wave of pain swells to a great and cresting height before it simply fades away. “You'll be sore for days,” Milo predicts, lowering my arm slowly to my side. “and have a hell of a bruise, but you should be fine soon enough.”

Before now, I didn't know there could be so strong a feeling of relief. It is cool and swift, like a snowmelt-stream in the flood of springtime, and it brings a smile to me. All that remains of that heart's-beat throb is a dim and distant echo. “Thank you,” I whisper to him.

What he gives me back is a wry turn of his mouth and the words, “You should hold off on that. We're not done yet.”

- - -

There's something odd in Milo's treatment of my injuries, some absence I can't quite put to name. It's not that he is careless; each bandage is as securely wrapped as it need be, and no tighter. Salve and ointment are applied to bruises and stinging cuts with neither waste nor a forceful touch. He is with me as he was with Clarke, and she showed not so much as a wince. The sound of my shoulder being located, a pop of surprising volume, had woken her from her table-top slumber. Now she watches, chin pillowed in the crook of her elbow, other arm stretched out in front of her.

What is it, this missing thing? He finishes with a pat to my shoulder and goes about packing up his kit. The woman, who'd given her name as Adelaide, helps him. They carry out a conversation in quiet murmurs and meetings of eye. There's the stinging-clean scent of medicine in my nose and weariness heavy on my shoulders and neck. It pulls at my eyes and I blink, and in that blurred moment afterwards it's not Milo and Adelaide that I see. It's my family. My parents.

There I see Father, broad and strong, thickly red in hair and beard. By now, both would be wild from how often he's run his hands through them. Always ready with a lesson for us, he would ensure he we knew the names of every herb in those salves and show us how to best keep them all dry. It's important to him that we learn, so that he may know we can care for ourselves when he cannot.

Then, just as suddenly, Father is gone. Milo in his place.

There, I see Mother; with hair, height, and build she gave to me. Smears of ointment on her fingers, wiped clean on her sleeves. She would patch our wounds and soothe our keening hearts with gentle touches and loving words, given in whisper to us and no other. It's important to her that we know, so that we may feel it when she can no longer tell us.

Then, just as suddenly, she is gone. Adelaide in her place.

Here I am without them and Oh, how I feel it. How I keen with it. My eyes sting, so I close them. Breathing deeply still rubs at my raw throat, so I don't. My head is heavy, so I lower it. My brow rests on the cool, sanded wood of the dining table, its polish smooth on my skin. I want my parents. My shoulders shake with it. I'm choking on it. Hot tears burn as they fall.

I want to go home. I can admit it here, to myself. I almost died tonight, and I want to go home. There's the scrape of wood-on-wood, a chair being pushed back. A sob heaves its way out, breaking through the wall of my sealed mouth. I press my brow deeper into the table and my lips peel back as another sob comes. There's no stopping now, no fighting it. Why did I even try? Clarke's hand sifts through my hair, fingers gentle on the back of my neck. It's as if I stand at the edge of a vast canyon, so wide and deep I see neither side nor bottom, and the only thing keeping me from falling in are those soft, gentle strokes.

“We – we almost died,” I choke out, because we did.

Above me, Clarke sniffs. “Almost,” she agrees, voice thick and wet. “almost.”

I rise unsteadily to my feet, pushing my face into the curve of her neck and wrapping my arms around her. I cling to her with all the strength left to me. She puts her arms around my waist and the middle of my back. We hold each other on the edge of that canyon, and we do not fall.