[From 106]
[113]
Barry's face is determined, harsh. It's the face he wore when he killed a man--a few minutes ago--a lifetime ago. And as I look back, I realize how much I don't want to see two people die tonight.
And maybe I’m scared or inspired, or maybe I just don’t want this death to be my fault. I swallow and reach over to him, gently lifting his shirt. I ask Barry for a knife, and luckily the one he hands me is sharp. I carefully cut through the waistband and shove my gagging back down into somewhere deep inside of me where it won’t bother me tonight, not right now--though I know I’ll have to pay for it later.
Whatever it was that cut him didn’t just slice a red stripe in his hip; it ripped part of it out. I can tell that much since a big chunk of muscle is just gone, and the skin is ragged around the edges. He was right that this isn’t something that can be sewn shut, and I doubt how much medicines could help. We could pack the wound and try to keep him from bleeding to death, but he’ll never walk again.
My hands are shaking, but I reach out and place two fingers on the wound. I close my eyes and feel a spark. I can still see it on the inside of my eyelids, real or imagined, I don’t know. I’ve never used magic for more than lighting fires, for moving small things. Not like this.
I had just a bit of an idea. If I could apply the principle of Wertenhouser’s Theory to his muscles, maybe they could move close enough together that I could at least slow the bleeding. Maybe I could find the blood vessels and close them. As I start to think in terms of mathmagics rather than blood, I can calm my breathing. I can see the small tubes that are letting so much blood free. I don’t know how, but I can see them, not see really, but feel in my mind the shape of them. I can feel the pulse, but maybe that’s just a guess or what I would expect to be there.
The trick now now is to tell them what to do. That’s the problem with mathmagics, not harnessing the energy, but focusing it for a specific purpose. That’s what they use machines for--and as I debate with myself, more of his blood soaks into the grass beneath us.
“Close,” I tell his veins. My fingers tingle, but nothing much happens. I feel an alertness, though, as if his body is listening. “Ciro,” I try in Galliun, when I switch languages, it makes me feel like I’m saying it more clearly or forcefully or something. And the tingling spreads. “Ciro,” I say again, this time louder, willing energy to move from my center and down into my hands. “Ciro.” I feel the veins begin to tremble, and the open edges press together. The bleeding slows to a drip. I breath out. I open my eyes. The raw meat that was once his leg is still there, but the rubbery little tubes that look like straws or balloons gone wrong have pinched themselves shut. I lift my bloody hands, not knowing where to put them.
I look at Barry. He looks at me. Neither of us dares to hope. We don’t say anything aloud, but there, in the middle of the night, over what would surely have been a dead man, we say everything with just our eyes.
And then I am aware of his breathing. I am waiting for it.
It doesn’t come.
I turn to look at him, look back at Barry.
“Sage,” he says. “Sage wake up.” He tries to scramble into the tent, but there just isn’t room. He grips my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
And then we hear a shallow breath, a whisper. Not deep enough, not long enough. Just a thin sputter.
I look at Sage’s white face. “Too much blood,” I guess. But I know that it’s a good guess.
“So now what?” he demands. “Can’t you...make some more or something?”
“I”m not a magician,” I remind him. “And even they don’t make blood. Do you think that people would die if magic could save them?”
Barry’s fingers tighten, pinch into my shoulder. “He's is my friend, but tonight his life means a lot more than that. If you don’t heal him, it won’t just be him who dies. You stopped the bleeding, there has to be something else you can do.”
“Barry, you’ve read the same books I have. You know that there isn’t anything else. What can I do? I can tell you about energy transfer ratio, not blood. There’s no spell for making blood.” But even as I say it, I can see the connection. I don’t know how to make blood, but his body does. I stare at Barry for a several seconds before I realize that he’s shouting at me, some of tirade about saving lives and a noble cause. I don’t care.
I push my hands back into the wound. I close my eyes and think, “I need to see you. Marrow. I need the marrow...” My voice dies out. I don’t have the courage to sound that silly aloud. Not with Barry there watching. What if it doesn’t work?
“He stopped breathing!” Barry yells, which doesn’t help me at all.
What I need is a way to talk to Sage's marrow--which is a really strange thing to do--to connect to the inside of his body without thinking about how stupid and impossible it is because then it really will be impossible. And I need it to work, regardless of how stupid it is.
Barry is still shouting. I reach one red hand toward him, press a five-fingered stain across his mouth. “Shut up,” I say very softly.
And then I remember other words, words he can’t possibly know. They're not Terran or even Galliun; they're more like a secret, or a remembrance, a gift from my grandmother. I could use her help now. She isn’t here. No one who can help me is here, but I have her words.
"Gweler" I say, pushing magic into the word as I press my hands on him.
And there they are, the long bones in his legs, above and below the knee. I don’t know what bones look like, not really, but I know the shape of his bones, know how to find the marrow inside of them.
"Gwella" I tell them. Gwella. I hope it’s the right word. I know so few. But they seem to understand, and red seeps into being. A little, so little. He’s too weak.
I bite the inside of my lip and feel something tighten inside of me.
"Gwella," I say again, only this time, instead of pushing something out, in front of me, I bring myself with the word. I flow into the marrow of his bones and stretch my fingers out through it, reaching as much of the hollow that I can.
I fill the emptiness of his hip with myself, stretching out my arms, bending my back to cover the hole, to negate the void. I don’t know how it works. If I stop to think about myself, I know that I am there, here, kneeling next to him, head bent. But then the work slows, and I have to forget about myself again, about what is real and possible and just do what needs to be done.
There comes a point when I open my eyes and wonder what is happening because my hands are still red, but they rest on pink skin. Raw, but whole.
And I turn to look at the lumilamp, but I see it as if from a long way off, down a dark tunnel. And I think that there is something about that that isn’t quite right. And I try to talk to...to the, the him there, but I can’t think of the words, and it’s darker, and my--isn’t; I’m not quite right.
“Kestrel.”
I wish that someone would stop saying my name; it’s too loud.
“Kestrel.” I want to stop hearing it, to stop the noise ringing around in my head, and my eyes don’t want to open, because it’s black, and I’m tired, and I want the voice to go away. I just want to sleep.
[200]
Continue on to Chapter 2
No comments:
Post a Comment