Bonesetter (15 page)

H
e
knew he
would need to find grains and roots to store, as
eating only
meat led to sickness.
There didn’t seem to be any grain growing in his area.
Donte had shown him some grasses she said would have grain later but he worried that he hadn’t seen any yet.
The tubers he did find were small and it didn’t seem like he would ever find enough to last a winter.
A
s he thought more of it,
despite his
surprisingly large
stores of meat, things
still looked pretty grim
.

Pell was coming back into camp late one afternoon when he was startled by a shout.
“Pell, look out!”

He looked up to see a figure casting a spear at him and dove into the bushes beside the path.
The spear flew overhead to clatter onto the path behind him.
Pell scrambled through the brush to the other side and crouching, regained his feet.
To his dismay he realized he had dropped his own spear.
The shout had sounded like Tando but
who had tried to kill him?
How had Tando managed to arrive at the same time as whoever was attacking
him
?
How many were there?
Why were they after him?
Was it Pont?
What in the Spirits should he do next?
He must escape!
Pell had dropped to his knees to crawl further into the bush when he heard Tando calling again.
“Pell, come on out, I scared it away.”

Scared what away?
Pell slowly raised his head and peered over the brush to see Tando standing there with a huge grin. He looked quite proud of himself.
Where was the guy who threw the spear at him?
“Tando, what happened to the other guy?”

“What guy?”

“The guy who threw the spear at me.”

“No one threw a spear at you.
I
threw a spear at a wolf that was sneaking up behind you.”

“Spirits!
Did you hit her?!”

“Her?
I didn’t see a woman.
Where was she?
Anyway, I didn’t hit anyone.
I
did
frighten away th
at
wolf.
It was a big one.
”

Pell began to clamber back over the brush to the path.
How was he going to explain Ginja to Tando?
“Tando….”

“Yes?”

“Uh, the uhhh, the uh wolf you see, she’s…the wolf is… my friend.”
He finished lamely.

Tando stared at Pell like he had just grown a horn.
“The wolf is what?”

“She’s my friend.
Don’t hurt her, OK?”

By
the look of
Tando’s expression, it appeared that
he thought
Pell had grown several horns.
Pell looked around for Ginja and saw her slinking about in the brush some distance away.
“Ginja, come.”
He said this while unconsciously pulling a piece of the heavily smoked meat out of his pouch and waving it down low.

To Tando’s amazement, the wolf began to slink nearer, though warily.
As it got closer he could see the hair standing up on its back and it bared its teeth in Tando’s direction.
Finally it came right up to Pell and took something out of his hand.
It lowered slowly down to its belly and began chewing on whatever Pell had given it, all the time with its attention focused on Tando
and
its fur still raised.

Pell turned back to Tando.
“How is your wrist?” he said eyeing Tando’s arm cautiously.
It looked swollen but, to his relief, it still appeared to be fairly straight.
The
wooden
splint remained in place but the straps appeared to be loose.

“What?
Oh it’s great!” Tando slid the splint out from under the loose leather straps and wiggled his wrist back and forth a little, flexing his fingers expansively.
It’s kinda stiff but it hardly hurts at all anymore.
“I didn’t know if I should take your “healing stick” off of it yet.
I feel safer with it on but it feels good to take it off and move my hand around some too.”

Pell was surprised that Tando thought of the stick as something that made the bone heal rather than just something to hold the wrist
straight while it healed.
H
e realized, he hadn’t explained to Tando why he had strapped
the stick to him, it had simply seemed obvious
.
“I guess it’s OK to have it off then.
But why are you back?
I’m happy to see you of course, but has something happened?” Pell didn’t say it aloud, but he was hoping against all hope that they had come to tell him that Roley had agreed to take Pell back into the Aldans.

Without taking his eyes off the wolf lying at Pell’s feet, Tando said, “It’s my mate Tellgif.
She was sick when Donte and I found the Aldans at the summer hunting area.
She started coughing, then she became very hot.
Then she alternated from hot and sweating to cold and clammy.
She would cough up terrible looking stuff and keep coughing in great wracking heaves until she was exhausted.
She became weaker until she couldn’t stand and she’s been that way ever since.
All Pont’s medicines and rituals haven’t made her any better.
Sometimes he does things that seem to make her even worse.
At some of his ceremonies, he makes her breathe smoke. When she does
,
it seems like she’ll never stop coughing.
He says she’s coughing up the evil spirits but it doesn’t seem
like
it helps, instead she seems weaker. When we first rejoined the Aldans, I pretended that my arm had been straightened in a fall into a stream.
Of course, Pont claimed that that was because he’d been praying to the water spirits for me. I didn’t object at first but one night Pont had us all chewing hemp in one of his ceremonies for Tellgif.
I… got kind of crazy like people do when they chew hemp.
When Tellgif seemed to get even sicker during the ceremony I went berserk.
I flew into a rage and started calling him a liar.
I told them all that I had gone to
you
!
I told them that
you
fixed my arm when Pont couldn’t!
I was crazy I guess.

I thought that they would throw Pont out and take you in as their medicine man instead.
But they didn’t.
Pont went into a rage, cast a death spell on me and then they threw
me
out.
He said that if they didn’t, the whole tribe would die just like Tellgif! And they just accepted it!
Can you believe it?
Thinking back over the years I’ve been in the Aldans, I’m not sure Pont has
ever
made anyone better who wouldn’t have gotten better anyway! He just claims that those who do get better, got better because he did this or that.

Anyway, Donte was the only one who stood by me and, since she came with me, now she’s exiled too.
Tellgif was so sick I was afraid to bring her with us, so she’s still there.”
He looked down at his feet and mumbled, “I was afraid to leave her too, but Donte pointed out that it would be better to get you quickly so that you can heal her before she gets too much sicker.”

“So I can
what
!?”

“You know, make her better.”

“Tando, I don’t know anything about healing!
I only know
one
trick, and that one’s
only
good for putting bones back in place.”

“She’s coughing stuff up.”

“I don’t know anything about coughing.”

“She doesn’t eat.
She’s hot, then she’s cold.
She says it hurts here.”
As he said the last Tando pointed to his chest.

“I don’t know anything to do for people who are hot and can’t eat Tando.”

“Still you’re a better healer than Pont.
All he
ever
does is give more hemp!”

“Sometimes he mixes in other herbs.”
Pell couldn’t really believe he was defending Pont but he desperately didn’t want to become involved in Tellgif’s illness.

“Yeah.”
There was a long pause in which they both looked everywhere but at each other.

“Pell, will you
try
to help Tellgif?”

Pell was stunned.
“How, Tando?
I have no
idea
what to do to help her!”

“Please Pell?
I’m begging you.”

Frustrated Pell said, “I have to think.
Let’s go back to the campsite.”

As they walked back to Pell’s cave Tando practically babbled.
He’d already stopped by Pell’s campsite and thought that the way that Pell had made a cave out of his overhang was very exciting.
He wondered whether something similar could be done elsewhere, such as the Aldans’ drafty winter cave.
He and Donte had talked about Pell’s healing powers and were sure that he could do something about Tellgif’s illness.
He and Donte had discussed how they could establish their own little tribe here at Cold Springs Ravine, just the four of them with Tando as the hunter, Pell as the healer and Donte and Tellgif as the gatherers.
The winters would be rough but others would probably join them as soon as the word got out about Pell’s healing powers.

Pell thought to himself that it was good that the walk to the cave was short, as he didn’t know how long he could take Tando’s burbling.
Especially, Tando’s constant references to
Pell
as a “healer” and
his
unshakable confidence that, because Pell had fixed Tando’s wrist he would be able to fix Tellgif’s cough.

However, as soon as they reached the cave he was assaulted
by
a similar
torrent
of babble from his own mother.
Tando and Donte had talked themselves into a highly optimistic frame of mind during their trip to Cold Springs Ravine.
Any difficulties that they may have contemplated had been set aside for Pell to solve with “his healing powers.”

Donte was also quite excited
and full of questions
about Pell’s “cave.”

-
“What mystical ceremony required that strips of meat be hung over a bush back in the back part of the cave?”

-
“Did he know that there was a lot of smoke back there and the meat was getting dried out and ruined?”

-
“How did he get enough meat to be able to spare it for the ceremony?”

-
“What had Pell buried back in the soft dirt at the back of the cave?”

-
“There
are
wolf prints everywhere!
Had wolves tried to take his ‘cave’ for a den?”

-
“Did he know that there were some wolf prints on top of Pell’s prints so the wolf must have been back recently?”

“Oh.”
She almost whimpered when she saw Ginja.
The young wolf had appeared at Pell’s side in the doorway, hackles raised despite Pell’s scratching behind her ears.

“Donte, he controls wild animals now too!” Tando said in an awed tone.

“No, not wild animals, just th
is
wolf!
She’s my friend!” Pell exclaimed.
My only friend
, he thought.
The veneration they were heaping on him
was
in such stark contrast to his previous social interactions that he just couldn’t accept it.

Donte sank to her haunches, staring at her son ashen faced, as she had done after his successful bonesetting of Tando’s wrist.
“You control the Wolf Spirit!”

“
No
,
no,
she’s just my friend.
Just this one wolf,
not
the Wolf Spirit.
I call her Ginja."

After a period of stunned silence during which both Tando and Donte alternately stared at the wolf, Pell, or each other, Tando cleared his throat to suggest that he and Pell go out hunting, “So that they might have something to eat that night.
When they threw me out of the tribe they wouldn’t let me have
any
food.
Ha, I was the one who’d made the kill that day too.
I should have taken
all
the food, but you know how it would be trying to take it, I’d have had to fight Roley for it.
Donte got some food when she left to join me, but we ate it all on the trip here.”