Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (52 page)

He placed about ten traps that morning and then went back to work on improving his shelter. As he neared his campsite Ginja began a rumbling growl.
Oh no!
Pell thought,
another lion?
To his consternation, when he carefully arrived in view of the little outcropping underneath which he had set up, he saw people squatting in front of
his
fire! They had even built his fire up. His stomach sank as he wondered if they had stolen his remaining meager possessions. He didn’t even contemplate the possibility of fighting anyone for what was his. After losing many fights to Denit, he would never consider the possibility that he might win such a physical contest. Especially against more than one opponent and he saw at least two near his fire. He stole closer, hoping to observe without being seen. Suddenly and with great dismay he recognized that the brawny, hairy individual nearest the fire was Tando. Tando’s arm, still deformed, hung out over his knee in front of him, as if to taunt Pell, “Look at what you have done!”

Had they come to take revenge?

Then he recognized that the person further back under the overhang was his mother Donte. She seemed to have heard something and moved out into the light, peering about. She saw Pell and called out to him. “Pell, come on down. Tando wants to see if you can fix his arm.”

Pell slowly walked down to the campsite. Distantly he noted the wolf slinking away into the forest. He was trembling with reaction. Might he be able to right his wrong? Conversely, the likelihood his being able to fix Tando’s arm seemed remote. It was after all, much larger than a finger or a rabbit bone.

The pall of his situation subdued Pell’s reunion with Donte. Pell had the feeling that she saw his impending doom clearly. Though she saw no realistic chance of avoiding it she was grasping at straws and so had brought Tando here. She told him that the tribe was on its way to its summer campsite. Producing one bright point in a litany of bad omens, Tando told Pell that Gontra had admitted to him that Pell had been the one who fixed his finger. Tando had come to Donte asking if she knew where Pell had gone. When he realized that it was close to their route, he had asked if she would go with him to find Pell. Though she didn’t come out and say it, Pell could tell that even Donte was dubious at best regarding Pell’s claim to have reduced Gontra’s finger. This even after Gontra’s admission. Pell realized then just how preposterous his claim must seem. He found it surprising himself that Tando had decided to seek him out. Tando must be desperate as well. Donte and Tando had brought a little meat for Pell but, for fear of infuriating Pont, had not told the rest of the tribe where they were going.

One look at Tando’s face told Pell that Tando was torn between viewing Pell as evil incarnate for having destroyed his life and considering him as a possible savior. Pell had been staring at Tando’s arm from across the campfire and finally Tando held it out and exclaimed, “Spirits! What
are
you waiting for? Come on now, give it a try!”

Pell swallowed, “Let me look at it first.” He moved around the fire to examine it. The break was about two fingerbreadths proximal to the wrist and had produced an angulation in the direction of the back of his hand. There was considerable swelling about the break but Pell had a sense that the bones were shifted or displaced toward the back of the hand and that they were overlapped to make the arm shorter.

He gently probed it with his fingertips and Tando immediately reacted, pulling away, “Just fix it, you ginja fool, I don’t need you to poke it!”

Pell realized with some surprise that Tando was more frightened than he was. “Tando,” he said as calmly as he could, “I must feel it to try to understand how it’s broken and therefore how I might possibly try to put it back in place. I’ve fixed two
fingers
with my trick but
I
don’t know whether it’ll even work for a wrist. I’ll try if you wish, but just fixing fingers caused a lot of pain, it’s bound to hurt even more trying to fix your arm.”

Tando seemed surprised. However, he appeared to be reassured, by Pell’s calm demeanor. “Yeah, well Pont’s jerking on it almost killed me, so I suppose that I’m already aware that it’s going to hurt. OK, do what you can.” He held out his arm and turned his eyes away, gritting his teeth

“Wait. Do you have any hemp to chew for the pain?”

“No.”

Donte stood up. “I saw some hemp growing on the sunny side of the ravine. It’s down a ways. I’ll get some and be right back.” She started off down the canyon, seemingly relieved to have something constructive to do.

Pell sat down and surreptitiously began palpating his own arm in the area of the wrist where Tando’s was deformed. As opposed to the two dislocated fingers that Pell had reduced so far, he soon recognized that Tando’s arm was deformed in an area where there must not be a joint. At least when he felt his own arm in that area, just proximal to the wrist, it felt solid without even a hint of the flexibility provided by a joint.
This must be bone in this area
, he thought,
not a joint. Tando must have broken the bone, whereas I “broke” or dislocated the joint in my finger
. Pell wondered a moment whether the same trick of bending it back would work for a broken bone like it did for a dislocated joint— then he remembered that it worked in the rabbit’s broken leg.
But were rabbits different than people
?
He’d just as well try
, he decided.

Donte arrived back with some hemp while Pell was still contemplating the problem. His mind seemed to alternate from considering the complexity of Tando’s condition, to shrinking back from the impossibility of the entire situation. Tando began chewing and after a while he began to look glassy eyed. Pell got him to walk over to the stream. He had him lie down and put his arm in the icy water. Tando immediately pulled the limb back out of the water, protesting bitterly about the cold. Thinking of the effect that his calm tone of voice had had before, Pell spoke in a soothing tone and reminded Tando of how cold makes it hard to feel your fingers. He told Tando that he was sure the cold temperature had helped with the pain when he reduced his own and Gontra’s fingers. Pell continued calmly reassuring him and Tando eventually put the arm back in the stream, lying on his back with his other arm over his eyes.

Pell waited until Tando had resumed his drunken expression then lifted the arm out of the water to look at it. It was pale and cool. Pell put it back in the water and then, taking a deep breath, stepped into the icy water himself, positioning himself over Tando’s arm and trying to picture how best to grasp the wrist. He lifted it out of the water and bent it back as he had bent the fingers and the rabbit leg back. It was too big and the water made it too slippery! He couldn’t pull it out to length! Tando immediately started to struggle and the arm slipped out of Pell’s grasp. In a slurred tone Tando began berating him—for breaking his arm in the first place, for putting it in the cold water, for jerking painfully on it, for not getting it straight, for ruining his life, for killing him slowly, for being a worthless ginja, outcast, lowlife. Pell cringed, heart pounding, wanting nothing more than to jump up and run away.

He got out of the water and backed away a few paces. Then he turned and struggled to again speak calmly. Pell couldn’t keep the tremor out of his voice, but Tando, in his drugged state, didn’t seem to notice. “Sorry Tando, your wrist was just too big and slippery for me, I just need something to help me get a better grip. You settle down, I’ll look for something to help me get that grip and we’ll try it again.”

Tando looked blearily at Pell for a moment, considering. “OK,” he slurred Donte gave him some more of the hemp to chew.

Pell walked back up to the campsite thinking furiously.
Easily said but
how
could he get a better grip?
For a moment he envisioned tying a slipknot around the wrist with a leather strap. How would he bend the bone back while he pulled on it though? He pawed through his meager possessions and looked around the campsite. His eye fixed on a piece of driftwood left from an old flooding of the ravine. It lay near some leather straps he had made earlier while cutting out thongs for his “traps.” It was about half a hand wide and the length of a forearm. He picked up the driftwood and the straps and went back down to look at Tando’s wrist. Tando snored loudly, oblivious to the world as Pell looped straps about his own arm in different directions and held the piece of driftwood up to his wrist, cocking his head to look at it from different angles. Finally, Pell took his hand ax and split it lengthwise. He hacked and scraped away at it until he had a fairly flat little board with a relatively smooth side. This smooth side fit comfortably against Pell’s own forearm, wrist, palm and fingers.

Pell laid the board against Tando’s palm and considered. Because of the angulation at Tando’s wrist, the portion of the board, which should lie against the forearm, stood away at least a handspan. Pell scratched his head, contemplating the problem. He tied the board to Tando’s palm with a couple of leather straps. With a shock of excitement, he realized that the portion of the board that would eventually lie against the palmar surface of the forearm gave him a handle such that, when he pulled on it, it would bend the bone back! This would increase the deformity like he’d had to do in reducing both fingers and also the rabbit’s broken leg! He wrapped the board into place with even more straps, extending from the hand, back up across the wrist and just onto the forearm bones, but only on the hand side of the break. Tando had tolerated all this fairly well, with only an occasional moan. The hemp must be working its magic fairly well even without Pont’s other herbal ingredients. Pell inspected the apparatus a moment more then put Tando’s arm, board and all, back in the cold water. Tando moaned and struggled a bit but tolerated it better this time. When Pell thought the wrist should be numb, he pulled it out and checked the straps, snugging up a few even tighter than he had gotten them before. He put Tando’s arm back in the water again and once more stepped out into the icy water to stand over the arm. As the submerged arm cooled again, Pell carefully considered how to exert the greatest possible force during this next try. He was fairly certain that Tando wouldn’t be giving him another chance if he failed this time. He had pulled very hard on the two fingers he had reduced. How much harder might he have to pull on an arm?

Pell bent Tando’s arm up to a right angle at the elbow. He grasped the proximal part of the board with his right hand, just below the fracture, bending the wrist and hand back. He grasped the other end of the board with Tando’s strapped fingers in his left hand then put his foot on Tando’s biceps just above the bent elbow. With a surge, Pell pulled mightily. The board bent the bone even farther back at the fracture site. Still through the board, Pell could feel the bones grinding together and slipping around. Tando flailed up, striking Pell on the back, though Pell hardly noticed. With his own left hand, which was grasping the board and Tando’s hand, he pulled the wrist back straight. This maneuver laid the board back down against Tando’s proximal forearm.

Pell stared. Yes! The board lay flat against the arm! Tando’s arm was straight again! It even seemed like it was back to its original length! Tears ran down Pell’s cheeks. He started to let go, expecting Tando’s arm to stay straight. The dislocated fingers had remained straight, after he had reduced them. To his alarm, in a sickening fashion the arm started to bend again. Pell remembered that the rabbit’s leg had done the same thing. He pushed the board back down against Tando’s forearm—this seemed to hold it straight. He held it there with one hand and lifted his own feet out of the icy water to sit on the bank and look at his work. Absently Pell reached out, picked up one more of the leather straps, and began to wrap it around the proximal forearm to secure the board in place as a splint. While doing this Pell slowly came to realize that Tando was still pounding him weakly on the back, all the while gasping in great wracking sobs.

Pell turned, “Tando, it worked. Your arm looks straight!”

Tando looked at his arm, still gasping. Then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed to the ground. For panic stricken minute, Pell feared that Tando’s spirit had left him, but after watching carefully, he could tell that Tando was still breathing. With a gasp, Pell began breathing again as well.

Pell slowly began to wind even more leather straps into place. When he had Tando’s arm firmly strapped to the wooden splint he propped it against the supine Tando's abdomen. To his amazement, a sense of complete exhaustion rolled over Pell. He considered the physical effort involved in what he had just completed and it didn’t seem like much, however he seemed to be unraveled. He lay back next to Tando, trembling.

To hide her own tears, Donte had gone out collecting firewood while Pell whittled on the little board. Her own nerves were tattered by the battering alteration of despair and hope for her only surviving child. She didn’t honestly want to survive Pell’s death, a death that she saw as inevitable unless Roley took him back into the Aldans. A squalid death in starvation or a savage death in the jaws of some predator—in either case it would be a desolate end for a mother’s son. Her hopes had been buoyed high upon Gontra’s admission that
Pell
—believe it or not,
Donte’s own son
—had in fact been the one to reduce his dislocated finger.

The ability to perform such miracles was a Spirit given gift that could make you welcome in
any
tribe, even if you
were
an abysmal hunter—even such an abysmal hunter that a mother would recognize the lack of skill in her own son. Donte’s high hopes had been dashed repeatedly on the stones of disbelief. This was, after all, the boy she had raised for thirteen summers, always watching for the signs of the distinction that a mother hopes for in her child, yet, being honest with herself, never seeing it.