Bonesetter 2 -Winter- (22 page)

The women turned, apparently just now noticing the grouse in the basket Pell had been carrying. Gia said, “Yum, grouse!”

However, Donte looked irritated. “Are you trying to distract us from the mouse problem by talking about grouse?!”

“No! No, I was just trying to point out that I’d been thinking about feeding grain to an animal that we would eat later. You’ve got animals that are already eating our grain, all we need to do…” He looked around at them as if waiting for them to figure it out. After a few moments in which they all stared at him as if waiting for some kind of revelation, he finally said, “All we need to do, is eat the mice!” He made a little hand gesture which seemed to say,
Isn’t that obvious?

Donte stared at him for a moment, then put her hands on her hips and said, “And just
how
do you think we’re going to hunt mice?! They’re too small and far too quick!”

Pell tilted his head curiously, “Squirrels are small and quick, but we catch them.”

That evening they ate a soup of lentils and grain with boiled crayfish and roasted grouse. Manute, Deltin, Tando, Boro, and Yadin had gone hunting, but their hunt had been unsuccessful. Though they had quite a few crayfish, Gia had convinced Pell that they should weave the large basket he wanted to put his grouse in before he actually started trying to keep any of them. Woday managed to seat himself next to Pell for this meal and Pell nudged him, “See, I told you I wouldn’t be able to keep Gia from eating my grouse.”

He’d said it loud enough for Gia to hear him, and she turned to him with a smile, “I’m only eating it because I
know
you can get more.”

“I hope so,” Pell said hanging his head as if he were moping, though it was obvious that he was faking.

Woday pondered the fact that his Falls-people tribe would have been happy with the number of crayfish he and Pell had brought in. Catching them one at a time by sneaking up behind them meant that even with many more people trying to catch them, they rarely got so many. Even though there were more people in their tribe they would have been satisfied with fewer crayfish. They would have mixed the crayfish meat in with grain and roots in a stew and been quite content.

As he was thinking about this, he heard Yadin talking to Agan. He was asking her something and for a moment a thrill of worry shot through Woday. What if he wanted to join this tribe also? The recollection of how much Woday had worried that this newly formed, recently devastated tribe couldn’t possibly feed him over the winter shot to the fore of his mind. If Yadin joined the tribe too…

His thoughts suddenly overturned. He realized that on the one hand he’d been thinking about how much food they had here at Cold Springs yet a moment later he’d gone back to worrying that they didn’t have enough.
But will these fish traps and bird snares work in the winter’s dearth?
He didn’t know, and realized that the people here couldn’t know either. They did have more root and grain stores than he’d have expected, but he didn’t think they had enough to keep this many people alive through the winter. Even if their snares continued to work after the snows, if the people only ate meat, they’d get sick. He started to get a gnawing unease in his stomach

His attention went back to Yadin and Agan. Agan was saying, “And if we did teach you our secrets, what would you do for us in return?”

Yadin looked surprised and Woday felt some surprise himself. He’d never considered the possibility that someone should pay to be taught a better way to hunt.
No, that’s not true. When I asked to be an apprentice, they told me I’d
I would
have to work hard to pay for the bonesetting knowledge I was being taught. That’s not really any different from Yadin asking to be taught some of their other secrets.
His eyes widened,
I forgot to ask Pell to teach me about Panute’s leg again.

Woday turned to Pell to ask him about Panute’s leg, but Pell interrupted his thoughts by saying, “What happened to your fingers?”

Woday glanced at his bruised and scraped fingers and grimaced, “I’m not very good with a hand axe. I managed to bang my fingers several times trying to cut the forked branch for our crayfish basket.” He sighed, feeling embarrassed, “I guess it’s another thing I need to practice.”

Pell stared at Woday’s injured fingers, saying nothing. After a moment, Woday tried to get back to his concern, “Um, I’m hoping…”

Pell had put up his hand in a halting position as he kept staring at Woday’s fingers. Not knowing what else to do, Woday sat silently for a moment, then looked back over at Yadin and Agan. Yadin had unrolled a bundle, apparently from his pack. Woday’s eyes widened, the pack contained a fortune in worked flint! Spear points, knives, cutting flakes, scrapers, awls—all of them fine examples of the craft.

Woday’s eyes went to Agan, expecting her eyes to show some kind of avarice, but she merely looked contemplative.

Suddenly, Pell shook himself as if coming out of a trance. He started to speak to Woday, but then looked to see what Woday was focused on. His eyes went to the trove of flint and now they gleamed. Woday thought however, that they gleamed with excitement rather than a mere lust for the value of the flint. Pell said, “Yadin, do you have any hand axes?”

Yadin shrugged, “No, they’re pretty heavy to carry and almost anyone can make a hand axe so there’s not much point in me carrying them around.”

“I’ve had an idea,” Pell said.

Woday took a sudden interest because he’d heard so much about Pell’s ideas. What he hadn’t expected was the intent look that immediately appeared on Yadin’s face. Yadin was so much older than Pell that it seemed hard to believe that he’d care about the ideas of a man so young he was practically a boy.

“An idea for what?” Yadin asked

“A different kind of hand axe,” Pell said, waving in the direction of Woday’s injured fingers. “Just about everyone’s pinched or scraped up some fingers trying to use one.”

Yadin peered at Woday’s fingers and snorted, “Looks like Woday’s better at hitting his fingers than most.” He shrugged, “Still, a hand axe is a hand axe. It doesn’t matter what kind of hand axe you make, people are still going to scrape up their fingers sometimes.”

“What if…” Pell paused, his head tipped to one side as he thought.

“What if what?” Yadin asked.

“What if… you made a hand axe something like a spear, with a shaft on the back so that your hand wouldn’t get very close to what you were chopping?”

Yadin snorted, “If you hold your axe way back at the other end of a spear shaft, you’re going to miss what you’re chopping at most of the time.”

“No! No, a
short
shaft… More like a long knife handle.”

Yadin got a startled look on his face, then his eyes grew distant as he considered. “It’d be really hard to shape the back of a hand axe so that it had a narrow stem that would fit into a deer antler.” He frowned, “Besides if you hit a little crookedly, it might break off the narrow stem or split the antler.”

Pell shrugged, “Make it smaller than a regular hand axe, but bigger than a knife or spear blade.” He held up three fingers next to one another. “Maybe the size of three fingers?” he said, then pointed to the ends of his fingers, “With the sharp edge down here where the ends of the fingers are?”

Yadin looked intent, then he turned and said, “Falin, where’s that nodule of flint I gave you the other day? I think it’s time for your first flint knapping lesson.”

Falin got up and ran to look for his flint nodule. Yadin got out his hammer stone, then rolled up his bundle of finished flint implements. Woday turned to ask Pell about Panute’s leg, but Pell had already stood up. He moved over to sit next to Yadin. Shortly they were deeply immersed in shaping the oddest hand axe Woday had ever seen.

He glanced at Panute and wondered whether he should try to look at her leg and try to understand the magic sticks that were tied to it without Pell’s help. Finally, he shook his head and decided he’d have to try to ask Pell again tomorrow. Looking around, he saw that Donte wasn’t busy. He turned to ask her for help picking out and binding a basket to his forked branch.

In the morning, as the tribe ate a porridge of einkorn with bits of apple, Woday saw that Pell was sitting near Panute. He made his way over to Pell and said, “Can you teach me about Panute’s leg?”

Pell looked surprised, his eyes going to Panute’s leg. Uncomfortably, he said, “What do you want to know?”

Woday felt flustered. He’d expected his teacher to simply begin instruction, not start by asking him a question! “Um,” his eyes went to Panute’s leg as well. “The sticks. How do you do the magic for the sticks?”

Pell looked distraught, “They’re not magic!”

Taken aback, Woday said, “They’re not? Someone told me you made them for her. If they don’t have healing magic, why are they tied to her leg?”

Pell blinked, “Her leg was flopping around! We needed something to hold it straight, so we shaped a couple of pieces of firewood to fit the leg, one on each side.” He shrugged, “
Deltin
did most of it. He’s much better at woodworking than I am.”

Woday cast around for something cogent to ask. “You said that you know a trick for putting bones back in place. What did you do to put Panute’s bones back where they belong?”

Looking a little surprised, Pell said, “Um, the trick is for bones that are
stuck
in the wrong position. I had to use it for everyone else’s bones, but not for Panute’s. Her bones just flopped around, assuming any position we put them in, so all we did was put the splints on to hold them as straight as we could.”

Staring at Panute’s leg and the sticks bound to it, Woday could see how the sticks would tend to hold a floppy leg fairly straight, but he felt very disappointed. He’d expected some kind of complex wisdom, not to be told that Pell had essentially tied her leg to a couple of stakes! “Um, how will you know when her bones are healed?”

“I think… I think the person whose bones are broken knows when they’re healed because they stop hurting. Your leg’s feeling a lot better now, right Panute?”

“Yes!” Panute said, looking excited. “Do you think it’s healed now?”

Pell shrugged, “I don’t know. Let’s take the splints off and see how it feels.”

Woday felt pretty disappointed. It didn’t really seem like Pell knew much. Woday found it hard to believe that the famous Bonesetter would think that the person with the broken bone would know better than
he
would whether the bone was healed. Nonetheless, when Pell knelt to untie Panute’s splints he leaned over eagerly to watch.

Woday wasn’t the only one interested. It quickly seemed that everyone in the cave had gathered around to watch. As soon as the splints were untied, the furs which had been padding the splints were unwrapped. Pell gently picked up Panute’s leg and bent it from side to side. Or at least that’s what it looked like he was trying to do. The bone didn’t seem to be bending very much. Since her bone had been recently broken, Woday expected Panute to gasp with pain, but she simply observed interestedly what Pell was doing.

Pell said, “Does that hurt?”

Panute shook her head. “Is that good?”

“I think so. How much of your weight have you been putting on it?”

Woday’s eyes widened, how could his Master be saying, “I think so?!” How was he going to learn from someone who didn’t
know
the answers to such basic questions?!

Panute didn’t seem to be put off by Pell’s lack of knowledge. She said, “Like you told me, I’ve been putting on as much as I can as long as it doesn’t hurt. I think I’m putting on quite a lot.”

Pell said, “Do you think we should leave the splints off?”

Panute’s eyes widened and she shook her head abruptly.

Pell looked back up at Woday, “Can you help me tie these back on?”

Woday squatted down next to Pell and helped wrap the furs back on her leg. As he did, he noticed that her leg didn’t
feel
broken. Next he held the splints in place while Pell tied them back on. When they’d finished, Woday wondered to himself if he’d learned
anything
.

He decided he didn’t know.

***

As Sidean and Wenax left the Oppos’ cave, they nervously looked at the sky. It had been days since that first snow and, though the weather had been good since then, they really didn’t want to be away from their home cave if winter really set in. Both of them felt somewhat surprised that Nosset and Pont had been able to talk Jalgon into sending two of his hunters on a mission this close to the onset of winter.

The evening before had been spent listening to ominous chanting by the two medicine men. Pont had repeated and embellished his stories about the evil spirit that had overtaken the boy Pell and how it now controlled his old tribe the Aldans. Everyone in the Oppos had been disquieted by the stories and relieved when Jalgon finally decided that something
had
to be done. However, when Sidean and Wenax realized
they
were the ones being sent out to do something, they hadn’t been nearly as happy.

Oh well,
Sidean thought,
at least I’ve visited the Aldans before and know where they live. We’ll make a fast trip there, see what’s happened to Yadin, and head back home, hopefully before the weather gets cold again.

***

Pell had Woday go put the fish trap back in the stream that morning. In the afternoon as he walked back with his new basket-on-a handle to check it, he found his thoughts turning back to his grave concerns about how little Pell seemed to know about bone setting. A trick he couldn’t show Woday, sticks for healing that Pell claimed
weren’t
magic, and asking the
patient
whether their bones were healed!

When he’d set out to apprentice himself, those were
not
things he’d thought he’d encounter in his Master! What if Pell was no more than he seemed, an overgrown, handsome boy barely come into manhood?

Though Woday had felt somewhat depressed early in the walk, the day was crisply beautiful. This seemed surprising in view of the fact that it’d snowed a little more than a hand of days ago, but Woday wasn’t about to complain. As long as he kept his thoughts away from Pell’s surprising lack of knowledge, his spirits continued to rise. After all, whether Pell knew anything about bone setting or not, Woday had already learned wonderful things about fish traps. And, for that matter,
bird
traps too.

He arrived back at the bend where they put in the fish traps and began tugging on the rope. As it rose near the surface, he felt a little dismayed to see that there were only two crayfish clinging to the outside of the basket.
Maybe they all found their way inside this time,
he thought in an attempt to reassure himself. For a moment, he wondered whether it’d be a waste of his time to slide his basket-on-a-handle under the trap to catch the crayfish as they dropped off, since there were only two. He decided he’d just as well determine whether the basket-catcher worked.

Stopping with the fish trap almost coming out of the water, he reached down and picked up the handle to the catching-basket. Carefully, he slid it underneath the fish trap, then lifted the fish trap and the catching-basket out of the water at the same time. With delight, he saw the two crayfish drop off the fish trap, but fall into the catching-basket. He brought both out onto the bank and set them down. He quickly caught the two crayfish in the catching basket, one in each hand. As they wiggled and twisted their pincers around, he realized with dismay that he didn’t know what to do with them.
I should get one of the women to make me a crayfish carrying basket
, he thought.

After standing there wondering what to do for a few more moments, he decided to put them in the fish trap itself. He knelt, planning to push them in through the reeds that created the one-way passage at the end of the fish trap. Suddenly, he worried that, if the trap was full of crayfish, one of them might bite him while he had his hand inside the trap. He leaned around to peer into the loosely woven door at the other end of the cylindrical basket.

There were only five more crayfish inside! How could that be?! Yesterday there’d been five on the outside and more than twenty, perhaps even thirty inside of it!

Dismayed, Woday shoved the two crayfish he had in his hands through the reeds into the basket while wondering what in the world had gone wrong. Did they just catch so many crayfish the first time through some kind of bizarre luck? Could it be that a trap only caught crayfish once?! Did Pell have to be there for it to work?

With a disheartened sigh, Woday decided he didn’t know. He picked up the trap, stood and started trudging back to the cave.

***

Yadin looked at his new axe. The cutting edge was a little more than three fingers wide and the entire axe not quite as long as his hand. For that matter, it was about as thick as his hand at the base though tapering down to the point. The back end of it, though thicker than the front, wasn’t as wide as the cutting edge. He turned to Pell, holding it up, “What do you think of this?”

“Oh! That looks really good!” Pell turned to Deltin who’d been helping Pell try to make a handle, “What do you think?”

Deltin shrugged, “I still don’t think it’s going to work.” He grinned, “But that’s what I usually think about your damn fool ideas. It hasn’t kept them from working so far.” He held out a hand for the axe, “Let’s see how they fit together.”

Yadin handed the flint axe to Deltin while he studied the handle Deltin had been making. Deltin had chosen the branch of one of the trees with hard wood. The branch had forked, but not at a steep angle like branches usually did, instead the two branches ran very close to one another for a little while. He’d cut it about a forearm length below the fork and a little more than a hand length above the fork. He’d been working to chip out the wood between the two limbs of the fork to be about the same size as the base of Yadin’s axe. Now he took Yadin’s axe and fitted it into the slotted fork he’d created so that the edge was pointing out, the same direction as the handle. To Yadin, it looked like a short, fat spear with a cutting edge instead of a point. It looked unbelievably clumsy to him and he couldn’t imagine it working.

Deltin looked it over. “Good,” he said, “it’s not pushing the limbs apart. I don’t think it’ll split.”

Pell said, “Shall we bind it with some wet sinew?”

Deltin shrugged again, “We could, but if I were you I’d try it gently to see if you think it’ll work, or maybe needs to be modified before you finish it.” He held it out to Pell.

Pell took it and stabbed gently at a piece of firewood with it a few times. He obviously wasn’t trying to hit hard, probably for fear that it’d split the unbound handle. It did keep his hand far from the wood he was cutting, but Yadin still thought it looked clumsy. From the disappointed look on Pell’s face, he probably did as well. On Pell’s final chop, he hit hard enough that the axe head twisted in the fork to point directly to the side. Pell reached down and grabbed the axe head as if to turn it back so that it would parallel the handle, but then suddenly stopped. Slowly, he lifted it up into the air as if he was holding a club.

Apparently not noticing Pell’s look of concentration, Deltin said, “I’m starting to think I might be right this time. It’s not going to work. It’ll keep you from smashing your fingers all right, but you won’t be able to chop very well.”

Pell didn’t react. As if he hadn’t heard Deltin’s words at all, he slowly lowered his club/axe toward the piece of firewood. It looked as if he was going to strike it with the edge sticking out of the side of his axe-with-a-handle instead of spearing it from the end like they’d originally made it to work. Looking entranced, he slowly said, “I think it’ll work…
this
way.”

Yadin could see it, though Deltin said, “If you hit it that way, the axe’ll just fly out the other side of the fork!”

Pell turned to him, an excited look in his eyes. “We might have to make the handle differently,” he held the axe out to Deltin, “but feel it! If you swing it like you would a club, with the edge sticking out the side…”

Deltin slowly took the axe through a swing like you would a club, obviously afraid the sharp axe head would fly off the handle. As he did his eyes widened. “You might be right.” He held the axe up so he could look at it. “If we made a hole in the handle rather than a fork, we could attach it solidly!” He’d said that part with an excited smile, but then suddenly turned and shot a mock glare at Pell. In an exasperated tone, he said, “How come
I’m
always the one having to do things over in order to make one of your crazy ideas work?!”

Yadin laughed.

Deltin turned his glare on Yadin, “Sure,
you
think it’s funny!”

Grinning, Yadin put his hands up in surrender.

From behind Yadin, Woday’s voice said plaintively, “Master, it didn’t
work
this time!”

Yadin turned to look and saw Woday behind him, holding a wet looking cylindrical basket and looking frustrated. Evidently he’d walked up while Yadin’d been focused on the axe. Pell stood, saying, “Call me
Pell
, I’m not your master. You’re learning from me, and I’m learning from you.” They walked toward the cave entrance. Pell looked back over his shoulder at Deltin, “I’m going to try to help Woday, I’ll try to redo the handle when I get back so
you
don’t have to do it over.”