Bonesetter (22 page)

With a sudden rush of weakness, Pell sat precipitously down on the boulder near the center of their campsite.
He scratched absently behind Ginja’s ear while the wolf continued to bristle and growl.
He wondered at the pounding sensation in his chest, was that his heart?
His back itched, he reached back to try to scratch it and his hand came away bloody.
He looked wonderingly at Denit’s knife, resting in his palm, noting with mild satisfaction that it was much better quality than his own.

“Pell,” Tando strode abruptly into the clearing.
“I just ran into Denit!
The Aldans must have arrived here at the River Fork.
You’ll be glad to hear that Denit looked as if he’d wrestled a bear and barely survived, but I’m worried about...” Tando came up short, realizing that everything was not as it should be.
“Spirits!
What happened?”

Trembling and shifting the two flint knives from hand to hand, Pell explained as best he could the events of his encounter with Denit.
Tando’s eyes, initially enraged, now took in the still bristling Ginja with a new look of awed respect.
“And I complained about the wolf eating a little of our meat!”

Shortly thereafter Donte arrived back in camp.
Tando was surprised.
“I was just going to go back to get you.
I thought you’d be there the rest of the afternoon inspecting the trade goods!”

“I probably would have been but Fellax and Teda came into the trading area.
They started pointing at me and talking about ‘cast outs’.
I’m sure the rest of the Aldans must be here somewhere and I think they are going to be big trouble for us.
We should do our trading as soon as possible and get out of here!”

Pell and Tando brought Donte up to date on
the
events at the campsite.
“Tonday came up to me on one of the side paths. She brought me up to date on the gossip in the Aldans.
Denit killed a boy from another tribe after some minor insult. She says the boy was much smaller than Denit.
Oh, spirits, he’s such a
n
evil abombination
!
I’m sure he really did intend to kill you. And for what? Just… I don’t know. Why would he do these things?” Donte finished with a
sob
.

Despairingly, they agreed that they needed to get out of the River Fork area.
The problem was that their spirit meat would not have much value until morning because its “preserving magic” would be unproven.
They made plans to trade as much as they could in the early morning and then leave.
In case something bad happened and they had to leave before morning, Donte took all of her salt and headed back to the trading area, intent on trading what she could before dark.

When Donte returned just before dark she reported threatening glances from other members of the Aldans that she had encountered at the market.
Even her old friends had not really met her eyes when she had spoken to them.
The three discussed these ominous signs through a tasteless meal of smoked meat and tubers, which they simply unpacked and ate without any attempt at special preparations.
They continued verbally mulling their predicament with a general sense of futility until they fell asleep.
From what had been said, or in some cases left unsaid, Donte suspected that Pont was blaming them for everything that went wrong in the Aldans.
From bad luck to ill health, the three of them would somehow be the scapegoats or the root cause.
They had all seen the healer do it before and therefore
no one doubted
that it was happening once Donte suggested it.
Pell suspected that Pont’s habitual blame of the weak and the absent for any ill fortune served to keep anyone from blaming the healer himself.
Whatever the cause, to have their old tribe in the area, so obviously meaning them ill will, comprised a serious misfortune.
They
were
only three, after all, and if the Aldans had a mind to cause them trouble, a mere three would have little capacity to resist.
They again resolved to do whatever trading they could for their spirit meat
early
in the morning, even if it meant trading before the best of the traders appeared and settling for poor bargains.
But, by trading early perhaps they could get their trading done before many Aldans showed up in the trading area.
Then they might get out of the area before a real conflict arose.

Then next morning Pell’s back was very sore from the wound that Denit had inflicted.
Nonetheless, he and Tando headed for the trading area at first light while Donte, having finished trading her salt the day before, stayed behind to pack up and protect their little camp.
They were disappointed but not surprised to find that no one was ready to trade that early.
They sat down against the bole of one of the massive trees to wait, discussing their trade priorities in quiet voices.

The crippled flintworker was the first to arrive and begin setting up his wares.
He looked up as they approached and said, “I’m not ready to begin trading yet.”

“We just want to look at your tools as you set them out.”

The cripple said nothing, getting out his wares and laying them out on the buffalo hide which served as his display area.
The woman with the clothing arrived next but Tando and Pell had discussed the fact that they could not wait for her to make anything for them.
Nonetheless, in order to keep the flintworker from guessing the intensity of their interest in his tools they went over to look at her display.
Again, they endeavored not to evince much interest in her work.

The old hag arrived and Pell, hoping the girl would appear soon, went over to watch her set up while Tando went back to the flintworker’s area.
The hag looked sharply at Pell, “You’re the one with the funny meat aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Pell said nervously, worrying that something had gone wrong.
Had the meat spoiled or something?

“What spell do you use to make it keep like that?”

These words had an enormously calming effect on Pell.
“Preparing the ‘spirit meat’ requires the help of the Spirit of the Spring,” he said, internally somewhat surprised that his voice came out without a tremor.
The three of them had agreed the night before that their smoked meat magic should be attributed to something in their own area so that others would not be so likely to think that they could simply smoke meat for themselves.
Pell had briefly argued that they should not try to keep such a secret,
because the knowledge
might help others to live through harsh winters.
He had been persuaded finally by Tando’s constant reminders of just how badly their little tribe of three needed some strong trades on this day just to get themselves through the winter to come.
Tando had argued that the others would probably figure out the secret for themselves soon enough from the meat’s smoky taste.
In any case Tando pointed out that even Pell didn’t know if smoking worked if it wasn’t done in the “cave” at Cold Springs Ravine or, for that matter, without Pell and his “powers” nearby.

“Which Spring’s Spirit is this?” The hag accepted his claim, apparently without question.

“We live at Cold Spring Ravine and call on the Spirit of the Spring, who lives there, to bless our ‘spirit meat.’”

“Humph, well, I
will
trade you for some more.
How much do you have and what medicines would you like in exchange?”

They settled down to
haggling
.
The hag was getting the best of him, partly from her years of experience in bargaining and partly because of Pell’s mounting disorientation when the beautiful young girl arrived in the trading area.
Looking over to where she was speaking to one of the other traders, Pell began to stutter and, try to control himself as he might, became unable to concentrate on his bargaining.
The old woman smiled slyly when she recognized his distraction and more when she divined its source.
She began driving her bargain even harder.
This became even worse when the girl saw him bargaining with the old woman and came over to
ask
occasional questions about Pell’s “bonesetting.”
As she helped the old woman wrap up powdered herb packets in broad flat leaves and tie them with thongs she asked him how many bones he had set and on what parts of the body.
As he tried to explain that he considered the bonesettings to be merely a few lucky events, he stumbled over his wording and began to blush.
Despite his tendency to minimize his accomplishments, she expressed admiration of his skill.
Her compliments only resulted in Pell’s thoughts whirling further out of control.
He tried to explain his trick for performing setting bones and how he thought it worked from his examinations of the rabbit’s broken leg but made a hash of the explanation.
During his intermittent stammered attempts to explain, the two women nearly cleaned him out of spirit meat by convincing him to purchase several herbs he h
ad had no thought
of needing.
Though the hag seemed amused by the entire episode she waxed enthusiastic about her new trove of preserved meat.

Pell, for his part, left wishing that he had
a
need for
some
more medications, and the spare spirit meat to trade for it,
anything
to stay near
that
girl longer.

When Pell finally wandered away from the medicine women’s area he traded much of the rest of his spirit meat for some of the braided leather ropes he had admired the day before.
He found Tando haggling the last of his spirit meat for a fine spear point.
Pell added the last few remnants of his own spirit meat to Tando’s to take the bargain over the top and they packed up to leave.

When they turned to go they found Pont standing in the path back to their campsite!

As they approached, the healer drew himself up to his full height, which, Pell was surprised to realize, was considerably less than Pell’s own height now.
He began to mumble the incantations that he had always used to drive away evil.
Pell and Tando skirted him and continued down the path, Pell’s ears flushing red and a spot itching between his shoulder blades.
Pont finished his chant with some shouted words about their “not being welcome” and “fleeing the area.”

Tando was angry.
“How dare he state that ‘we aren’t welcome’?
This isn’
t
his
area to command!
The
trading
area is
supposed
to open to
all
tribes.”
At one point Tando stopped in the middle of the path, determined to go back to the market area and expound upon this concept to all who would listen.
Pell talked him out of it; concerned that they should get away from the area before they had a more disastrous encounter than the one he had had with Denit the prior day.

However, when they arrived back at their little camp, they found Donte extremely agitated.
She had one arm around Ginja, which was unusual enough for someone who had always feared the young wolf.
It took a while to get her calmed down enough to explain what had happened but eventually she gasped out that Denit and Exen had come while they were gone.
At first tentative and sullenly angry about his injured arm, Denit had gradually worked himself up to an enraged state.
He began stomping about the campsite, claiming that he “was going to kill Pell,” making rude, suggestive remarks about Donte and gradually becoming more and more threatening.
Exen, as before, had merely stood by, not egging him on, but not trying to talk sense into him either.
As Denit became more and more agitated, he began to kick their gear around, spilling open some of their bundles.
Donte fell to her knees, trying to salvage some herbs spilled out of one pack, and Denit had dropped down behind her, grasping her hips and rubbing obscenely against her buttocks.
Donte had struggled to get away and succeeded once when his injured arm gave way but then Denit had overpowered her and wrestled her to the ground.
Just when Donte had been sure he was going to succeed in raping her, Ginja had stalked out of the forest, bristling and snarling.

To Donte’s amazement and relief, Denit had bolted to his feet in terror.
He and Exen had scuttled from the camp in full retreat.
Ginja had sniffed around the camp and then come over to Donte, still emitting a low rumbling growl.
Donte had lain fearfully as the wolf came closer and closer, then reached out to lick Donte’s face.
Once Donte had regained control of her careening emotions she had hastily repacked.
Since then, she had sat with her arms around her new friend the wolf, anxiously waiting for Tando and Pell to return so that she could get out of the area.