Bonesetter (31 page)

Falin came up to ask if there was anything else he could do and Pell sent him for more furs to cover the shivering Panute.
When the boy returned and Pell went to add the extra layers, he was astonished to find her flesh hot to the touch.
Pell was pondering whether to add the extra furs anyway when Gia returned with her new poultice.
As he applied the poultice Pell told Gia about Panute’s shivering despite her fever.
Gia advised against applying extra furs and, after more discussion, they decided to remove some instead.
Relief flowed over Pell when he removed the first poultice and saw that most of the bleeding had already stopped.
He wrapped the astringent poultice on with a couple of the soft leather straps that Donte had prepared to apply the splints to Panute’s leg.
Gia went to Agan to consult with her regarding the brewing of a tea to break Panute’s fever.

Gia called out to Pell, “Can you help me
carry
Agan over to look at Panute?”

From Agan’s withering looks earlier, Pell had feared that she would refuse to have anything to do with his treatment of Panute, so he was grateful to be asked.
“Sure,” he said.
Then as he and Gia helped Agan over to Panute, he asked, “but how will we get Panute to drink the tea?”

Agan snorted, “She’ll wake soon enough, as
soon as
the pain herbs wear off
—unless she dies first.”
This last was muttered darkly and in a tone that left little doubt as to just whom Agan would hold accountable.

Pell’s heart fluttered when Gia came to his defense, “Agan, Panute was going to die
even
if we didn’t cut off her fingers.
You
know
that.”

“Maybe, but I don’t think it would have
been
this soon.”

While Agan and Gia inspected Panute and consulted regarding the proper herbs for their tea, Pell sat down with Deltin and Tando to begin shaping splints for Panute’s leg.
It was soon obvious that Deltin had great skill in shaping wood. Watching him, Pell asked about it.
Deltin told him that he had been the
spear
shaft
maker of for his tribe for many years and had learned a great deal about working wood while doing that.
He had also learned from other workers of wood during trading missions to other tribes.
Pell watched him work in awe, carefully trying to duplicate his techniques with the hand axe, scraper and flint knife.
Deltin told of other wooden things he made for his tribe, such as a two pronged eating utensil for spearing meat, bowls scraped out of driftwood, totems to ward off evil spirits, and spits for roasting meat over fires.
Pell occasionally gave him directions regarding how the splint should be shaped but Deltin readily enough grasped the idea that it should fit Panute’s good leg and make rapid progress towards making it do just that.

Deltin for his part assumed that Pell had experience as a woodworker and asked where he had learned the art of carving splints. Pell dumbfounded him when he told him that he had no training in “splint making” or actually any special training in the working of wood.
“How t
hen, did you learn to make
magical splints like the ones that healed Falin’s leg?”

“They’re not magical.”

Deltin looked at Pell skeptically.

“Really.
There
aren’t any
spells or spirits or anything!
All they do is hold the limb straight while it is healing, like, like a stretcher holds a skin while it is curing.”

Well then how did you learn to make
‘
non magical
’
splints then?”

Pell paused to consider, “I just thought about what it would take to hold the limb straight.
It seemed like a straight stick would do it if the limb were tied to it.
But since arm and legs are bumpy, a completely straight stick wouldn’t work—so I just pictured how it would have to be shaped to fit the limb when the limb was straight.
Then I tried to shape it so by scraping and chopping.
The others that I’ve made were much harder to construct than this one.
I’ve learned a lot from watching you.”

“You
must
have some kind of gift to make healing sticks
like
Falin wore, especially without any training.” Deltin glanced at Panute who still lay unconscious.
After a moment he said, “I have seen Falin walk when I knew that he would not—that is a miraculous gift.
I don’t know whether what you have done will help Panute, but I think she was right.
It couldn’t have made her worse.
She would have died soon without something being done—I won’t… hold it against you if she dies anyway
…
” Tears rolled down Deltin’s cheeks as he whispered this last in an agonized tone.

Enormously relieved by Deltin’s halting statement, but unsure of what to say in response, Pell continued scraping a while.
Finally he said, “I just hope…
I, uh,
hope
... that
it turns out well.”

It was dark when they had scraped and shaped the splints to Pell’s satisfaction.
He looked at her leg for a while, pondering.
He had always made the deformity worse then pulled or pushed the limb back into place when doing his “bonesettings.”
But before, the deformity had always consisted of a limb bent where it should be straight.
Panute’s leg seemed merely “floppy,”
laying
in whatever direction it had been placed.
Generally, it lay with an outward twist so that when she was on her back, the foot laid out to the side.
However, sometimes it was bent one way, sometimes another.
Perhaps it didn’t need a “bonesetting” but just something
like the splints
to hold it straight
?
He grasped her foot and turned it slowly up, then gently pulled the leg straight.
She moaned a little but did not awaken.
With his other hand, he placed one splint on the medial side where it seemed to lay well.
Deltin tentatively held the other in place on the lateral side of her leg.
Because of the swelling in the middle of the leg, both splints touched the leg in the middle but not at the ends.
Pell considered scraping more away, but feared that
more scraping would weaken the splints
too much.
They were already quite thin in their central regions.
Also he thought that as the swelling went down, they would become loose in those areas.
After more thought, he put pads of fur between the splints and the ankle and between the splints and the knee to tighten those areas.
Then with Tando and Deltin’s help he bound the splints to her leg with Donte’s soft leather straps.
The splints held her leg fairly straight but Pell feared that they would be knocked loose during the move to the cave.
When he discussed this with Tando and Deltin, Deltin described a carrying device he had seen once made of two spear shafts with skins stretched between them.
It took a while longer but they
constructed
a stretcher
and then carried Panute up to the cave, placing her on a bed of straw and furs
that
Donte and Gia had prepared.

Donte already had an inverted basket at the end of the bedding for the leg to be propped up on and one beside the bed for the arm to be placed on.
“That is how Pell cared for Falin’s leg,” she said when
Deltin
asked about them.

As they got Panute settled in on the bed Deltin stared around in astonishment.
Soon Manute showed up in the cave carrying Agan.
They all began to exclaim over the way the cave had been walled in with the poles and mud daub wattle.
“You could make it even bigger by walling in more of the overhanging area!
What a great idea!

“The cave we had would have been warmer in winter if we had narrowed the opening like this.”

“Oh, and look, they just built a hole in the wall for the smoke to get out through.
With the smoke hole they can have their fire at the back end of the ‘cave’.”

They returned to where Tando was working to set up more beds.
“Where did you learn to
fix
up an overhang so that it becomes a cave like this?”

Tando inclined his head to where Pell was sitting with Panute, “Better ask Pell, he’s the ‘cave builder’.”

The group was astonished to learn that Pell had thought of walling in the overhang himself.
“No one showed you how?”

“Well no. There wasn’t a good cave in Cold Springs Ravine, just this overhang.
And the overhang dripped.
I made a
“
drip lip
”
but the wind and rain still blew through and so I leaned a bunch of poles against the mud of the drip lip trying to stop the wind.
After that mudding the gaps to block more wind just seemed natural.”

“You just thought this up?! “

“Did you ask the spirits for help and they showed you?”

Pell tried to explain, “No. I was just trying to fix one little problem after another
..
.”

They shook their heads incredulously.
Then they suggested that shallow storage baskets of grain and roots propped with space between them was wasteful of the space in the cave.
“If you used deeper baskets they’d hold more in less space.
We can teach you to weave much deeper baskets.”

“Well we used to keep ours in deep baskets too.
But the grain in the bottom
of the basket
would go bad.
And the roots on the bottom of deep baskets get crushed and go bad also.
Then others sprout into the wet mess and they aren’t much good either.
We think propping them up lets little winds blow
through and keep the food
dry.
The grain and roots at the bottoms of these shallow baskets still go bad sometimes, but they seem to do better than in the old deep baskets.”

“What are these?” Gia was peering into a basket.

Donte leaned over, “Let me see.
Oh, those are dried apples.”

“Dried apples?
What good are they after they’re all dried out like that?”

“You can still eat them.
Here taste one.
They aren’t as good as fresh apples but they don’t seem to rot.
We slice them thin and dry them in the sun.
We’re hoping they’ll last most of the winter.”

Gia chewed thoughtfully on a slice.
“It’s like your spirit meat, tough and chewy but still full of flavor.”

The group continued talking about the innovations in the cave while they were making a stew of the rabbit and squirrel Pell had been carrying when he met the others that morning.
So much had happened that Pell could hardly believe it was the same day.
The stew contained some of Donte’s older stored roots.
The fresh, fat roots Donte had dug up earlier that day were placed in storage in their place.
They were rotating
the
ir
stores in an effort to keep them as fresh as possible during winter’s approach.

The visitors were amazed at the savory flavors of the stew.
They had never been able to put so much salt in their stew
s
, of course, not having a source like the Cold Springs tribe.
That alone made it wonderful to people that spent much of their summer sweating away more salt than they could get in their diet.
In addition, Donte had added some onions and some “bitter berries.”
These she had discovered were too bitter to eat by themselves, but still added an interesting flavor to stews.
When she described them to Agan, the old hag nodded knowingly and proclaimed that they were also good for wounds that weren’t healing.
Then Agan asked for Gia’s bag of herbs and medicines.
Taking out one of the packets she crushed some dried leaves in her hand and added them to the remaining stew.
After stirring it in for a while, everyone had some more stew and remarked on the further enhancement of the flavor.
Then Agan let them taste the herb itself, whereupon they were astounded by its sharp and unpleasant taste.
She said there were several other herbs that added interesting flavors to stews, despite tasting bad by themselves.
This led to a long discussion of how herbs that tasted bad could be good medicines. The breadth of Agan’s knowledge of herbs, medicines and cooking astounded Pell.

As they sat, their conversation drifted back to the flood that had killed the other members of Agan
’
s
tribe.
Tears were rolling down their cheeks as they reminisced but then Panute wakened, moaning and somewhat out of her head.
This brought their attention back to the present and at Gia’s suggestion, they managed to get some stew into Panute.
After taking a few sips she broke into a sweat, cast off all her covers, thrashed about a while, and then fell back into a disturbed sleep.
During her thrashing about, she disturbed the poultice that Pell had wrapped to her hand and her hand began bleeding again.
Gia prepared another poultice while Pell took off the old one.
Then they wrapped on the fresh.
Soon after that Panute was shivering again and Deltin covered her back up with furs.
It wasn’t long before her tossing and turning had again cast them off and she began shivering anew.