Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (43 page)

Bummer.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Elene Trull
, Kerry McIntyre
and Nora
Dahners
, each of whom significantly improved this story.

BONESETTER

(Sample)

By

Laurence E Dahners

Available at your e-book seller

Pre-prologue

“Bonesetter.”

A humble childhood had the boy who would one day be known as such.

He was born one cold and bitter winter night to a woman called Donte, who gathered and cooked for the Aldans tribe. His father Garen was a flint worker. Garen named his son Pell, a term in their language for a flake of flint.

During Pell’s seventh winter, before Garen had taught his son more than the rudiments of flint working, Garen developed pains in stomach, then fevers, then agony. He died a few days later. When Garen knew that his death approached, he called to Pell. Mildly delirious from the fever, Garen gritted his teeth against the pain. He said, “I have seen the death spirit Pell—and know it comes for me.” Garen gasped a moment, but then continued, “I
hope
that you will become a great hunter. But… I have watched you playing with the other boys and ... I fear that you will
not
have the hunting skill. I didn’t and sons often take after their fathers. Thank the spirits, you don’t have the ‘clubbed foot’ like I did though. If you
are
like me, your ‘skill’ will be in the making of tools and in being able to see better ways to do things. The others of the tribe may not recognize such abilities as worthy skills. But Pell, whether the others recognize your value or not, where they are strong and quick, you must
make
and use
tools
…” He slipped away for a moment, then whispered, “I’m sorry—sorry I didn’t teach you how to work flint.” The boy sobbed as Garen’s consciousness lapsed.

Pell’s father did not wake coherent again, only a few times—babbling.

His father had been dead for many years before Pell understood what his final words had meant. His father was wrong in the long run, about peoples’ recognition of Pell’s abilities. Pell
himself
did not recognize the truth of the words, “your ‘skill’ will be
in the making of tools and in the vision of better ways
,” until after many others had already recognized the enormous power that Pell’s “great skill” truly held.

The first dislocated joint that Pell reduced, he reduced on himself.

It was a bitterly cold day, nearing the end of winter. Sharp winds and densely overcast skies made it even more unpleasant. He and his friend Boro, both scrawny, undernourished boys of thirteen summers, were returning from yet another unsuccessful hunt. Hunger pangs gnawed their guts and weariness steeped their bones as they plodded homeward. As usual by this late in the cold months, the sparse winter game near the cave had been hunted out. Most big game had migrated anyway, and many of the animals that did stay nearby were hibernating.

The stores of grain and roots put up in the cave during the previous summer were mostly eaten or spoilt. Meat killed at the beginning of winter and placed under rock cairns to freeze had almost all been eaten or else had been dug up by industrious scavengers. What was left was being rationed severely by Roley. The Aldans had used up the layers of fat they had built up by gorging themselves during the plentiful kills of summer. They desperately needed to move away from the cave area to a hunting ground that had not been exhausted, at least until the plentiful game of the warmer months returned. Unfortunately, the weather was still too cold for the tribe to try to live without a cave for shelter. They lived in grass huts in the summers but even trying to build the huts could be life threatening in this weather. There was talk of trying to do it anyway, but their summer hunting grounds were two days walk away. Traveling to those grounds, carrying their possessions, in this frigid weather, in their current poorly nourished state, would be fatal to some of the weaker members of the Aldans. Then they would have to build their huts—which wouldn’t be warm enough…

On the fateful day of his injury, Pell and Boro had gone out for an entire day’s hunt up on the sere plateau above the cave to the north—the tribe’s better hunters had taken the more desirable southerly directions into the forests and meadows downstream, nearer to the great river. Down south the trees broke the cold winds. Pell and Boro had walked half a day northward on the blustery plateau and then looped back. Pell had seen but a single gaunt snow hare on this hunt. His and Boro's stones had both missed; in fact neither even came close. But that was to be expected; the two friends were clumsy adolescents who were wide of the mark more often than naught.

As daylight faded, they walked carefully back down the steep path above the cave, but Pell’s right foot slipped on a small patch of ice that persisted in a shaded part of the worn path. Later his toppling would replay in his mind over and over and over—as if in slow motion. His right hand flailing back to break his fall, his cold, numb fingers catching on one of the boulders at the edge of the path. His right buttock and elbow striking the rocky path simultaneously, sending shock waves through him. His head cracking down onto stone with a “whock” that resonated through his skull. A few seconds passed in the sure knowledge that
something
would soon be agonizing.

Then the pain arrived. His elbow wracked in torment. His head and buttock simply ached. The full magnitude of the disaster hadn't struck home until the moment that he reached up to rub his head…
his fingers weren't working correctly!
He shook the furs back from his arm to look at his hand. With dismay, he saw his pointer finger was deformed! It was disjointed at the second knuckle from the tip so that the distal part bent back and away from his palm. Because of the angle, the pad at the tip wouldn't touch items he reached for with it, just then his head. As he stared at the deformed finger, the pain from it finally arrived at his brain, despite the numbing effect of the cold. However, the pain held a distant second place to the gibbering terror shouting through his system at the thought of being a “cripple” or ginja.

Memories ripped through Pell.

-Durr with his broken arm—broken in a fall during one of the hunts that were Durr's great skill.

-The hushed clan staring at Durr as he returned with the other hunters, clutching his swollen, deformed arm—grossly twisted and angled midway between the wrist and elbow—the grimace of pain and terror on his face.

-The wracked agony of Durr’s cries as Pont, the Aldans’ healer, tried over and over to straighten his grotesque arm.

-The elation on Durr's face when the clan voted to let him stay the summer because, that summer at least, the hunting was good.

-The growing despair as the weeks passed and the arm remained crooked and useless. Each day Pont had tried anew to straighten the arm but, despite the agony it brought Durr, the limb remained deformed and useless.

-The arrival of Fall with Durr still unable to cast a spear or throw a stone.

His pitiful attempts to do so with his left hand.

-The horrific day that Roley declared Durr "ginja" or "useless,” and sent him away.

-The stoop of his shoulders as he slowly trudged away to certain death.

Durr had only had the one great skill—hunting. He hadn’t had any “small skills” that he could perform with one arm. He had no “great knowledge” to teach the others because there were many other hunters. And, so Roley said, he must be exiled and go forth to remove his burden from the clan.

Pell had been the one who discovered Durr’s ragged remains at the bottom of the Cliff two days after Durr had been exiled. Pell had heard hyenas coughing and grunting at the base of the Cliff. There were only a few and Pell had been able to frighten them away with a few stones, hoping to garner some of the hyenas’ meal for himself and the clan. As Pell had come closer he had recognized Durr's spear and some of his furs. His corpse reeked of rot. Pell wept for hours on that day. The tears kept coming back as he pictured the once proud Durr jumping from the Cliff, rather than starving or falling prey to one of the great cats.

A great tremor ran across Pell's shoulders as he stared at his finger. With a cry he grasped the finger in his left hand and pulled as hard he could in an effort to straighten it. Agony shot through his hand and arm and a grating, grinding sensation emanated from the finger itself.

He stared at the finger. It remained as deformed as before. He thought to himself "it's just a finger," recalling others in the clan who had prospered despite a bad finger.

But, Pell knew with a certainty that he hadn't been among the good spear casters or stone throwers even when his hand had been
normal
! What were his chances with a bad finger? Though he thought of hunting as his “great skill” he knew in his heart that he wasn’t really much of a hunter. Though he’d hoped and prayed for one of the older men to take him under their wing, no one had even
tried
to teach him a “lesser” skill since his father had died.

Now the finger was turning a dusky blue color! He felt a roiling in his stomach—Kana's finger had turned blue, then black, after being crushed under a boulder she and Tando had been trying to move—soon after that, the rest of her hand had begun to swell and turn red. This was followed by swelling of the whole arm—high fevers followed, with Kana going out of her head. Her hand had burst open, draining fluids with horrible odors shortly before she died. Tando's finger had been caught under the same rock but at a sharp corner and was cut completely off. It had taken a while but the wound had healed and Tando remained a respected hunter. It had only been the small finger on his
lesser
left hand after all.

Connecting these two facts in his mind, Pell quickly decided if the finger was turning blue, he would be better off without it. He heard a gagging sound and looked up to see Boro staring at Pell’s finger with enormous round eyes. Boro’s hand was over his mouth. Boro turned and retched. Pell felt his own gorge rising—he choked it back—he was too hungry to spare anything that might be in his stomach! He scrabbled out his flint knife and laid it against the finger, directly over the most deformed part. Then, in his mind he saw a scene from the previous summer. He had been assigned to gather trophies from the body of a man the Aldans had killed while fighting with the Kinto tribe over a particularly rich hunting area. Pell had been surprised at just how difficult it had been to saw through the man’s fingers. Nonetheless Pell steeled his nerve to saw off his own finger. He repositioned the blade several times but finally dropped the knife to his side in disgust at his inability to even
begin
cutting into his own finger.

Maybe if he walked back to the cave Pont would be able to put his finger back in place—he was, after all, their "healer", though it usually it seemed that there was little enough that Pont could do. Or would do. Maybe Pont could cut the finger off
for
Pell? Pell struggled slowly to his feet and limped on down the path to the cave.

Boro had run ahead so that when Pell arrived, Pell’s mother Donte was already outside the cave. Hair in disarray, she wrung her hands, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Pell…” she began.

Determined to be brave, Pell marched past her into the cave to find the healer. With disgust he saw the bandy legged Pont sitting in his "healer’s corner" with a glazed expression on his face. He'd been chewing his own herbs again! Roley had once demanded that the healer stop taking his own medicines but Pont insisted, claiming that a good healer must take his medicines himself in order to understand and guide their powers. It seemed, however, that Pell mostly chewed the hemp leaves that made you glow inside. Some of the adults joked that Pont “had the powers of the hemp completely mastered.” Though they only said such things well outside of Pont’s hearing. Even the massive Roley quailed before the healer’s potential anger, allowing him to do as he pleased. One never knew when one might need the healer’s powers for your own benefit.

Pont peered owlishly at Pell's finger. The healer rocked back and forth and it seemed that he could hardly focus his close-set eyes. He pulled on Pell’s finger perfunctorily. The tug stung like the bite of an angry child but did nothing to restore the form of the finger. Pont squinted at it a moment longer then dropped to his knees and began to rummage through his baskets.

"What are you looking for?" Pell heard himself asking in a querulous voice.

"Dried hemp and other herbs to help ease the pain, boy!" was the slurred answer as Pont held out a handful.

Pell didn’t see any “other herbs” besides hemp in the handful he was given. He stuffed it in his mouth and began to chew. "The finger’s so cold I can hardly feel it anyway. What now?" Pell mumbled around a mouthful.