Child of Man: Chapter 7, Part 1

Alex knelt next to the river’s edge, fingers working over the knotted twine that held the leaf poultice on Briar’s leg in place. The broad, flat leaves were crusted with dried blood, stuck to each other and to the fur and skin beneath, and the rapidly fading light didn’t help either. If she’d let me do this earlier, he thought to himself as he carefully unwound the bindings from her ankle, this would have gone twice as fast.

Still, it went smoothly enough, though she did hiss around her front teeth when he began to pull away the cracked and matted covering, exposing the raw wound. Large gouges of flesh had been dug from both sides of her ankle in uneven furrows, leaving ragged wounds that wept anew when their scabs were removed. The fur hung loose in strips around the edges, and the flesh beneath was littered with white dots that heralded a possible infection. Alex’s stomach, still recovering from its earlier upheaval, twisted at the sight, but he swallowed heavily and only nodded. “I’m amazed you aren’t screaming.”

“Screaming won’t make it hurt any less,” Briar said through gritted teeth. Every time Alex’s untrained fingers pulled on something or put too much pressure against the wound, spasms of pain ran up her leg from the site of the injury all the way to her chest, but she barely grunted in response. Instead, she dug her short claws further into the ground, gripping the earth to keep herself from bolting. Her good leg shook, but she kept the injured one rigid in Alex’s lap.

Alex smiled at that. “Maybe this will. Here.” He stood up and held down his hand to the rabbit. “See if you can scoot yourself over to the river and lower your leg. You really should wash that out.”

Briar took the proffered hand in her own paw, her pads like delicate suede against his skin, warm to the touch. She rose awkwardly, leaning against Alex for support as she hopped to the bank of the river. She knelt on the damp rocks, then shifted to her rump, giving the man’s hand a squeeze before letting go. The cold water made her gasp when it enveloped her injured leg, but quickly the numbing chill seeped beneath the fur and started to flush away the hot, throbbing ache of her injury. The rabbit sighed, clutching her good leg to her chest and drooping forward over it, letting the current wash out the ragged bite.

The Child of Man sat next to her, folding his legs tailor fashion under him. “How’d that happen, anyway?”

The rabbit didn’t bother to lift her head, her ears hanging forward over her knee. “It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t happen again.”

The words caught him off-guard for a moment, until with a start he realized the source of his confusion about the Child of Rabbit. He had asked her about her injury, expecting her to tell him how it had happened, and yet all she would say on the matter was that the situation was behind her. This casual dismissal of something that had to have been traumatic seemed utterly alien to his mind, and yet to a prey species it might well be the best means of coping with terror. To cling to the memory of every near-death experience might well leave them mentally paralyzed and unable to live. To purge that fear as fast as it came, to live in the perpetual now of “I’m alive, so anything in the past must not have been that bad” could well have been an innate response, and not just social awkwardness.

This trail of thought, in turn, led Alex to another conclusion, the one that most likely Briar had either forgotten or simply feel no need to mention. “It was Dancer, wasn’t it? Something happened with him.” The bear-mind studied this idea with casual interest but no accusation, though the revelation was still a shock to his internal monolog. He remembered rubbing Shadowdance’s stomach, combing through the tangled coat there with his fingers as if he were an overgrown Saint Bernard. The idea of the Child of Wolf attacking someone jarred painfully in his mind with the memory.

Briar’s head rose suddenly at his words. “Why do you say that?” She was cautious, but not defensive. That he had drawn that conclusion startled her; she hadn’t expected him to realize.

Alex shrugged, still a little disconnected from his own train of thoughts. “I doubt there are any other large predators in the area; Dancer’s marked his territory, hasn’t he? And you had this when we got here, so it wasn’t Watcher. That leaves only him, but why?”

The rabbit sighed, shifting on the edge of the river, swirling her leg around in the water. Streaks of pale pink, almost purple in the rapidly fading twilight, trailed off of her fur into the river. “It’s the poison.” She turned her head back towards Watcher’s lodge, where streaks of firelight and shadow leaked out from beneath the heavy leather flap. Curls of blue-white smoke rose from the center. “He’s been getting worse, day by day.” Her voice shook, for the first time in Alex’s memory.

Alex didn’t know what to do but nod, the words disturbing to him as well. He really didn’t even know Shadowdance, and yet that seemed irrelevant. That Watcher had asked for his help, and that he could give it, those were what mattered.

The rabbit shifted on the rocks, half-turning to face Alex. “Watcher said you found a cure.” It was a question, even if she didn’t phrase it like one.

Alex nodded, leaning forward to rub his hands together in the water, washing dried flakes of blood off of them as he talked. “I think so. At least, I think I found what the poison is. Watcher gave me some leads, and apparently I was able to dig up what he needed. I still don’t understand what he’s doing, but Dancer sounded like he was sleeping better when I left.”

Briar turned her head back towards the lodge, watching the thin wisps of smoke rise from the hole at the top. A soft but steady breeze broke up the thin stream into curls, and she shivered, the cool mountain adding to the effects of the icy water sapping the heat from her body despite the heavy coat. She hugged herself into a tighter ball, her greyish-tan fur bristling. “You’ll learn what you need to know in time.”

He blinked at that, cocking his head to the side and sitting over his heels, his elbows resting on his knees. The bear claw that hung from his necklace danced slowly in the low wind, swaying on the end of its knotted leather tether. “I wish I had your confidence in the matter,” he confessed quietly. “I’m scared out of my mind, to be blunt. I don’t know why I haven’t run screaming into the night.”

At that, the rabbit turned her head back towards Alex, favoring her human companion with a smile. “You’re more afraid of going back than you are of staying here. You’re a Lost One.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. She pronounced the words as if they were capitalized, the same way Watcher had with Child of Wolf. Obviously the expression held a special significance to her. “I heard Shadowdance use the term before, but what does it mean?”

“A Child of Nature, born and raised among the Children of Men,” Watcher’s voice interjected before Briar could respond. The wolf had crept upon them so stealthily that even the rabbit had remained unaware.

Both Alex and Briar jerked backwards, neither prepared for the too-silent approach of the wolf. The Child of Rabbit’s reflexes, though, were far more prepared for it. By the time Alex had whipped his head around and had begun to rise to one knee, Briar already stood precariously perched on one leg, ready to bolt. Only Watcher’s sudden firm grip on her shoulders kept her from darting into the forest and the darkness beyond the edge of light peeking out from beneath the wolf’s tent. “Briar! It’s Watcher!”

She snapped her head around again, blinking rapidly as if confused, but her panic resolved itself rapidly, recognition dawning in her eyes. “Watcher,” she said quietly. She wavered on her good leg and, with the tan wolf’s help, sat again.

He nodded and knelt by the bank of the river, setting down the wooden bowl in which he had prepared Dancer’s remedy. With his free paw, he motioned towards the rabbit’s injury. “May I? It should be treated.”

Briar hesitated for a moment, but then held the damaged limb out in front of her, shaking slightly as she held it off the ground. Her fur glistened from the river water, the glaring colors of her injured flesh reduced to browns and blacks in the twilight. Still, Watcher slipped his paws beneath her calf, cradling the limb gently. Watcher studied her injury, rotating the leg gingerly, barely supporting its weight against his paws, his claws held away from the skin. “This is going to scar,” he pronounced a bit glumly; he seemed to take it as a personal affront that even his best efforts would only restore a patient to less than perfect condition. “Mr. Demont, please come here and support her leg; I’ll find leaves for a poultice. I only wish I had been here when this happened. I might have been able to do more, then.” He glanced up briefly, then shifted to the side as Alex knelt in his place, carefully slipping his paws out from beneath Briar’s leg into Alex’s waiting hands.

Once the healer had vanished into the shadow-drenched tree-line, Alex turned his attentions back to Briar. “So,” he said with mock-cheerfulness, still feeling rather spooked from Watcher’s ghostly performance. “You were saying about Lost Ones?”

Briar shrugged, arms again wrapped around her good leg. “As Watcher said, Lost Ones are Children of Nature that have forgotten their place in the world.”
Alex’s heart skipped a beat. “So you’re saying there… there could be others like me?”

The rabbit sighed and shrugged again. “There might be. There’s really no way to know.”

Alex fought not to let the disappointment show, but his shoulders slumped anyway. “So much for easy answers, ” he muttered.” What about other Children of Nature? How many are there, anyway?”

“Not enough,” she replied grimly. “Nature has little place in the world of Man these days.”

Something in that statement caught the bear-mind’s attention, but the sensation was fleeting, grasping at smoke. He tried to decide what about the words bothered him, but he couldn’t place a finger on any one thing. After a few moments, he let the thought slide. “What about the Shepherds? Have you heard anything about them? Watcher said they were hunting us.”

The mention of the group’s name made the rabbit flinch, the leg supported in Alex’s hands shaking, even worse than from just the cold. “Only what I’ve heard from Watcher, and a few others. I’ve heard what they do to us.”

Alex looked back down at Briar’s leg, then began carefully running the flat of his palm over her fur, brushing it against the grain, carefully wiping away the water and returning some warmth to the chilled limb. “Any idea why?”

She shook her head again. “No,” she whispered. She shivered, clutching her good leg more tightly.

The breeze shifted and picked up strength, whistling through the pine trees and carrying the grey, cloying stink of the cloud that hovered over the site of the fire less than a mile away. Strange, how cool the air seems, Alex thought. He could almost forget about why he had come here, and all the events that led to this point, in the simple action of caring for someone injured.

The bear-mind loomed large within him, silent but ever-present, guiding his hand as he drew it slowly over Briar’s leg, carefully tracing around the injuries with his fingertips, avoiding the loose and ragged flaps of skin around the bite. It seemed briefly that his world consisted of touch alone: the feel of her wet fur beneath his paws, the quiet whisper of the wind through his fur, the cool of the night settling into his bones. He shifted his frame, but the paw steadying the rabbit’s leg never wavered. He could feel it, the rightness of it all around him. Thank you, Great Mother, for this vision, he breathed contentedly, even if it isn’t real.