The Blackbird's Song

by Billy Wong

  "Help her, someone help her!" the woman cried. Rose felt two men take her arms and legs, shouting unintelligibly, and the world blurred around her as they carried her away.

  "What on earth happened to you?" the surgeon they brought her to asked while they laid her on her side upon a cot. The air smelled of blood and sickness, and the little infirmary seemed darker than she remembered. "Did you have an accident playing with your father's crafts like last time?"

  Rose would have smiled, if only she had the strength. Glen, he was named. He had treated her two years ago, when she'd sliced her forearm playing with one of her blacksmith father's swords. "No, I made the mistake of thinking I could fight."

  He looked at her wound and shook his head. "I assume you saved the boy; I applaud you for that. It was a good thing to do."

  The sadness in his eyes frightened her more than a bit. "What's wrong?" she asked in a quivering voice.

  "You're wounded very badly."

  Well, that was obvious. She could barely stay awake. "Am... am I going to die?"

  He frowned, hesitating, but replied at last under her insistent gaze, "This isn't something a person can survive. I'm amazed you've lived this long."

  Her heart sank as she took in his words, and realized everything was getting even blurrier. Was it the tears in her eyes, or something worse? "It's really that bad?" Glen nodded, and Rose exhaled a red mist. A spasm wracked her body. "Pull it out. I want to be able to lay on my back."

  "It'll kill you faster," he whispered.

  "Doesn't matter."

  He extracted the sword from her body, and despite the hopelessness of the situation stitched closed both sides of her wound. "Maybe the gods will look after you, Rose."

  "I haven't done nearly enough for that. Call my parents here, will you?"

  To his credit, Glen got Rick and Lise to her bedside with fair haste, and they looked at her with stricken faces as the doctor told them of her injury. Soon, Lise began to sob. "You stupid girl," Rick said with desperate force, his large callused hands clenched tight with fear. "How could you let this happen to yourself?"

  She cringed at her father's distress, but said, "I didn't try to get hurt—I was just taking a walk when I saw this ruffian snooping about a farm, so I decided to try and stop him. Maybe if you had actually let me carry a sword, I wouldn't have a hole through me right now."

  "You cut yourself open the last time you had a sword."

  "Yeah, but I've been practicing."

  Lise looked at her husband and choked out, "At least she would have had a better chance than unarmed."

  Rose squeezed her mother's plump hand and smiled. "I killed him anyway, you know. Just took more out of me than I'd have liked."

  "Please don't leave us, Rose. You're our little light."

  She resolved then not to die, no matter what medical knowledge had to say, and nodded. "Mom, I'm not going to. Promise, okay?"