Half Discovered Wings

by David Brookes

  ‘Tranquilliser? Is she not in a coma?’

  ‘Who’s the expert here? This is local, it’s to relax the muscles before I use this, which is for the paralysis. Once things get going normally again, she should begin to work the toxin out of her system.’

  ‘Just like that?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not just like that,’ she snapped, about-turning and holding the hypodermic needle in her hand like a weapon. ‘Of course not. You have any idea how complicated the body is? How it all works, like a machine?’

  ‘I have some idea,’ the hunter said.

  ‘Then you’ll know nothing in medicine works just like that. It’s all complicated.’

  ‘Where’s the doctor?’ he asked suddenly. ‘We were told that Doctor Fenn is a man.’

  ‘I am Doctor Fenn. But perhaps Lanark was referring to my father,’ she said, visibly much calmer. She injected the needle into several places around Rowan’s body, moving the clothes where appropriate: the thighs, once in her side, and in the lower abdomen, over the diaphragm. She spoke while she did this. ‘This is the anti-paraplegia shot I’m administering, by the way. After this, if it works, we’ll have to do her other muscles again. They can’t be as tense as they are.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The shot might cause a seizure,’ she explained, looking again at Rowan’s eyes. ‘Tensed muscles can get damaged if that happens.’

  She seemed much more relaxed now, happy even. She felt Rowan’s arms, and nodded to herself. Then she turned, and looked at the hunter.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked.

  ~

  ‘Since we may be here a while,’ she began, sitting down heavily into a large leather chair, ‘I might as well clear up a few things.’

  ‘Like what?’ Gabel sat in the same stiff position he usually did: back straight, arms on the rests, hat on the floor just by his feet. He had refused a drink.

  ‘First of all, things about my father. Bramo Fenn was the man who taught me, as well as Lanark Harris and a few others. He was a great doctor, but he passed everything on to me and now I’m even better. He was a stubborn man, hadn’t the capacity to change any of his ideas once they were written down. People condemned him for it, because with him as the only doctor in this town they could turn to no-one else, even though he was often patently wrong.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘He was killed, in a city far to the west of here, past the desert. There was some kind of epidemic and he was called for, but as a result of his obstinacy he and a few people died.’

  ‘Why did you not go with him?’

  ‘Because I was only just out of my teens at the time,’ she replied. ‘I didn’t know how to treat this plague they presented to my father. I’ve since studied it and not found much more, so I wasn’t much use then and I’m not now. They killed him because he couldn’t save three children. I’ve now taken over his business in Goya, and I’m pleased to say I know everything he did and more besides. There’s not much I can’t treat,’ she said.

  ‘How long have you been training for this?’ he asked.

  ‘Mister Gabel, I am forty-eight. You, if you forgive me, look like you’re not two-thirds my age, so you wouldn’t know that I’m not naïve, or still ambitious as the young invariably are. I’ve been training since I was about twelve, when I was my father’s assistant. My age and experience allow me to boast like this.’

  ‘You say this came from the northern continent?’ Gabel inquired.

  ‘Yes. The same place as these little guys.’

  Around Fenn’s feet ran two golden rabbit-like creatures, furred and round-faced. They chattered like monkeys as they ran. One of the over-grown gerbils sat in her lap, and lay quietly as she stroked it.

  ‘They’re Ochotoria,’ she said. ‘Pikas. Quite friendly. They live in the burrows you saw in the other room.’

  ‘The pen with the metal floor.’

  ‘Yes. My floorboards might prove too tempting for them,’ she told him, smiling. ‘The echidna you saw I acquired just recently. I have a little joey, and some sparrows, in my office. There’s a room just next door with Pardy inside.’

  ‘Pardy?’

  ‘Felis Pardalis,’ Fenn explained. ‘I just call him Pardalis, or Pardy. He is an ocelot. Would you like to meet him?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ Gabel said, resting the coffee down. He’d held it for its warmth but was never interesting in drinking stimulants of any kind. ‘I’d like to talk about Rowan.’

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘If she’s going to be okay.’

  ‘Looks like it. Her heart rate has increased already. The muscles are atrophied, I’m afraid. She might need extensive physiotherapy. It’s that which I’m worried about now.’

  ‘We’re on a journey,’ Gabel explained. ‘We need her able to walk. Soon. We’re on a pilgrimage to the Western mountain range. We fear she’s desperately ill.’

  ‘I was going to ask you about that,’ the doctor said. She too put her cup down to speak. ‘You said she was stung.’

  ‘Yes. Lanark said it was a bolt-hornet.’

  ‘Did you capture it?’

  ‘No. My ally crushed it.’

  ‘Get a look at it?’

  ‘Its body looked almost like lightning. Purples and blues and yellows. It was large.’

  ‘How long?’

  He showed her with his hands, and she nodded silently to herself for a moment, thinking.

  ‘Hmmm. Quite large, then. Though hornets are naturally large, people are often surprised when they first see one.’

  ‘Or afraid,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, there is that. But, you say it stung her only once?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Because she shouldn’t have been affected like this.’

  ‘How should she have been affected?’ he asked, irritated by the prolonged question-and-answer session.

  ‘Well,’ she said, shrugging, ‘it should have killed her.’

  ~

  As she said it, the door opened and a furred, bulky creature pushed its way through and padded across the room. Its heavy-lidded eyes slid from one wall to the opposite, taking in the entire room, its muscles rolling as it moved.

  ‘This is Pardalis,’ said Fenn. ‘Here, Pardy.’

  Purring deeply, the ocelot made its way to the feet of the seated doctor, scattering the pikas and dropping its heavy body onto the wooden floor. The pikas scurried back immediately, but gave the cat a wide berth.

  ‘Is it vicious?’

  ‘Only when he has to be. He must have heard us talking about him and came to see what the fuss was about.’ She stroked it behind the ears, across its striped cheeks. ‘Who’s a clever Pardy? See how he rests, with his head on his paws, like a dog? The ocelot is the only small cat to do this.’

  ‘This is small?’ Gabel asked, a little taken aback.

  ‘Compared to, say, a leopard, yes.’

  ‘What’s a leopard?’

  ‘Like this but bigger, with similarly chained spots.’

  Gabel frowned slightly, and said, ‘You mean like Irenia’s Sentinel?’

  The Sentinel was a creature from the H’ouando faith: a giant cat that was blistered with the love of Irenia, and chained by its devotion to God. It guarded the Heavenly realms and fought with Irenia on the battlefields, gently teasing the fallen righteous from their bodies and carrying their souls in its jowls.

  ‘Not literal chains, Mister Gabel,’ Fenn said. ‘It’s figurative. But we were talking about your friend: by all natural accounts, she should be dead. The bolt-hornet is as dangerous as it is rare; every story I’ve heard of such a creature involved the victim dying. I really don’t understand why Rowan is alive. I’d like to take some blood to see what is different about her.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the hunter. ‘But she was very ill, even before the accident with the hornet. We were told there were doctors in Hermeticia that could help her.’

  ‘Hermeticia?’

/>   ‘Its people call it Shianti.’

  ‘Ah. Why do you call it Hermeticia?’ Then: ‘Oh, I see! Yes, that’s very clever.’

  ‘It’s just what the people our side of the Lual call it,’ said Gabel. ‘Is it true there are doctors there?’

  ‘It is true, there are doctors in Shianti. The most skilled in the entire world, I’ve heard, so all is not lost. For now, though, I think it’s necessary that Rowan stay with me.’

  Gabel nodded as he stood. ‘We are looking for a place to spend the night. When we do I’ll make sure that one of us comes back in the morning to let you know how to contact us.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Look after Rowan.’

  He left the room, giving the slow-breathing ocelot a lot of space as he passed. It eyed him silently as he left the room, and flicked its banded tail.

  ~

  There was no phone at the hotel, so all Gabel had to hand to Doctor Fenn in the morning was an address: two simple lines and a door number written on a ragged scrap of paper. He gave it to the manservant, who nodded gracefully and led the hunter up the stairs and once more into the doctor’s study.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ the doctor gestured. ‘Did you all sleep well?’

  ‘Presumably. I was alone when I awoke. The others must have gone looking around the town. I came with the address of the hotel we are staying at.’

  ‘Thank you. And I think I have good news. Rowan seems to be responding very well to the treatments.’

  ‘Already? Can she speak yet? Is she awake?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, but in a few days, yes, I’m certain of it. Her heart rate is almost back to normal, thankfully. Her muscles seemed to have settled down somewhat.’

  ‘Is that important?’ He watched the small birds chirping and fluttering restlessly inside their delicate wire-frame aviary.

  ‘Yes,’ replied the doctor. ‘As I explained yesterday, they can’t be too tense, in case she spasms. Her neck muscles were especially tightly knit; if she had had a seizure in that state she could have broken her neck. But, as far as I can tell, she is improving. I’m making notes from this, I hope you don’t mind. I see it as doctor’s duty to record everything, since the hornets are so rarely seen.’

  ‘That’s okay. As long as you make her well,’ he said.

  ‘She means a lot to you?’

  ‘She is the sister of my fiancée,’ said Gabel quietly.

  Is that all she is? he asked himself. Fenn said something he didn’t hear, and he looked up, blinked away memories. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Have you set a date yet? For the wedding?’ she repeated.

  ‘I wasn’t clear. My fiancée died not too long ago.’

  ‘Oh dear, I am sorry. I beg your pardon. Perhaps I can make it up to you,’ she said seriously, standing. ‘Would you like to see some of my animals?’

  ‘No thank you, I only came to—’

  ‘Come on, they’re only next door. I think you might like them, a man of the outdoors like yourself.’

  The hunter stood, brushed down his shirt and picked up his hat. He was preparing to make a clearer refusal when the doctor opened the door and disappeared through it, saying, ‘Pardalis usually sleeps in here, since it’s dark, but he’s fairly docile and doesn’t hurt the others…’

  Gabel thought he could hear the animals through the wall as he surrendered to the doctor’s hospitality, moving from the room where they had been sitting and out into the corridor. He heard a barely audible chattering, not unlike the sparrows, but indefinably different. It was a sound he’d never heard before, but familiar in a way he didn’t understand.

  The door opened and he was allowed to slip through, Fenn holding it open a fraction, permitting only the scarcest sliver of light to shine through. Through the darkness Gabel saw the sleeping form of the ocelot, head on its paws. The hunched back moved slowly up and down with the beast’s breathing, and the hunter heard its rasping breath in its throat, and fancied he was also picking up the whub-ub of its strong heart.

  The chittering he had heard was above and around him now.

  ‘What’s that—’

  ‘Shhh, quiet please,’ Fenn whispered.

  She let the door click shut, and there was no light now for them to see by. The perimeter of the room was illuminated with a faint luminescence as the woman rotated a rheostat an inch or so from the doorframe. There was just enough light to pick up the black silhouette against the far wall – Pardalis’ slumbering form – and the oppressive darkness of the ceiling.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ Gabel whispered.

  ‘Above you, do you see them?’

  ‘They’re bats … aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They’re moro bats, “wolf bats”.’

  Teague the theriope on the rooftop, wiping Bethany’s blood from its lupine snout with the back of its hand, and then—

  ‘Have you ever seen moro bats before?’

  ‘Only flying away.’

  In the feeble light Gabel saw her looking upward at the dark shifting mass. A light danced in the centre of his mind’s eye and he feared that it was a second onset of the rusalki’s dream-suggestion, but no.

  ‘They’ve a much undeserved reputation, you know,’ the doctor was saying quietly. ‘Said to attack indiscriminately, drawing blood with savage attacks so that they can feed…’

  —and then, when the lightning flashes, the theriope is gone and Gabel feels the claws in his back, cutting deeply like the blades of multiple hatchets—

  ‘My God, are you okay?’ Fenn dropped beside him as he fell to his knees.

  ‘Just my back, it hurts a little.’

  A heavy, bulky shape brushed past him. It was the ocelot nuzzling against his shoulder, purring softly in the almost-pitch darkness.

  ‘Let me look, come outside…’

  And then he was back into the fully-lit corridor, standing unsteadily against the banister as Fenn removed his jacket and lifted up his shirt. ‘There’s a little bruising, but it doesn’t look much. Does this hurt?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Well, looks almost healed. Have you been in the wars or something?’

  ‘Occasionally.’

  The ocelot nosed open the door and padded up to him, rumbling against the cloth of his trousers.

  ‘He likes you. Must be something in you he recognises.’

  The old man knows what you really are, the smoke and flame that bore you, even though you do not. Who had said that? A woman … The rusalki?

  Then Gabel saw an image of Irenia’s Sentinel, the chained cat, burned by Irenia’s kisses, who guarded the battlefields of Heaven and buried the corpses of the Hellish spirits that had been killed there, showing respect even to those born in—

  Born where?

  ‘Mister Gabel, I think you’d better sit down…’ He was slumped against the banister, the drop into the lobby just another inch backward. ‘Come on, you look unwell.’

  The doctor helped him across the landing to the study, where she heaved him into the large leather-backed chair that sat in front of the desk. ‘Have you been depriving yourself of sleep?’

  ‘We’ve been on a long journey.’

  It was all he said that morning; when he awoke, it was afternoon.

  *

  Sixteen

  MEDICINE

  The doctor told Gabel that Rowan’s body was still cold from her slow heart rate, and asked him if he would help carry her upstairs.

  ‘I have a solarium, she’ll be okay there,’ she said. ‘We’ll let our sun warm her.’

  Gabel put his hands under her arms and lifted from that end, while the doctor took Rowan’s feet. Together they moved up a flight of stairs that sprouted from the landing outside the study. Gabel went first, and together they took her into a small room that had only two walls. The remaining sides were glass from floor to ceiling, which was also glass. The sunlight streamed in, warm and welcoming.

  ‘It’s much better in the evening,’ said Fe
nn. ‘It faces west, you see, so there’s more light with the sunset.’

  ‘You chose to have it facing this way? Most people would have it looking south.’

  ‘I like the sunset,’ Fenn said.

  There was a bed already set up beside the window, empty of sheets and blankets. Carefully they set Rowan down, facing out the window with a single flat pillow beneath her head.

  ‘Are you sure she’ll be safe here? Anyone can see in. She might be attacked.’

  ‘She’ll be fine. I’ve fallen asleep in here several times and never come to harm.’

  ‘People can still see in.’

  ‘From this height? We’re three storeys up.’ The doctor busied herself placing blankets over Rowan’s still body. ‘There’s nothing in this room, no valuables. I do that deliberately. No-one would even dream of breaking in through here, not in Goya.’

  He seemed satisfied, then asked, ‘How come this town is so empty?’

  ‘Worried, I’d bet,’ she said, wringing her hands together. ‘People get nervous around this time of year. It’s when the rusalki start getting stronger.’

  ‘Tell me more about them.’

  ‘Ghosts of drowned maidens, that’s all there is to it. Simply ghosts. At least,’ she added, ‘that’s what folk say. The truth is, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they weren’t a few poor souls born different and left out there somehow to starve.’

  ‘And these folk say the rusalki do … what?’

  ‘Cause mischief, mostly. We don’t know what they want, but they like frightening people half to death whenever they get the chance. Some people say they can stop your heart by touching you.’

  Gabel looked down at Rowan.

  ‘Where are you headed next?’ Fenn asked, suddenly quiet.

  ‘We’re moving west. I’m not sure which towns we’ll hit before Hermeticia. Even if you can help Rowan’s earlier illness here, the magus still has business further west.’

  ‘Then the next town is Iilyani, just before the Resting Place,’ she said, gently stroking back a few wayward strands of hair from Rowan’s beatific face.

  ‘That sounds pleasant. Although I think we’ll all have rested enough before setting out there.’