“She went after my father, didn’t she?” asked Tristan.
“Yes. But I think that is a tale for her to tell.”
Gabrielle had just come for Tristan when a runner approached Féolan.
“My lord Féolan, they wish to question a Gref Orisé prisoner. If you are able, will you come and speak to him?”
“You will have to help me walk, I’m afraid,” replied Féolan. “But yes, lead me on.”
He had expected a bound soldier. Instead the messenger led him to a crude haycart tucked away at the far edge of the field. A couple of Stonewater Elves stood peering in. They turned to Féolan, their expressions doubtful. “We do not know what to do with this one.”
Féolan looked inside with trepidation. Glaring back at him was a scrawny boy in mid-adolescence at most. Face pale and clammy under chopped dirty hair. Fear palpable under the bravado. And sick. There was no question he was seriously ill.
Gabrielle’s fears had come true. With the shock of Col’s death and the momentum of the invasion, Féolan doubted anyone had treated Derkh at all. It looked as though he had been tossed in the cart as an afterthought.
Féolan looked at the boy, his gaze steady and kind. Slowly, the young man’s frightened hostility faded.
Then, very quietly, so only the two of them could hear, Féolan said, “I am a friend of Gabrielle’s. Are you Derkh?”
The emotions chasing one another across the boy’s face would have been comical if he had not been in such desperate shape: Shock. Relief. Hope. Worry. His first words were touching in their selflessness: “Is she all right?”
Féolan smiled. “She’s fine. And she’ll want to see you right away, I expect. She won’t be at all happy at the state you’re in.”
Derkh eyed the tall Elves around his cart. “Aren’t they going to kill me?”
“We aren’t in the habit of killing sick boys,” said Féolan briskly. “They are going to pull this cart to our Healing Lodge, where Gabrielle will try to put right whatever has gone wrong with your wound.”
“Infected,” the boy grunted. He lay back on the straw and closed his eyes. “She warned me.”
GABRIELLE WAS PLASTERING Tristan’s arm as Féolan approached them.
“Ho, there’s a fair-weather friend,” declared Tristan. “You managed to disappear for the screaming and yelling part, I see. Where were you when I needed an arm to grip?”
Gabrielle knew Tristan was exaggerating but not inventing “the screaming and yelling” part. Bonesetting could be a rough job, and after several hours of jostling, his arm had been swollen and tender. It bothered her still that she could not take the time to speed the healing and soothe the hurts, not just for Tristan but for all the injured she had treated this day.
“Hold still, Tris,” murmured Gabrielle. “Give it a chance to harden.” She rinsed the plaster off her hands and took a critical look at Féolan. He favored his right hand, she saw, on top of the limp. “Right, you’re next. Let’s have a look at that leg.”
“There’s someone here who needs you more, Gabrielle,” said Féolan, pointing to the cart parked just outside the tent. Drying her hands on the back of her skirt, Gabrielle walked over and looked over the wooden side.
“Ah, dark gods,” she whispered. “Look at you.” She reached down to feel Derkh’s forehead, though she didn’t have to. Heat almost shimmered off his body. Remorse stabbed at her. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
“Of course you should have,” Derkh snapped. He seemed older than Gabrielle remembered. “This way we both get to live.” Then his manner softened, became childlike. “Can you save me again, Gabrielle?”
Her throat was tight as she thought of what her young friend had been through. “I’ll do my very best, Derkh. I promise.”
THE NIGHT CRAWLED by as Gabrielle fought for Derkh’s life. The skin around his wound was shiny with swelling, a hot angry red that streaked off along the path of the surrounding blood vessels. She was angry too at the callousness of the men who had left him thus, but she had to let it go. There was no place for such thoughts in the healing trance.
By morning the fever was lower, and the red streaks were gone. The infection was localized in a tight circle around the wound itself, and Gabrielle dared to leave him long enough to go in search of breakfast. She found travel biscuits and tea and sat under the big cedar tree to eat and rest. Soon, she thought, she would have to see if she was needed on any cases more critical than Derkh’s. The Human bonemenders would doubtless be glad of her help as well, when she could manage it. The very thought was exhausting. Her eyes closed against the morning sun.
When she started awake, Tristan and Féolan were back, lounging on either side of her. Neither looked much better for their night’s “sleep.”
“Hi. Rough night?” she asked.
“We could ask you the same,” noted Tristan.
“How’s the young lad?” asked Féolan.
“Some better,” she said. “I need to get back to him soon.” She dippered out medicinal tea for both of them, and bullied them into drinking it, and checked over Tristan, proclaiming him as well as could be expected. Then she took Féolan by the good hand, led him to the Lodge and sat him down. The knee, she concluded, would heal itself, but she wrapped it up to give him a little support in the meantime. Then she laid the hurt hand in hers and just held it, remembering the night they had said farewell. His good hand reached up and stroked the side of her face, and without even thinking she bent down and kissed him.
Tristan was grinning at them broadly. “Looks like you two are on good terms again!” Guiltily, Gabrielle realized how much Tristan still didn’t know. She smiled weakly.
“I guess that’s one way of putting it. I have a lot to tell you Tris, when there’s time.”
CHAPTER 31
THE trip home was slow, the pace set by the walking wounded among them. Gabrielle spent long hours wedged into a cart with Derkh or another of the grievously injured men and more time in the evenings working with the other bonemenders. By nightfall she was stiff and weary, more than ready for sleep.
Still, she found time to walk with Tristan and give him a full account of Jerome’s death. This time she was able to tell it with more sorrow than shame, and Tristan’s heartfelt reaction comforted her as much as Haloan’s wise words.
“He wasn’t alone, then. Thank the gods,” said Tristan. His voice roughened with emotion. “All this time I imagined the two of you, each dying alone and uncared for on that bloody field. It filled me with horror.” He stopped walking and turned her by the shoulders toward him, his blue eyes serious for once. “You shouldn’t have gone back, Gabrielle. It could have been the death of you. But thank you. Thank you for staying with him and easing his passage.”
They walked on awhile in silence, until Tristan began humming in time to their steps. Gabrielle recognized the tune as one they had sung at FirstHarvest. “That seems a long time ago,” she offered.
But Tristan didn’t hear. He was lost in his thoughts, his eyes far away. A second later he said, “Sorry. Did you say something?”
“So long ago I’ve nearly forgotten,” Gabrielle replied, amused. “Wandering the clouds, were you?”
Tristan was only a little sheepish. “I was thinking about Rosalie, if you must know. Maybe it’s seeing you and Féolan together; it makes me wish I’d been more serious with her.”
Gabrielle felt a pang of guilt. She had not told Tristan yet of her birth, and she hated to keep it from him. It was for Solange to hear it first, though. “How is it between you and Rosalie, anyway?”
“I wish I knew,” Tristan replied glumly. “Her father whisked her back to Blanchette when we first started mustering—thought it would be safer. She could be married by now.”
“Now that seems unlikely,” Gabrielle chided. “For one thing, I shouldn’t think there are too many marriageable men in Blanch-ette these days. Didn’t they all come up with Dominic to defend Chênier?”
Tristan seemed che
ered at the thought. He turned to Gabrielle with a wheedling grin. “You could put in a good word for me with her father. Tell him, you know, how responsible and serious I’ve become.”
Gabrielle resisted the temptation to tease him. “I doubt you’ll have any shortage of people to put in a good word for you, Tris,” she said.
DERKH WAS SILENT AND GUARDED, perhaps with good reason. He got his share of dark looks from the soldiers who passed them by. It was one thing to give downtrodden Greffaire peasants free passage through the Basin lands, quite another to shelter the son of the invading commander. Tristan made a point of walking by Derkh’s cart, and the men of his unit followed his lead. In this way the boy’s presence gained grudging acceptance.
Féolan, however, was constrained in the young man’s company, and he knew very well why. Col’s death lay between them, a malevolent unseen presence. He said nothing until Derkh regained some strength. Then one evening when the others were hunkered around a fire, he asked him for a private audience. The road skirted the river here, and it was but a short walk to a sloping granite bank. Here Féolan pulled out his sword, laid it at the astonished boy’s feet and knelt before him.
“Féolan. What is this?” Derkh’s voice was unsteady, for he recognized the action.
“I owe you the blood-price, Derkh.” Féolan had learned the term in Gref Oris, and though the concept was savage, he could think of no other atonement that would satisfy a Gref Orisé citizen. “It was I who killed your father. I fought him fairly, face to face. Still, I am sorry for the grief I have caused thee.”
He looked up at Derkh in utter seriousness. “If you wish to kill me, I will not resist.” It was a deadly gamble, but Féolan believed he had read the boy’s character aright. He waited.
For one moment, Derkh was a breath away from snatching up the sword. Justice, his mind clamored. You shall have justice.
But it wasn’t justice, was it? Rather it had been justice for Féolan to kill an invader. He thought of Gabrielle, who had healed him not for fear of her life but out of simple compassion when it would have been “justice” to let him die.
With a shaky hand, Derkh picked up the sword and passed it back to Féolan. “Take it,” he said thickly. “It is my father who was the cause of ... “ He gestured back up the road. “It shames me to have been his son.”
“Nay, Derkh,” said Féolan softly. Here, he thought with a twist of pity, was another painful burden, one no boy should have to carry. “Hear what I say now,” he said, switching to Gref Orisé speech and laying a hand on Derkh’s shoulder. Derkh would not meet his eyes but did not shrug him away. “Your father’s actions, I doubt not, were true to his beliefs. From what I saw of your land, there is no great leeway given in the matter of beliefs. But Col was a courageous and loyal warrior, and he followed his duty as he saw it. You may disagree with his actions. But you need never be shamed at your parentage.”
He never quite remembered how it happened that Derkh was pressed against him, crying in great gasping sobs that wrenched his thin shoulders. It didn’t matter. Féolan held him until he was done, and thus was their friendship sealed.
BETWEEN FÉOLAN AND GABRIELLE too, a strange tension hung. It began imperceptibly, but seemed to Gabrielle in the latter part of the journey to grow with every step they took toward Chênier. The delight they found in each other’s presence became muted, their silences awkward where once they had been full of ease. Their conversation was careful, not quite so freely spoken from the heart.
Her own uncertainty for the future was the cause. As she neared her home, it loomed over her, pulling her in too many directions. She did not know how to speak of it to Féolan, and it made her withdrawn and oversensitive.
They were about a day and a half from Chênier when Féolan raised the matter directly. They were having a rare meal alone. Tristan was eating with the men of his unit. Derkh, who walked or rode Arda for short distances now, still tired quickly and was dozing in the shade. Féolan returned from the cook tent with a distinctly unappetizing menu—cold stew from the night before and a round of stale flat bread. Looking at the congealed gray broth in her bowl, Gabrielle wrinkled her nose. “Nasty.”
“Enough to turn one altogether against Human cookery,” Féolan agreed.
Gabrielle flared, the humor lost on her. “This sludge is not ‘cookery,’ and you know it. There’s nothing wrong with the food I was raised on!” She dug her spoon into the ugly-looking stew, raised it to her lips—and could not make herself eat it. What was wrong with her, snapping at an innocent jest? She set the bowl beside her on the ground and took a deep, deliberate breath before meeting Féolan’s eyes. In them she read concern, not offense, and that unsettled her further, ready as she was to be angry.
“I’m sorry, Féolan,” she said. “That was uncalled for.” She didn’t feel better, though. She felt “all in a turmoil”—her mother’s expression.
There was a careful pause as they both searched for the words to put things right again.
“Is it well with thee, Gabrielle?” asked Féolan, lapsing into the more formal speech that came naturally to him at serious moments. “You seem ... “
“I know I haven’t had much time for you,” she cut in. “But I have to put the patients first.” She had declined to resume leadership of the bonemenders, content to leave it with Manon, who had done an admirable job in her absence. But she had still taken on full duties.
“I know you do,” he said quietly. “A calling is not a thing that can be set aside on a whim. And I was not about to complain about the lack of your company, well though I would love more of it.”
“I would too,” confessed Gabrielle. She felt calmer, her defensiveness falling away. They had had so little chance to be alone together.
“I was going to say, you seem worried. Though I’m not sure that is quite the right word. Is it near the mark?”
It was. Suddenly the bottled-up words came out in a rush. “So much in my life has changed, Féolan, with no chance to understand it. I have not even properly mourned my father yet. And what will come after? I try to imagine what our life will be, and I cannot see it. Am I to leave Gabrielle behind and become Twylar? My family is still my family, no matter my birth. And my work ... It’s not conceit, I don’t think, to say that these people—my people—need me in a way the Elves do not. When I made my vows, it was them I promised to serve ... “
She paused, searching for her next words. “Your home is so beautiful and its people also. There could be happiness for me there, I think. But Féolan, am I to turn my back completely on Verdeau?”
She had not glanced at him once while speaking, determined to say it all, whatever his reaction. Now she was surprised to see him looking so unperturbed. He laughed out loud at her obvious relief.
The horns sounded, and they were on the road again before Féolan spoke.
“Perhaps you’ll want to live in Chênier still, or spend half of each year there,” he mused. “Many Elves divide their time between two settlements where they have close ties. My own parents have been several years now in Moonwash settlement, visiting my mother’s people.
“Or maybe,” he smiled, “the role of First Ambassador will be a real position now, and we will travel the roads of the Basin together, you mending the sick while I conduct terribly important talks with terribly important people.”
Gabrielle thought of Féolan’s parents, away “visiting” for years rather than weeks, and understanding blossomed within her.
“We have time, Gabrielle,” Féolan said, reaching out to fold her hand in his. “Time to experiment and see what feels right. Time to find a life that welcomes us. You don’t have to hurry your path.”
They did have time, more time than Gabrielle had ever imagined. The road ahead was long, but for now she need only see as far as the next destination. And that was easy.
She was going home.
photo credit: Wayne Eardley
Holly Bennett is the Editor-in-Chief of Special
Editions at Today’s Parent magazine where she has worked for seventeen years. Her best qualification for writing The Bonemender is all the fantasy that she has read aloud to her children. (The Lord of the Rings three different times!) She read pages from her manuscript aloud to her youngest son at bedtime. “Aaron was my first editor,” she says. “He said to me one night, ‘You know, Mom, you use the phrase “smiled grimly” an awful lot.’ And he was right; I had!” Holly lives with her family in Peterborough, Ontario.
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