Bonesetter 2 -Winter-

by Laurence E. Dahners

  He arrived back at the bend where they put in the fish traps and began tugging on the rope. As it rose near the surface, he felt a little dismayed to see that there were only two crayfish clinging to the outside of the basket. Maybe they all found their way inside this time, he thought in an attempt to reassure himself. For a moment, he wondered whether it’d be a waste of his time to slide his basket-on-a-handle under the trap to catch the crayfish as they dropped off, since there were only two. He decided he’d just as well determine whether the basket-catcher worked.

  Stopping with the fish trap almost coming out of the water, he reached down and picked up the handle to the catching-basket. Carefully, he slid it underneath the fish trap, then lifted the fish trap and the catching-basket out of the water at the same time. With delight, he saw the two crayfish drop off the fish trap, but fall into the catching-basket. He brought both out onto the bank and set them down. He quickly caught the two crayfish in the catching basket, one in each hand. As they wiggled and twisted their pincers around, he realized with dismay that he didn’t know what to do with them. I should get one of the women to make me a crayfish carrying basket, he thought.

  After standing there wondering what to do for a few more moments, he decided to put them in the fish trap itself. He knelt, planning to push them in through the reeds that created the one-way passage at the end of the fish trap. Suddenly, he worried that, if the trap was full of crayfish, one of them might bite him while he had his hand inside the trap. He leaned around to peer into the loosely woven door at the other end of the cylindrical basket.

  There were only five more crayfish inside! How could that be?! Yesterday there’d been five on the outside and more than twenty, perhaps even thirty inside of it!

  Dismayed, Woday shoved the two crayfish he had in his hands through the reeds into the basket while wondering what in the world had gone wrong. Did they just catch so many crayfish the first time through some kind of bizarre luck? Could it be that a trap only caught crayfish once?! Did Pell have to be there for it to work?

  With a disheartened sigh, Woday decided he didn’t know. He picked up the trap, stood and started trudging back to the cave.

  ***

  Yadin looked at his new axe. The cutting edge was a little more than three fingers wide and the entire axe not quite as long as his hand. For that matter, it was about as thick as his hand at the base though tapering down to the point. The back end of it, though thicker than the front, wasn’t as wide as the cutting edge. He turned to Pell, holding it up, “What do you think of this?”

  “Oh! That looks really good!” Pell turned to Deltin who’d been helping Pell try to make a handle, “What do you think?”

  Deltin shrugged, “I still don’t think it’s going to work.” He grinned, “But that’s what I usually think about your damn fool ideas. It hasn’t kept them from working so far.” He held out a hand for the axe, “Let’s see how they fit together.”

  Yadin handed the flint axe to Deltin while he studied the handle Deltin had been making. Deltin had chosen the branch of one of the trees with hard wood. The branch had forked, but not at a steep angle like branches usually did, instead the two branches ran very close to one another for a little while. He’d cut it about a forearm length below the fork and a little more than a hand length above the fork. He’d been working to chip out the wood between the two limbs of the fork to be about the same size as the base of Yadin’s axe. Now he took Yadin’s axe and fitted it into the slotted fork he’d created so that the edge was pointing out, the same direction as the handle. To Yadin, it looked like a short, fat spear with a cutting edge instead of a point. It looked unbelievably clumsy to him and he couldn’t imagine it working.

  Deltin looked it over. “Good,” he said, “it’s not pushing the limbs apart. I don’t think it’ll split.”

  Pell said, “Shall we bind it with some wet sinew?”

  Deltin shrugged again, “We could, but if I were you I’d try it gently to see if you think it’ll work, or maybe needs to be modified before you finish it.” He held it out to Pell.

  Pell took it and stabbed gently at a piece of firewood with it a few times. He obviously wasn’t trying to hit hard, probably for fear that it’d split the unbound handle. It did keep his hand far from the wood he was cutting, but Yadin still thought it looked clumsy. From the disappointed look on Pell’s face, he probably did as well. On Pell’s final chop, he hit hard enough that the axe head twisted in the fork to point directly to the side. Pell reached down and grabbed the axe head as if to turn it back so that it would parallel the handle, but then suddenly stopped. Slowly, he lifted it up into the air as if he was holding a club.

  Apparently not noticing Pell’s look of concentration, Deltin said, “I’m starting to think I might be right this time. It’s not going to work. It’ll keep you from smashing your fingers all right, but you won’t be able to chop very well.”

  Pell didn’t react. As if he hadn’t heard Deltin’s words at all, he slowly lowered his club/axe toward the piece of firewood. It looked as if he was going to strike it with the edge sticking out of the side of his axe-with-a-handle instead of spearing it from the end like they’d originally made it to work. Looking entranced, he slowly said, “I think it’ll work… this way.”

  Yadin could see it, though Deltin said, “If you hit it that way, the axe’ll just fly out the other side of the fork!”

  Pell turned to him, an excited look in his eyes. “We might have to make the handle differently,” he held the axe out to Deltin, “but feel it! If you swing it like you would a club, with the edge sticking out the side…”

  Deltin slowly took the axe through a swing like you would a club, obviously afraid the sharp axe head would fly off the handle. As he did his eyes widened. “You might be right.” He held the axe up so he could look at it. “If we made a hole in the handle rather than a fork, we could attach it solidly!” He’d said that part with an excited smile, but then suddenly turned and shot a mock glare at Pell. In an exasperated tone, he said, “How come I’m always the one having to do things over in order to make one of your crazy ideas work?!”

  Yadin laughed.

  Deltin turned his glare on Yadin, “Sure, you think it’s funny!”

  Grinning, Yadin put his hands up in surrender.

  From behind Yadin, Woday’s voice said plaintively, “Master, it didn’t work this time!”

  Yadin turned to look and saw Woday behind him, holding a wet looking cylindrical basket and looking frustrated. Evidently he’d walked up while Yadin’d been focused on the axe. Pell stood, saying, “Call me Pell, I’m not your master. You’re learning from me, and I’m learning from you.” They walked toward the cave entrance. Pell looked back over his shoulder at Deltin, “I’m going to try to help Woday, I’ll try to redo the handle when I get back so you don’t have to do it over.”

  Deltin snorted and called after him, “Oh no you don’t. You’re just wanting all the credit for the axe when it’s done!” His smile showed he wasn’t serious.

  Pell gave him a dismissive wave as he continued walking away, “Okay, you do it. You can have all the credit if you want.”

  Yadin stared after Pell and Woday. What in the world are they doing with a wet basket?

  Sounding like he was still amused by the exchange he’d just had with the other men, Pell turned to Woday and said, “So what went wrong? Weren’t you able to catch the crayfish when they fell off the outside of the trap?”

  Woday shook his head, “No! There were only two on the outside of the trap and only five inside!”

  “Oh.” Pell shrugged, “Sometimes the hunting’s good and sometimes it’s not.”

  “But last time there were more than twenty!”

  “Did your catching-basket catch the two on the outside?”

  “Yes, but…”

  Pell plucked the trap out of Woday’s hand and held it up to look in through the more loosely woven and with the door. “They look fine,” he said musingly
.

  “It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them! There just aren’t very many!”

  “I thought you said that a hunter would be happy with five to ten crayfish back at the falls?”

  Woday gave an exasperated sigh, “Not if he’d had nearly thirty the day before with virtually no effort!”

  Pell frowned, “Did you have to work really hard to get these?”

  “No, but…” Woday stopped as he realized how much his world had changed to leave him so dissatisfied with a catch of seven crayfish.

  Pell had started looking over the basket. Contemplatively, he said, “I don’t think there are any holes for them to escape through.” He pushed his hand in through the reeds at the end, carefully avoiding the waiving pincers of the crayfish inside. “It still seems like they should have been able to climb in without much difficulty.” He turned to look curiously at Woday, “Did you put it in the same kind of quiet water?”

  Throwing his hands up in frustration, Woday said, “Yes! I put it in exactly the same spot we had it in yesterday!”

  “Oh,” Pell said, looking amused. “You don’t think that you caught most of the crayfish that lived in that spot yesterday?”

  “Huh?” Woday said, not grasping what Pell was saying.

  Pell shrugged, “Supposing you were a great cat and you liked to eat people.” He raised an eyebrow at Woday to see if Woday was following.

  Woday gave him a puzzled nod.

  “And supposing you came here to Cold Springs and ate 10 people one day.” Apparently not registering Woday’s look of horror, Pell continued, “If you came back the next day would you expect to be able to eat ten more?”

  Woday frowned, then raised his eyes to the sky as he thought, “No…” he said slowly. “There are only fourteen people here total, so if the cat ate ten,” he worked his fingers, “there’d only be four left.” He turned a puzzled look on Pell, then realized what Pell was saying. “Oh, so you’re saying we have to put our fish trap in a different place every day?! What happens when we run out of spots?”

  “Then we go back to the first place,” Pell said unconcernedly. “That’s what we do with our animal traps. I think, after a while, other animals move in to take over the empty place. It’s the same with hunting… you can’t keep hunting the same place over and over again and expect to keep finding animals there.”

  “Oh,” Woday said, feeling stupid. It seemed so obvious now. “So, shall I put the trap out in a different location?”

  “Sure,” Pell said, “but you’ll need new bait. The crayfish seem to have eaten all the bait you had in here.”

  “There’s still the entrails of the grouse from last night,” Woday said. Then, suddenly, his mind backtracked. “Animal traps?!” When Pell gave him a blank look, he said, “Before… you said you move your animal traps! Do you have traps like this you use to catch animals?!”

  Pell shrugged, “Not like these. We use snares to catch small animals. I’ll get around to teaching you about them eventually.”

  Realization dawned, “That’s how Manute and Deltin get all those rabbits, squirrels, and hedgehogs, isn’t it?!”

  Pell grinned at him and nodded slowly.

  “Teach me now!”

  “First you need to figure out how to catch fish for Cold Springs, then Cold Springs can teach you how to snare animals.” He winked, “Bait your crayfish trap and get it back in the river; it turns out I like crayfish.”

  With a sigh, Woday picked up the fish trap and said disconsolately, “Yes Master.” He tilted his head curiously, “Can I just put the fish trap in the stream right on the other side of the meadow?”

  Pell shrugged indifferently, “Try it if you like. The section of the stream near the meadow is shallow and the water runs fast. I suppose there must be fish there sometimes, but I don’t see very many. If crayfish like still water, I’ll bet there aren’t very many of them in this section. There’s a little slow moving pool right at this edge of the meadow, perhaps you could try it there if you wanted.” But then Pell’s eyes went to Yadin. “Maybe you shouldn’t. We don’t have Agan’s permission to show Yadin how to trap yet and, since he’s right here, he might figure it out from watching you put the trap in the river.”

  “You don’t want him to know?”

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll tell him eventually. But you heard Agan last night. I think she’d like to get something out of it in return.” He winked, “Maybe some of those fine flint tools of his.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Woday stood, “I’ll find a basket to store these crayfish in and then go put the trap in a different spot in the river for the night.” He turned curious eyes on Pell, “I’m sure there must be other areas of slow moving water to put the trap in besides that little bend we’ve been putting it in. Can I try some of them?”

  Pell shrugged, “Sure. We were just fishing there because that overhanging rock let us see what was going on down in the water.”

  “Okay,” Woday said. As he walked off, he wondered if he would’ve thought to try out a new idea down at that rock so he could see how it was working…

  ***

  Sidean cursed, “Come on Wenax! Get your ass up!”

  Wenax burrowed deeper into the drift of leaves they’d slept in the night before, “Let’s wait until it warms up a little more.”

  “If we wait much longer, it’ll be nearly dark when we get to Cold Springs! We won’t be able to tell if Yadin’s there until the next day and we’ll be out here five days instead of four!” He grunted unhappily, “Hungry days!”

  They’d only brought food for three days. Then they’d arrived at the Aldans and not been able to see Yadin anywhere. Fortunately, Sidean had encountered one of the Aldans that he’d gotten to know pretty well from previous visits. He’d asked the guy where Yadin was. They hadn’t been happy to learn that Yadin had gone on to Cold Springs, especially knowing that Jalgon would be angry if they returned without going to check Cold Springs as well.

  Wenax heaved himself up onto an elbow and rubbed at his eyes with the back of a wrist. “Okay, okay. But I hate traveling in this cold.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sidean muttered, “you’ll hate it worse if it snows before we get back home…”

  ***

  Woday sat beside Pell while they both watched Deltin work on an axe handle. At first Woday had been angry because it seemed like woodworking had little to do with the things he wanted to learn. However, he’d followed along as Deltin walked through the woods looking for the perfect branch. When Woday had asked why they couldn’t just take any branch that was the right size, Deltin had replied, “I’m looking for a straight one that has two knots, a little more than three fingers apart.” Then he’d smiled and pointed, “Like that one there.”

  Watching Deltin quickly and efficiently cut the limb free with his hand axe, Woday could understand why Deltin thought making an axe with a handle to protect Woday’s fingers was a waste of time. Deltin was highly skilled and cut the branch free with a minimum number of strokes of his hand axe. With his confident chopping, there wasn’t any danger to his fingers.

  They’d returned to the ledge in front of the cave and, using a stone chisel, Deltin had deftly started to cut a hole between the two knots in the branch. The wood near the knots appeared to be hard to cut. When Woday had asked why Deltin was making the hole between the two knots where it appeared to be so difficult, Deltin had held up the club he was using as a mallet for his chisel.

  “The twisted grain of a knot keeps wood from splitting,” he’d said. “That’s why I’m using this club with a big knot on the end of it as a mallet. If I used a straight piece of wood it’d be breaking and splintering a lot more.” He pointed to the branch he was making into an axe handle, “We’re going to wedge that axe into this hole, then hit things with it. Straight wood would split as the axe wedged into the hole, but the knots’ll prevent that. Although,” he said, looking a little irritated, “the toughness of the wood at the knots does make it harder to cu
t the hole.”

  Cutting the hole was a difficult project and took even longer because Pell wanted to do part of it. He’d never used a chisel and wanted to know how, but, because he hadn’t used one, he wasn’t very efficient with it. Pell even suggested Woday try using the chisel for a while. Though Woday had no desire to, and thought it was a waste of time, he chiseled some anyway.

  Finally, they had a hole they could wedge the back of Yadin’s axe head into. It looked fine to Woday, but Deltin popped it back out and widened the hole a little bit saying, “We want it to be tight against the ends where the knots are, not tight against the sides like it was. If it’s tight against the sides, it’ll still be trying to split the wood down its length.”

  Woday found this concept difficult to understand, but apparently Pell grasped the principle. He thanked Deltin warmly for explaining it, as if he thought he’d be able to use it again in the future.

  Finally, they had the axe head wedged into the handle to Deltin’s satisfaction. He and Pell both took some tentative swings, gently chopping at a piece of firewood, but then Deltin said, “Now let’s wrap it with wet sinew. We’ll wait for it to dry and tighten before we try really chopping anything with it. After all this work, it’d be infuriating if it broke the first time we used it.”

  Soon they were all sitting around chewing dried strips of tendon to soften them. Deltin wedged the axe head into the hole with some birch tar, trapping the starting end of the sinew in the tar as well as between the axe head and the handle. Then he started wrapping the sinew tightly around the junction of the axe head and handle. When he finally set it aside to dry, he shook his head as if dismayed and said, “I hope protecting Woday’s fingers was worth all that effort.”