Windhaven - Страница 44

“Tesis?” Her own voice sounded strange in her ears. She coughed, trying to clear her throat.

“The bitter drink that quiets the body and mind, brings sleep and relaxation to stop the pain. It’s a very helpful drink, full of healing herbs, but too much of it can be a poison. I had to give you more than I liked to, to keep you still. Physical restraints were no good for you—you thrashed and struggled and strained to be free. You wouldn’t let the broken parts of your body rest and heal. When you drank the tesis you fell into the quiet, healing, painless sleep you needed. But I don’t want to give you any more. There will be pain, but I think you can bear it. If you cannot, then I will give you tesis. Do you understand me, Maris?”

She looked into his bright blue eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I understand. I’ll try to be still. Remind me.”

He smiled. It made his face suddenly young. “I’ll remind you,” he said. “You’re accustomed to a life of activity, motion, always going and doing. But you can’t go somewhere to get your strength back—you must wait for it, lying here, as patiently as you can.”

Maris began to nod her head, checking it as she felt a dull, straining pain on her left side. “I’ve never been a patient person,” she said.

“No, but I’ve heard that you are strong. Use that strength to be still, and you may recover.”

“You must tell me the truth,” Maris said. She watched his face, trying to read the answer there. She felt fear like a cold poison moving throughout her body. She longed for the strength to sit up, to check her arms and legs.

“I’ll tell you what I know,” said Evan.

She felt the fear in her throat and could scarcely speak. The words came in a whisper. “How… how badly was I hurt?” She closed her eyes, afraid now to read his face.

“You were terribly battered, but you lived.” He stroked her cheek and she opened her eyes. “Both your legs were broken in the fall, the left one in four places. I set them, and they seem to be mending well—not as quickly as they would if you were younger, but I think you will walk without a limp again. Your left arm was shattered, with bone protruding through the flesh. I thought I would have to amputate. But I did not.” He pressed his fingers against her lips and withdrew them—it was like a kiss. “I cleaned it and used the fireflower essence and other herbs. You’ll have stiffness there a long time, but I don’t think there was any nerve damage, so that with time and exercise I think your left arm will be strong and useful again. You broke two ribs when you fell, and you hit your head on the rock. You were unconscious for three days in my care—I didn’t know if you would ever return.”

“Only three broken limbs,” Maris said. “An easy landing, after all.” Then she frowned. “The message…”

Evan nodded. “You repeated it again and again in your delirium like a chant, determined to deliver it. But you needn’t worry. The Landsman was informed of your accident, and by now he has sent the same message to the Landsman of Thrane by another flyer.”

“Of course,” Maris murmured. She felt a burden she had not even known she carried lifted from her.

“Such an urgent message,” Evan said, his voice bitter. “It couldn’t wait for better flying weather. It sent you out into the storm, to injury. It might have meant your death. The war hasn’t come yet, but already they start, disregarding human lives.”

His bitterness distressed her even more than his talk of war, which merely puzzled her. “Evan,” she said gently, “the flyer chooses when to fly. The Landsmen have no power over us, war or no. It was my eagerness to leave your bleak little island that made me start out despite the weather.”

“And now my bleak little island is your home for a time.”

“How long?” she asked. “How long before I can fly again?”

He looked at her without replying.

Maris suddenly feared the worst. “My wings!” She struggled to rise. “Are they lost?”

Evan was quick, with hands on her shoulders. “Be still!” His blue eyes blazed.

“I forgot,” she whispered. “I’ll be still.” Her whole body throbbed painfully in response to the mild exertion. “Please… my wings?”

“I have them,” he said. He shook his head. “Flyers. I should have known—I’ve healed other flyers. I should have hung them over your bed so they would be the first thing you saw. The Landsman wanted to take them for repair, but I insisted on keeping them. I’ll get them for you.” He vanished into the next room. A few minutes later he returned, carrying her wings in his arms.

They were mangled and broken and did not fold properly. The metallic fabric of the wings themselves was virtually indestructible, but the supporting struts were ordinary metal, and Maris could see that several of them had shattered, while others were bent and twisted grotesquely. The bright silver was crusted with dirt and stained black in places. In Evan’s uncertain grasp they seemed a hopeless ruin.

But Maris knew better. They were not lost to the sea. They could be made whole again. Her heart soared to see them. They meant life to her; she would fly again.

“Thank you,” she said to Evan. She tried not to weep.

Evan hung the wings on the wall beyond the foot of the bed, where Maris could see them. Then he turned to her.

“It will be longer and harder to repair your body than your wings,” he said. “Much longer than you will like. It won’t be a matter of weeks, but of months, many months, and even then I can’t promise you anything. Your bones were shattered, and the muscles torn—you aren’t likely, at your age, to regain all the strength you once had. You’ll walk again, but as for flying—”

“I will fly. My legs and my ribs and my arm will mend,” Maris said quietly.

“Yes, given time, I hope they will mend. But that may not be enough.” He came close, and she saw the concern in his face. “The head injury—it may have affected your vision, or your sense of balance.”

“Stop it,” Maris said. “Please.” Tears leaked from her eyes.

“It’s too soon,” Evan said. “I’m sorry.” He stroked her cheeks, wiping away the tears. “You need rest and hope, not worry. You need time to grow strong again. You’ll put on your wings again, but not before you are really ready—not before I say you are ready.”

“A land-bound healer—telling a flyer when to fly,” Maris muttered with a mock scowl.

Although she might suffer it, a time of forced inactivity was not something Maris could enjoy. As the days passed and she began to spend more time awake, she grew restless. Evan was beside her much of the time, coaxing her to eat, reminding her to lie still, and talking to her, always talking, to give her restless mind something to exercise itself on, even though her body must stay motionless.

And Evan proved to be a gifted storyteller. He considered himself more an observer of life than a participant, and he had a rather detached outlook and a sharp eye for detail. He made Maris laugh, often; he made her think; and he even managed to make her forget, for minutes at a time, that she was trapped in bed with a broken body.

At first Evan told stories of Thayos society, his descriptions so vivid that she could almost see the people. But after a time his talk turned to himself, and he offered her his own life, as if in exchange for the confidences she had made to him during her delirium.

He had been born in the deep woods of Thayos, an island on the northern fringe of Eastern, sixty years before. His parents were foresters.

There had been other families in the forest, other children to play with, but from his earliest years Evan had preferred the time he spent alone. He liked to hide in the brush to watch the shy, brown dirt diggers; to hunt out the places where the most beautifully scented flowers and tastiest roots grew; to sit quietly in a small clearing with a chunk of stale bread, and tame the birds to come to his hand.

When Evan was sixteen, he fell in love with a traveling midwife. Jani, the midwife, was a small, brown woman with a ready wit and a sharp tongue. In order to be near her, Evan appointed himself Jani’s assistant. She seemed amused by his interest at first, but soon accepted him, and Evan, his interest sharpened by love, learned a great deal from her.

On the eve of her departure, he confessed his love for her. She wouldn’t stay, and she wouldn’t take him with her—not as lover, not as friend, not even as assistant, although she admitted he had learned well and had a skillful touch. She traveled alone always, and that was that.

Evan continued to practice his new healing skills when Jani had gone. Since the nearest healer lived in Thossi village, a full day’s walk from the forest, Evan was soon much in demand. Eventually he apprenticed himself to the healer in Thossi. He might have attended a college of healers, but that would have meant a sea-voyage, and the idea of traveling on the dangerous water frightened him as nothing else ever had.

When he had learned all she could teach him, Evan returned to the forest to live and work. Although he never married, he did not always live alone. Women sought him out—wives seeking an undemanding lover, traveling women who paused a few days or months in his company, patients who stayed until their passion for him was cured.

Maris, listening to his soft, mellow voice and gazing at his face for so many hours that she knew it as well as that of any lover in her past, understood the attraction. The bright blue eyes, the skillful, gentle hands, the high cheekbones and imposing beak of a nose. She wondered, though, what he had felt—was he as self-contained as he seemed?