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Chapter 22

When I turn and face the speaker, I realize I've grabbed Stone's hand in fear, and I drop it quickly.
Facing us, is a rather sophisticated looking man. He wears wire-framed glasses, a rare vanity in the Wold, but his ears are pointed. His eyes are sharp and green and slanted, his nose very red. He bears no brand, but he's probably not Pure. Perhaps above Beast, but he was still Impure, one of the few people who walk the world who do not have animal DNA in their blood, but are altered by the radiation that still lurks the world, lingering from the apocalypse.
"You do?" I say, barely daring to hope, like the man might vanish if I blink, along with our hope.
"Yes, my mother was a great healer; in fact, she worked on the Ruler's themselves at one point." He says, green eyes twinkling.
"Which Rulers?" Stone says quickly. I hardly think this concerns us, but he looks determined.
"Er, Queen Ruby and King Spade, I believe." The man says, taken aback.
"Must have been the Rimnel Blade..." Stone murmurs, more to himself than anyone. I have to restrain myself from asking what the heck he was talking about. There's an awkward silence that follows.
"Um, why don't I take you over to Bow?" I suggest, leading the man to our little camp. On the way, he tells me his name is Glass, and in exchange I relay our names to him. I decide he looks like an elf, the tall, thin, angular body, his posture, the pointed ears, narrow head. Sort of like a pencil.
"And you said he was shot in the raid? An arrow?" Glass says when he sees Bow, lying on his bark sled. He has begun to bleed through his bandages, scarlet staining the whiteness.
"Yeah... We think it punctured a lung." Stone says. Right on cue, Bow breaths in a shallow, rattling break.
"Oh dear, I'm not really sure... I can only help with the outside wound, Mother never did much internal work..." Glass bites his lip, lifting up the bandage and peering beneath it. He winces, and sets the cloth back down, getting to his feet.
"I'll be right back." He says, turning and walking back to wherever his camp is.
"Will a punctured lung repair itself?" I say worriedly to Stone.
"No idea, ask him, he's the doctor." Stone shrugs, jerking his head at Glass, who's running back to us, carrying a burlap bag.
"Can punctured lungs heal themselves?" I ask Glass, who shrugs.
"Depends on the severity of the wound. Let me get a closer look..." He leans forward, and carefully unwraps the bandage. Bow winces every time he has to pry his back off the ground to get underneath.
"Will my Daddy be okay?" Clay says out of nowhere, right behind me. I jump, gasping, and realize who it is. Glass looks up at me, wondering how to answer, and I stiffly shake my head, meaning 'Don't say'.
"Of course." Glass says mildly, turning back to Bow, whose breath is coming in short, hollow gasps. He peels the last layer of the bandage off, which is stuck to Bow's skin with dried blood. He wrinkles his nose when he sees the gory wound, and turns to open up his sack. Bow breaths in again, and air can be heard whistling out of the hole in his chest.
"Now, there's a couple possible problems a wound like this presents." Glass says calmly, pulling out a thin hollow tube.
"When he inhales, the flow of oxygen in the left lung passes on out the puncture, and it appears that it continues on through the hole in his chest." Glass says. I can see this much, and it's a fact, but I don't see how this is good or bad.
"How's that a problem?" Stone says, voicing what I was thinking.
"See, the skin will probably heal up faster than the lung." Glass says slowly. I nod, annoyed that he's talking to us so slowly, as if we might not understand. "So when the his chest heals up, the air will have no place to go. It will gather in the chest cavity, and slowly this will become a severe medical condition." He says professionally.
"It already is a severe condition. We just need to prevent it from becoming worse." I press on.
"The only thing I can think of to do, is prevent the outside from healing until the lung heals." Glass shrugs. I frown, thinking this over. I guess it makes sense, it just seems strange that we have to stop Bow from healing to make him better.
"And how do we do this?" Stone leans forward. Without looking over, he reaches out and snags Clay's arm, dragging him back over, where the five-year-old had been about to dive into Glass's bag.
"Watch." Glass takes the small plastic tube, a bit like a short stray, and... Sets it aside on a clean white cloth. Then he pulls out another cloth and pours some water from a bottle, dabbing away the dried blood, cleaning it up.
"I need to clean it first..." He murmurs absently, washing away the gore.
"We cleaned it before we bandaged him, after taking out the arrow..." Stone says hopefully, but the doctor is focused now, and I don't think he would notice if I flicked something at him... I might try it, if it hadn't been a matter of life and death for Bow.
Then Glass takes a small brown bottle out of his bag, and opens it, pouring a couple drops around and partially into the wound.
"Sterilizer," He explains, taking yet another cloth and dabbing it gently over the torn flesh.
"We've got rubbing alcohol." Stone says, as if challenging the doctor. Wolf instinct, I guess.
"Ooh, no, goodness, that burns something terrible." Glass winces at the mention.
"Gosh, it's good we never had to use that." I snort, eyeing the scar on my leg. As Glass dabs and pours different cleaners and pastes onto Bow's wound, I look closely at the scar. It seems a lifetime ago, but we just left Pine's only this morning... And yet in under fourteen hours we had witnessed dozens of deaths, and blood... So much blood...
"All done." Glass claps his hands together as if he has just completed a puzzle, and puts all his stuff back into his bag, drawing it up.
Bow has a shiny new tube sticking out his chest, just the end of it poking out of his flesh.
"Ew. Does that go all the way to his lung?" I wrinkle my nose at the weird tube, turning to Glass, who's struggling to hold the weight of the bulging bag.
"No, it's angled so it just releases the air that gets trapped in his chest. When his lung heals, and you'll be able to tell, you can hopefully just pull it out." He says, as if it's all good now.
"Hopefully? What do you mean, 'hopefully'?" Stone says beside me.
"Well... The flesh might try to heal around the straw... But that probably won't happen, I rubbed preventive on the opening... His lung should be healed in about eight to ten weeks." He finishes, and my shoulders sink. Eight to ten weeks? That means the entire way up the mountain, we would be traveling very slowly, because Bow was missing a lung. I would never abandon him and his son, but still... It was going to be a long two weeks.
Glass must have seen our disappointed looks, because he quickly says, "Now look. I'm going to have a word with my wife, and see if she'll agree to take these two off your hands. I fear he'll need further medical attention, and you two can't give it to him." He says honestly. I'm suddenly so light-hearted I barely feel insulted that he thinks we can't take care of them... He's probably right.
"Thank you, for everything." I say gratefully, and he shrugs, turning and walking away to is own family.
"Bow is nice, but I really hope Glass and his wife can take him and Clay." Stone winces as Clay bites his furry tail.
"Hey, Clay!" I say, trying to act excited for his sake.
"Hmm?" Clay looks up from attacking Stone's tail, only vaguely interested, and then sees Stone's swords lying in the corner with his pack.
"Can I touch it?" The little fox boy runs over to the blades without waiting for an answer, and struggles to pull one out.
"No-Don't- Ash, help!" Stone shouts, running to the kid. You know, that other little bat kid we met in the forest liked the swords too. What is it with little kids and lethal weapons?
"Hey, kid, you want to hear some more stories?" I say, as Clay topples over backwards with the weight of the sword. I wince, but the blade clatters to the ground next to him. We don't need two dying fox people.
"About who?" The kid says, still holding the handle of the sword. Stone has grasped the blade, gently trying to pry it out of the kid's hands, but he's afraid to be rough. He shouldn't be, the kid's tough.
"Me," I say. Clay stares at me blankly. "And Stone." I add quickly.
"Yay!" The boy shouts, dropping the sword and running over to his seat by the fireplace and staring at me expectantly.
"Now," I say, feeling like an old storyteller as I take my seat next to Stone, who's carefully checking over his sword, as if afraid there might be a scratch. It's a sword, who cares? But anyways. "Stone told you about the great Beast he- saved me from." I strain to get the word out, and Stone's smiling smugly when I glance at him.
"But did he tell you about the giant snake Beast?" I say. Stone's smile suddenly drops, and he faces me with wide eyes.
"We swore we'd never speak of that." He murmurs quietly. I ignore him, knowing very well he was the only one who swore anything.
"I wanna hear the snake story!" Clay cries, leaping up and down.
"Yeah, Stone, he wants to hear the snake story!" I grin evilly at Stone, who's face is stony. Wow, I didn't even realize that was a pun!
"Okay, this is the one where I'm the hero"