Jasper Dallow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The rain hit the tin roof like gravel, and the wounded beast on the veranda flinched with every drum roll. Jasper Dallow crouched beside its crate, one hand on the splint he'd wrapped that morning. Mud streaked his overalls to the knee. Water was already climbing the veranda step. No other healer in the region had kept this animal alive, and he meant to be the one who set it walking again. But somewhere out past the flooded path, other creatures were hurt too. He could hear them. A high, thin crying in the reeds. He grabbed his satchel and shoved the door open. Brown water ran halfway up his boots before he was off the step. The lower path was gone. Where the trail should have been, there was only a slow, wide river carrying leaves and broken bamboo. He turned back inside, dripping, and started tearing bandages into strips he could stuff dry into a tin. The radio on his shelf crackled. He had forgotten he'd left it on. It was an odd thing, cold to the touch even in summer, a hand-me-down wrapped in a black ribbon. A voice pushed through the static, reading flood warnings. Bridges out. Stay indoors. Then a name he knew: the bait shop, calling any boat owner who could hear. Jasper ran for the veranda railing and shouted across the yard toward the neighbor's round hut. No answer through the rain. He cupped his hands and tried again. A shutter cracked open. The old woman inside waved him off and pointed downstream, toward the tackle shop. He waded. The water pulled at his shins, then his thighs. By the time he reached the shop porch, Silas Stump was already dragging a flat-bottom skiff out from under the eaves, striped apron soaked black, gap-toothed grin fixed hard against the weather. Silas was the man who sold him hooks for pulling fish line out of heron throats. They were not friends exactly. They were the two people on this stretch who kept things alive. "Heard you on the wire," Silas said. "Get in. Don't touch the left oar, it splits." Jasper climbed in. Silas rowed. They found the crying first, a young otter pinned under a fallen reed screen, leg bent wrong. Jasper splinted it in the boat with his knees braced against the hull. Two more after that, a soaked fledgling and a dog-fox with a gashed flank. He worked until his fingers went numb. By dusk the rain thinned. Silas rowed him back to the sunken porch. Jasper carried three new patients inside and set them beside the rare beast, whose eyes tracked him, alert, hungry, alive. Then he saw the crate. The splint had held. But the bandage on the beast's shoulder was soaked red through, fresh. It had torn the wound open thrashing at the thunder. The bleeding was bad. He had hours, not days.