Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 13 of 38

Thornwyn set the bar on the door and turned to the room she had breached. The girl sat by the new fire. The elf sat against the wall with his leg stretched out. The deer lay on its side by the hearth, breathing fast and shallow. Blood pooled under its shoulder and crept toward the floorboards. The bond she had spoken over it a week ago pulled at her chest like a thread stretched thin. If it broke, the deer would go with it. She knelt by the deer first. The elf could hold his own wound. The girl was safe in the room. The deer was dying. "I need boiling water," she said to the elf. "Hang the kettle. Do not stand on that leg any more than you must." He dragged himself to the hearth on his hands and his good knee. Thornwyn set her staff along the deer's spine and pressed her palm flat to the worst gash. She spoke the green words her mother had taught her, the ones she used on rabbits and fawns and once on her own hand. The staff warmed under the deer's fur. The blood slowed but did not stop. The third gash had gone through to the lung. She felt the wet catch under her fingers each time the deer breathed. Green words would not close a lung. She needed thread and a hot needle and both hands. "Girl," she said. "Come here. Press where my hand is. Hard as you can." The girl came at once. She set both small hands on the deer's ribs and leaned her weight into it. Her mouth was a straight line. She did not flinch at the blood. Thornwyn threaded her needle in the kettle steam. She stitched the outer gashes first, then cut deeper to reach the lung and stitched that too. The deer shuddered once and lay still. Not dead. Waiting. The girl kept her hands where Thornwyn had put them until Thornwyn touched her wrist and moved them away. She spoke the binding words again over the closed wounds. The thread in her chest steadied. The deer's breathing evened. Its long tail twitched once against the floor. "It will live," she said. The girl put her face into the deer's neck. The elf lowered himself back against the wall and closed his eyes. Thornwyn went to his leg next. The cut was clean and shallower than the blood had suggested. She stitched it while he watched the fire. When she stood, her hands were red to the wrist. The ward outside was broken. The deer could not guard a door tonight. Two sellswords had run east yesterday. They would reach whoever sent them by morning. She washed her hands in the kettle water and began to plan for the ones who would come next.