Wren Ashby's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Wren Ashby kept a laboratory under her clinic that no patient had ever seen. She built it to hold one thing: a perfect specimen of human pain, preserved at its sharpest moment. Tonight the steel table stood empty. The jars waited clean and dry. Without a subject, she could not begin, and she had waited three long years already. She sat in the cellar and listened to the gas lamp on the wall hiss and flicker. Its small flame threw shadows across her tools. She picked up the ether rag from its tray and folded it twice. The cloth gleamed with a wet sheen and smelled sweet. She breathed through her mouth and set it down again. A rag alone was not a subject. She needed someone to bring it to. The bell above the clinic door rang. Wren climbed the stairs. She smiled before she reached the top, the way she always did. A man stood dripping in the doorway. He held his left arm against his chest. His sleeve was torn, and dark blood soaked the wool below the elbow. "Doctor, please," he said. "Something in the woods. A vine. It caught me and would not let go." She tilted her head and studied him. She studied him a little too long. He did not notice; men in pain rarely did. Deep cuts ringed his forearm in a tight band, as if a dozen cords had squeezed at once. The skin between the cuts had gone gray. "Sit down," Wren said. "You're safe now." He sat. He talked fast, the way frightened people talk. He lived alone past the edge of the village. No wife. No family who would ask after him. He had crawled a long way to reach her light. Wren nodded at each word and kept her face kind. Inside, something settled into place. No one would come looking. No one would know where he had gone. "The pain," she said softly. "Show me exactly where it's worst." He lifted the ruined arm. His face twisted. For one clean moment his whole body spoke of suffering, pure and complete. Wren watched it the way another doctor might watch a sunrise. "I can take the pain away," she said. "Breathe deep for me." She pressed the folded rag over his nose and mouth. He jerked once. His good hand gripped her wrist, then loosened. His eyes rolled white. The rag left no mark at all. In a moment he slumped against her, heavy and warm and quiet. Wren held him and did not blink. Her hands, as always, were cold. She had her subject at last. Now she had to carry him down the stairs before he woke, and she had to decide how long to keep him alive.