The Paths Between Worlds

by Paul Antony Jones

  Three burly looking men stood guard at the south, east, and northern points of the camp. Each cradled a spear like the ones Albert had made for us.

  Between the campfire and the stockade, a man and two women worked on putting the finishing touches to a large log cabin. Thick branches had been used to form the beam-like supports of the roof, and the two women stood atop them while a tall, thin man passed them bundles of long-grass which the women then used to thatch the roof.

  The woman I’d seen tending the fire earlier was now walking back from the river. She struggled with a large brown vase-like container that was almost half her height, supporting it with both hands like it was a fat, struggling baby. Water sloshed over the container’s rim, soaking her front and leaving small puddles behind her, as she half-walked half-staggered back toward the campfire.

  The guard at the northern approach spotted us, raised a hand to shade his eyes, then yelled something back in the direction of the camp, waving his arms above his head until he got the attention of the slim man working on the cabin.

  The slim man looked toward us as he was handing another bundle to one of the women doing the thatching. She stopped, tapped her workmate on the arm and their heads turned in our direction too.

  “That’s Edward, the boss man,” said Wild Bill. “The two girls are Sarah and Jacquetta.” There was something about the way the cowboy spoke the last woman’s name. He had a wistful smile on his lips that made it obvious he had a bit of a ‘thing’ for this Jacquetta. I looked back at the camp before Wild Bill could see that I had noticed. Hubbard said something to the women, then stepped away from the cabin, wiped his hands on his trousers and trotted toward the guard who had alerted him to our approach. Sarah and Jacquetta watched us for a few more seconds before turning back to their work.

  We reached the guard about the same time Hubbard did.

  “Welcome back, Wild Bill,” Edward said as we approached, an honest smile of happiness on his face. “I see you brought some friends.” Like Albert, Edward had an obvious English accent, but it was rougher than the boy’s. But the rich timbre of the Englishman’s voice made his words sound soft, rounded like pebbles smoothed by a river. And his quiet, even pitch made his delivery gentle and measured. I was struck by a distinct but impossible feeling that I knew Edward from somewhere. He had the most intense hazel eyes, short brown-bordering-on-black hair, and a complexion which suggested he hadn’t seen much sun in a very long time. He was dressed in a worn and patched brown/gray military uniform. The right elbow of his tunic had a large green patch inexpertly sewn to it.

  “Welcome to the garrison,” Edward said looking directly into my eyes. He reached out a hand, saw that it was covered in dirt and grime, smiled apologetically and wiped it clean on his pants, then extended it again, his smile widening. “Honest dirt from an honest day’s work.”

  I shook Edward’s hand and told him my name, still unable to shake the feeling of déjà vu. He seemed so familiar to me.

  “And this young man is…?” Edward said.

  “I’m Albert.”

  “Your son?” Edward asked.

  I shook my head. “No. We met on the beach.”

  Edward smiled again, started to say something, then noticed Chou on the travois. His expression became serious. “You have a casualty?” he said, walking to the travois, the flat of his right hand running down the flank of Brute as he did so.

  “We had a run in with some… unfriendlies,” said Wild Bill, joining Edward and me.

  Chou was conscious, but her skin was even paler, and she looked to be in a great deal of pain.

  “Hello,” Edward said quietly, kneeling just off to the right of Chou, his attention drawn to the arrow protruding from her hip. “We’re going to get you to the surgeon and have him take a look at you.”

  Chou said nothing, she just stared at Edward through half-closed lids. There was definitely something seriously wrong with her, and I worried she might be bleeding internally… or something worse.

  Edward turned to face Wild Bill. “Let’s get her to Bull.” He turned back to face me and Albert, “I expect you’d like to stay close to your friend?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Come with me,” Edward said. We followed him through the stockade entrance into the camp then he guided us toward the lean-tos I had seen on our approach.

  The stockade wall was taller than I had thought; a good thirteen feet high. At our approach, men and women looked up from their work, smiling or nodding at us as we walked through what was effectively a construction site toward the horseshoe of lean-tos.

  “Doc Bull!” Wild Bill yelled in the direction of the two lumberjacks working on felling another oak. “Doc! Hey, Doc Bull, you got yourself a patient,” he yelled, louder this time.

  One of the two lumberjacks, a large man, his belly extending over his dirt-smeared trousers, stopped mid-swing and squinted in Wild Bill’s direction.

  Wild Bill waved his arms above his head and yelled the man’s name again. “Doc Bull, we need you right now.”

  Bull turned to his workmate, said something to him, then leaned his ax against a tree stump. He dusted off his hands and quickly walked to where we waited.

  “Got a patient for you, Doc,” Wild Bill said, as the man I would later find out was named William Bull approached us. Bull was overweight, but there was also clearly muscle beneath the top layer of fat, and he carried himself with a confidence bordering on cockiness. He was a squat, fireplug of a man, and reminded me of a neighbor’s Bulldog. He had a thick, drooping mustache the same color as his curly blond hair. He didn’t say a word to anyone, just eyeballed me and Albert as he passed us on his way to where Chou lay, the smell of sweat and wood sap wafting behind him.

  He knelt beside Chou, raised one of her eyelids and stared deeply for several seconds, before doing the same for her other eye. Bull took Chou’s left forearm in his hand and measured her pulse with a pocket watch he’d pulled from his waistcoat’s breast pocket. He tutted to himself, then gently moved the clothing from around the arrow’s shaft so he could get a better look at where the arrow had penetrated Chou’s hip.

  “Wild Bill, take her over to the fire and get her off this sled… carefully.” Bull sounded American, Boston, or New York maybe. His voice had a cultured accent I wasn’t familiar with, and although the precise delivery of his words conveyed a deep intelligence, there was an aloofness that didn’t sit well with me. “Edward, if you would set some water to boil while I fetch my medical bag.”

  While Albert and I followed Wild Bill, Edward jogged through the space between two of the lean-tos and spoke to the woman I had seen working on the fire and fetching water from the river. She immediately grabbed more fuel from the supply of branches and leaves and fed it to the fire.

  Edward picked up a large iron pot from near the fire and filled it with water from the same vessel I’d seen the woman bringing from the river (a big brown amphora with a chunk missing from its lip). A tripod made of thick, straight branches lashed together by vines stood over the fire. Edward hung the pot from a long piece of metal shaped like a hook that had been attached to the tripod.

  I helped Wild Bill unhitch the travois from Brute, and we dragged it as slowly as we could to the lean-to closest to the fire, then gradually eased Chou off it and under the lean-to.

  Bull came back with a big black leather bag secured by a brass clasp similar to a woman’s purse. He laid the bag on the ground, undid the clasp, and pulled out a roll of tanned leather. Kneeling, he unrolled the piece of leather, next to Chou. Attached to the roll by pockets of more leather stitched to its interior were a variety of medical instruments. Some of them—like the scalpel, scissors, and stethoscope—I recognized, the rest, I had no idea about. He also took a small metal container from the bag that reminded me of an antique cigarette case. Inside the case were eight thin glass vials swathed in cotton wool. Each vial was about three inches long and contained a reddish-brown liquid. Bull t
ook one of the vials, popped the tiny cork seal, lifted Chou’s head with his free hand and moved to tip the contents of the vial between her lips.

  “Hey!” I said, grabbing his wrist. “What are you giving her?”

  Bull looked completely taken aback.

  Judging by the dark gray wool trousers, what had once been a white cotton shirt was now almost as gray as the waistcoat he wore over it, I’d already reached the conclusion that the last holiday Bull had celebrated had been sometime around the end of the nineteenth century. I guess being challenged by anybody would come as a bit of a surprise to him, more so if it was by a woman.

  Bull gave me what could’ve been considered a hard-stare.

  “I asked you what you intend to give to my friend?” I tightened my grip.

  Bull flushed red, the jowls of his cheeks began to tremble like a volcano about to erupt.

  I had no illusions about his ability to break free of my grip, but he’d look like a good old-fashioned buffoon to everyone if he did. And there was no way I was going to let him administer whatever was in that vial to Chou until I knew exactly what it was.

  “Well?” I continued to stare at him and wait for his answer.

  I heard a chuckle behind me, followed by Wild Bill’s unmistakable gravel-road-crunch of a voice. “You two better learn to play nice,” he said. “Doc, I figure Ms. Meredith here has a right to know what your intentions are with her friend. Now, in the spirit of us being a welcoming community and all, why don’t you just tell her, so we can get this over and done with. The sun isn’t much longer for this world, and I’d like to water Brute before dark.”

  Wild Bill placed his hand lightly on my right shoulder. I held Bull’s wrist for another second, just to make my point, then released it.

  Bull continued as if nothing had happened, but his face remained flushed. “In order for me to extract the arrow, I need to sedate your friend.” He held up the skinny glass vial. “This is laudanum. It is a soporific and analgesic.”

  “Isn’t that opium?” I asked.

  “Of sorts. It’s a tincture of approximately twelve-percent opium,” said Bull. He appeared grudgingly impressed, giving me a little nod of acknowledgment, some of his brashness falling away. “You’ve had some experience in medicine?”

  “In passing,” I said. I was surprised at my reaction to the drugs. Not so long ago, I would have killed to get my hands on Bull’s doctor’s bag if I’d known they were in there. Now there wasn’t even a tinge of interest. Whatever changes the nano-clusters had made to me, it had been done proficiently and completely.

  “May I continue?” Bull said, his eyebrows raised while he waited for my answer.

  “Sure, go right ahead.”

  Bull placed the open end of the vial against Chou’s lips and slowly poured the laudanum into her mouth. I watched, still expecting some kind of reaction from my own body, you know, like a starving dog watching someone devour a big juicy burger, but I felt nothing. Chou, however, was an entirely different matter; within a few seconds, her body visibly relaxed as the drug took effect. I watched the small muscles in her face loosen and begin to droop.

  “We can proceed,” Bull said with a slight smile at the corner of his mouth. “Mr. Hickok: if you and the young… lady would be so good as to help me turn the patient on to her right side… gently now… that’s it.”

  Despite being loaded up on laudanum, Chou still moaned as we slowly eased her onto her side.

  Bull took the scalpel from the leather roll and slit through the fabric of Chou’s trousers, exposing the arrowhead where it had exited her back. The barbed head of the arrow was coated in what I first thought was congealing blood, but it looked too black and too thick.

  “What in heaven’s name?” Bull said. He leaned in closer and touched the black viscous fluid with the tip of a finger, brought the finger to his face and sniffed. He wrinkled his nose, then touched his finger lightly to the tip of his tongue. Bull spat three times in quick succession into the grass, then turned to face me. “I believe your friend has been poisoned.”

  “What?” I said. “You can’t be serious?”

  “I assure you, I am,” Bull continued. He held the finger with the black goo on it in front of my eyes for a second then wiped it off on his trousers. “While I can’t be completely sure, the smell leads me to believe that this is, in all likelihood, a plant-based poison, possibly from the Genus Helleborus.” Then with barely hidden urgency, he said, “We need to remove the arrow immediately. Continued exposure will only worsen her symptoms.”

  Bull turned to me and said, “If you would support her shoulder here, please.” He placed his hand on Chou’s left shoulder where he wanted me to put mine. When I did so, he grasped the shaft of the arrow about six inches above where it entered Chou’s body. “And Mr. Hickok, if you would do the honors and cut the arrow just below my fingers.”

  “Be my pleasure, Doc.” Wild Bill reached down and pulled the large-bladed knife from the inside of his right boot. One side was a regular knife blade, the other a serrated edge. Gently, he began to saw away at the arrow’s wooden shaft just below where Bull held the arrow. It took about a minute of careful work on Wild Bill’s part, but finally, the arrow shaft snapped off. Bull tossed it to Edward, who examined it thoroughly before tossing it into the fire.

  “Meredith, stay where you are and support her back. Mr. Hickok, when I give you the nod, if you would be so kind as to slowly remove the arrowhead from your side of Ms. Chou. And do not let it come into contact with your skin.” As Bull gave us his instructions, he rummaged in his bag and removed two squares of cotton gauze and a roll of three-inch wide bandages along with a small brown glass tub with a gold lid. The words zinc oxide cream were handwritten on the lid.

  “Now, Mr. Hickok, please.”

  Wild Bill took a pair of worn leather gloves from his belt and leaned over Chou. He wrapped the leather glove around the head of the arrow, grasped it with his right hand and began to slowly pull it out.

  Chou moaned quietly but did not regain consciousness.

  The end of the arrow shaft popped out of Chou’s back with a wet slurp that made me want to gag, but I managed to resist the urge. Blood began to trickle out of both entry and exit wound.

  Bull leaned in close to Chou and inspected first the wound in her front, and then her back. “I don’t believe it has damaged anything vital to her survival, but only time will tell. Our priority, now, is to keep her comfortable and ameliorate the effects of the poison as best we can.” He beckoned to Edward, “The hot water, if you please.”

  Edward ran to the fire, unhooked the pot of hot water and brought it back to us. Removing a large handkerchief from his pocket, Bull dipped it gingerly into the steaming water and used it to clean Chou’s wounds. He took the roll of bandage and handed it to Wild Bill, then set about smearing some of the contents of the Zinc Oxide tub onto each piece of cotton gauze, which he placed over the entry and exit wounds. “The Zinc Oxide will help prevent infection and promote healing,” he said to me specifically. He beckoned for the roll of bandages from Wild Bill. “Now, very carefully lift her an inch or two from the ground.” Wild Bill and I complied without a murmur from Chou, and Bull fed the bandage under her then around her abdomen twice, covering the two pieces of gauze. He cut the bandage and tied it off. “You may lay her down now,” he said finally, after he had inspected his work.

  We lowered Chou down onto her back.

  Bull placed his materials back into his bag and stood up. “She’s in God’s hands now,” he said.

  “What?” I blurted out. “Is that it? Don’t you have antibiotics or something you can give her in that bag of yours?”

  Bull looked at me quizzically, an eyebrow raised. “I’ve done as much for her as I can. I’m sorry,” he said slowly, then he walked back in the direction of the tree stump where he had left his ax.

  Albert sat cross-legged with his back against the lean-to’s sloped wall, his elbows resting on his legs, his c
hin in his hands, silently looking out at the camp and the people working there. His face was drawn, his expression glum, his eyes shaded by worry.

  “She’ll be okay,” I said, smiling at the boy. The truth was, I had no idea if Chou would survive or not. I felt absolutely useless. The poison was obviously working on her, and there was nothing any of us could do to stop it. The only hope we had was that she lived long enough to make it to tonight’s aurora. But, while I knew the aurora could mend bones and heal cuts, I had no idea whether it could negate the effects of poison.

  I sat down next to Chou and did the only thing I could think of that might help; I began stroking her forehead. Chou’s skin felt hot, clammy beneath my hand. Occasionally, her eyelids would twitch then become still again as if she was deep in a dream. I don’t know how long I watched her like that, but eventually, I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I turned and looked up into Edward’s face.

  “We should probably let her rest,” he said quietly. “Why don’t you both come and get something to eat?”

  Food! In the days since we’d arrived, we’d gotten by almost exclusively on coconut, except for Wild Bill’s jerky. Now, at the mere mention of an actual meal, I felt how empty my stomach really was.

  “Yes, please,” said Albert, nodding enthusiastically. “I’m starved.”

  “Well, young man, you’re in luck. Come with me.” Edward winked at Albert, smiled at me, then helped us both to our feet and led us over to the campfire. He sat us down on one of four large logs, each about ten feet long that had been placed in a square around the edge of the fire. He pulled a sharpened stick from where it had been poked into the ground, then proceeded to prod the ashes and cinders around the edge of the fire until he found what he was looking for. He flipped a misshapen brick of mud from the ashes onto the ground, then poured water on to it from a coconut-cup. The mud brick hissed and steamed. Edward continued to pour water until the steam subsided then gingerly tested the brick’s temperature with his fingers. Satisfied it wasn’t going to burn him he made his way back to where we waited, tossing the brick back and forth between his hands.