Bonesetter 2 -Winter-

by Laurence E. Dahners

  “These young people today, they never want to practice,” Yadin said, like he usually did when such sentiments came up.

  However, he was very thoughtful as they continued onward, wondering what was really going on in Cold Springs.

  ***

  Woday and Pell headed back down the small river to where they’d placed their fishing basket. When they’d crept out onto the rock to look down at the fish trap, they saw it had a lot of crayfish climbing over the outside! Pell frowned saying, “I hope there’re some inside too.” He started pulling on the rope to drag the basket back up to them.

  Woday watched as the basket rose toward them. The crayfish clinging to the outside of it stayed in place, though they looked a little agitated. “Maybe the ones on the outside will keep clinging to the basket and we can catch them after we get them up here on the rock.” However, to his disappointment, when the basket broke the surface, most of the crayfish dropped off and fell back into the water.

  Pell lifted the basket out onto the rock and peered in through the more loosely woven door. “There’s a bunch of them inside too!” He turned to Woday and arched happy eyebrows, “Crayfish tonight!”

  Starting back toward the cave, they left the crayfish in the basket as the most convenient way to transport them without getting bitten. They stopped at the little meadow to get the grouse. As Pell wiggled out the stakes that were holding the bird trap in place, he turned to Woday, “Do you think that if we put a big shallow basket on a sturdy branch for a handle…” He trailed off, apparently lost in thought.

  Woday finally said, “What?!”

  Pell said, “If we lifted the fish trap up near the surface, but stopped before it came out of the water, maybe we could slide the big shallow basket underneath the fish trap?”

  Woday blinked in puzzlement, “What good would that do?”

  “Well, when the fish trap came up out of the water and the crayfish dropped off, they’d fall into our big shallow basket.”

  “Oh…” Woday said, thunderstruck. He frowned, “Do you think that would work?”

  Pell shrugged, “I don’t know. I think it’s worth a try.”

  “Sure,” Woday said with a nod.

  Pell grinned at him, “So, there’s an apprentice type job for you. Cut a forked limb off a tree, fit a shallow basket into the fork and bind it there. Next time we try to catch crayfish, we’ll try it out.”

  “Okay,” Woday said, thinking how much he hated using hand axes. He usually smashed his fingers at least a few times.

  When Woday and Pell arrived back at the cave, Woday expected people to be excited about the grouse and the crayfish they were carrying. Instead, the women were upset. Donte had had them turning the grain to keep it dry and they’d found droppings. Donte turned to Pell, her hands on her hips. “Mice! Maybe rats. They’re eating our grain! We made tight lids for our old taller baskets. These shallow baskets may be keeping the grain from spoiling, but they’re not keeping the mice from eating it!”

  Pell tilted his head and looked at them curiously, “I thought that the mice used to chew holes in your old baskets and eat the grain anyway?”

  “Well… yes,” Donte admitted, “but we could patch the holes.”

  Gia looked around at their food store and said exasperatedly, “Are we going to have to weave lids for all these shallow baskets?!”

  Woday looked at Pell, wondering how he’d respond. In his tribe at the Falls, the men got angry when the women confronted them like this. Especially when the women yelled at them about some problem that couldn’t be solved. Everyone knew nothing could be done about mice. Instead, Pell had a kind of distant look on his face. After a moment, Pell smiled and said, “Woday and I were just talking about how we might keep these grouse in a big basket and feed them grain. Then, later in the winter, we could have some grouse for a feast.”

  The women turned, apparently just now noticing the grouse in the basket Pell had been carrying. Gia said, “Yum, grouse!”

  However, Donte looked irritated. “Are you trying to distract us from the mouse problem by talking about grouse?!”

  “No! No, I was just trying to point out that I’d been thinking about feeding grain to an animal that we would eat later. You’ve got animals that are already eating our grain, all we need to do…” He looked around at them as if waiting for them to figure it out. After a few moments in which they all stared at him as if waiting for some kind of revelation, he finally said, “All we need to do, is eat the mice!” He made a little hand gesture which seemed to say, Isn’t that obvious?

  Donte stared at him for a moment, then put her hands on her hips and said, “And just how do you think we’re going to hunt mice?! They’re too small and far too quick!”

  Pell tilted his head curiously, “Squirrels are small and quick, but we catch them.”

  That evening they ate a soup of lentils and grain with boiled crayfish and roasted grouse. Manute, Deltin, Tando, Boro, and Yadin had gone hunting, but their hunt had been unsuccessful. Though they had quite a few crayfish, Gia had convinced Pell that they should weave the large basket he wanted to put his grouse in before he actually started trying to keep any of them. Woday managed to seat himself next to Pell for this meal and Pell nudged him, “See, I told you I wouldn’t be able to keep Gia from eating my grouse.”

  He’d said it loud enough for Gia to hear him, and she turned to him with a smile, “I’m only eating it because I know you can get more.”

  “I hope so,” Pell said hanging his head as if he were moping, though it was obvious that he was faking.

  Woday pondered the fact that his Falls-people tribe would have been happy with the number of crayfish he and Pell had brought in. Catching them one at a time by sneaking up behind them meant that even with many more people trying to catch them, they rarely got so many. Even though there were more people in their tribe they would have been satisfied with fewer crayfish. They would have mixed the crayfish meat in with grain and roots in a stew and been quite content.

  As he was thinking about this, he heard Yadin talking to Agan. He was asking her something and for a moment a thrill of worry shot through Woday. What if he wanted to join this tribe also? The recollection of how much Woday had worried that this newly formed, recently devastated tribe couldn’t possibly feed him over the winter shot to the fore of his mind. If Yadin joined the tribe too…

  His thoughts suddenly overturned. He realized that on the one hand he’d been thinking about how much food they had here at Cold Springs yet a moment later he’d gone back to worrying that they didn’t have enough. But will these fish traps and bird snares work in the winter’s dearth? He didn’t know, and realized that the people here couldn’t know either. They did have more root and grain stores than he’d have expected, but he didn’t think they had enough to keep this many people alive through the winter. Even if their snares continued to work after the snows, if the people only ate meat, they’d get sick. He started to get a gnawing unease in his stomach

  His attention went back to Yadin and Agan. Agan was saying, “And if we did teach you our secrets, what would you do for us in return?”

  Yadin looked surprised and Woday felt some surprise himself. He’d never considered the possibility that someone should pay to be taught a better way to hunt. No, that’s not true. When I asked to be an apprentice, they told me I’d have to work hard to pay for the bonesetting knowledge I was being taught. That’s not really any different from Yadin asking to be taught some of their other secrets. His eyes widened, I forgot to ask Pell to teach me about Panute’s leg again.

  Woday turned to Pell to ask him about Panute’s leg, but Pell interrupted his thoughts by saying, “What happened to your fingers?”

  Woday glanced at his bruised and scraped fingers and grimaced, “I’m not very good with a hand axe. I managed to bang my fingers several times trying to cut the forked branch for our crayfish basket.” He sighed, feeling embarrassed, “I guess it’s another thing I need to practice
.”

  Pell stared at Woday’s injured fingers, saying nothing. After a moment, Woday tried to get back to his concern, “Um, I’m hoping…”

  Pell had put up his hand in a halting position as he kept staring at Woday’s fingers. Not knowing what else to do, Woday sat silently for a moment, then looked back over at Yadin and Agan. Yadin had unrolled a bundle, apparently from his pack. Woday’s eyes widened, the pack contained a fortune in worked flint! Spear points, knives, cutting flakes, scrapers, awls—all of them fine examples of the craft.

  Woday’s eyes went to Agan, expecting her eyes to show some kind of avarice, but she merely looked contemplative.

  Suddenly, Pell shook himself as if coming out of a trance. He started to speak to Woday, but then looked to see what Woday was focused on. His eyes went to the trove of flint and now they gleamed. Woday thought however, that they gleamed with excitement rather than a mere lust for the value of the flint. Pell said, “Yadin, do you have any hand axes?”

  Yadin shrugged, “No, they’re pretty heavy to carry and almost anyone can make a hand axe so there’s not much point in me carrying them around.”

  “I’ve had an idea,” Pell said.

  Woday took a sudden interest because he’d heard so much about Pell’s ideas. What he hadn’t expected was the intent look that immediately appeared on Yadin’s face. Yadin was so much older than Pell that it seemed hard to believe that he’d care about the ideas of a man so young he was practically a boy.

  “An idea for what?” Yadin asked

  “A different kind of hand axe,” Pell said, waving in the direction of Woday’s injured fingers. “Just about everyone’s pinched or scraped up some fingers trying to use one.”

  Yadin peered at Woday’s fingers and snorted, “Looks like Woday’s better at hitting his fingers than most.” He shrugged, “Still, a hand axe is a hand axe. It doesn’t matter what kind of hand axe you make, people are still going to scrape up their fingers sometimes.”

  “What if…” Pell paused, his head tipped to one side as he thought.

  “What if what?” Yadin asked.

  “What if… you made a hand axe something like a spear, with a shaft on the back so that your hand wouldn’t get very close to what you were chopping?”

  Yadin snorted, “If you hold your axe way back at the other end of a spear shaft, you’re going to miss what you’re chopping at most of the time.”

  “No! No, a short shaft… More like a long knife handle.”

  Yadin got a startled look on his face, then his eyes grew distant as he considered. “It’d be really hard to shape the back of a hand axe so that it had a narrow stem that would fit into a deer antler.” He frowned, “Besides if you hit a little crookedly, it might break off the narrow stem or split the antler.”

  Pell shrugged, “Make it smaller than a regular hand axe, but bigger than a knife or spear blade.” He held up three fingers next to one another. “Maybe the size of three fingers?” he said, then pointed to the ends of his fingers, “With the sharp edge down here where the ends of the fingers are?”

  Yadin looked intent, then he turned and said, “Falin, where’s that nodule of flint I gave you the other day? I think it’s time for your first flint knapping lesson.”

  Falin got up and ran to look for his flint nodule. Yadin got out his hammer stone, then rolled up his bundle of finished flint implements. Woday turned to ask Pell about Panute’s leg, but Pell had already stood up. He moved over to sit next to Yadin. Shortly they were deeply immersed in shaping the oddest hand axe Woday had ever seen.

  He glanced at Panute and wondered whether he should try to look at her leg and try to understand the magic sticks that were tied to it without Pell’s help. Finally, he shook his head and decided he’d have to try to ask Pell again tomorrow. Looking around, he saw that Donte wasn’t busy. He turned to ask her for help picking out and binding a basket to his forked branch.

  Chapter Five

  In the morning, as the tribe ate a porridge of einkorn with bits of apple, Woday saw that Pell was sitting near Panute. He made his way over to Pell and said, “Can you teach me about Panute’s leg?”

  Pell looked surprised, his eyes going to Panute’s leg. Uncomfortably, he said, “What do you want to know?”

  Woday felt flustered. He’d expected his teacher to simply begin instruction, not start by asking him a question! “Um,” his eyes went to Panute’s leg as well. “The sticks. How do you do the magic for the sticks?”

  Pell looked distraught, “They’re not magic!”

  Taken aback, Woday said, “They’re not? Someone told me you made them for her. If they don’t have healing magic, why are they tied to her leg?”

  Pell blinked, “Her leg was flopping around! We needed something to hold it straight, so we shaped a couple of pieces of firewood to fit the leg, one on each side.” He shrugged, “Deltin did most of it. He’s much better at woodworking than I am.”

  Woday cast around for something cogent to ask. “You said that you know a trick for putting bones back in place. What did you do to put Panute’s bones back where they belong?”

  Looking a little surprised, Pell said, “Um, the trick is for bones that are stuck in the wrong position. I had to use it for everyone else’s bones, but not for Panute’s. Her bones just flopped around, assuming any position we put them in, so all we did was put the splints on to hold them as straight as we could.”

  Staring at Panute’s leg and the sticks bound to it, Woday could see how the sticks would tend to hold a floppy leg fairly straight, but he felt very disappointed. He’d expected some kind of complex wisdom, not to be told that Pell had essentially tied her leg to a couple of stakes! “Um, how will you know when her bones are healed?”

  “I think… I think the person whose bones are broken knows when they’re healed because they stop hurting. Your leg’s feeling a lot better now, right Panute?”

  “Yes!” Panute said, looking excited. “Do you think it’s healed now?”

  Pell shrugged, “I don’t know. Let’s take the splints off and see how it feels.”

  Woday felt pretty disappointed. It didn’t really seem like Pell knew much. Woday found it hard to believe that the famous Bonesetter would think that the person with the broken bone would know better than he would whether the bone was healed. Nonetheless, when Pell knelt to untie Panute’s splints he leaned over eagerly to watch.

  Woday wasn’t the only one interested. It quickly seemed that everyone in the cave had gathered around to watch. As soon as the splints were untied, the furs which had been padding the splints were unwrapped. Pell gently picked up Panute’s leg and bent it from side to side. Or at least that’s what it looked like he was trying to do. The bone didn’t seem to be bending very much. Since her bone had been recently broken, Woday expected Panute to gasp with pain, but she simply observed interestedly what Pell was doing.

  Pell said, “Does that hurt?”

  Panute shook her head. “Is that good?”

  “I think so. How much of your weight have you been putting on it?”

  Woday’s eyes widened, how could his Master be saying, “I think so?!” How was he going to learn from someone who didn’t know the answers to such basic questions?!

  Panute didn’t seem to be put off by Pell’s lack of knowledge. She said, “Like you told me, I’ve been putting on as much as I can as long as it doesn’t hurt. I think I’m putting on quite a lot.”

  Pell said, “Do you think we should leave the splints off?”

  Panute’s eyes widened and she shook her head abruptly.

  Pell looked back up at Woday, “Can you help me tie these back on?”

  Woday squatted down next to Pell and helped wrap the furs back on her leg. As he did, he noticed that her leg didn’t feel broken. Next he held the splints in place while Pell tied them back on. When they’d finished, Woday wondered to himself if he’d learned anything.

  He decided he didn’t know.

  ***

  A
s Sidean and Wenax left the Oppos’ cave, they nervously looked at the sky. It had been days since that first snow and, though the weather had been good since then, they really didn’t want to be away from their home cave if winter really set in. Both of them felt somewhat surprised that Nosset and Pont had been able to talk Jalgon into sending two of his hunters on a mission this close to the onset of winter.

  The evening before had been spent listening to ominous chanting by the two medicine men. Pont had repeated and embellished his stories about the evil spirit that had overtaken the boy Pell and how it now controlled his old tribe the Aldans. Everyone in the Oppos had been disquieted by the stories and relieved when Jalgon finally decided that something had to be done. However, when Sidean and Wenax realized they were the ones being sent out to do something, they hadn’t been nearly as happy.

  Oh well, Sidean thought, at least I’ve visited the Aldans before and know where they live. We’ll make a fast trip there, see what’s happened to Yadin, and head back home, hopefully before the weather gets cold again.

  ***

  Pell had Woday go put the fish trap back in the stream that morning. In the afternoon as he walked back with his new basket-on-a handle to check it, he found his thoughts turning back to his grave concerns about how little Pell seemed to know about bone setting. A trick he couldn’t show Woday, sticks for healing that Pell claimed weren’t magic, and asking the patient whether their bones were healed!

  When he’d set out to apprentice himself, those were not things he’d thought he’d encounter in his Master! What if Pell was no more than he seemed, an overgrown, handsome boy barely come into manhood?

  Though Woday had felt somewhat depressed early in the walk, the day was crisply beautiful. This seemed surprising in view of the fact that it’d snowed a little more than a hand of days ago, but Woday wasn’t about to complain. As long as he kept his thoughts away from Pell’s surprising lack of knowledge, his spirits continued to rise. After all, whether Pell knew anything about bone setting or not, Woday had already learned wonderful things about fish traps. And, for that matter, bird traps too.