Fire Along the Sky
Page 133

No matter how patiently or firmly she explained that a fever was not a fire that could be suffocated, Mr. Whistler could do nothing less than swaddle a fevered man like a newborn. Usually Blue-Jay was able to stop Mr. Whistler by simply making sure that there were no blankets to spare, but this morning Daniel was wrapped as Hannah had swaddled him the day he was born in the middle of a February blizzard.
Without any effort at all she remembered the smell of him, the rosy slick skin, how hot he had felt in her arms, how he had quieted when she held him and spoke to him. How he had opened his eyes and looked at her, eyes green from the start under a mass of damp dark curls. Eyes as green as the sea.
When he was still an infant she had sometimes unwrapped him just to study the shape of his knees or wrists, the curve of his shoulders, the folds of skin at his neck. Her father's son, her brother.
Now if she were to unwrap him she would find the evidence of the lost battle that had brought him here. She had heard the story many times already, and no doubt would hear it again. Every time she had to contain her temper and impatience and listen as if she could never have enough of such things: messengers gone wrong, poorly marked trails, troops waylaid, ammunition lost in whitewater, failed maneuvers, flawed strategies, bullets spent and graves dug.
And the result: her brother's body, a map of the war. Bruises from hip to neck, still dark over the broken ribs but otherwise faded to the yellow-green of a storm sky. Nicks and scratches and the bullet wound, raw and seeping.
The bullet in his side was what concerned her at the moment, but it was not what worried her most. She had dealt with wounds like this one so many times that she had a feel for them, and this one would not get the better of her. She would not allow it.
She could not say as much for his arm. Crouched beside him Hannah studied the curve of his neck where it met his shoulder. A year ago she would have been hard-pressed to remember the names even of the major muscles, but now it seemed she could simply look through cloth and skin and past bone to the heart of the damage caused when he had fallen unconscious from the tree. He had asked her, and she had given him the details he wanted: the brachial plexus, a braid of nerves bedded in the shoulder, protected by bone and muscle, the names of the five trunks that moved down into the arm to branch and branch again. More names he did not need to know and would not recall: radial, ulnar, median, musculocutaneous.
It had taken all her strength to hide her unease when she had first examined his arm and seen how little control he had over elbow and wrist and fingers. The fact that he was not able to lie to her about the pain was just as alarming: this brother, who had once sat still while she stitched a long gash on his leg without uttering a sound.
She made a sling for his arm and told him to keep it still. She used her firmest and most threatening voice, her older-sister voice. As if it were her bossy nature and not the injury that kept him from walking around the room on his hands.
Then he had used his good hand to stop her, catching the fabric of her overdress in his fingers.
“Will you have to take it off?”
The first amputation she had ever done on her own had been of an arm, and somehow Hannah had the sense that he was remembering that, and how it ended.
“There is no sign of gangrene,” she said. Something she had said before, but he must hear it again. “There is sufficient blood flow to your fingers. You see, the color is good and they are warm to the touch.”
“Will you have to take it off?” His gaze never wavered, nor his voice.
“No,” she said. “No, I will not.”
“Will I have the use of it again?”
Another man might have asked when the pain would stop. Hannah wished he had asked that question.
“I don't know,” she said, meeting his gaze. And then, in a firmer voice: “Maybe.”
He had closed his eyes and turned his face away, but not before she saw that he was weeping.
At night, sometimes, Hannah lay awake and wished for the Hakim, who had been her teacher for a while. While the men prayed aloud to Jesus and his mother and the saints, she conjured forth her many teachers out of her memories: her grandmothers Falling-Day and Cora Munro, Curiosity, Richard Todd, Valentine Simon. They came at her bidding and each of them told her what she knew already. There was nothing she could do for her brother; no medicine or knife existed that could mend damaged nerves. They would recover and he would have the use of his arm, or they would not.
She put a palm to Daniel's cheek, and he roused himself to her touch.
He was thirsty. She helped him to water, and then to the gruel. Two of the larger eggs had been put aside for him. He wrinkled his nose at the idea of eating them raw and swallowed them whole, as most of the others did. When he had eaten she helped him lie down again, and then set about unwrapping him.
“There was a package late yesterday, from Luke.”
She studied his face while she worked. From the set of his eyes and mouth she could read how fierce the pain was.
“He sent the medicines you asked for?”
“Yes. Dragon's blood and willow bark and laudanum, and the rest of it. New needles too.”
“Simon?”
“Yes,” Hannah said, not bothering to hide her smile. “If you're in a mood to argue about Simon Ballentyne you must be feeling strong today.”
At that he pushed an impatient breath out through his nose. “My business with Simon Ballentyne is my business,” he said.
“Spoken like a protective brother,” Hannah said.