Fire Arrow

SEVEN

Fara

Plummeting downward, Brie clutched at the cliff face, scraping off skin and breaking her fingernails. She landed heavily on the ledge below, crushing her right leg beneath her. Pain exploded through her body and she screamed. Then she clenched her teeth and lay still. Barely conscious, she spotted a small crevice in the rocky cliff and burrowed into it, dragging her leg. She was able to fit only half of her body into the opening, but it gave her some protection from the lashing wind.

Brie lost track of time, her leg throbbing with a pain beyond any she'd known before. Her thoughts became disconnected, dreamlike, and she grew warm with a tingling rushing under her skin. Collun was there, at their campsite, an arm's length away. They had spent the day planting rutabaga and were exhausted, drowsing peacefully by the embers of their fire. Then Brie's father bent over her, telling her it was time to get up and practice with her bow and arrow.

The arrow. Brie came alert. Where was the arrow? She shifted her body to reach for the quiver. Her leg moved and pain knifed into her. She began to panic, then her fingers brushed the leather surface of the quiver. It had stayed on her shoulder as she fell, along with her bow and pack. But to get to the arrow she would have to move her body again. She couldn't. Her fingers dropped from the quiver.

Cross your heart,

Then to die;

Shoot an arrow in your eye.

The singsong bit of doggerel repeated several times in her ears, though she didn't know if it was her own voice or someone else's. She needed the arrow. If she didn't hold the arrow, she would die. As she reached for the quiver, the pain again coursed through her, worse now. She pulled the quiver to her chest. With numb fingers she found the arrow. It was ice-cold to the touch. She had been expecting warmth, comfort, and the shock of the cold made her numb fingers flinch away. The arrow fell.

Brie felt a whirling dizziness, as if she, too, were falling. Then she was somehow looking down from above at the crumpled body of a girl. She saw blood and a white tip of bone sticking out of her leg. But the arrow ... It was falling slowly through the air, and as it fell, tiny pictures unraveled like thread off a spool. A thin streamer spiraled away from the arrow; it was long, longer than she would have believed possible. The wind played with the colored picture streamer, teasing it into great looping coils.

Brie reached for the streamer, thinking to reel the arrow back in like a fish at the end of a line, but the wind was mischievous, whipping the streamer out of her grasp just as she thought she had it. She sighed. She was so tired. It was easiest just to close her eyes....

"Brie."

Someone had spoken her name. A voice with melody and strength. A woman's voice. Brie's eyes flicked open. Then she saw a face. Unlined, beautiful, yet old, very old. White hair—or was it a cloud?—surrounded, flowed all around the face. Seila. Brie smiled, closing her eyes again.

"Brie, wake up." The voice was insistent, even urgent.

"I'm tired, great-grandmother."

"You can sleep later. Now you need to get up. Here." Something was being pressed into her hands. It was the arrow, no longer cold, with just a little warmth humming along its shaft. Brie wondered if all the pictures were gone, unraveled.

"Look," said the voice.

Brie opened her eyes and looked at the arrow. The pictures were still there. For the first time she could see one of them. The little pictures were like pictures in a book, only they were moving, telling a story. There was a young girl with yellow hair skipping along a seawall, carefree. Then water rising, rising. And a light bursting from the girl as she held back the water. Brie watched the pictures unfold, avid, waiting to see what would happen next.

"Get up, Brie."

She jerked with surprise. The pictures faded, disappeared. She wanted them back.

"Get up, Brie."

"It hurts."

"Get up."

"I can't."

"The arrow, Brie."

Brie closed her eyes, but she held tightly to the arrow. It was getting warmer. She concentrated on the warmth, felt it seep into her hands, up her arms.

"Seila?" Brie called out, pulling herself up. But she knew even before opening her eyes that Seila was gone. Brie almost sank back onto the rock; the feeling of loss was so overwhelming. But she stayed upright.

The wind had died down. Brie looked around her, taking stock.

The ledge she was on jutted out of the cliff, narrowing away to her right. Below her the cliff face plunged straight away. Brie could not see a way down.

Then she steeled herself to look at her leg. She could see the whiteness of the bone where it protruded. It was bleeding badly. If she didn't get help soon she surely would die. The warmth of the arrow beat against her fingers.

The first thing to do was to set the bone back into her leg and then stanch the flow of blood. She laid down the arrow and, painfully, slowly, shrugged the pack off her back. Brie felt a sudden, unexpected surge of self-pity. It wasn't fair.

But, hardening herself, she reached down and took hold of the white knob of bone. With her other hand, she felt under her leg for the opposite end. Taking a deep breath, she pushed them together. A scream tore out of her throat and she battled against losing consciousness. For a few moments she teetered in grayness, then the miasma began to clear.

Again she pressed together the two ends of shattered bone, and again came the unspeakable pain. Brie looked at her leg. It wasn't good enough. But she could do no more. Reaching into her pack she found a spare tunic. She tore it into strips and tightly wound the largest around the bleeding wound. Then she took out one of her two remaining arrows and, breaking off the arrowhead, used the shaft for a splint, tying it in place with strips of jersey. She did the same with the last arrow; only the fire arrow remained in her quiver.

After that Brie lay still, letting her pounding heart rest briefly. Then she shifted onto her stomach and began to drag herself along the ledge to where it tapered off. Perhaps if she could see around the corner there would be a way off the ledge.

A grating sound assailed her ears. She stopped and listened closely. It was the braying of some kind of animal. She looked up.

A goat-man stood on the summit above her. His goat face wore a gloating, toothy smile. He had seen her.

Impossibly, he began moving down the mountain face toward her, finding toeholds she could not even see. Brie's heart hammered unevenly as she grabbed her bow. She tried to nock the fire arrow to the string, but her fingers were trembling too violently. The goat-man was only a few feet above her, on a minuscule edge of rock. He looked down at her, balanced and steady on his perch. His musky goatish odor wafted down, making Brie's stomach tighten.

Please, oh please, oh please ... Brie silently prayed for her fingers to work. There. The arrow was notched and ready. The goat-man began to leap down, toward her. Squinting, Brie let the fire arrow fly.

There was a searing, crackling noise. Sparks of light blinded her. Heat on her face, skin. She heard a hoarse scream. Through blurred eyesight, Brie saw the creature fall, its chest split open, flames spewing from inside.

Then it was gone.

Brie listened. Some time later—it seemed an eternity—she heard a far-off thud. Then she slipped into unconsciousness.

***

She woke to the feeling of something soft rubbing against her eyelids. Slowly she opened her eyes and saw a blurry white ear. As she blinked several times to ease the blur, a pink tongue lapped her eyebrow and Brie found herself looking into the silvery eyes of a faol, an Ellyl animal from Tir a Ceol. Dumbly she wondered what a faol was doing in the Blue Stack Mountains, then the animal purred a welcome and rubbed her white furry face against Brie's.

"Fara," she whispered in amazement. And the faol lovingly gave Brie's cheek a lick with her coarse tongue. Feebly Brie lifted her hand and ran it down the animal's back. "Well met, friend," she said, gazing at Fara. Faols were an odd hybrid of wolf and big cat, and this one had a gleaming white coat with a gold star burst on her forehead.

Then Brie remembered the goat-man and her fire arrow splitting his chest with fire. The fire arrow was gone. She felt a wave of desolation.

Sensing Brie's grief, Fara licked her again several times.

But then the faol moved away, down the ledge to the end where it tapered off. She stopped, waiting expectantly.

"I cannot, Fara. My leg is broken," Brie said almost apologetically.

Fara didn't budge.

Brie sighed, then began dragging herself toward Fara. Finally she reached the end, and—sweating and raw with pain—she peered around the edge. Approximately ten feet away was a moderately steep slope, made up of mostly loose pebbles and small patches of scrub grass. It was not as steep as the cliff face, but it didn't look particularly navigable, certainly not for one with a broken leg. Between it and the ledge she was on lay one narrow outcropping of rock. The rest was sheer.

Fara ever so slightly beckoned with her head.

"Now that is a very fine stepping-stone," said Brie to the faol, "if you happen to be a goat-man. But for a one-legged girl who has lost a fair amount of blood..."

Fara sat on her haunches, waiting.

"No." Brie shook her head. She could not.

Fara began cleaning her whiskers.

Brie closed her eyes. Then she opened them again. Because of a thick patch of taznie plants and the way the slope angled off, she could not see where it led. Even if she could get there, she might easily be dashed on jagged rock at the bottom. With two graceful leaps, the faol effortlessly glided to the top of the slope. She settled herself and waited.

Brie suddenly smiled recklessly. She dragged herself to the end of the ledge and slowly, excruciatingly, pulled herself into a standing position. Then she tried putting all her weight on the broken leg. She almost screamed out loud. Trembling, she gazed at the empty space between her ledge and the narrow one, trying not to look down to the valley below. Clenching her fists, she again put her weight on the injured leg and pushed off, jumping to the small ledge. She landed on her good leg, swayed a moment, teetering on the edge of consciousness, but she stayed on the outcrop, her breathing shallow, sweat thick on her skin. She opened her eyes. Fara was sitting unruffled, watching her from the top of the slope. She cocked her ears forward, then rose, as if to say, "Stop dawdling."

Thinking she would much rather stay where she was, Brie limped the few steps to the far edge of the rock. This jump would be shorter, but it still took all the courage Brie possessed to fling herself once more into the air.

She lay where she landed, and squinted at Fara, who had already begun loping easily down the incline.

The slope was too steep for Brie to walk down, so, with several muttered curses, she lifted her injured leg so that it rested on top of her good one. Then she pushed off, sliding on her backside down the slope. She quickly picked up momentum. Pain overwhelmed her as her shattered leg was jarred by the motion. Then she hit bottom, her leg collided with something, and she lost consciousness.

When she woke it was nighttime. She had no sense of where she was. Her body was sore and battered, and her leg throbbed. She could feel Fara's rough tongue on her face. It brought her into focus.

She was lying beside something large. At first she thought it was a boulder, but then the odor assailed her and she gagged. Goat.

She recoiled, pulling away from the still body. Pain from her leg shot through her and she gasped.

Hands shaking, Brie felt for her pack. With a great effort she shrugged it off her back and fumbled inside for a lasan stick. Letting out a groan, she struck the tip against rock. Light flared. The first thing Brie saw was the fire arrow. It was sticking straight out of the goat-man's gutted, blackened chest.

Relief washed through her. Then she thought, But now I have to take it out of the goat-man. She felt weak, weaker than she'd ever been.

She heard Fara burrowing in her pack, then watched as the faol used her teeth to drag out Brie's skin bag. "Thank you," Brie whispered, taking the water. As she drank she realized how hot she was and how thirsty. She felt as though she could drink the entire contents of the bag, but she did not.

Then she gritted her teeth and, closing her nostrils against the smell, reached over and took hold of the arrow lodged in the goat-man's chest. She gave a tug and it slid out, catching only a little. Brie took a deep breath and began pulling herself as far away from the corpse as she could manage. Finally, bathed in sweat, she lay still, holding the arrow.

Fara curled up by her shoulder and they both slept.

When the sun rose, Brie woke and pulled herself into a sitting position. While Fara cleaned her fur, Brie gave herself a thorough examination. Miraculously, the makeshift splint had held and, except for cuts and scrapes, her leg at least did not look worse than before. And the bleeding had abated. She was lucky, but she could tell that the break was a bad one, and she was, weak from all the blood she'd lost. According to Crann's map she was far from any of Dungal's villages.

The first thing she must do, she decided, was to get as far away as she could from the evil dead thing that lay nearby. The smell still filled her nose, and the summer sun would soon make it worse.

Brie pulled herself to her feet and tried hopping on her good leg, but it immediately buckled beneath her. So, dragging her broken leg behind, she began to crawl across the ground. It took half the morning to reach the small crea-than tree she had made her goal. She rested for a time in the shade of the tree, then set about making herself a rough crutch out of a branch she had found nearby. When she finished, she ate the last of her meat strips and drank water from her skin bag. Then she set out. By late afternoon she collapsed, sleeping where she lay.

She woke shivering in the dark. At least the smell of goat was gone, but she was burning with fever. The wound on her leg was swollen, festering with pus. She gazed up at the stars, thinking about Collun, wondering if he had finished tilling the north field.

"Plant in rows, straight and long. Temper them with care and song," they had sung by the fire at the end of the day. Collun's voice always went off-key on the next-to-last word, and he would be the first to laugh. Once that same off note had coincided with the cry of a nightjar and had been in perfect harmony. They had both laughed until tears ran down their cheeks.

Brie dozed.

She woke to a raucous barking noise. Fara let out a long sibilant hiss.

"Dyfod, Jip!" commanded a distant voice.

There was another torrent of barking. Fara stood beside Brie, her back arched high, her tail swollen with outrage.

"Easy, Fara," Brie whispered. She was too weak to sit up.

"Dyfod!" called the voice, impatient and still far away.

Brie tried to cry out, but her lips were cracked and dry and she could barely move them.

The voice continued to speak, but it seemed to be moving away. Tears of frustration pricked Brie's eyes. She struggled against her weakness.

But the dog kept coming toward Brie. It got as close as Fara would allow and, planting its legs stubbornly, continued to bark, loudly and persistently. Fara's eyes were slits and she looked ready to hurl herself onto the large brown-and-white dog. "No, Fara," Brie whispered.

Then Brie heard footsteps moving toward her. Abruptly they stopped, and Brie could see the outline of a person standing over her. It appeared to be a woman, though a tall one.

Brie felt a dry, cold hand on her forehead. "Poeth," said the voice tersely. Strong fingers gently probed her leg. Brie groaned. Suddenly she was being hoisted onto a strong back.