Curse of Ferreus

1 - Battered Egos

I sprawl in the dirt, land hard on my wrist, and feel a resounding, sharp click.

With a hiss, and as agony lances white-hot fire up my arm, I curl in on myself. "Fucking shit," I gasp out, equal parts startled and disappointed. It's been a while since I've caught a fall wrong. A testing roll of my wrist drags another pained noise from my throat. "You bitch!"

I'm not in the mood for graceful semantics, right now. I have a bet to win. And, it seems, a broken wrist to deal with.

"Again!" Esme barks, unfazed as always. "River, get up."

Frustrated, exhausted, and feeling particularly sorry for myself, I uncurl enough to offer my twin a glare. "My wrist just snapped," I tell her harshly.

"Snap it back, then," she says with a careless shrug, twirling a wooden pole — the same one that's landed me flat on my ass countless times and flat on my arm just now — as though it's weightless. "Come on, we have work to do."

Scowling and cursing the universe, I snatch up the knife with my left hand — our family is taught ambidexterity, and the potentially broken wrist only reduces my fighting capabilities by half — and rise to meet her ceaseless challenge. Pain blurs into the background, unimportant.

The aim is to get at her with the knife before she can bat the weapon out of my hands, or else render me useless via breaking every bone in both my arms.

Knowing Esme, bearing down on me like a firecracker let off from hell, she's leaning towards the latter. As usual. She's got a flair for the dramatic, that one.

My world descends into a flurry of thuds and slashes; a maelstrom of instinct and impact. Offence and defence. Dancing out of Esme's twirling range. Jabbing, feigning, falling back.

Breaths come hot and sharp. Thoughts slide away without sticking. The blade slices skin — superficial cuts, only due to Esme's fast reflexes to dodge a more fatal end — and the pole connects solidly. Blow after blow. Narrowly avoiding cracked ribs and kneecaps, I dart and weave between her incessant strikes.

Until at last, like an angelic melody falling from the heavens, a piercing whistle cuts through our chaos.

The fight is over. My bones are safe.

At once, our guards are down. Our hackles fall soft. Our minds clear as though the whistle is a gust of wind sending off angry, black clouds.

Esme releases a sharp, breathless laugh and tosses her pole aside. It sprawls in the dirt with a fraction more dignity than me, sending a cloud of dust up in its wake; an explosion in miniature.

I huff out a frustrated sigh, aim the knife for one of the tree stumps stationed around our training arena (the site of many hours of wood-chopping, but thankfully the humid summer air renders the remaining trees free of that fate) and send it flying.

The blade nestles into the wood with a satisfying thud, and the stump bleeds sap. All around the arena trodden flat beneath many feet, trees shudder and murmur and pray for a better fate.

They're safe for now. Collectively, we've chopped enough wood to last us six winters and still leave enough for decoration, and we've planted so many replacements it's a wonder every garden centre in the area hasn't banned us.

"Feel better?" Esme taunts, tugging my arm towards her.

I bite back a gasp at the harsh treatment; my sister is heavy-handed at the best of times, and nothing about her in the midst of training is remotely gentle.

She prods and messes with my wrist, deftly ignoring my hisses and winces. I give myself over to her attention; it's either submit to her will or fight and have her will win out, anyway. The pain is sharp and thrumming in time with my racing heartbeat, but I breathe through it, as I've been taught.