"Again, Skip?"
Estelle faced the red-haired scarecrow waiting outside her door.
Freckles peeked through his sunburn, and his elbows and knees were adorned with the perpetual scabs of an ever-active eleven-year-old boy. To say he was a frequent visitor to her little clinic would be an understatement.
He beamed up at her. "Good morning, Miss Estelle. How are you this fine day?"
She raised a brow at this performance. "I was doing just fine until a little scamp landed himself on my doorstep. What have you done now?"
He cradled his right arm to his chest, a huge basket of apples hanging from the bend of his left elbow. "I think it's broken!" he announced, in the same tone she had once a decade earlier exclaimed, "It's slimy!" the first time she touched a frog—excitement mingling with distaste.
She sighed. "I suppose you had better—"
But he was already brushing past her into the cottage, tossing a "Thanks, Miss Estelle!" over one narrow shoulder.
"—come in," Estelle finished. With a last exhale she shut the door, hastening to the examining room (her mother had called it the kitchen) when she heard an Ooh from that direction.
"What are you doing?"
He turned as she entered the room. "What's this?" He was stretched to more closely examine something on the higher shelf.
When she saw where he pointed, she replied, "A spinning top."
"Ooh, hello Spinning Top. What does it do?"
She explained by demonstrating, taking the toy down from its perch and sending it twirling across the tabletop.
Seeing the size of his eyes as he watched, mesmerized, she smiled. She had probably looked similar the first time she'd seen it at work. There was such a delicate balance between achieving stillness, wobbling, or seemingly endless revolution.
"Wow, is it magic? It's like it'll never stop!"
"It's even better than magic. It's science."
When finally the top slowed, then wavered, then skidded to a stop lying against the table, he raised his eyes to her. "Can I try?"
"Don't you want your arm looked at first?"
He blinked at her as if the suggestion was strange. She would never understand young boys.
"How about you sit and let me look at your arm, and you can play with the top while you tell me what happened."
"Great!" He threw himself down into a nearby chair, wincing when the movement jarred his arm. She shook her head but his grin snapped back into place as he made himself comfortable at her table.
"Just wait here while I get my supplies." She walked past him toward the back of the house, picking up linens to use as bandages and stopping by her room to retrieve the book. On her way back, she paused by the door to the master bedroom, listening. No sound came from within. She had not expected any different, but habit, and perhaps hope, compelled her to check.
She laid the book on the table, upsetting the top, which fell to rest on its side. Skip set it up again as she opened the twenty-year-old edition of Modern Medical Practice, taking a moment to brush her fingers over the handwritten note on its first page even thought she'd long since memorized it.
D,
I hope you will accept this and make use of it. Please take care of yourself.
Yours,
M
She flipped then to the index, skimming until she found the listing for broken arms, and then turned to the right page. The clatter of wood on wood and Skip's sighs accompanied her reading until she nodded to herself and walked over to him.
"I need to see if your arm is really broken. It will probably hurt."
His eyes were wide and serious as he nodded, and she grasped his right arm. He inhaled but held himself still as she ran her fingers over the limb.
She had to agree with him about one thing: the bone appeared to be fractured, if not broken. According to her book, it would need a splint and a sling. He was lucky, as he'd told her on one of his many previous visits, that he was left handed. He was still practicing with the top when she spoke. "How did you manage this?"
"Fell out of an apple tree." The top was wobbling and falling almost immediately.
"You have to hold it very straight and control the motion when you spin it. Think very tight movements." He nodded and tried again. "What were you doing in the tree?" she continued.
"Picking apples." He pointed to the large basket he had dropped by the wall, half full with the shiny red fruit.
"Why?"
He shrugged, wincing again as it shifted his bad arm. "I want apple pie. Don't you like pie?"
Before she could answer, he let out a whoop of triumph, throwing his hands up and nearly hitting her in the face. "Stay still," she admonished and he sat back into his prior pose, biting his lip. He was silent. "Did that hurt?" she asked. He nodded. "Let me fix it, then. You can have the top but only if you can stay still."
"I can have it? To keep?" He grinned.
No. That was not what she had meant, but she held back the instinctive denial. If it kept him entertained while his arm healed, was that not worth giving up a memento she was really too old for anyway?
"Alright. But only if you promise to be still for now. And to be careful when you leave," she added.
"I will."
"Good," she muttered. "It'll save me a lot of work and headache."
He nodded. "Mom says I give her a headache too. That's why I got the apples, so she could make a pie. Pie always helps me when I have a headache."
She rolled her eyes and returned to her book. She had plenty of cloth for the sling but what could she use for the splint? Her eye was drawn again to Skip's basket. "Is that a tree branch?"
"Oh, yes," he replied, "it broke off when I fell, so I brought it back with me. Isn't it like I broke the tree's arm when it broke mine?"
She raised an eyebrow but only asked if she could use it for his splint, and when he agreed she fetched the branch. It was a two-foot length and about half as thick as her wrist. A spark of energy coursed up her spine when she grasped it. She dismissed it as the lingering traces of the tree's life force encountering hers. She snapped the branch over her knee, ignoring his gasp. Estelle began immobilizing his arm, binding it to one half of the stick and mostly tuning out his chatter as he became more and more adept at spinning the top.
"There," she said when she finished with the splint and sling and stepped back. "You're lucky you're young, so your bones are soft. This will heal soon enough, but only if you're careful."
He widened his doe eyes at her and stood. "Of course."
"Scamp," she replied. He grinned. "Now, that means I don't want to see you back here again before this needs to come off."
"But what if I want to come, to visit you?"
Her brows drew together. "Why would you do that?"
He traced a finger along a shelf's surface, then examined the dust collected on his fingertip. "I don't know. Your house is full of weird stuff like this spinny-top thing. And anyway, it's on the way to my cousin Cole's house, so I'm probably going to be in the area a lot. That's where the orchard is."
"Well, I'm usually pretty busy..." she hedged, but he covered her words with a huge yawn. She frowned. "Didn't you sleep?"
He shrugged, as much as he could with one arm in a sling. "I had to get up early because of the baby. She gives mom a headache, too." He paused. "I wonder if there's any food at home, I think I've got a headache starting."
She shook her head, and walked him to the front door. "You're probably just tired. Eat and then rest. You've had a lot of excitement today."
He grinned, turning the handle. "That's the way I like it." A moment later, he was off, disappearing through the line of trees that cut her cottage haven off from the village and the rest of the world. Estelle shut the door and leaned against it, letting the breath pour out of her. Alone again. Finally.
*****
After realizing just how bare her cupboards were (unless one counted cobwebs), Estelle decided a trip to the market was unavoidable. It helped that she was running low on some of her herbal supplies, and so could fulfill both needs with one outing. Efficient!
Estelle was approaching the village common, reviewing her shopping list, when a wall collided with her body. She was tossed to the ground, the breath knocked from her lungs. It was as if her hearing returned in that moment of impact, and a shout reached her ears just before a cart thundered by, a dark-haired boy struggling to control its team of massive honey-coloured horses. They passed so close she could feel the ground shudder under the pounding of their hooves, could see the horses' eyes roll and the foam on their gaping mouths.
As they continued down the road toward the market, she saw that apples littered the road, shaken from the back of the cart. She looked down at one that had rolled to rest against her foot and blinked. She had nearly been killed. She had not seen the cart, had not heard its approach. She would not have moved in time to evade it. So how...? Then she remembered the force that had propelled her to safety. She swept her surroundings for its source.
The dust kicked up by the horses was beginning to clear, and she could discern a crumpled shape in the street. Not a wall, then. And surely not the heap of cloth it appeared to be. The sun gleamed off short hay-coloured hair. Someone had saved her. A man.
She was on her feet and at his side between one heartbeat and the next. She knelt and took in the sight of her rescuer. Both the bag that lay beside him and his unfamiliar face identified him as a traveler. A stranger had risked his own life to save hers. And because of her he had not been able to escape the careening vehicle in time.
His prone form lay still, stretched out as if in sleep, except for the mess that was his leg.
She crawled closer to the injury. His left leg had been crushed, likely by the wheel of the vehicle after it knocked him down as it passed. The pain must have made him lose consciousness.
From what she could see, the bone had been broken in several places, turning to shards that could too easily sever something vital. That was, if they hadn't already done so.
Estelle sat back on her heels, letting her breath out in a long stream. This was not good.
She could not leave him here. She could not simply treat him with her book and let him heal in his own time. His lifeblood could be draining under his skin at this very moment. He might not survive the trip to her cottage.
And he had to survive. She had to save him—because he had saved her life first.
It did not matter why he had risked everything for a stranger. He had done so, and now they were bound to each other in a debt more powerful than any other. She could not sit idly. She could not walk away. She had to save him at any cost.
And it had to be done right now.
She did not let herself think of what this would mean, of what she was doing. She only set one hand to his ankle and the other to his knee. Then she closed her eyes and breathed. Inhaled—imagining herself filling up with energy like a wave gathering height as it neared the shore. Exhaled—the wave crested and curled, flowing through her and narrowing into needle precision, shooting into the shattered limb. It was like she could see into him. Could see the tissues knitting back together, each piece returning to its proper place. She stopped short of healing it entirely, instead ensuring he was out of danger and well enough to be moved. She would have to take him back to the cottage to finish treatment of the remaining fracture, but for now this was enough. She reeled the energy back into herself and opened her eyes, lifting her hands from her patient.
And froze.
There was a different, equally unknown boy rushing at her. How long had he been nearby? Had he seen the impossible thing she'd done?
His brows were furrowed as he took in their tableau. Was he merely concerned at the accident, or could he be horrified at her display of power?
He spoke through harsh breaths. "I'm so sorry! A cat ran across the road and spooked the horses. Are you alright?"
He must have been the same dark-haired boy who was driving the apple cart. He must have run back after he'd settled the horses down. Perhaps, then, he had not seen what she had done. She swallowed, her throat dry. "I am, but he's had a shock. I need to get him home."
"Let me." A moment later he was at her side, helping her to her feet. Then he stooped and began to lift the unconscious man.
"Be careful of his leg," she said and hurried around to prop up the other side. In the end they held the fallen hero between them, his arms over their shoulders. The dark-haired stranger immediately took on more than his share of the weight—and thank goodness for that, the hero was heavy. The burden was demanding enough that they hobbled along in silence except for their breathing. For the first time, Estelle lamented that her cottage was so far from the village's center. This was going to be a long walk.