The Captive, page 5
Inside the trees I feel safer, but my body is numbing in several places, pains beginning to swell in my back, stomach, arms, one leg, and the sharp thrust of the broken ribs against my heart. I am on all fours now, dragging one leg, waving my head back and forth to clear one sense so I can find a place. They will not clear. Keep blanking out. Let the body do it. I see a dark place. Blank. I feel the living form moving behind me now, farther away. It does not know where I am. Blank. I am digging slowly under a fallen log. I feel the pain and hear something whisper softly. Blank. I am under the log. Blank. I hurt too much. Who is Renee? I call a name. Blank.
Chapter 2
I float and sink in a painful fire that burns me when I move. There is a dark pain that impales my chest when I sink, and the fire burns me everywhere. My senses are falling away from me in the dark painful sea, and I cannot swim any longer. I let myself sink again so that the sharp pain impales my heart like a severed head on a stake. I cannot hold. I let go and the stake presses in so that the pain rushes up into my mind and flares there like an explosion. And then it is quiet. I am floating in the dark sea, but I no longer feel the pain, or rather I feel it, but it does not matter anymore. Lights, sparks appear in the mist and the current takes me toward them. They are eyes, many pairs of eyes with thoughts behind them resting as if on snags of rock in mid ocean, the eyes watch me as I float and drown before them. I hear their thoughts as they think to each other about me. They are wondering if I am dead yet. They do not care, merely wonder about the creature with their abiding trait, curiosity. I would speak with them, but I cannot move my mouth, and my mind is a burned out cinder from the last flare of pain. I can only listen, feel their thoughts with what used to be my spatial sense, most joyous of my senses, now only a receiver of dull thoughts from the sparkling eyes in this fog that extends forever.
"It is dead?"
"Yes. It floats without moving."
"No. I see a thought."
"The last merely, the final burst which we can see. It is dead."
"The man killed it like any animal."
"Yes. The men kill anything. It was a nuisance to the man."
"Few are left."
"There are others?"
"They would not help."
"It is not their nature."
"Alone is safe."
I sank. The sparks flew upward. For a long while in darkness I lay on the bottom of the sea, not breathing, listening to the slow hiss of my last thought escaping like a fine thread running off the emptying spool. Then, when my mind felt the last flicker of the thread slip past and disappear, I felt buoyant and rose, unwilling, into the fiery sea again, feeling again the pain as I rose and the darkness became lighter to my senses, and I heard the spool of thought running again like an undertone of agony trying to be thought. And now I hear myself scream for the pain, cut off the scream with my thought and make it silent. I feel my body. The pains can be separated from their ocean of searing agony. The mind will separate the pain, and it will care for the body as it can. The pain pushes me to shift, to escape this body. The mind knows it cannot escape, that to shift to a human form would mean instant death, for I am injured beyond what a human can stand.
I am alive. I will be alive. I move one arm that is caught under me so that I can roll off the sharp pain in my chest. The arm is swollen and throbbing. but it moves when I command it. I move away from the chest pain. A leg bone grates. It is broken. There is something hard just over my head. A fallen tree. I have clawed my way into a ditch beneath a fallen tree, a safe place. The dawn is beginning, I think, and I do not know what dawn, how many dawns it has been. Can I feel my other leg? Is there another leg? Yes, there, numb. Perhaps not broken. The other arm is also numb, dull pain there, but no movement in the claws - broken. The spine is a long pathway of pain, lying like a broken column, the last crashing fall of a marble pillar, the geography book that Charles loved - I cannot think of other things, for the pain overwhelms me. I must go away now.
The sparkling eyes are there again. How long have they been after me, running across plowed fields, running in the ruts, a young boy running in the cold with the huge yellow moon just over the horizon. It draws him, helps him cry for help and brings that help to him in need. The talisman has power from the moon. They were not Indians. It was not a bear, only looked something like one. This is your totem, the moon, the bear, the shape changer. The sparkling eyed things are chasing some great bear across the unplowed fields, the fields that will not be plowed for centuries, but they will not catch him. He runs, laughing, knowing where they are in the dark. Now there are more, circling him, the choice must be made. I must teach you this and then leave you. Your need creates your being. Alone is safe. But you must search for the connection. We are still running while the sparkling eyes are behind us in the darkness and the fields are standing with corn now, with the moon hanging over us like a round skylight, a window on the universe that only we can see through while we keep running, always in search, while the shining eyes fade in the moonlight. I will teach you, the great animal says while we run under the moon, and we fall to all fours and run more swiftly than the wind, more clever than the fox on a trail, more powerful than the bear in defense of her home.
Something screams in my ear. I move too suddenly and the pain jars me awake. I am still under the fallen tree, and thirst is torturing every cell in my body. I must have liquid. I will make it rain. And I find myself weeping tears. Again I fall into the agony and the blackness. This time it is dark and painful all the time. I extend my senses very feebly into the painful areas, the worst ones first. The large, raging area around my heart is a group of broken ribs that move each time I breathe. And my one hind leg is broken, but not badly separated. It will heal if I can manage it right. The arm. I cannot find the center of the pain. It feels as if the whole upper arm has been smashed, but I can still move the claws on that arm. It cannot be that bad. Perhaps an early infection. The other arm is broken near the wrist. Not as much pain, but a large swelling that is already helping to hold the bones in place. My back worries me. But if it were badly separated, I could not move the legs or arms, and I can do so a little bit. I am not dead. I will be alive. I must first set the bones.
I close off and reach inside to find the spot, the sharp edges along the inner wall of the chest. The pain leads me. I feel the ends separated. Three must be held, for they move each time I breathe, stabbing me each time I try to move. I concentrate my consciousness on the receptors in the muscles around the largest rib until each strand of muscle becomes clear, hanging loosely under the shock of pain like long skeins of wet yarn. I pull back for a moment to turn off as much of the other pain as I can. It dims under the force of my will, and I turn up the receptors around the large rib. The shock is stunning for a second, but now I can find the proper strands that will pull the bone ends together. These I pull carefully into place. The bone ends move in a glare of pain that I can now almost ignore, it is so intense. They meet and I feel them grate as I pull more muscle strands into tetanus so that they lock. The pain of the muscle spasms is so minute in comparison to the others that it is almost a relief. Piece by piece I build up a hard muscled splint for the ribs, shifting the burden of breathing to the other lung so that only the very bottom part of the left lung moves when I breathe. And then I can relax for a time.
Almost, death would come easily now, I feel, as I ride the wash of pain that comes back as I must relax my will. But the thirst drives me on. I promise my body water if it will finish this job. I must set the leg before I can move. My concentration drives down into the upper leg. The large bone, along the bone, through the mashed and weeping tissues. The impact must have been very great, but the veins and arteries are not completely severed anywhere, and their shock contractions are holding well and keeping me from bleeding to death. I feel along until there are bone splinters. These will work out. Now I am at the break. It is a transverse break, with not much manipulation necessary for setting. I must have dragged it carefully. I do not recall now. I pause to put back the pain from the rest of the body and set to work isolating the necessary muscles, which for the hind leg will be most of the large extensors. One by one I ease them into tension until a brief burst of overload locks them in place. The pain of the locking is greater in the leg, but still minor in comparison with the other agonies. Now the next one, the great thigh muscle that will most surely hold. It stretches slowly to receive the bone, contracts gradually as I apply the pressure of will to the strands, and it moves smoothly to embrace the break, sealing with its strength the fragile bone ends, and now it locks. Ah, it is a relief to feel that pain and know the bone is tightly held. As I back away from the internal sensorium, I begin to hear and feel externally again, and the raging dryness that is like burning wood in my mouth and throat rises above the pain. Now if the wrist is all right for a time. I raise it and hold it close to my stomach. It will do for awhile. Explore it in detail later. Must have water.
I extend my spatial sense. Trees, a few birds asleep, dim light like twilight coming through the leaves. Living thing moving along the ground near the place where the trees stop. Rabbits. Come, rabbit. Come to me. I want you, rabbit. I feel the nearest little animal hopping toward the hole where I am crumpled up under the fallen log. I cannot sense water nearby. As divided as my consciousness is now, I can still make this little creature come to me. The rabbit appears to my sight, looking with blank, stupid eyes into the hollow where I lie. Come, little vessel, down the slope and under my jaw. You must! I command as the burning in my throat and mouth overwhelm me. The rabbit takes a step and slides down into the hole with me. He lies against my bloody chest, quivering with fear. I command him to come close under my jaw, for I cannot move. He must nearly thrust his body into my mouth, and then I move reflexively to snap my teeth into him, feeling the hot blood in my throat, groaning with pain in my neck, and the rabbit lets out his final squeal. I tear it apart in my jaws, gulping it, sucking at the juices, trying to swallow the flesh before I am ready. I retch and realize that if I do not take it slowly I will suffocate myself, for I cannot properly swallow in this bent position. I take it carefully, chewing many times, swallowing the precious blood, taking small pieces back with my tongue. And then it is done, and I am exhausted with my tiny meal. I want more, but the strain is too much. I let go and consciousness blanks out like fire dropping into a dark lake.
Days and nights pass. Sometimes when I open my eyes it is light, other times dark; my spatial sense brings me news of the small forest around me. I command my meals, rabbits and squirrels, a chicken once that had come into the woods lost. And I move a little until I can slide part way up out of the hole, dragging the one leg, one arm held tight to my chest. Now the liquids of the animals are not enough. I must have water, and there is a pool not far away where rain has collected. The time it rained, how long ago? Days? I do not know. I only know the pool is near. I pull my heavy body out of the hole, feeling the stiffness of muscles pulling against each other, the pain wanting me to stop, to stay curled in the hole under the fallen tree. I pull up with the unbroken arm; the one that hurts the most is least injured, I think. I am out of the hole, lying in last year's brown leaves. It is dark, moonless, comfortingly empty in the woods. I have not heard trains or cars for many hours now. It may be near morning. The pool is near. I pull over to it, sliding on my right side like a swimmer doing the side stroke. The water smells better than any food ever did. My mouth shrinks up in anticipation of the water. It is there, a dark glaze in my perception. I pull along and feel the ground getting slick and muddy. I want to lick the mud, but I force myself to wait. Now the water is under my right paw, and now my face is over it. I drop my face into the water, sucking it in, long, slow sips that take me with delight so that I hardly feel the pain when I drink. Not too much. Lie quietly and drink slowly.
The great stupid creature stretched out with his face in a muddy pool, one leg bent under him, the other stretched out in pain, broken ribs starting to heal in masses of scarred flesh. The back and the belly and the head a mass of painful swellings and oozing wounds where the pelt has been torn away. A train whistles in the distance. It will be dawn soon, for the train comes before dawn, and then the cars will come, only one or two most mornings although sometimes I have heard voices along the edge of the little woods. They are children's voices and have meant no danger, so I have paid little attention to them. Now, as I drag myself back toward the hole under the fallen tree, I begin thinking of where I am, how long it will be until I can move to a better place, what next I will be doing. I will not think of anything beyond this for a time. Death is still very close, and I must concentrate practically every thought and power of will on the healing of my body. I must be alert to deadening of the flesh, to undue swellings and oozings where they should not occur, to the healing of the many lacerations that could infect or turn gangrenous overnight. The weather is good, I think, as I drag back to the hollow. Only one rain, and it is warm at night. At the edge of the scraped out hole I have a ridiculous time trying to get back down into it without injuring myself further. Finally I can do no more than roll down into it limply, ducking head and holding my broken parts together tightly. Once in the hole again, I am so exhausted that I must relax my will and sleep. The last thing I perceive is the waking birds, the smell of sun hitting wet earth, and a far off train whistle.
The excited voice has been chirping in my ear for a long time, blending with a dream in which it was a chorus of crickets and frogs, which now I can hear separately as I rise toward wakefulness. The voice is narrow, high and has a metallic quality.
"It's a knockout, folks, in the twelfth round. Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber, has just been knocked out by Max Schmeling in the twelfth round. The crowd is going wild here in Madison Square Garden, folks. I wish you could see these people. They are in a frenzy."
I come all the way to consciousness and the pain comes rushing in again, duller than it has been, but very sharp in areas I have not felt before. It is night again. I extend my spatial sense at once, feeling for life and the source of the radio voice. An automobile is pulled off the road into the first trees about a hundred yards away. I sense two humans in it, and the radio is coming from it. The voice is still going on in its artificial hysteria about the two fighters as I seek some explanation for the humans being there. Are they aware of me? Why are they parked there when there are no houses about? I turn up my hearing to the limit, ignoring the raucous chatter of the radio, seeking for sounds from the humans.
"Please...."
"No. Now take me home...."
"I love you, Barbara. if you really loved me ..."
If I were not in such pain, I would laugh. As it is, a laugh would probably tear one of my broken ribs out again. Lovers. Young people parked in the darkness, fumbling about with their passion. I listen for a time to their mounting efforts to transcend the taboos of their society, and then, tired with the efforts they are making and aware of the great hunger in my stomach, I tune them out as best I can and begin seeking about for small game. The radio noise has about driven everything into hiding for a long ways around, but there is something sniffng about on the far edge of the woods. I concentrate on drawing it to me. As it responds, I realize it is a small dog. Well, better than nothing, although I particularly do not like eating too much of the terrible canned food humans give their dogs. I feel it coming closer in the darkness, and perhaps because my hunger is so great, I do not notice noises coming from another direction until they are very close. Then a shuffling in the leaves hits me with such alarm that I lose concentration on the dog, and it goes leaping away in fright. The sounds of feet in the leaves are almost at my shoulder. I scan quickly in that direction. The two young people are walking directly toward me!
I lie as still as stone. They have stopped at the same moment as the dog ran away. Now they are standing silently no more than ten feet from my hiding place. It is quite dark for them, so they probably cannot see me, although in these past days I have not been as sanitary as I usually am, and there is an unmistakable odor about my lair.
"What'd you come out here for, Stan? There's so many mosquitoes," the girl said softly.
"I dunno," her friend answered, puzzlement in his voice. "I just felt like walkin' around."
"Well let's go back. They're just biting me everywhere."
"Yeah. O.K. I just felt like walkin' around," he said again.
I heard one of them begin walking away, the other standing still in the dark so that I could hear the catch in his breathing as he scented me. At the same moment, I caught the first whiff of his own fear scent.
"Hey, Barbara," the boy said in a low, excited voice. "It smells like a bear out here."
"Stanley! Come on. The mosquitoes!"
