Jaelle said, her breath coming loud, “Bandages … in my saddlebags . . ..”
Magda got up, edging between the dead bandit and Jaelle’s horse, which, smelling the blood, shifted its feet uneasily. She led the horse away and took down the saddlebags, hunting in them; she found two or three rolls, and what looked like a small, primitive first-aid kit. That cut probably needs stitches, but I can’t do it. She made a pressure bandage, strapped it around Jaelle’s shoulder, turned her attention to the long, hideous gash along Jaelle’s face; it had laid her cheek open to the bone. Jaelle said, in a hoarse, frightened voice, “Can’t see out of … this eye….”
Magda went to the well behind the shelter, dipped” up the icy water, came back and sponged the dreadful gash. The eyelashes parted; a little more sponging showed that the eye had only been stuck shut with blood from a small nick in the eyelid. Magda pushed the eyelids open; Jaelle gasped with relief.
“Can you walk? You can’t lie out here in the snow.” Magda knelt, slipped an arm around the woman, managed to hoist her to her feet; Jaelle tried to walk, but collapsed against Magda. Magda managed, somehow, to get her inside the shelter and lay her on one of the stone benches. She started to build a fire, put some water to boil, thinking that some bark-tea, or some of the Amazon grain-brew, would do them both good. And if Jaelle was in shock-and she looked like it- she had better be kept warm. Not knowing how Jaelle had stowed her own blankets, Magda got out her own and wrapped Jaelle up in them; shoved one of the stone slabs into the fire, thinking she could heat it, wrap it in something and put it at the hurt woman’s feet. When the water boiled she poured it on the bark for tea, and went out to put the animals away-they wouldn’t be going anywhere right away. The second bandit was definitely dead. She had to drag him out of the way to get the horses and her pack beast into the stable again.
When she came into the shelter Jaelle was conscious. She whispered, “I thought you had gone.”
Remotely, like something someone else might have thought, it occurred to Magda: she could have escaped. After doing her best for Jaelle, she could have left her here to recover, and felt no particular guilt. Now it was something she could never have done. 7 swore to treat every Amazon as my own mother, sister or daughter….
She fumbled for words, saying, “We are oath-bound-sister.”
Jaelle put out her hand, a groping gesture that made Magda’s heart ache, remembering how quick and skillful those hands had been. She whispered, “I told you-oath-mother and oath-daughter exchange gifts. I did not ask for such a gift as this.” –
Magda felt embarrassed. “You’d better not talk anymore. Are you cold?” She got another blanket, put the hot stone at Jaelle’s feet, propped her up to sip a little of the boiling tea. Jaelle touched her sleeve. “Tend your own wound.”
Magda had forgotten it. “It’s only a scratch.”
“Just the same. Some mountain bandits … poison their blades,” Jaelle said with difficulty. “Do as I say.”
By the time Magda had finished Jaelle was asleep of unconscious again. And asleep or unconscious she remained all that day. Magda made herself some soup from dried meat, late in the day, and tried to rouse” Jaelle to eat, but Jaelle only moaned and muttered and pulled away from her hands; Magda knew that she was feverish. Once she woke and asked quite clearly for a drink of water, but when Magda-brought it she was stuporous again and would not swallow.
Are there injuries I did not see? Or were the wounds poisoned after all? Magda found that she was fighting terror and dread. I don’t want her to die! I don’t!
By nightfall Jaelle’s skin was blistering hot, and Magda could not rouse her even for a moment. Jaelle muttered and flung herself around; once she began with her free hand to tear at the bandage on her face. Magda pulled her hand away, but a few minutes later Jaelle was clawing at the bandage again. Magda, thinking that if she got the bandage loose she might hurt herself, make the scar worse, took a roll of the bandage and tied Jaelle’s hands at her sides. She was not prepared to hear Jaelle begin to scream: wild screams of panic and terror.