Lisaykos, Healing Shrine of Mugash
“Emily, dear," I attempted to look and sound unmovable because otherwise, Emily would find an effective argument to do things her way. "I think we should move into the study," I looked up and waved to the waiting serving crew waiting in the corridor to come into the dining room. "At the very least, we should give the staff time to clear the table and clean up the mess we've left them." I winked at Lieth, the halfhair in charge of the domestic chores for the fourth floor south wing, who ran a crew so efficient and invisible that one seldom saw the staff. "Do you think you can get yourself next door to my study, Kayseo?"
“Certainly, Great One,” Kayseo was so pleased with the walking contraption that she was grinning non-stop. I think she liked it. I mindcasted Wolkayrs to warn him we were moving into the study.
Emily was studying the floor with a calculating look I didn’t like. “Stop even thinking about it, dear heart. Too much exuberance in the morning will mean less staying power in the afternoon. You need to pace yourself, regardless of how good you may feel at the moment.”
The scowl she shot back at me confirmed my suspicion that she was thinking of jumping down. The height was more than eight and a half hands off the ground taking into account the raised seat and back that Wolkayrs made for her that fit into my normal chairs.
“Let's wait for a few more rotations before scaling the furniture like a squirrel," I smiled deliberately at her.
The guests at my table were moving on their own toward the study but Huhoti stopped next to Emily still in her chair. "Up on the roof earlier and thinking of jumping out of your chair just now? Does this mean you're finally starting to feel better?" Emily looked up and nodded. "That's excellent news," Huhoti smiled with just a little bit of mischief. "Would you like a hand getting down, stubborn one?"
Emily let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head. “Please,” she conceded defeat quietly and lifted her arms so Huhoti could lift her. I succeeded in not laughing. Emily was just a little too stressed right now to take teasing with good humor. Her tolerance for Cosm was frayed and I hoped she could get through today without crumbling. If she didn’t already like Raoleer and Huhoti a great deal, I would have insisted she take a day to rest; however, since it was likely to be a meeting of minds between three manic mekaners, I estimated she would survive the day without going sideways on us.
I noted that Opa snuck into the study with the rest of my guests instead of returning to her bedroom to study. I decided to let her continue with her minor misbehavior for now since it wasn't every day that Emily displayed her mekaner prowess to an audience. The little voice in the back of my head was telling me that this would be another day when Emily overturned a significant portion of what we thought we knew.
As I stood in the doorway into the study, Raoleer and Huhoti were examining the walking contraption.
“...that’s the interesting thing about the best designs,” Raoleer was remarking to Huhoti. “They appear to be simple and yet, when you think back on what the world was like before a new thing arrived, you have to wonder why you or I didn’t think of this thing ourselves long before now?”
“Yes, like glass,” Huhoti chuckled “Here we’ve been smelting and assaying metals out of rocks for centuries and the makings of glass have been staring at us all this time, at the top of every slag pour. Why didn’t you or I think of melting the fluxes together to make the clear slag we now call glass.” She shook her head.
"Just look at this thing," Huhoti took it from Raoleer, “it’s just a simple three-sided frame with bracing. That’s it!” She put it on the carpeted floor and made her way to the corridor door and back on just one foot plus the walking contraption. “The wheels are clever but you don’t really need them unless someone was too weak to lift the frame. This thing is really handy,” she placed it back in front of Kayseo, who was in one of the armchairs by Emily’s usual favorite spot on the south wall lounge.
"You know, "Huhoti looked at Kayseo, "you could put a fold-down bench seat here," she indicated a level about two-thirds of the height of the contraption, "with these same ingenious folding braces that self-lock. That way, Healer Kayseo, when you got tired and needed to stop, you could fold down the seat and take a rest."
“Oh!” Kayseo sat up with a look of revelation in her eyes, “you could even add a basket or a satchel to hang off the front. That’s so clever, Revered One. Thank you for the idea.”
Emily had a quiet look of satisfaction on her face watching the reactions to the walking contraption. I had a feeling that more of these walking things would start to show up on the third floor of my shrine. I made a note on my pocket tablet to ask Wolkayrs about what sort of costs were involved in making these things.
Wolkayrs moved one of the low side tables closer to Emily on the lounge and put down some folded sheets of paper and some bent and straight pieces of wood. I was interested in how the long pieces of wood had holes drilled in them at one end at regular intervals about a quarter of a hand apart. Then there were two round pieces of dowel, each with a hole through the middle lengthwise. I had no idea what to make of those, but I'm hardly a mekaner.
Wolkayrs started to place armchairs in a half circle around Emily’s lounge. Opa, not lacking in manners at all, got up to help him. I was about to take my usual chair next to Emily but didn’t get there in time. Raoleer, not knowing it was my usual chair, plunked down in it and reached for the funny piece of dowel. She picked up an assembly of two long lengths of wood which were attached to a strangely-shaped crosspiece on one end. In a way, it looked like a two-tined pitchfork that was missing its handle. The crosspiece attaching the two pseudo-tines on one end was carved so it was fatter on the ends than in the middle.
The pseudo-tines, as I had labeled them in my head, were bent towards each other at the non-spacer end. That’s where most of the holes were drilled. There were more holes halfway down the tines too, before they bent inward at the ends.
Roaleer took the dowel and inserted it between the two pseudo-tines where the holes were drilled in the middle, above the bent parts. She wore a smile of triumph which she delivered to Emily. “This is where one of the two long bolts goes, right? There’s one long bolt and nut for each of the two round pieces.”
“Yes, that’s exactly right, holy mekaner,” Emily grinned.
“Huhoti, do you have the hardware?” Raoleer asked her foundry master and shrine deputy.
“The hardware is in my saddle bag," she got up, "I'll be right back."
“Now, this arrangement of holes is clever,” Raoleer moved the dowel up and down between the two pseudo-tines. “If you make every crutch using this design, you can adjust the grip to any person, regardless of how tall or short they are. I like this.”
Aylem watched and then frowned. “Wait,” Aylem sat up. “Emily, you’ve made axillary crutches?”
“You couldn’t tell?” Emily was a bit startled.
“I did just now. Alright, you are correct,” Aylem was thoughtful, “the axillary crutch is a superior design to the design currently in use. It never occurred to me to replace the current crutches. I confess I never gave any thought to the design of crutches before you mentioned it a few days ago in Kamagishi’s office. I can see how having a grip improves the crutch, but why is the two-piece design better than the one-piece design? Why not just add a grip to the one-piece design?”
Raoleer just gaped at the Queen, astounded that Aylem didn’t see the obvious. “You can’t see why, Great One?”
Aylem began to flush as she frowned in displeasure.
“I have to repeat what the Holy Raoleer just said,” Emily said before Aylem could get even more riled. “I think it’s obvious just by comparing the two designs, though I do concede that it’s for two reasons, and not just one. I also concede that I'm infected with mekaner disease, so of course, I think it's obvious. It's the same as why double-entry accounting is better than single-entry accounting." Emily gave Aylem a dubious look and then switched to what I called Emily's teaching voice.
“The first reason is the grip itself. When you place a grip between two supports, you distribute the load evenly. If you have a grip that's attached to just one long piece, like a one-piece crutch, you put a tremendous load from a person's weight on the point where the grip meets the long support piece. Sooner or later, the grip will fail at that place. Now, the second reason has to do with balance, because..."
“No, no,” Aylem held a hand, “stop there. You’re going to plow me under with mechanics again, and we both know that I’m no mekaner. We don’t have the seven bells it would take to explain this to me. I will take your word for it – both of your words for it.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Emily visibly deflated when Aylem calmed down. Then she sat back up as if nothing had happened though the dark green knot of fear in her was hard to miss. I could tell Aylem saw it from the look of exquisite regret and shame on her face. What was interesting was Opa's reaction. The girl looked like she was annoyed at both her mother and Emily.
“Well, the most important feature of the axillary crutch is the grip itself, Aylem,” Emily was going to ignore all the undercurrents of emotion and forged ahead with the task in front of her. “Healer Kibbilpos, you’re about Kayseo’s size,” Emily smiled in a very friendly way. “Could you please stand up and put Kayseo’s crutches under your arms?”
“Certainly, Great One,” she stood and got the crutches positioned.
“Can you face the other way so you can walk with the crutches?” Emily asked pleasantly. She waited for Kibbilpos to turn. “Now imagine you have two injured legs and need those crutches to move around. Please use the crutches like you can’t walk without them. It might help if you walk on just your heels. Pick your toes up off the floor and don’t use them to balance, as if you were using leg stumps.”
“I can try,” Kibbilpos seated the crutches in her armpits and balanced on just her heels. “This is not easy,” she smiled with a grimace. She grabbed the shafts of the crutches and struggled to move them forward while balancing her weight at the crosspieces in her armpits. Then she moved one heel followed by the second. She repeated the motion several times and then quit. "That is not the easiest thing to do.”
“How do your armpits feel?”
“Ouch! That’s about sums it up. Ouch with a helping of ow in the side. It’s unpleasant to hang your whole weight, even for a breath or two, entirely from your armpits.”
“And that,” Emily held a finger up, falling into her lecturing tone of voice, “is why a gripless crutch is a bad thing. The axilla, which is to say the space below the shoulder through which blood vessels and nerves enter and leave the upper arm, is what the current crutch design harms. You're hanging your whole weight on a hard crosspiece that's jammed up into one of the most nerve-rich parts of a person's body. If you do this too much, you can hurt those nerves and can also cause thrombosis in the blood vessels of the upper arm."
“Thrombosis?” Huhoti asked.
"Blood clot formation inside the blood vessels. When they dislodge, they travel and can get stuck in the heart, causing heart attacks, or can get stuck in the blood flow to the brain and cause strokes," Emily explained. "This is why you need a comfortable grip on crutches, so the person using them can support their weight with all the muscles of the arms and shoulder. With the variable grip design, the grip height can easily be adjusted so the user can support their weight using the grips, so no weight is supported by the armpits.”
“Then why have the crutch go all the way up past the elbow?” Aylem asked.
"Balance and stability," Emily sat back and relaxed, "in reality, the top of the crutch just needs to be above the elbow, high enough to give the arms some stability while they hold the body’s weight up but low enough so the cross piece at the top doesn’t dig into the armpit.
Huhoti returned with the hardware I didn't know that Emily had ordered from the Shrine of Giltak. I would have found out when I got the bill. Emily gets absent-minded sometimes when it comes to things she has people make for her.
Raoleer snatched the hardware and started putting the crutch pieces together, grinning all the while.
“Oh, and this short piece with holes must go between these two to adjust the height,” Huhoti grabbed the other pseudo-tines and leaned against Raoleer’s chair to start putting her parts together. The mekaner high priestess and her chief deputy – they were a matched set.
“The plans are right there,” Emily pointed at the papers on the side table, “if you want to look at them.”
“Oh, no,” Raoleer grinned like a small child in a large toy shop, “it’s more fun this way.”
“Yes,” Emily gave Raoleer a chiding look, “but if you’re going to completely assemble them, then at least fit them to Kayseo.”
In the end, Raoleer and Huhoti helped Kayseo stand and balance while they adjusted the crutches. It took Kayseo less than ten breaths to decide she was in love with the new design. "There's one thing I would change, Emily," Kayseo tried not to look like she was complaining.
“What’s that?” Emily opened an eye after dozing off during the crutch fitting.
“Well, the wood piece on top and the grip are both hard,” Kayseo noted with a tone of apology. “It would be more comfortable if there was some padding. Also, the stacked leather on the bottom slips a bit when I’m on the tiles and off the carpet.”
“Nothing a little glayon vine sap can’t fix,” Emily said in a half-asleep voice. “I was thinking we could do rubber after the mid repast.”
“Are you wearing out, dear heart?" I purred at Emily, ready to chastise her for being too exuberant earlier this morning.
“Maybe a little,” she closed her eyes again.
“So, now that you’ve redesigned crutches,” Raoleer picked up Emily’s design drawings to make sure she didn’t miss something important in putting the crutches together, “you should tell me why this rubber stuff from glayon sap is such an important thing that Galt has to go convey...”
Raoleer stopped mid-sentence, pulled three paper sheets out of the stack, and laid them side by side so she could look at them all at once. "Great one, what is this thing? It looks like an imitation leg and a boot at the same time. The heel and ankle are filled with?" she looked up to see if Emily had fallen asleep on her.
Emily's eyes were open and she was listening. "It should say crepe rubber," Emily answered. "The three straps hold the remains of the leg so that most of the weight is held above and below the knee, where the leg tapers. The bottom strap secures the stump end nested in crepe rubber. Some weight is applied to the stump with this design, instead of all the weight like the current peg legs given out by the healing shrine. The crepe rubber is very springy and forgiving so the weight applied to the bottom of the stump should never be unbearably painful. That's why I want rubber so badly. If I have rubber, I can make an artificial leg that should be pain-free."
“Why bother with a foot shape?” Raoleer asked, interested in Emily’s thinking behind the design. “Why not just pad the straight fake leg with rubber? Isn’t adding a foot an unneeded feature?
Emily sat up, “no, the straight fake leg currently in use should be discarded and never used again." She leaned forward, "what Kayseo is walking on gives her just one point of balance per leg. That's not good. In fact, it's wretched. The human foot, or the foot of a duck, or the talon of a hawk or eagle, or the paw of a cat or dog is not a point. It's usually a triangular or rectangular area with a minimum of three vertices to give its owner balance.
“This is so important, especially if you expect someone to manage the rest of their life minus the feet they were born with,” Emily sat up and started to speak intently. It was obvious that she was passionate about this.
“We were all born with feet that gave us the same balance as standing on a triangle or tripod,” Emily pulled a spool of thread out of her belt pouch. “We can’t balance on one point or two. It's not doable and yet, that's what the current peg legs provide: one point to balance on for each leg if you're Kayseo. That will still not provide any stability.
“Look," Emily dug into her belt pouch and pulled out a handful of pencil stubs. "Here's the amount of balance you get from one straight fake leg," she stood a pencil on its tip, removed her finger, and let it fall over. "Now, here's two," she tied the ends of two pencils with the thread. She stood the two pencils tied together with the tips touching the table and lifted her finger, letting them fall over.
“Now, if we have three points to balance on, like a tripod, we don't fall over." She added a third pencil to the two already tied together, stood them up, and removed her finger. Of course, since she just made a tripod of pencils, it stood up and didn't fall over. "Now go look at the feet of living creatures, and you'll find they are mostly triangular along some squares, rectangles, and trapezoids. They all have three or more points to balance on.
"So the Impotuans took away Kayseo's triangular foot bottoms and she got simple one-point straight attachments at the end of her legs to balance on. As we just saw, you can't maintain a balance on just one to two points. You have to have at least three.
“The solution here is simple when we remember to treat the leg as a mechanical construct more complex than a simple stick. “I believe that obvious thing to do is to hand out fake legs with triangular-shaped feet to those who have lost both legs and everyone who gets them should be able to walk better, and many will be able to walk without the need for crutches. But I can’t build legs that will be pain-free without something like rubber.
“I need rubber to wrap around Kayseo’s calf to hold the fake leg in place and I need rubber on the inside of the artificial leg to cushion the stump and prevent the edema I suspect she is still suffering at the bottom of the stump.”
“It's been almost four rotations since the attack on Pinisla," I said in disbelief. "Kayseo, are the ends of your legs still painful, and is there still edema?"
The apologetic and distressed look on Kayseo’s face was all the answer I needed.
"But why?" I wondered out loud. "When we give these same artificial legs to soldiers, after four weeks, the swelling is gone, and so is most of the pain."
“Lisaykos,” Emily sounded both sad and weary, “it has to do with the differences between silverhairs and everyone else.”
“What?” I had no idea what Emily meant by that. It couldn’t have anything to do with magic, could it?
“It’s a matter of weight and height differences,” she said in a hurry, probably in reaction to the expression on my face, “and the width of the tibia in the lower leg.”
Everyone in the room looked as befuddled as I felt.
“I don’t understand, Em,” Aylem said in a soft and cautious voice, looking doubtful.
"Ohhhh!" Raoleer sat up straight and looked at Emily with revelation on her face, "the weight increases much more than the weight-bearing diameter of the bone, right?"
"I'm happy somebody understands beside me," Emily looked relieved.
“Now, do you think you can translate for the rest of us, Holy Mekaner Raoleer?” I leaned forward and smiled at her deliberately, "might you be available for hire? We could use someone around here who can understand the strange foreign language Emily speaks."
(continued in installment 116)