Chapter 8: I Thought That I Heard You Sing

Brian's eyes felt like someone had stuffed sand under the lids and then glued them shut. His body felt heavy like lead and he wasn't able to even turn his head let alone lift his hand to rub his face. His throat was coated in a thick layer of sticky phlegm and everything hurt. On the upside he was laying on something soft and he felt warm, warmer than he had in over a month.

He focused on waking up and sensing his environment without his eyes. He was laying in a small depression that was lined with something soft. The air was thick with the smell of earth, wood, and stone as well as the crackling sound, fragrance, and radiant heat of a wood fire to his left which was warming the left side of his face. There was also a soft warm weight on his arms and legs.

He slowly became aware of the sound of shuffling feet on wood and the sound of pages turning and the scratching of a pen on paper.

He finally managed to force his eyelids open and blink away the crust.

"This is new." His voice croaked with disuse and gummy phlegm. He began a weak rattling cough to clear his throat.

He was covered in a blanket, laying in what looked like a trough for water or animal feed in the corner of a low wooden room filled with similarly low dining tables and benches. On the far side of the room crackled a fire in a stone fireplace. The warm weights on his limbs were small fuzzy balls sleeping in the crooks of his arms and between his knees. Between the blankets stuffed around his body wedging him into the trough and the small furry weights on his limbs he was in his weakened state, quite stuck.

His coughing awoke the small forms sleeping with him and they popped small rabbit-like heads from their sleeping piles. They regarded him with sleep blurred curiosity as the movement attracted the attention of someone across the room.

"Finally awake, eh?" Charlotte came into Brian's field of view.

"How long was I out?"

"Six days, we were starting to wonder if we would need to find 'love's first kiss' to wake you." Charlotte chuckled.

"Oh? Does that make me Snow White or Sleeping Beauty?" Brian's voice was getting stronger by the moment.

"Depends, do you know how to use a spinning wheel?"

"Eh, seven dwarf tag team it is then." He managed a small painful laugh.

"There it is! I told Binna that you'd be alright and cracking jokes in no time."

The small rabbit-like kennik who had been sleeping began to get up from Brian's makeshift bed removing some of the weight on his limbs. They were of a variety of colors from mottled browns and creams to solid whites and blacks. They also appeared to be quite young as they were less than half the size of Binna.

"The kiddos here wanted to keep you company after Binna told everyone the story of how you killed dozens of 'long ones' with your club and took a 'hundred' arrows before you finally carried everyone up the cliff."

The children were watching him with a mixture of awe and amazement with a little bit of trepidation mixed in. "That's not quite how I remember it."

"She used a bit of artistic license for the benefit of a good story I think."

What little strength Brian had was spent just trying to keep his head up enough to look around and he collapsed back into the soft bedding.

"Mike will be by in an hour or so to do today's healing session, so in the meantime, I figure you're pretty hungry."

"Yeah, now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever been this hungry before."

Charlotte went to gather some things from the other side of the room and came back. "We had to feed you sugar water, it's the only thing that we could get down your gullet without choking you while you were unconscious. We have one small bag of rolled oats left, but I'll save that for later. Right now, as unappetizing as it sounds I've got some crushed up trail biscuits that I'm going to wet down with some hot water."

Despite Charlotte's apology Brian was so hungry right now that even soggy trail rations sounded pretty good. He really wanted some meat, but he didn't think he could chew the jerky at the moment. He heard Charlotte place a wooden bowl out of his range of vision and pour in the crushed biscuits and hot water. "Alright, let's let that soak for a bit while I get your head up."

With Charlotte's assistance he was able to get his head and shoulders elevated and she stuffed a blanket behind his head to keep him up. Brian could now see the small kennik sniffing at the bowl cautiously. Charlotte stirred the contents until it became a liquidy blend of flour and fats before spooning it into his open mouth.

Brian couldn't have said when he fell asleep again, but it was probably somewhere after the fifth spoon.

***

The next while passed for Brian as a series of disconnected interludes. He'd awaken and he'd be fed. Charlotte or Michael would be there or maybe one of the kennik, maybe Binna or maybe one of the other storykeepers who could speak English. Sometimes it would be a very serious looking kennik named Raph with mottled brown and tan fur and more of a svette jackrabbit look compared to Binna's fuzzy pet rabbit look. One time he awoke to find nearly a dozen kennik, some wearing hammered metal armor flanking an elderly female who looked like 'grandma bunny' right out of the pages of a children's book; complete with cotton frock, apron, bonnet, cane, and wire rimmed glasses. He learned later that it was the grandmatron who came to check on his health.

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Of course he also had a rotating collection of fuzzy bed warmers to keep him company.

He hadn't seen Kurt or Brent, and he always seemed to pass out before he remembered to ask where they were.

As time went on his time conscious increased only slightly, bit by bit. In contrast his strength waned little by little. And as time went on Michael's face became more and more worried.

"Alright Mike, give it to me straight."

"Give what to you straight?"

"Don't play coy with me, I may act like the big dumb goofball but I'm not stupid. It feels like it's been weeks and I'm still stuck here in this bed."

Mike let out a long sigh and scrubbed his face with his hands. The kennik children watched his unusual movement with wary curiocity from their nest on Brian's legs. "Yeah, it's been almost two weeks now. I'd say medicine isn't 'magic' but it kind of is here. But this isn't Final Fantasy, there is no phoenix down to make you all better all at once. The best I can do is help your body heal faster than it would normally and keep you from bleeding out. Even with the potions and salves there is not really a miracle that I can work to make you better in a flash. You took ten arrows mate. The ones in your front weren't so bad. Your armor and shield kept them from getting too deep and only the one which hit your thigh cut a major vein. But the ones which hit your back are another story."

Brian listened and tried to ignore the painful itching where the arrows had struck him.

"One of them pierced your left lung, one scraped off your spine and missed anything else important I think, but I think one got your left kidney, and the last one tore up your guts."

That was worse than Brian had thought it would be, but he was still breathing so something must have gone right. "Yeah, I'm still here though. You must have gotten the holes patched up."

"Yeah, with Kurt's help I managed to get most of your bleeding stopped and I think I was able to seal up the holes in your lung and intestines, but it's not as simple as closing the holes. I'm not an expert on this. I'm just a bookworm not a doctor. I'm pretty sure your kidney isn't working anymore and the tears in your intestines let a bunch of bad stuff into your body. I've been doing my best just to tread water and keep you from going septic. I think I might be losing the battle, I'm running out of cure potions and if we don't get you to someone who can handle injuries on this scale then I don't know what will happen."

It was a lot to take in, Brian relaxed into the bed to consider the situation.

"Kurt and Brent should be back from the beachhead in the next few days and they should be bringing supplies and backup if possible. Hopefully that includes a dedicated healer or at least a sled so we can haul you back to the beachhead to get treatment."

"Well, why didn't you say so?" Brian's normally bright puppy dog personality reasserted itself, "If Kurt says he's bringing the cavalry, then that's all there is to it. No worries."

***

Binna entered the great hall with a thin bowl of vegetable and root soup. Charlotte was strumming her guitar for the horde of younglings who had been endlessly curious about the humans ever since they arrived. The great hall was where the clan gathered on special occasions and it was really the only room large enough in the burrow for the humans to stand up in. And Brian likely wouldn't even be able to do that. Not that he looked like he would be doing any standing any time soon.

Brian had been getting steadily worse over the last two weeks. His skin was a sickly shade of milky grey and he was sweating constantly. Michael said that something about 'bacteria' and 'septicemia' which even after asking him to explain the words made no sense to her. As best she could figure it was some kind of curse or evil spirit which was causing him to become more ill. Michael had been doing his ritual over Brian's palid form daily, and for a little while after the effort he would look a bit better. Some color would return to his skin and he would breathe easier. But within hours he would be back to his terrible state.

He would fade in and out of consciousness and when he awoke the younglings cuddling with him would alert an adult nearby and they'd feed him some of the gruel made from the biscuits they brought with them from their home.

Kurt and Brent had gone back to their base at the edge of the sea to get more medicine and supplies and hopefully a healer who could help Brian. They said they would be back in two weeks, so they should return any day now, if their estimate was accurate.

The younglings stirred and raised their heads from their location on Brian's legs where he lay in the brass water trough. They had dragged the brass trough from the creche to the great hall and filled it with blankets to serve as a bed for the large human. It was really the only thing they had which was large enough to contain the mountainous human. They had originally brought it from their last burrow where it was used as a water trough for large animals in the dwarven trading outpost. They used it to haul many of the storystones from the old burrow to this one, and then repurposed it as a bed for the younglings.

Brian having faded into consciousness again, was being fed by Kayna (one of the other storykeepers) since she could speak the old tongue. After a few spoonfuls he spoke to Charlotte where she sat nearby. "Hey, can you sing the one from 'Domestic Girlfriend'? I like the way your voice sounds in that one."

"Sure. It's not my voice though, it's stolen from the girl who wrote that song. How about I warm up with 'Main Actor' first though. The arrangement is simpler and I think that the lyrics are kind of apropo for our whole situation."

"Yeah, I like that one too."

The younglings who would have otherwise been playing in the creche split their time between there and the great hall to gawk at the humans and listen to Charlotte's music when she played. There were dozens here now listening to the music. As Charlotte warmed up for the new song their excitement grew and some more exchanged places with the others who were sleeping with Brian.

Binna continued to eat her lunch while Charlotte began to play. She couldn't understand the lyrics since they weren't in the old tongue, but she could feel the raw emotion in Charlotte's singing. Her voice would whipsaw from breathy plaintiveness to powerful and crystalline highs and then back to a ragged moan that could convey such raw emotion that it could take your breath away.

As Binna finished her lunch so did Charlotte finish her songs. Brian had faded back into unconsciousness somewhere in the middle of the second song and as Binna stood up to put her earthenware bowl and utensils away she spared a worried look for the large human.

Charlotte had moved on to another song, this one was in the old tongue and spoke of a man deep in the throws of self hatred who lamented the loss of his friends and pined for some way to restart his life. Binna hoped that this wasn't a bad portent for Brian's health, but she didn't have time to worry about that. She returned to the alchemical lab to assist Michael in mixing up more curative potions to help Brian hold out until help could arrive.

(End of Chapter 7)

Written by Charles Caplan, all characters and situations are fiction.