Chapter 7. T For Swearing
"We have to set his leg." Leda said, rolling a pair of green latex gloves onto her hands.
All the phones apart from Astrid's were water damaged or lost in the plane wreckage, but she guessed an hour or so had passed since she woke up. The sun had finally set below the horizon, leaving streaks of fading orange across the darkening sky. Julian and Howard had built a fire from scavenged driftwood and she found herself unconsciously leaning towards it as night settled.
The shock was gone too and while she couldn't fully rule out what was most likely a mild concussion, there wasn't really time to focus on herself when the Pilot's -Paul's- tibia was bent in two and the tip of one half had breached the skin of his shin. Compounds were always trickier than they had any right to be and that was in a hospital. Out here on the edge of what was known reality, a compound fracture was going to be a real son of a bitch.
"We?" Julian interrupted her thoughts. His eyebrows shot up, half hidden beneath his copper hair. It had dried fluffy on his head and it made him look younger. "Who said anything about 'we'? You're the Doctor, Newbs."
Leda rolled her eyes and cracked her knuckles. Paul's tibia had mostly broken cleanly but without an x-ray it was impossible to know more. Setting a bone was never pretty but as annoying as a compound was, she couldn't shake the guilty thankfulness she felt at such a injury. Stabilizing, tending and setting a compound fracture was a great distraction from the looming abyss of worry that hung over her head.
She was on the Island. The island. The place her dad said existed but none of the courts had ever found. Well. Stranded on the Island if she was going to be specific about it.
God. How were they going to get home? Her dad didn't even know where she was, and her phone was well past dead. She was never going to get the chance to tell him that she was sorry, and he was right.
"As soon as I set that leg, he's gonna shoot up and start swinging." She said, exasperated.
If they were stuck forever on a disappearing island, she was going to have to reject her Hippocratic Oath and commit murder by strangulation if Julian spent the next sixty years being a gigantic dick.
She gestured to the Pilot's arms. "I need you and Howard to hold him down. It's either that or he loses the leg and we all get black eyes."
"I'm sure he'd be fine losing a leg." Julian muttered, but he got up anyway and rubbed his sandy hands on his thighs. He clapped Howard on the shoulder as he passed and jerked his head to where Leda knelt by Paul's legs. "With the pay-out he's about to get from big pharma Aether, he could afford two new robotic legs."
"Jules!" Sarah squeaked from her seat next to the co-pilot, Louise Hanquin. She was conscious, if still a little delirious. The Botanist was helping her sip from a bottle of water, using her lap as a pillow for Louise's head.
"What?" Julian snorted, kneeling by Paul's head. Howard sat on Leda's right and swallowed deeply. He tried to hide the shake in his hands by clasping them together but she still saw the tremble in his fingers. "Dude's about to have so much money he won't know what to do with it. May as well lose two legs and set your grandchildren's grandchildren up for eternity. In for a penny in for a pound, I always say."
"You ok?" Leda ignored Julian, bumping Howard's shoulder with her own. "You look a little green. It's ok if you can't do it. I can ask Astrid or Sarah if you-"
"No!" he interrupted, but not with any venom and Leda admired the determination that settled over his features. "I- I can do it. I'm just…"
"Bit different from watching it on Casualty, right?"
Howard shot her a grateful look and with a deep breath, began to roll his damp sleeves up to his elbows. "Yes. That."
Julian wiped his hands with a disinfectant wipe from her kit and tossed a packet to Howard which he scrambled to catch.
"If you're too green I can do it myself, Nerd." Julian quipped and set his large hands on Paul's slack shoulders. "Blood doesn't bother me in the slightest."
. . .
It surprised absolutely no one that Julian was the first to puke. Well. No one apart from Howard probably, who was straddling the line between smugness and concern.
As soon as Leda had snapped the bone back into place, Paul had jerked awake with a yell. Howard clamped down on his ankles and Julian pushed against his heaving shoulders, but she couldn't have anticipated the spray of blood from the fracture arching high and over Paul's body. It splattered across Julian's shocked face and Leda grimaced as a bit dribbled into his open mouth. She wasn't the least surprised when the man who had loudly proclaimed that 'blood didn't bother him in the slightest', went as green as her med pack and promptly projectile vomited into a nearby bush.
That had been ten minutes ago now. Julian had crawled back to his make-shift bed of someone's slightly damp jacket and was laying on his side. Howard was graciously pressing a cold flannel to Julian's forehead while trading amused grins with Leda who was busy bandaging the Paul's leg and trying not to think about the fact she was stranded on an island with a bunch of strangers and far, far out of her depth. She was so busy thinking about not thinking that she only realised Astrid had returned to the group when she clapped her hands together, startling everyone.
"The sub will be here in two days." She stated, standing beside Dr Morgan who was fiddling with a weird antennae thing. Her brick phone was nowhere in sight but it seemed all that rapid talking worked. Help was coming. Leda's fingers twitched as she secured the last of the bandages, smiling in apology to a wincing Paul as she tightened the knot.
"Sub?" Leda asked as Sarah handed her two planks of driftwood. Leda shook her head and motioned for Sarah to hold them in place against Paul's leg as she opened a new bandage roll. "As in submarine?"
Astrid blinked. "Oui. Of course."
Leda scoffed under her breath. Trust the heir to the secret society to not only know of a submarine but have enough money and resources to get one to rescue them. She even said it like Leda had just asked her if water was wet. One percenters were a riot.
"The skies are too volatile." Astrid continued, bending down to straighten one of the bent antennae's Dr Morgan was fiddling with. "They will come by sea."
Leda looked to the still smouldering wreckage of their plane. Yeah. Volatile was one way to put it. No wonder the Frenchwoman had looked so calm during everything. Leda guessed that she could fall out of the international space station and be fine with it because a hired spaceship would come pick her up.
Maybe it was the absurdity of the situation, or maybe it was the almost foot she took to the chin as Paul jerked as she tied the splint together with the new bandage roll, but Leda couldn't quite keep the bitterness out of her voice when she spoke.
"Yeah. Sure. Submarine. Like that's a totally normal thing to request. Did you order caviar as well?"
Astrid's nostrils flared but she offered no reply.
Logically, Leda knew it wasn't her fault that the plane had crashed. Whatever (and she hated to even think it) thing that zapped them out of the sky was also probably the reason why the island, for all intents and purposes, didn't 'exist'. It was just easier to blame the physical embodiment of a mysterious secret society than it was to drive herself crazy wishing her dad had just picked up the goddamn phone. Or worse, blame herself for thinking she could just go on an adventure and not have it completely screw up.
Julian's groan tore through the silence Leda's jab had left.
"Two days?" he moaned, batting Howard's hand from his forehead. He flopped onto his back and in the orange firelight, his red hair glowed unnaturally. "What are we gonna eat for two days?"
. . .
Energy bars. That's what they were going to eat. Energy bars, little packets of sour cream and chive pretzels, fifteen bottles of water and a bottle of whiskey Dr Morgan had somehow saved from the fiery inferno of their plane. Go figures the old man would save the whiskey first.
"What are you doing with that cannister?" Sarah tiredly mumbled to Howard as they all sat around the campfire, finally dry and well into the night.
No one had any blown pupils and apart from Paul, who was in a lot of pain but handling it well, no one was having trouble stringing two sentences together. Despite no obvious signs of concussion, Leda had advised that they all stay up till sunrise, just to make sure. Light dozing would be ok, she'd feel better if they just forewent sleep for a few hours. The advice had been taken with scowls but so far, so good. The twilight hours had even inspired some creativity, if Howard's constant tinkering with a gas cannister salvaged from the plane wreckage was anything to go by.
"Yeah. What are you doing, nerd?" Julian quipped. He was warming his hands next to the fire and had recovered from barfing up everything in his stomach. "We saw you filling it up with sea water. You're not going all Castaway on us are you?"
"I'm making a desalination instrument." Howard said absently, attaching a tube he'd found from somewhere onto the cannister's empty nozzle.
"A what?" Leda asked, her interest wiping some of the exhaustion from around her eyes.
"It is a device to purify sea water." Dr Morgan answered for Howard. He didn't even look up from the antennae he was still fiddling with and Leda rolled her eyes. An action she was beginning to realise was second nature around that group. He tutted as one of the wires bent in the wrong direction and then, with an air of normalcy asked: "Will you bury it or burn it?"
Leda's eyebrows shot up. "Will he what?!"
Howard shrugged, twisting the rubber tubing to tighten it. "Burn it. It'll be faster."
He placed a piece of domed metal from the plane's hull on the floor by the fire and lay the end of the rubber tube in its centre. And then, acknowledgement of how weird the conversation had gotten or any pre-warning, he threw the cannister onto the fire.
The bonfire sparked and sizzled and Leda jumped to her feet. Jesus Christ. Maybe Howard really had gone all Castaway. Julian leapt up two seconds later, eyes wild and awake.
"What the hell, nerd?" He yelled, patting his thighs to douse any embers that had flown onto him. "You've gone all Lord of the Flies on us!"
"Calm down." Dr Morgan said with a sigh, frowning down at his antennae. "The fire will boil the saltwater inside. The tube will gather the condensation and deposit it into the bowl. Thus-"
"We get fresh drinking water." Julian finished. The anger in his face bled away to appreciation and he sat again with a huff. "Pretty cool, nerd. Although a warning would have been nice. Kinda wish you did go all Lord of the Flies on us, though. Woulda made for a good story."
"Don't worry." Howard said drily, watching the cannister heat up. "There's still time to turn into a cannibal and eat you."
Leda didn't stick around to hear Julian's indignant reply. Her feet were moving before she even had a direction and only stopped when she was close to the line of trees that bordered the beach.
Her breath stuttered in her chest and she held a shaking hand to her breast. Something about the jabbing and jibing and the burning cannister and de-sa-li-nation had kicked her panic into hyperdrive. How could they just sit there and be so normal? They were miles from home and the only thing they had to look forward to was some mythical sub from some world dominating secret society heiress. She was never going to see her dad again. Her mum was dead, and she was going to die on that dumb island with Julian being a prick and why couldn't dad have just picked up the fucking pho-
"Are you alright?" Astrid's deep voice cut through her frantic thoughts.
"I uh-" Leda cleared her throat and scratched nervously at her wrist while she thought up a lie. "Needed to pee. Just trying to figure out which tree looked the least threatening."
Astrid hummed. Leda looked at her out of the corner of her eye. Her hair had dried wild, but it framed her face beautifully and in the dark, her brows hung even lower over her eyes and set her face into shadow. She was carrying two backpacks. One of which looked suspiciously like Leda's.
"Come then." Astrid said and Leda fought against the natural response to just obey the Amazonian. "I will go with you."
"Oh…" Leda looked back to the camp and cleared her throat. "No, it's fine. I can- you know. I can go by myself. Big girl and all."
She withered under Astrid's answering stare.
"What about the others?" She asked lamely, grasping at straws. She had no desire to be alone with Astrid anymore than she desired to go sit back with the group and she was running out of ways to politely decline.
"You'll be quick." Astrid shoved Leda's backpack into her limp hands. "I could use the break as well. Come."
Leda sighed and slipped the bag on. It felt way heavier than it had in Bermuda and she adjusted the straps accordingly. Bermuda seemed so far away now; a lifetime could have passed when in reality it had only been ten hours or so.
Astrid handed her a flashlight when they got to the treeline and Leda chanced one last look at the group. The others were talking, Sarah's white teeth catching the bonfire as she laughed. Dr Morgan however, had finally looked away from his antennae thing and was staring right at her. She smiled a little, but he didn't return the gesture and his blank look left a weird taste in her mouth.
Astrid's flashlight blinked past her, and Leda followed, waiting until she had passed the first few trees before flicking hers on too.
A strange silence settled over them as they ventured into the forest, like a buzzing just below the skin that crawled into her ears and settled uncomfortably. She shook her head as if to expel the bizarre sensation, but it stuck fast.
Astrid stopped suddenly and pointed her flashlight's beam to the base of a thin, grey tree. "Here."
"Oh." Leda trailed to a halt. She had completely forgotten her lie about needing to pee; the weirdness of the forest had distracted her. She cast her eyes up and around quickly, trying to find a source for what was making her feel so odd but was only greeted by empty forest. Now that she thought about it, there didn't seem to be anything around them. No wildlife or insects. Nothing but trees. "I-"
"Don't need to go?" Astrid snorted and as quickly as she had stopped began to walk again, flashlight swinging from side to side. "I assumed."
Leda stalled, not wanting to go further into unknown territory with Astrid of all people but also not wanting to traipse back through the wood alone. It wasn't like she was particularly close with the woman after butting heads with her for the better part of twelve hours but she didn't want to be alone in the forest that was giving her the worst hibbie jibbie's she'd had since she was seven and had watched The Exorcist against her parents express permission.
After a moment she followed after Astrid with a groan, rucksack bouncing against her sweaty back. Guess she was going with door number one: probable death in a creepy forest. But at least she wouldn't be alone as the inevitable big bad whatever ate her eyeballs. This is what she got for wanting to be brave and help her dad. She should have just stayed home. The only thing that could help her dad was money. Money for his psychiatric treatment and for the vending machine so he could get those chocolate bars he liked.
She rubbed at her ear as they walked silently, the odd sensation swelling faster under her skin. Her body felt foreign, like something else was burrowing inside.
She broke the silence just as her skin began to crawl. "Does this forest seem a little…"
"Weird?" Astrid grunted and Leda saw her head nod in the beam of her flashlight. "Oui."
Ugh. Just like that. Like it was totally normal that they were in a forest with no wildlife and a weird pressure that was making her feel like she wanted to tear her skin off.
It was quiet again for a while and Leda scrambled to find something- anything- to say just to distract herself from feeling so...weird.
"So..." she hedged, watching the back of Astrid's head. "You're related to the guy who founded The Aether Group."
Astrid paused to hold up a low hanging branch for her to duck under. She hummed, waiting until they were beside each other before walking again. "Yes. Distantly."
"That must be-"
"A burden." Astrid cut her off, looking down at Leda past her strong nose. She hadn't been expecting her to be so honest about it. Leda was new to the whole 'leave your job and go on an adventure thing' but she was pretty sure that in all the movies, the secret society was always the bad guy. So far, Astrid had just seemed a little…cold. So this little slice of truth was welcome. Sort of. She wasn't sure she was in a hurry to jump headfirst into 'friendship' with a woman she wasn't sure was telling her the whole truth about everything.
"Oh." Leda muttered. A sheen of sweat had formed across her forehead. It pricked the roots of her hair and she bemoaned the loss of a shower. She probably didn't smell too hot right then. "I know all about burdens."
Astrid hummed again. "Yes. With your father. Richard."
There it was again. The familiarity with which she said her dad's name. Did they know each other? And if so, how the hell? Leda hadn't been around him a lot since having him committed but she sure as shit would have noticed the six foot three Amazon at The Eyrie had she been there.
She let out a short titter despite the dread that always formed when someone brought up her dad coiling in her empty stomach. Or maybe she was just hungry.
"...It must have been a lot." Astrid hedged, leaves and twigs crunching under her heavy boots.
Leda scoffed. "Not any more so than growing up knowing you were going to lead a three-hundred-year-old secret society that's probably filled with raging men with small egos."
She expected another one and Astrid's less than warm stares, but the Frenchwoman surprised her by laughing instead. It was a rough sound; masculine and hard but in the weirdness of her situation Leda found herself offering a snort of camaraderie.
The tension between them thawed by a millimetre as Astrid threw her a wild grin.
"Oui. Probably just as hard as that. I-"
She stopped abruptly and her hand flew to her waist. The sound of the gun being cocked echoed loudly in the quiet of the forest and it made Leda gulp and the hairs on her arms stand on end.
Up ahead where the trees thinned, a whitish glow seeped between their trunks. It was like something out of the X-Files and replaced her false sense of ease with sticky dread.
Astrid tossed something small over her shoulder and Leda fumbled the catch with limp fingers. It slipped out of her grasp and when she picked it up, she realised it was a taser. Where the hell had she been hiding a taser?
Astrid crept towards the treeline; gun held high. "Stay behind and close to me."
"What!" Leda cried, back hunching against some unseen threat. "What are you doing?"
Astrid jerked her free hand behind her back as if to hush her and continued to advance.
"Wait!" She hissed but Astrid ignored her and slipped past the trees into the glowing unknown. The light gobbled the shadow of her profile and left Leda feeling far more alone than she had in years.
She huffed and jimmied on the spot and the taser hung heavy in her grip. It was either stay out there by herself and let the forest send her mad or follow Astrid, and she couldn't believe she was about to think this as a medical professional, into the light.
She chose the latter, of course. In for a penny, in for a pound.
"Oh my-
"God." Astrid finished as Leda broke through the trees and stumbled to a stop beside her.
Before them was a large, dark lake. Scattered on the water's surface and on the wet ground surrounding were hand-sized gold and silver leaves. They emitted a faint light and sluggishly, Leda realised that that's where the glow had been coming from.
She stooped to pick up a handful of leaves that had floated onto the wet soil. They were warm to the touch and lit her fingers with their white glow.
Leda held up the leaves. "You ever seen a plant like this?"
Astrid re-holstered her gun before shaking her head stiffly. "No."
Distracted by everything around her, Leda stuffed the leaves she was holding into her pocket along with the taser and walked to the water's edge. The surface rippled occasionally, even though she couldn't see or hear any flowing source. Perhaps there were fish in the murk although, with how silent the island was, Leda doubted anything lived in the water except fauna.
A tugging sensation began in her stomach, curling around until it wound itself tight and ebbed with each ripple of the water. She gritted her teeth against it. There was nothing to be alarmed about. It was probably just nerves.
"Be careful." Astrid said and Leda jumped, startled. Her foot slipped into the water and she groaned. Wet boots and socks were a gross combination and the leading cause of trench foot. Which, if she took into consideration her shitty luck so far, she was most likely going to contract.
Leda watched the ripples her foot created disturb the surface. "Its warm." She said.
Maddeningly, each ebb of water timed itself to the pull in her stomach that she was trying to ignore.
Astrid jaw clicked before she spoke. "It may be an underground volcano. Do not go any further."
Leda rolled her eyes and quickly glanced back. "You know, it may be hard to imagine, but I'm not actually a child."
Astrid huffed and stooped to examine a weird green plant with small white flowers. "Oh, I know, Ms Gauling."
"It's Ackerman." Leda griped, resisting a new urge that washed over her. It was like fight or flight on steroids. She got the insane urge to step further into the lake. To keep walking to- to something.
"Is it?" Astrid's voice was coy. She broke off a stem, brought the cluster to her nose and breathed deeply. "It smells sweet."
Leda's thoughts jumbled in her head, the pulling was growing stronger and if she was being honest, it didn't feel a whole lot like nerves. It felt like there was rope inside her attached to something and that something was pulling. Hard. Leda didn't want to go anywhere but home but it was beginning to feel like she didn't have much choice.
"Stop!" Astrid's cry sounded panicked and Leda felt a bit guilty that her first thought was that she was a bit happy that at last something had ruffled her. That smugness lasted exactly two point five seconds, however, because as she turned back, she saw how far she had walked into the lake and blanched. The water pushed at her thighs, now, seemingly growing higher ever breath she took. What the hell?
"Leda come back now." There was a wobble in Astrid's throat and again, Leda felt a childish sense of a-ha! at ruffling the un-ruffable. Astrid pulled out her gun again and Leda rolled her eyes.
"Stop being so dramatic." Leda said, trying for an air of nonchalance but worry pulled at corners of her mouth. How had she gotten so far away? "Put it away, I'm coming back."
She tried to step towards Astrid, but her foot went backwards instead and the water soaked the shirt at her stomach.
"I said come back not go further!" Astrid yelled; gun steady. Leda got the irrational fear that she was going to shoot her and her panic hitched.
"I'm trying." Leda grunted, taking a step back to shore. "Just shut up a second! I need- I need to think-"
Instead of moving back towards the bank, her foot slid back again, further into the lake and she gasped. The water was now just below her breasts. In a panic she swung her arms in an arc under the surface to force herself forward towards Astrid but something tugged her back, and her foot slipped again. There must have been a drop in the floor because when she tried to sraighten her feet treaded water.
"Astrid!" Leda shouted, around water that slipped up above her hair and worked into her mouth.
The lake churned around her and she spun her arms again, trying to keep her head above water. The weight of her bag kept pushing her down though, and she fought against her sagging clothes.
"Stay there, Leda!" Astrid yelled but made no attempt to come any further or touch the water. The satellite phone was at her ear again and she looked very small on the bank. "Just don't move!"
Leda wanted to yell back that she was trying for Gods sake but the sharp pull in her belly made the words stall. One minute she was staring at Astrid and the next she had a mouthful of water and was being dragged down. Air bubbled up around her and stung her eyes. All around was black, inky depths.
She could only have been under for seconds, but it felt like hours before her instincts took over rand she began to kick for the surface. It took countless tries but within the blink of an eye she shot upwards, breaking the waterline with a gasp of air. The pulling in her stomach ebbed and left her feeling empty, like she hadn't eaten in days and she grimaced, hacking water until her throat felt scorched. Light stung her eyes as she wiped the water away from them.
"Jesus- Astrid- g-get some rope or-" But she wasn't there anymore and that wasn't the only thing that was all fucking wrong.
For one, it was daytime now and the sunlight made black spots form and dance around her stunned eyes. Second, the lake was also now inexplicably a river that extended far to the left and right of her peripheral vision. The water was colder, too and cramped her fingers.
So. Astrid being missing was a major inconvenience (or rather, absolute devastation) but it was ok. She could deal with it. She'd just- find something or someone. Or do- something. She could handle it. She could even handle the whole lake to river thing if she suspended her disbelief for another thousand years.
But the real nail in the coffin of her false positivity in the face of total fuck was the line of people standing in the Frenchwoman's place, all in elaborate armour with gleaming swords and wooden bows. She couldn't see their faces in her blurry vision, but she was ninety-nine-percent sure that they were as shocked to see her as she was to see them.
"Drego!" One of them shouted. Their loose black hair flew about their face as they gestured down.
Down? They wanted her to go back down into the river? Were they mad? How had they even gotten there? Had they been on the island and not seen the plane crash and what the fuck was going-
Something growled behind her and she spun, booted feet kicking at the water. A mottled green skinned...thing was standing on the other riverbank. A rusty looking sword raised above its...head? Was it a head? It didn't look like any head she'd ever seen before. Around it were other deformed creatures holding every type of hammer, knife and sword Leda could think of. They weren't wearing armour and she could just about make out the sneers and grins and rotting yellow teeth behind.
A frantic call came again from behind as Leda treaded water, wide eyed and stunned. "Drego! Drego!"
And then all hell broke loose.
As far as I could make out, Drego is the Sindarin word for flee but I'm not a linguist. I have no idea if it's right, but it doesn't bother me in this edit. This is a huge chapter and again, editing it felt like pulling teeth. Mentally, I can't keep churning out 5000-word chapters lol One of things I was focusing on in my University workshops was using less words to get the same points across. To varying degrees of success that has worked with this story but it's something I need to work on.
But anyway! This is the end of Phase One and we're in Middle Earth at last! I'm glad it's taken this long to get here and I hope I haven't bored you all with the build up lol As you can see I've also updated the supporting characters section. That should give you an idea of what's coming next and where Leda's landed.
Thank you so much for the reviews, the favourites and follows and your support. I do reply to all reviews because I appreciate them so much. I tend to reply just before I post a new chapter. It's like a checklist routine aha I just wanted to write something light-hearted and fun and I'm glad we're all on this Indiana Jones adventure together. Have a great few weeks till next time we meet!
Novaer,
Aobh x (: