Hullo again! It is Friday, and Friday means update! When I was revising this, I really had to work to tone down my fondness for Mandrake whenever I described him. I'm sorry, that character is such a delight. I think I made the narrative reasonably objective though. Fjkljsldkajf I just really like the Boggans I'm sorry.
So in this chapter, you get to see MK be a medical badass, meet another Boggan Amianth, and watch Nod panic. Compared to last week's beast, this is a short one though.
Chapter 5. Stitches
MK wasn't sure what she imagined Mandrake to look like based on Nod's stories, but it definitely wasn't this. The Boggans she had seen so far all had a sturdy brutality to them. Standing tall with the long, hooded cloak flowing behind him and a wooden staff in his hand, Mandrake was regal. The very intent of his approach made her dip her head in obeisance and step aside to let him pass.
"Son," he murmured, moving to Dagda's side. MK definitely hadn't expect that either.
"Hey, Dad," Dagda whispered with a smile. "I made it."
"I was worrying for hours," Mandrake said. "We searched everywhere." MK glanced awkwardly at the other Boggan who had pressed herself into the opposite corner of the shelter. MK felt like she was intruding on something private.
"She's helping me," Dagda said. "So don't kill her."
MK swallowed hard as Mandrake rose back to his full stature and examined her with a sidelong gaze.
"Did she now?"
He regarded her with venomous, serpentine vigilance. She reached deep to find her courage to speak.
"I committed myself to making sure your son is healed. Until someone removes the arrow and treats his wounds properly, my job is not finished. But his injuries are dangerous unless handled with care," she said as carefully as she could.
Mandrake faced her fully. "Why would I trust you with the life of my child?"
Frustration boiled her fear away. Did no one realize the danger Dagda was still in? MK straightened herself against Mandrake's height.
"It doesn't have to be me, but someone has to do it and do it right now! He's still losing blood. He could get an infection. The arrow is wreaking havoc the longer it stays in his leg! If there's no one else around, then I'm going to save his life, and if you care about him as much as I think you do, you won't try to stop me!"
A palpable silence filled the air as all the other Boggans cringed in horror at her impudence. But fear of losing a patient's life trumped the fear for her own, and she stared furiously at Mandrake, hands clenched at her sides.
"If I wanted to hurt him, I wouldn't have brought him home. If there are no other doctors, then I will treat him. I can save his life!"
Mandrake glanced down at Dagda, and MK saw a softness in his eyes that seemed at odds with the cold-blooded killer Nod and Ronin described.
"You'll come with us to the Hollow," Mandrake said quietly. "You'll work there." Without waiting for her response, he gently picked up his son and carried him out.
"Bring the Jinn girl to the Hollow," he ordered, and the Boggan she had been speaking with beckoned her to follow. Outside the lean-to, a cluster of bats roosted in a low branch. At the sight of Mandrake, they swooped down and landed awkwardly, waiting for their riders.
The bats were larger than hummingbirds and difficult to sit on.
"Hold on to the fur," the Boggan rider said, climbing on behind her. Mandrake's bat took off and the bat fluttered into the air after. The takeoff was clumsy compared to birds, and with each wing beat, MK's grip tightened in fear that the bat would pitch them clear off its back.
From above, she could see a large, hollowed out stump in the distance. As they approached the Hollow, Mandrake's bat pivoted in midair, hovering with its back facing a landing platform, making it easy for Mandrake to smoothly dismount without jostling Dagda.
The bat she was riding was less skilled, and its attempt to do the same resulted in she and the Boggan rider being more or less tossed from its back. The rider grumbled at it, and it squeaked irately at her before flying after Mandrake's mount.
MK dusted herself off quickly before hurrying after Mandrake. As she followed them, another Boggan joined. She was wirier than Dagda, and her head was covered in a crest of quills that resembled stiff hair.
"Dagda!" she cried out, rushing over to Mandrake's side.
"Amianth," Dagda groaned. "Don't shout."
"Sorry," the new arrival whispered. She shot MK a glare.
"Chief? What's happened? Who's the Jinn?"
"She claims she can heal him," Mandrake replied. They entered a cozy chamber where Mandrake laid Dagda onto a bed of furs and down.
Amianth frowned. "The Jinn would never…"
MK brushed past them, slamming her backpack on the ground and strewing the contents of her first aid kit out before her. "I'm not a Jinn. I'm a Stomper." She swung around to face Mandrake. "Do you have any kind of healing draughts, mixtures, whatever? Anything for fever or disinfectant? I don't know the biological makeup of your species so I don't want to use any old medicine."
Amianth looked up at their leader in confusion, and MK was about ready to burst a capillary in frustration. No, getting mad won't do any good, she told herself.
"Be more specific," Mandrake said with remarkable composure for one whose child could potentially die.
She sucked in a rattling breath. "If you have it, I need something to numb pain or induce deep sleep. I need something to wash out and clean the wound. I need a needle and thread and the smallest, sharpest knife you have. I'm going to have to cut the arrowhead out surgically, so I'm going to need something to stitch the incision," she rattled off again.
Mandrake muttered something to Amianth who nodded and ran off.
MK set to work carefully removing Dagda's bandages. The flesh around the arrow swelled angrily, and she hissed through her teeth at the sight.
"Where's your magic?" Dagda asked, peering at her things.
"Shh." She pushed him back into a lying position. "I don't have magic. I'm not a Jinn," she said with professional calm.
Amianth returned with an armful of supplies and tossed them at MK's side.
"Thanks. Tell me what's what," said MK, picking up the knife in the pile. She wiped it with a gauze pad, wishing she could use her own antiseptics to clean it.
Amianth waited for a nod from Mandrake before launching into an explanation of the medicines they had. It wasn't much, MK realized, shaking her head. How many medical experts did they have? The Jinn had their magical healers, but what did the Boggans have? MK chased away thoughts of how many had fallen to elementary wounds that had been poorly treated.
"I need a bowl of boiled water," she said, before setting to her work.
Hours later, she sat watching Dagda sleeping heavily, a lone arrowhead sitting near the water bowl and dark brown Boggan blood all over her clothes. Both Mandrake and Amianth had been appalled and fascinated by the stitches, until she explained in clipped tones why it was necessary to the healing.
Amianth had long since fallen asleep by Dagda's side. Mandrake sat near his son also, a hand rested on Dagda's shoulder.
"We have doctors, but nothing like the Jinn with their magic," Mandrake said. MK jerked out of her stupor.
"So what do you do when people get injured?"
"We apply some of the medicines you used and wrap the wounds. Even so, I've seen warriors die from less than this." Mandrake inclined his head toward Dagda. "They get sick over days until they die. I've never seen the methods you employed, nor the precision."
MK sighed, pulling her bloody gloves from her hands. "It's almost always infection that does it. That or blood loss, which would have been your son's fate if he had stayed out in the forest without stanching the bleeding."
That earned her another sidelong examination. "Why did you help him?"
She attempted to rub the exhaustion out of her eyes. "I'm not from around here. Not even close. Where I'm from, I'm a healer of sorts. But we don't have magic there either, just our knowledge and our tools." MK gestured at the scattered contents of her first aid kit. "It's my job to care for people in need and do everything in my power to help them, regardless of whose side they're on."
"Yes, you did proclaim on multiple occasions to not being one of the Jinn," said Mandrake, and MK was surprised to hear a note of wryness in his voice. "How is that possible though? A Stomper you said?"
MK ran a hand through her tousled hair. It was falling out of her ponytail by now. "That's a story that's been told a million times by now."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Exaggerating!"
"Ah." He paused. "Then you are not in allegiance either?"
The weight of the question sank down on her shoulders. MK scanned the chamber with flickering glances. Was she on a side? No getting involved, she'd said, but sitting in the heart of Boggan territory beside the Boggan chieftain himself and the son she'd just helped to save, MK wasn't so sure that was an option anymore.
"No," she said finally. Somehow it felt like a betrayal to Nod, but the other answer would have felt no different in its own way.
"Hmm." Mandrake fixed her with another anguine stare, chipping away at her composure. "Make it a million and one," he said. The undertones of his words reminded her how suspicious she looked wearing the face of his enemies in the middle of his home.
Even if MK had, in fact, already told the story a million times, no rendition would have had to be more convincing than this one.
Nod woke up to an elbow to the face from the unconscious beetle flailing in its sleep beside him. For once, the main hall of Nim Galuu's fortress was still and silent, aside from the various snores he heard across the room.
"Aw maggot-crap, is it morning?" he groaned, rubbing the sore spot where the elbow had rammed into his cheekbone. His eyes widened, and he bolted into a sitting position. "MK!"
Nod raced down every level of the Rings, even the dank, mildew-crusted ones just above the roots, and MK was nowhere to be found. "Oh no. Oh no. MK, I'm sorry!" His apologies did nothing to make the lift return to the top any faster.
He leaped over the partygoers from the previous night who lay tucked into the corners of the main hall and bolted out the door. Maia fluttered down to greet him.
"Maia! You're still here? Damn it…Where's MK? Have you seen her?"
The hummingbird trilled at him.
"Ugh, I guess you were probably asleep. Oh, this is so bad. I messed up, girl," Nod moaned, shaking Maia's face in his hands. He mussed his hair and wrung his hands. "Damn it! Ronin is going to kill me if he finds out I lost her." He gritted his teeth. "Ronin's already going to kill me since we stayed out all night."
Maia prodded him with her beak.
"What? What is it?"
She jerked her head to the west, and Nod's gaze settled on the Wrathwood, still couched in its blanket of darkness that hadn't yet been chased by the morning sun.
"No. No, that can't be right. That's impossible. She's got to be inside somewhere." Nod raced back into the main hall. Maybe she was sleeping with the rest of the loiterers, and he missed her.
Nod wandered around the hall, tripping over people who had lain in the middle of the walkway. He shot quick glances at every face, but he caught no glimpse of the strange pink hooded coat MK wore, or even anything similar.
"Where are you?" Nod paused in the doorway, remembering the glint that entered MK's eyes when she stormed out of Asteria's healing room, threatening to trek across the forest on foot if she didn't get anyone's cooperation. He ran a tense hand through his hair. "Don't tell me you tried to walk home in the dark."
Maia was hovering just outside the threshold of the door, chirping and tapping the tree with her beak. Nod ran out to her.
"You're serious? MK is in the Borderlands? Did you just let her leave by herself?" he shouted. The sleeping people near his feet groaned at the noise.
Maia glared and twittered indignantly. She spiraled in the air, whizzing past a twig, sweeping the leaves in the breeze of her wake.
"Wind? You mean she got swept away?"
The hummingbird bobbed her head. Nod propped himself against the wall for support.
"This is not happening to me." If she had been found by Boggans in the Borderlands, she would definitely be mistaken for a Jinn and killed on sight. "We have to find her now." Nod swung himself onto Maia and spurred her in the direction of Wrathwood.
As MK finished explaining herself, she couldn't help but stifle a yawn. How long had she been awake? Light crept into the chamber through the large holes and crevices in the walls and ceiling, so she guessed that she must have been up all night—not that long night shifts were alien to her.
"You don't look like you believe me," she said carefully.
Mandrake's lips quirked into a poisonous smile. "I find it more believable that you are a Stomper shrunken by magic than the fact that you were so willing to help Dagda." He leaned back and gazed down at Dagda's sleeping form. "No one helps us."
MK's eyebrow quirked, and she struggled to conceal her bewilderment. It seemed a mundane fact to Mandrake who didn't even look up as he spoke, but for MK it was the tip of an iceberg whose roots delved deep beneath the surface of the ocean. She had been told about how terrible the Boggans were, and believed the stories because she hadn't imagined Nod or any of the Jinn would be lying about such things. Dagda had been wandering alone and lost in the woods, would have died without her. No one helps you. A renewed sense of commitment flooded her to see her task through to the end, whatever it was.
Mandrake hadn't finished talking. "Besides, the shrub-scum were the ones who found you and cared for you. Why would you betray their alliance?"
"You think this is some convoluted plot to trick you?" MK asked in disbelief.
"The Jinn would go to any lengths to keep their weedy chokehold on sovereignty of this forest."
The candidness with which he delivered the statement floored her. MK stared hard at the ground. "Well, I'm not trying to trick you. This is not my world. This is not my war, and I don't have a right to choose a side when I know nothing of your history. I helped Dagda because he needed it, and it's my job to help those in need."
"If only everyone were as simple as you," Mandrake said, rising.
"People would probably die a lot less," MK said, eyes drooping.
The Boggan chief paused in thought at that, and MK hoped she had gotten through to him. Eventually, he spoke again. "Know this, Stomper girl: you have saved the life of my son, and I am grateful for that. But I don't trust your intentions. If you are as unaffiliated as you claim, you will not mind a prolonged stay in the Wrathwood, now would you? Just to be sure."
MK turned to look at him sharply. Was she a prisoner?
Mandrake continued, "You will look after him until he is fully healed. Then I will decide what to do about you." His leathery cape brushed her as he swept past. "I certainly hope you can be very convincingly neutral."
He stopped again at the door. "Amianth!"
Amianth jolted upright, taking only a moment to blink away the sleep. "Yes, sir!" Beside her, Dagda stirred.
"The Stomper keeps vigil over her patient. You will keep vigil over her." With that command, Mandrake left the room, and MK sat with her patient and an owl-eyed Boggan who watched her with piercing gaze. MK yawned again, her head sinking downward.
"Did you sleep?" Amianth asked.
MK shook her head. "Does he expect me to stay up all day watching him?" She was halfway into lying down.
Amianth crawled over to where MK sat. She wore a cape of glimmering fly wings which rustled as she moved. "We could kill you in your sleep, you know."
MK rested her head on her arm and closed her eyes. "I hope you don't. I didn't kill you or Dagda, so it's only fair."
To her surprise, the amusement was audible in Amianth's voice. "How nice of you. It is only strange to me that you would sleep so easily in the presence of enemies."
"It's easy because you aren't enemies," said MK, before drifting off to sleep.
Chapter 6: Heart of Fire will be released May 9.
Here's an excerpt:
"I can help if anyone else is…" MK rushed into the room, and everyone froze. "Hurt," she finished, staring at Nod who was nursing a bleeding lip and a black eye. He crouched, doubled over in pain, just as a Boggan was preparing to deliver another kick to his stomach.