Chapter 5

            And so he climbed... Up through the branches, Emma always a few feet above him. Arm over arm and foothold after foothold, he went higher. It was agonizingly slow work... he had to inspect each place before he put his weight on it so he could be sure it would hold him. Emma offered no help; she would scuttle up a few feet then wait for Kieran to catch up only to go a bit higher once more. Kieran felt as if he were one hundred feet in the air but in reality the long half hour had only taken him twenty feet up. Kieran was speechless. How would he make it to the top? He was out of breath and his hands hurt horribly where he had been grasping the rough bark. 

"What’s keeping you?" Emma called from a branch she was perched on five feet above him. 

"I'm tired!" Kieran said looking up. Emma wrinkled her nose at him. Then she grabbed the branch she was standing on and flipped forward... Kieran gasped aloud, sure his friend was going to fall to her death, but Emma held on, swinging slightly, dangling off the branch she had just been standing on. 

"Oh my God," Kieran breathed, "you scared me to death!" Emma just laughed and wiggled her tongue at him. Then she let go of the branch and landed perfectly on the one Kieran was crouched on. 

"How did you do that?" he demanded. 

"Maybe I'm just good at climbing trees!" she retorted. 

"Fine, whatever” Kieran turned away from her and looked up through the branches of the tree... The top seemed miles away.... Unreachable but still calling to him. 

"Come on, let’s go!" he said shortly to Emma and started once again to climb. 

"Bet I can beat you there!" Emma started nimbly up the tree, accidentally brushing Kieran as she scrambled up past him. Kieran’s foot slipped off the branch... His hands scrabbled in mid air... He felt himself tipping... Sliding... Falling. Kieran let out a frantic yell... squeezing his eyes shut. His arms pin wheeling through the air. Faintly he heard Emma scream as well. There was a whooshing sound all around him. Branches smacked at him, he grabbed at them but only came away with leaves. Again he faintly hear Emma yelling something. Nothingness on every side of him. Open air.

Oh God, I'm going to die, he thought and squeezed his eyes shut tighter... Willing it to go fast... For no pain. Then suddenly, simultaneously his fall was stopped by something soft and there was a loud crack and pain shot up his arm. Kieran heard a loud oomph and then a small groan. He hardly dared to breathe. What had caught him?

"Ughhh get off me!" Kieran opened his tightly clamped eyes in a flash. 

"Emma?" Kieran scrambled off her, careful of his wrist, wincing when he put weight on it.

Emma was flat on her back, her leg twisted at almost a right angle at her knee away from her body, her face was contorted in an odd expression, “Emma, are you ok? Oh God your leg.”

“Kieran can you straighten my leg out.” Emma’s eyes were closed.

“Wh- What? Won’t that hurt you a lot? Here, I- I’ll go get someone to help!” Kieran started to turn, to go get someone from the village, someone to help.

“No! please Kieran, please,” now Kieran was scared, Emma never said please, “Just straighten out my leg, that’s all I need you to do.”

Kieran did as he was told, ignoring Emma’s slightly sick expression and the nasty grinding noise her leg was making. He straightened it as best he could but it still jutted out to the side a bit. When he finished there was a light sheen of sweat on Cianna’s forehead and Kieran could feel sweat dripping down his. Cianna’s leg looked lumpy and there was a large bump around her knee obviously caused by a misplaced bone.

“Thank you,” Emma said, finally opening her eyes and sitting up, “I probably could have done that but for a second there I almost thought I was going to pass out. I hate being remin-…” Her voice dropped away.

“What are you going to do? You can’t walk that way? You need help,” Kieran leaned closer to Cianna, he used his sleeve to first wipe his sweat away and then hers. When he touched her though, she glared at him and let out one of her characteristic growls, “S- Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Emma took a deep breath, “you were being kind.”

She took another deep breath and unsteadily got to her feet, no sign of pain or anything on her stony face.

“Wh-what are you doing?!” Kieran yelped, he didn’t know medicine but he definitely knew she should not be standing up on a broken leg. Emma ignored Kieran though, studying her leg, which was a bit shorter than the other and quite disfigured by the jutting bone just under her skin. She looked up.

 “Don’t watch Kieran, this is going to be a bit unpleasant.”

“What is?”

“Kieran, I can’t exactly go around with a broken leg, can I? I need to fix it obviously.”

“Fix it? But, how can you just… fix it?”

“Fine, watch if you wish.”

Emma bent forward placing her forehead on her knee, then she lifted her head and placed the flat of her palms on either side of her knee. Kieran could feel his jaw drop as he stared incredulously. Cianna’s leg was moving, not normally, but the lumps and bumps in it shifted, the skin over it rolling like the waves on the river. The bone visibly retreated to its normal position and her leg grew to match the other one. There was a constant grating noise and then a small pop. Kieran could feel himself grow nauseous, his small breakfast coming up again. He just turned away when, with a great heave of his stomach, the food rolled out of his mouth and splattered onto the forest floor.

Kieran retched, more and more of his breakfast was forcing its way out, onto the ground. All he could see was Cianna’s skin, shifting and rolling over and over, the sound of bones moving, tendons snapping back in place. After a few seconds, Kieran got control of his stomach and straightened up again, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. Emma was standing a few feet away, her face concerned but with a hint of smugness.

“I warned you not to watch,” she said in a knowing voice.

“I didn’t think it was going to be like that,” Kieran cringed as his left wrist bumped against his chest where he had been cradling it.

“Oh, are you hurt too?” Emma took a step towards Kieran and held out her hand, “here, let me see it.”

“God, no,” Kieran took a step back, he didn’t want to ever watch that again, “I’ll be fine.” But as he said this the throbbing in his hand seemed to increase as in protest.

“No you will not, actually. So come here right now, I promise it doesn’t hurt.” Kieran took a cautious step forward, it was paining him and obviously Emma had somehow fixed her leg.

“Oh, come on!” Emma said impatiently. Kieran scowled then walked toward her, scooting around the pool of sick. Emma grabbed Kieran’s wrist roughly and Kieran cried out in pain.

“Be a man,” she said meanly but her hands were gentle, they fluttered around his wrist, testing it here and there, almost stroking it. Emma had the most dangerous mood swings; Kieran could never tell how she would react to something.

“Is this where it hurts the most?” Emma tapped the outside of his wrist gently, Kieran cried out again in pain.

“Seems like it is,” Emma smiled momentarily.

Emma scrunched up her nose and put one hand on each side of his wrist like she had done to her knee. This time Kieran had the sense to look away, but it didn’t stop him from letting out a gasp of pain, Emma had lied, this hurt a lot. It seemed to progress in pain until he was about to yell for her to stop and that he would get it fixed in town where the surgeon would set it properly then bind it up and he wouldn’t rely on some forest vagrant to put him right. Then suddenly it stopped. Kieran looked back at his wrist, it had shrunk back down to normal size and it didn’t hurt anymore. The purple was even fading before his eyes. Emma let go of it and her hands swung back down to her sides.

“There, how’s that?” Kieran moved his wrist in amazement, there was no pain, no sting, nothing, it was as if Emma had turned back the clock to before Kieran had fallen out of the tree.

“Whoa, how did you do that?” Kieran twisted his hand back and forth, “can I do it?”

Emma let out a small laugh, “Probably not, think of it as something special that only a few people can do. And no, it’s not something you can learn,” she said catching Kieran’s look.

            “Why not? How can you do it then?” Kieran whined, “I want to be able to do that.”

            “No you don’t,” Emma said quickly, “the skill doesn’t exactly come to you pleasurably.”

            Kieran loudly made a sound of discontent and inspected his wrist again. It was perfectly healed, well the break was, the scratches on it from jaunts through the brambles were still there. How peculiar. So Emma had fixed only what he had hurt falling from the tree; she had targeted just that injury, none of the others. It was amazing.

            Kieran looked back at Emma “Well, no matter where you learned the skill, thank you.”

            Emma flashed a rare smile, “You’re welcome. Now I think it is time for both of us to go home, we can climb the tree again another day.”

            “I guess so,” Kieran said, “As long as you promise to teach me another day.”

            “I promise,” Emma replied and she led him back almost to the gates of the city, stopping only just out of eyesight of anyone in town. As always she had no desire to be seen by anyone other than Kieran.

            Beatte Wempe woke up wet. She first became aware of it as sleep was releasing her from its tight hold. She was aware of a dampness all over her right side and in the bed. It did not seem so important to her at that moment but as she moved closer and closer to consciousness it became stranger and stranger still. She had not urinated in the bed, nor had her husband Joachim; the wet was near her head and torso. And though the air smelled faintly of excrement that couldn’t be it either. Of course it not rained inside her house, that was just silly.

            When she finally became so curious she opened her eyes all she saw was red. The entire right side of the bed was bright red. It was spurted all over the place, then spread as if someone had deliberately smeared it over the walls, making swirls and heavy block shapes mixed with smudges and droplets. The straw mattress was soaking. Joachim was gone. Beatte’s heart stopped. Fear flooded her body, coldness creeping up her spine. She sat up and looked around, she looked to the floor. Beatte screamed and screamed.

            Joachim was completely naked and his neck had been slashed. It had been cut literally from one ear to another, a giant red smile on his white skin. Joachim’s head had been pulled back so it now rested on the crown. His windpipe was visible along with the white vertebrae of his neck. But that was not the first thing Beatte noticed. She saw the deathly white of her husband’s stomach and the giant hole cut into it crosswise. The skin was pulled back and all of his organs were visible. They had obviously been moved around as they were all pushed aside giving Beatte another glimpse of his vertebrae connected to the back of the cavity.

            Joachim’s intestines had been removed. They were tied together and circled his body like some grotesque holy aura. The intestines, a reddish brown, were what was giving off the foul smell and there were strings of gore hanging off  them. Actually there were flecks of gore all over the room. There was blood pooled all over the floor, it was amazing one man had that much liquid in his body. There were footprints and more designs on the floor around the body. The swirls and shapes seemed to emanate from the corpse, adding to the look of an aura. Thin, crimson marks extended outside of the circle then swirled into nothing.

            Some bastard had finger-painted with her husband’s blood, all over the walls and floor, up the bedposts and, when Beatte looked down, even on her own night gown.

            Beatte kept on screaming, her voice rose above the early morning sounds and she heard the sounds of feet pattering on the floor. For on terrified second Beatte thought the murderer was coming back for her but then she heard the voices.

            “Mama! What is it?”

            “Mama!”

            Her screams had woken the children and all four of them stumbled into the room, the littlest, Anna, who was only three, pulled along by the oldest, Bert. For a moment all was silent. Beatte had stopped screaming the second the children had appeared, and all of the children were taking in the sight of their father. Then Margareta let out a shrill scream and the others seemed to fully understand what was in front of them and began to yell as well.

            Beatte’s paralysis left in a second and she leapt out of bed, around the body of her dead husband and, sliding once on a puddle of blood, shoved her children out of the room and ran with them out of the house and into the street outside.

            “Help! Help!” She screamed, scurrying this way then that in the street, “Send for the surgeon!” People started appearing, wondering what was going on at the Wempe house.

            “Bert! Go! The surgeon!” Beatte knew it was far too late for her husband to be saved but she couldn’t help but to cling to the hope… Bert ran off and by that time a crowd of people had gathered around her and someone’s hands grabbed her. A male voice said, “Beatte, what’s happened? Is that blood on your gown?”

            “The bedroom floor, Joachim, blood, blood, oh God!” Beatte said shrilly.

            “Where’s Joachim? Is he hurt?”

            Beatte just moaned, the  children were clinging to her, crying loudly. Even little Anna had tears running down her face though she almost certainly didn’t know what was happening. Margareta and Johanna were crying for their father, their arms tight around each other and their mother. A few men broke off from the group and went into the house to investigate.

            “Beatte what’s happened? What did you see?”

            The last thing Beatte remembered before she fainted was muttering, “I saw red, red, red. All over!”  and someone yelling from inside her house, “Dear God, you won’t believe this!” then blackness came like paint dripping over a canvas.