The Accidents
A few years ago, I was technically homeless. I still am, I live week to week in an inn, but I feel like I have a reason to be homeless now, so it's not so bad. I lived under a building with my best friend Mill. I say under the building because it really was under the building, not the basement, we lived in a crawlspace below a bakery. The owners knew we lived there, and made sure we couldn't get into the bakery itself, but told us that we could stay if we killed the rats. Mill got very good at killing rats, she had a knife and she could slip up behind beams and around corners and slice- the rat would be dead. We did eat them a good deal, we'd made a fire in the outskirts of town by borrowing some flame from one of the town guard's torches and we'd cook them over the burning twigs.
We were very bad at it at first, we'd just poke the rat with a stick and cook it until it split open, and then we'd pick off the bits of fur and try to scrape meat off with our little knives.
"We need to skin it first, Mill." I'd say every time
"Aye, and take ou' th' guts I rekkon" She'd mutter back
Eventually we got fed up and we spent a few weeks outside the butcher's shop, peeking through the back doorway to get an idea of how it worked. We tried to ask for lessons, offered to work for him, but he told us we'd just be underfoot, and to stay out of his establishment unless we had cause to be there. Mill picked it up fast anyway though, she always had a knack for that kind of thing, the more icky kind of thing. Soon we were getting more meat from the rats, and not having to deal with the fur, and we could even sell the offal to the butcher to use in sausages for a few coppers.
Those days were the happiest times in my life so far, as far as I can remember. I remember a bit from my mum, her stories about living in a fancy house, my father being unlike any man she'd ever seen (he's where I get my grey hair, skin, and... unusual nature from), but those weren't my times, and most of my memories of my mother involve crying while tugging at her body, trying to get her to stand back up. But the times under the bakery, they were truly beautiful. The smell of bread, the taste of salted gruel made from the flour that came through the floorboards, the feeling of Mill curled up next to me under our blanket at night, as close to the cooling brick base of the stove above us as we could get. I would give anything to go back to those days.
The thing that started the end of it all was an accident, as most endings seem to be. Me and Mill were trying to hunt for mushrooms in the forest (we sold them to the inn in exchange for a meal and a few coppers most weeks) and a hunter mistook me for a deer and hit me in the chest with an arrow. He was very sorry, said his eye was going, and the grey shape seemed enough like a deer to him. The arrow hurt very bad, it stuck into my chest and was very much not willing to come out, it felt like my body was gripping it. Mill pulled and pulled, me yelling and yelping all the while, but eventually she had enough.
"Y' need a doctor, proper one n' all"
I shook my head and tried to pull it out myself
"N-no, Mill, no we don't have the coppers for th-that, we can j-just c-cut it"
She glared at me and grabbed the arrow, pulling me along by it, heading back to town
"No, y'r goin' t' th' doctor so 'elp me, shut up 'n walk"
We made quite a sight, me cringing and gasping, my front covered in blood, and Mill yanking me along by my wound looking for all the world like she was walking her hound. We turned heads in the town, and eventually a man who ran the tanning shop ran out and picked me up, jogging me to the doctor's office. I'm grateful for the help, but between the jostling and the acidic smell he gave off, I much preferred Mill's method. The doctor and the tanner working together were able to pull it out, but the doctor said he was unable to give me any medicine or herbs, as we didn't have the coppers. He washed the wound, and covered it for me, and the tanner offered to pay for the herbs. Me and Mill didn't take to any handouts, usually, but she didn't argue the point this time, just looked off to the side and pretended she didn't hear.
The doctor pulled him aside and spoke to him quietly, so I couldn't hear, and when they returned, the tanner's eyes were wet. He rubbed my head and told me to be a good lass, and he'd help if he could later. He told Mill to be strong, but that he probably didn't need to tell her of all people that. At the time I was quite confused as to what had happened, and mildly concerned at the lack of herbs being given to us, but now, being a few years older, I realize that the doctor had most likely told him that herbs would do nothing more than prolong my suffering, as I would not recover.
Mill brought me home, my breathing a gentle wheeze by now, and rolled me up in the blanket next to the stove base. I slept heavily for two days, only waking up when I felt Mill pouring water or gruel down my throat. On the morning of the third day, I woke up fully to find that my chest was profoundly itchy. I sat up and noticed my breathing was far better, but the itching concerned me. I pulled off my dress to see if I had somehow gotten maggots in the wound, but after carefully pulling the plastered bandage off, I saw that the wound was fully healed over; just a sensitive pink line where the arrow had gone in. I traced it with my finger, feeling it tighten under my touch. Mill crawled in just then, and saw me sitting upright rubbing the wound and started
"Oi! Keep y'r 'ands off it! Y' make it worse!"
I shook my head and beaconed her closer
"No, see it's ok! It's almost healed! Come see!"
She scurried over and leaned in, squinting her eyes at the pink spot. She made a skeptical noise, and poked it with her finger, eliciting a yelp from me
"Milly! It still hurts! It's just mostly better!"
She frowned, and told me to put my clothes on; we were going to the stream for a bath, as my laying near a hot stove for almost 3 days had made me "not one I'd curl up to" as she put it. I happily got dressed and folded the blanket to bring along to wash with our clothes. I remember walking through town, feeling happy and full of optimism, and seeing the tanner. I waved at him as I passed, and his eyes widened, and he turned to watch me as I walked out of sight. I kept waving as I walked, but he never waved back.
After that, I had a bit of a reputation around the town as a walking miracle, or a "god-blessed" as the church called me. I lauded it up, tried to get some coppers by blessing wells or babies, most folk ignored me or laughed it off as a shallow wound that had looked worse than it was. Despite this, no real, serious attention was paid to me until the carriage accident. Not the one with my mum, although that one did lead to this in a manner of speaking.
In our town we didn't much get any carriages, at least not often. It was a rare sight on account of us being off the main road just a bit, so there was no cause for strangers to pass through (a fact I was thankful for truth be told) so when that big, square death box hurtled towards me on the street pulled by demonic looking steeds, I locked up. I know it was just a normal carriage, in a rush to leave our tiny spot in the world for something better, I know I should have moved, as most other girls would have, but I just stood and stared. I stared it down, my mother's trampled and crushed body frozen in my mind, playing over real life in perfect clarity.
I felt the horse's chest hit me first, then the hooves as I went down, crushing my stomach, snapping my arm and kicking me into a horrible position. Then came the wheels, the first one hit my neck with a white hot pain, twisting my head to one side, but the second one, the second one snapped my neck like dry bread. It was the worst pain I'd felt up to that point, more than the arrow, and even more than the time an ember fell through the floor onto the pit of my as I slept. I lay there, unable to move, unable to scream past a gurgle, and I heard people yelling, someone pulled me off the road and turned my head around the right way. It hurt a lot, my neck was a sharp unending pain, but the rest of my body was strangely numb. Someone yelled to go find Mill, and I tried to choke out that 'she was at the church for her clergy training, but by now she was most likely just cleaning up the building for service, you'll find her with Sister Galla, I'm sure', but the words wouldn't seem to come out. The person over me slowly came into view, and i saw it was the lady who fixed me and Mill's clothes when we were very little, and that she was crying. I thought it was strange to see her cry, she never offered us food or work or anything, but maybe it still feels bad to see someone hurt, even if you're not close.
The doctor got to me before Mill did, and he frowned and re-adjusted my neck, causing me to gurgle in pain again, and he did something to my stomach and arm, but my face was looking up, and I couldn't really feel it, so I couldn't quite tell what it was. He stood up and I heard him say something along the lines of "she cannot be moved, she will most likely starve, but she will live for now." I got chills thinking about lying here in the seamstress's lap and slowly starving to death. Hunger was a familiar fiend, and I had felt it many times, and I'd wondered if it'd kill me many times, but the torture of lying here, unable to do anything while it finished me off was a hell beyond what they taught us in the church classes.
Mill showed up then, and looked at me with a face full of fear and panic, but only for a moment. She put on her usual, serious face, knelt, and slid the lady away, taking my head into her lap. It hurt, but I was much more comfortable looking up into the face of Mill than that of a lady I had not spoken to in an age. She talked to the doctor, and I was slipping into a black fog, so I could not make it out entirely. It was a few hours before I awoke, and my entire body tingled with a buzz like the ones I get when Mill lay on my arm too long at night. I tried to speak up, but could barely whisper, and Mill's sleeping face above me doesn't change. I lay there in the moonlight for a while, feeling the tingling getting better, then worse in a cycle. Eventually when it faded enough, I drifted back off.
The next time I awoke, it was to Mill gently putting my head on her cloak, folded up for me to lay on. I blinked a few times in the morning sun and saw her dash off towards the outhouses and wondered if that would be a problem I would have to face in the future. I couldn't tell anyone I needed them, so how would they know? A bit of chaff landed on my nose as I was pondering this issue, and I tried to blow it off, but it was stubborn, so I brushed it off, and continued to wait on Mill to return. My neck still felt stiff, and my body still hurt a bit, but the pain was nowhere as bad as it had been, thank the gods. When she arrived and gingerly picked my head up off the cloak and into her lap, I decided to try to speak again
"'s ok, doesn't hurt today" I managed to get out, my voice sounding choked and strange to me
She shrieked and jumped a bit, then froze, thinking
"Wha' y' mean it don't hurt?" She asked slowly, almost accusingly
I thought about it for a moment and then coughed a bit before replying
"Well, I guess it just doesn't, I feel pretty normal today"
She stared for a bit, then smacked my broken arm with her fist. I yelped and cradled it in my other arm, the bone still sore from the break. She didn't move, she just stared down at me with a strange mix of her serious face and relief.
"Y' fukin did it agin..." She whispered
"Did what?"
"Y' just... ignore wha'ever y' feel like, rules, pain, death, wha'ever, huh?"
"What are you talking about Mill?"
She didn't reply and instead sat me upright, and let go. I sat there, confused, looking at her.
"...Well? What is it? What did I do?" I glanced down at myself, checking to make sure I hadn't done anything untoward accidentally. She smacked me in the head lightly and said
"Git up, we're goin' to see the doc."
I started to protest that I couldn't move much less walk, but as she pulled me to my feet I found that quite the opposite was true, I had a steady strength in my legs, and while my stomach and arm still stung, I was seemingly fine to stagger stiffly down the street behind her. Once more through the town I walked and the townsfolk whispered among themselves, one making the blessing symbol as I passed. I felt my face grow red at the attention, and walked closer to Mill to hide my embarrassment. I hadn't done anything special, I just healed, everyone did that, in their own time, my time was just a bit shorter than expected, right?
Mill burst into the doctor's room and yanked me in front of her. The doctor, who was reading from a large book and having breakfast, shot upright and stared at me. I locked eyes, and gave a little wave, my face still flushed from the prior attention. Wordlessly he pulled me to his bench and felt my arm, then motioned for me to expose my stomach, I did so, and he poked and prodded, making me squirm in equal parts pain and embarrassment. He then moved on to my neck, his eyes shimmering with a strange look. He took my head in his hands and turned it to one side, eliciting a scary snap that made Mill cry out and step closer, but he continued, turning it the other way for another snap. I winced and rubbed at my neck, which stung, but felt a lot less stiff now. The doctor slowly sat back down and looked at me for a long time. I fidgeted uncomfortably for a while before he finally said something
"I think it best if we run some tests, young miss. I will pay you quite well for them, if you wish to participate, please come back in two days. We can call it a checkup if that makes you feel better."
Mill grabbed my arm and pulled me to the door
"Long as she's fine, we don't need no 'tests' doc. we gots to git going, bye now."
She yanked on my broken arm, me cringing all the way as she led us back to the bakery. She didn't say anything as we sat in the heat of the stove for a long time. I didn't want to break the silence, and she seemed to be thinking very hard about something. She looked up at me after she came to a conclusion, and said in a matter of a fact tone
"We're gonna do our own lil' 'tests', an' we'll figure yew ou' as best we can ourselfs, no doc involved."