First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts (12 page)

Helen was shivering. She stood up slowly. “Who’s hurt?”

No one answered.

“Who’s hurt?” she asked again.

“We’re all hurt,” gasped Rona. “But what we have done can never be fixed.”

“We’ll worry about the clue and the Book once we’re all warm and moving. Who’s hurt the most?” insisted Helen. “Everyone stand up, try to walk or fly. Tell me if anything’s broken or bleeding, or if you’re faint or light-headed.”

“I can move,” whispered Lavender.

“Me too,” said Rona. Sapphire grunted.

Catesby squawked weakly. Rona crawled over to the wall and picked up a heap of dull brown feathers. “Catesby can’t move his right wing,” she called.

Helen said, “Keep him still. I’ll look at him in a minute.” Then she walked stiffly over to Yann.

“Yann. Can you move? Yann. Can you hear me?” There was no movement, no sound. “Yann, please. Oh please, Yann!”

She knelt down by his head and looked into his face. His eyes were closed. “Lavender, more light here, please.”

Yann turned his head away from her, away from Lavender’s light.

“Oh thank goodness,” whispered Helen.

“Go away. Just go away and leave me alone. I don’t want to be healed. I’d rather be dead than bow down before that creature.”

“Yann, he’s not won yet. He’s only got the clue, not the Book. Don’t give up. Tell me what hurts.”

Yann scrambled to his hooves, and yelled in Helen’s face.

“I’ll tell you what hurts! We were set a test by the Book
and we failed
. We just had to hold fast; just hold fast like some mere human girl managed many years ago … and we failed. We have all this power, knowledge, strength and magic but we lacked the courage to hold on. We failed and we don’t deserve the Book.”

Helen looked at him and said briskly, “Well, you can move and you aren’t bleeding too much. I
diagnose
damaged pride. Catesby however has a
real
damaged wing, so I’m going to fix that first.”

She turned her back on Yann, and limped over to the phoenix. His right wing was crooked, and his head was lolling on Rona’s hand.

Helen said, “I need lots of light, Lavender, and Yann, could you come and open the first aid kit for me?”

Yann humphed, but took the green rucksack from Helen. She asked for her exotic animals book, and leafed through it to the section on parrots and birds of paradise. Light rain fell on the pages, but she wiped the words dry and read the short paragraph on broken wings:

“Exotic birds with broken wings, like race horses with broken legs, are usually permanently damaged. It is advisable to put them out of their misery rather than waste resources repairing them.”

Helen looked at Catesby, then glanced at Yann. She shook her head and mumbled, “Well, that just won’t do.”

Then she tried to feel the bird’s wing, but as soon as she touched it, he stiffened and squawked in pain.

She asked Yann for the syringe of painkiller and read the sticker on the box that listed how many millilitres was recommended for each size of
animal
. She estimated that Catesby weighed about the same as a cockerel, and gave him a little less than the stated amount just to be safe. As soon as Helen injected the drug he relaxed in Rona’s hands, and she was able to feel that the wing was broken halfway between the shoulder and elbow joints. It seemed to be a simple fracture, broken in only one place.

“Can you find a splint in the bag?” she asked Yann.

“I think the fauns must have kicked you a couple of times,” he said. “The splints are in pieces.”

“They kicked me more than a couple of times,” she replied, “but I need a splint before we can move Catesby. Lavender and Sapphire, can you hunt for a thin branch about the length of my forearm and as straight as possible?”

Lavender found a branch, and Sapphire brought it carefully to Helen, who used sticky tape to bind it gently to the wing.

“I’ll need to take Catesby home and do this properly with a real splint and tape that isn’t damp, otherwise his wing will heal squint and he won’t be able to fly.”

Catesby squawked quietly and Helen raised her eyebrows at Rona.

“Phoenixes heal fast,” Rona explained, “so if you can help him keep his wing straight, he will soon be able to fly again. He thanks you for taking away the pain. If you hadn’t done that he may have had to burn himself up, and then he wouldn’t have hatched again in time to help us find the Book.”

“So, phoenixes really do burn and become eggs again?”

“Oh yes, but they can only do it seven times, so they don’t like to waste it.”

Helen took off her fleece and wrapped the bird in it. Yann shoved everything back in the rucksack and handed it to her.

“Thank you for helping me,” she said.

“I was helping Catesby,” he replied and turned away.

Helen rummaged in the front pocket of the
rucksack
, where her Mum kept a human first aid kit. Underneath the plasters were some Arnica tablets, which she insisted that everyone suck, to stop their bashes and bumps becoming bruises.

Yann raised his voice and got everyone’s attention.

“We must find the Master, before he finds the Book, but how?”

Lavender answered, “I saw a little of the clue when I was holding it. I saw the words ‘brothers and sisters.’ Does that help?”

“That’s not enough to get to the Book before him. Any other ideas?”

Rona said, “The clue was badly ripped when his horns tore it from our grasp. I think he will have to repair it before he can read it. If we can find his lair before he reads the clue, we might be able to work it out before he can.”

It was decided that Helen would take Catesby home and splint his wing, while the others would split up and ask questions of their elders and their storytellers; those who might know where the Minotaur lurked when he was in Scotland.

“But don’t let them know why, not yet,” Yann instructed. “If they discover that we’ve lost the Book, they will waste precious time shouting,
panicking
, blaming people and arguing about what to do … just like we did at the start … and we will lose this small chance to get the clue back.”

As Sapphire crouched down for Helen to climb up with Catesby in her arms and the squashed first aid kit on her back, Yann trotted up to them. Helen turned to face him.

“Catesby, my friend. If we challenge the Master again and lose, he will not let us live. Let the human girl heal you and then tomorrow, when you wake, if we are not safe in our beds and the Book is not safe in its box, tell our families what we did and how we failed. Then see if they can do any better.” Yann stroked the bird’s coppery head. He looked at Helen.

“Healer’s child. You …” He stopped.

Helen said, “I’ll fix Catesby. Tell me anything else tomorrow. Good luck.”

Rona gave her a hug. Helen said, “We still have to write the end to our song. Let’s do that tomorrow.”

Lavender wept on her shoulder, but Helen soothed her, “Shhh. I’ll see you all soon.”

She mounted the dragon and they took off into the night sky. As they flew over the narrow strip of woodland, she squinted through the drizzle and saw the dark shapes of her friends move off in different directions, looking for the one they feared the most.

Sapphire landed in the field just behind the house. Helen slid down awkwardly, trying not to jostle the injured phoenix, then walked to Sapphire’s head and said, “Good luck.”

Sapphire blew some silver sparks out of her nostril sand nodded gravely. Helen stood back to give the dragon space and watched as she launched into the air and took off to the west.

Helen approached her house very carefully. Would anyone realize she was missing? She checked her watch and was amazed to see that the journeys to and from the well, and the battle there, had only taken a couple of hours. It wasn’t even her usual bedtime yet. But that meant that her Mum and Dad were still up, and it would be difficult to use the surgery in the house.

She could see light coming from the living room window and her Dad’s computer room. She clambered over the fence, went up to his window and peered in. He was working calmly, so there was no panic; they thought she was in bed.

She tried the front door, usually opened only for visitors and patients as it led into a tiny waiting room and the small animal surgery. It was locked from the inside. Next, she moved to the dark window
of the surgery, where she knew she would find books with detailed instructions on how to splint a bird’s wing.

The room often smelt of damp dog, so her Mum sometimes left the window open just a crack. Helen prodded the base of the window. There was a tiny gap. At last, thought Helen, a bit of luck tonight.

She placed Catesby gently on a nearby garden bench, pushed her fingers through the
opening
and forced the window up. Putting Catesby onto the inside window sill, she squeezed herself through.

She didn’t dare switch the light on, so to find the books she needed and to examine Catesby’s wing more carefully, she used the torch that her Mum shone down animals’ throats.

Now she needed a splint and some tape that wouldn’t damage his feathers, but most of her Mum’s supplies were in the large animal surgery. She didn’t want to move Catesby again, so she made him comfy on her Mum’s leather chair and whispered, “I’m leaving you here for a couple of minutes. I have to get a proper splint from the other surgery.”

Catesby nodded his head and pecked gently at her fingers.

Taking her Mum’s set of keys out of the coat on the back of the door, she climbed out of the window and crept round the house to the large animal surgery, wondering what her friends were doing. Once she had fixed Catesby, she didn’t want to go to bed. She wanted to help. But how could she track down a Minotaur? Perhaps if she waited until
her Dad was in bed, she could go online and see if any weird and wonderful websites were reporting Minotaur sightings in southern Scotland.

The large animal surgery door was unlocked and slightly open. Her Mum probably hadn’t slammed it hard enough. She opened the door very quietly and turned to close it carefully. She jerked it until she heard it click, then reached out her hand to switch on the lights. Blinking in the brightness, she turned to face the large space. Which cupboard were the splints in?

But there, in the centre of the concrete floor, was the largest animal the room had ever held. The Master of the Maze was standing looking at her.

Helen stood totally still and stared back. She felt suddenly cold and very alone. She had no Yann looming behind her, no Rona nor Lavender at her side. She was alone … with this monster in front of her.

In the bright white room, the Minotaur looked twice the size and twice as dark as he had in the open evening air. His horns almost reached the ceiling. His massive shoulders spanned the room.

His head was dark, with long black curls between his ears, and the skin on his arms and chest, although pale like Helen’s, was covered in swirls of rough black hair. He wore black leather trousers and had bare feet with long curved nails.

From one of his huge hands dangled a bright pink teddy. Nicola’s teddy.

“Girl.” He spoke in a deep, distorted voice, that sounded painful in his throat.

It was a bull’s head speaking, she realized, not a human head like Yann or Rona, or even Frass, had. The Master had the head, throat and mouth of an animal. Yet he forced himself to speak.

“Girl. You must heal me.”

“No.” She found her own voice, though it was very faint.

“No? Is it right to choose whom to heal? Should you not use your gifts to help everyone who needs you? Do your healers not take a vow to help
everyone
? Or do you require payment?”

“I don’t require anything from you.”

“Would threats work better?”

He held Nicola’s teddy up to his huge mouth and put its ear delicately between his enormous teeth. Teeth that did not look like a grass-eater’s teeth. Teeth that could crush bones.

“Frass brought me this pretty, but he could bring me the baby too, if you refuse me.”

Nicola couldn’t go to sleep without her pink bear. If the Master had the bear, then one of his creatures had been in the nursery while Nicola was asleep.

Helen thought of Lavender and the words she had read from the clue. ‘Brothers and sisters.’ Did they have to sacrifice their brothers and sisters to get the Book back? There were millions of books in the world but she only had one sister.

“I’ll heal you, if I can,” Helen said quietly. Then added, in a more confident voice, “But only if you give me the clue.”

“Ha! You gave
me
the clue when you and your little friends couldn’t hold on to it.” His hand
patted the back pocket of his trousers. “You do not make demands of me, girl. You will heal me now or I will send for your sister.”

Now Helen knew he had the clue with him, she needed to get closer. “What needs to be healed?”

“My ear.”

She looked more carefully at his head. His right ear, just below his huge horn, was ripped and hanging off. She bit on her lips to stop a smile.

“Yann did that!”

“Yes. And he will pay for it when I have the power of the Book. But first I want you to sew it back, as you sewed the colt’s leg.”

“It will hurt.”

“I can stand pain.”

More macho nonsense, thought Helen, but pulled a stool over to him.

“I need to look closely at it,” she said.

She climbed onto the stool and, as she did so, put out a hand to steady herself, brushing against his back pocket to see if the clue was in there.

The Master grabbed her arm and lifted her easily into the air. He whispered hoarsely, “I will check that I still have the riddle before I leave here.” He swung her in time to his slow words. “If you try to steal it, I will make your whole family suffer. Do you understand? Now, girl, sew up my ear.” He opened his fist on the last word, and dropped Helen onto the concrete floor.

Helen stifled her cry of pain and shock, not wanting to disturb her parents in the house next door. She took a deep breath and thought quickly about whether she should agree to heal him, even
if she couldn’t get the clue in return.

If she did as this monster asked, would she be doing it for her own safety or for Nicola’s? If she did more than he asked, would she be doing it for her friends, or for the Book? Or to prevent some terrible war she didn’t really understand?

She nodded, more to herself than to the Minotaur, then clambered to her feet and moved over to the shelves to collect needles and sutures. She had made no vows, nor taken any ethics courses, so it was an easy decision not to clean his wound first. Let him take his chances, she thought. She walked up to him again, her back straight and her chin up. She would not show him what she was feeling, and she must not show him what she was thinking.

“Good girl,” he sneered.

The Minotaur didn’t stink like the fauns did, but there was a heat in the air around him, and a pulsing thumping sound, almost as if you could hear his heart. Or perhaps Helen was hearing her own heart as she got nearer the monster.

His eyes were fixed on her, and were set wide apart on the sides of his massive skull. They weren’t calm and round like cows’ eyes, but had a more oval human shape, with the yellowy white eyeball showing all round the golden orange iris. The rim of the eyelids glowed a hot red, as if these human eyes were burning to get out of this animal’s head. She wondered if he felt trapped in there.

She didn’t want to look at his eyes, because they made her pity him rather than fear him. So she said, “Turn away so I can see your ear.” She
looked at the long tear and the small piece of skin still holding the ear on. She had to think of it as a problem to solve.

The dangling ear was only inches from his huge curved horns. The horns had looked silver at Carterhaugh, but now Helen saw that they were pale grey and streaky like old horn spoons, darkening at the tips, which had been sharpened to vicious points.

She threaded her needle.

“This will hurt. You must stay still or it will heal unevenly.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, girl.” But he stood still as she sewed.

Piercing holes in his tough skin, Helen tugged the curved needle through and knotted the thread. She briefly considered making it ragged and squint, but didn’t think having an ear at an odd angle would dent his plans for world domination. So she simply carried on, intent on doing as good a job as she could.

Halfway along the wound, sweating from the heat of his skin and the effort of raising her arms above her head to reach the top of his ear, she said, “I’m hot, excuse me,” and got down to take off her jumper and remove her watch from her wrist. Then she climbed back up and finished the operation.

He didn’t flinch once or make a sound as she sewed.

But when she announced, “Finished,” the Minotaur growled, “If anyone else had hurt me that much, I would have torn them to pieces. Bring me a mirror!”

Sighing with relief that she hadn’t botched the repair, Helen found a small mirror in the odds and ends drawer and handed it to the Master.

In his huge hand the mirror looked like a piece of broken glass, as he angled it to see the ear.

“Good. Either you lacked the courage to make a mess of it, or you had the good sense to see that being on my side is to your advantage.”

“I’m not on your side. Now give me the teddy and please leave.”

He laughed, deep and low in his throat. Helen felt the air round her rattle.

“You will never be rid of me. Once I am in power, all those who have thwarted me will bow down to me.”

“I won’t bow to anyone.”

“You will, girl. You will be the first human to pay me homage. But now I have a Book to find. Thank you for your nimble fingers. Have the pretty back … for now.”

He threw the bear at Helen and moved in long strides to the door. Shoving it open, showing none of the care that Helen had, he was gone.

Helen ran to the doorway, to see which direction he took. Over the fence, like they all seemed to, then north across the fields. A mass of fauns emerged from behind the fence and followed him.

Helen realized that she was kneeling on the floor, her whole body shaking, cuddling the pink teddy and letting the light rain cool her down and wash her clean. But she had no time to deal with her terror. She had to splint Catesby. Then she had to track the Master.

She grabbed the supplies she needed, took thirty seconds to tidy up, then left the surgery as quietly as she could. She made sure she locked the door behind her, then ran round the house to the open window and scrambled in.

Fixing a wing was a complex procedure, but she did it almost without thinking as she told Catesby what had happened in the large animal surgery. And when she had reached the end of her story, the splint looked exactly like the one in the book.

After an initial horrified squawk, the phoenix had remained silent as she talked, then gave her a sympathetic rub with his shining head as she described the Minotaur striding out.

Helen smiled at him and said, “If you were a normal bird, I would strap that wing to your body, but if you do heal fast perhaps you want to keep it moving. What do you think, Catesby?”

He tested the wing, flapping round the surgery once, and nodded his satisfaction.

“Now we must tell the others,” whispered Helen, “But how?”

They were scattered all over the country looking for possible lairs, and Catesby couldn’t fly strongly enough yet to find them all. Helen knew the Minotaur had gone north … and even better … she knew how to follow him!

If only she could get the rest of the fabled beasts back together before the Master read the riddle.