Chapter 4

Sometime later, Seth woke up. It was dark every way that he looked. There were rocks all over him, some on the side of his chest, and he started to move them to the side. Probably there were rocks all around him, too, but he couldn’t see that far.

It hurt. Serious hurt when he tried to breathe or move. He decided he probably had cracked ribs, or even a broken rib or two. That was bad.

Worse was the fact that Ellie was laying nearby. He could tell she was conscious, but injured and very scared. She wasn’t moving. He extended a hand in her direction and felt along her side until he got to her head; he scratched her nose and sent comforting thoughts.

He began to roll out from under the rocks on his chest. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, but it had to be done sometime. In the dark, Seth couldn’t tell what size the cave-in was, or how big a ‘room’ he was in. He rolled some of the rocks off him, away from the side Ellie was on, and wriggled out from under the biggest of them.

The Indian shaman had to stop when he was free, to let the pain subside. He realized that he was sweating, and that got him to thinking about how long it had been since the cave-in. “Cave-in” ... shit. Call it what it was. Somebody had thrown some dynamite in after him ... and he knew who the “somebody” was.

Fuck!

But he wasn’t dead yet, and he didn’t plan on being dead anytime soon.

How long was it since the explosion? He looked at his left wrist. Couldn’t see anything -- he forgot. The wrist had a watch on it, and the stud on the side of the watch worked to illuminate the watch-face. Good! It hadn’t been broken. There was a blood trail leading down his arm, and the blood was dried ... old. Wasn’t a lot of blood, though, so it wasn’t something major. According to the watch, it was after 9:20 by the analog hands. He hated the digital watches. Was it useful to know that it was exactly 9:23 and 42 seconds? No it was not.

So it had been either a little over an hour-twenty, or thirteen hours since he’d been trapped here. Okay ... thirteen hours and twenty minutes. And okay... “since WE had been trapped.” Him and Ellie.

Now for the first aid. He checked himself first. Ribs hurt like hell. The little movements he’d made to free himself had felt like major surgery. Like somebody sticking electrified needles into his nerves. Left side was better than the right. He tried a gentle cough -- and nearly passed out from the intense pain. But he didn’t think he coughed up any blood. There wasn’t any taste in his mouth and when he wiped at it with his left hand, nothing felt like blood. That was good. Cracked ribs he could deal with -- a punctured lung would probably mean he was on the way to being dead.

He lay back -- on his back -- and took inventory. Mentally he ‘felt’ along his entire body, starting with his feet and working up to the top of his skull. He didn’t think there was anything broken, but there was some serious bruising on the right side, just below the rib. What was over there? Liver maybe. Kidneys would be around the back, so that wasn’t involved. Intestines, sure. Ribs. Yeah that was for sure. He thought it was at least three ribs. There was a big cut on his left chest, up high near the shoulder. But it wasn’t bleeding anymore.

That was an indication that it was more likely thirteen hours than one: the bleeding had stopped. Well, he’d have an “interesting” scar to show to Meri. Assuming that he and Ellie could get out of here.

Ellie. He needed to check her out.

Seth: ‘I’m going to touch you all over. Tell me if it hurts somewhere.’

Ellie: ‘It hurts everywhere, but not bad.’

Seth: ‘I feel that way, too.’

Seth began to feel the wolf with his left hand. Head and neck were fine. He pushed at small rocks to get to the wolf’s body. There was a moderate sized cut on her fore-shoulder, that had stopped bleeding also. Another time confirmation. He couldn’t reach under her without moving her body, and he was reluctant to do that.

He had to sit up to reach the lower part of her, and that hurt him again, badly. He stopped to collect himself. When he found her left rear leg, she gave a small whimper.

Seth: ‘I know it hurts, Ellie. I’m going to try to fix it. It will hurt worse for a very small while and then it will get better. Can you take it?’

Ellie: ‘Will Hesh have to know that I complained about the pain?’ Hesh was the Alpha Wolf in her pack.

Seth: ‘He won’t hear about it from me.’ He smiled to himself. She’d take the pain, but didn’t want her Alpha to learn of her reaction to it. ‘Please do not tell my mate of my yowls either ... okay?’ She’d feel better if it was a reciprocal thing.

Ellie: ‘I won’t ... I am ready for whatever you do.’

He grasped her lower leg with his left and held her upper with his right. Moving his right arm caused him to nearly faint, and Ellie sensed it.

Ellie: ‘Don’t do it, Sssseth. Your pain is not worth my leg.’

Seth: ‘Foolish wolf!’ He said with a mental wolfish growling. ‘You leg is permanent. My pain is temporary. Now withstand this pain. I have to do this.’

He focused on her leg and felt that he could ‘see’ the broken bone. It was the femur ... the upper leg, near the hip. Ellie growled a bit and lowered her head to her chest. He ‘thought’ the bone back into place, and soon -- well relatively soon anyway -- it moved.

The medical team at Syracuse University had done some experiments on Seth once. His right hand was somehow electrically positive and the left was negative. But not all the time; he could create this state by meditating -- in a certain way. When he meditated in other ways, this didn’t happen. Seth maintained that he couldn’t control it; the fact of the matter is that he could bring it on when it was needed, but he didn’t know how. He knew he could move broken bones with his mind. Again, he didn’t know how -- he just did it when he needed to.

Like now.

He was an “other” kind of vet for the people and animals in his area. He fixed things for animals -- a bad cough, sick offspring, porcupine needles in a dog’s snout, mostly it was worms or other parasites, but even an arrow in the shoulder for a whitetail buck. It amazed him that the wolves disappeared from the immediate area of his cabin when the buck came to him for help. Smart wolves, smart buck, too. Stupid human hunting out of season. He hated stupid. You can cure disease or injury, but you can’t cure stupid. That’s permanent.

Seth had never had to try his healing on himself. Never had a broken bone or serious injury. Well, that was going to have to change, he thought to himself. But first Ellie; he owed her that much. And there wasn’t anything to do about his ribs anyway.

The meditation would take some of his pain away. Pain was, after all, just nature’s way of telling you something was wrong. Thanks, nature! He got the message: bad rib situation. Don’t need the pain anymore. And it was gone! -- at least if he didn’t move.

He thought of the femur under his hands. It would take several hours for the bone to reattach itself enough that he could let it go. She still wouldn’t be able to walk on it for several weeks, and the more ‘treatments’ he could give it, the faster it would heal. He poured his energy into the broken bone.

And just sat there. An immovable object. He didn’t even hear the sounds of people on the other side of the cave-in. He was awake -- sort of. Mentally, he was elsewhere.

The femur called to him. At least, so the Waabanow thought. ‘You can release me. I’m connected again. Whole, ‘ said the bone to his mind.

His mind ‘looked’ at the femur. Yes. He could let it go now. He sought out the mind of the wolf. She was asleep. He released the bone and felt the stiffness of several hours of immobility. He fumbled with his right hand to the watch on his left. 2:40. He’d been sitting here for nearly six hours -- well, five hours and about twenty minutes. Analog vs digital again. He laughed to himself -- in his mind. It hurt too much to really laugh.

He found a small rock nearby and threw it at where he imagined the far wall to be. It hit and, from the echo, he felt for the size of the room -- fairly large. That matched. He was in a fairly large room before the explosion. He’d forgotten that. Strange, he didn’t usually forget things. Must have been the shock of the cave-in. Wonder what else he forgot.

He cast his mind out of the caves, calling.

‘Eh?’ came an answer. It was a very small voice. So, it was a small creature.

‘I am Seth. I am a friend to your kind, ‘ he answered.

A bat. He was in contact with a bat. Hears where to go, what to avoid, eats insects.