Stranger Skies
The Buried Star
24th Cufaito
Curiosity is what sent them to investigate the shooting star.
They’d seen shooting stars before, but never had they seen — or felt — one land so close. The boom had rent the air, and their house had shaken on its foundations. The animals in the barn had spooked and were still skittish.
The star had landed less than a mile away, by Scoas’ estimation. Still within his land boundaries.
He knew his neighbors might have let their curiosity get the better of them. They might go out to investigate first, if he didn’t. Not that they were dishonest people. Not completely. Yet he felt he should get out there before anyone else did. Some sense deep within pulled him inexorably onwards. Only that could have driven the old farmer out of his house in the middle of the cold winter night.
His daughter insisted on going with him.
“Brinna, I’m already taking your brother.”
“Yeah,” said Alaev, sticking his tongue out at his elder sister.
“So take me, too.” Brinna put on her thick coat and stamped on her boots.
“Who will look after your mother?”
“We won’t be gone more than a few hours!” Brinna protested.
“Besides,” came Natai’s voice from the kitchen, “I’m quite well versed in how to defend myself with this.” His wife hefted up the cast iron frying pan and smiled at him. “Take the kids. We’re plenty safe here; I’ll be fine.”
Scoas watched his headstrong daughter strap on her snowshoes. “Fine,” he said, knowing when he was beaten. “Keep the door locked, though. Been reports of Thaenites and their wolves in the countryside.” Natai nodded and he stepped through the door, the kids following.
Brinna grumbled. “That’s just propaganda, Papa. We haven’t heard a peep out of Thaen for centuries.”
“Oh?” he huffed down the hill, stepping wide in his flat snowshoes. “How would you know? You been alive that long?” His tone was challenging, but not harsh.
Brinna sighed and said nothing.
“There’s nothing wrong with being careful. I just want your mother safe.”
“I know, Papa. I do too. But I doubt we have anything to fear from Thaen. For all we know, they’re all dead.”
Alaev groaned. “Shut up with your history lessons, Brinna. They were boring in school and they’re boring now!”
“Don’t tell your sister to shut up, Alaev,” Scoas said almost automatically. “And save your breath, both of you. Talking is slowing us down.”
His children quieted down and they passed the rest of the journey in silence. It was a cloudless night; they could see all the stars clearly. Scoas glanced up and saw his patron constellation, the Hunter. He and his family were being watched over tonight.
Small crunches reached their ears with each step they took; if they looked behind they could see three sets of footsteps in the snow, close enough together to form one long, thick trail. It looked as if a giant snake had coursed across the frozen earth. Or D’ssah, if he were a bit bigger. The Gssn’lthari trader was only about the size of two Minae, not three.
They traveled on, over the hills that decorated Scoas’ family farmlands until finally they reached the crater in the ground where the star had landed.
It was a very small crater and it was deep in the snow. None of the snow around had melted, though steam rose up from the fresh hole in the earth. Didn’t fallen stars burn? The kids murmured and jostled each other a bit; Scoas could feel their excitement. It was a feeling he shared.
They slowed and approached the starfall reverently. What would it look like? Would it sparkle and blaze like the stars in the sky? Or would the fall to earth have profaned it, would it be lesser, duller?
Taking a deep breath, Scoas looked over the edge of the crater and gazed upon the fallen star.
It was a woman.
Confusion swept over Scoas and his children for only a moment before pragmatism set in.
“We have to get her out of there.” The woman had fallen through snow drift and into frozen dirt; it was likely she had broken limbs. She’d freeze to death if left alone.
Brinna had already started digging out the snow around the woman. Scoas turned to his son.
“Alaev, run back to the house and grab our sled and some thick furs.”
Alaev did not argue and quickly ran to do his father’s bidding. For all that Scoas’ children bickered and argued, they obeyed without question when it counted.
Scoas bent to help his daughter. Her red hair spilled out over her shoulders from under her woollen knit hat and her breath left tangible clouds in the air as she worked on digging out the strange woman in the snow.
“How did she get here, Papa? Did she fall from the sky?” Brinna’s voice held awe, or perhaps fear.
“I don’t know, Brin. I don’t know.”
Brinna reached the woman first. She tugged off a mitt and placed her hand on the stranger’s neck, feeling for a pulse. “It’s weak,” she said. “As if only two hearts are working.”
“We’ll have to start the third one, then.” The stranger would never survive a Minae winter with only two hearts.
They tugged the woman out of the hole and placed her on the snow. She looked Minae, but her hair was unlike anything Scoas had ever seen — instead of normal Minae violet, red, orange, or brown shades, the woman had white hair with green tips. It looked like snow falling on the top of the trees in Steelmint Forest. In fact, the woman almost resembled a tree in winter with her overall coloring. Very strange.
Scoas felt for the woman’s heartbeats. The left and right were beating strongly, but he couldn’t hear the center heart. He placed his hands on top of each other and put his palms on the stranger’s sternum.
“One, two, three,” he counted, doing chest compressions.
It had started to snow again. White flakes swirled and danced in the night air, landing all around them to gently freeze the land some more. Scoas and his daughter knelt on either side of the stranger, Scoas doing chest compressions and counting, Brinna murmuring fervent prayers to Leine.
“We know not who this woman is, but a stranger is just a friend we haven’t met yet. Lady of Fate and Death, please let her live, that we may be friends.”
After what seemed an eternity, Scoas felt the woman’s third heart start up. Soon more color flowed into the stranger’s face. A minute later, Alaev ran up with the sled.
The snow fell faster now; they worked quickly to put the woman on the sled and bundle her up with furs. Once she was secured, Scoas and his two children divided up the leads to the sled and began dragging it back to their house through what had fast become a small blizzard.
They put the stranger in a bed in the main room of the house and piled her with blankets and furs. Natai heated water over the hearth fire and dipped cotton cloths in it, placing them on the stranger’s forehead and feet, alternating with more hot cloths before they cooled in the air too much. The fire had been built up till the entire house felt like one of the purification chambers used around Lenma.
There were no doctors in Heartpin Town. There were a few in Daetus City and one in Fallwoman Shire but both places were a few days’ ride away. The local wise woman, Enendoa, lived on the edge of Steelmint Forest, only a forty-five-minute walk away. Thirty, if one were a fast runner. She could make a house call.
Alaev, the fastest family member, left well before dawn the following morning, returning with Enendoa as the sun’s first rays broke over the eastern horizon.
Enendoa was a short, stout woman in her late sixties. She was young, by wise-woman standards — her mentor had died young and she’d inherited the post early. She knew every herb in Steelmint Forest and Heartpin Fields. She knew the parts of the body and how to heal them all and she knew how to help fix a wounded spirit.
She was also the opposite of gentle.
“Ah, Scoas, you’ve brought trouble to me again,” she said, stamping snow off her boots and hanging up her thick winter coat.
“You know me, Enendoa. I’m always trying to help make life interesting.”
“Where is she, then?”
Scoas pointed to the corner of the room by the fire, where the stranger was buried in furs on the spare bed.
Enendoa got to work quickly, pulling the furs and blankets up and checking the stranger’s limbs briskly. She “hmmm”ed a lot and nodded; then finally stood again.
“Shock, most likely, and possibly a concussion. She’s very lucky — no broken bones! Keep her hydrated and get me when she wakes up.”
“She will wake up, then?” Scoas hadn’t realized he had been worried that the stranger might not wake.
Enendoa regarded him shrewdly. “She should. If she doesn’t, it’s the gods’ will and not ours.”
As briskly as the wise woman had come in and done her work, she left for her own house.
That night there was a whimpering and growling from the main room. Brinna woke up and went to investigate. Had a wild animal broken in?
It was the stranger. She was whimpering and growling like a puppy. She thrashed about in the bed and tossed off the top fur. Then she quieted down.
Brinna gathered up the fur and shook off the dust. It was a wolf fur from Kaz the hunter, which had cost them a pretty penny.
She placed the fur back on the stranger’s bed and was about to leave for her own when the stranger started to whimper again. Perplexed, Brinna tiptoed closer. Perhaps the woman was too warm?
The stranger strained her face away from the wolf fur, whining. Brinna pulled the fur away and again the woman calmed down. But a moment later she began to shiver.
Well, she most definitely did not want the wolf fur. Brinna switched the fur for the thick blankets from her own bed and tucked the stranger in with that. Within minutes the woman sighed contentedly and relaxed. The shivering stopped.
Satisfied, Brinna went back to her own bed to sleep.
The next day passed uneventfully. The third morning, when Natai walked in to see, the stranger’s eyes were open.