Unknotted

It was too early to have the electric and water turned onto this project. I raced around the middle tree to kick on the portable generator, and floodlights flashed on inside the treehouse. I took the stairs two at a time and burst through the door-less entrance into the unfinished treehouse. The bones of the interior walls’ studs cast strange shadows about the room.

Peth laid sprawled on the subfloor, her yellow blood seeping into the dry wood. Kova knelt at her side, a handful of empty potion vials beside his knee. His hands were pressed over her abdomen.

Her head rested in Jik’s lap. He combed trembling fingers through her purple locks. Red ringed his eyes that were stretched wide and glassy. Leaning over her, he was whispering in her ear words that I could make out.

I took in the surreal scene with numb detachment, like watching a documentary recounting a tragedy that was too agonizing to be real.

“What happened?” Kova’s deep voice vibrated in the planks beneath my boots, snapping me out of my episode. This was real. Peth had been shot. She was bleeding out, her breathing growing shallower.

I didn’t know where to begin explaining the last three days, or even how much to tell Kova. He wasn’t part of the Ebbing Society. As far as he knew, we needed his help out of sticky spots from time to time because Jik had a gambling problem and I dealt illegal potions that Peth brewed.

I dropped beside Peth, scooping up her hand, careless of the blood that coated it. “Is she—” My tongue felt tacky in my mouth. Too tacky to release the rest of my question.

“I’ve done all I can.” He raked a hand through his hair again, mumbling something under his breath. “We have to pray the Core doesn’t pull the tide in before the potions take full effect.”

Kova’s question was muffled behind the buzzing in my ears. The magic was dragging against my skin, pulling away. My throat tightened, as if the tide had power to take my breath along with the magic.

“How long do the potions need?” My voice sounded strangled.

“Ten minutes, at least.”

“And if we don’t have that long?”

“Then the potions fail,” he ground through clenched teeth, lips pulled tight over his tusks. “The damage remains. And her blood isn’t replenished.”

I swallowed past the knot in my throat. “The tide is about to shift.”

“No!” The tears wavering in Jik’s eyes fell. He clung to Peth as if his scrawny arms could keep her soul in her body.

“Core between, you should have taken her to a hospital,” Kova growled.

“The closest one is two hours away,” I snapped. “What did you want me to do? Charge into the Keadanian camp and demand the services of a field surgeon? Do you really think they would use resources on a troll?”

Kova snorted like a ticked off bull and shook his head. He was more bitter than most trolls about the way the other races treated them. He leaned over Peth and checked her pulse. His lips thinned. “Ten minutes,” he whispered. “Give her ten minutes, Core. Ten is all I ask.”

The blood drained from my head. The room tilted beneath me. I couldn’t lose Peth. There were so few I trusted, so few who saw me for who I was now and didn’t care what I had run from.

The magic started to pull away, dragging the energy from the room. My senses started to dull. My heart ached harder, more sharply, with each beat, as if it knew that with the tide’s retreat, hope for Peth’s survival would also vanish.

My eyes slid close. My fingers tightened around Peth’s. I scrambled to hold the magic, to sink my claws into it and make it stay. I envisioned it wrapping around us like a protective shield. Visualized energy infusing the air until we choked on the magic so the potions could heal Peth.

Time lost meaning. The world and my surroundings lost meaning too. All I could think, feel, sense was the touch of Peth’s palm against mine and the lingering magic.

For years, I had worked to shed all the cords the Core had tried to knot me up in. Unknotted was the life I had chosen for myself. In that moment, with my friend’s hand limp in my grasp, I would have accepted any knot thrust on me. Even one with blasted Whiskers.