Chapter 48
Forty-Eight
Ayla
I finished cleaning the floors. When I was done, there wasn't a hint of either man in our house! Not even a trace of blood in the grooves between the boards. They were gone, washed away with vinegar and soap. If only getting rid of the rest of the Moles could be so easy.
Then Kanik made me rest for a while and eat. First, I had a bath and put on a dress that didn't stink of vinegar. I put the other with the washing, which I was assured would be handled for me. I had no idea how, but I was trying hard to learn the Dragon way of doing things.
Then, for the first time I got to try something called pancakes. Kanik served them with eggs covered in goat cheese, and the bread-like circles were smothered in the sap from a maple tree. It was so good that I ate much more than I should've. Before I knew it, my eyes had gotten heavy.
I woke to find myself stretched out on the couch with a pillow under my head and a light blanket over my body. In the kitchen, I could hear Kanik humming to himself, but the light outside was bright and slanted towards the windows. That meant it was well after noon.
I thought about jumping up, but the cushions were so very comfortable. I also didn't want to stop Kanik's song. The man's voice was deep and rich. The notes he made in his throat were beautiful! I'd heard hymns sung before, but this was very different, so for a moment I lay there and allowed myself to enjoy it.
A bellow of feminine laughter sounded on the porch, making Kanik stop humming. A moment later, the front door opened. Rymar stepped in first, but the doctor was right behind him - and Zasen was behind her. All three of them were smiling, and Naomi - the doctor - was doing her best not to laugh again.
"Wyvern's gold!" Naomi giggled. "As if you and Kanik haven't been helping at all. No, Zasen is going to get - and take - all the credit."
"I'll make sure Jerlis knows they helped," Zasen muttered.
Naomi just reached back to rub his shoulder, but I'd pushed myself up at their entrance, ashamed to be caught sleeping on the couch. Hoping they wouldn't be offended, I began folding up the blanket as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.
"Exactly the person I was wanting to see," Naomi announced as she headed towards me.
"Yes, ma'am," I breathed, glancing back towards the kitchen in the hopes of Kanik telling me what was going on.
He was now standing in the opening between the kitchen and the living room. Rymar headed right to him, but Naomi plucked the blanket from my hands and pushed it back at Zasen. Then she knelt down by my feet.
"How have you been feeling, Ayla?" she asked.
Her Vestrian was crisp and clear. The words were carefully enunciated, making them easy to understand. Most people blurred the sounds a little in their excitement, but not this amazing dark-skinned woman. In all my life, I'd never imagined anyone like her could exist. Not only was she beautiful, but also a doctor, and she was so very kind!
"I'm well," I promised.
That made Naomi give me a strange look. "Does the laceration on your side hurt?"
"No, ma'am," I breathed, unconsciously reaching my hand up to test it.
"And your feet?" she asked even as she peered at my bare soles. "Any pain? Tingling sensations? Zasen said you wore the bandages until last night? They were changed daily, correct?"
"Yes, ma'am," I promised.
"Technically," Kanik said from across the room, "she's called Doctor, Ayla. So instead of ma'am, you'd say 'yes, Doctor.'"
Naomi smiled at me again. "I'm fine with ma'am too - or my name. Those who don't know me call me Doctor Naomi Griffin, because my sign is the Griffin."
I nodded to show I heard her, but had to know, "How do you get your sign?"
"We pick it when we become adults," she said. "Or for you, when you become a true citizen of Lorsa."
"When you're a Dragon," Zasen clarified. "Why, know what you want to be?"
I shook my head. "No, but I should think about it."
And that was one more reason to become a Dragon. I would no longer bear my father's name. No, I could become whoever I wanted. I just wasn't sure who that was yet.
Then Zasen lifted the metal pendant which had been hanging around his neck a lot lately. "Our identifier is both the image on our sign die and the name. When we agree to things, we use one of these to stamp our signature, making it official. So consider how it will look as well as how you'll carry the name."
"Okay," I agreed, twitching my toes as Naomi poked at my feet.
It tickled, but not too badly. However, my reaction seemed to please her. "Your nerves seem to be fine," she stated. "The wounds are completely closed, and even that deep puncture has healed as well as could be expected. You will have scars, Ayla."
"Okay," I said again, not sure what else she wanted from me.
Then Naomi gestured to my side. "And how is that cut doing?"
"She scrubbed the floors this morning," Kanik told her. "Supposedly, she was being careful, but Ayla wanted to clean up the blood from the Moles who died inside."
Which made Naomi sit up and lean back. "Boys? Can all of you go somewhere else for a moment?"
"Mom..." Zasen tried.
Naomi just gave him a cold look. "I need to speak to my patient. The three of you are hovering and trying to answer for her. I'd also like to look at her side, and I'm sure she'd prefer not to have quite so many eyes gawking at her."
"I have some work upstairs," Rymar said. "All of you can help me with it."
Kanik chuckled. Zasen groaned. The three men still left, even if the tromping of their feet on the stairs was a little harder than usual. Before they even reached the top, Naomi was chuckling again.
"Those kids," she grumbled playfully. "I just about raised all three of them. Then again, I'm sure their mothers would've said the same. Well, back then, it was four. Tasult, Tamin's father, was a part of their childhood friend group, and they were always up in each other's business."
"The Moles got him, though," I said, proving I knew that much.
"They did," Naomi agreed. "Tasult pushed them out of his house to protect his family, and he hasn't been seen since. They all took it hard, too." Then she jerked her chin at my side. "Will you let me look at that?"
"Okay," I agreed, lifting my dress high enough to expose the well-sewn laceration on my side.
Naomi murmured a few approving sounds. "It seems my son hasn't lost his touch with a needle. That shouldn't leave much of a scar at all." Then she pressed lightly around the edges. "And no signs of infection, but I'm going to leave you with some pills." A flip of her hand made it clear I could put my dress back down.
"Pills?" I asked as I straightened my clothes.
"Antibiotics," she explained.
"To be swallowed?" I asked, making sure I was keeping up. I'd read about such things, but had never seen them.
"Yes, they're small pieces of condensed medicine that taste absolutely horrible." Gesturing for me to move my legs, she claimed the cushion beside me. "You will need to take one a day for a week."
"Five days?" I asked, making sure we were talking about the same week.
"Yes," she said. "And the boys said they want to start making you immune to Dragon venom. I think you should gain a little more weight first, but they're insisting. They told me you are more than strong enough to handle it."
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
She rocked her head from side to side in an ambiguous gesture. "It isn't comfortable. Mostly, it's shocking. When I was given venom, I was a girl, much younger than you. I was sure they'd given me too much and I was dying, but I got used to it. Each dose got easier." She offered me a gentle smile. "You also aren't required to take it, Ayla. It is a good idea, simply because there are so many stingers around here, but no one can make you do it."
"I want to," I assured her. "Doctor Naomi, I want to become a Dragon. I want to stop the Moles and maybe prove to everyone that women with orin color aren't bad. Maybe then my friends can come here too, because I'm worried about them."
"How will they know to come?" Naomi asked.
"Callah said to send back something yellow," I told her. "I just have to put it on a hunter, and she'll find it. She'll know, and then she and Meri can get thrown out the same way I did."
Zasen's mother was nodding at me, but her face was blank. "Ayla, it may not be that easy."
"But you don't understand," I insisted. "Meri's already married, and Gideon punishes her for everything. He's going to kill her! And Callah? In a few months, she'll turn twenty and have to marry too."
"Ayla..." Gently, Naomi rubbed my leg. "Sweetheart, you're a good girl. You also know the Moles kill us. They take us back to feed your people."
"Their people," I corrected. "I'm not a Mole anymore."
"Okay," she relented, "their people. The problem is you look like a Mole still, and your skin has been getting darker. Your friends? They will still be pale. They will look like hunters, Ayla. People will want to hurt them because they're scared of them. If you try to bring them here, it may not end well."
"But I have to," I said, hoping she could understand. "If I don't, they'll die in the compound - and in a worse way. We don't have medicine, you see. I only learned about using ethanol on the wounds by accident. Otherwise, we simply pull out the arrows and sew them up. Ms. Lawton picks us for the infirmary by how well we can stitch fabric!"
"No antibiotics?" she asked.
I shook my head. "It was all lost when we left the surface. When someone is sick or injured, we pray."
"Dear God," Naomi breathed softly. "Please tell me you know to wash before tending wounds?"
"Only because Mrs. Worthington told me," I admitted. "She said that kept the wounds from infecting as fast. In the books I read - that I wasn't supposed to know about - I learned all about germs and how to kill them, but things like antibiotics don't exist in the compound. Or anesthesia. Or numbing agent. None of it. We just have someone hold them down."
"No wonder you're trying so hard to learn everything," she said. "Okay. I'll leave a schedule for getting you immune to venom. I'd like to take it a little slow, though, because you're still underweight, Ayla. That will make it harder for your body to metabolize the venom."
"I'll do it," I promised.
"Honey, this isn't something you can try harder and make work. It's how your body works. So we'll go slowly. Better that than killing you by accident, right?"
"Okay," I agreed, willing to do anything so long as it meant I was allowed to get one step closer to being a part of this place.
"And the boys are going to get you some shoes. More clothes too, I think." She smiled at me, then turned her eyes to the hall and lifted her voice. "Okay, you three can come back down now!"
The thundering of their feet was even louder than before as the three men all rushed back into the living room. Zasen was the first. Kanik was right behind him. While Rymar tried to look like he hadn't hurried too much, his eyes were the ones that found me first.
"How's she doing, Doc?" he asked.
"She's fine," Naomi promised. "Zasen, your sutures are still beautiful. I'm also going to write up a schedule for her venom tolerance program. And while you work on that..." She crossed her arms and looked from man to man intently. "Shoes, boys. Ayla needs sandals and boots at least. She also needs more than these little dresses you're keeping her in."
"Pants," Zasen agreed. "Yes, Mom, I know."
"And I told her we'd start on the venom tolerance tomorrow," Kanik said. "She was up before me, and I woke at dawn."
"We'd probably just left," Rymar said.
I nodded. "I wasn't sleeping anyway, so I thought I'd remove the Moles from the house."
"Eight full hours of sleep," Naomi told me. "Any less, and you'll have to wait another day to start."
"I'll go to bed early!" I assured her, just as I'd said to Kanik that morning. "I promise!"
Then Naomi glanced over at her son. "Zasen, if I hear any of you are taking advantage of her sweet nature, I will amputate your tail, do you hear me?"
"Mom..."
"All three of you," Naomi snapped. "I raised you to be gentlemen, and don't think I won't do it. You'll be fumbling the whole time it regrows!"
"Regrows?" I asked.
"We can regrow our tails," Kanik explained. "And other things."
"We were designed to live in a hard world," Zasen told me. "We're good at it, Ayla."
But that wasn't what I was thinking about. It was the tail in the dining hall back in the compound. "So the Dragon who lost his tail..."
"It's not an uncommon injury," Naomi explained.
"The Moles have one hung up," I said, looking between all of them. "It's kinda brown and black, I think. It stinks, too. But Mr. Cassidy said it was cut from a Dragon and then the Wyvern went to feast on him. I know that part's a lie, but it's a Dragon tail!"
Zasen shoved a hand over his mouth. Kanik huffed out a laugh and turned away. Rymar, however, simply pressed his elbow against the corner of the room and then leaned into it.
"Did the color look familiar?" he asked.
"I don't know," I admitted.
"Tan, maybe a bit of green near the stinger, and black markings across all of it?" he pressed. "Ayla, that was Drozel's tail. One of the men who walked back here with us. A Mole cut it off and Zasen got Drozel away before shock set in."
"Before the Moles could kill him," I realized.
Rymar nodded slowly. "We all assumed they'd eaten the tail."
"No," I said. "They use it as proof the world is not a safe place. They tell the children it's proof of the monsters they tell us about in our school sermons. They also said the stinger on that tail was the only weapon they had left."
"Because that time they ran out of bullets," Zasen explained. "Since then, they always carry more. Lots more."
"Then we need more arrows like your blue ones," I told him. "Because the hunters in the infirmary with blue arrows? They're as good as dead without me there to help. They also die slowly."
"And there it is," Naomi said as she pushed to her feet. "The girl is going to make a great Dragon one day, boys. Just don't try to stop her."
"Nope," Zasen said, smiling at me. "We're trying to encourage her."
"And for today, that means resting," Kanik insisted. "All day. Same for the rest of us."
"Books all around," Zasen said.
"Sounds good to me," Rymar agreed.
Naomi just waved to her son. "And I'm going to check on the rest of my patients. Bye, Ayla. Bye, boys."
"Bye, Doctor Naomi," I said, smiling at the thought of it.
A real doctor. A woman. One who told three adult men what to do and they all listened. Not only that, but they acted like she might be the one to punish them if they didn't! This place just kept getting better and better.