Page 75 of Bones
“Whoa—” Sam started, catching him by the shoulders.
“It’s Clarity,” Trey gasped. “She’s hurt.”
The three of us sprinted the entire way to the brothel. Trey tried to fill us in as we ran. A regular client of hers liked to get rough. There had been an incident just a couple weeks before I arrived where he nearly killed her. He'd been banned from the brothel for a while, but they missed his coin enough to let him return.
“How bad is it?” I asked, trying to ignore the painful stitch in my side as I ran.
“It looks bad.” Trey’s voice sounded tight with pain and fear. “I can’t tell though.”
I tried to prepare myself for the worst, but my stomach still dropped at the sight of her when I entered her room. She lay on her bed, another brothel worker sitting beside her, dabbing her bloody face with a cloth. I could hardly recognize her swollen face and she breathed raggedly, her nostrils flaring like she struggled to get enough air into her lungs.
I dropped everything I held on the floor and rushed up to her side. Her head turned toward me, but she didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything either, just took her hands and began to work. The golden warmth seemed to flow to every part of her body, healing a multitude of injuries. Slowly the bleeding stopped and the swelling on her face receded. Her breathing evened out. She started trying to mumble something to me, but her eyelids drooped.
“It’s ok, Clarity,” I murmured, squeezing her hands. “Just rest.”
She managed to squeeze my hand back a tiny bit and then her eyes closed. Once she’d been healed, every small scratch erased, I set her hands back down on her stomach. When I looked up, the girl who sat on her other side stared at me, her mouth open in awe. I dropped my gaze, feeling uncomfortable.
“How much does it cost?”
The whispered words had me looking back up. The girl looked nervous, but she swallowed and asked again, “How much does it cost?”
“Nothing,” I said, my throat tight.
Her eyes widened and she glanced between me and Trey and Sam. “Can…can you help me with something?”
I followed her back to her room, noting she shared it with four other girls. It was small and cramped and smelled sour, very different from Clarity’s single room decorated with red silks. Two girls slept in their beds, and the other three beds were empty.
“I have this rash,” the girl said in a tiny whisper, “itches somethin' fierce. I keep scratchin’ it til it bleeds.”
She showed me the rash, and it took just a couple of seconds to heal it. The simple act left her in tears.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
“You can always come get me if you get something like this again,” I told her, unable to keep the emotion from my voice. “Please tell the others.”
“The previous healer wouldn’t treat us.” She sniffled, wiping at her eyes. “Said we were worse than rusters. He’d drop off some bandages and medicines but that was it.”
“I’m not like that,” I said, furious at the thought of refusing to treat someone because they worked at a brothel. “Tell the others they can come anytime. Or I can come here.”
“Thank you, Bones,” she whispered again as I slipped out the door.
* * *
The weather turned colder. I started going for walks along the wall whenever I had free time, trying to covertly examine the layered metal sheets between me and freedom. I could feel the pressure of time building. It wouldn’t be long before the mountains filled up with snow, and then I’d be stuck here until spring. The walls were made of giant sheets of metal welded together and overlapped in layers. It must have taken forever to build, but it stood impressively solid. I couldn’t find any holes or spots that looked a little weak. The smaller gate on the other end of the hold had been chained shut with multiple padlocks and some pieces of wood nailed across it for good measure. The only way out was through the guarded gate.
The loggers got sent out for an extended trip to bring back more wood for winter. I thought about trying to sneak out with them, but Madame kept me so busy torturing people for four nights in a row that I missed my opportunity. I wondered if she did it on purpose.
The first night of Zip's absence, I didn't know what to do with myself. I cleaned the entire clinic just to have something to do since I didn't want to go to Mootzie's by myself. As I dumped out a bucket of dirty water outside, I noticed two small children darting through the shadows. I moved slower, watching them out of the corner of my eye. They followed a drunk man who stumbled down the path eating his dinner ration. He dropped about half of his food, and the children darted out to pick up every tiny crumb. Something in my chest twisted. As I stood there outside, pretending to work, I noticed more. They moved like tiny ghosts with hollow faces and empty eyes.
“You need help?”
I startled, looking at where Trey sat in the wooden chair by the clinic door, watching me.
“No,” I said, going back inside and slamming the door.
When Sam came walking in with my mug of broth and meal ration, I asked him about the kids.
“They’re orphans,” he said. “They’re too young to work, so they have to beg or scrounge for food until they’re big enough to join a workforce, the guards, or a crew.”
