Black Blood

The hellish pain of the dozens of deep wounds brings me back to consciousness. I groan from the throbbing and cutting sensation all over my back. I thought I had experienced severe pain, but that was a joke compared to this. My eyes shoot open. I try to see where I am but my eyes barely focus. As soon as I move a finger, it feels as if I am tearing open the wounds further.

I press my forehead into the pillow, trying to stop myself from screaming and crying. My head feels blurred and I am not fully awake. The room seems to dance around me. I am lying on something soft, probably a bed, but it is anything but comfortable. I try to move a little to find a more comfortable position. Again, I groan in pain.

‘Stay as still as possible,’ a voice suddenly sounds next to me. Someone gently grabs my wrist. I want to lift my head to see who it is but I don’t have the strength. My body feels like concrete, my head like cotton wool. I cooperate with what the person wants from me without struggling or asking questions. If they want to do something to me, I cannot fight. My arm is pushed slightly to the side. The next moment, I feel a brief pain in my wrist.

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ the voice says next to me before my arm is put back on the soft ground. I don’t have long to think about what just happened. My eyes slowly roll back in their sockets, the pain subsides and my head seems to float. I fall back into dreamland.

-

‘I don’t think she’ll survive?’ There is a vague sound in the background. It is a woman’s voice, but I do not recognise it. As soon as I try to open my eyes they fall shut again. My head switches between consciousness and unconsciousness. I feel as if I am floating.

‘She has to. We can’t lose another Night Rider,’ a male voice sounds in the distance. My body seems to have become one with the soft ground. I don’t know where the fabric ends and my skin begins. I barely have the awareness that I am awake, let alone the strength to do or utter anything.

‘Her fever is high, some wounds are inflamed and she hasn’t woken up since that one time. She must be very strong to survive that.’ The female voice seems to sink further and further into the background, to become a fainter background sound. I am too far gone to realise what she is saying.

’And the boy...’, is the last thing I hear until I’m drawn back into the darkness.

-

I don’t know how long I’ve been wandering in the darkness, where I am or how I’ll be once I find the strength to open my eyes. My eyelids are heavy, seem to be glued together. I have to blink several times before my vision becomes clear. The whistling of birds echoes past my ears.

The room I am trying to look into is small but full of stuff. The first thing I notice is a cupboard against the wall. The cupboard is made of wood, slightly bulging with clothes. On the cupboard there are all kinds of decorations, from small paintings to wooden statues. There is a window above the cupboard. The only things visible are trees and here and there a bird that flies by. On the floor is a wool rug. I am finally lucid enough to realise that I am lying on my stomach on a bed.

Slowly I put my hands on the mattress, push myself up a little. I almost seem to forget that I have wounds on my back. As soon as the muscles in my back tighten, the pain returns to my nerves. I bite my teeth together.

‘Please stay down.’ I am shocked when I hear an unexpected voice. I vaguely recognise the voice but it is not clear to me what it is. Slowly, I lower myself onto my stomach again. A blonde lady of about my age comes into my sight. She sits down on the floor next to me and puts her arms on the mattress. Her deep blue eyes look at me inquiringly. Her blonde hair hangs in dozens of small braids along her face.

‘How do you feel?’ she asks. I can’t remember how I got here, who she is and everything else. My memories stop at the eighteenth whipping. Everything that came after that is vague or black. I have no idea how long I slept.

‘Burs,’ I reply. I don’t know how to describe it better than that. My muscles feel heavy, my back hurts and my head doesn’t seem quite right. The lady gets up from the floor. She leans over me slightly, probably, looking at the wounds.

‘The swelling is gone, the bleeding has stopped and it is slowly starting to heal. I don’t know how you survived but you did,’ she says as if I should know what it was like before. She comes kneeling in front of the bed again.

‘How long did I sleep?’ Maybe I should first ask her what her name is and where I am but I am too curious. She pushes a tuft of hair behind her ear.

‘A week. After the flogging, you became unconscious from the loss of blood. Warriors and nurses are forbidden to help people undergoing punishment so I brought you to my house. After a day, you woke up briefly. I gave you a medication for the pain. Then you fell down again and the wounds began to inflame. You had a fever of 39 degrees for three days. We thought you were not going to make it and I still don’t understand how you did it. The inflammation is gone and the wounds are starting to heal,’ she updates me. I don’t remember waking up, I don’t remember anything. It seems like she is talking about someone else.

‘I’m Alisha by the way,’ she says smiling as she holds out her hand to me. Slowly, I move my arm closer to hers. I shake her hand.

‘Celeste’, I introduce myself. No point in lying about my name, she already knows it anyway. She gets up again, walks to a part of the room out of my sight and comes walking back with a glass of water in her hand.

‘You must move as little as possible for the next two days to allow the wounds to heal. Your accelerated healing will have you back on your feet within a week but the wounds will remain red and painful for a long time,’ she tells me. Two days on this bed is still better than the dungeons.

Two days on this bed is still better than the dungeons.