“He’s injured,” was all Peter would say before walking out.

“What’s up with Kowi?” I asked.

Winky got up and came back with a bottle of water and a bowl. She put the bowl on the floor and leaned my arm over the bed, rinsing the wound and letting it drain down. I winced at the stinging pain.

“He got sliced in the gut. It’s pretty bad. I think he’s going to be okay, but he’s staying in the clinic so we can keep an eye on him. It’s been hard keeping him in bed, so we don’t want to encourage him getting up too much.” She patted down my wound and lifted it up for closer inspection. “You can go see him when I’m done here.”

Some stitches were still in place and others were hanging by torn skin. The cut was about six inches long and deep enough to make me feel woozy looking at it. It was still bleeding, and the skin around it was an angry red.

“You really did a number on this thing,” said Winky, frowning. “The scar was going to be so nice, too.” She sighed in defeat. “Not anymore.”

“Sorry.”

“It just gives me more practice,” she said, smiling. “Not that you’re going to be happy about that. We can’t waste pain killers on people who ask for their injuries.”

I rolled my eyes. “Great. Now I have another reason to hate Coli.”

“She’s not that bad, you know,” said Winky, threading a needle with what looked like regular button thread. She ran a piece of wet cotton over it before poising the needle over my arm.

“What is that? Shirt thread?”

“Yeah. It’s all we have. I just sterilized it. It’ll work.”

“It’s gonna hurt like hell when you take the stitches out,” I said.

“Yep.”

“What about Kowi? I hope you didn’t use this crap on him.”

“We didn’t.” She smiled. “He got the good stuff.”

“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes. I was feeling totally expendable.

“No offense. But a cut to the gut is more serious than one to the arm. At least this one is. So we have to save our surgical supplies for the most serious stuff.”

I waved her off. “No, no, I understand. I’m just giving you a hard time. Go ahead. Do your worst.” I leaned back and looked up at the roof of the hut, gritting my teeth as I waited for the pain.

“Here,” she said, holding a thick piece of leather up to my mouth. “Bite on this.”

I frowned at her. “Are you serious? You might as well give me a bullet.”

“Can’t waste the ammo. Just bite the leather instead.” I swear she almost laughed. I was glad someone was enjoying herself.

I took the leather in my teeth and tried to talk around it, but I soon gave up since Winky was so focused on stitching me up that she ignored me anyway.

The pain began immediately and was much stronger than I had anticipated. The idea of conversing went out the window as I concentrated all my energy on not shrieking in pain. I wasn’t able to keep all the shouts down inside, but at least they were muffled by the leather.

Twenty or so minutes later she was done and gone. I rested on my pallet, overwhelmed by the throbbing pain coming from my flaming arm. I’d started sweating about two minutes into the process and was soaked now.

The smoke from the mosquito sticks was making me dizzy and sick, so I turned my head, trying to find some fresh air. My eyes locked on the strong leg that stood by my bedside. I looked up to see who was visiting.

Paci was standing by my bed, a bottle of water in his hand. “Hey,” he said, looking intently at my face. “Feel better?”

“No. I feel worse, actually,” I said weakly. I couldn’t for the life of me sound as strong as I felt in my brain now, knowing I had a plan. My body was still too wasted to perform, but my mind was getting stronger by the second. I struggled to sit up, but Paci sat down on the edge of my pallet and pushed me back.

“Stay. I just came to see how you were and to bring you some water. Here … drink.” He pushed the bottle into my good hand, pausing to unscrew the cap for me.

I took a long sip and then dropped my head back, balancing the bottle on my stomach.

“So, how’s your leg?” I asked.

He glanced down at it. “It’s okay. The bullet went through the meat. I’m going to be fine.”

“What about Kowi?”

“He’s going to be okay, I think. He’s too stubborn to get sick over it.”

We both smiled.

“So …,” started Paci, clearly a little uncomfortable. “You … uh … had some issues with Coli. What’s that all about?”

“Do you really have to ask?” I said, rolling my eyes.

“She is a pain in the butt, but I got the impression it was more than that.”

It was more than that, but I wasn’t sure he was the one to be my confessor. Something in his eyes, in his body language, made me nervous. He reminded me of Bodo in some ways, and that made me feel both guilty and sad.

“It’s nothing. Boring girl stuff.”

Paci stared at me for a few seconds, before reaching over to squeeze my shoulder. “Okay. Well, I’m here for ya if you need to talk. I won’t tell anyone anything you say, just so you know.”

“Thanks, Paci. I appreciate that.”

“Everyone needs someone to confide in,” he said mysteriously.

I should have said nothing, but I couldn’t just let it hang like that. “Who’s your confessor?”

He shrugged. “I don’t have one.”

He’d been so nice to me from day one, even though he’d followed Kowi’s orders to grab me when he first met me. I’d seen him fight enough times to come to the conclusion that even then, he’d held back and not used everything he had against me. He was always standing around, smiling, interjecting humor when things got too intense. All of this made it impossible for me not to respond.

“You can confide in me if you need someone. I won’t share either.”

He smiled. “Thanks, Bryn. Maybe someday I will.” He stood up, my eyes following him automatically. “Keep the water. I’ll come see you at dinner.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said, tipping the bottle towards him before taking another sip. He walked away before I was finished.

I swallowed, thinking about what had just transpired, letting the water bottle rest beside me. Paci was a good guy, maybe even a good friend. It was hard to believe he didn’t have anyone he could talk to; he was a pretty popular guy, always laughing and joking around with everyone. He was cute, too … really cute. And I’d seen lots of the girls watching him and acting very interested. But I also knew that sometimes it was hard to open up, and when you found someone you could do that with, it felt like coming home in a way - to a safe place.

I wanted to be that for Paci, but a part of me felt like I’d be cheating on Bodo. But I told myself that was stupid, because there was nothing wrong with talking to someone, and I was going to go find Bodo soon anyway.

My mind drifted to his rescue, but my plans were interrupted by Peter who’d arrived again to boss me around, apparently.

“Finish that water and then come on. Kowi wants to see you.”

I sat up with the plan to gulp the rest of the water down, raising the bottle partway to my lips, when the world started to go faint, my vision narrowing down to a tunnel of grayness in front of me.

I heard Peter say, “You don’t look so good…,” and then a buzzing filled my ears. The tunnel shut down completely and everything went black.

***

I woke up in my hut, Peter and Buster asleep at my side. As soon as I moved, Peter sat up quickly, his hair sticking out all over the place.

“What? Who? …” He looked around, lost in his dream world for a few seconds until he laid eyes on me. “Oh. Hey, Bryn. Do you need anything?”

“Water?” I asked, my tongue nearly sticking to the roof of my mouth.

Peter reached over and grabbed the bottle next to him. “Here. I guess I fell down on the job. I was supposed to wake you up in the middle of the night and make you drink this.”

I guzzled the entire bottle and burped when I was done.

Peter curled his lip in disgust but said nothing. I was probably getting a pass since I was on the injured list. I wondered what else I could get away with.

“What time is it?” My watch had disappeared somewhere between punching a canner in the face and being here on the mattress with Buster licking my fingers. I couldn’t remember the last time I saw it on my wrist. “Ew, Buster, get away.” I shoved him over onto Peter’s mattress, but he was back in half a second, deciding that me pushing him away meant I wanted more attention from him, not less.

“It’s about seven in the morning,” answered Peter, enjoying Buster’s torture of me.

Buster was angling for a chin lick, I could tell by the way he was staring at me while his butt wiggled with frantic tail wagging.

“No, Buster! No lick!”

He dove at me and got one in, practically knocking me over in his enthusiasm.

I pushed him away again and held my hand out to stop him from getting close. “I swear to God, that dog knows when I’m weak and can’t fight him off.” I waited for him to walk away and then wiped his stinky drool from my face. “I need some bleach or something. I probably have an amoeba on my chin right now.”

“An amoeba? From Buster? Not likely. More like e-coli.”

“Are you serious?” Now all I could think about were the possible flecks of poo on my face. I scrubbed my chin harder.

“No, I’m not serious, dope. There’s nothing on your face that isn’t on every other square inch of your body right now. I’ll help you go take a shower in a minute. Let me just get some food in you, first.” Peter left the sleeping area and came back with a basket that had been sitting on the shelves. “Eat this stuff. Then we’ll get up and get you clean and destinkified.”

I picked through the basket, not finding anything appealing; but my growling stomach would not be ignored, and the look on Peter’s face told me he wouldn’t be either, so I took out a piece of stale bread and chewed on a bite of it.

“So what happened? One minute I was getting up to talk to Kowi, and the next I’m cuddled up next to you and the lick master here in the hut.”

“You passed out. You’ve lost quite a bit of blood and you were just … I don’t know. Stressed.” He avoided talking about the reason for my stress.

“Any news?” I asked, chewing on my bread, not looking directly at Peter. “About anything … or anyone?”

“No. No news about Bodo.”

I was going to declare my intentions to go after him, but I stopped myself. Peter wasn’t going to be invited, and I could totally see him tattling on me when he found out he was being left behind. I changed the subject. “So what does Kowi want to talk to me about?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe next steps.”

“Next steps?” Hopefully they’re not the next steps of us being kicked out of the swamp.

“Yeah. We didn’t kill all the canners. Some of them got away.”

My eyes widened. “Does he want to go after them?”

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just speculating. I have no idea why he wants to talk to you or what everyone is thinking. I’m not in the loop.”

“You don’t sound upset about that.”

“I’m not. I just want to live here, make some cloth, bake some bread, cook some stuff, and never see another canner for as long as I live - which I hope is a very long time.” Peter pulled Buster into his lap, allowing him to lick his hand to death. “And to be honest, I’m not all that crazy about you going out after anyone, either. I think it’s a bad idea.”