A Girl Called Badger - By Stephen Colegrove Page 0,2
grow big. But an all-seeing, all-knowing priest like yourself shouldn’t be worried.”
“More like all-work all-the-time. My apprenticeship has been nothing but broken fingers, display screens, books, crying babies, and more books,” said Wilson. “I can’t escape on Sunday like you two.”
Robb covered his mouth. “Look over there. It’s Badger,” he whispered.
The tall girl ate alone and without looking up. Unlike the other village girls, her dark hair was parted into two braids that stretched down the front of her white shirt. On the right side of her face, two pale scars ran from temple to jaw and disappeared into her collar.
“Badger looks sad. Maybe she hasn’t killed anything today,” said Robb.
Wilson glared at him. “Her name’s Kira and don’t say things like that.”
“You keep bringing up her birth name,” said Mast. “Nobody cares, including her. Especially her.”
“I can’t believe it.” Robb laughed and pointed his spoon at Mast. “He’s still sore about his broken nose!”
“Shut up.”
“She’s got fourteen wolf pelts. What’s your count again?”
Mast sighed. “Allow me recreate the famous battle of My Hands. It takes place at Scrawny Neck, Robb.”
Wilson watched the girl until she finished her meal and left.
HE RAN AFTER HIS father through a field of sunflowers. Something banged, rapid and metallic. His hands whipped through tall, needle-covered stems and the banging came again. Wilson jerked out of his apprentice bunk and scrambled to the hatch. In the dark tunnel three hunters held a long stretcher covered by a bear pelt. They breathed hard and sweat dotted their faces.
“We need help!”
Father Reed shuffled into the corridor. “Were you born in a cave, Wilson? Let them in and shut the hatch.”
The men squinted in the light as they brought the stretcher to the treatment room. As they set the stretcher on a black slab in the middle of the room, a wooden hunting mask clattered on the floor. Wilson saw a braid of long black hair and realized who was under the blanket.
One hunter took off his gloves and wiped his face.
“We werent’t doing anything, just watching the outer line when she fell down. I couldn’t get her to stop shaking or wake up.”
“Thank you, Simpson, we’ll take care of it. You can return to your posts,” said Father Reed.
“Please look after her, sir.”
The metal door rumbled shut after the men and Wilson and Reed were left alone with Badger. Reed pulled off the blanket and her arms and legs began to tremble violently.
“Don’t let her fall! I have to get her clothes off.”
“What?!!”
“Don’t be so shy. You don’t have to look.”
Wilson turned red and his ears burned as Reed unbuttoned the furs. Luckily, she still had an undershirt, but it had pushed up and exposed her midriff. Near the navel Wilson saw a curved scar longer than his hand. Without thinking he touched it. Her skin was cool and soft under his fingers.
“Stop that and get things hooked up,” said Reed.
“Yes sir. Sorry sir.” Wilson pulled Badger’s arm out of the overcoat and wrapped it with a flexible blue band.
Reed handed him a small disc. “Put this on her left shoulder. No, the other left!”
The priest slid a metal circlet onto Badger’s forehead then wrapped her torso with blue material. The bands and discs all had long black cables that stretched across the girl and down to the slab.
“Display screen.”
Wilson found it on the counter. Reed touched the screen a few times and the Badger’s body stopped moving.
“Fix some tea, please.”
“How?”
“Hell’s bells, the water is over there! Seventeen years old and you can’t–”
“No, sir,” said Wilson. “I mean, how did you stop the shaking?”
“Oh, that. Just a reset.”
“What if you didn’t do that … reset?”
Reed shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very nice, now would it? She’d die, eventually. At least that’s my guess––I’ve never seen it go that far. Twenty years ago I had a patient with this sickness, and had to do quite a few resets.”
“He was fine?”
“Not as such. But he was mostly the same grumpy Gus until he died years later. In fact, we were on a scouting trip the second time it happened. That time I had to do a manual reset.”
“A manual?”
“We were in the eastern plains and well out of range. Watch now and I’ll show you how to do it. Take the forearm here–”
Father Reed placed the Badger’s left arm in Wilson’s hands. The soft skin had warmed and deepened in color to a healthy tan.
“Supinate the palm to the sky, put two fingers from your other hand to