She was under another dome. Not swords, this time. She marveled at the scale. The walls were built of stacked stone, much like other rude masonry she had seen. These stones were not the size of loaves of bread, or even trunks. They were the size of carriages. Houses. It rose around her in an arc on every side, and thin moonlight filtered through the crevices.
“You can rest on the bed.” The man gestured to a flat rock, bare and open.
Lissie sat on it, and started to ease off her pack. She unbuckled the belt and slipped out her good arm, and then let herself fall with it to the left side. She held the strap away from her, and pulled her broken arm out with a cry.
He rose, and stood beside the open boulder in the side of the dome. When they walked up, Lissie had seen him pick it up and move it aside for them to enter. “I need to close this.” He was glancing outside, scanning.
“I need your help,” Lissie said. The throbbing beat of her heart in the break made her nauseous. She lifted it back over her head. It helped. A little.
He took a step back from her. “I can bring you things.”
Why won’t he touch me?
Aloud, Lissie said, “I need four thin sticks, as long as my forearm. And leather straps. I have my belt, but I need another one.”
The man walked outside.
Lissie looked around. She felt warmer, but only because the stones blocked the wind. Rows of plants lined the earthen floor. She could see lamb’s ear, cabbage, and chard. Many fragrant things that she had never seen before. They perfumed the space with a wonderful growing smell.
How do they get enough light? She looked up. He probably just moves the boulders above them.
There was no furniture other than the bed, but there were sculptures. The one closest to her was a rabbit. She peered close and could see fingerprints inside the divots. It had a reverent beauty. A majesty that she had never seen in a rabbit before.
She stood, flinching against the pain, and looked for a fireplace. There was none. There was no evidence of smoke or soot. She breathed in the cold air and shivered.
He returned. He held the sticks in his open palm. In his other hand, a fresh deer hide. He approached her, and turned his palm over the bed. The sticks clattered against the stone. Lissie held out her right hand for the hide, and he dropped it. It fell heavily against her arm.
Lissie said, “I need strips, can you cut it for me?”
“Drop it back on the ground.” The man stood, waiting.
Lissie raised and eyebrow and dropped it. “I’m Lisandra, Lissie to my friends. What’s your name?”
“Nikolai.” He bent at the waist, and moved like a glacier. With the thumb and forefinger of both hands, he picked up the hide. It ripped in his fingers like paper. “I don’t think I have any friends.” He dropped a strip on her lap.
Lissie looked into his eyes. They were clear, but his hands trembled.
She placed two of the sticks across the strip of leather. She put her broken arm down against the leather between the sticks. She picked up one side of the leather, and placed it across her arm, then grabbed the other, “This is hard to do myself.”
“Lots of things are hard to do yourself.” Nikolai just stood and watched.
Lissie got the other side of the leather strip wrapped around, and twisted. She kept going until it was tight. She folded it underneath, braced against her arm. Her breath was ragged against the pain. She took the other two sticks, and turned her arm over.
This is going to hurt.
She repeated the procedure, this time with all four sticks held by the second strap. Then she twisted it as tight as she could, forcing her breathing steady as she felt the bones flex. The part that was exposed twitched a bit.
“I need that lamb’s ear, and I can make a bandage out of my spare shirt.” Lissie said against gritted teeth.
“Do you need anything else from outside?”
“Fire?”
He flinched as if she had struck him and walked outside. Lissie got up, her head swimming against the movement. Her arm hurt in different ways now. She walked to the lamb’s ear, and squatted, keeping her left arm up. Lissie grabbed a handful, stood slowly, and walked back.
She sat it down on the stone, and opened her pack. She pulled out the shirt. Nicest shirt I ever owned. He returned with a log over his shoulder. It was splintered on both sides. The other arm was around a dozen rocks the size of chickens.
Lissie asked, “Could you rip this shirt into strips three finger widths wide?”
The stones and log crashed to the earth. He walked over and said, “Drop it there for me.”
Lissie set the shirt down and watched him pick it up as he had the deer hide. It ripped at his touch, Lissie had to resist snatching it out of the air. Some of the fragments were passable. She salvaged what she could and wrapped them around the plush leaves on her arm.
Nikolai was putting the rocks in a circle before the bed. When he finished, he asked again, “Do you need anything from outside?”
“I suppose not.”
He sealed them in. The log shredded into kindling in his hands, he let it fall into the ring of stones. “I cannot light a fire. Humans always have fire.”
Lissie smiled. “I always seem to have fire.” She looked at the splintered wood and thought of flames. Smoke began to rise.