Bonesetter Read Free Page A

at Boro. Boro stared into his own lap and avoided Pell’s eyes—as did pretty much everyone else in the cave except his mother Donte. Pell returned to his bedding and collapsed to nurse his misery.
    Pell found that if he kept his finger high in the air it didn’t throb as much. It remained swollen but he could move it still, as he proved to himself over and over, despite the pain involved. He found himself holding it next to his middle finger so that that good finger could protect it. There was nothing but a thin gruel of roots to eat that day . Pell didn’t have the courage to get any himself the way people had been looking at him but his mother brought him a bowl of it and sat behind him grooming his hair while he ate. He felt comforted by her actions but his stomach s a nk again when he saw the way people looked at him. He could tell that many of them were already thinking of him as “ginja.” They didn’t want him eating their food if he would be cast out to die soon anyway.
     
    The next day, having tired of holding the injured pointer finger and its neighboring middle finger together with his other hand, he bound them together with a thong. At first he wrapped the two fingers together but had difficulty tying the fingers together with only the one other hand to work with. Finally he managed to tie a small noose in a thong and slipped the loop around the base of the fingers. Then he wrapped a few turns and cinched a couple of half hitches about the fingers. He found that his hand could function almost normally with a short wrap of thong between each of the joints. He decided that he should go out on a hunt so that the Aldans would see him trying to contribute. He looked about for Boro but couldn’t find him. Eventually he embarked on a hunt all by himself.
    As he trudged up a little side valley toward the plateau above he knew in his heart that t his hunting trip would be a farce, but he waited until he was far from sight of the cave to try throwing with his injured hand. As he had feared, the pain in his bound finger made him even clumsier than usual. He practiced throwing for a while but soon realized that there was even less chance than usual that he would hit anything that day. Nonetheless he trudged on. It was a clear, windless, cold day without a cloud in the sky but in his tired and hungry state, he had no appreciation for its placid beauty. Instead, he cringed from its cold bite, trying to draw into his furs.
    Suddenly a white snow hare exploded from under his feet! Daydreaming, he hadn’t noticed it until he had nearly stepped on it! Pell was so frightened that he dropped the stone he held in his injured hand and nearly fell again. The hare shot across the floor of the little ravine and disappeared. Pell followed it half-heartedly to the spot where it disappeared and stood, looking around disconsolately.
    Suddenly he recognized that he was standing beside a hole! The rabbit had its own little cave! He crouched down and reached into the hole as far as he could—no rabbit. He sat by the hole and pondered. If he waited long enough, would it have to come out? Might he catch it then?
    Who was he kidding? He wasn’t fast enough to catch a rabbit!
    Perhaps if he covered the hole with a fur? No, then the rabbit just wouldn’t come out at all. As he sat contemplating the problem, he unwound one of the thongs from his finger—the finger remained swollen but pink. He could still wiggle it. Daydreaming, he played with the thong a bit, tying the knots that he had learned. While practicing the slip knot that he had used to start the wrap on his finger, he fumbled and dropped the thong. When he picked it up, the loop in the end caught on a small stump next to the rabbit hole. When he jerked on the thong the little noose that he had formed cinched tight around the stump. He had to scoot down next to the stump and work it loose.
    The idea came to him that he might make a similar loop catch around the rabbit somehow,