Page 17 of Valka

Delia screamed in pain, nearly passing out as she slid off the log she’d been sitting on, gasping for breath through her tears as slowly but surely, the searing pain subsided.

“Stop,” she begged, her voice raspy as she tried to pull her arm free of his hold again.

“No,” he replied, as his fingers wandered her arm and wrist, gently pressing into her skin, paying particular attention to the wrist itself.

“It hurts so bad,” she said, trying to pull away from him again.

“Fixed,” he said, letting go of her arm and starting to dig through the items he’d brought with him from his storage spaces in the wall of his cave.

“What?” she asked, raising her eyes from examining her wrist herself, to look at Valka.

He was busy looking through a small supply of cloth strips, and obviously had no intention of answering her, if he’d even heard her. “Ah!” he said, finding what he was looking for and shaking it out as he held it high above his head. “Arm,” he said, holding out his hand for her to place her arm in his care again.

“No! You hurt me! Bad Valka!” she said, as though admonishing a child.

Valka’s brows came down over his eyes again and she thought for a moment she’d made a mistake in calling him bad, but then suddenly he grinned, then laughed boisterously, thoroughly enjoying his mirth at her comment. When finally he was able to get himself under control again, he simply reached out and snatched her arm away from where she was cradling it against her chest again.

“Still,” he ordered, holding her arm with one hand and digging through the cloth strips piled on the ground between them with the other. Scowling he got up and stomped over to the storage spaces again, dug through several more, then came back holding a rough hewn stone bottle with a corked top sealing it. He sat on the ground before her and uncorked the bottle. Upending the bottle he shook some of its contents out into his hand before recorking it and letting it fall to the cave floor beside him. He opened his hands and seemed to count the leaves that had fallen out of the bottle and into his hand.

He looked up at Delia, then at the leaves in his hand. “Delia little,” he murmured, as he removed two of the small leaves from his palm, replacing them in the bottle, then popped the leaves into his mouth and chewed them up five or six times before spitting them in his hand and glaring at her. “Where arm?!” he demanded.

“You hurt me!” she exclaimed.

“Give Valka arm!” he insisted.

He lifted one side of his upper lip in a snarl, clearly displaying his tusks as he leaned toward her.

Quickly Delia held her arm out to him. “Please don’t do what you did before,” she begged.

Valka ignored her while he smeared the slimy chewed leaves onto the gash in her forearm before using a strip of the clothto wrap her arm and keep the leaves on top of the gash. When he was sure he’d sealed the cut with the leaves on top of and inside it, he started looking around the cave, his eyes darting here and there before settling on what looked like a trash heap to the far side of the cave entrance. He got up and went over toward it, stopping to give her a frightening stare. “Arm, there!” he insisted.

“Okay,” Delia answered, having realized he was trying to treat her injuries.

Valka walked out of the cave and disappeared from sight for a few moments, then came back in, grinning as he held a large bone over his head triumphantly. “Valka find!” he said, thoroughly pleased with himself.

“Oh, dear, Lord,” she whispered.

He returned to his place on the ground in front of her and held it up to her arm, judging its size against the length of her arm. Satisfied that it would work, he grabbed her other hand and placed it on the long ago sun-bleached bone, pressing her to hold it against her own arm. Then he took hold of another length of cloth and started wrapping it snugly from her hand, up and around every inch of her arm up to the elbow and down again. When he’d finished the wrapping up and then down again, he tied the two ends together.

He sat back and grinned at her. “Valka fix!”

She looked down at her arm, trying not to think about what kind of bone it was that stabilized her wrist, but had to admit that though it hurt, it didn’t hurt as badly as it had up until this point. Delia nodded. “Yes, you did. Thank you.”

Valka nodded, then gathered all the remaining strips of cloth and carried them over to shove them into the same storage place in the cave wall.

Delia looked down at her arm, trying to open and close her fist a time or two. She ran her fingers over the ends of the clothtied together and it was then that she realized what it was. “This is sail cloth. That’s why it’s so stiff,” she said.

Valka looked at her over his shoulder and shrugged. “Mine.”

Delia looked around the cave. “I would think everything here is yours.”

Valka looked at her with a predatory expression. He lifted an arm to sweep over the cave and everything in it, then ended the wave by jabbing a finger at Delia. “All Valka.”

“I… I am aware,” she said, her voice shaky.

“Strip,” he said.

She looked up at him. “What?”

---