Page 44 of The Tsarina's Favorite
The man set down the leather bag and fabric.He rolled up his sleeves, even in the chill, in preparation for a difficult time.
“Gentle,” he cooed at me.“I’m here to help.”
With only a little difficulty, less because I gave it to him intentionally and more because he exercised excessive caution, he finally snagged the bindings.
I didn’t want to fight aid, even if I wanted to make myself everyone’s problem for the rest of my natural existence, so I held still.The man found the place in my wing and probed at it.I yelped, and he caught me by the shoulder.
“Hold there,” he said, releasing me.“I’ll be but a moment.”
Not having wings in my natural shape, I did not know how they correlated to my old anatomy.Were the wings part of my shoulder blades or my ribs or my spine, or a combination?And now that I had a bullet hole in one of them, I could not determine where the wound might have been on a human body.If by some miracle I escaped this fate, would I have a scar on my back from this?
He grabbed the fabric with his free hand and began wrapping my wing, undoing the bindings as he replaced them with the softer material.
“I don’t have an Aba large enough for you,” he told me as he worked.“We might have to have one made so you don’t hurt yourself.Just be still now.”
As he passed the fabric under a wing, he paused.Then he turned his attention to the two useless people at the enclosure entrance.
“It has arms,” he said to them.
“I know,” answered the guard.“We bound them too.The thing is unnatural.”
“I suppose firebirds, and other Otherland creatures, are, by definition, unnatural.Or perhaps supernatural.”
The man gave me another long examination and passed the back of his hand over his brow.Then he resumed binding my wings until only a small patch around the wound remained visible.With the main task done, the man dug around in his bag and extracted a tool that I did not want anywhere near me.
“I didn’t see a bullet,” he said to me, as if I could understand, which I did, but he didn’t know that.“But I need to clean it.You’re doing so well.”
Despite my apprehension, I set myself to endure.I almost vomited from the pain, but he was deft with his tool and eventually produced a squashed round to show me.
“I’m glad I looked.”He spun it in his fingers.“I don’t know how this will affect your flight —”
I couldn’t fly.I had already tried it.But I appreciated his concern.
“—but we can only do our best, right?”
He might have had a fainting spell if I answered him, so I just looked away.
He tossed the spent bullet into his bag with the tool and retrieved ointment of which he slathered obscene amounts on my wound.
“We can’t have our firebird getting an infection now,” he soothed as he bandaged up the tender area.
“Are you sure it’s a firebird?”the attendant asked.
“I thought the firebird was supposed to be red and gold,” the guard said.“This one is just black.I don’t know that a few bright feathers count as a firebird.”
“Those are all legends,” the man said.“Tell me, have you ever seen another such creature?I certainly haven’t, and I see them all!”
If this man attended all of tsarina’s creatures, then I supposed I could safely assume that she was not hiding hordes of other enchanted princes somewhere on palace grounds.Somehow, knowing I was the only one did not flatter me.
“Maybe, somewhere, there’s still a firebird that looks like the creatures of yore,” he continued as he tied off the fabric.“Maybe deep in the Otherlands.I cannot imagine that Otherland creatures that live in the Mundane Lands look much like their legendary counterparts, if only for survival.How else might this one have eluded us for so long?”
“I suppose that’s true,” observed the guard.
“Maybe,” said the attendant with more skepticism.
“If the tsarina calls it a firebird,” said the man rolling his sleeves down to denote the completion of his work, “I will too.And unless one comes along that looks more like what we expect, there will be nothing to sway my opinion.”He paused.“Unless the tsarina decides to change her mind.”
He was a survivalist too then, having the sense not to contradict the tsarina.That was likely why he had charge of her strange pets.
