






                             WOUNDS
                                
                          Watts Martin




  "Got you, you little bastard."
  The fox yelped in terror, whipping its head around frantically
to bite at the clawed hand that had grabbed it; then, as the pain
from the claws sunk into its gut began to register, the yelp
became a long, heart-rending howl of anguish.
  "Shut up," its captor hissed, wrapping her other hand around
its muzzle.  Most anyone else would have been bitten, but the
zoomorphic bat was faster and far stronger than the little
animal.  She lifted it to her mouth, tilting its head back to
expose the neck, and sank her teeth into the flesh.
  Then her right hand, the one around the fox's jaws, began to
send shooting pains through her arm.  She felt like yelling at
it: you call this exertion?  Instead she relented on her strained
muscles and dropped the hand to her side.  The fox immediately
resumed howling, now with a frantic desperation, and she was
forced to listen to its death cries as she drank.
  It was over in a half-minute; there was very little blood
inside the animal.  At this rate--one or two minuscule meals a
night--she would starve before reaching her destination.
  Jemara sighed and threw the animal's body to the ground,
picking up her small pack.  Oh, she missed the bed, the old,
rickety bed that she and Revar had broken half the springs on, a
shattered headboard that served as a silent reminder of the first
night they made love--and of the night after, which Revar still
didn't want to talk about.  But she couldn't have stood staying
there being babied; that chocolate-colored idiot would have just
gotten herself fired eventually, spending more time taking care
of (she swallowed) an invalid than working, and then where would
they be?
  But she missed the bed.
  Tears started to well up in her eyes, and she kicked the dead
fox as if they were the little creature's fault and trudged on.

                             *  *  *
                                
  She woke up the next sunset and tried to flex her right
shoulder, as always.  Instead of its now customary dull throb, it
sent shooting pains through her entire body, and she bit back a
scream.  Trying to unfold the wing didn't hurt as much, but it
simply stopped when it was half-open, looking even more sadly
crumpled than yesterday.
  Cursing loudly, she checked her compass and maps.  It was still
a good hundred and fifty miles to Raneadhros.  Jemara examined
the wing joints, the mass of scrapes and scars--and tears--along
its near section.  She had reflexively raised it like a cloak
when they had started pounding on her.  It had kept her ribs
intact, but at the price of her flight.  Permanently.  Death
might have been kinder.
  Maybe with her gone, Revar would have gotten up off her cute
butt and gone after the shits.  Knowing they had all died
wouldn't make her wing heal, but it would make her feel better.
Even if Revar wouldn't be nearly as slow about it as they
deserved.
  After a moment, she stomped forward.  The effort sent more
pains throughout her body.  This time she sighed, and continued
walking with a slow caution that left her unaccountably close to
tears.
  She knew chasing the rabbit a few hours after midnight, well
into a dense forest, could prove a mistake, but she didn't know
how serious of one it would be.
  Jemara crept up on the animal as stealthily as she could,
getting within arm's length before it saw her.  It froze--until
she took another step forward.
  When she lunged the rabbit took off.  Cursing, she raced after
it, beginning to pump her arms as she built up speed.  But this
time when she raised her right arm she screamed in pain,
stumbling.  She managed two steps before falling nose-first and
rolling onto her right side.
  Not sure if the breaking noises were real or imagined, Jemara
screamed once more, trying to stand.  She braced herself on her
left arm and pushed up; it simply put pressure on her right
shoulder.  The other arm didn't want to move at all.
  She tilted her head to look at her feet and realized her left
one was bent and bleeding.  She couldn't see whatever had tripped
her, but it must have been a hell of a root.  Unless she had
managed to do that all on her own.
  The bat groaned, trying to collect her thoughts.  After a
moment a single clear one remained in her mind.  It was, /you are
going to die here./
  Jemara laughed weakly, closing her eyes.  She was not surprised
to taste blood running from her nose into her mouth; there was
something fitting about the idea of bleeding to death.
  When she felt something suspiciously resembling hands begin to
poke at her she was almost resentful.
  She opened her eyes and looked up.  The figure poking at her
was a human female.  She groaned a bit.  That was all she needed.
A fucking human.  Hell, she had taken this route to Raneadhros
because she wanted to be /away/ from everyone--
  The woman touched her shoulder, tracing a hand across the wing,
and Jemara winced.
  "This is not from your fall," she said after a moment, her
voice low and as hard as ice.
  The bat tried to reply but couldn't make her voice work.  /I
know that, shitbrain,/ she thought angrily.  /It was from someone
trying to kill me slowly.  I bet they'd be happy it took this
long to finally work.  Get the FUCK away from me and let me die!/
  But instead the human put her hands under Jemara.  "I am going
to pick you up," she announced unnecessarily.
  "Bitch!" Jemara forced out as she was lifted into the air,
beating at the woman with her left hand.  Even in her weakened
state the blows should have been enough to make the damn human
drop her and run away screaming, but instead her unwanted rescuer
placidly walked forward with the bat in her arms.
  "When you are a bit more rested you may explain what you were
doing on my land," the woman said softly as she carried the bat
along.
  "Well, that'll be a /big/ damn thrill," Jemara said clearly,
before the protests from all her muscles drowned out the rest of
her senses.
  For the next half hour the world was a haze, her vision a
dizzying collage of trees, stars and glimpses of the woman's
rough burlap shirt, its dullness blindingly bright against
Jemara's coal-black fur.  She had never liked the smell of
humans, and this one had a stronger musk than most.  Jemara kept
considering reaching up and removing the woman's throat before
she took her to wherever they were going, but she couldn't
concentrate long enough to decide whether it was really worth the
effort.
  Then the woman kneeled, and gently set the bat down.  Jemara
grunted in pain, but realized she was lying on something soft.
The human left her field of vision, then came back and started
poking at the injured wing again.
  "That is more serious," she said as Jemara held back a yelp of
pain.  "The foot is not."  The hands moved down to the injured
foot, and there was a sharp wrench.  Jemara screamed, hissing at
the woman, and struggled to sit up.
  "Hold still," the woman commanded, as if she found nothing
disturbing about a five foot tall vampire bat preparing to attack
her.
  Jemara stopped her struggles when she realized the human was
healing the wound.
  She watched, dumbfounded, as the flesh under the woman's hands
began to meld back together.  The healing was not painless--she
had always imagined such magic would be cool and soothing, but it
was more like someone jabbing a hot poker under her fur.  /I'm
not going to scream again,/ she repeated silently, clenching her
teeth.
  After it was over the human was sweating and breathing heavily,
and the foot felt worse than ever.  As Jemara leaned over to
examine it, the healer reached up and touched her nose.  There
was a sharp sting.  Jemara shook her head and looked over at her
self-appointed savior.
  "You will need to rest without putting weight on the joint for
the night."  The woman sat back, squatting a few feet away from
the bat.  "I am not often up this late in the evening.  This was
good luck tonight.  You might have injured yourself further in
the meantime if I had found you a day from now."
  Jemara remained silent.  There was very little to say, really;
the part of her that would have preferred to die kept her from
feeling gratitude.
  Another part of her was concentrating on the smell of the
woman's blood.  If she had seen the human first, had run into her
before the damned rabbit, she could have gone without feeding for
almost a week.  And the woman... might have lived.  She knew if
she sprang from here she could grab the human before she had a
chance to react.
  Instead Jemara remained silent and unmoving, wondering wryly if
even she was vile enough to feed on someone who had just saved
her life.  Even if she hadn't wanted to be saved.
  "I cannot heal your wing without rest.  And without study."
The woman moved back to sit on a blanket next to the one Jemara
was sitting up on.  "Go to sleep, winged one.  I have questions
to ask of you when you are alert."
  Jemara watched, dumbfounded, as the woman stretched out on the
blanket and promptly fell asleep.
  "Why not just tattoo 'Eat Me' across your forehead?" she
whispered hoarsely at the healer.  But the human's eyes were
closed, and she made no response.
  The bat lay down, carefully folding her wings across her
stomach, and stared up at the stars through the tree branches
overhead.  "So I'm not attacking her," she whispered.  "Would you
be proud of me?"
  She didn't remember falling asleep; she woke up to the sun
sinking into the forest and a gnawing in her stomach.
  "You sleep as if you were dead," the human's voice said from
behind her.  Jemara sat up as the woman stepped around her and
sat down on the blanket facing her.
  "It's our way," the bat replied curtly, looking away.  "The
wings lock so we don't roll over and accidentally hurt them."
  "Oh."  The woman was silent for far too short a time.  "What
are you doing out here?"
  "Travelling to Raneadhros."
  "Roads are far easier than wilderness."
  Jemara snorted.  "I would hardly have been welcome on the roads
in Rionar."
  "Why?"
  At that, Jemara did look at the healer.  The woman's lined face
was still hard, bright black eyes set under closely cropped dark
hair playing counterpoint to oddly fair skin, and the bat
realized she was asking because she truly didn't know.  "You
don't know what I am, do you?"
  "A Derysi."
  She frowned.  "A what?"
  "It is a faerie word for an animal that looks as much like you
as a fox looks like a Vraini."
  "I've never been called that."
  "What are you normally called?"
  "Bitch."  Jemara chuckled at the woman's blank expression. "I'm
a vampire bat."
  The woman nodded.  "A Derysi," she repeated, as if Jemara had
just confirmed it.
  "Whatever."  The bat rubbed at her eyes tiredly.  "Let me spell
this out for you.  To me you are a prey animal.  If I had seen
you instead of the rabbit last night I would have been chasing
you."  She smiled unpleasantly.  "You have a lot more blood and
aren't nearly as quick."
  "Oh," the woman said again, looking less shocked than
nonplussed.  "Does that bother you?"
  "No, not particularly.  Should it?"
  "You can answer that better than I."
  "If I wanted more sermons I would have stayed with--"  Jemara
caught herself, shaking with anger.  "Look," she continued
tightly, "I didn't ask you to save me.  For what it's worth, I
think I'm grateful.  But I am /not/ willing to get into a
discussion of vampire ethics with you."
  "All right," the woman said, her tone reasonable.  "Are you
going to feed on me?"
  "I don't think so," she muttered, turning away.  "Even though
I'm fucking starving."
  "Do you have a name?"
  "Of course I have a name," Jemara snapped.  She /could/ still
feed on the woman.  But she didn't know if she had the will
necessary to attack someone begging for mercy on a first-name
basis.  "Jemara," she said after a minute, closing her eyes.
  "I am Dynral.  Jemara, I am aware you do not owe me an
explanation for your presence here.  It is obvious you are
running from something rather than running toward Raneadhros;
when you are ready to say what you need to, I will listen."  She
stood up.  "When you have had something to eat I can look more
closely at your wing, unless you do not wish me to attempt a
healing of it."
  "Why would you do that?" Jemara whispered after a moment.
  "Because it needs healing," Dynral said simply.  "Whatever you
call yourself, you were obviously meant to fly.  In this
condition you cannot.  Any wound that prevents one from doing
what they were meant to cannot be ignored by a healer.  Will a
coyote be sufficient?"
  "A... what?"
  "A coyote.  For you to feed on.  It is the largest animal I
think I can catch and bring back."
  "Yes," the bat mumbled.  "That... would be fine."
  The human nodded and moved away from what Jemara realized was
her campsite, walking with a grace and silence unusual in a
human.  When she was out of sight the bat shook her head in
bewilderment, closing her eyes again.

                             *  *  *
                                
  Dynral watched her feed on the coyote with an intensity that
made Jemara downright nervous.  The animal was bigger than a fox,
certainly, but she wasn't completely satisfied even after
draining all the blood it had.
  When she had finished, Dynral picked up the cooling corpse and
closed its eyes.  "I shall bury her before morning."
  "You could just eat it yourself."
  "I do not eat meat."  The human set the coyote down on the edge
of the "camp"--little more than the two blankets themselves,
along with each woman's packs and the remains of a campfire--and
walked back to sit beside Jemara, this time on the same blanket.
  "What did you mean when you said you knew I was running from
something?"
  "It shows."
  "And what is it, then?"  Jemara made no effort to keep the
sarcasm from her voice.
  "You will have to tell me," Dynral replied.
  Jemara grunted.  "I can't imagine a less appealing prospect
than baring my soul to a madwoman."
  Dynral's expression retained the same placid inscrutability it
had since she had picked up the bat the night before; Jemara
swallowed uncomfortably.  Perhaps this was what other people felt
the first time they stared into her own monochrome eyes.  "Why do
you believe I am mad?" the healer asked after a moment.
  "A sane person wouldn't be living out here in the middle of
nowhere."  She snorted.  "Because you called this 'your land.'
It's a fucking /forest./  Unless you're as rich as you are insane
this is no more your land than it is mine."
  "I care for this land.  Do you?"
  "Not really."
  "Then it is more my land than it is yours."
  Jemara chuckled softly.  "All right, fine."
  Dynral folded her hands in her lap.  "If I am going to heal
your wing, Jemara, I would like to know what caused the
injuries."
  The bat drew back a little, studying the healer.  "Pipes."
  "Pipes?" Dynral repeated, raising her eyebrows.
  "Yes, pipes," Jemara replied, imitating the woman's maddeningly
calm tone.  "Two people beat me with pipes."
  "Oh."  For a second Dynral's eyes registered pain, followed by
anger.  "You may have far more serious injuries inside," she
said, touching Jemara's stomach with a finger.  "Why did you not
seek help in Rionar?"
  "Because I didn't want to," she hissed, slapping Dynral's hand
away.  "I'll be fine."
  "You will never fly again.  That is not 'fine.'  You may very
well have wounds inside that will kill you in another week, or
another month.  The infection in your shoulder alone might do
that."
  "Revar cleaned my shoulder," Jemara said, her voice petulant.
  "It has been reinfected on your journey, then."  Dynral stroked
her own chin.  "Someone did take care of the injury."
  "Yes," Jemara sighed.
  "A friend?"
  "My lover."
  "Oh."  Dynral continued stroking her chin.  "Why are you not
still with him?"
  "The reason I'm not still with /her/ is none of your business,"
she snapped.
  "No, it is not," Dynral said, raising her eyebrows and falling
silent.  At length, though, she spoke again.  "I do not believe
you are headed toward a meeting of life-or-death importance in
Raneadhros."
  "What's your point?"
  "That you are being stupid," the human replied levelly.
  Jemara narrowed her eyes, growling in the back of her throat.
  "I am sure I could not stop you from killing me if you chose,"
she continued, locking her gaze to Jemara's.  "But doing that
before I healed your wing would be even more stupid than
travelling with such an injury was in the first place.  A chance
to regain your flight should be more important than the temporary
satisfaction gained by gutting me."
  "Don't call me stupid," Jemara muttered after a moment, looking
away.
  "I did not.  I said you were behaving stupidly.  You left
someone who was caring for you to travel, by foot, across three
hundred miles of wilderness knowing you could not hunt adequately
when your species must hunt to survive."
  "I had to leave," Jemara said curtly.
  Dynral grunted, then reached up and turned the bat around,
starting to prod around the wounds.  "This will take most of my
energy," she said after a moment.  "You will need to bathe first.
Follow me to the river."
  It was less than four minutes' walk to the "river," little more
than a clear stream.  Dynral promptly started to undress; Jemara
watched in some surprise.  Most humans she had met were terribly
self-conscious about nudity.  Jemara had actually started this
cross-country trip unclothed, but had switched back to her shorts
and half-top after a few branches hit in her in exceedingly
sensitive areas--and, after one night, learning that walking
twenty miles bare-breasted was a much less comfortable
proposition than flying two hundred miles in the nude was.
  After Jemara had removed her own clothes and stepped into the
water, she looked back at Dynral.  As she had expected, there was
little fat on the woman, her chest and hips slimmer than her own
even though the human had over half again as much body mass.  She
was ruggedly handsome, but almost certainly had never met her own
species' narrow ideals of beauty.  Then, with a shock, she
noticed a web of purpling bruises covered one of Dynral's
shoulders.
  The human followed the bat's gaze and seemed to smile without
moving her lips, then turned away.  Jemara sucked in her breath.
When the healer had first picked her up, and she had pounded at
her in fury--she had believed she must have been too weak to
cause any damage, since the human hadn't even flinched.
  She swallowed, hard, and continued bathing herself
mechanically, feeling numb.
  Neither one of them spoke until Jemara was sitting, still nude,
in front of Dynral, who had clothed herself in a loose robe.
"This will almost certainly hurt," the human said quietly,
placing her hands on Jemara's injured shoulder.
  But it didn't, at first.  A warm, not entirely pleasant
tingling began under her fur, and it spread deep inside, seeming
to settle somewhere in her chest just above her stomach.  The
human's breathing slowed, and the tingling increased, changing to
pinpricks.
  "Oh," Dynral said, her voice registering surprise for the first
time since Jemara had met her.  The bat closed her eyes, deciding
this was not at all a good time for the healer to become
emotional.
  Suddenly the pinpricks moved.  The image Jemara formed was that
of a firework she had seen, a shell that exploded into hundreds
of flaming embers.  This time it had gone off inside her rib
cage, and the embers were ricocheting around her chest.  She
gasped, then clenched her teeth to keep from screaming.
  The fire passed around her ribs, slowing down to an agonizing
crawl, and she felt it intensify.  Dynral's breathing was
becoming ragged, and her hands trembled on the bat's shoulder.
  Then the embers moved up toward the injured wing, and the human
gently lifted Jemara's arm.  The sparks expanded into something
else, a hot liquid trying to push its way out of her body by
force, and Jemara felt tears of pain forming in her eyes.
  She could feel how badly Dynral's hands were shaking now, how
labored the human's breathing was.  She knew healers charged as
much for their services as they did because such magic was
intimately tied to the magician's own life.  In a Rionar hospital
they would have had two healers on a case like this.
  Before she could complete the thought, there was a final burst
of brilliant, searing pain, and the hands on her arm fell away.
She tried to turn around, to see what had happened, but she
couldn't move, her muscles refusing to respond.  So Jemara sat
quietly, an unnamed, sick fear beginning to take the place of the
agony in her shoulder, and whimpered, feeling as helpless as she
had when her attackers had beaten her two weeks ago.
  The sun had almost set when the healing had begun.  By the time
Jemara could move, there was only starlight, the forest now
shaded in the blue-grays of her night vision.  She turned around.
  Dynral was stretched out behind her, her awkward position
suggesting she had collapsed at the healing's end.  She was
unconscious, her breath coming unevenly and shallowly; when
Jemara concentrated, she could hear the human's heartbeat, and
knew it was irregular.
  "Idiot!" Jemara hissed, beginning to tremble.  "If you've
killed yourself--I'll--if you've killed yourself for me I'll...."
Then her voice broke, and she lay down next to Dynral, her head
on the human's stomach, and wept.
  She had no idea how long she remained there before she became
aware of Dynral's hand gently stroking the back of her neck.
Jemara sat bolt upright, pushing the human's arm away, and stared
down at her, shaking with a rage she did not understand.
  "Are you angry with me for healing you?" Dynral whispered,
slowly sitting up to face the bat.
  "I'm angry with you for being a fool!" Jemara spat back.  "You
could have died.  It wasn't worth the risk!"
  "You are not?"
  "No, I'm not!" she yelled furiously.  Then she realized what
she had just said, and her eyes widened.  "I... I mean...."  Her
voice became higher, like a little girl's, and tears started to
pool in her eyes.
  "That is what you are running from," Dynral said softly.
  "Revar cared that much," Jemara choked, closing her eyes and
letting the tears flow.  "And she /loved/ me."
  "And you did not believe you deserved it."  Dynral's arms were
around Jemara, holding her gently.
  "I don't want a confessor," the bat sniffed, trying to bring
her voice back to her customary bitterness but unable to keep it
from sounding lost and miserable.  "I've heard all the sermons.
I've already heard that you have to care about yourself before
you can care about others.  I don't need--"
  The human placed a hand over Jemara's mouth, quieting her.
"Then you heard wrong, winged one.  I believed you cared about
Revar deeply.  But I think you cannot bear to have another care
about you."
  "I don't /want/ anyone to care about me!  I'm...."  She
shivered.  "If I had fed on you and killed you I wouldn't have
felt any regret.  Do you understand that?  I would have just left
your body to rot.  I wouldn't have...."  She felt her throat
closing up, and gulped.  "I wouldn't have even shown you the
same... the same respect you did for the c-c-coyote--"  The word
became a wracking sob.
  "You have much healing left to do, Jemara," Dynral whispered,
stroking softly through the fur on her shoulder.  "But your
wounds are not ones my magic can mend."
  "It's not a fucking injury," the bat gasped through her tears.
"It's the way I am."
  "Jemara.  Look at me."  Dynral lifted the bat's face up to
hers.  "Was your Revar also a Derysi?"
  She nodded.
  "Was she an evil person?"
  Jemara narrowed her eyes.  "Don't you ever--"  Then she let out
her breath.  "She was the most wonderful person I've ever met."
  "Then being a bat does not make one evil."  Dynral leaned
closer, so her nose was almost touching Jemara's.  "I do not know
anything about Revar except how much you loved her, and I know
very little about you.  But if you are telling the truth now,
then why would a person as wonderful as that love you in return?"
  "I don't know," Jemara whispered.
  "I don't, either," Dynral said, smiling slightly.  "Perhaps she
sees something you do not."
  Jemara looked down, closing her eyes.
  "What do you hope to find in Raneadhros, child?"
  The bat shook her head.  "I'm not sure.  But I can't go back to
Rionar."
  "Why is that?"
  "Because...."  She swallowed.  "Because I think there's
something I need to do without Revar's help."  Then she sagged
against the human.  "I just wish I knew what it was."
  They stayed together, holding one another, for long minutes,
until Jemara's breathing had returned to normal.
  "When you get to Raneadhros and do what you feel you must,
promise me you will let your Revar know you are still alive,"
Dynral said.  "She must certainly believe otherwise by now."
  Jemara nodded faintly.  Dynral patted her on the back and
started to lift the bat out of her lap, but Jemara squeaked in
protest, and the human looked at her in surprise.
  "Uh...."  She felt her ears start to burn in embarrassment.
"Will you hold me?  Until I fall asleep?"
  "I would be honored," Dynral replied, her voice serious.  She
gently lay Jemara out on the blanket, letting the bat fold her
wings around herself, then cuddled against her, cradling her
furry head against her shoulder.  Jemara made a happy, half-
purring noise, and closed her eyes.
  When she woke up the next afternoon she was alone.  The other
blanket and Dynral's pack--and the coyote--were gone, with no
trace left to suggest they had ever existed.
  But her wing was healed.
  Jemara sat in the sunlight, staring at the trees around her,
trying to decide what to do.
  Revar's angst had always infuriated her.  She had had no
patience for the doomed romanticism of the other bat's self-
image, her constant struggle to reconcile the overwhelming
instinct to feed on other sapients, uncaring of their lives, with
a desperate desire to be a "good person."  Despite her avowed
distaste for Jemara's vigilantism, Revar had been the main reason
she had tried to limit herself to criminals.  But even that
wasn't really good enough for Revar; she didn't want Jemara to
take /any/ pleasure in what she was.
  But what had she really been taking pleasure in?
  "I don't know how to care about myself, Revar," she said aloud.
"And I've been amoral all my life."  /And I only now realized
that "amoral" is just a word people use when they don't want to
admit they're being evil,/ she continued silently.  /Even though
I think you've been trying to tell me that since we met./
  Whatever she needed to learn, Revar would be unable to teach
her.  If she hadn't learned yet, she wasn't going to learn it
there.
  But maybe she'd be able to learn it--somehow--after all.
  Finally she stood and picked up her pack, strapping it to her
back.  Crouching down, she extended her wings completely, the
wingtips touching the ground, and looked up.  It was a hell of a
tight space to aim at for someone who hadn't flown in two weeks.
  Jemara cleared the treetops with only inches to spare, and it
took her almost a minute to stabilize herself, cursing a constant
stream until she gained altitude.  Then she made a wide circle,
looking vainly for Dynral.
  "Good-bye," she called softly to the forest below.  She knew
the human had no chance of hearing her--but she would not have
been surprised at all if the healer had heard it nonetheless.
  When she completed the circle she pushed upward, climbing
toward the clouds, and banked in the direction of Raneadhros.
Flying, she would be there before sunset.

                                             [6/7/92, 4800 words]
