"I'm holding its head."
"Axan?"
"Little busy."
She looks at the trap, looks at the release lever, wraps both hands around it and pulls.
The jaws loosen and the bear convulses—every muscle at once. My grip slips and I wrench it back, and the trap falls open and the leg drops free. The bear thrashes so hard Axan gets thrown sideways. He rolls, comes back, pins the shoulder again. Blood running down my forearm, dripping.
"Hold him." Melori's hands are on the leg now and the wound is—I can see it from here. Crushed. Infected. Skin split to the bone. She pours water over it and the bear bucks against us.
"I know," she tells it. "I know. I'm sorry. Almost done."
Kestria passes her a fistful of packed herbs and Melori takes them without looking, her hands in the wound—cleaning, draining, packing. The bear's head thrashes against my grip and its eye rolls, white and wild and terrified. I press harder, close enough to feel its breath. Hot and rank and desperate.
Claws catch Axan's ribs. He grunts, doesn't move. Blood spreads across his shirt.
"Mel." Through my teeth. "Faster."
"Don't rush me."
Holding a bear's head to the ground, bleeding from both arms, and she's telling me not to rush her.
Kestria tears a strip of cloth and hands it over, and Melori wraps the leg—fast, tight, practiced. Same hands. Wolves, stew, that damn chicken. Now a bear.
"Okay." She sits back and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand, blood smearing across her hairline. "Okay. Let him go."
"Back up first," I tell her.
She scrambles back. Kestria with her. Axan and I reset our grip, put the trap and the open ground between the bear and the women.
"Now."
We release and shove off the shoulder at the same time, jumping clear, and the bear is up before we land. It twists, staggers, and runs—hard, fast, crashing through the underbrush away from us, the freed leg dragging and catching and propelling it anyway. Not a look. Not a pause. Just gone.
Silence.
My ears ring and my forearms burn, blood dripping off my fingers into the dirt. Three parallel lines on the left arm, two on the right.
Axan sits against the nearest tree, winded, one hand pressed against his ribs where the claws caught him. His shirt is dark with it. He looks at the blood, looks at me, shakes his head.
Kestria is still on her knees and her hands are shaking, her eyes going from the trap to Melori to me.
Melori stands up and wipes her hands on her dress. Blood, dirt, herb paste, bear. Her sleeves are soaked and her braid has come half undone. She looks at my arms and her face changes.
"You're bleeding."
She steps toward me.
I don't step back.
I want to. Everything in my body wants to. But Axan is watching and Kestria is watching and Melori is a healer offering to do what healers do, and refusing her here would be louder than anything I've said all day.
"Let me see."
I hold out my arms.
She takes my wrist. Her fingers are cool and steady and covered in bear. My pulse is not steady. I can feel it kicking against her fingertips and I know she can feel it too because she pauses, just a half-second, before she turns my arm to the light.
