Claudio and Delluth: RecoveryCoolth. He could finally feel it again, after what seemed an eternity of fire -- waves of it, burning and twisting throughout his slight body like a nest of malevolent snakes, forcing cries through clenched teeth until his throat was raw. But at last the flames had subsided; only a sullen ember remained, located (he thought, as awareness coalesced further) in his right leg. He could feel cool bedding under him, a cool breeze blowing from somewhere ... probably the garden. The garden... Claudio Barimen opened his eyes and whispered, "Father?" "I'll send for him," an unfamiliar man's voice said. An equally unfamiliar face moved into Claudio's field of view: an ordinary-looking face, with a high forehead topped by brown hair in need of combing. He smiled reassuringly. "But first, can you drink this?" He reached to one side and produced a glass tumbler of straw-colored liquid, then slid his other arm behind Claudio's shoulders to help him sit up. "You need liquids, and there's some medicine in this too. And food, I hope. Are you hungry?" The boy blinked clouded grey eyes at the stranger, confused, but let himself be helped into a sitting position. "Dunno," he mumbled. Then more clearly, but still with a rasp in his light voice, he asked, "Father is all right? It didn't--?" A shudder passed through his thin frame. "He's fine. Drink," the man said firmly. "Your throat is too dry." Claudio took a gulp of the liquid, and gasped. "Hurts." When Claudio had taken a few swallows of the tangy-sweet liquid, he let him rest for a moment. "If you're wondering who I am, I'm Delluth Telutci Corrino. I'm here with Skelton Corrino to look after you. You've been very ill." Claudio's eyes widened. "Corrino? The Imperial House?" "That's us," Delluth agreed. "It's Skelton's name you should be impressed by, though. Take another drink and I'll tell you why. Plus, you should be feeling a little better already." The boy nodded. The tangy liquid had initially stung his sore throat, but that was diminishing. Obediently he took another swallow, then asked, "Why?" "Because he's the greatest expert in poisons in the universe. Or one of the top three, at least," he added with a show of modesty. "That demon you interrupted was quite dangerously poisonous, Claudio. I'm afraid we're not done healing you even yet. But your being properly awake now is a very good thing." "I knew it had to be poisonous," said Claudio. "It was too little to kill somebody otherwise. Where did it get me?" he wanted to know. "You can probably guess," Delluth said soberly. "I'm sure it still hurts. And I wouldn't try to move if I were you." He hesitated, watching to see if the boy would take his advice. "My leg," Claudio said after only a moment's thought. Though he didn't try to move the injured member, he stared intently at the hummock in the bedclothes where it ought to be, and from the expression on his face he was about to uncover and look at it. "Do you think you can hold this glass and sit up on your own? I still need to send for your parents." Momentarily distracted, Claudio said, "I can try." He took the glass carefully in both hands. "Good lad." Carefully, Delluth withdrew his arm from behind Claudio's shoulders. Satisfied that the boy was not going to fall over immediately, he went to the door and spoke to the demon waiting outside. Returning, he urged the boy to finish the drink, refusing to answer any other medical questions. Claudio, thirstier than he'd realized, emptied the glass readily enough, though his arms were trembling with the effort by the time he'd finished. After a few moments, the door opened and Claudio's parents came in, followed by another man he didn't know. Alfonso Barimen went straight to Claudio's bedside, the lines of worry graven into his aquiline face softening a bit when he saw that the boy was awake and aware. "My brave son," he said quietly, putting a hand on Claudio's shoulder. Claudio gave him a wavery smile. Ekaterina Heldt-Barimen, meanwhile, crossed over to Delluth and said, "I have not yet had the chance to thank you for coming, Doctor." "I am honored to be of service, my lady," Delluth said courteously. Skelton Corrino, who had followed the lady, quietly asked, "How's his cognitive function?" As quietly, Delluth answered, "It seems fine. He remembers the incident, or the key parts of it, understands what I say, and follows directions." Ekaterina looked relieved. "What will we need to do, to care for him?" she asked. The two men exchanged glances. "He needs rest and food," Skelton said. "And we need to do more work to heal the wound properly. Or finish healing it, I should say." His long face gave away no particular concern on this point. The slender woman opened her hand, palm up. "Whatever you need to do, any requirements you have, just ask." "We understand, my lady," Delluth replied. In accord, the two Corrinos approached Claudio and his father. The boy was telling Alfonso, "My throat is still scratchy and there's a pain in my leg, and I still feel wobbly, but I'm much better now, Father. The doctor said so." "I'll be sending for some food for you, Claudio," Delluth said. "After you've eaten and rested some more, we'll work on fixing your leg. Tomorrow or the next day, depending on how strong you feel." "I don't feel very strong now," Claudio admitted. "But I think I am getting hungry." He looked up at his mother, who had moved to the bedside and was feeling his forehead. "Can I have--" "You can have what the doctor thinks you should have, my dear," Ekaterina said firmly. "We'll see," Delluth said, while Skelton studied Claudio from beside the bed. "What were you going to ask for, young man?" Claudio peeped up at him. "Batter bread?" "That should be well enough," Delluth said, trying to hide his amusement. "You can even have something sweet on it, if you like." "I like powdered sugar," said Claudio. "And cinnamon?" he tried. "Hmm," he said. "I don't think that will react badly with anything we're giving you." Skelton leaned forward and felt Claudio's pulse, and possibly extended other senses the boy couldn't perceive. "Good," he murmured. "Now I just want to have a look at that wound." The mood in the room changed; Delluth glanced at Alfonso and Ekaterina, silently asking if they wanted to be present for this. Claudio's mother returned him a firm nod. Alfonso looked more hesitant, but nodded also, his hand going to Claudio's shoulder again. Skelton was already moving to uncover the damaged limb, apparently taking everyone's willingness to observe for granted. The gash just below Claudio's knee was puckered, still red and angry-looking, but that was the least of it. The leg was twisted as if giant hands had taken and wrung it out like a washcloth. Claudio's eyes widened and he whimpered a little, looking at it. Alfonso swallowed audibly and his hand tightened on his son's shoulder. The Countess's reaction was a swift intake of breath. "Hmm," Skelton said, gently prodding the flesh of Claudio's thigh. "Can you feel this? This? Tell me if it hurts ..." He examined the whole leg this way, attempted to flex the knee and ankle, and finally straightened. "Well, there's clearly a lot of work to do here. Delluth, do you have the new poultice -- good," he said, as his fellow doctor handed over a fragrant piece of folded bandage. He placed this over the wound, ignoring Claudio's hiss at the stinging sensation, and the two doctors quickly bound it in place. "He needs to stay warm and rest," the senior man went on, while Delluth twitched the blanket back over the tortured limb. "We'll start therapy as soon as he's up to it, hopefully in a day or two." "Are you going to untwist it?" Claudio wanted to know. "That's the plan," Delluth said firmly. "But you need to build your strength up, because your body has to do a lot of the work, too." "I can eat a lot of batter bread," Claudio suggested ingenuously. "And I'm sure you can fit in a few more nutritious things along with it," Delluth retorted, not quite smiling. A week later, Delluth took gentle hold of Claudio's ankle and spoke as calmly as if this was the first repetition instead of the twentieth. "As I turn your leg, imagine your flesh and bone loosening and turning with the pressure, flowing back toward its original state." Just as he had the other twenty times, the boy squeezed his eyes shut, compressed his lips, and tried hard to imagine it. Claudio had a good imagination, and in his mind's eye he could see it, picture it so clearly... but that didn't seem to be helping. After several moments, Delluth sighed and let go, sitting back on the stool he had dragged next to the bed. "I know we've gotten all the poison out," he said. "It must be that you're so young to have shapeshifting triggered. Let's try something else. I can let you watch me shapeshift, so you have a better idea of what it feels like. But that will require close mental contact, which I'm sure you know isn't something you permit lightly." Claudio nodded. "Yes, I know that. I've watched Pavlo practice sometimes." Pavlo was Claudio's older brother, who was going through combat training. "He's good." "Well," he said, "if you're willing to give this a try?" "Yes," Claudio said. "I'd like to see." He moved off the stool and, for some reason, crouched on the floor beside the bed. "Just put your hand on mine. Good. Now I'm going to try to show you what it feels like to shift. I remember how tricky it seemed when I was first learning, like trying to focus on something between my eyes ..." He had stopped speaking aloud. Claudio had a sense of a presence much larger than himself, cool and disciplined. No thoughts intruded except the words Delluth was using to describe what he was going to do. Delluth in turn could sense a spirit quick and lively, unformed as yet but sparking with intelligence and curiosity. Whatever the problem was, lack of mental flexibility wasn't it. Claudio closed his eyes, and slowly began to feel what the man's body was feeling: the slight strain in leg muscles from crouching, Claudio's hand gripping his own--and at the same time, his own hand touching Delluth's. His concentration wavered. Delluth spoke soothingly, and he got used to the division quickly enough to earn approval. Now he was going to begin the shift. And it was a flowing thing, a loosening, overlaid by direction and purpose, as everything in his/Delluth's body moved and changed. When it finished, Delluth gently broke the contact. Claudio opened his eyes, which confirmed the impression he already had: the doctor had changed into the form of a dog, a large one, deep brick red in color. His hand was now resting on a paw. Delluth dropped down onto all fours beside the bed and shook himself. "All right, Claudio?" he said. Claudio laughed. "You make a nice dog," he said. "Thank you," he said with dignity, then sighed. "I always want to start running when I'm in this form," he remarked. "But I'll need my hands." First, though, he sniffed the air for a moment; then he sat, and a few moments later had become human again. "Let's try one more time, then give it a rest," he said. "All right," Claudio agreed at once. "I might be able to do it this time after watching you." He cocked his head at Delluth. "Maybe you should watch me to make sure I'm doing it right," he suggested. "I think that's more likely to distract you," the doctor said. "No two people really do the same thing exactly the same way, and my way might not work for you." He resumed his seat near Claudio's foot and took hold of the limb again. "All right, one more time..." This time, instead of just trying to picture the leg untwisting, Claudio remembered the loosening and flow he'd sensed earlier and tried to do that. Maybe if he started from the other end... Giggling a little inside himself, he imagined standing on the toe of the twisted foot and twirling like a dancer until it came straight. Something was happening. He could feel his body tingle, taking on fluidity like heated glass awaiting the shaper's tool... ...all except for the twisted leg, which remained stubbornly, sullenly unchanged. Delluth, monitoring the boy's surface thoughts and feelings, leaned forward attentively. Then, as the moments passed, he frowned. "Claudio!" he said. "Stop. Look at me!" Claudio's eyes popped open. "What is it? It's not coming, is it?" "I could see you were starting to shift," Delluth said, "but it didn't seem to be affecting your leg. Is that right?" Claudio nodded. "That's what it felt like to me," he said. A thoughtful frown creased his young face. "I think it's stuck." The doctor patted Claudio's ankle and sat back, rubbed his chin, and sighed. "I think it could be--traumatic--if part of you didn't shift with the rest. So now I have to advise you not to try shifting." He smiled crookedly. "I'm sorry about all the effort. But at least we know you could do it." "How did it get stuck?" Claudio wanted to know. "Did the poison do that?" "Say it was a combination of the poison and our efforts to keep the poison from killing you. One of the problems, Claudio, is that we know very little about how these poisons affect children. Poisoning children just isn't done. There have been accidents before, of course, but none we know of with exactly this kind of poison." He paused, wondering how much of an explanation the boy would understand. "Anyway, one of its effects is to retard shapeshifting, and I'm sure that has something to do with the damage it did. But we don't really understand why. And that makes it effectively impossible to know how to undo it." The boy listened attentively, then was silent for awhile, apparently thinking over Delluth's explanation. At last he said quietly, "At least it doesn't hurt anymore." "Definitely an improvement," Delluth agreed, keeping to himself the fact that the absence of pain was one of the things that worried him. "Now, do you feel strong enough to get up today?" The doctors both seemed to think that lying in bed all the time was bad for a person. Claudio shared that opinion and was quick to answer in the affirmative. "... so there's nothing more we can do at this time," Skelton Corrino said briskly. "Or I should say, while we could conduct a lengthy series of experiments to try to find something that would help, that would be uncomfortable for him at best, painful and dangerous at worst." Nobody said and expensive, but the thought was unmistakably in the air. House Barimen's resources had been stretched already to bargain for Claudio's care, and while that hadn't been begrudged... "You've already done the most important thing," Ekaterina said firmly. "Our son is alive." Skelton looked gratified. Delluth said, carefully, "In the long term ... when he's older--much older--he might choose to have the damaged limb amputated, and then learn enough of shapeshifting to regenerate it. It is our belief that such a regenerated limb should be healthy. But it isn't, of course, something to undertake lightly, and certainly not while he's a child." "No, certainly not," Alfonso replied, looking a bit green. "In the meantime," Skelton continued, "we advise that he not try to shift. He retains the ability overall, but since the limb itself won't change, we're not sure what would happen. Experiments in this area are, frankly, not recommended." Claudio's parents exchanged a worried glance. "That will be difficult," said Alfonso. "I cannot imagine his not wanting to, as he gets older." "We shall have to give him something else to occupy his mind," said Ekaterina. "That shouldn't be too hard," Delluth said, smiling. "I'm impressed by how well he is coping with this." "He's a brave boy," Alfonso said with a touch of pride. "And quick-minded," added Ekaterina. "Keeping him occupied in that way may be more difficult than you think. But I'm sure we can get his brothers and sisters to help. That might be one way to keep Lovisa out of trouble," she added dryly. Skelton straightened in his seat, prepatory to rising, as soon as his hosts should do so. "Then we're done here, I think, my lord and lady." Alfonso and Ekaterina rose. "Thank you again, Doctors both," said Alfonso, while Ekaterina moved to give an order to one of the house demons. "Claudio will want to say his farewells," she told the doctors. "And medical instructions might come better from you." It wasn't long before Claudio came into the room. He still looked thin and drawn, though his eyes were bright, and a shaggy creature about the size of a large dog (though it was a vivid purple, had horns, and its eyes were the size of teacups) walked by his side, supporting him. Learning to walk with the stiff, twisted leg was a process he'd only just started. "The doctors are going home now, Claudio," his mother told him. The boy straightened and looked up at Skelton and Delluth. "Goodbye, then, Doctors," he said, "and ... and thank you." "You're welcome, young man," Skelton said, his tone a little too hearty. Delluth had crouched down to talk to the boy at his own level. "You'll remember, Claudio, it's important that you not hurt yourself by accident. So, no shapeshifting, and be careful not to hurt the leg if you can possibly avoid it. And you have to tell your parents immediately if anything changes with it, even if it doesn't hurt, so we can make sure it's not a problem." "Can you do all that?" Skelton put in. "Yes, sir," Claudio answered readily, looking from Delluth to Skelton and back. "Good," Delluth said, and reached out to give Claudio's shoulder a gentle squeeze before standing up again. Another of the house demons was waiting to show them out. |
