“I can be strong, Aunt Abi,” Taimin said in a small voice.
Abi’s lips thinned. “I’ve been thinking about this long and hard. I see strength in you, but you’re a dreamer, and you’ve got a sensitive side. You’re also a cripple.” She gave him a firm stare. “At any rate, I don’t think your future is for me to decide.”
Taimin watched his aunt’s face and felt a chill. The last time she had asked him to make a choice she had left him at the firewall. “Decide?”
“I won’t live forever and you might be better off surrounded by other people. The journey would be tough—you have no idea how tough—but I can take you to a larger group of settlers, if that’s what you want.”
Taimin swallowed. He realized that the choice he was being asked to make was momentous. He remembered dangling on the rope as he gazed out from the cliff and wondered about the lands that lay out of view. In that moment, he had thought that his parents were too cautious. More than anything, he had wanted to meet other people.
But then he had met other people . . . ruthless men who had killed his parents.
Something snagged in his memory. “The rovers . . . They asked Father about a white city . . .”
Abi’s face curled in a scowl. “There is no city, boy. It’s a myth. People live in caves and homesteads. Well? Do you want to go? You might be too young to think about finding love, but you won’t stay young. There might be someone out there compassionate enough to love a cripple. It’s unlikely, but sometimes people fit together and we don’t know why. There’s no chance of it at all out here.”
Taimin longed to find other people, but he didn’t want his aunt to abandon him forever. He didn’t know what was out there, and he was afraid. “I want to stay with you. You don’t have to get rid of me.”
“We’ll see,” Abi said. She nodded. “You’ve made your choice, then.” She inspected him and frowned. “Stand tall.”
Taimin straightened but gave an involuntary wince of pain. Abi looked at his crutch and then, without warning, reached forward and pulled it out from under him. He nearly fell before he managed to right himself.
“It’s been six months,” she growled. “By now your bones have knitted together into some sort of blasted arrangement. The healing is done. I’ve got bad news for you, boy. Whatever you feel now is what you’re going to feel for the rest of your life.”
Abi broke the crutch over her knee and tossed the pieces into the ditch. Taimin watched as the bits of wood disappeared. “You’re going to have to learn to move without a crutch. You’ll never be able to fight if you depend on something like that.”
Taimin nodded. He took a deep breath. “I understand.”
Her mouth tightened. “I hope you do. Because you’re going to have to be more than strong to survive. You’ll have to be stealthier than a skalen and tougher than a bax. Mantoreans are good archers; you’ll have to be better. Trulls are big; you’ll have to strike them down anyway. You’ll need to use your head and know more about the creatures of the waste than you know about yourself. Most important of all, you’ll have to know how to find food and water in the driest desert.”
Taimin nodded again and gave his aunt a determined stare.
“If you’re going to stay with me, you’ll have to learn all that and more. Now come on, let’s get inside before Dex goes down.”
Taimin followed his aunt back into the homestead, and when they reached the kitchen she told him to sit down at the table. A few moments later, she came to him with a pair of boots. Curious, he recognized the soft leather she had been saving for a new vest to replace the tattered thing she wore now. The boots were dark red, the same color as the wyvern’s hide they had come from, and were made with the same care Abi brought to everything she did.
“Here,” Abi said. “Take off those sandals and put these on. Let’s see if they fit.”
Taimin slipped out of his crude sandals. He yanked on the left boot, feeling it grip his toes. “It fits well.”
“And the other.”
Looking askance at his aunt, he turned and examined his crippled right foot. Rather than the healthy, familiar shape, the outline was more like a right-angled triangle. The small toes were squished together, and the big toe stuck out like an anomaly. It was as if a foot made of mud had been flattened from above, which was exactly what had happened, except that it was his flesh and bone that had been forcefully reshaped.
“I don’t know if I can,” he said.
Aunt Abi gave him the look that made him feel like a stupid child. With a sigh, he inserted his crippled right foot into the opening and started to pull.
She left him to it for a time, occasionally glancing at him as if measuring his level of determination. Finally, with a growl, she came over and started to push, pull and twist, regardless of his discomfort. “The leather will shape itself to your foot,” she grunted. “Provided we can get the boot on in the first place.”
At last, it was done. Taimin looked down at his feet. For the first time since the death of his parents, he felt something akin to pleasure. He looked whole. He didn’t look like a cripple anymore.
“Good,” Abi said. “Now stand.”
Taimin rose to his feet. He wobbled but resisted the urge to grab hold of the table. He took deep breaths as he fought the pain and struggled for balance and control. He wavered, and nearly fell, but in the end he stood tall and looked at his aunt proudly.
“Well done,” she said. “Now follow me.”
Walking was altogether different from standing. Abi waited impatiently outside the front door, in the cleared area between the fence and the shack, while he bounced and jarred his way over to her.
Abi indicated two hardwood swords at her feet. “Pick up a weapon.”
Taimin crouched and grabbed the hilt of a sword. As he straightened, he lost his balance and leaned on the sword, and felt a strike on his head that caused him to cry out.
“Never, ever, use your sword for a crutch,” Abi said. “It is your weapon, and your life depends on it.”
Taimin put his hand to his head, rubbing the tender spot where his aunt had struck him. “I understand,” he said.
“Now,” said Abi. “Show me your guard. Let’s see what Gareth taught you.”
As the weeks became months, and months turned to years, Taimin felt the wound of his parents’ passing slowly heal, although he never forgot the manner of their deaths.
Abi taught him all she knew, and whether she pushed him harder because of his disadvantage, or whether she was just instructing him as she would have instructed her own child if her life had worked out differently, he would never know.
He learned to manage with his boots, and could eventually walk with only the slightest limp. He would have been useless as a swordsman if he couldn’t leap, or duck, or lunge, so he learned to move his body in deft, unpredictable ways. But he couldn’t run. When he tried, he lumbered at a pace easily outmatched, and never managed more than a dozen paces before stumbling. It was the best he could do, even with Abi pushing him, and eventually she understood that anything else was impossible.
Taimin learned the limits of his dexterity, but to do so he had to defeat the pain. He felt the bones jangle together whenever he pushed himself. Controlling the pain was the key to his freedom of movement, and learn to control it he did, even if after hard practice it kept him awake at night, sweating and shivering.