Rubberband World 2 (Patreon)

Gretchen the big ol' Poitou helps carry an injured wild ass Richard inside and then what?

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Gretchen rushed back outside and cranked furiously to pull up a bucket of bitterly cold water, but when she hurried back inside the house, instead of sitting in her comfy chair, the knight was standing before it. “Sit! Sit! Please, sire,” she urged him.

The grey donkey smiled at her as he pulled his tabard over his head. “Well, if you want me to be comfortable—”

“I do, sire!” she interrupted.

“Well, then give me a moment to remove my armor, okay?”

“Of course, sire,” she said, lowering her eyes. “My home is your home.”

He set the tabard on the floor, on top of his pack, belt, and sword, but when he started to pull the chain mail shirt up, he paused. “I mean,” he said with a grin, “presuming it’s safe for me here to be unarmored.”

“Of course, sire,” Gretchen said quickly, completely missing the mischievous glint in his eyes.

The knight stripped off his hauberk and then the padded gambeson he wore beneath it.

The wooly donkey tried not to stare at the knight’s bare chest—and failed. He was finely muscled, and she was completely unprepared to see him naked, or to even have a naked man—save for the silk ribbon in his mane—inside her home. When he finally sat back down, it snapped her from the spell that held her helpless, and she hurriedly set the bucket in front of the chair. “Here, soak your ankle in this.”

He dipped his hoof into the water and then pulled it straight back out. “Ugh, that’s cold!” he gasped.

“Good!” she said before rushing back out to fill a second bucket. “The cold will help reduce the swelling.”

Gretchen returned with the second bucket and poured it into the pot hanging in her hearth. Then she spent a moment to build up the fire and returned to kneel before her visitor. “Now, let me see it,” she said.

He pulled his hoof from the bucket and she prodded it just as gently as she could. “That’s very swollen,” she agreed. “I don’t think it’s broken … or at least isn’t badly broken. It’s still straight.”

“Torn muscle?” he asked. “Or a tendon?”

“I don’t think so,” she said again. “Blood isn’t pooling under the skin. There’s no bruising. It’s just swollen. You’re very lucky.”

At last, she put his hoof back into the bucket. Then she sat back on her heels and looked up at his big green eyes. “I want you to soak in the cold for just as long as you can stand, okay? Then we’ll switch to the water I’m heating over the fire. You’ll soak in that as long as you can stand before switching back to the cold again.”

“And this will help?” he asked, sounding dubious.

“I think it will, sire,” said Gretchen. “When my brother twisted his ankle, this is what our healer did for him. This, plus some willow bark tea, and you’ll be feeling better in no time. At least it will hold you over until the healer returns.”

“How soon?”

“Soon. Very soon,” she said. “Perhaps a day for the swelling to go down and a week of keeping your weight off of it. Then you’ll need to judge for yourself—a couple weeks of taking it easy, perhaps a month before it’s back to normal.”

The knight looked very disappointed and his ears hung low. “You’re sure? I need to be at the belt before moonrise.”

Gretchen frowned and shook her head. “I’m not a healer, sire. I can’t tell you that you’ll lose it or that you’ll have a painful limp for the rest of your life if you keep walking on it, but if she were here, I suspect that’s the sort of thing she’d say.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “If it were life and death, I could maybe fashion you a crutch, but walking nine miles with a crutch? I think that would be a very foolish thing to do.”

The knight nodded and lowered his eyes to his lap. Silence stretched a long while before Gretchen finally broke it. “If you could excuse me, sire, I really need to go clean up.”

“No.”

“No?” she gasped.

“No, please stop calling me sire,” said the knight, the smile finally returning to his handsome face. “My name is Richard.”

“Oh…” she said, “well, Sir Richard—”

“Just Richard,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Yes, well,” she said, standing and giving him a slightly awkward curtsey. “I’m Gretchen.”

And with that, she grabbed the empty bucket and dashed back outside before he had a chance to say anything else.

Once outside, Gretchen drew bucket after bucket of water, and she scrubbed furiously at her dirty wool until the water dripping from her finally ran clear. Creeping back inside when the knight had his head turned, she hurried to her bedroom, tossed her filthy work vest in the corner and then dug frantically to the very bottom of her hope chest—throwing things this way and that—until she found the white cotton vest that her mother had made for her years ago.

She’d only ever worn it once—for a Festival Day—and she prayed it still fit. Holding her breath, she carefully secured each of the bone buttons. She steadied her shaking hands. The thin cotton cloth was stretched a little too snug across her broad chest, but so long as she didn’t draw too deep a breath, she hoped it would hold.

When at last she returned to check on the knight, she found that he had switched to the hot water and was ready to change back to cold again, so she hurriedly drew new buckets for him to soak in and to heat over the fire. She grabbed him a plate of fruit and cheese that was going to be her dinner and rushed back to him before realizing her vest’s top button had come undone.

“Oh, um, thank you but no,” Richard said with a smile, politely declining the food. He closed the black book he’d pulled from his pack and set it in his lap.

“Oh, okay,” said Gretchen. She set the plate aside and fiddled with the button, trying not to blush. When she got it hooked again, she took a seat on the hearth so that the fire could help dry her damp wool. “Is that a … a book of scripture?” she asked him.

“No, um…” he muttered, “something much more dire, I’m afraid.”

She said nothing, just pursed her lips and waited for the knight to continue.

Richard looked pained. At last, he asked, “Can I tell you a secret, Lady Gretchen?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, just Gretchen,” she said with a smile. “And of course, you can tell me anything si— Richard,” se corrected herself.

He grinned for a moment then tapped the book against his palm a few times, like he was trying to figure out where to begin. “Well, you see, a few days’ walk from here—I won’t say precisely where—there’s a stronghold. And in the deepest, most secure section of that keep, there’s a lot of books like this… dangerous books… books of… prophesy.”

Gretchen’s eyes opened wide. “Really?” she gasped. “Should that even be out here… I mean… if it’s so dangerous?”

Richard stared at the book a long while. “Probably not,” he said, “but these are unusual times. You see, in the stronghold, there are thousands of these books—thousands and thousands—some written by prophets centuries or even millennia ago. Any of these books might come to pass, but no one knows when or if they’ll ever happen. The front page of each describes how the stars must align. So, every night, the monks—the keep’s guardians—keep a sacred vow by checking how the stars are aligned, and then they look through the books to see if any one of them are… um… well, if any of them are coming true. Does that make sense?”

Gretchen shrugged. Prophesy? Was that even a thing? Was it really possible to predict the future? “Um, maybe?” she said.

Richard sighed. “Some of these books tell about good things, like marriages and prosperity. But most of them, I’m afraid, are dire—warnings of wars, famine, that sort of thing. All of these events are important, pivotal even. The guardians use covers dyed different colors to help them keep the sorts of books organized.”

She winced. “So, a black cover? I’m guessing that’s not a good thing.”

He shook his head, expression stern. “The very worst, I’m afraid… the end of the world.”

Gretchen gasped. “The world is coming to an end?” she shouted.

“No, no, no,” said the knight. He waved his palms trying to calm her down. “That’s why we have books of prophesy. Should any of these books come to pass, the rest of the pages tell what we need to do to secure the best possible outcome. Or in the case of a black-bound book, how to keep the world from ending.”

“Oh,” whispered Gretchen. Still, she didn’t feel very comforted. Her heart was racing, and she could feel herself start to sweat. She moved to a footstool, farther from the fire.

“Do you know how to read, Gretchen?” asked the knight.

She nodded; her eyes fixed on the black book’s spine.

“You could read some of it,” he suggested, “if you wanted.” But she furiously shook her head and remained silent.

“I’m sorry if I’m frightening you,” he said, “but the monks gave me the book because I’m the one who’s supposed to save the world.”

Gretchen’s eyes opened wide and her mouth hung open slightly. “Except that you’ve sprained your ankle.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, “that’s the problem in a nutshell.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wD9o6lWh_KuWBdsC1gBLiI7r6A5_RuhADWr4Tx8OHpo/edit?usp=sharing

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