Field Hymn for Old Kindly

  The triage tent shakes like a throat trying not to sob.
Lantern smoke.
Salt air.
Splinters of Cruinlagh’s shell punched through bodies like ivory nails.
Hands tied to cots so they don’t claw themselves open.
  Someone is begging for their mother
Someone is begging for death.
Someone is just making that wet animal noise people make
when language is over.
  Lysa is twenty.
Lysa is not ready.
Lysa presses linen to a wound she will not close and lies,
“Breathe. You’re all right. Just breathe for me,”
like gentling a horse with its stomach open.
  Her hands shake too hard
to thread a needle.
  Three of them will not see dawn.
Two of them could live,
if she could hear past the screaming,
if her fear would stop rattling her bones
like dice in a cup.
There is no one else in the tent.
Everyone who could help is still out there on the shell
trying not to die.
It is just her
and the lantern
and the sound of suffering
rising like heat.
  Someone on the next cot is begging the gods to kill them.
Someone further down is choking on their own spit.
A body on the floor is still trying to crawl
even though half of it is somewhere else.
  Her throat burns.
Her eyes sting.
Her pulse is wild and useless.
  She bows her head.

  She has never done this.

  “Burden shared,”
she whispers.

  Nothing.

  The screaming keeps going.
Cruinlagh groans underfoot,
deep and angry in its own bones.
  Her mouth is dry.
Her whole body feels like a frayed nerve.
  “Burden shared,”
she says again,
louder,
voice cracking.
  The world goes stuffed and distant,
like someone packed wool into her ears.

Air tightens.
Heat drops.
  Then:
chain on bone.
  Drag.
Scrape.
Drag.
  The lantern gutter-flutters
like it is afraid to go out.
  She keeps her eyes down.
No one told her the rules
but she knows them anyway,
the way people know not to bite down on a blade
crossed over a grave.

Old Kindly enters.

It smells of boiled linen and old iron.
It wears aprons of knotted bandage,
layered and layered until they hang like butcher’s hide.
All the cloth is chewed and clawed,
as if people tried to grab their pain back
and couldn’t.
  Chains trail behind it
into a place the tent does not contain.

It goes to the first cot.

A gloved hand settles on a chest
that has been heaving and screaming and thrashing.

Jaw loosens.
Shoulders fall.
One long shivering breath,
like sinking into warm bathwater.
  Not dead.
Just quiet.
  It moves down the line.
  Second cot.
Third.
  A hand.
A hand.
A hand.
  Panic goes out
like a candle pinched between wet fingers.
Even the man split nearly in half
makes a tiny noise of relief,
like finding a real bed
after too many nights on stone.
  Then it reaches the fourth cot.
  Aran.
  Aran can still think.
Aran is clutching her wrist hard enough to bruise.
Aran is whispering,
“Don’t let me sleep. If I sleep I drown,”
with blood on his teeth.
  He can live,
if he can get through this part.
If he can stay conscious.
If she can work.
  Kindly reaches for him.
  “No,” she says.
  The air drops ice-cold.
Her own breath ghosts pale.
  Her heart is a trapped bird
beating itself stupid against her ribs.
  She steps between Aran and the chains
like she’s throwing herself
in front of a runaway cart.
  Her mouth can barely form the shape of words.
You are not supposed to talk to it.
You are only supposed to say:
Burden shared.
  “Please,” she whispers.
  The chains go still.
Old Kindly turns.
  Up close,
it is nothing but weight.
  Bandage layered on bandage,
resin-stiff and stained,
a butcher’s apron made of other people’s nights.
  Shoulders bowed under invisible cargo,
like a mule made of grief.
Air that tastes like rust and old tears.
  “Please,” she says again.
“Not him.
He can live.
Take mine.
Take mine instead.”
  Something touches her forehead.
  Not warm.
Just pressure,
like a hand made of stone
and pity.
  Her terror is scooped out of her
like the soft center of a loaf.
  Her hands go gentle and still.
Her stomach settles.
Her thoughts line up
like clean instruments on a tray.
  Oh,
she thinks,
like someone finally allowed to lie down.
That’s better.
  Old Kindly turns away from Aran.
It does not touch him.
  One more cot.
One more scream pressed flat
and carried off
somewhere under Cruinlagh’s ribs.
  Then the chains drag again,
softer now.
  The lantern steadies.
The tent exhales.
  Old Kindly leaves.
  Sound comes back in crumbs:
whimpering,
coughing,
breathing.
Human sounds.
Survivable sounds.
  The medic feels fine.
  Too fine.
  Pulse calm.
Mind clean as boiled linen.
She looks straight into opened ribs,
into the meat of someone she knows,
and does not flinch.
  “Hey,” Aran whispers.
“You’re crying.”
  Fingers to her cheek.
Wet.
She hadn’t noticed.
  “It’s all right,” she tells him,
soft as tucking in a child.
  Outside,
deep in Cruinlagh’s bones beneath the tent,
something makes a muffled sound
like a swallowed sob
dragged over stone.
  The Medic heard it and, for a moment, felt the echo of her fear again, very far away, like a memory in someone else’s throat.
  “Press here,” the medic murmurs,
guiding his hand to his own wound.
“Hard. Stay awake.”
  Then she threads her needle
with steady hands
and gets back to work.