Your Trail of Blood in the Snow

Chapter 7 (Larry)

I spent three days in bed, for Lucas would not allow me to get up without his permission and if I did it was only with his help. I would see him come and go from cupboard to cupboard. He would leave the room where we were and come back with things that I was not sure what they were and he would show them to me, but I was sure that they were used by humans at some time. We would talk about many subjects, and in turn I was learning about the healing methods he knew. He told me a lot about things he had done in the past, animals he had helped and sad memories he had witnessed. "I saw a family of squirrels get slaughtered by a fox," he once said in a conversation. His gaze turned sad whenever he told me stories of that nature. "I couldn't do anything," he commented later. He told me that he brought them food so they wouldn't starve to death without them knowing who was bringing it. Even during storms, which back then were the order of the day, he would risk it to bring them dry grains and water, but once he arrived, he only found the traces of blood in the snow. Following them he realized they were leading to a fox den. (I wondered if it wasn't the same one, we had been in days before, when he was carrying me). Honestly, a part of me wanted to believe him, but the other was not willing to do so, keeping me suspicious. Although I trusted Monti completely, it was not the same with other bats. These were mixed feelings because I was grateful to him, but my instincts did not allow me to fully embrace that gratitude. It was, in a way, circumstantial to what he was doing or talking about. In spite of everything I tried to keep an open mind when I was with Lucas.

Sometimes he would pick me up and walk with me leaning on his shoulder or with my arm around his neck; other times he would leave me alone to see how far I could go without help. It was just a small distance, a distance that increased as the days went by. He taught me novel methods of healing and about some medicinal plants with a mastery and a selflessness that I had never seen in my life. He went back and forth showing me which plants could be used to cure a flu, which were for the torment of females, which one's relieved stomach-ache or diarrhea and which ones served to keep away fleas and other external parasites.

"The world offers us everything we need to live, we just have to know how to choose," he told me once, and he emphasized that, if we did not know how to choose, we could die. That reminded me of Montimer when Ron fed him those poisonous mushrooms; now I remember it with derision, but at the time it scared me a lot, although thanks to that I could see a side of Monti that was completely unknown to me at that time. Little by little I was becoming more familiar with Lucas, perhaps because of the constant treatment and help he was offering me, not to mention all the things I was learning.

One afternoon he mentioned to me that humans were a species that became extinct because of selfishness. Seeing him with a doubtful expression, being bathed by the afternoon that made him look like he had a golden coat, I asked him how much he knew about humans. In the years I had been alive, animals rarely touched the subject, and what was known was only general knowledge, knowledge transmitted orally: humans disappeared suddenly without apparent trace, and we began to acquire certain customs that they had and learn skills that were becoming common knowledge.

Lu saw me with those red eyes.

"I don't know more than you do... sometimes I think that they left us the eternal winter and various knowledge. the former I think is some kind of punishment, and in the case of the latter, a gift. I may be just saying stupid things, but something in me tells me it is so."

"I believe that the earth punished them, that the eternal winter was just that: a punishment, where we by extension were harmed."

Lucas smiled.

"You have very interesting thoughts, Larry. I'd like to have you with me longer." That made my heart race, and I became a little afraid. "But I know that's not possible. Your Montimer wouldn't allow it.