To Reverse a Curse

Chapter 9

    I'm now seated on a cushion on the floor, sitting across from Mama Ostell, surrounded by other important figures in the community.
  Mama Ostell is an older Cree woman, her greying hair tied into two braids, both tied in beaded strings with feathers, like many of the men and women here. She has a very serious look on her face as she stares me down. "Why have you come here?" she asks.
    "I need help," I say.
    "With?" she asks.
    "A curse," I say.
    She narrows her eyes at me. "What do you mean?" she asks, quietly.
    I sigh. I reach behind my head, and start to untie my scarf. I let it fall off of my face, and the group of people around me gasp.
    Mama Ostell nods, slowly. "You've been cursed by the mountain," she says, "How long have you been like this?"
    "About...a little over a month," I said, not believing it's been that long.
    She looks at me, mildly confused, slightly amused. "You should have fully turned by now..." she mutters, "...it takes a very strong soul to resist the wendigo's instincts,"
    "I was nearly lost," I say, "if my friends hadn't have found me,"
    "How are you lucid?" she asks.
    "They've been trying to get me to eat anything other than human..." I say, "It's been working...but...I...I still..."
    "You still crave human flesh," she said, shaking her head, "It's the wendigo trying to take back the host that's fighting against it..." She stares at me for a second, maybe considering her options. "Prove your worth," she says, "prove to me that you won't kill all of us in our sleep, and I will help you retain control,"
    "All...all I would want," I say, "is to look normal again. I don't care about hunger anymore. I've learned to live with it. And...I enjoy being strong, and fast, and..."
    She pauses, listening to me. "So, you...accept the curse of being a wendigo?" Mama Ostell asks, "It's quite a burden to hold, young man,"
    "I'm prepared," I say, nodding, "I can handle it,"
    She slowly nods, narrowing her eyes.
    Suddenly, Cora bursts into the room, panicked. "There's a fire!" she says, "There's a fire!"
    All of the leaders stand up, and start toward the door.
    "There's people trapped inside the building!" Cora says, "They're all up on the top floor!"
    The next thing I know, I'm running down the road, no shoes on, toward the burning building.
    "Josh!" Cora calls after, "You forgot your shoes!"
    "Don't need them!" I yell back. As soon as I reach the building, I skid to a stop, stones cutting up the bottoms of my bare feet.
    A crowd of people have already gathered, some men yelling for them to start gathering buckets of water.
    I take off my coat, and set it on the ground. I walk to the front of the crowd, gently pushing past people, staring at the top window. I had just seen a child-sized hand slapping against the window pane.
    "Josh!" Mama Ostell calls out to me from the back of the crowd, "What are you doing?"
    "I...I can save them," I say, my eyes trained on the top window. Before she can protest, I crouch down and spring onto the porch roof. I take a sharp breath, the world coming into sharp focus.
    Colors slightly fade away, and everything that even slightly moves is tinted orange.
    I crawl onto the wall next to me, somehow sticking to it like a spider, climbing the building until I get to the top floor window. I balance on the sill of the window on my toes, clinging to the top of the frame. I lean back for a second, and I kicked one of the panes in the window, breaking it with ease. I swing myself inside the burning building, landing softly on the floor.
    A child and her mother are cowering in the corner of the room, staring at me, terrified.
    "I'm here to help," I say to them.
    The mother stares at me for a second, but then nods. She stands up, ushering her child toward me.
    I glance around the room, and see a staircase, unblocked. "Get to the stairs," I say, "I don't know how long the building will stay up,"
    The mother, glances in the direction of the stairs, looks back at me and nods.
    As we make our way down the hall, I go into the rooms we pass, finding trapped people and directing them toward the stairs. In one room, I have to lift a charred, smoldering beam over my head, so people can pass by me. I didn't think that I could have actually done it, but once I had grabbed the edge of the beam, it seemed so easy.
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, ruN, RUN, RUN, RUN, RUN...
    I shake my head, trying to force the instinct to get as far as I can from fire as I can out of my head. 'These people I need my help,' I think, 'I can't abandon them...' I usher people toward the stairs, when the roof creaks above us. As a beam falls, I block the child from getting hit. As the beam hits me, I feel some ribs crack, and my skin burns. I hiss in pain.
    The child shrieks, then stares up at me with large, watery eyes.
    I turn around, and see the child's mother. "It's fine," I say, "get out. Get safe. I'll get her out of here, unharmed,"
    The mother just stares for a minute, and nods. Her and the other people in the house run down the steps.
    I turn to the little girl, and I kneel in front of her. "I'm going to get you out of here," I say to her, "but I need you to trust me, okay?"
    She nods, eyes dripping.
    I extend my hand, and she takes it. I pick her up, and have her wrap her arms around my neck and her legs around my lower ribs.
    As she grips onto me, there's a slight pang of pain in my ribs, but I can't let that stop me.
    I navigate the burning rubble, and get to the window that I kicked in. "Okay," I say, "hold on tight,"
    Her grip gets tighter, making my ribs scream in pain.
    I perch on the window-frame, broken glass digging into my feet. I swing myself over to the roof below us, and then crawl to its edge. I carefully face away from the edge, and grip it with my hands. I hang off of the edge of the roof, and after pausing for a second, drop off of the roof, landing softly on the ground below.
    The little girl gives a small yelp as we fall.
    "Lily!" her mother screams, running toward us.
    The little girl starts to cry as I hand her to her mother. Both of them are covered in soot, but unharmed. "Thank you, stranger," the mother says, "You saved us,"
    "No problem," I mutter.
    Mama Ostell walks up to me, and stares for a second. "You've earned my respect," she says, "I will help you, but it will take a while. A few weeks, at most,"
    I sigh. 'A few weeks?' I think, 'A few weeks away from Chris? Well...It will be worth it in the end...' I nod. "Okay," I say.
    "But first," she says, "I'll heal your injuries after your good deed," she gestures to my feet.
    I look down to see that I'm standing in a small puddle of my own blood. "Oh," I say, pain finally registering in my feet, back, and ribs, "Ouch..."
    Mama Ostell just chuckles, and leads me to a house near the center of the town.
    It has multiple garden patches out front, with odd plants growing in them.
    She leads me inside the house, where Finn and Cora are sitting at a table.
    Finn looks up, and instantly smiles. "Josh!" he says, "You're going to stay?"
    I smile and nod.
    Cora glances at me, and scoffs, rolling her eyes.
    "Josh shall be staying with us," Mama Ostell says, "but, for now, he needs to sleep. He's injured,"
    Finn nods, still smiling.
    Mama Ostell leads me to a small room that has a bed in it. She sits me down on the bed, and leaves the room for a moment. She returns with a roll of bandaging, a pillow, and a bowl of odd colored paste. "Lay down on your chest," she says, "I need to set your broken ribs,"
    I nod, and lay down on the bed.
    She places her hands in the middle of my back, and with a quick press, I hear a slight click.
    I yelp in pain as the broken ribs click back into place. I can feel her rub something on my feet.
    It stings at first, but then an icy-cold, numb kind of feeling envelopes my feet.
    She then wraps my feet. "Sit up," she says.
    I comply, sitting on the edge of the bed.
    "Take off your shirt," she says, over in one corner of the room, looking through a basket of what seems to be pale, curved sticks.
    I hesitate, but follow her orders. I find that the back of my shirt is charred and full of holes.
    "Sit up straight," she says, approaching me, "Or a straight as you can, without hurting yourself,"
    I straighten my back, and she presses some of my lower ribs. When I gasp or yelp in pain, she stops.
    She then holds one of the short, pale, curved sticks to my rib, and tapes it down with medical tape. After watching her do this multiple times, I notice that the sticks aren't sticks.
    They're animal ribs.
    "I need to give your ribs a proper shape to heal to," she says to me, "if you're curious as to why I use animal ribs,"
    I paused, unsure whether she noticed I was staring or if she could read minds.
    "Lay back down on your front," she says, and after I do, I feel her rub something onto the burns on my back.
    The same thing that she rubbed onto my feet.
    She has me sit up again, and she wraps my torso, holding the ribs tightly in place, and covering the burns on my back. "Now," she says, "Sleep. You'll feel your injuries in the morning, when the adrenaline properly wears off,"
    I nod, and lay on my side on the bed. I thought that having the animal rib over my broken one and laying on it would be painful, but it actually doesn't hurt. I slowly drift off to sleep, thinking of Chris, knowing that I did this for him.