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Claire wakes often in the winter. In the summer, she traded her heavy furs for abalone shells and a set of fine needles and thread. It was a fair deal, then. Now, as she’s woken for the second time tonight by shivers wracking her restless frame, she’s not so sure. Even though she’s only at the foot of the mountain, the winters are harsh, the nights frigid black and plagued by snowfall. Gusts of wind blow through the valley and a thick layer of clouds block the moon, leaving Claire’s home braced and shaking in the pitch dark.
Except — the space under her doorframe is glowing. Someone’s there.
She listens, hears the whip and crack of branches in the wind outside, and, underneath that, the popping heat of a fire coming to life in the hearth, but nothing else. She decides to face this silent trespasser. The space under her threadbare quilt is cold anyway, and she’d like to sit by the fire awhile. She steps quietly to her door.
Slouched before the glowing hearth is a knight in chainmail, poking at Claire’s firewood and bleeding onto Claire’s floor. Fresh snow blew in behind her, now melting into a puddle beneath her sword, which she left propped up by the door.
“Um, hello,” Claire says.
The knight surges up, and the end of an arrow bobs around behind her. She wears a tight bun and a wary scowl. She goes for her hilt, which she finds empty, and then draws a short dagger from her other side. “I mean no harm,” she says quickly. “I just need to rest a bit. You can — you can go back to sleep. I’ll replace your firewood tomorrow.”
She’s favoring her left side. Claire tilts her head, sees another arrow in the girl’s lower back and a bloody tear through her sleeve. “I don’t think sleeping that off is going to cut it, girl.”
“Knight commander.”
“Pardon?”
“That’s my title,” she says, straightening to her full height with a barely concealed grimace. “Or ma’am.”
“Uh-huh. I’m Claire. You want a plaster?”
She looks around suddenly. Asks, “Claire? The witch?”
“So they call me. Sit your butt down, Miss Knight. You can hold onto the dagger if you want.”
The girl wavers in place for a moment, squinting. Claire waits, slides a dozen half-empty bottles to the side to set her emergency kit on the table. The exhaustion and blood loss puts the girl down before Claire finishes pulling bandages out, and the girl settles on the wobbly three-legged stool by the hearth.
“We’re going to have to get that armor off,” Claire says, examining the entry point of each arrow. She pulls out a pair of heavy duty clippers, and the girl’s eyes widen. “So I’m going to cut the arrow stems.”
“Okay,” the girl says, low and wary.
“Stay as still as you can,” Claire says, fitting the sharp ends of the clippers around the base of the arrow behind the girl’s shoulder.
The girl braces herself. She stays still, just lets out a quiet grunt as Claire clefts through the wooden shaft.
“One more.” Claire lines the clippers up with the second arrow, at her lower back.The girl’s fist is braced against the stool, clenched so tightly around the handle of her dagger that her skin has gone white.
“Real fast,” Claire says, and snaps the stem off the other arrow. The girl grunts.
Claire murmurs, “Good, you’re doing great,” as she tucks her fingers under the edge of her chain mail. “Now lift your arms for me.”
With an apparent ache slowing her, the girl raises her arms. Her arms reach barely as high as her shoulders and she’s already quivering with the effort. She leans forward so Claire can shimmy the stiff mail up her torso, over the top of her head.
“Oh, girl,” Claire sighs. Underneath the mail, the girl’s shirt sticks to her back, tacky with wide patches of blood. Most of the blood has dried brown, but Claire can see fresh red seeping out of the arrow wounds.
“Knight commander,” the girl insists.
Claire goes for her scissors, aiming to cut the shirt away. The girl grasps her wrist with a surprisingly firm grip for how grey her fingers have gone. Claire raises her eyebrows. Something cracks and pops in the hearth, and the girl releases Claire’s wrist.
“Don’t want to waste the shirt,” the girl says finally. She raises her arms again, groaning. Her sleeve goes shiny with fresh blood.
“Stubborn,” Claire mumbles, eyeing the gruesome bloodstains and gaping holes already marring the shirt, but she fits her hands on the girl’s hips, edges the shirt off as requested. She doesn’t get far; the arrow stub in her lower back dislodges with a disgusting wet sound as the shirt pulls past it, and blood starts flowing.
“Shit,” Claire says, dropping the shirt, reaching for her ointments, “should’ve wasted the damn shirt.” The girl laughs. “Hold the hem up,” Claire tells her.
With effort, the girl does. Claire presses a clean rag firmly against the wound. The girl hisses. Claire fumbles through her half-empty bottles—she needs to label these more clearly—while the rag goes warm and wet. She hasn’t developed any new treatments in ages, but she should have clotting cream left over. Somewhere.
The girl shudders.
Claire finds a nearly empty bottle, about the size and weight that her clotting cream bottle usually is, hopes it’s right, and shakes the last vestiges of it onto her right wrist. She quickly swipes the rag away and applies the cream with her left hand’s clumsy fingers.
The girl hisses again, sharply, but when Claire reapplies the rag, the bloom of red spreads far more slowly. She sighs. “We did it.”
“We?” the girl asks. “Pretty sure you did it.”
Claire laughs. She wraps bandages around the girl’s stomach to hold the rag flush against the wound. “The other ones probably won’t bleed like that. We still might be able to save the shirt if you really want to.”
Groaning, the girl lifts her arms again. “Let’s go.”
Claire fits her hands back around her hips, and gingerly peels the shirt off. The girl’s skin along her sides is soft with fine, downy hair. Across the smooth span of her now bare back and shoulders, there is only minor scarring, little raised lines gone pale where her skin has stitched itself back together, and even there her skin is soft.
After the shirt comes off and the other arrow is removed, Claire works more languorously, lets her hands linger. Maybe she leans in too close as she wraps up the wound in the girl’s shoulder, and maybe she moves too slowly, too carefully around the slice through the girl’s arm; maybe it’s nice to have some warmth other than that of her thin quilt and her hearth, the crackling of which has already begun to quiet with the dwindling firewood.
As a last step, Claire checks the gauze around the girl’s back and around the girl’s arm, feels the goosebumps rising along the girl’s bare skin where she rests her hands.
“Think we’re done,” Claire says, placing her hands here and there to check on the wounds.
The girl turns. Her face is very close to Claire’s like this.
“Thank you,” she says. She leans in, maybe. “I— um. I can be out first thing in the morning.”
Claire quirks an eyebrow.
“And I’ll replace the firewood soon. This week.”
“You gonna replace the bandages too?” Claire jokes, but the girl grimaces.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she says stiffly.
“I’m kidding. You don’t have to replace anything,” Claire says.
“No,” the girl says, looking certain. “I will. Tomorrow. As soon as I’ve rested.” She starts to lower herself to the floor.
“You’re really going to sleep right here?” Claire asks incredulously, gesturing at the barely glowing hearth. “Shirtless and quiltless.”
The girl glances at the cracked open door to Claire’s bedroom. “You already did all this. I don’t want to put you out.”
“Who said anything about putting me out?” Claire says. “You think I’m going to sleep on the ground? There’s only one quilt, and I’m using it too.”
The girl smirks. She braces her hand on the table, hefts herself to her feet. She’s nearly the same height as Claire, but she’s broader, more muscled across her arms and shoulders. Claire imagines the breadth of her chest, the heavy swell of her breasts, hovering over her in bed and she feels a little heat spread across her cheeks.
“I’m Misty,” the girl says, her hand outstretched. “Misty Knight.”
“Your name is Knight?”
“Yeah.” She shrugs it off. “Yours?”
“Claire.” She takes Misty’s hand. “Temple.”
Misty’s mouth tugs up in a half-smile. “Suits you.”
They go to the bedroom and climb into bed, Misty against the wall, Claire at the edge. The quilt is not made for two, and the bed less so, so they end up with their hips and chest fitted close together. Against her back, Claire can feel Misty’s heart pounding, and the stiff bandages around Misty’s waist. When Claire hears Misty’s breathing go soft and steady, Claire takes Misty’s still-cold fingers in her hand, and, for the first time since the snow began to fall, Claire sleeps through the night.