My name is Xuemei — Snow-Brow. My brows went white, so: Snow-Brow. In my youth they said a white-browed monkey has a gentle heart. Gentle or not, I can't say. I only know I can't stand to see another in pain.
Three months since we were taken, and I practice my old trade here: tending wounds.
The pens produce wounds daily — crushed by stone, torn by the cut of the wall, opened by the little yao's whips. No medicine here, so I make do: cold moss off the cave wall stops bleeding; charcoal ash and spit holds down a swelling; a straight splint for a break. The craft I stole in my youth from an old herb-farmer below the mountain. Never dreamed I'd use it in a place like this.
First rule of treating wounds here: the patient must not cry out.
A cry brings the little yao. And what they bring isn't treatment — it's more. So I tend the wounds of the pens quietly — at night, behind screens of bodies, and when the pain runs high, they bite my wrist. Three months, and the teeth marks on my wrist have never faded.
But last ten-day I noticed something strange.
The wounds in the pens are healing too fast.
A crushed arm lifts in three days. A whip gash scabs in five. Thirty years of this work and I know the normal rate of mending — this cave is off. At first I flattered myself my craft had grown. Then I ran a test: one patient, two dressings — one with my salve, one with plain water.
Both healed at the same speed.
Not my medicine. Something in this cave is helping the wounds close.
I told Tiewei. He said: Grandpa Xuemei, that's good news. I said: child, nothing heals for free. Fast-healing wounds mean more work the yao can wring out of you. Heal, and you can't die. Can't die, and you work forever.
The faster we mend, the less we ever leave.
Stranger still, yesterday. In the back of the pens there's a boy with a broken leg I'd splinted. Yesterday morning the splint had fallen off, and the bone—
Was whole. Overnight. The seam of the break was true and flush — only the new bone is the wrong color. Bluish. Like stone.
The boy took two steps and laughed. I didn't. I touched his new leg. Cold.
Stone-colored bone. Stone-cold skin.
So tell me — what closes wounds in this cave: a kindness, or an exchange?
If you come to get us out, don't celebrate too soon that the wounded can walk. Let me look first, and see whether their bones are still bones.