crushingly, and because he was off balance Hoom teetered for a moment on the sill and then fell from the window.
He wasn't prepared for the fall. He landed with his right leg only, and the knee popped somehow, and with an agonizing grinding the leg buckled under him. He lay there, terribly, acutely, sharply conscious, though the only reality was the vast pain that pressed on him and shortened his breath and threatened to suffocate him utterly. He heard a distant scream. It was his mother. She ran to him, screamed again, crying, "Hoom, my boy, my son," and then in the distance (far up in the sky) he heard his father's voice call out, "Stay away from him, woman!"
"My name is Esten, man!" shouted his mother in fury. "Don't you see the boy's leg is broken?"
Broken? Hoom looked down and nearly vomited. His right leg was bent backward at a ninety degree angle at the knee. Only a little below the knee, a new joint, from which a strange white and bloody bone protruded, bent his leg back again the other way.
"Jason!" he heard his father cry out, as if the call would bring God from his tower. "What have I done to the boy?" And then the pain subsided for a second, Hoom gasped his breath, and the pain washed back, twice as powerfully as before. The wave of agony swept him away; everything went bright purple; the world disappeared.
Hoom woke to hear a knocking at a door. He was immediately conscious of being hot; sweat dripped from him, and the wool of the blankets over him prickled in the heat. He tried to push the blankets off, but the movement was pain, and he moaned.
Someone had come in, and he heard, in the distance (a couple of meters away), an argument.
"You'll stay away from my boy, damn you," said Aven's voice.
"I can heal his leg, Aven," said another voice, "and you have no right to stop me."
"Jason knows you've done enough!" Aven said, his voice rising.
"And you've done more than enough!" came back the savage retort. "At least let someone who really loves the boy care for him now!"
Hoom recognized the other voice. It was Stipock. But now Grandfather Noyock's voice came, soothing, gentling. "Aven, the law is the law. And if a man injures his child, the child is no longer in his care."
A moan, a cry. "I didn't mean to hurt him!" Aven said, his voice twisted and bent with weeping. Father weeping! The thought was incomprehensible to Hoom. "You know I didn't mean to hurt him, father!"
But Noyock said nothing to him, only told Stipock to go ahead.
Hoom felt the blanket come off him. The cold air was biting. Gentle hands touched his leg - fire ran up his spine.
"This is terrible, terrible," Stipock said softly.
"Can you heal him?" Noyock asked. "We've never had an injury this bad, at least not one that left the poor fellow alive."
"I'll need help."
Aven spoke up from the corner. "I'll help you."
"No!" Hoom hissed from his pain - clenched teeth. "Don't let him touch me."
Hoom couldn't see Aven turn away, or Esten put her arm around her husband to comfort his remorse. All he could see behind his closed eyes was the hatred on his father's face.
"You help me then, Noyock. Is that all right, Hoom?"
Hoom nodded, or tried to. Apparently Stipock understood his assent, for he began giving instructions. "You'll have to hold the boy by the armpits, from above. And don't try to spare him any pain. Gentleness won't help him now."
"What's happening to me? What are you doing?"
"Trust me now," Stipock said. "This is going to hurt like hell, Hoom, but it's the only way we can fix it so you'll ever walk again."
And then a hand gripped him at the ankle, which made Hoom moan, and another hand gripped him just below the break, high on his shin, which made him cry out in pain.
"Don't hurt him - " began his mother, and then silence, as Stipock said, "Now pull with all your strength, Noyock," and Hoom felt as if he were being pulled apart. The pain rose and rose and rose, until, suddenly, Hoom could feel no more pain, except that he knew he was virtually dead with it. Above the pain he floated, and felt the dispassionate movement of his body as Stipock pushed the fragment of shin back into place, where it fit again with a terrible snap