Ice splintered and crackled as Eleven delivered a solid blow to it with his sword. The force of the hit ran up his shoulder and he winced at the sharp sting, flexing the muscles.
His face burned. It had stopped bleeding — he’d reached up to gently dab at his face that morning — but there was probably dried blood staining his face.
He needed ice to calm the cuts and prevent them from bleeding further.
The ice from the river was too thick to crack into small enough chunks for his needs, but maybe if he traveled up or down the bank he would be able to find patches that were more melted. He wasn’t sure whether this was the time for ice to freeze or melt because, as embarrassing as it was, he actually didn’t know what season it was.
It was probably winter. Maybe Eleven should have assumed that by the snowfall he had seen the other day. But was it the middle of winter, or one of the last snowfalls before spring? Cobblestone never got much snow, so Eleven wasn’t in a place to know.
He scouted around the trees and ground for ice frozen over the soil and settled on shoveling some of it into a cloth that he wrapped into a chunky sphere.
Mum used to give him ice packs whenever he scraped his knees or bumped his forehead. In that moment, he picked out a spot near the riverbank and lay down with his makeshift ice pack on his face. The dirt and ice were as cold as the ground, but he couldn’t complain. He closed his eyes and listened to the water, folding his fingers over his chest as he breathed, trying to remind himself that he would live. He wasgoing to get through this. He just had to calm down.
