He couldn’t pull himself any further up but he clenched onto the top rung. Hands clammy and quickly tiring, his fingers threatened to give out at any moment. But in the end, it wasn’t his fingers that crumbled. The mortar in the bricks gave out, the whole side of the well collapsing. Jason, the snake and a rain of masonry fell backwards into the dark.

6. Potent Potable

6

Potent Potable

Jason, as a rule, enjoyed waking up. He loved the brief hazy moment between dream and reality, shrouded in warm, soft bedding. Even awaking in the soft grass of the hedge maze hadn’t been a wholly unpleasant experience. It was very different from regaining consciousness at the bottom of a dark well, soaked in filthy water and entangled in the corpse of a dead snake. He ignored the screens that had popped-up while he was unconscious. They shrank away to hover inconspicuously in the periphery of his vision.

His left arm was pinned under some rubble, a chunk of fallen masonry from the well wall above. He didn’t feel any pain from it, which was good, then realised he didn’t feel anything at all from it, which was bad. When he tried pulling it free the pain arrived in full force, his screams reverberating up through the well.

Holding his left arm as still as he could, he rolled the chunk of masonry off with his right. It wasn’t insurmountably heavy, but he had to hold back more screaming with gritted teeth. He couldn’t examine the freed arm properly in the dark, but it was hot and swollen to the touch. Even probing it gently with the fingers of his good hand sent ripples of pain radiating through it. He was confident it was broken and started carefully applying all the healing ointment he had left. The swelling reduced and the skin cooled, but the arm was still delicate and painful to move. The ointment didn’t seem effective on the bone-deep injury it couldn’t reach.

There was so much of the snake corpse that he was laying on it rather than the bottom of the well. Jerking his foot free of its coils sent fresh pain spiking through his arm. It took multiple attempts to struggle to his feet, using his good arm to yank himself upright with one of the wall rungs. Each time he achieved some precarious stability, his stomach roiled and he threw up, dropping to his knees. Vomit spewed out in fits and starts, even as the motion drove new pain into his injured arm.