"You will pull until I say stop. I'm going to guide the ends of the bones into place. You will pull." She gazed evenly into Mr. Worthington's dark eyes, and then captured the gaze of Shepherd Orren as well. "And you will not slack until I say the word 'stop'. Understood?"

She had expected at least a smidgen of argument from Shepherd Orren but the man simply nodded and set his jaw grimly against his own child's oncoming pain.

"Now begin. Slow and steady."

Both men did as she asked. Gemma ignored the father's low grunt and the child's wail that quickly climbed to a shattering shriek. She ignored the dark, silent presence of Mr. Worthington at her side. She ignored the pain in her wrist and the gasps of Mrs. Orren and the concerned murmurs and rustlings of the other Orren children. There was nothing in the world except the bone in her hands and the two broken ends. She watched, and listened, and tried to sense through her fingertips as the bone shifted beneath the boy's skin. Almost there.

Then she had it. She felt and saw and heard the leg bone straighten and the two ends realign. "Hold there! Do not move! Keep the tension but do not pull further." One part of her brain hoped they understood what she meant but the other larger part of her tried to sense the way the bone was fitting beneath the skin and bruised flesh of the child. "Mr. Worthington, please rotate the lower leg ever so slightly clockwise." It was important that the bone heal straight, not twisted. She wanted to see this little boy run fast and wild over the slopes, not hobble.

Mr. Worthington did as he was asked, and he did it with a sort of perfect slowness, as if he had done it before. Gemma tucked that thought away for later and bent over the child's leg, trying to see beneath the swelling. "Light!"

The eldest Orren son scuttled forward with the candle from the table. Gemma tilted her head and stroked her thumb over the boy's lumpy shin. Then Mr. Worthington's careful rotation caused something to change and the two of the ends of the bone almost seemed to snap together as if magnetized. "Stop!"

After that, the rest was just bustle and weeping as Gemma took the four slats that Shepherd Orren happily broke from his best chair and bound them lengthwise around the boy's battered little leg. As she neatly tied off the last strip of binding, she looked up to see that the child had fallen into an exhausted sleep in his father's arms.

Shepherd Orren regarded her worriedly. "He went out like a snuffed candle. Will he be right?"