The peat-sack lands on the stainless-steel table with a wet, heavy thud that echoes through the clinic. Outside, the Icelandic rain lashes the glass, blurring the dark expanse of the lava fields into a bruised purple smear. Gunnar Eriksson stands in the doorway, his yellow slicker dripping onto the linoleum, his breathing ragged from the trek across the yard.
Inside the burlap, something shifts with a dry, frantic rasp of feathers. Hjordis pulls on her latex gloves, the snap of the powder-lined blue rubber sharp in the quiet room. She reaches into the sack, her fingers finding the heat of a body and the jagged, protruding bone of a broken wing. It is a raven, massive and obsidian-dark, its eye a cold, intelligent bead that tracks her every movement. She works under the hum of the surgical lamp, pinning the fracture with the calm, square-shouldered precision of a woman who has spent eleven years mending what the coast tries to break.
By the time the first grey light of dawn touches the glacier, Hjordis has finished the splint. She drapes a heavy oatmeal wool blanket over the patient to ward off the shock and turns to wash the iron-scented blood from her hands. Behind her, the rhythmic rustle of feathers stops, replaced by the heavy, unmistakable sound of a man catching his breath.
A pale, human hand slips out from under the wool blanket where the bird just lay.
