Georgiana knew her brother well.
43
THE NORTH PATH
EMMA
I slammedthe guest room door behind me and thumped my back against it, digging the points of my shoulder blades into the wood to bar entry, bracing my toes. Harriet might come, or Mr. Darcy, or Mr. Knightley. One I had betrayed, the next abandoned, the last angered.
“Selfish girl!” I cried out. “You are hiding while Lizzy is ill.” With her, I had been my best. And with Nessy, too. I had only failed them by not achieving a miracle.
To the north, to the north, the wyvern said. I gathered the cloth bag with the last teaspoon of herbs for Nessy’s tea, dried now but a lively green, and an ivory coat and bonnet that matched my gown. Ivory seemed lucky for an ivory alcove. I hurried down more stairs and rushed through the gardens, the twin skirts of my gown and coat flashing. I patted the radiant statue at the north point as I passed.
The north path was natural, widened by deer, an easy walk, although damp and weedy where the earth dipped. Soon, I was climbing the hill, scattered sunbeams at my back.
The human noises of Pemberley House vanished. The mild afternoon had brought animals out to forage. Birds sang and squirrels chittered. Other than the tremendous, mossy girth of the bare-branched oaks, it could have been a forested walk near home.
The ground roughened with knotted roots and rotting mast, and the path steepened. Rowan and holly joined oak. Finally, puffing, I stopped to catch my breath. The path behind me stretched back—it had not magically vanished as happens in fables—but the hilltops I glimpsed through the trees were unfamiliar. How far had I come?
“A half mile,” I announced, to hear a voice, and to say something unfrightening. “Not far.” The day seemed darker, but that was the canopy of unthinned forest. I had left the house before three, so there would be hours of light. Well, two hours. Perhaps.
Lucy had matched my short boots of supple ivory kid to my gown. They looked dismayingly dirty already, caked with black mud and dead leaves. My calves ached. Sighing, I resumed the climb.
It grew harder, as happens in fables. The path stayed clear, but downed branches and trunks crossed it. I removed my Chantilly gloves, aligned the lace holes between the left and right, and folded them into my reticule. With my reticule fastened to my waist, I could now pull on branches to step over rocks and rotting logs. But the low branches had loose, dead bark, the wood brittle from summer shadow. Some snapped without warning, even sticks an inch thick.
I stopped again, panting. My thighs burned. I was hungry, my stomach growling, my throat dry. The left seam on one boot had popped several threads. The sky was unquestionably darker.
“Three quarters of a mile. That is far enough.” The woods listened. “Should you not come out?” The woods did not answer, but distantly, I heard an echo as if a tenor voice had shouted. I called louder, “Mister Wyvern?” but that felt foolish.
In the fading light, my palms had red scratches and smears of sap and mold. I rubbed them, the skin stinging and the sap sticky. Better to harm my skin than my gloves. The hems of my skirts were soiled, so I should preserve what defenses I had.
But these trees had deep, vertical crevasses in their bark. In each, cunningly hidden, miasma glimmered, a subtle trickle to soak the earth. I was alone, but how far could it seep? Where would it rise in a malignant spring? Harriet had stormed off, furious with me. She must be safe in Pemberley. Or did she look for me in the gardens? She might be wandering and lost.
I caught myself opening the drawstrings on my reticule. I tugged them tight again. Lace gloves would be ruined by dirty fingers.
What had Mr. Darcy said? I forced my memory past the wretched terrace to the lesson in the ivory alcove. Denying the possibility of illness would fail. That was true. I knew that spiral of what-ifs and the hopeless chase for perfection. Accept that you cannot protect people from being hurt. Instead, help them if they are.
The glisten of miasma had thickened to a flow. I shouted, “I am prepared to help!” but the fear stayed.
I needed a stronger talisman than an unpracticed lesson. I dug into my reticule, avoiding the gloves, and found the little cloth bag of Nessy’s tea. I pressed it to my nose, breathing flowery mint, and my mind filled with calm stories and her smile at the foolish rabbit. The fear eased.
Words whispered in my mind:climb, healer
“Thank you,” I cried. That was just like the fables Papa had read me as a child. “Iknewthis was right!”
Up, then. I climbed, ignoring the cramping hollow in my belly and my loose boot. The twilight made inky pools under raised roots, then around them, then swallowed the ground. I splashed through water, my torn boot waterlogged and my toes numb. The trunks turned to shadows against an iron sky, then black against silvered, slipping clouds. Direction was impossible, but always there was only one path ahead. I tripped, fell, and fell again, batting at unseen bushes and hanging moss, cloth snagging and dragging, bonnet pulled askew and straightened fifty times. But all that damage was swallowed by the dark.
No hilltop of Pemberley was this high. Had I gone up and down and back up again?
I stumbled into a rough meadow, the sky cleared by the fall of an ancient tree. The stump was a softening mound tufted with ivy. Without branches overhead, it was lighter, the sky the purple-blue of elderberries and glowing rose in the west.
No. If I was facing north, that was east. Was I lost, or was that the dawn?
I blinked and was surrounded by mid-morning sunlight on a spring day. Cheerful blooms nodded their heads. Life boiled everywhere: ants searching and birds singing, gnats dancing, rabbits nibbling, their ears alert and listening. I trembled with exhaustion, every muscle aching, but my clothes were as pristine as a final fitting.
Where the mounded stump had been, Lady Anne’s wyvern stood. The proud strength I saw in Georgiana’s vision was lost. He was wasted and skeletal,his bones propping wrinkled leathery skin, those lustrous brown scales reduced to a few ragged patches. Pity stilled me, and fear that I came too late.
healer. i have waited
