“Valeria, I need you to grind up the dandelions and elderberries to start. We will try giving her a fever reduction that’ll aid in the cough that the poor girl has.”
I nodded. “Right.” I took my cloak off and worked on the bottles.
Under the dim lighting, I picked up the berries, their skin appearing more black than purple of an elderberry. I examined them more closely, the color never reflecting the purple. I shook my head. It could not have been a mistake that Ayla packed nightingale berries rather than elderberries. Or it was the trick of the light.
I threw the berries into the mortar. The unsettling feeling pounded against my skull in time to the pestle grinding the stone.
Ayla examined the girl, speaking softly. The little girl answered meekly, her voice barely a whisper. She whipped out a stethoscope to listen to her heartbeat, shifting it across the thin fabric of the girl’s chemise. “Alright, I need you to lay you back so I can listen to your lungs. Can you do that for me, sweetie?”
The girl nodded weakly.
Ayla took another quiet moment, listening to the girl as I quietly ground the dandelion flower into the black mush. I added liquid to the mixture to where it became a drink rather than syrup.
Ayla withdrew her stethoscope. “Lungs appear to be healthy. Tell me, sweetie, what hurts?”
“My body . . . I feel so tired . . . and the dreams. The awful . . . dreams.”
The girl’s eyelids were drooping as if she were passing on into the realms of dreams rather than into capable hands.
The mother wrung her hands profusely. “She has been talking nonsense for days about these dreams. She often awakes in the middle of the night screaming bloody murder. As if she was being killed rather than sleeping. It’s awful.”
Ayla turned back to the girl. “Can you tell me what your dreams are about?”
The girl paused, wheezing with each raspy breath. “There are these shadows... . Hungry shadows and they want to eat me. They grab at me as if I am a snack. I am not a snack.”
I stopped grinding.
“Eat you?” Ayla pressed.
The girl nodded. “Uh-huh. It’s like the mist around the castle. They don’t have faces, but I can tell that they have eyes and a mouth, and they are hungry. They want to eat me, and I tell them no. I tell them no, and I scream, and the next thing I know, mother is shaking me awake, telling me to stop screaming.”
I was suddenly submerged into icy waters, my hand coming to a stop.
Ayla stood, guiding to the workstation, and she grabbed a bottle of chamomile. “Do you have any hot water?”
The woman sprang into action, going across the tiny space to fill the kettle and then back to the other side where a fireplace sat near the beds. She placed it over the fire as Ayla sprinkled the leaves into a small cup, mixing it with honey.
“This should help with the sleeping problem, but she does have a profound weakness that is hard to explain.”
The mother scowled. “It must be the vile thing that lives up there. That would have to explain it. Every physician I have talked to said that they have never seen anything like this and don’t even know where to begin.” The woman crossed her arms, her gaze on the sleeping child, curled up and fighting sleep as tiny eyes watched the conversation closely. Worry played across the mother’s lips, straining, and tightening as her throat bobbed. “Tell me, isheresponsible?”
Ayla just packed the bottles back into her pack.
Her normal, serene features strung into a contemplative worry.
“I will come by in a fortnight. I have materials back at the cottage that may be of used to ease her symptoms. I am afraid her diagnosis is one I cannot treat, but I can ease.” Ayla’s eyes darted to me, full of understanding and the message clear.
Silas was to blame.
Ayla said nothing on our way back to the cottage. The quiet ate at me, knowing that, in some way, regardless of the facts, I was responsible for the little girl’s slow decline and imminent death.
The moment we entered the quaint cottage, Ayla whipped around in a fury. “Why isn’t he dead yet?” Ayla demanded. The firelight bounced off the cottage, dancing across her twisted frown. “I gave you the way out of your entrapment, and he is still not dead.”
“How do we know he is the one responsible for these deaths?” I inquired. “Silas said that he—”
“And you honestly believed that monster?” Ayla slammed the table, and herbs flew around the small space. She tapped the table, face darkening, lips twisting into a frown. “The man needs to die. If you can’t complete the job, then someone else must in your stead. I can’t let him continue to flaunt himself. Things are already dire enough as it is.”
“Why can’t you do it yourself if you are so sure he is responsible?” I shoved my chilled fingers into my pocket, watching as Ayla paced the length of the cottage.
