“And?”
“The ground swims a bit, but ...” I shrug, feeling the pull in my uninjured arm, and then shiver. As warm as the room is, I am still damp, injured, and nearly naked. “Not bad enough to waste magic.”
“Are you certain?” She frowns, and I know that she was considering using the hardened pebbles of magic that she keeps here for emergencies. She is kinder to my body than I am, but if I say no, she will typically adhere to my wishes.
“I’ve had worse head wounds. I need you to examine me for anything I cannot see well enough.”
“Mmph.” She frowns at me, but she does not walk to the counter for the precious few hardened bits of magic she has in stock.
I know one of her youngest apprentices has already been dispatched to the manor to fetch me something clean to wear. Another apprentice brings over a bucket of warm, wet rags that Maria is already using to wipe away the blood and grime on my arm. The water is heavily salted, and I must force myself not to cry out as the salty water flushes out my cut.
She grabs a dark, dyed cloth to blot the water and blood. “No green in it.”
“Good.”
“Not too deep.” She prods at the skin around it. “Stitch it up, and you’ll heal. Shame you aren’thimyet.”
Her words are callous, as being “him” means being the Hunter—and that means my father would be dead. From Maria’s perspective, however, having the Hunter’s healing abilities would change my injury from painful to mild.
Maria walks away to collect a glass bottle that has several threaded needles inside. The needles float in what looks like water, clear liquid that each needle and thread waits inside like fish in a jar. I know better.
She uncorks it and uses a hook to catch and withdraw a needle. The bitter scent assails me. Salted wine. That’s what each needle soaks into its thread. The thread is catgut, which despite the name is made of sheep’s intestines, not cats’.
Maria eyes my injury as if I am a swath of linen she is about to sew, and then she jabs the needle into my flesh. The pull of the thread through my skin used to bother me, but I have been stitched and sewn together in so many places now that the process no longer seems odd. She will mend me, pull my tears together so they resemble the right shape and order.
And I will think about the monster Father and I must find.
Not the woman who brought me to the village.
Not the risk my father could be facing in this moment.
Not the fact that hemustbe able to defeat this creature because I am not prepared for my destiny.
I will be sewn, salted, and redressed. And then I will begin to learn more about this creature.
Was it the same one that attacked me?
Why did it not kill me?
What does it want?
Or was it a man? Did he attack someone who screamed, then knock me out so I would not interfere?
All I have are questions, a handful of hardened faery blood, and a collection of vials to study.
Chapter 5
“The Pooka,rectèPúca, seems essentially an animal spirit. Some derive his name frompoc, a he-goat; and speculative persons consider him the forefather of Shakespeare’s Puck. On solitary mountains and among old ruins he lives, ‘grown monstrous with much solitude,’ and is of the race of the nightmare.”
—Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, edited and selected by W. B. Yeats [1888]
By the time I am stitched and liberally doused with salt water, I no longer have any part of my body that doesn’t scream out in pain. Two maids from the manor have come to the physicians’ house with a dress and all the necessary accoutrements to transform me from patient to noblewoman.
“Lady Rylan sent a hooded cloak,” one woman tells me. “She says to tell you that Lady Fleuriste is in a temper over your absence and his lordship’s, so to cover up any bloody parts.”
I laugh, despite everything. My sister feigns gentility better than I can, but she is still cut from the same cloth. “Thank you ...”
“Elspeth,” the woman supplies. She is older than my sister and me, but not by much.
