Flushing, Arthur pulled away.
“Arthur?”
Arthur shouldered his knapsack with such force he almost knocked himself over. “We should go. You said we’re off track.”
“Yes. Of course.”
Ira shouldered his own pack. He gazed at Arthur, impassive. Then he said, “This way,” and headed into the trees. Arthur let out a breath and followed, hoping he could leave all the confusing things he was feeling there beside the stream.
xxix. In which Charlotte and Elspeth get into a scuffle with some trees
The glass vials, like Elspeth’s scar, were unchanged by morning. Charlotte examined them as Elspeth packed up camp, hitched up the mule, and tied the horse to the back of the gig. The grass in the vial of ooze was still veined; the grass with the infected bark and leaves was still healthy. Touching infected plant matter—being closed in with it overnight—had not transferred the sickness to a healthy plant.
Charlotte packed the vials away with a frown. That was information, she supposed, but not much, since she’d never seen the sickness pass between people anyway. She suspected the grass in those vials would go on uninfected.
The next step was seeing whether she could coax the sickly blade back to health with the silver acorns she’d harvested. But how? Plant matter could not ingest medication. Creating a topical might work, but she thought that dubious—more likely to heal an injury than cure an illness. As they trundled along the cliffside, she was deep in thought, turning over possibilities.
Elspeth glanced at her occasionally but said nothing until afternoon. After a warm and golden morning, clouds had drawnin dark and gray. Out to sea, the sky was black. The promise of a coming storm etched itself into Charlotte’s bones. The pain distracted her from her thoughts about curing the sickness, not that she’d been getting anywhere with that anyway.
“Think we’re getting close,” Elspeth said.
“How do you know?”
“The acorn. It feels...” Elspeth sucked in her cheeks, considering. “I don’t know. More alive. It likes this place. The Lord of the Wood must be nearby. Aside from the first tree, I don’t know what else in the forest’d make it feel this way.”
The forest was to their right, but only a few scraggly trees, like the rowan they’d camped by last night, appeared in their path. As they went on, those trees distorted into fantastical shapes. Here was one with roots high and bent like knees. Here one twisted like a man looking over his shoulder. Here one with a knot open in a silent scream.
Shuddering, Charlotte drew closer to Elspeth. They were sharing the cloak this morning. Elspeth had offered it to Charlotte, but she’d been shivering herself. Remembering how Agnes had described the progression of Gracie’s sickness, Charlotte worried. Elspeth had been all right, despite the forest’s unseasonable cold, until her sickness had shown up. Rather than mention that, however, Charlotte insisted they share. Sea breezes could flay a body to the bone, this time of year. The sickness need not have anything to do with it.
The misshapen trees increased in number the farther they went. Elspeth’s mouth pressed into a grim line.
“’Member how I told you you’d know it if that tree was a person?”
Feeling sick, Charlotte nodded. Elspeth jerked her head at the surrounding trees.
“Who do you think they were?” Charlotte asked in a hushed voice.
Elspeth shrugged, but her brow puckered. The mule halted, stamping a foot. His ears twitched frantically, swiveling in every direction. At the back of the gig, the horse snorted and tossed his head.
Elspeth threw off the cloak, climbed down, and stroked the mule’s nose, murmuring in his ear. Slowly, his ears stopped twitching, but he shook his head. She sighed.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked.
“He don’t want to go any farther. Spooked by them trees.” Elspeth patted his neck. She was shivering again; Charlotte handed the cloak down to her, but Elspeth waved it away. “No matter. I’ll lead him on foot. C’mon now, there’s a good lad. I’ll be right alongside you the whole way.”
She led the mule by the bridle. The strange trees closed around them.
The gig kept sticking, lodged between trunks or caught on roots. Each time, Charlotte feared it would remain stuck. Elspeth seemed afraid of the same thing; she went from muttering curses as she freed it the first three times to working in silence, glancing around shiftily.
Wind hissed through the leaves. Charlotte’s skin prickled. The hissing seemed almost to form words. Incomprehensible at first. Then—voices. They might have been coming from the trees, but they sounded unsettlingly familiar. Like Arthur. The children. John.
Find me.
Help us.
You didn’t save me.
She swallowed, her stomach twisting. Silly; obviously she was imagining things. It was no different than the evil spirit that had lured Elspeth into the muddy pit yesterday. She held on to that thought, but now she saw faces, too, the half-imagined features of everyone she’d ever loved.
