“This.” He filled it with water, growling when some sloshed on the floor. “Spill a drop of your blood into this, and you cansee where she is now.” He set the basin on the table and sat. “It won’t be pleasant.”
Elspeth didn’t move from Charlotte’s side. “Is it safe?”
“Safe, yes. But it may be disorienting.”
He held out a pocketknife.
“What d’you think?” Elspeth asked Charlotte in a low voice.
“I think, if we want to find our siblings, we have to take whatever he can give us.”
Elspeth approached, took the knife without touching the beast’s fingers, screwed her face up, and pricked her finger. A drop of blood splashed into the water.
Elspeth froze.
“Elspeth?”
She didn’t answer. She stood just as she’d been, face screwed up, hand over the basin, blood slowly dripping into it.
Charlotte grabbed her in alarm. At her distress, Calyx slipped from the beast’s shoulders and wound up her side instead, clicking fretfully.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing.” The beast retrieved bandages from a cupboard and shrugged out of his bloodied shirt. The bandages on one shoulder needed changing. “When she’s done looking, she’ll come out of it.”
Nonetheless, Charlotte fussed over her. She bandaged the bleeding finger and kissed it. Then, more to have something to do than for any other reason, she asked the beast, “Do you need help?”
He paused in the middle of packing his wound with fresh bandages. With his hands so paw-like, it seemed difficult.
“Yeah. Thanks.” He avoided her gaze as she finished the work for him. “I’m sorry I left him.”
Her skin prickled. She thought of her brother alone in the forest. “Why did you?”
“I was scared.” He scrubbed his face with a paw. “The forest took me over. I thought I might... I should’ve listened to him. He tried to calm me down, but I wouldn’t—”
A sharp inhalation cut him off: Elspeth had come back to life. She glanced around wildly, gulping down air.
Charlotte touched her back, worried by the sudden change. “Are you all right?”
Elspeth shook her head. She cast Charlotte off and paced the room, fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides. Calyx curled a comforting tendril around Charlotte’s arm.
“Elspeth?”
When she finally spoke, it was to the Lord of the Wood, venomously. “You said I’d see her. You said. Wherever she was.”
“You would,” he said in confusion. “You must have. What did you see?”
“Nothing,” Elspeth spat. “Not a damn thing. Not even a body.”
Charlotte reached for her. With a sob, Elspeth buried her face in Charlotte’s neck. Charlotte kissed her head, tamping down her worry for Arthur and the fear that she, too, might see nothing in the basin.
“What did you see?” she asked, when Elspeth’s sobs had quieted. “If not Maggie, what...?”
“A tree.” Elspeth’s voice was muffled. “It spat me out at a mossy tree.”
Charlotte’s heart sank. “Like the ones...?”
Elspeth shook her head against Charlotte’s neck. “Just a plain old tree. The one where I found the acorn, right there with the stump of the first tree behind it. I called for her, I went wandering all around, but all I saw was the leftovers of that work camp what vanished. Like I was stuck in a nightmare, trying to find Maggie, but all I could find was trees.”
