A lazy tendril unfurled in his direction.
“It’s all right,” Charlotte said. “I know what happened. But Calyx has been a great help to me, and it’s not going to hurt you—is it?” she asked the plant creature, in much the same tone she always told the cat to get off the table.
The tendril waved from side to side. Arthur still remembered leaves sealed over his face, vines biting into his ribs, tendrils down his throat.
“Are you... quite sure?”
Faint clicking, which did not raise his confidence.
“Calyx.” The clicking died away. “Yes, I’m sure.”
The tendril stretched toward him. Nervously, Arthur let it wrap around his finger.
“Bygones? I’ll forget the whole thing if you will.”
The tendril shook his finger and retreated. Arthur let out an astonished chuckle and started coughing.
“You’re here,” he rasped, when the coughing had died away. “You’ve got eldritch creatures eating out of your hand. Of course you have.” He prodded her shoulder, reassuring himself she was real and unharmed. “You’re not hurt?”
She laughed wetly. “Heaven’s sakes, Arthur. Half your torso is being held together by stitches and bandages, and you want to know if I’m hurt?”
“Are you?”
“Of course not. I didn’t get mauled half to death by a bear.”
“And the children?”
“They’re fine. More or less.” She kissed his knuckles. “Seeing you get torn to bits didn’t do them any favors, but they’re not hurt.”
Letting out a breath, Arthur leaned against her, careful to avoid squashing any of Calyx’s appendages. Charlotte wrappedher arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. Knowing she’d come after him had been one thing; finding her sitting beside him, taking care of him as she always had, was quite another.
His eyes prickled. “I’ve missed you so much. I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Thank God I am.” Charlotte’s voice wobbled. “Ira was panicking so badly he couldn’t have done anything for you himself. Jonas had to do the stitches, my hands were so stiff by the time we reached you, but I was able to talk them through it all right.”
Arthur’s stomach dipped. “Ira... Is he here?”
“Mmm.”
She let go of him. He wished she hadn’t. They had things to talk about, and he didn’t want to talk about them. Easier to go on leaning against each other, glad to be sitting together.
“Let me see your bandages,” Charlotte said.
He tugged the furs from his shoulders, shivering so violently his teeth chattered. His father’s acorn hung from his neck. He touched it, relieved. He’d dropped it at some point in the confusion with the bear.
His bandages were tidy but spotted with blood. Charlotte peeled them away to replace them.
Arthur sucked in a breath and started coughing. Black veins crept across his torso from the gouges the bear had left. Coughing made his injuries throb worse than ever, but he couldn’t stop for several moments.
Charlotte’s jaw tightened, but when she spoke it was in the same calm, soothing tone she used on all her patients. “It’s not as bad as it could be. The acorn’s slowed the spread. I wish... I found a cure for it. The sickness.”
“You did?” Arthur wheezed. “Then—”
“I don’t have any more.” Charlotte fiddled with John’s wedding ring—or Arthur thought so, before realizing she was fiddling with a silver acorn, hanging beside the ring, that matched his own. “There’s this woman I’ve been traveling with. She had the sickness. We tested the cure on her, and it worked. But we used it all up, and I haven’t... It’s the acorns, but—”
She gestured around them. They were in a grove of young silver oaks. There was no black ooze, no half-skeletal animals, no unnatural silence—but all the trees were tarnished, none fruiting.
“Ira thinks replanting the heart of the wood will cure you, too, but we have to get there first.”
