Elspeth plodded through the trees.
“The acorn. It was our gran’s—yours, I guess, she said you gave it to her when she was a little girl lost in the wood. Maggie wore it everywhere, but when I found it on this tree I figured she’d left it for an offering, for safe passage.” She shook her head. “I could’ve sworn... When that woodsman struck at me, I thought one of the trees struck him back. Could’ve been the same one.”
Through the new growth, a tree appeared. Stunted, but thoroughlytree, not human in form like the trees they’d fought to get into the vale. It was bent and twisted, carpeted with a thick layer of moss. The thin, whiplike branches of a willow spilled from its crown, blooming with little white flowers not unlike those that had bloomed in Ira’s scar before he’d transformed.
“That one,” Elspeth said in a hushed voice. “It’s that one. Them flowers weren’t there before.”
Ira ran a hand over the branches, laid his palm against the trunk. He cocked his head, listening intently.
“It’s not a tree. It’s a person.”
Elspeth’s jaw clenched. “The forest turned her?”
Ira shook his head. “It isn’t someone the forest was protecting itself from. That’s why it doesn’t look like the others. It’s someone the forest wanted to protect from something else. The same way it tried to protect me all those years, by making them a part of itself.”
“Why?” Charlotte asked.
Ira shrugged.
“We can ask, if I...” He ran his fingers over the bark, murmuring, “It’s all right. You can let her go. She’ll be safe now.”
Moss shifted and slipped downward, creeping away throughthe grass to crawl up the trunks of other trees. The white flowers wilted. The bark shuddered and melted into skin and clothes, the whiplike branches turned to hair, and the tree was a young woman with mousy-brown hair, a crooked nose, and skin a shade lighter than Elspeth’s.
“Maggie,” Elspeth breathed.
The next moment, her expression twisted into horror. Rather than straightening, stretching, awakening—whatever any of them had expected Maggie to do once no longer a tree—she tilted forward and collapsed. Her skin was waxy, her breath shallow.
“Maggie!”
Elspeth caught her, eyes wide with panic. Maggie bled spectacularly from a wound in the back of her head.
With Calyx’s help, Charlotte knelt beside them. “Let me see.”
Her stomach twisted. Nohead wounds often look worse than they are, this: Maggie had been bludgeoned. Charlotte couldn’t fix this.
She met Arthur’s eyes helplessly. He’d gone pale at the sight of all that blood, but he blurted, “Maud! Maud—your pool—did you bring any—”
“Of course I did.” Maud clicked her tongue, pulling a vial from her skirt. She nodded at Ira. “Hewouldbring humans into battle with him, never mind how fragile you all are.”
She gave the vial to Charlotte. Its contents were silver.
Charlotte held it to the light. “How do I use it?”
“Pour it over the wound,” Ira said. “That’s all.”
“Might not work as well as you hope,” Maud warned. “Best on fresh wounds. Which I suppose this is, in a way, but if the girl’s been a tree all this time it’s likely older than it looks.”
“She...” Elspeth swallowed. “She’s been missing for weeks now.”
Charlotte uncorked the vial with difficulty, turned Maggie’s head, and dripped silver fluid onto the wound. Beside her, Elspeth was rigid as stone.
Wherever the liquid spilled, skin knit itself together and new hair grew. Charlotte had never seen anything like it. With access to this, she could save anyone who had an accident that might otherwise cost their life.
Maggie’s skull stitched itself up until it looked as if the wound had never been, except for the blood sticking strands of hair together. With the last few drops of liquid, Charlotte wiped the blood away. It stained her apron pink.
Shaking, Elspeth stroked her sister’s hair. “Maggie?”
Charlotte felt for a pulse. Maggie’s chest rose thinly, but her skin looked less waxy than it had before. “Her pulse is all right. Let’s give it a minute.”
