Arthur shivered but focused on rooting through the kitchen for rags, bandages, and scissors. Unable to stand his wet socks any longer, he replaced them with a fresh pair. Things were quite bad enough without wet socks.
“I should’ve realized,” Ira went on. “It’s been clinging to me like a shadow for so long, I forgot how dangerous it can be. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop it. I thought...”
Arthur filled a bowl with water. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Ira looked unconvinced. Apparently deciding the rescue had gone some way toward making amends for his behavior the day they’d met, the cat allowed Arthur to attend to him without interruption. She curled on the bed, barely glaring.
Antiseptic, Arthur thought. He needed to disinfect the wounds.
“Do you have any—” what was that plant? Charlotte always had a paste or ointment of it with her medical things “—sweet amber?”
“I can.”
Ira waved a hand. A shrub with oval leaves and cupped yellow flowers sprouted beside his chair. Arthur’s breath hitched, but Ira slumped, like that small act of magic had drained his energy.
Biting his lip, Arthur cut away Ira’s shirtsleeve and pressed a towel to his upper arm. “Hold that, will you?”
Ira did so. Arthur touched the shrub’s foliage, considering. The leaves, not the flowers. For this, anyway. Sweet amber had many uses, not that he could remember most of them. He plucked leaves from the shrub, wishing he’d asked Charlotte to teach him more about herbalism over the years. Most of what he’d learned had been in the past six months, so he could help her on bad days.
Arthur’s heart stuttered. Assuming he managed to leave again, what, exactly, was his plan? To wander the forest at random, hoping he found her?
Ira leaned back with his eyes closed and the towel, rusty with blood, against his arm. His forehead bled freely. Arthur bit his lip so hard it hurt. He found a mortar and pestle in a cabinet and ground the leaves, hoping for the best.
Head wounds bleed a lot, he heard Charlotte saying in clipped tones, over a year ago, as she cleaned Sasha’s forehead while he panicked beside her. Sasha had somehow climbed onto and fallen off of the cottage roof.
A little water and the ground leaves made a paste, though one runnier than Arthur had been hoping for. He set the mortar and pestle down, wet a towel and wrung it out.
As Arthur cleaned the blood from Ira’s upper arm, he couldn’t help glancing at the door, like Calyx might burst in. But it was as Ira had said: Chastened, the plant creature remained outside, wrapped moodily around a tree.
Ira’s nostrils flared. Arthur worried something might’ve happened to his eye: Odd little bloody clumps lined his scar. Arthur wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were. His stomach clenched, but he breathed deeply and focused on his work. Ira wouldn’t look so bad if not for him.
In a small voice, he said, “Thank you. For what you did. You didn’t have to.”
Ira cracked an eye open. “You could’ve been killed.”
“So could you.” Arthur reached for the mortar. “This might sting. Sorry.”
He dabbed the sweet amber mixture onto Ira’s arm. Some of it dribbled down his bicep, staining his skin green, but most of the mixture stayed where Arthur wanted. Ira winced, but his eyes flickered over Arthur’s face.
“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Not if I could stop it.”
Arthur looked away. He couldn’t stand that serious hazel gaze, even as gentle as it was now. He wasn’t sure why, except for his usual thing about eye contact, whatever the reason for that. Thank God Ira never demanded it as so many people did.
“What did you see?” Ira asked.
Arthur paled but focused on bandaging his arm. He explained what he’d seen in the basin and added, as he finished with the bandage, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know when she left! It might’ve been an hour ago—a day—I’ve no idea. She could be anywhere by now. How am I supposed to find her? With the paths shifting—the stormwings—the sickness—”
His vision swam as he imagined what could’ve happened to Charlotte by now. Charlotte like Hamish, black-veined and covered in moss and vanishing when Arthur’s back was turned.
Arthur dropped his head to his knees and breathed through the cycle Charlotte had taught him. He’d never imaginedthis. Dying in the forest or being trapped in the vale forever: yes. Charlotte coming after him, as if she had any hope of finding him: absolutely not.
A hand on his head, gentle and comforting. Arthur focused on it, grateful that Ira did not have the same hang-ups about physical touch between men that Seacliff did. At home, Arthur was used to the weight and warmth of someone’s hand on his. Sasha would bowl into him for a hug, just because, or snuggle against him as he told a bedtime story, or demand a piggyback ride around the garden, even though she was getting big for that sort of thing and it often triggered his back spasm. At twelve, Jonas still sought him out to cuddle on the settee together after a bad day at school. Even Charlotte, despite her reserve, often squeezed his arm or touched his shoulder when he was upset or sunk so deep in his work that there was no other way to get his attention.
“Perhaps she’ll find her way here,” Ira said.
Then they’d both be trapped. Wonderful.
A couple more breathing cycles, and Arthur had calmed enough to examine Ira’s forehead. The bleeding had slowed, but blood congealed at his hairline, in his scar with its strange bloody clumps, on his cheek and temple. Arthur tried to channel the calm Charlotte radiated whenever she cared for a patient.
