“Hurts like balls.”
Charlotte flushed at the language but said evenly, “I have an ointment that can help with the pain.”
Elspeth lay face down on her cloak—sat up, made a face, and removed the silver acorn on its chain before lying downagain—so Charlotte could pull her shirt up and massage ointment into her shoulder. She was wiry and muscular. No matter how Charlotte reminded herself Elspeth was another patient who needed help, she couldn’t stop remembering that flash of breast she’d glimpsed.
She was relieved when she finished with the ointment. Surely because Elspeth’s color and breathing had gone back to normal, and Elspeth had shown no other signs of shock.
Tugging her shirt back into place, Elspeth froze. “Lottie?”
“What?”
Elspeth turned around, jaw tight. She pulled her collar down, revealing her scar with its stitches.
Its edges were feathered in black.
Sucking in a breath, Charlotte pulled her closer to examine it. The thin blackness unfurled outward into veins before her eyes. Her heart stuttered. What had caused it? Elspeth had undoubtedly been infected by the sparrowhawk that had left her scar—but why had symptoms appeared after almost two weeks of nothing?
“It’s just now?” she asked.
Elspeth nodded. “I’d swear to it nothin’ was there before I lay down.”
“Before you lay down...” Charlotte murmured. “Where’s your acorn?”
“My...?”
The acorn was on the cloak where Elspeth had left it. Charlotte considered it, remembering how the mud winding around Elspeth’s body had avoided it.
“Have you taken it off since finding it? Until now, I mean?”
“Nay, sleep in it and everything. Wouldn’t’ve taken it off just now if it hadn’t been so uncomfortable lying on it that way.”
“Here. Let me—”
Charlotte clasped the chain back around Elspeth’s neck. The moment she’d done so, the black veins stopped spreading.
Charlotte let out a breath. “It worked.”
“Veins’re still there.”
“They’re not getting any worse.” That wasn’t much, but it was something. “I think the acorn has been protecting you, somehow, and that’s why you haven’t had any symptoms until now.”
The wind picked up, colder now. Charlotte shivered, wishing she’d brought a heavier coat. She hadn’t expected it to be so cold in early September, nor to end up on a bluff while wandering the wood.
“Here.” Elspeth wrapped her cloak around Charlotte. “If you want it.”
Charlotte snuggled into the cloak gratefully. “Thanks.”
Elspeth nodded. She turned away to hitch the mule back up, but she kept pausing to touch her scar uneasily.
Perhaps the acorns were the answer. The sickness was magical, eldritch. Charlotte was certain the cure had to be magical, too.
One way or another, she’d figure it out. She wasn’t about to lose Elspeth to the sickness as she’d lost so many others.
xxiv. In which Arthur takes a dunking
Arthur was no longer a person; he was a throbbing mass with a mangled neck. He drifted in and out of awareness. Ira’s breathing, harsh. His own bones jolting with each step. Freya skittering, her cries. Ira swearing as she got underfoot, almost tripping him.
A new sound, a creaky voice like a tree that had learned to talk.
