Maud wheezed with laughter, a susurration like wind in the leaves. The ravens laughed with her; their laughter was unsettlingly human.
Nodding tightly, Ira went to retrieve their furs and bags. His limp was more pronounced than usual, now he’d carried Arthur through the forest.
Arthur peeled his wet socks and trousers off, racked with shivers. Maud dropped his knapsack at his side. He flushed, turning away; she laughed.
“Good heavens. Humans are silly about nudity. You’ve spare clothes in that, he told me. And a heating pad, which might do you some good once I warm it. Here.”
She handed him a towel. Arthur mumbled a thanks and dried hastily. He yanked a spare set of clothes out of his knapsack; he’d packed two, his own and a set Ira had altered for him.
He re-dressed, picturing Ira on his knees, reaching for Arthur’s trousers. He reddened again and tried to stop picturing it.
When he turned, fully clothed, Ira wrapped several furs around him. Their spring-flower scent enveloped him alongside their warmth.
“Thanks.”
Arthur’s teeth chattered. Underwater, the water had felt like nothing. On shore, it felt likewaterin all the worst ways.
“Sit here a spell.” Maud dragged over a log larger than shewas so Arthur could sit by the fire. “You warm yourself till the soup’s done.”
She nudged him toward the log with her stick, then disappeared with his heating pad into a wizened stump nearby. A bit of bark like a tiny chimney smoked at the stump’s top. White-spotted red toadstools grew around the door like a garden.
Freya crawled into the stump but came flying out followed by tiny kitchen implements and a string of what were unmistakably curses, albeit in a language with the same creaky quality as Maud’s voice. Ravens went flying and settled back in the surrounding trees.
The fire stung Arthur’s nose and cheeks, but the furs helped. Freya settled on his lap, purring deeply. That helped, too.
“I saw Dad,” Arthur said in a hushed voice. “In the water. I saw Dad.”
Ira sat beside him, removing his knee brace. “All the spirits of those who die in the forest end up here.”
Arthur’s stomach clenched. He huddled over the cat, stroking her fur, and reassured himself that he hadn’t seen his sister in the pool. Surely that meant Charlotte was alive, wherever she was.
Ira massaged his knee, letting out a sharp breath. Arthur glanced at him.
“If you went into the water,” he began, but Ira interrupted.
“It won’t work on me.”
“Not even...” Arthur gestured at his paws.
Ira smiled humorlessly. “Shall I show you?”
“I don’t see how it would hurt to try. I suppose you can turn into a fish and not come out gasping.”
Laughing softly, Ira undid the first toggle of his shirt, the second, but Arthur said hastily, “Never mind, no need to show me, if you say it won’t work I believe you.”
To his simultaneous relief and disappointment, Ira shruggedand quit undoing his shirt. He didn’t redo the toggles, though, and Arthur couldn’t stop staring at his collarbones.
“Would it do anything for chronic pain?” he asked. “A human’s, I mean.”
Ira’s eyes went over his body like he’d find pain mapped there. Arthur smiled faintly.
“Not me. Lottie’s been... She took sick back in February. I’ve never seen her so ill. She coughed all the time, she was exhausted, hardly left her bed for weeks—when she did, she could barely make it across the room without getting short of breath—and that was on top of the aches and fever and all the usual things you’d expect. She’s been so tired ever since, and in pain more often than not, so I just wondered...”
Ira shook his head. He looked calmer now than he had when he’d pulled Arthur from the pool.
“I asked Maud, once. Ages ago. I brought a sick human to her, hoping the water could cure him. I’d done everything I knew to do, but he kept getting worse. I wouldn’t believe her when she said it wouldn’t help. He died a few hours after I pulled him out of the water.”
Arthur shivered, imagining Charlotte wet and cold and sicker than ever.
