“Maud likes to say,” Ira added, “that it’s like expecting surgery to cure the common cold.”
They fell silent.
Arthur’s neck throbbed. He touched it, yelped when his hand throbbed, too. He examined his palm, expecting the injury from the brambles to have reappeared.
“I thought I was healed,” he said anxiously. “Why does it still hurt?”
Ira dragged a hand through his hair. “It’ll do that. You’re healed, but you’re not unchanged.”
Maud emerged from her stump with Arthur’s heating padand two bowls of a smoky vegetable soup. The scent tickled Arthur’s nose. He took his heating pad and, when his neck stopped throbbing, downed the soup, starving after the trek through the forest and the fuath’s attack.
The sun started to set; golden rays sliced through the trees. Their shadows dimmed the pool’s silver glow, but Arthur gazed upward, grateful for a brief sight of blue after so many days in the vale with its snow and clouds. The first star appeared deep in the vault of the sky.
Maud brought him a second bowl of soup. Arthur ate more slowly this time.
“Eat up.” Ira had finished eating and was now on his back on the ground, doing a series of knee exercises. Stubble shadowed his cheek. “We have a ways to go yet tonight.”
“Ought to stay.” Maud nudged his paw with her stick. He swatted her away. “It’s safe here. You head out now, who knows where you’ll end up sleeping.”
Shaking his head, Ira returned to his exercises. “We can’t afford the daylight. The faster we get to the heart of the wood, the better.”
Arthur said nothing. He knew they needed to hurry, but he was cold and damp and sore. The pool had healed his wounds, but his hand and neck throbbed with phantom pain, his muscles ached from the day’s walk, and something deeper in him ached from what he’d seen in the water. He pulled his father’s watch from the pocket of his damp, discarded trousers and was relieved to find it ticking.
When Arthur had finished his second bowl, Ira put his knee brace back on and shouldered his pack. Arthur reluctantly shouldered his own. Freya wound between his legs until he bent and scratched behind her ears.
“Here.” Maud thrust a vial of silver water into Ira’s hand. “Might as well take some. That’un seems likely to need itagain,” she added, nodding at Arthur. “Humans are terribly fragile.”
Ira growled but pocketed the vial.
“Thanks.” He avoided her silver eyes. “I know I haven’t been around.”
She patted his thigh. “You’re here now.”
He nodded, not looking convinced. “I’ll visit again. Soon.”
She smiled, a strange, wrinkly smile with moss-green teeth showing in her bark-like face.
“I hope so, my lad. I hope so.” To Arthur, she said, “You look out for him, hmm?”
Arthur was taken aback by the very idea of him looking out for Ira. “I—yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.”
They left her standing on the sea-glass shore, surrounded by ravens, waving to them with a twiglike hand until Maud, pool, and yews vanished behind them.
xxv. In which Arthur does a brief stint as a barber
Arthur didn’t know how much farther they walked, but it was too far. His legs ached, a stitch burned in his side, and the canopy was dark overhead. He missed the open sky above Maud’s pool, though he didn’t miss the pool itself. He imagined the stars reflected in that silver expanse of water.
Then he imagined them at home, as he lay in the heather on the hillside with Sasha and Jonas on either side of him and taught them constellations like his father had taught him and Charlotte. He sighed.
Ira glanced at him without speaking. As he’d recovered from his dunking, Arthur hadn’t thought much of the moss creeping across the left side of Ira’s face; in fact, he’d confused it for stubble. Now he couldn’t help noticing it. By the time they’d stopped, and Ira had built a fire, the moss had thickened. It trailed over Ira’s left cheek and jaw and down his neck.
“Ira,” Arthur said, and paused. Ira hadn’t mentioned the growth, but Arthur didn’t know how he could be unaware of it. “You have. Er. Well.”
He gestured helplessly. Ira ran a hand over his face. His jaw tightened; then his expression smoothed into resignation. He shrugged.
“Nothing to be done about it.”
“No, surely there’s—” Arthur cast his mind around. “You might shave it off?”
