“None,” he squeaked. “I don’t know any other way.”
I cursed and kicked a stool. It toppled across the floor with a clatter, but the sound did nothing to relieve the pressure building inside me. I refused to accept that answer. I would not let Laurel die from infection, and I would not let this fool bleed her into a grave. This could not be the end. There had to be another answer. There had to.
“But…” the physician said hesitantly.
I snapped my gaze to him. “But what?”
He licked his lips. “There are rumors of someone else who might be able to…” His voice died.
Laurel did not have time for this idiotic man to speak slowly. “Well?” I demanded.
The physician glanced toward the windows, as if afraid the villagers might have their ears pressed to the glass. I stepped toward him and he quailed.
“It isn’t a physician,” he said quickly.
“Who is it?”
“Some people say there’s an old woman.” He lowered his voice. “They claim she can heal people without bleeding. Potions and herbs, mostly. But I don’t feel that I can in good conscience recommend…”
I crossed the room and scooped Laurel into my arms. She had faded into unconsciousness again. “Where do I find this woman?”
The physician licked his lips again. “There’s a path in the woods. Follow it until you see the cottage with the crooked tree out front.”
He pointed the way and I was out the door in a flash, hurrying toward the woods with Laurel in my arms. Behind me, the physician called, “You didn’t hear it from me.”
LAUREL
No matter how hard I struggled, I could no longer keep sleep from pulling me under. Every thought, memory, and feeling became muddled and foggy. I tried to form one cohesive thought, just one, but even that was too much. Everything blurred together until there was nothing but darkness pressing softly at the edges of my senses.
I couldn’t hear anything anymore. Sound had disappeared as though thick pillows had been placed gently over my ears, and I could no longer open my eyes. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. I could barely feel myself breathing.
Even the pain that had consumed me for so long began to fade.
It slipped away into a vast black nothingness, and for the first time in what felt like ages, I didn’t want to fight.
I didn’t have the strength to claw my way back into a world where there was so much pain.
I didn’t have the strength to be brave anymore.
Perhaps, if death was this quiet and peaceful, I could stop being afraid of it.
Perhaps once death came for me, I could rest. I could let go.
I released the last feeble thoughts that I had.
I was ready to die.
BARON
The part of the woods we entered was dark and foreboding. Moss draped from the trees in long green sheets, and cobwebs stretched across the abandoned path as if no living creature had used it in years. It took half an hour of walking before I reached the cottage the physician had described. At first, I worried that I wouldn’t recognize the crooked tree. How was I supposed to know which one the physician meant? Every time I passed a tree with the slightest bend in its trunk, I strained my eyes through the gloom, searching for any sign of a house.
But as soon as I saw it, I knew.
The tree was blackened and twisted, growing at a sharp angle from the ground before bending completely in the opposite direction halfway up. It continued that way for nearly ten feet before clawing toward the sky again. Dead branches hung from the trunk, and a massive vulture perched at the top, watching my approach with wide, hungry eyes. I shifted Laurel’s weight in my arms and held her closer.
The cottage beyond the crooked tree would have terrified me as a child. A large iron pot boiled over a cook fire outside, its contents giving off a foul smell that caught at the back ofmy throat. Ravens clustered in the surrounding branches, their caws grating against the heavy silence of the clearing. Though it was a cloudless summer morning, shadows seemed to cling to the small shack as if sunlight was afraid to permeate the gloom. Every step toward the door made my skin prickle.
Blue-tinted smoke curled from the chimney. Several shingles were missing from the roof, and the shutters hung crookedly beside grime-covered windows. The walls had perhaps once been white, but thorny vines had climbed over them until green mildew and dark leaves swallowed nearly every inch. Weeds grew unchecked around the path and something slithered through the tall grass near my boots.
