Page 32 of Bonetide

I reach for it.

Our fingers meet at the wooden handle.

His skin is cool. Not cold. Just cool, the way the stone walls of an old church are cool in summer. Refreshing. A respite. And the brush is between us for a second, his fingers and mine on the handle, and the shock that goes up my arm has nothing to do with static, and everything to do with the line of his knuckle resting beside my thumb.

My breath hitches and I pull my hand back. The brush stays with him. He stares at me curiously.

“Sorry,” I say, too quickly, and now I’m fumbling, blood up in my face, and I reach again and the brush goes back to me. “Sorry, I…”

“Iris.”

He says my name quietly. I stop talking, as if I’ve been conditioned to.

He’s not smiling. He’s just looking at me, those glacial blues searching my face as if he’s expecting to find something.

“Go on,” he urges. “Show me what else you’ve got.”

I take the reprieve for what it is, my heart galloping a million miles a minute. I narrate too much, as per usual. I tell him about the inks, the watercolors, the small Japanese pen with the nib that makes the line I use for venation. He listens intently the entire time, as if everything I’m saying is fascinating to him.

When I’ve run out of things in the box, like a glorified show and tell, he picks up one of the foxgloves I’ve been pressing and holds it gently between two fingers.

“What’s the Latin?”

“Digitalis purpurea,” I answer without skipping a beat.

“And what does it do?”

Is he testing me on something I’m extremely knowledgeable in?

How did he know that was my kink?

“Depends on the dose. It’s heart medicine when done properly,” I continue. “You know, by actual chemists. The old name was folk’s glove—fairies’ fingers. Although whether the fairies got their hands stuck in the bell shape or whether the flower was theirs to begin with depends on who’s telling the story. In the old days the leaves were used for dropsy, and they killed as many people as they cured. Nowadays people know that foxgloves are poisonous. Even cows seem to know that.”

“Aye,” he says, as if remembering something specific. “There was a woman in the village south of here who knew the right dose for it. Saved a few lives.”

“When was this?”

“Before the road came in.”

I look at him, wondering when that was. He doesn’t return the look. He sets the foxglove gently back in the press.

“Beautiful, but with the disposition to be dangerous,” he murmurs, then glances at me. “Think I might have to call you foxglove.”

Please do, I think pathetically as my cheeks go bright red.

“There’s eyebright on your spit.” He turns back to the bench. “On the moor side, the way to the road. The small one. White flower, yellow throat.”

“Euphrasia.”

“Aye. The old name was the herb for the eye.”

“The doctrine of signatures!” I can’t help myself, he opened the door and I’m waltzing right in. “It looks like an eye, so it’s good for the eye. Pliny said so.”

“Pliny was a fool with a good library.”

I laugh before I can stop myself. He almost smiles. My god, I’m practically giddy. Aside from my father and a few folks at college, I don’t think I’ve ever used Pliny—as in Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist who all of botany owes a great debt to—in a real conversation before.

“A good-hearted fool, perhaps,” I tell him. “Did you know he died while trying to rescue villagers from the Mount Vesuvius eruption?”