Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Inearly trip on my way down the steps as I hang my wicker basket in the crook of my elbow. The sound of jars clinking together rings through the forest as I land on the soft dirt, and it almost makes me flinch.
I look left and right before I start on my way through the woods, the hairs on the back of my neck pricking up with every step I take.
Rumours indicate that Mayor Hawthorne arrived in Sylvan yesterday, and ever since I heard the news from Miss Linden this morning when she picked up an anti-conception tonic from me, I’ve been on edge.
I feel as if I may see him or any of his councilmen around any corner—not that I know what any of them look like. His councilman could have arrived before him for all any of us know. I could’ve passed by them already and be none the wiser, mistaking them for travellers passing through.
The woods feel eerily quiet as I tiptoe through them. The sound of my feet meeting the earth is the only sound for miles. No birds are chirping, no frogs are croaking. Even the trees are quiet, almost as if they can feel the change. Their discomfort is louder than the silence.
I try to shake off the feeling as I walk, my mind returning to the one thing that has been plaguing my mind for the last day. The thing that kept me from sleep last night.
“I can’t lose you too, Evie.”
Silas’s words play over and over in my head. My dreams were filled with fragments of our conversation, all jumbled up like a tonic that wasn’t distilled correctly. I’m not sure how to make it stop.
I’m not sure if I want to.
It feels like my heart is constantly racing. Whether I’m on edge because of these witch hunts or exhilarated by hearing the boy I grew up with say that he doesn’t want to lose me. It’s racing, nonetheless.
It’s nothing otherworldly, his saying something as such. He’s lost everyone, just as I have. It makes sense that he doesn’t want to bury another person. But the irrational part of my mind feels elated that it’s me he doesn’t want to lose.
Something about the way he was holding me yesterday made me feel like I was something precious to him. Like it’s about more than not wanting to dig another grave in this forest.
A pained moan pierces the morning air as I break into the clearing of the trees where Mrs. Thorley’s medical practice sits comfortably in the long grass.
A breeze tumbles through the clearing, bending the blades to its will, and pushing another moan into the woods where it can disappear between the thick trunks of the old oaks.
The cadence of the woman’s voice floating past me hurries my steps to the front door. “Mrs. Thorley?” I say, pushing the door open.
I look around the small kitchen, taking survey of the jumbled glass jars sitting atop her kitchen cabinets.
Some look to be tonics and remedies I have brought her in the last few weeks, and others look to be ingredients for baked goods.
How she can sort through the disarray I’m unsure, but she does it well.
I try to check in on Thorley regularly. She’s getting older, and while that doesn’t affect her medical knowledge or abilities, I still like to keep an eye out for her.
“In here.”
I follow the sound of the old woman’s voice and find her in the third room down the hall. She’s hunched over the bed in the middle of the room, using hushed tones in an attempt to soothe her patient. “It’s okay, you’re safe, dear.”
“Mrs. Thorley,” I say once more.
The woman on the bed turns to her side, pushing her palms into the sockets of her eyes as if hiding from the light. Mrs. Thorley looks over her shoulder at me, her posture slumped and her eyes tired.
She stands up, whispering quietly, “I’ll be back soon,” to the woman before ushering me out of the room.
“How are you holding up?” I ask, my hand on her shoulder.
“Oh, I’m fine, dear. I just need to boil a tea of Valerian and...and—” She clicks her fingers together as if trying to summon the thought, the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes deepening with every second of her searching her memory for the answer.
“Chamomile?” I say, imagining she’s looking for something to help the woman sleep.
She sighs with her entire body, and I can almost see her berating herself in that mind of hers for forgetting.
“I’ll make it,” I say. “You sit, rest while you can.”
For once, she doesn’t argue. She just sits, dropping her head in her hands. I see the way her body slumps into her chair, how her messy grey hair slips through her fingers, and it tells me all I need to know about the kind of day she has had.
Mrs. Thorley has been a healer in Sylvan for as long as I can remember.
She’s the one who taught Finnick after our parent’s death.
Training him to become one of the best healers I’ve ever seen, and consequently turning me into his apothecary, teaching me about the different properties of well-known plants used for remedies.
Though I taught myself a lot too, learning as I went and experimenting with different mixtures. But Thorley taught me the basics, and for that I’ll always be thankful.
“I don’t know how to help her,” she says, her voice defeated.
I pour hot water into the pot, mindlessly steeping the leaves in the enclosed space. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s delirious. That mayor has been here only one day, and he’s already causing trouble where it’s not wanted.”
My stomach drops. Part of me had desperately hoped the rumours about Mayor Hawthorne were exaggerated, but it seems that was a fool's plea. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“She thinks he’s going to capture her. She’s so out of her mind scared, she can’t even move. She won’t sleep either. I just—” Thorley sighs once more, shaking her head in favour of continuing.
Guilt pools deep in my stomach. When Finnick first died—no, disappeared—guilt tugged at me to become a healer, to give the community what they lost with Finnick’s disappearance, but I couldn’t do it. Healing isn’t what I want to do. I want to help people, but not like that.
I want to help people by knowing so much about the earth, and what it can provide for us. I want to create medicines. But I don’t want to be the one who is responsible for whether someone lives or dies.
I fear the guilt would swallow me whole, that I’d vanish into it. I never understood how Finnick could stomach it, especially after what happened with our parents.
“This should help,” I say, straining the tea and pouring it into a cup. “At least for now.” Nothing I have can offer a long-term solution to what this woman is suffering from.
Fear.
It’s a sickness that has infected all of us now, and only time will tell whether it is something we can heal from, or if it’s something that will kill us all.
“How is your brother, dear?” Her words make my entire body still, as if every cell in my body stops working. “How’s Finnick?”
I’ve known Mrs. Thorley for a long time, which means I know that when she gets tired, she starts to forget things, as do many her age.
But that doesn’t stop the sting behind my eye when she speaks about Finnick like he’s still around.
No one else does. Part of me wants to humour her, to have a conversation about my brother where we can ponder where he has gone, or what has become of him. However, I decide against it.
“Finnick is gone, Mrs. Thorley. He disappeared three years ago. You came to the funeral last year.”
The lines on her forehead deepen. “Oh,” she mutters, putting a hand to her brow and shaking her head. “Oh, I’m sorry, Everleigh. I remember now.”
“It’s okay,” I say, a small smile on my lips before I turn back to the tea.
I should have visited sooner; Thorley isn’t fit to cope like this. I need to do more. I need to help more. I try to conjure up a method in my mind, try to figure out where I can be of the most help when the sound of heavy footfalls echoes on the steps outside.
That guilt pools once more as someone stumbles through the door, catching Thorley’s attention as she pushes herself up to help the young man.
He looks on the brink of leaving us, and Thorley doesn’t look decidedly better. People are becoming desperate for help and are finding it too late. With so few healers in Sylvan, some are even finding travel to Evergreen just to seek help.
I feel futile, standing here in the kitchen staring into space as Thorley swings the man's arm over her frail shoulders and takes him down the hall. That’s when I remember the tea sitting in front of me.
I pick up the cup and saucer, carefully making my way back to the room down the hall. I startle when I walk in, the cup and saucer rattling as I catch my grip.
“Is that him?” The woman, who was previously immobile on the bed, whispers from where she is now pressed up against the wall beside me. “Is that the mayor?”Her eyes are frantic, darting from me to the bed, through the door, then back to me. Her fear is etched in every shallow breath she takes.
“What is your name?” I ask, my voice soft.
“Is that him?” Her eyes are pleading with me.
I shake my head. “No, no, that’s not him.” At least I don’t think so.
I place the tea down on the small table beside the bed, and when I turn back, the woman is still up against the wall, her back pressed so firmly against it, as if she’s trying to disappear. Though her wild dark hair is a stark contrast to the warm beige walls of Thorley’s clinic.
Her hands stay at her sides as she clenches and unclenches them, her nails leaving crescent shapes in her palm.
“What is your name?” I ask again. “My name is Everleigh.”
Her eyes jump to mine quicker than a lightning bolt. “Who are you? Do you work for him? Is that why you’re here?” She brings a shaky hand up and runs it through her hair before she sinks down the wall, her hands trembling as she covers her mouth.
I can taste her fear on the tip of my tongue, can feel it in my lungs like it’s hovering here in the space between us.
“No, no,” I say, dropping to her level but keeping my distance. “I’m a friend of Mrs. Thorley’s. I don’t know the mayor, I swear it.” I place a hand over my heart as I settle on my knees. “I am here to help you. I brought a cup of tea for you. It will help you sleep if you want to.”
I can see her breath heavy in her chest as she regards me, as if she may decide just by the look of me if she can trust what I am saying to be true. I leave my expression open, letting her see what I hope is honesty in my gaze.
“Dahlia,” she says. “I’m Dahlia.”
Relief washes over me like a crashing wave. “It’s nice to meet you, Dahlia.”
She hesitates, her gaze assessing as her eyes move around my body, almost as if she is studying me. “You too.”
I smile, and I almost think I see one pull at the corner of her mouth, but by the time I blink, it’s gone. “Are you tired, Dahlia?”
A tear slips down her cheek, making its way ever so slowly down the valleys and planes of her face as she nods slowly.
I hold my hand out in front of me. “Come on, you can sleep.”
“I am scared to,” she whispers, but she places her hand in mine in any case.
“I will stay with you,” I say as I walk her over to the bed.
This isn't right. She is terrified of the mayor, and she has never even met him. A thought overwhelms me, and I decide in this moment that I need to become a safe place. My shop, these practices, we need to be a safe haven from everything going on outside these walls, somehow.
“No one will hurt you here.”