Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Igave up on sleep when the birds started singing.
The vision clung to me. Every time I closed my eyes I felt rope cutting into my wrists and heard the counting in my head.
Thirty-six. Thirty-seven.
I pushed off the blankets and put my feet on the cold floor. My body ached like I’d been fighting all night, maybe I had. I touched the red ribbon at my wrist, rubbing the frayed edge between my thumb and forefinger until the trembling eased.
Work helped. It always had. When my hands were busy, my mind could rest. Or pretend to.
I crossed to my herb table beneath the window, where bundles of dried plants hung from the rafters above and baskets lined the wall. Jars and pots and pouches crowded the surface, and the smell of green things filled my lungs and pushed out some of the river still lingering there.
My inheritance was never money or land. It was knowledge passed down through hands and voices.
Mother to daughter. Generation to generation.
Grandmother and Sophia taught me which plants to grow and which to forage, which to pick in spring and which to wait for until the first frost. How to dry them, grind them, mix them into salves and tinctures and teas that could ease pain or bring sleep or stop a wound from going bad.
I pulled down a bundle of chamomile and stripped the flowers from the stems. The petals crumbled between my fingers and released a smell like apples and honey, good for sleep, for nerves, for bellies that wouldn’t settle.
I could use some myself, but the stores were low and winter was just starting.
The people who came to my door needed it more than I did.
I worked until my shoulders ached and my fingers were stained green. It helped. A little.
The door flew open.
I spun with my heart slamming against my ribs, but it was just Emma. Tall and broad-shouldered with a face made for laughing, she burst through without knocking because she never knocked, had decided years ago that my door was her door.
She wasn’t laughing now.
Thomas hung against her hip, wild curly hair and a gap-toothed grin that could charm his way out of anything. He wasn’t grinning either. His face was gray and tear-streaked, his left arm hanging wrong at the elbow.
“He fell from the oak behind the house.” Emma’s chin trembled, the words tumbling over each other. “I heard him scream and ran out and he was just lying there holding his arm and I didn’t know what to do.”
“Bring him here.” I swept the herbs aside with both arms and spread the cleanest cloth I had across the wood.
Emma eased Thomas down and he cried out when his arm shifted, his face crumpling as fresh tears spilled down his cheeks.
But I made myself focus. Thomas needed me.
Nothing else mattered. I examined the elbow, ran my fingers along the bone.
The joint was out of place. I could feel the wrongness of it, the way the bones had slipped past each other.
It reminded me of my own fall from the tree many years ago.
Lucky for Thomas, Grandmother taught me how to settle bones.
How to read a body with my hands, how to feel where things had shifted and where they needed to go back.
“Thomas.” I brushed the hair back from his forehead. “Look at me.”
He looked, his eyes brimming and his chest hitching with the effort of not sobbing.
Snot ran down his lip and he wiped it on his sleeve with his good hand.
“I’m going to fix your arm.” I held his gaze steady.
“It’s going to hurt for one moment. Just one.
Then it will feel better. Can you be brave for me? ”
He nodded, his lip trembling. A tear slipped free and rolled down to his cheek.
“Good boy.” I squeezed his shoulder. “The bravest.”
I looked at Emma. Her face was pale but she was holding herself together with great effort. “Hold his shoulders.” I positioned her hands where I needed them. “Keep him still.”
She pressed down, her knuckles going white.
I took his arm — one hand on the upper part, one on the lower. I could feel exactly where the bone had slipped, exactly where it needed to go. “Take a deep breath, Thomas.” I watched his chest rise. “Count with me.”
“One.” I positioned my hands.
“Two.” Found the angle.
“Three.” I moved quickly. A twist and a push and then a pop.
Thomas screamed, but only for a second, a sharp sound that cut off as suddenly as it started. His arm was straight again, the elbow back where it belonged. He stared at it, then at me, his mouth falling open. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.” He flexed his fingers slowly, wonder breaking across his face.
“It will ache for a few days.” I wiped the tears from his cheek with my thumb. “Some bruising. Some swelling. But the worst is over.”
Emma made a sound that was half laugh and half sob, then pulled Thomas off the table and crushed him against her chest, eyes squeezed shut, her whole body shaking.
“Mama.” Thomas squirmed against her grip, his good arm pushing at her shoulder.
“Can’t breathe.” She laughed and loosened her hold, but she didn’t let go.
Her hand stayed pressed against the back of his head like she was afraid he’d vanish if she stopped touching him.
I turned away and gave them the moment and went to my herb table where my hands were shaking and hid it by keeping them busy, comfrey for the bruising, arnica for the deep ache, mixed into rendered fat until it became a thick paste.
Thomas. Wild and reckless and so full of life. For a moment something cold brushed against the back of my mind, an old nightmare, long buried, and I shoved it down the way I’d been shoving it down for years. He was here. He was fine. He was always going to be fine.
I finished the salve and brought it to the table. Thomas wrinkled his nose, his upper lip curling back.
“Ew, this smells bad.” He leaned away from the jar.
“Smells like medicine.” I tapped his nose with one finger. “The best medicine always smells terrible. That’s how you know it works.”
I applied it gently, rubbing it into the skin around his elbow.
The joint was already purpling — by tomorrow it would be a spectacular bruise.
He’d be proud of it, showing it off to the other boys, making the fall higher each time he told the story.
I wrapped his elbow in clean cloth and tied a sling around his neck.
“No climbing for two weeks.” I tugged the knot snug. “Can you do that?”
Thomas’s mouth fell open. He looked at me like I’d suggested he stop breathing. Emma laughed, the sound still wet around the edges but real. She ruffled his hair. “I’ll tie him to a chair if I have to.”
I packed the rest of the salve into a small jar and pressed it into Emma’s hands. “Apply this twice a day.” I curled her fingers around it. “Morning and night. Keep the sling on even when he says it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“How much do I owe you?” Emma reached for her pocket.
“Nothing.” I stepped back and folded my arms.
“Red...” Her brow furrowed.
“You brought me bread last week.” I held my ground. “Eggs the week before. We’re even.”
She looked like she wanted to argue, her mouth opening and closing, but Thomas was already squirming and she had her hands full holding him still. “Thank you.” She met my gaze, serious now, the gratitude showed plain on her face. “You’re the only reason half this village is still walking upright.”
“Go home.” I shooed her toward the door. “Keep him off the trees.”
She smiled and shifted Thomas onto her hip. Headed for the door, then paused and looked back at me, her head tilted, her eyes squinting the way they did when she was puzzling something out.
“You look tired, Red.” She searched my face, one hand braced on the doorframe. “More than usual. Are you sleeping?”
“Well enough.” I made myself hold her gaze. The lie came easy. I’d been telling it for years, and Emma’s lips pressed thin because she knew. But she also knew I wouldn’t talk about it. We’d done this dance before.
“If you need anything.” She gripped the doorframe tighter. “Anything at all.”
“I know.” I let my shoulders drop and let her see I meant it.
She nodded. Then she was gone, the door closing behind her, and the cottage went quiet.
I stood there staring at nothing, my hands still and steady now that the work had done its job. Thomas’s laugh carried back through the door as Emma carried him down the path. Healthy. Whole. Alive.
Later that day, I had to go to the market square.
I usually avoided it, too many people, too many eyes, but I was running low on provisions.
The square was crowded with the usual morning bustle.
Farmers selling vegetables from carts, the baker’s wife with her trays of bread, children running between legs while their mothers shouted at them to behave.
I kept my head down, moved from stall to stall, bought what I needed without lingering. Spoke only when spoken to.
The whispers followed me through the market. They always did.
Witch.
They were never loud enough. As if saying the word loud enough would make me turn them into toads. I wish it would. But that’s how it worked in a village like this, just a word passed from mouth to mouth, a seed planted in soil that was always fertile.
“Red.” Someone called my name from behind me and I knew who it was before I turned around.
Klaus. He stood too close — always stood too close. A big man with a barrel chest and small eyes that never quite looked at my face. His gaze dropped to my bodice and lingered there.
“Elder Klaus.” I kept my expression flat and empty.
“Shopping alone?” He smiled, showing his yellow teeth beneath thin lips. “A woman like you shouldn’t be alone so often. People talk.”
“Let them talk.” I shifted my basket between us like a shield. “They know I’m alone, a widow and an orphan. Who do they expect to be with me when shopping?”
“You know, I could help with that.” He stepped closer, his tongue darting out to wet his lower lip. “A widow needs protection. Needs a man to speak for her. I’ve told you before — my offer still stands.”
His offer. To make me his mistress, to use my body whenever his wife wasn’t looking and call it charity. He’d been making that offer since they buried William. “I don’t need protection.” I lifted my chin.
“Everyone needs protection, Red.” His hand found my elbow, fingers pressing into flesh, his nostrils flaring as he leaned closer. “Especially women who live alone. Women the village whispers about.” His breath smelled like sour ale. “It would be a shame if those whispers got louder.”
I pulled my arm free and took a step back.
“I need to go.” I clutched the basket against my chest.
“Think about it.” His eyes traveled down my body, slow and deliberate, and his smile widened. “I’m a patient man. But my patience has limits.”
He walked away and disappeared into the crowd. I stood there with my skin crawling where he’d touched me. Klaus would be one of the faces watching me drown. I could feel it in my bones, could see him in that circle above the water, counting.
I hurried home and locked the door behind me. Sat in the chair by the cold hearth while the counting echoed in my head. I stayed there as the light faded, trying not to picture the dark closing over me.