Chapter 34
Avice
For three days, Avice, Trewoofe, Bramble, and Ashling were lulled into a domestic routine while they waited out the snowstorm. For the first time in her whole life, the midwife rested, allowing her body to recover from the frenzied weeks before and the presence of her courses.
When she did not nap in Trewoofe’s arms, Avice pottered around her cottage.
She tidied and restocked her medical satchel, organised her herbs and tinctures, planned meals from their dwindling reserves, washed the bandages and her linen scraps, and prepared floral offerings for the Faeries when – she hoped – they would arrive for the Equinox ritual; when she would dance at Spring’s beginning to bless the yields of the woods and fields of Lamorna.
Trewoofe was her shadow. Her ever willing, and often underfoot, assistant.
He learnt quickly, gaining knowledge that had never left the women of her bloodline.
He could now name each plant she had in her herbarium and their uses in medicine.
Yet, other things alluded him: the use of cutlery befuddled him, he could not bear to wear anything on his feet, and he often banged his horns on the beams of the cottage.
By the third evening, after their meal, Avice had Trewoofe sit on the pallet so she could remove the bandages on his arms and torso.
She sat back, astonished. “All of the stitches can come out, except the newest three here.” She brushed the bottom of the largest wound with her fingertip.
“So, I am healed?” Trewoofe asked, allowing himself to be guided into a lying position.
As usual, Avice rolled up a pelt to help ease the discomfort that his horns put on the angle of his neck. “Not quite. I will leave the last three in and cover this part again.” She patted his belly. “As for the rest of you? It will scar, like this old one.”
She trailed over the ancient scar down his midline, from the top of his chest to just above his groin. Trewoofe had said nothing about it during their time together, and she had not asked. He said he would tell her when he was ready, and she was prepared to wait.
Trewoofe caught her fingers. Intertwining them with his own, his claws pressing into the back of her wrist. Their faces met, and Avice felt the unfathomable sadness shifting in his eyes.
His throat bobbed. “I will tell you while you work.”
Avice nodded and extracted herself from his grip. She was silent as she rifled through her medical satchel on the pallet side, and extracted a tiny, sharp copper knife.
“I had a soul-bound. Lindana. She was kind, intelligent, fierce, and beautiful; all I could ask for in a mate and mother to my Knuckerlings,” Trewoofe began, his voice thick.
The midwife focused on her work while she listened. She snipped the first stitch and pulled it free with a swish. She had a cloth prepared to catch any oozing blood from the minuscule thread holes, but none came.
“It happened many, many turns of seasons ago. When my daughters, Dalinda and Branna, were old enough to come down from Knucker Hill, Lindana and I took them to play in the woods. I did not think of moving through the trees unseen. We had never had to before.”
He stifled a sob.
Avice placed her knife beside her and reached to cup his face, rubbing away the tears that ran down his sharp cheekbones.
They were silver, just like his blood.
Trewoofe closed his eyes and nuzzled into her touch, his lips brushing her palm.
“I thought they would be safe with their mother when I went to hunt. Lindana was larger, older, stronger, faster, and smarter than me.” He wept into her skin.
“But brooding and hatching our daughters had weakened her more then I understood. She had not wanted to come outside yet, but I did not listen to her and insisted. I said that the Sun on their scales would benefit all three of them. I was young, impatient, and keen to show Dalinda and Branna the world.”
Trewoofe turned his face away.
His chest rose and fell several times. Avice returned to her work, a lump in her throat, while she waited for him to continue.
Several snips echoed through the cottage, mingling with the sound of the crackling hearth.
Bramble plonked his chin onto the end of the pallet, eyes wide and watching.
Ashling landed on his head, both intent on listening to the King’s story.
“I left them in a clearing nearby,” he continued, voice raw.
Avice cut the final stitch she planned to remove that night and gently spoke, “That was the last one for now, Lord.”
He turned his face back to her. Rivers of silver ran down to his sharp chin. She reached and wiped them away with her cloth.
“Do not feel like you must tell the whole story. If it is too hard, I understand.”
“I want to tell you,” Trewoofe replied.
“Sit up and raise your arms, please,” Avice instructed. “I need to bandage here again.” She grazed her fingers down the side of his remaining stitches, making his skin twitch.
He did as he was told, and Avice looped the fresh, clean bandages around his lower belly. She pushed a single crystal against the wound, and completed her task with a final layer, tying it all off with a tight knot.
She gave him a soft smile. “All done. You can lower your arms now.”
Trewoofe dropped his hands into his lap, chin tucked to his chest.
Hesitantly, not sure whether it would help, Avice shifted to her knees and shuffled closer to him. She reached up to him and stroked calming lines between his horns and down the back of his head to the nape of his neck.
He purred and leant into her soothing touch. “Shortly after I left the clearing, I heard their screams. I galloped through the woods, but by the time I returned—” His voice cracked. “I was too late.”
“Who did it?” she asked, her voice a whisper.
“Men.” He dropped his forehead to her shoulder and wept. “I killed them all, and they nearly gutted me.”
Avice stilled under his raking sobs. Each gasp sent his body shuddering. The reverberations rattled her bones.
“Let it out,” she encouraged, continuing her soothing strokes. “Let it all out.”
Trewoofe tugged her into his lap, squeezing her tightly, as he continued to weep rivers down her back. Her heart shattered for him, each piece a massive weight in her chest, making it hard to breathe.
“When I speak of them, it is like the briars around my chest tighten, stabbing me with thousands of thorns. I do not know how I can hurt so much and still live,” he gasped.
“My King.” She pulled back from him so she could see his stricken face. “My heart breaks for all you have lost.” She wiped his tears away with the back of her hand, staining her skin silver. “You loved them so much, and it was not your fault. It was men.”
“I—”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Let me finish.” Trewoofe nodded, and she lowered her hand. “Grief is what is left of love. Lindana, Dalinda, and Branna, they will live on because you love them so.”
“How?”
“They will always live here.” Avice patted his chest, right above his broken heart. “You can speak to me about them whenever you wish. A fond memory, an anecdote, or of how much it hurts.”
He pressed his forehead to hers, his nose brushing her cheek. “You are gift, Avice. A gift from Nature herself.”
His lips were close, so close.
Ashling chimed, snagging their attention.
We are here for you too, Lord, the Grim said, wagging his tail weakly.
Trewoofe smiled through his tears and waved for them to come to him.
Her familiar bounded up into the hug, wedging himself between them, and Ashling landed on his shoulder.
“Careful, Bramble!” Avice scolded, his wiry fur tickling her nose. “The Well King has only just recovered.”
Does that mean he will be returning soon? he whimpered.
“Yes.”
Her own words made her gut twist. She did not want him to leave. Trewoofe pulled back from their embrace, his face pinched.
“What is it?” she asked, her lungs tight. Does he want to stay? It would be selfish if I asked him to.
“I worry,” he admitted. “I barely survived the last poisoning. What if they do it again? What if I cannot save my Faeries? What if you come to help me again, and I am thrashing in a fit and I hurt you?”
Avice understood now why Trewoofe fussed so much over her wellbeing.
He had been devastated by grief and he did not want to lose her as well, because he cared deeply for her.
She rubbed her temple at the realisation.
She was worn, wrung out like a cleaning cloth that had been used one too many times.
“A solution may present itself. For now, we should rest,” she ordered with a firm nod.