xxvi. In which Charlotte discusses grief, even though she’d rather not
xxvi. In which Charlotte discusses grief, even though she’d rather not
It was after dark when Charlotte and Elspeth stopped for the night, but the cliffside was brighter than the wood. They hadn’t
discussed their mutual desire to avoid the depths of the forest as long as possible, but Elspeth hadn’t turned the mule in
toward the trees, and Charlotte hadn’t asked her to. It was colder out here, with the sea breezes blowing, but she had Elspeth’s
cloak. The stars seemed close enough to touch.
They made camp in a spot where the trees were farther back from the ledge, leaving a comfortable amount of room for the mule,
the gig, a fire, and themselves. Two silver saplings stood nearby, which had been the deciding factor; Elspeth thought a sapling
of the same kind as the first tree might lend them some safety.
One of the trees wasn’t fruiting. In fact, it was tarnished, no different than the silver in Agnes Livingston’s manor when
it went too long without polishing. The other, however, was thick with acorns. Charlotte harvested a handful, hoping their
magic could cure the sickness.
Before supper, she gave Elspeth a once-over to be safe.
The hands in the mud had left fingerprint bruises on Elspeth’s ankles and calves.
Elspeth avoided the sight but told Charlotte not to bother about them; they didn’t hurt.
Her shoulder was sore but hadn’t bruised or swollen.
Her scar and stitches were still black, which made both women uneasy—though neither said anything about it—but the veins had spread no farther.
So far, it seemed, Elspeth’s acorn was protecting her from worsening symptoms.
Charlotte dug the glass vials from her medical kit, plucked several blades of grass, and sat by the fire. Besides the vial
of black ooze, she now had one of bark she’d scraped from an infected tree and another of sickly gray leaves she’d picked
out of the leaf litter. An animal sample would’ve been useful, but she didn’t relish getting bitten or clawed by an infected
beast, and she was unwilling to test anything on Elspeth until she’d tested it elsewhere.
Carefully, she uncorked the black ooze and dropped a blade of grass into it. She did the same to the vials of bark and leaves,
then examined them all.
Black veins shot through the grass in the ooze. Did the ooze always infect things so quickly, or was the blade simply sucking
it up like water? Charlotte wasn’t sure. Either way, the grass looked infected now.
In the other vials, nothing happened. She leaned forward, holding them closer to the fire to make sure she wasn’t missing
anything. John’s wedding ring glinted in the firelight.
Beside her, removing her boots, Elspeth nodded at it. “That was your husband’s, then, aye?”
Charlotte reached for it automatically. With Elspeth watching, she tried not to rub the ring, but no sooner had she forced
her hand away than it slipped right back.
“How long ago?” Elspeth asked.
Charlotte’s eyes stung. “Eight years. Sasha doesn’t remember him.”
“You must miss him.”
Charlotte’s hand closed over the ring. “I try not to.”
“Why not?”
Elspeth’s gaze was unbearable. Charlotte busied herself putting the vials away, planning to reexamine them in the morning.
Once her samples were fully infected, she’d think how to test the acorns’ efficacy against the sickness.
“My father vanished in the wood thirty years ago,” she blurted, resuming her seat, “and my mother was never the same after.
Arthur carted me around the village, begging for jobs or money so we could eat. When John died . . .”
Her throat tightened. She’d talked about him so little in the past eight years.
She swallowed with difficulty. “For the first week afterward, it was all I could do to get out of bed. And Mam was so weepy
about it, you would’ve thought it was her husband dead all over, instead of mine, and I thought about how little she’d been there for us after Dad vanished. My children
weren’t even as old as I’d been. I had to be there for them. But I couldn’t be if I thought too hard about John, because every
time I thought about him I missed him, and every time I missed him I fell apart, so I . . .”
God help her. If Elspeth asked what he’d been like, Charlotte wouldn’t be able to stand it. She was already constantly close
to tears since her illness.
Her chest ached like it might shatter. She remembered the first words he’d ever said to her, after three days in which he’d
drifted in and out of consciousness while she’d tried to save his life, this beautiful stranger.
So you’re real. Thought you might be an angel.
He used to bring her sea pinks when he came home after a long day of fishing.
He used to ask Charlotte to teach him what she could about healing, because sometimes accidents happened on the boats and there wasn’t time to get back to land for help.
He used to whittle; he’d whittled her favorite whistle.
He used to sit up half the night wondering why he couldn’t remember more of his life as a sailor. When he’d first come to,
he’d had no idea where he’d been or how he’d gotten there; he’d thought he was nineteen, living back home with his mother.
He didn’t remember what ship he’d manned, what port he’d sailed from. He didn’t remember leaving home, in fact, though he
knew he’d always wanted to be a sailor. When he wrote home to his mother and received a letter back from a neighbor instead, they discovered he was
twenty-five. He’d left home six years prior, shortly after his mother’s death.
That had been the worst part, John learning his mother was dead. Or rather relearning, because he’d been there for it. He’d
arranged for her burial. But after whatever had happened at sea, he’d forgotten it. Everything from that point in his life
onward was gone.
Sasha, his mother’s name had been. He’d asked if they could name the baby after her. Around the same time, they’d planted
a rosebush at the corner of the cottage because his mother had always kept a sachet of rose petals in her pocket. Unable to
remember his sailing days, John had tried to re-create as much of the life he could remember as possible. All knowledge of
his life at sea came from letters exchanged with a friend back home, accepted as fact but never really remembered except in
bits and pieces: the way he could work a boat almost instinctively; half the tune and lyrics to a shanty one of the crew had
taught him.
Sometimes, Charlotte wondered how much more he might have eventually remembered if he’d lived longer. If one day he might’ve
told the children stories about his days at sea the way her own father had once told her and Arthur about his travels through
the forest.
She blinked, but tears dripped down her cheeks.
“Sorry,” she said thickly.
Elspeth thumbed away her tears, then seemed to realize what she was doing and pulled away. “What for? Does a body good to
weep now and then.”
Charlotte laughed snottily, made a face, and accepted the handkerchief Elspeth offered. “I’m not sure about that. It doesn’t
feel good.”
She wiped her eyes, blew her nose.
“You got more options, you know,” Elspeth said. “It ain’t a choice between letting your grief swallow you whole and never
spit you back out, or refusing to feel it at all.”
Charlotte’s skin prickled. Between her mother and the rest of Seacliff, those had always felt like the only options. Just
as it felt her only option regarding her pain and fatigue was to push through them, no matter how disabling they were.
Behind them, in the forest, something screamed.
Elspeth scrambled to her feet, bootless. The mule snorted and tugged at its line. Charlotte’s heart pounded at the unexpected
noise. She reached for the kettle, the nearest item that might do as a makeshift weapon.
Another scream. Elspeth’s brow furrowed. “That sound like a horse to you?”
Charlotte stood slowly, clutching the kettle. “Yes.”
A horse burst through the trees, wearing a bridle and the remains of a harness. Driving lines and traces trailed behind it.
It galloped right past them, toward the edge of the cliff. Charlotte gasped, but it pulled up short. It reared, still screaming.
She stumbled back.
Elspeth approached the creature cautiously.
“Don’t,” Charlotte said, but Elspeth said in a low, soothing voice, “S’all right.”
She raised her hands, like the horse was a constable who might arrest her, and kept speaking in that low, soothing tone.
“There now, me beauty. S’all right. Let’s have a look at you, eh?”
The horse shook its mane. Its eyes rolled, but it stopped screaming, and all four feet went back on the ground, to Charlotte’s
relief. Getting stepped on barefoot by a horse was hardly the worst thing that could happen to Elspeth, especially now they
knew she had the sickness, but a broken foot in Shiftleaf was quite bad enough.
The horse quivered, jerked away as Elspeth reached for it.
“S’all right, now. C’mon.” She stroked its neck. Its sides heaved, but it stayed put. “Good lad. Let’s see whether we can’t
get all this nonsense off you.”
She frowned as she removed the tattered remains of the harness.
“Looks like he come from a work camp,” she said to Charlotte. “Probably been running around the forest for weeks on his own.”
Charlotte’s skin prickled. “Then what happened to the rest of the work camp?”
“By the looks of this harness, nothing good.” Elspeth tied the horse beside the mule; they nosed at each other. “Around the
time Maggie was supposed to’ve come home, a whole camp vanished in the forest. They were meant to pull up what’s left of the
first tree, but that’s what we thought, they’d vanished. Well, when I come upon the first tree and Maggie’s necklace—I found
’em. The workers didn’t vanish. The forest ate ’em up. Turned ’em into trees, and other things. Could be the horse escaped
all right, ’cept he’s good’n’shook up.”
Charlotte shuddered, thinking of Brigid Tierney. Her stomach turned. A whole work camp taken by the forest, turned into trees
and who knew what else—