xxix. In which Charlotte and Elspeth get into a scuffle with some trees
The glass vials, like Elspeth’s scar, were unchanged by morning. Charlotte examined them as Elspeth packed up camp, hitched
up the mule, and tied the horse to the back of the gig. The grass in the vial of ooze was still veined; the grass with the
infected bark and leaves was still healthy. Touching infected plant matter—being closed in with it overnight—had not transferred
the sickness to a healthy plant.
Charlotte packed the vials away with a frown. That was information, she supposed, but not much, since she’d never seen the
sickness pass between people anyway. She suspected the grass in those vials would go on uninfected.
The next step was seeing whether she could coax the sickly blade back to health with the silver acorns she’d harvested. But
how? Plant matter could not ingest medication. Creating a topical might work, but she thought that dubious—more likely to
heal an injury than cure an illness. As they trundled along the cliffside, she was deep in thought, turning over possibilities.
Elspeth glanced at her occasionally but said nothing until afternoon.
After a warm and golden morning, clouds had drawn in dark and gray.
Out to sea, the sky was black. The promise of a coming storm etched itself into Charlotte’s bones.
The pain distracted her from her thoughts about curing the sickness, not that she’d been getting anywhere with that anyway.
“Think we’re getting close,” Elspeth said.
“How do you know?”
“The acorn. It feels . . .” Elspeth sucked in her cheeks, considering. “I don’t know. More alive. It likes this place. The
Lord of the Wood must be nearby. Aside from the first tree, I don’t know what else in the forest’d make it feel this way.”
The forest was to their right, but only a few scraggly trees, like the rowan they’d camped by last night, appeared in their
path. As they went on, those trees distorted into fantastical shapes. Here was one with roots high and bent like knees. Here
one twisted like a man looking over his shoulder. Here one with a knot open in a silent scream.
Shuddering, Charlotte drew closer to Elspeth. They were sharing the cloak this morning. Elspeth had offered it to Charlotte,
but she’d been shivering herself. Remembering how Agnes had described the progression of Gracie’s sickness, Charlotte worried.
Elspeth had been all right, despite the forest’s unseasonable cold, until her sickness had shown up. Rather than mention that,
however, Charlotte insisted they share. Sea breezes could flay a body to the bone, this time of year. The sickness need not
have anything to do with it.
The misshapen trees increased in number the farther they went. Elspeth’s mouth pressed into a grim line.
“’Member how I told you you’d know it if that tree was a person?”
Feeling sick, Charlotte nodded. Elspeth jerked her head at the surrounding trees.
“Who do you think they were?” Charlotte asked in a hushed voice.
Elspeth shrugged, but her brow puckered. The mule halted, stamping a foot. His ears twitched frantically, swiveling in every direction. At the back of the gig, the horse snorted and tossed his head.
Elspeth threw off the cloak, climbed down, and stroked the mule’s nose, murmuring in his ear. Slowly, his ears stopped twitching,
but he shook his head. She sighed.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked.
“He don’t want to go any farther. Spooked by them trees.” Elspeth patted his neck. She was shivering again; Charlotte handed
the cloak down to her, but Elspeth waved it away. “No matter. I’ll lead him on foot. C’mon now, there’s a good lad. I’ll be
right alongside you the whole way.”
She led the mule by the bridle. The strange trees closed around them.
The gig kept sticking, lodged between trunks or caught on roots. Each time, Charlotte feared it would remain stuck. Elspeth
seemed afraid of the same thing; she went from muttering curses as she freed it the first three times to working in silence,
glancing around shiftily.
Wind hissed through the leaves. Charlotte’s skin prickled. The hissing seemed almost to form words. Incomprehensible at first.
Then—voices. They might have been coming from the trees, but they sounded unsettlingly familiar. Like Arthur. The children.
John.
Find me.
Help us.
You didn’t save me.
She swallowed, her stomach twisting. Silly; obviously she was imagining things. It was no different than the evil spirit that
had lured Elspeth into the muddy pit yesterday. She held on to that thought, but now she saw faces, too, the half-imagined
features of everyone she’d ever loved.
They’re not real. She clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms. It’s the forest’s trickery.
The gig paused, but Elspeth made no move to unstick it. She shrank into the mule’s side, eyes squeezed shut.
Breathing deep, Charlotte climbed down with the cloak tight around her and her cane in hand. The voices whispered in her head.
You can’t save us. Why did you let me drown? You’ll never find me. You should’ve saved them.
Clenching her jaw, she touched Elspeth’s shoulder. Elspeth jumped.
“Elspeth?”
Elspeth shook her head.
“Not real,” she muttered. “Not real, not real, not real.”
“No,” Charlotte agreed. “No, they’re not real. Come, now.”
She’d never seen Elspeth like this. Even when mummified fingers had been dragging her into the mud, Elspeth had been sarcastic.
Realizing she had the sickness had made her uneasy, but she’d gone about her business anyway. Now she pressed against the
mule like she hoped to melt into him. At the back of the gig, the horse whinnied.
“Elspeth.”
Charlotte gripped her shoulder, but Elspeth shrank away. Charlotte let go.
Voices crowded her head. She barely heard herself when she spoke, but she fought to keep her tone calm and gentle.
“Elspeth, it’s all right. It’s me. I’m here.”
Elspeth eyed her warily. “Are you—are you real?”
“Of course I’m real,” Charlotte snapped.
You should’ve saved them, the voices taunted her. You can’t save them.
Faces melted in and out of trunks, but Charlotte focused on Elspeth. Elspeth who was flesh and blood, Elspeth who annoyed her, Elspeth who had plenty reason not to like her but looked after her anyway.
Charlotte touched her back. “Of course I’m real. You feel that, don’t you?”
Elspeth swallowed but nodded.
“I don’t know what you’re hearing,” Charlotte said, “or what you’re seeing, but it’s the forest playing tricks on us. That’s
all. That’s not real. I’m real, Elspeth.”
John’s face appeared in a nearby tree. Charlotte’s heart stuttered. The long lashes, the high cheekbones, the chin and nose
like Sasha’s—
You left our children, he said mournfully, and he faded away.
Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut, her grip tightening on her cane. In for four, hold for four, out for four.
“It’s not real,” she repeated irritably. “It’s a trick. Of course it’s not real.”
Elspeth’s fingers curled around hers. “You’re real.”
Charlotte let out a breath, forced her eyes open. “That’s right. Come on, now. Let’s take a step forward, all right? That’s
it. Now another one. And once more.”
A step at a time, she walked Elspeth through the trees. Elspeth kept one hand clenched tight on hers and the other on the
mule’s bridle. The mule snorted but, to Charlotte’s relief, neither he nor the horse seemed subject to the same trickery as
the women. Voices sounded in Charlotte’s head, but focusing on her own voice—“Next step, that’s right, now another”—and helping
Elspeth dampened them. Whenever another face appeared before her—Sasha, Jonas, Arthur, her mother, her father, her husband,
a patient she had failed to save—she squeezed her eyes shut, tightened her grip on Elspeth’s hand, breathed in hold out, and snapped, “It’s not real.”
The spot over her left eye jabbed her, threatening a migraine, but she gritted her teeth and squeezed Elspeth’s hand and limped onward.
Her joints ached with the coming storm. Normally, Charlotte ignored her pain, until she couldn’t; now, she focused on that, too, because the pain at least was real.
Through the trees, she glimpsed indistinct whiteness. She sucked in a breath, hoping it wasn’t some new danger.
“Just a few more steps.”
Elspeth clenched her hand so tight it hurt.
They stumbled. Then, as if the trees had spat them out, they were free. The whispers silenced. The faces vanished.
The unpleasantly human trees had gone still. Elspeth let go of the mule, dragging a hand through her braid. The horse and
mule pranced a short distance away from the trees, the gig swaying between them, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Are you all right?” Charlotte asked.
Elspeth was pale and gasping, eyes fixed on the trees like she still saw faces in them. Setting her cane aside, Charlotte
draped the cloak around Elspeth and took her hands.
“Elspeth.”
Elspeth’s gaze snapped to her.
Charlotte squeezed her hands. “Breathe with me a minute.”
Elspeth swallowed, but she followed Charlotte’s breathing through several cycles. By the time they finished, her body had
relaxed. She sighed.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
“Are you all right? You seemed . . .”
Elspeth shook her head. “It was awful. Them faces.”
“Voices, too, I suppose.”
“You heard ’em?”
Charlotte smiled faintly, unwilling to admit it had been real. “Well, I heard something.”
Elspeth let out a long breath. “But you got us out of it. You didn’t let ’em get to you. I was . . .”
Charlotte’s skin prickled. Elspeth’s hands were tight on hers, her voice soft, but Charlotte didn’t see how she’d done anything special. She was practical and stubborn and could sometimes put those qualities to good use; that was all.
She pulled away, reaching for her cane. “It was very upsetting. I hope you don’t think less of yourself for reacting like
anyone would.”
Elspeth smiled crookedly.
“That’s about the nicest thing you’ve yet said to me.” She caught the mule by the bridle and stroked his neck. “Animals seem
all right, anyway. Where are we?”
They turned to survey their surroundings.
It was a little woodland vale, caked in snow—except for flowers blooming in a slab at the foot of a headstone before them.
The headstone was carved with yarrow instead of the usual things. Charlotte touched it, wondering whether it was the Lord
of the Wood’s and, if so, who had buried him.
She hoped not. If the Lord of the Wood was dead, there was no hope of finding their siblings. They could either wander the
wood until their dying day or go home defeated and pretend Arthur and Maggie might one day emerge unharmed.
Her forehead throbbed. Now the danger was past, the memory of the faces and voices tumbled through her head.
Nonsense, she told herself, but the voices sounded discordantly.
“Come on,” Elspeth said. “Let’s see what’s what.”