xxxvi. In which Charlotte tests her cure
On Wednesday, with Elspeth looking after the animals, Charlotte was still in bed. It was a rare good day. She was tired, but
not as bone-deep fatigued as she often was; her head didn’t hurt, and the ache in the rest of her body was tolerable.
This was later than she normally stayed in bed on good days. At home, she would’ve been up before sunrise, but lying in a
bed that wasn’t hers, in a house that wasn’t hers, was oddly freeing. There were no patients to see, no laundry to do, no
children to tend to—she winced at that thought but let it pass—no villagers who might realize she was playing the layabout
instead of going about her business as she ought.
At home, of course, Arthur tried to help, but he was also a constant source of worry. Charlotte knew he was lonely, though
he never admitted it. She had figured out how to fit in with Seacliff long ago. It wasn’t always comfortable, but she’d managed.
Her brother never had; she worried he never would.
With that thought, she got up. Thinking about Arthur meant wondering, again, where he was and why he’d left the vale in the first place.
Surely the Lord of the Wood had taken him home, she tried to tell herself, but optimism came hard to her.
And it was difficult not to think that, if that were the case, she could’ve stayed home instead of gallivanting through the forest.
The plant creature skittered across the floor to greet her, small and vaguely dog-shaped. Picking it up, Charlotte carried
it to the window.
She peered outside. Elspeth came around the side of the house where she’d left the horse and mule. Her shoulders were bowed,
her eyes bruised like they’d been yesterday, but she stopped to listen to a wren trilling the gray winter dawn.
The corner of Charlotte’s mouth turned up. It hadn’t been all bad, coming out here.
Setting the plant creature on the floor, she turned to her work. The creature slung itself onto the counter beside her vials.
“No pets on the counter. I know you can grow tall enough to look from the floor, if you’re interested.”
The creature clicked but slid off the counter and grew, swaying at her side. She patted it and returned to the vials.
Since plant matter could not swallow things, she’d decided infused water might be the best way to run her test. Last night,
with the plant creature’s help, she and Elspeth had cracked the acorns, removed the skins, and ground the nuts. To their surprise,
it had been like cracking normal acorns, except that the nuts came out gold. Ground, the nuts had become a golden powder that
Charlotte had put in water overnight.
This morning, the water shimmered with gold specks. They’d made more than would fill the vials. Charlotte had wanted extra
in case a course of medication was called for and in the hopes of treating Elspeth if the acorns proved effective on the plant
matter.
“I hope this works,” she murmured.
She pulled gloves on and poured acorn water into the vials of bark and leaves.
The infected grass from the vial of ooze she moved into a fresh vial and watered that, too.
It might’ve been worth testing the water directly on the ooze, but she’d leave that for later.
First she wanted to see whether it did anything for her patients, such as they were.
Nothing happened, but that didn’t dishearten her. Most medications needed some time before they took effect; cures often took
longer. She’d check on the vials throughout the day, the next several days if necessary. If they showed no improvement in
that time, she’d have to reevaluate. With Elspeth’s symptoms developing so much more slowly than usual, Charlotte hoped several
days wouldn’t see her bedbound like Gracie Buchanan.
Elspeth came in and slumped in her armchair. Charlotte joined her, resisting the urge to grab something to occupy her hands.
The plant creature shrank back down and curled in her lap, winding tendrils through her fingers.
“It work?” Elspeth asked.
“I don’t know. Medicine doesn’t usually work that fast. It might take effect in fifteen minutes, or three hours, or it might
take a course of several days.”
“If it works.”
Charlotte reached for Elspeth’s hand. “If. But I’m hopeful.”
Elspeth’s fingers were cold and stiff. Scooting closer, Charlotte rubbed her hands to warm them.
“Thanks.” Elspeth’s hair lay in limp strands across her forehead. “What’s got you so cheery today?”
“It’s a good day. I’m less tired and hardly in pain.”
“I’d’ve thought a good day meant no pain.”
“I don’t remember what it feels like not to be in pain.
Anyway, the acorns—I don’t know if they’ll work, but I’ve spent years lamenting that nothing I had access to could even alleviate the sickness’s symptoms, let alone cure it.
Now I’ve got something new to try.” Charlotte smoothed Elspeth’s hair from her forehead, then sat back pretending she hadn’t done it.
“I don’t know. Today I feel . . . hopeful. ”
She built up the fire, tucked Elspeth into a fur, and experimented with the ovular whistle they’d found in the bedside table.
Positioning her fingers on this whistle was different than on her whistles at home, which were thin and cylindrical. A pleasant
note in a lower tone came out, then a higher one. Her fingers fumbled at the unfamiliar placement of the holes, but she blew
a few more notes. One screeched like a dying cat. The plant creature slung itself out of her lap and disappeared into the
ceiling.
“Sorry,” Charlotte called up to it.
Cautiously, the plant creature curled back down over her chair. It examined the whistle, which she held up for it before putting
the whistle away.
Elspeth had been listening with her eyes closed, but she cracked a tired eye when Charlotte returned to her chair. “Took to
that like a duck to water.”
“I have a couple of whistles at home.” Charlotte stroked the plant creature. “I used to play. Not all the time, of course,
I had far too much to do, but I played when I could. John whittled my favorite one.”
“You don’t play anymore?”
Charlotte shook her head. “I get breathless so easily. And my fingers are stiff so often, or sore, or both . . . It’s harder
than it used to be. Most things are.”
“Must be frustrating.” Elspeth drummed her fingers on her knees. “That sounded pretty good, anyway. Mostly.”
Charlotte’s mouth twitched.
An hour had elapsed when she finally checked her vials. She’d found herself thinking periodically, A watched pot never boils, though taking such things literally was silly. The acorn water would work, or it wouldn’t, and it would do so in its own
time whether she watched or not.
“So?” Elspeth asked.
Charlotte’s hands shook. She laid them flat on the counter and went through a few cycles of breathing. The plant creature
swayed at her side, waist-high.
She reached for the vial of bark.
Hard to draw any conclusions. The bark was softened by having been left in water for an hour. It looked brown rather than
gray or black, but she couldn’t be sure that wasn’t the lighting. The infected leaves were similar.
Charlotte shook her head. She should’ve realized; of course half-decayed bark and leaves would crumble in water.
She reached for the clean vial into which she’d put the blade of grass.
The grass was green.
Charlotte’s heart skipped a beat. She held the vial to the window. The water no longer shimmered with gold specks, but no
question: The grass was free of ooze and black veins. No dark tendrils unfurled in the water.
The sickness was gone.
“Well?” Elspeth croaked.
Unable to speak, Charlotte brought her the vial.
Elspeth whistled but broke off coughing midway through. Charlotte hovered, a hand at her back, until she quieted.
“I’ll be damned, Lottie,” Elspeth rasped. “You did it. What about the others, then?”
Charlotte handed them to her. Elspeth examined them.
“All right—harder to say. But it looks better, don’t it?”
Not clearly enough for Charlotte’s taste. The water in the other vials was brown with flecks that might’ve been desiccated
plant matter or some remnant of the sickness. But they didn’t seem as black as they’d been, and the grass—there was no question
its sickness was gone.
Charlotte sucked in a breath, leaning on the back of her chair for support. The anticipation had sapped some of her energy. The plant creature wrapped around her, offering more stability. She patted it gratefully; it had proven a good aid in the last two days.
“It’s a good first step.”
Elspeth laughed, stopped to fight another coughing fit. “First step! Lottie—”
Charlotte shook her head. “It’s good, I’m not denying that, but we don’t know if it’ll work consistently. Or if there are
any side effects. Or if it’ll work on humans as well as plants, for that matter. But . . .”
Straightening with the plant creature’s help, Charlotte pulled Elspeth’s collar aside. The black veins at her scar had unwound
farther, stretching up toward her throat and down toward her breast.
Charlotte swallowed. “I guess we’re going to find out.”
She found a glass in one of the cupboards and dipped it in the remaining acorn water, reconsidered and added more. Dosage.
Another thing to figure out, if this worked.
“Start with this.”
Elspeth downed it. “Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
They passed a torturous hour in which Elspeth asked about her whistle playing and Charlotte named her favorite tunes. But
their minds were on the acorns and the black veins at Elspeth’s collar, her increased exhaustion over the last couple of days.
The plant creature wound around Charlotte’s feet, up her legs, over the back of her chair. Charlotte’s eyes kept flickering
toward Elspeth’s shirt, but she forced herself to hold off checking until the whole hour had run out.
Elspeth sounded winded. “Well?”
“It’s hard to tell.”
Charlotte kept her voice light, but internally she panicked. She couldn’t tell whether the black veins had receded. Did it need more time, or a higher dosage? Both? Or was it simply not working?