xliii. In which goodbyes are said （for now）
Charlotte touched Elspeth’s cheek, concerned. Elspeth’s jaw had gone tight, but at Charlotte’s touch, she let out a long,
low breath. Her eyes dimmed.
“How, Lottie? This is all I saw in that basin. The stump, a tree—that’s it. I didn’t see Maggie.”
Ira untangled his fingers from Arthur’s, nudging Calyx out from underfoot. “What exactly did you see? Which tree? If something
happened to her here, if you can remember exactly what you saw, I can find out.”
Elspeth seemed even more suspicious of him now that he looked human. Charlotte squeezed her hand, wishing they were alone.
They’d found her brother alive, more or less in one piece, in better shape now than he’d been when they’d reached him—but
no sign of Elspeth’s sister. Although Charlotte had forgotten herself before, so relieved to find Elspeth in the wood, she
couldn’t comfort Elspeth much with so many people around.
“Which tree?” Ira repeated.
Elspeth bit her lip. So many trees had grown in the last few minutes.
What had been a dying clearing was new-growth forest. Young trees of all kinds—birch, holly, rowan, goat willow, aspen, hawthorn—all with leaves that had budded, opened, grown, and started turning yellow or orange or red.
Moss and lichens bloomed on their trunks.
“Let’s take a closer look,” Charlotte said, though she shuddered at approaching the new growth. Calyx wound around her for
support.
The ooze, the veins—all of it had cleared up. The trees were healthy. Nonetheless, the forest’s magic made her shiver. Never
mind that the forest no longer wanted to kill them; it had done away with the work camp. Somewhere in Port Lorne and cities
like it, wealthy men who already owned more than anyone could humanly use would learn of their plight. Undoubtedly, they’d
start planning their next camp, determined to remove the heart of the wood, destroy the forest, and gobble up the land for
factories or grand estates.
But the men who had done the work had been working men in need of money. And likely none of their families would ever see
any, now. Perhaps they’d known that. Known, like the fishermen in Seacliff, that their provider was as likely to kill them
as support them.
Perhaps knowing that hadn’t mattered, because they’d had no other options.
Elspeth’s grip tightened as they moved through the trees.
“None of ’em are . . . I don’t recognize any of ’em.” Her breath hitched. “There are too many. There are too many trees now.”
“Here.” Charlotte turned Elspeth toward her, cradling her face in her hands. “Breathe with me a minute, hmm?”
They all did it together, even Maud, breath sighing out of her like wind in the leaves. In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Elspeth’s breathing steadied. Charlotte wiped her tears away.
“Now, close your eyes and picture what you saw.”
Elspeth let out a breath and did as instructed. “It . . . it was the tree where I found Maggie’s necklace, but it looked like it’d grown thicker. Mossier.”
“Her necklace?” Ira asked.
Elspeth plodded through the trees.
“The acorn. It was our gran’s—yours, I guess, she said you gave it to her when she was a little girl lost in the wood. Maggie
wore it everywhere, but when I found it on this tree I figured she’d left it for an offering, for safe passage.” She shook
her head. “I could’ve sworn . . . When that woodsman struck at me, I thought one of the trees struck him back. Could’ve been
the same one.”
Through the new growth, a tree appeared. Stunted, but thoroughly tree, not human in form like the trees they’d fought to get into the vale. It was bent and twisted, carpeted with a thick layer
of moss. The thin, whiplike branches of a willow spilled from its crown, blooming with little white flowers not unlike those
that had bloomed in Ira’s scar before he’d transformed.
“That one,” Elspeth said in a hushed voice. “It’s that one. Them flowers weren’t there before.”
Ira ran a hand over the branches, laid his palm against the trunk. He cocked his head, listening intently.
“It’s not a tree. It’s a person.”
Elspeth’s jaw clenched. “The forest turned her?”
Ira shook his head. “It isn’t someone the forest was protecting itself from. That’s why it doesn’t look like the others. It’s
someone the forest wanted to protect from something else. The same way it tried to protect me all those years, by making them
a part of itself.”
“Why?” Charlotte asked.
Ira shrugged.
“We can ask, if I . . .” He ran his fingers over the bark, murmuring, “It’s all right. You can let her go. She’ll be safe
now.”
Moss shifted and slipped downward, creeping away through the grass to crawl up the trunks of other trees.
The white flowers wilted. The bark shuddered and melted into skin and clothes, the whiplike branches turned to hair, and the tree was a young woman with mousy-brown hair, a crooked nose, and skin a shade lighter than Elspeth’s.
“Maggie,” Elspeth breathed.
The next moment, her expression twisted into horror. Rather than straightening, stretching, awakening—whatever any of them
had expected Maggie to do once no longer a tree—she tilted forward and collapsed. Her skin was waxy, her breath shallow.
“Maggie!”
Elspeth caught her, eyes wide with panic. Maggie bled spectacularly from a wound in the back of her head.
With Calyx’s help, Charlotte knelt beside them. “Let me see.”
Her stomach twisted. No head wounds often look worse than they are, this: Maggie had been bludgeoned. Charlotte couldn’t fix this.
She met Arthur’s eyes helplessly. He’d gone pale at the sight of all that blood, but he blurted, “Maud! Maud—your pool—did
you bring any—”
“Of course I did.” Maud clicked her tongue, pulling a vial from her skirt. She nodded at Ira. “He would bring humans into battle with him, never mind how fragile you all are.”
She gave the vial to Charlotte. Its contents were silver.
Charlotte held it to the light. “How do I use it?”
“Pour it over the wound,” Ira said. “That’s all.”
“Might not work as well as you hope,” Maud warned. “Best on fresh wounds. Which I suppose this is, in a way, but if the girl’s
been a tree all this time it’s likely older than it looks.”
“She . . .” Elspeth swallowed. “She’s been missing for weeks now.”
Charlotte uncorked the vial with difficulty, turned Maggie’s head, and dripped silver fluid onto the wound. Beside her, Elspeth was rigid as stone.
Wherever the liquid spilled, skin knit itself together and new hair grew. Charlotte had never seen anything like it. With
access to this, she could save anyone who had an accident that might otherwise cost their life.
Maggie’s skull stitched itself up until it looked as if the wound had never been, except for the blood sticking strands of
hair together. With the last few drops of liquid, Charlotte wiped the blood away. It stained her apron pink.
Shaking, Elspeth stroked her sister’s hair. “Maggie?”
Charlotte felt for a pulse. Maggie’s chest rose thinly, but her skin looked less waxy than it had before. “Her pulse is all
right. Let’s give it a minute.”
Slowly, Maggie’s color and breathing improved. Elspeth held her, rocking her on and off. She kept stopping, like she’d realized
rocking someone who’d recently had a head wound wasn’t the best idea, then continuing like she couldn’t help herself. Charlotte
slipped an arm around her, hoping to comfort Elspeth as they waited since she couldn’t do anything more.
Maggie’s lashes fluttered.
Elspeth gripped her hand. “Maggie?”
“Elspeth?”
Maggie’s eyes were deep and blue. She sat up slowly, brow furrowing, and clutched her head.
“How you feeling?” Elspeth asked anxiously.
“Like I got run over. But I’m . . . How’m I . . . What are you doing here?”
Elspeth hugged her tight. Like a disgruntled cat, her sister tried to squirm free.
“Elspeth—what . . . ?”
Elspeth’s voice was muffled in Maggie’s shoulder. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“You’ve been missing for some time,” Charlotte said.
Since Elspeth was too busy squeezing the air out of her sister to explain, Charlotte explained in her stead. As she did so,
she examined Maggie’s head, face, throat, and pulse, and periodically had Maggie curl her fingers or flex her feet.
“What we don’t know,” she said when she’d finished, “is what happened to you in the first place. Let’s try standing you up.”
Calyx helped her get Maggie to her feet. Maggie swayed; Calyx steadied her. Charlotte would’ve offered her cane, had it not
gone flying when Calyx had slung itself toward Ira upon reaching the work camp. She didn’t know where it had ended up, but
she missed it already. Just now, however, Maggie needed Calyx’s support more than she did.
“How do you feel?”
“Dizzy.” Maggie squeezed her eyes shut but abruptly opened them. “Oh—that made it worse.”
Charlotte helped her sit back down.
“I was almost home,” Maggie said slowly. “Made it all the way to the first tree. After nightfall, it was. Thought I’d sleep
by the stump. Always felt safe here. But I found a work camp—big one, fires burning and all, trees cleared away that’d been
here when I passed through with Bess on our way to Seacliff.”
She rubbed her forehead, frowning.
“There was this big machine. Don’t know what it’s called. Sitting right there by the stump, though, and I could see they meant
to uproot it. So I thought . . . while I’m here, why don’t I bollox their plans a bit?”
Elspeth snorted. Her eyes were red, but she was calmer now that Maggie no longer seemed in danger of imminent death.
“You? What’d you do, huh? You always were the good one.”
Maggie smiled crookedly. “Think you got a monopoly on making trouble, do you? I found a fire poker and stuck it in the thing’s gears.
Had it pretty well in there, too. But the foreman caught me at it, tried to get the poker away from me, and when he couldn’t, he walloped me instead. That’s the last I remember.”
Elspeth pulled her in for another rib-crushing hug. “I hope the forest walloped him.”
Charlotte touched Elspeth’s arm. “Gently, dearest.”