Chapter 43
THE NORTH PATH
EMMA
I slammed the guest room door behind me and thumped my back against it, digging the points of my shoulder blades into the wood to bar entry, bracing my toes. Harriet might come, or Mr. Darcy, or Mr. Knightley. One I had betrayed, the next abandoned, the last angered.
“Selfish girl!” I cried out. “You are hiding while Lizzy is ill.” With her, I had been my best. And with Nessy, too. I had only failed them by not achieving a miracle.
To the north, to the north, the wyvern said.
I gathered the cloth bag with the last teaspoon of herbs for Nessy’s tea, dried now but a lively green, and an ivory coat and bonnet that matched my gown.
Ivory seemed lucky for an ivory alcove. I hurried down more stairs and rushed through the gardens, the twin skirts of my gown and coat flashing.
I patted the radiant statue at the north point as I passed.
The north path was natural, widened by deer, an easy walk, although damp and weedy where the earth dipped. Soon, I was climbing the hill, scattered sunbeams at my back.
The human noises of Pemberley House vanished. The mild afternoon had brought animals out to forage. Birds sang and squirrels chittered. Other than the tremendous, mossy girth of the bare-branched oaks, it could have been a forested walk near home.
The ground roughened with knotted roots and rotting mast, and the path steepened.
Rowan and holly joined oak. Finally, puffing, I stopped to catch my breath.
The path behind me stretched back—it had not magically vanished as happens in fables—but the hilltops I glimpsed through the trees were unfamiliar. How far had I come?
“A half mile,” I announced, to hear a voice, and to say something unfrightening. “Not far.” The day seemed darker, but that was the canopy of unthinned forest. I had left the house before three, so there would be hours of light. Well, two hours. Perhaps.
Lucy had matched my short boots of supple ivory kid to my gown. They looked dismayingly dirty already, caked with black mud and dead leaves. My calves ached. Sighing, I resumed the climb.
It grew harder, as happens in fables. The path stayed clear, but downed branches and trunks crossed it.
I removed my Chantilly gloves, aligned the lace holes between the left and right, and folded them into my reticule.
With my reticule fastened to my waist, I could now pull on branches to step over rocks and rotting logs.
But the low branches had loose, dead bark, the wood brittle from summer shadow.
Some snapped without warning, even sticks an inch thick.
I stopped again, panting. My thighs burned. I was hungry, my stomach growling, my throat dry. The left seam on one boot had popped several threads. The sky was unquestionably darker.
“Three quarters of a mile. That is far enough.” The woods listened. “Should you not come out?” The woods did not answer, but distantly, I heard an echo as if a tenor voice had shouted. I called louder, “Mister Wyvern?” but that felt foolish.
In the fading light, my palms had red scratches and smears of sap and mold. I rubbed them, the skin stinging and the sap sticky. Better to harm my skin than my gloves. The hems of my skirts were soiled, so I should preserve what defenses I had.
But these trees had deep, vertical crevasses in their bark.
In each, cunningly hidden, miasma glimmered, a subtle trickle to soak the earth.
I was alone, but how far could it seep? Where would it rise in a malignant spring?
Harriet had stormed off, furious with me.
She must be safe in Pemberley. Or did she look for me in the gardens? She might be wandering and lost.
I caught myself opening the drawstrings on my reticule. I tugged them tight again. Lace gloves would be ruined by dirty fingers.
What had Mr. Darcy said? I forced my memory past the wretched terrace to the lesson in the ivory alcove.
Denying the possibility of illness would fail.
That was true. I knew that spiral of what-ifs and the hopeless chase for perfection.
Accept that you cannot protect people from being hurt. Instead, help them if they are.
The glisten of miasma had thickened to a flow. I shouted, “I am prepared to help!” but the fear stayed.
I needed a stronger talisman than an unpracticed lesson. I dug into my reticule, avoiding the gloves, and found the little cloth bag of Nessy’s tea. I pressed it to my nose, breathing flowery mint, and my mind filled with calm stories and her smile at the foolish rabbit. The fear eased.
Words whispered in my mind: climb, healer
“Thank you,” I cried. That was just like the fables Papa had read me as a child. “I knew this was right!”
Up, then. I climbed, ignoring the cramping hollow in my belly and my loose boot.
The twilight made inky pools under raised roots, then around them, then swallowed the ground.
I splashed through water, my torn boot waterlogged and my toes numb.
The trunks turned to shadows against an iron sky, then black against silvered, slipping clouds.
Direction was impossible, but always there was only one path ahead.
I tripped, fell, and fell again, batting at unseen bushes and hanging moss, cloth snagging and dragging, bonnet pulled askew and straightened fifty times.
But all that damage was swallowed by the dark.
No hilltop of Pemberley was this high. Had I gone up and down and back up again?
I stumbled into a rough meadow, the sky cleared by the fall of an ancient tree. The stump was a softening mound tufted with ivy. Without branches overhead, it was lighter, the sky the purple-blue of elderberries and glowing rose in the west.
No. If I was facing north, that was east. Was I lost, or was that the dawn?
I blinked and was surrounded by mid-morning sunlight on a spring day.
Cheerful blooms nodded their heads. Life boiled everywhere: ants searching and birds singing, gnats dancing, rabbits nibbling, their ears alert and listening.
I trembled with exhaustion, every muscle aching, but my clothes were as pristine as a final fitting.
Where the mounded stump had been, Lady Anne’s wyvern stood. The proud strength I saw in Georgiana’s vision was lost. He was wasted and skeletal, his bones propping wrinkled leathery skin, those lustrous brown scales reduced to a few ragged patches. Pity stilled me, and fear that I came too late.
healer. i have waited
“I am here. For my message.” That was not nearly urgent enough. “There are people I must heal. A child and a wyfe.”
the song is broken. blight spreads in the east
“I do not know how to help songs or blight. I want to help two people. Please.”
only two? show me what you carry
I pulled out the little bag of tea leaves, enough for a single cup. When nothing happened, I walked close and sank on my heels.
In the grass around us, fallen scales gleamed. The facets of the wyvern’s eyes were pitted and cloudy like poor glass, and his head had an uncertain cant, so I opened the bag and held it close. He leaned to bring one eye near.
you are as she thought you would be. the heiress to her skills, but stronger. already these have power
“Not enough. The child is too ill. Every day I see the disease eating her away.”
one child. the world is besieged
“Healing is a small thing,” I whispered.
The wyvern’s weary head lifted in startled surprise. When at last he resumed, his tone was wondering.
my eyes rot, wyfe, but my vision clears. the wyverns hold the lore. never has one waited so long. never has one’s vision seen so far. say for a third time: how many would you save?
“Two. Just two. A child and a wyfe.”
The wyvern took a step. His feet had lost their claws, and his gait was unsteady, his toes scabbed and webbed. In the clearing around us, leaves and grass rustled. Small creatures of the forest were gathering—rabbits, crows, squirrels, foxes. Watching.
He pressed his cheek to my hand so the bag and tea were beneath his eye. A single golden drop gathered and rolled into the dried, green leaves.
her gift. to cure the child. only the child
That eye clouded until it was the opaque gray of dusty stone. Along his flank, a strip of brown scales shed like dense seeds, each descent sudden and quick.
“What of the wyfe?” I said. “I must save her, too.”
He turned his head the other way, and his remaining eye clouded to stone as a golden tear gathered. It rolled down, and I caught it on my palm as it fell from his jaw. It shone in the sunlight, then sank into my skin. A sense of pureness filled me.
“I will give Nessy the tea. But what do I do with this?” He did not answer. “What message did Lady Anne leave for me?”
you already knew her message: ‘healing is a small thing, born in love.’ stay true to your path, wyfe, and you will save three lives today
Save a third life. That sounded more ominous than good.
The wyvern’s head shuddered and clunked down a handbreadth. Gleaming, jet-black shoulder blades split the skin of his back, then he collapsed in a mound of skin, scale, and clean bone.
The gathered creatures swarmed forward. Rabbits and crows caught leathery shreds or tiny phalanges in their mouths and left.
Squirrels stuffed their cheeks with scales and climbed trunks.
Foxes lifted the heavy bones and padded off, tails waving.
All were common creatures, not draca, and they carried their burden with reverence.
The bright sunlight vanished as if it had never been, leaving cold twilight, but brighter than before. Dawn.
The decayed mound of the fallen tree was at my knees. I touched the ivy, felt a hard edge, and tugged free an obsidian jaw bone with a few knife-edged teeth attached. Hard clay and tangled roots clung from years of rest.
In the dawn light, my clothes were completely ruined, my boot seam hanging. My belly had shrunk to a cramped, empty knot. My throat was thick with thirst.
Ahead of me, the path continued through the trees. I looked behind. The path I had walked was still there, not vanished. But retracing all those steps was quite unappealing.
I tucked the jaw bone back into its bed. “You were most loyal and brave. It is strange that the message is one I already knew, but I think ‘Stay true to your path’ means just what it says.”
I pushed to my feet, tucked loose strands of hair into my bonnet, and slogged north.