Chapter 14
The dirt is wrong.
Not wrong wrong, just—dense. Packed. I've been digging for twenty minutes and my arms are already screaming because whoever lived here before me apparently walked on this exact patch of ground every single day for a decade.
My knees are grinding into the hard earth and I should have brought something to kneel on.
"You're not helping," I tell Nugget.
She's wearing the sweater I made her last night. Couldn't sleep—kept staring at the ceiling and every time I closed my eyes it was bark against my back and his—so I made a chicken sweater.
Normal coping.
It's lopsided. One arm hole—wing hole?—is bigger than the other. She looks ridiculous, pink feathers poking out of gray wool, and she's currently pecking at the exact spot I need to dig next.
"Move."
She doesn't move.
"Nugget. I'm trying to make a garden. You're standing on the garden."
More pecking. She's found something. A bug, probably.
A rock she thinks is a bug.
The sweater bunches up around her neck when she bobs her head and I should fix that, should adjust the—
His hands sliding up under my shirt—
I shove the trowel into the dirt harder than necessary.
"Right. Rosemary." Talking to myself. Normal. "Rosemary can go here. Yarrow by the stream, I saw some yesterday when I was—yesterday. Right. And the comfrey needs partial shade, so maybe over by the—Nugget, that's a rock, not food. That is a rock."
She eats the rock.
"Fine. Enjoy your rock. I’m sure that will feel great when it—"
Footsteps behind me.
I know whose footsteps those are. I know because I'm pathetic and because dirt has a sound and his boots hit different than everyone else's and I am not turning around. I'm digging. Very busy. Important soil work happening.
"Rhen's going out past the creek tomorrow." Keer's voice at my back. "He'll take you if you want to look for wild herbs."
"What time does he leave?"
"Just after dawn."
"K. I'll be ready."
He doesn't walk away. He's right there. Three feet. Maybe less. The warmth of him at my back and the trowel needs to go deeper into this extremely important dirt right now. My hands have stopped moving. When did my hands stop moving? I shove the trowel down again.
"Your chicken is eating a rock."
"She knows what she's about."
A pause, then he walks away. Footsteps on dirt, then gone.
My fingers ache on the trowel.
The plot is maybe four feet by six feet, which isn't much, but it's something.
Herbs for healing. Herbs for cooking.
Something I built with my own dirt-caked hands in dirt that smells nothing like cedar and I'm not—the comfrey. The comfrey needs partial shade. Focus—
"Okay." I sit back on my heels. "Okay. That's enough digging for now."
Nugget clucks.
"I'm not spiraling. I'm assessing soil composition."
More clucking. I have never met a more judgmental chicken.
"You're a chicken in a sweater. You don't get to have opinions about my mental state."
I push myself up, knees popping loud enough that Nugget startles.
My back hurts. My shoulders hurt from digging.
My face still aches where the guy hit me—there's a bruise there now, purple-green, and people keep looking at it and not asking questions.
Which is fine. I don't want questions. I want to dig a garden and not think about—
"MELORI!"
My head snaps up.
The shout comes from the central clearing—loud, urgent, wrong. I'm already moving—dropping the trowel, leaving Nugget to her rock.
"MELORI!"
The clearing opens up and people are gathering, a tight cluster near the main fire pit. I'm shoving through bodies before I can see what's happening—elbows and shoulders, someone grabs my arm and I yank free, already pushing toward the center where—
Keer.
He's carrying a child. Small body limp against his chest, maybe six years old, blood soaking through a rough bandage on her arm. Her face is wrong.
"Put her down. Now. Right here."
He lowers her to the ground without arguing—and I'm already on my knees beside her, hands reaching for the bandage before he's finished laying her flat.
"What happened?"
"We found her past the creek." His hands are red to the wrist. He's not looking at me. "She wandered too far from the group."
"When?"
"An hour ago. Maybe less."
I pull back the bandage and my stomach drops.
The wound is deep—a slash across her forearm, jagged, rough blade—and the edges are already turning gray. Not healing gray. Dying gray. The flesh going dark around the cut, spreading outward in tendrils I know too well.
"Moonbright. They're using moonbright on children now."
The child's mother is pushing through the crowd, face twisted. "Is she—will she—"
"She'll be fine. I need space. Everyone back up."
They don't back up. They're wolves, they crowd.
"Give her room." Keer's voice cuts through and bodies retreat.
I'm checking the child's pulse—fast, too fast, her skin burning hot under my fingers. Fever's already setting in.
"How long was she bleeding before you found her?"
"Maybe twenty minutes. She was hiding."
"Hiding?"
"She ran after the attack. Hid in a hollow log. We found her when she stopped answering calls."
Twenty minutes bleeding plus the run back. Poison's had time to spread, dig into her blood, start shutting things down. Hour? Less?
"I need my supplies. The jars, the clay ones, from my dwelling. NOW."
A young wolf takes off running.
"Dara!" I spot her at the edge of the crowd. "Boiled water. Not stream. Go."
"On it." She's already gone.
"What's her name?" The gray has spread past the wound edge. "How old is she?"
"Fenna. She just turned six."
"Fenna. Hi, sweetheart." The gray's crept past the bandage edge. Farther than I want. "Does she bounce back fast from cuts? Scrapes, bruises—heals quick?"
"Usually, yes, she's always—"
"Good." Six years old. Moonbright on a blade swung at a six-year-old. My hands keep working.
He's right beside me. Not in the way, so I keep working.
The wolf returns with my supplies and I grab the jar—yank off the lid—
Not enough.
A third of a jar. Maybe less. I've been using it steadily—Kestria's wound, minor treatments, the scraped knee of a pup who fell off a rock—and I didn't realize how low it was because I was busy doing other things.
Things that weren't inventory. Things that involved bark and hands and—not now. Not now not now not now.
"Melori." Keer's voice. Low. Calm.
"I know." I don't look at him. "I see it."
"Is there enough?"
"This wound needs a full jar. I have a third." I scoop paste onto my fingers. "So I'm going to make a third work."
I turn to the mother. "Hold her shoulders. When I put this in, she's going to wake up screaming. She needs to stay still."
"Screaming? But she's—"
"It's the paste working. It hurts before it heals. Hold her down."
"I can't hold my daughter down while she—"
"You can and you will because the alternative is worse. Hold. Her. Shoulders."
The mother drops to her knees. Her hands find her daughter's shoulders.
"Legs." To Keer. "She's going to buck."
His hands close around Fenna's ankles. Steady.
I spread the paste into the wound.
Fenna's eyes fly open and she screams—raw and high and terrible—and her body flails hard. The mother's crying now, saying her daughter's name over and over, and I keep working because stopping isn't an option, spreading the paste, scraping the jar for every last bit.
"Shh, shh. I know." My voice drops soft. "I know it hurts. You're so brave, Fenna. Almost done."
"Is it working?" The mother's voice breaks. "Please tell me it's—"
"Give it a minute. Three more seconds of spreading and then we wait." I scrape the jar clean. My fingertip comes out with barely a smear. "There. That's everything."
I sit back on my heels.
The jar is empty. I set it on the ground and my hands are shaking.
"Now we wait for the fever to break." I wipe my hands on my trousers, leaving green-brown streaks. "About an hour. Sometimes less."
"An hour?" The mother's gripping her daughter's shoulders, knuckles white. "She has to be in pain for an hour?"
"The fever has to spike before it breaks. That's how the paste works—it fights the poison, and the fever is the fight." I check Fenna's pulse again. Rapid but steady. "She's strong. She'll get through it."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure."
Dara returns with water. Sets it beside me without a word, then crouches next to the mother.
"She's in good hands." Dara's voice is certain. "I've watched her work."
The mother nods, tears streaming.
Five minutes. The gray at the wound edges holds steady. Not spreading. Not retreating either.
Not sure. Not sure at all. The paste is thin—thinner than I've ever spread it—and Kestria's wound had twice this amount and Kestria is a full-grown wolf with decades of healing behind her, and Fenna is six.
Keer hasn't moved. His hands are wrapped around her ankles, and he doesn't fidget, doesn't shift.
Still.
"Come on," I murmur. "Come on."
"What should it look like?" Keer asks. Just to me.
"The gray should be pulling back. Starting at the edges where the paste is thickest."
"It's not."
"I know it's not."
"What does that—"
"It means the paste is thin and it needs more time. It doesn't mean it's failing." I press my fingers to Fenna's forehead. Burning. "The fever's still climbing. That's right. That's what should be happening."
Ten minutes. The crowd has thinned—people drifting away to wait at a distance, but the core group stays.
The mother is praying, whispered words I don't recognize, something old that catches in her throat and starts over every time she loses her place.
Keer's breathing is controlled beside me.
My knees are screaming from the packed dirt.
"There." I lean forward. "Look."
The gray edge closest to the paste. Lighter. Just barely—a hair's width of flushed pink where dead gray had been.
"Is that—" the mother starts.
"It's working. Give it time."