Chapter 9
Avice
Avice jolted awake as something cold and wet touched her warm cheek.
…wake up!
Blinking away her drowsiness, she looked up into Bramble’s muzzle.
Avice!
She pushed herself up from the cushion of Trewoofe’s scales. Avice flushed with embarrassment at the sight of the drool she had left there and quickly wiped it away.
Avice! Bramble barked.
“Yes, yes!” she snapped back, irritable and still sleepy. “What is it?”
Why are you nestled with the King of the Well? he huffed irritably.
Her cheeks reddened. “I —”
This is why I do not like it when you tell me to stay behind, who knows what trouble you will get into!
“Bramble! I am perfectly fine with the Lord.”
Trewoofe lifted his head from where it rested near Avice’s legs. He gave a wide yawn, fangs glinting in the rapidly dimming light.
“What is this noise?” he grumbled. “Familiar?
Bramble lowered his head, his nose touching the moss at his paws. King Trewoofe, forgive the disturbance, but Avice is needed by a patient.
Fully snapping from her drowsiness, Avice leapt to her feet. “Who?”
She raked her mind over all her expectant mothers and patients she had visited earlier that day. No one was due imminently, and most had survived the Winter so far with the normal number of sore throats and blocked noses.
William the Farmer came to the cottage looking for you. His wife is expecting a pup, is she not? Bramble ventured, cocking his head.
Avice’s stomach clenched. “She is not that far into her quickening. If she has gone into labour… it is too soon!” She swooped to gather her things. She went to lift the water bags and remembered they were empty. No! She turned her gaze upwards; the sky was rapidly darkening. “God’s blood!”
She knew that, even with Bramble guiding her, it would take her too long to reach the outskirts of the village in the gloom, and she would not be able to make the journey before night fell.
Avice realised she also did not have her medical satchel with her.
She clenched and unclenched her fists, frozen with indecision at what to do next.
“I can help,” Trewoofe offered.
Avice’s face brightened. “You can?”
He lowered his head, so the bottom of his jaw was flush against flowers. “Get on.”
“What?” Avice asked, wringing her hands.
“Sit behind my horns, at the back of my head, and hold onto them to stay in place.”
Avice swallowed her nerves. She gave the Knucker a firm nod, and with the basket and water bags on the hook of her elbow, she scrambled up the side of his neck.
She seated herself firmly there and clutched on to the tallest pair of his horns.
She noticed the folded scaly skin beneath her thighs, bright pink and purple, reminding her of Spring flowers.
“Alright,” she said tentatively. “I think I am secure.”
“Well done, little witch.”
Trewoofe smoothly rose his head. Despite the urgency of the situation, Avice felt her heart flutter with delight. She had never been so high up before. She could see over the Knucker’s garden and the plummet of his hill.
Then, the view.
She saw the woods: bare, barren, and brown from the longest Winter Avice could remember, the odd burst of evergreen amongst the ghostly branches.
Beyond that, the coast. The sea was stained purple by the twilight.
The midwife inhaled, catching traces of the clean, crisp scent of the ocean.
She knew she was too far away, but she fancied that she could hear the crash of White Horses on the sandy shore.
She gasped, her cloudy breath puffing from her chilled lips.
“Trewoofe— Lord, I mean,” she corrected herself. “This view… it is…”
“Something, is it not?” Trewoofe rumbled, sending a vibration up her spine, making her toes curl in boots. “We must be off.”
Follow me! To the cottage first. Bramble barked, before slipping into the space between light, only the blur of his red eyes giving a hint of his location.
It had been so long since Avice had seen her Grim move that way. She had nearly forgotten that he was a hound of shadows. That Bramble could travel along the dark lines that cast over the earth.
Avice leaned over to Trewoofe’s ear, it flicked as she spoke into it. “Can you keep up with him, Lord?”
Trewoofe huffed. His misty breath temporarily covered her face before it wafted up to sky above. “Of course,” he grumbled.
Avice braced herself as he dashed forward, barrelling out of his garden and down his hill in a blink.
The buffeting of the wind stung her eyes, making tears run down her cheeks before they blew away in the gale.
As she turned her face from the onslaught, all she could see was the brown blur of tree trunks.
The midwife chanced a glance over her shoulder, past her billowing mantle, to see a river of stars chasing them.
Not stars, it’s him.
His lustrous, iridescent scales coiled in the last snatches of light.
Glittering in colours that she had barely caught whispers of, despite her ability to see what others could not.
Those shades that she had only seen in the corner of her eye, in the retracting of a sunlit wave, in the bud of a new flower, in the last fragments of a rainbow, and the melting of a snowflake on skin.
“Beautiful,” she murmured.
“What was that?”
Avice turned her face forward again. She chewed her lip, butterflies in her belly. She did not realise the Knucker could hear her over the buffet of wind at his relentless pace.
She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. “I said, your scales, they look beautiful. Under this light, for a moment, I thought the stars were chasing us.”
Trewoofe said nothing, but continued his sprint across the landscape, right on Bramble’s tail. Worry gnawed at Avice as he did not respond, concerned she had slighted the Knucker.
“King Trewoofe, I am sorry if that offended you.”
“There is none taken.”
To Avice, his voice sounded raw, cracked, like she had struck at something that wounded it. “Lord, what is the matter?” she pressed.
Trewoofe kept his gaze straight ahead but spoke. “It has been many, many turns of seasons since anyone has remarked on my appearance. It reminded me of the last who did.”
Avice knew that curiosity could be dangerous, but it had peaked. “Who?”
“My… soul-bound. I suppose the human equivalent of what you would call a wife.”
The midwife jerked in surprise. “You have a wife?”
“Had. She died long, long ago.”
Guilt twisted in her, and she immediately regretted her probing. “I am sorry, Lord. I should not have pried.”
“It is alright. I see your cottage ahead. Let us attend to the work ahead of us.”
Avice was silent as Trewoofe came to sudden stop; a mighty paw stepped within the circle of stones that surrounded her garden.
Bramble trotted ahead down the garden path.
The midwife sighed as she saw the Pillywiggins had begun to till a patch of soil that she had planned to let lie fallow in Spring, whenever she arrived.
“So, this is where you do your witching?” the Knucker asked.
“Yes, this is where it all happens.”
Trewoofe lowered his head to the frosted ground. The surrounding air had rapidly chilled at their race through the woods. Avice shivered beneath her cloak and layers of wool and linens. She slipped easily down his smooth scales, breasts and belly sensitive to the friction with his glittering hide.
“Thank you.” She lowered her head to him in gratitude.
“Leave the water bags here,” Trewoofe instructed. “I will refill them while you attend to your patient. I will take you there first.”
“Yes, yes, thank you again!” Avice exclaimed before darting up the rammed earth path.
She burst inside the cottage. The midwife briefly greeted Ashling while she dumped her basket by the hearth.
She grabbed her satchel, confirming the contents, checking them off in her mind.
Linens, knives, sheep gut, cross, needle, honey, willow-bark, essence of lavender, motherwort, hemlock…
She swallowed nervously at the small bottles of healing water in there, grateful that she still had some.
I got distracted today. He is too easy to idle away day light with. Good at conversation, kind, safe.
Avice slicked her hair back into a bun at the nape of her neck, knowing that her tumbling mane would only get in the way while she went about her work. Her hands were already freezing, so she tugged on the gloves she had stuffed in the picnic basket before accepting her gift from Trewoofe.
“Ready, Bramble?” she asked, turning to the Grim as he stood in the dark doorway.
Yes. The hound tilted his head towards the hearth. Keep it warm in here, Ashling; she will be cold when we get back.
An affirmative chirp from the Wisp playing in the ashes made Avice smile as she stepped towards the freezing night.