xxi. In which flowers grow somewhere unexpected
Back in the vale, Calyx was waiting. It was smaller than ever, vaguely dog-shaped, but Arthur tensed as it crept toward them.
Freya hissed.
“Are you happy now?” Ira snapped at the plant creature.
It rubbed against his legs, but he kicked it away—lost his balance, but Arthur kept him upright. Calyx crawled up a nearby
tree to mope.
Arthur glanced at it as they passed, neck prickling. “You’re sure it won’t follow us inside?”
Ira shook his head. “Its whole purpose is to protect me. I got hurt because it scared you away.”
“I thought the forest was protecting you.”
“Calyx came from the forest.” Ira’s blood dripped a red trail in the snow the whole way inside. He collapsed in his armchair.
“The last time a human was in the vale, I thought he was a traveler who’d gotten lost, that he needed my care, but he . . .”
He touched his scarred eye. Arthur’s stomach heaved at the thought of someone scarring him that way on purpose. It was bloody
now, the scar, the same as Ira’s forehead and arm. Arthur closed his eyes and breathed deep, in for four, hold for four, out for four.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” Ira said, “but the forest sent Calyx. It handled the problem.”
Arthur shivered but focused on rooting through the kitchen for rags, bandages, and scissors. Unable to stand his wet socks
any longer, he replaced them with a fresh pair. Things were quite bad enough without wet socks.
“I should’ve realized,” Ira went on. “It’s been clinging to me like a shadow for so long, I forgot how dangerous it can be.
I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop it. I thought . . .”
Arthur filled a bowl with water. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Ira looked unconvinced. Apparently deciding the rescue had gone some way toward making amends for his behavior the day they’d
met, the cat allowed Arthur to attend to him without interruption. She curled on the bed, barely glaring.
Antiseptic, Arthur thought. He needed to disinfect the wounds.
“Do you have any—” what was that plant? Charlotte always had a paste or ointment of it with her medical things “—sweet amber?”
“I can.”
Ira waved a hand. A shrub with oval leaves and cupped yellow flowers sprouted beside his chair. Arthur’s breath hitched, but
Ira slumped, like that small act of magic had drained his energy.
Biting his lip, Arthur cut away Ira’s shirtsleeve and pressed a towel to his upper arm. “Hold that, will you?”
Ira did so. Arthur touched the shrub’s foliage, considering. The leaves, not the flowers. For this, anyway. Sweet amber had
many uses, not that he could remember most of them. He plucked leaves from the shrub, wishing he’d asked Charlotte to teach
him more about herbalism over the years. Most of what he’d learned had been in the past six months, so he could help her on
bad days.
Arthur’s heart stuttered. Assuming he managed to leave again, what, exactly, was his plan? To wander the forest at random, hoping he found her?
Ira leaned back with his eyes closed and the towel, rusty with blood, against his arm. His forehead bled freely. Arthur bit
his lip so hard it hurt. He found a mortar and pestle in a cabinet and ground the leaves, hoping for the best.
Head wounds bleed a lot, he heard Charlotte saying in clipped tones, over a year ago, as she cleaned Sasha’s forehead while he panicked beside her.
Sasha had somehow climbed onto and fallen off of the cottage roof.
A little water and the ground leaves made a paste, though one runnier than Arthur had been hoping for. He set the mortar and
pestle down, wet a towel and wrung it out.
As Arthur cleaned the blood from Ira’s upper arm, he couldn’t help glancing at the door, like Calyx might burst in. But it
was as Ira had said: Chastened, the plant creature remained outside, wrapped moodily around a tree.
Ira’s nostrils flared. Arthur worried something might’ve happened to his eye: Odd little bloody clumps lined his scar. Arthur
wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were. His stomach clenched, but he breathed deeply and focused on his work. Ira wouldn’t
look so bad if not for him.
In a small voice, he said, “Thank you. For what you did. You didn’t have to.”
Ira cracked an eye open. “You could’ve been killed.”
“So could you.” Arthur reached for the mortar. “This might sting. Sorry.”
He dabbed the sweet amber mixture onto Ira’s arm. Some of it dribbled down his bicep, staining his skin green, but most of
the mixture stayed where Arthur wanted. Ira winced, but his eyes flickered over Arthur’s face.
“I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Not if I could stop it.”
Arthur looked away. He couldn’t stand that serious hazel gaze, even as gentle as it was now. He wasn’t sure why, except for his usual thing about eye contact, whatever the reason for that. Thank God Ira never demanded it as so many people did.
“What did you see?” Ira asked.
Arthur paled but focused on bandaging his arm. He explained what he’d seen in the basin and added, as he finished with the
bandage, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know when she left! It might’ve been an hour ago—a day—I’ve no idea. She could
be anywhere by now. How am I supposed to find her? With the paths shifting—the stormwings—the sickness—”
His vision swam as he imagined what could’ve happened to Charlotte by now. Charlotte like Hamish, black-veined and covered
in moss and vanishing when Arthur’s back was turned.
Arthur dropped his head to his knees and breathed through the cycle Charlotte had taught him. He’d never imagined this. Dying in the forest or being trapped in the vale forever: yes. Charlotte coming after him, as if she had any hope of finding
him: absolutely not.
A hand on his head, gentle and comforting. Arthur focused on it, grateful that Ira did not have the same hang-ups about physical
touch between men that Seacliff did. At home, Arthur was used to the weight and warmth of someone’s hand on his. Sasha would
bowl into him for a hug, just because, or snuggle against him as he told a bedtime story, or demand a piggyback ride around
the garden, even though she was getting big for that sort of thing and it often triggered his back spasm. At twelve, Jonas
still sought him out to cuddle on the settee together after a bad day at school. Even Charlotte, despite her reserve, often
squeezed his arm or touched his shoulder when he was upset or sunk so deep in his work that there was no other way to get
his attention.
“Perhaps she’ll find her way here,” Ira said.
Then they’d both be trapped. Wonderful.
A couple more breathing cycles, and Arthur had calmed enough to examine Ira’s forehead. The bleeding had slowed, but blood
congealed at his hairline, in his scar with its strange bloody clumps, on his cheek and temple. Arthur tried to channel the
calm Charlotte radiated whenever she cared for a patient.
Cupping Ira’s face in his hand, Arthur dabbed blood from his forehead. Ira’s eyes fluttered closed, but his breathing wasn’t
as labored as it had been. With the blood cleaned up, the wound didn’t look as bad. Arthur applied the sweet amber to it,
taped gauze over it, and turned his attention to cleaning the blood off Ira’s face.
As he wiped blood from the scar, something emerged he had not expected. He’d thought—feared—that the clumps had been oddly
shaped bubbles of blood, that the scar had opened up in the altercation.
Instead, Ira’s scar was dotted with flowers.
White flowers stained pink. Five-petaled and tiny. Arthur swallowed, touching a fingertip to the scar.
Ira jerked away. “Don’t. Please.”
“But . . . your scar.” Arthur’s heart fluttered in panic. “It’s growing flowers.”
Ira’s brow furrowed. He reached for the scar but lowered his hand without touching it.
“That’s new,” he said wearily, but Arthur, more panicked, caught his hand. His nails had lengthened into claws. Gray hair
furred his fingers. Like his hands were turning into paws the way his feet had.
“What’s happening to you?” Arthur whispered.
Ira’s thumb brushed across his knuckles. “I told you. The forest is trying to protect me.”
“But—this—how does this—”
“It makes it harder for me to leave the vale.”
Ira slumped in his chair, letting out a breath. Arthur squeezed his hand.
“The first time I left the vale after your father died,” Ira said, “I changed to a stag. Always liked being a stag, when I’m
not in human form instead. Sometimes I liked it better. But when I changed back . . .”
He gestured at his antlers. They gleamed in the low light.
“The second time, it was the paws. The third time, the feathers. The more time I spend transformed outside the vale, the less
of me changes back. And I start to lose myself. To feel like a real beast, instead of just looking like one. It was never
like that before.”
He gazed absently at their linked hands.
“I used to change for the fun of it. Now I never know whether I’ll be able to change back.”
A lump formed in Arthur’s throat. The forest made it so difficult for Ira to leave the vale, yet he’d done so for Arthur.
He’d transformed for Arthur, too, to face the glaistig, not knowing whether or to what extent he’d become a man again.
Arthur swallowed. “Is there nothing that can be done?”
Ira leaned forward, reaching for the silver acorn. His new claws scraped over Arthur’s throat but didn’t break the skin. Arthur
shivered. On the bed, Freya raised her head, eyes narrowed, but she curled back up when it became apparent Arthur wasn’t in
mortal danger.
“With this . . .” Ira’s fingers curled around the acorn. “If the heart of the wood were replanted, it would heal the forest.
Calyx might calm down. And I think . . . I think it’d put me back the way I was.”
“Then—why haven’t you done it?”
Ira shook his head.
“It’s not a matter of stepping outside and planting the acorn wherever you want. It has to be planted where the tree is. Was. In the stump.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I tried. I ran out of acorns, planting them in the vale, or just outside it. Some of them took, but it didn’t work.”
“How do you know?”
Ira smiled humorlessly.
“Because the forest has grown sicker since.” He squeezed Arthur’s hand and let go. Arthur hadn’t realized their hands were
still linked. “Besides, you’d know if it worked. I’ve had to do it once before, centuries ago. The tree had been struck by
lightning. It grew back the second I replanted it.”
He ran a hand through his hair, making a face when it tangled in his new claws.
“I was so scared when I saw it like that, blackened and split and broken, half of it fallen over. When I replanted it, and
it grew . . . I thought I could protect the forest forever. And now I can’t even get to the heart of the wood.”
His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “Let me see your hand.”
Arthur gazed at Ira as he cleaned and bandaged Arthur’s hand. At the flowers in his scar, there because Arthur had needed
him.
Arthur fiddled with the silver acorn, thinking about all Ira had said about it. “How far is it to the heart of the wood?”
Ira shrugged. “Three days on foot. Maybe less, if you travel hard and don’t stop much.”
“What if we went there?”
Ira frowned. “What if—”
Arthur knelt at his feet, touching his knees.
“What if we went to the heart of the wood?” Arthur shifted closer.
“What if we replanted it? What if we healed the forest? Then it would be safe, wouldn’t it, like it used to be when Dad came through every year?
And nothing would happen to Lottie—I could find her, no matter how long it took, we could go home—and you could—”
“I can’t leave the vale.”
“You did, just now.”
Ira opened his mouth but closed it without saying anything, as if that hadn’t occurred to him.
“I did,” he said slowly.
Arthur nodded, fingers tightening on Ira’s knees.
“We could do it—I’m sure we could. You could keep me safe, and I could . . .” Arthur faltered, not sure what he might lend
to the venture, but he recovered quickly. “Well, if you don’t transform, there’s no problem, right?”
Ira touched his scar uneasily. “I’m not sure about this. I might sprout more flowers just for leaving.”
“We’ll figure something out if it comes to that.”
“Maybe.”
Ira pried Arthur’s fingers from his knees. Blushing, Arthur skittered away and flung himself into his armchair.
“If I ordered the forest to regrow the bridge,” Ira said, “if it knew why we were leaving . . .”
“It might let us go?”
Ira’s brow furrowed. “It’s safer here.”
“For now. Isn’t that what you told me? That the sickness will spread here eventually?”
Ira’s fingers curled over the arms of his chair.
“Ira,” Arthur said gently, “I can’t stay.”
“Don’t you like it here?”
“I—well, I hadn’t thought about it,” Arthur said in astonishment. “It’s— That’s not the point. I promised my family I’d come
home, but I haven’t, and now Lottie’s come to find me. I can’t let her die out here. Not if I can help it.”
A little hesitantly, he reached for Ira’s hand. There had been so much touch between them, but Ira had initiated most of it. Ira threaded his fingers through Arthur’s; Arthur relaxed.
“And it could help you, too,” he said, “replanting the tree. You said so.”
“I said I thought it could.” Ira avoided his gaze. “I wasn’t like this, last time. What if . . .”
His jaw tightened. He swallowed.
“What if,” he said, “what if we go, and we plant the tree, and the forest is healed, and I’m still like this?”
Arthur’s heart clenched; he understood that feeling. He squeezed Ira’s hand.
“We have to try, don’t you think? You’re my friend. I’d hate to see you stuck like this forever when there was something we could do about it. But I can’t make it myself. Even if the forest didn’t try to kill me—” he laughed ruefully “—I’m sure
I couldn’t make it anyway. I’m useless. But together—please, Ira. I need you.”
Ira’s gaze latched on to their hands, then flickered over Arthur’s face. His right eye was dark in the dim glow of the stove.
The scar over his other eye gleamed white with flowers.
Shaking Arthur off, he leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. Arthur’s heart sank, but Ira said, in clipped tones,
“We don’t leave till morning.”
Arthur would have to hope his sister would be all right in the meantime. “Yes. Of course.”
“You’ll do exactly as I say.”
“Well—all right.”
“The whole way there.”
“Yes.”
Letting out a long breath, Ira sat back. Errant strands of hair fell around his face. Without thinking, Arthur tucked one
behind his ear.
“We’ll leave Calyx here.” Ira’s eyes met his. “You’re sure about this?”
“Not at all.” Arthur gave a small smile. “But we have to try.”
His hand lingered on Ira’s face. Ira laid a hand clawed and gray with fur over his.
“All right. We set out at first light.”