xxiv. In which Arthur takes a dunking #2
The fire stung Arthur’s nose and cheeks, but the furs helped. Freya settled on his lap, purring deeply. That helped, too.
“I saw Dad,” Arthur said in a hushed voice. “In the water. I saw Dad.”
Ira sat beside him, removing his knee brace. “All the spirits of those who die in the forest end up here.”
Arthur’s stomach clenched. He huddled over the cat, stroking her fur, and reassured himself that he hadn’t seen his sister
in the pool. Surely that meant Charlotte was alive, wherever she was.
Ira massaged his knee, letting out a sharp breath. Arthur glanced at him.
“If you went into the water,” he began, but Ira interrupted.
“It won’t work on me.”
“Not even . . .” Arthur gestured at his paws.
Ira smiled humorlessly. “Shall I show you?”
“I don’t see how it would hurt to try. I suppose you can turn into a fish and not come out gasping.”
Laughing softly, Ira undid the first toggle of his shirt, the second, but Arthur said hastily, “Never mind, no need to show
me, if you say it won’t work I believe you.”
To his simultaneous relief and disappointment, Ira shrugged and quit undoing his shirt. He didn’t redo the toggles, though, and Arthur couldn’t stop staring at his collarbones.
“Would it do anything for chronic pain?” he asked. “A human’s, I mean.”
Ira’s eyes went over his body like he’d find pain mapped there. Arthur smiled faintly.
“Not me. Lottie’s been . . . She took sick back in February. I’ve never seen her so ill. She coughed all the time, she was
exhausted, hardly left her bed for weeks—when she did, she could barely make it across the room without getting short of breath—and
that was on top of the aches and fever and all the usual things you’d expect. She’s been so tired ever since, and in pain
more often than not, so I just wondered . . .”
Ira shook his head. He looked calmer now than he had when he’d pulled Arthur from the pool.
“I asked Maud, once. Ages ago. I brought a sick human to her, hoping the water could cure him. I’d done everything I knew
to do, but he kept getting worse. I wouldn’t believe her when she said it wouldn’t help. He died a few hours after I pulled
him out of the water.”
Arthur shivered, imagining Charlotte wet and cold and sicker than ever.
“Maud likes to say,” Ira added, “that it’s like expecting surgery to cure the common cold.”
They fell silent.
Arthur’s neck throbbed. He touched it, yelped when his hand throbbed, too. He examined his palm, expecting the injury from
the brambles to have reappeared.
“I thought I was healed,” he said anxiously. “Why does it still hurt?”
Ira dragged a hand through his hair. “It’ll do that. You’re healed, but you’re not unchanged.”
Maud emerged from her stump with Arthur’s heating pad and two bowls of a smoky vegetable soup. The scent tickled Arthur’s nose. He took his heating pad and, when his neck stopped throbbing, downed the soup, starving after the trek through the forest and the fuath’s attack.
The sun started to set; golden rays sliced through the trees. Their shadows dimmed the pool’s silver glow, but Arthur gazed
upward, grateful for a brief sight of blue after so many days in the vale with its snow and clouds. The first star appeared
deep in the vault of the sky.
Maud brought him a second bowl of soup. Arthur ate more slowly this time.
“Eat up.” Ira had finished eating and was now on his back on the ground, doing a series of knee exercises. Stubble shadowed
his cheek. “We have a ways to go yet tonight.”
“Ought to stay.” Maud nudged his paw with her stick. He swatted her away. “It’s safe here. You head out now, who knows where
you’ll end up sleeping.”
Shaking his head, Ira returned to his exercises. “We can’t afford the daylight. The faster we get to the heart of the wood,
the better.”
Arthur said nothing. He knew they needed to hurry, but he was cold and damp and sore. The pool had healed his wounds, but
his hand and neck throbbed with phantom pain, his muscles ached from the day’s walk, and something deeper in him ached from
what he’d seen in the water. He pulled his father’s watch from the pocket of his damp, discarded trousers and was relieved
to find it ticking.
When Arthur had finished his second bowl, Ira put his knee brace back on and shouldered his pack. Arthur reluctantly shouldered
his own. Freya wound between his legs until he bent and scratched behind her ears.
“Here.” Maud thrust a vial of silver water into Ira’s hand. “Might as well take some. That’un seems likely to need it again,” she added, nodding at Arthur. “Humans are terribly fragile.”
Ira growled but pocketed the vial.
“Thanks.” He avoided her silver eyes. “I know I haven’t been around.”
She patted his thigh. “You’re here now.”
He nodded, not looking convinced. “I’ll visit again. Soon.”
She smiled, a strange, wrinkly smile with moss-green teeth showing in her bark-like face.
“I hope so, my lad. I hope so.” To Arthur, she said, “You look out for him, hmm?”
Arthur was taken aback by the very idea of him looking out for Ira. “I—yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.”
They left her standing on the sea-glass shore, surrounded by ravens, waving to them with a twiglike hand until Maud, pool,
and yews vanished behind them.