Chapter 9 #2
Before she can speak, Allen stiffens. His gaze goes distant, not unfocused but fixed on something she cannot see. A faint ripple of gold flickers in his irises, pulsing like light through leaves.
Marian’s eyes narrow. She has seen it before; the sudden stillness, the subtle shift, the way fae eyes shimmer as though lit from within. Each time, Allen has dodged her questions with jokes or half-truths. But here it is again, undeniable.
They’re communicating with one another via the gilded pulses that thread through their eyes like the interconnected root network running beneath their very feet.
A beat passes, then another. Finally, he blinks, the gold guttering out.
‘What was that?’ her fingers clutch the sketchpad tighter, suspicion rattling through her bones.
‘Hmm?’ Allen smiles, all charm again, though it feels stretched. He shakes his head and shoves up from the boulder. ‘Sorry, you aren’t the only one who hasn’t eaten much today. I should swing by the kitchens after we stop by the healing bough.’
‘The healing bough?’
‘Oh, did I forget to mention it to you earlier?’ he remarks casually, already moving to pluck the drying tunics from the line with easy grace.
‘Apparently, there was some sort of fracas by the boundaries last night. A few bruised ribs, some burns, nothing dramatic. But they need fresh linens for the bandages and the like.’
He’s lying. Not outright, but there’s a slant to his words that doesn’t sit clean.
She wants to press him – demand confirmation that some sort of network connects their minds together – but Allen’s already bundled the last of the linens under his arm.
Just as she opens her mouth, her stomach gives a low, traitorous growl.
With a huff, she tucks the sketchpad against her chest and pushes herself off the ground.
She spies a thicket hugging the trunk just below.
Red berries cluster thick on the stems, fat and glossy.
Her eyes dart toward Allen as he wades across the river.
Quick as a thief, she plucks a fistful from the lowest branch and shoves them past her lips.
They burst tart and sweet across her tongue, juice staining her teeth, seeds catching in her molars.
Her stomach relaxes slightly in gratitude even as she wipes her fingers on her skirt and hurries to catch up to him.
Allen doesn’t look back, but his voice carries over the burble of the river. ‘Be sure to remove the evidence from your chin as well.’
Marian’s hand flies to her jaw. Sure enough, the pad of her thumb comes away red-streaked. Heat stings her cheeks. She scrubs at the stubborn stain on her lips with the back of her hand and scowls at Allen’s retreating shoulders.
They walk in relative silence for a while, her hunger soothed, though not satisfied.
Allen hums under his breath, the tune light, almost careless.
The path they take winds deeper into Sherwood and along the outskirts of Elswyth.
Overhead, branches knit so tightly that the morning dulls into a green twilight.
Roots arch up across the ground, forcing them to step high or balance across them.
The air thickens with the smell of pine.
Marian wipes her stained fingers against her skirt again, though the juice clings stubbornly.
Soon the trees thin and the ground opens into a hollow lit by shafts of pale sun.
A vast bough arches low enough to graze the earth before rising again into the canopy.
It curves like a giant’s arm bent in prayer, its bark striated with silver veins.
Vines drip across the entrance like hair, their blossoms a pale, pulsing blue.
Allen pulls them back like a curtain and gestures for Marian to step inside.
The scent hits her first. Not rot or sickness, but herbaceous with something bitterly metallic beneath it.
It coats the air, not cloying, but insistent.
Inside, the space smells of crushed herbs and warm resin.
Beds are carved into the walls, little hollows lined with moss and woven mats.
Fae of every shape and size move quietly from cot to cot, tending to the injured with hands or whispers of power.
A woman with braids knotted through with feathers fans her palms above a soldier’s bruised ribs, and light seeps out like honey, golden and slow.
Another wrings steam from a bowl without lifting a finger, holding a cloth above it until the vapour seeps into the fabric.
It isn’t crowded, but it’s not empty either. Every bed she passes tightens something in her chest. Fae, adults and children alike, lie in hammocks or on low pallets cushioned with lichen and woven blankets.
And several of them look . . . wrong.
Skin too pale. Breath too thin. Their eyes should be variations of green, from sun-warmed sage to the deep emerald of ferns, but they’ve all turned a misty, glassy grey.
Allen shifts the linens in his arms, his voice lowering as if the weight of what he’s about to say deserves quiet.
‘They came from Silverfen,’ he explains, glancing toward the nearest cot where a boy who looks no older than twelve lies with his chest rising shallow and slow. ‘Lyss’s village at the far side of Sherwood, east of Nottingham’s borders.’
Marian follows his gaze, her mouth tightening. The boy’s lips are cracked and pale, his lashes trembling faintly against his grey-veined cheeks.
‘Surely they have capable healers of their own,’ she whispers.
‘Elswyth’s connection to the ore runs deeper than anywhere else on this side of the forest, and it answers loudest during the month of the equinox.’
‘Fae ore,’ she repeats, breathless.
‘It sings clearer when the veil thins. Sickness doesn’t cling as tightly when the ground itself wants to mend it.’
One of the older healers, broad-shouldered and white-haired, beckons Allen with a lift of her chin.
‘Song-keeper,’ she says, ‘I need your hands.’
Allen gives Marian a glance. ‘Stay here.’ He’s gone without waiting for a response.
Marian counts five breaths, maybe six, before her curiosity wins out and she continues in the opposite direction. The infirmary unfolds in layers of curtained archways, with hanging herbs strung between carved beams. Each room hums with a strange energy. Grief held at bay by ritual and desperation.
And then she hears something entirely out of place – laughter.
Not loud or raucous. But a kind of wonder-tinged glee, fragile as glass but unmistakably alive.
Marian follows the sound, easing around a slatted wall and ducking beneath a fringe of ivy. The chamber beyond is smaller, warmer. No beds or pallets. Just a hollow in the tree, rounded like a womb, where the air pulses with quiet enchantment.
And Lox kneels at its centre.