Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 29 of 59

The king rode off, and the danger went with him. But the flower-draped house behind Delia still stood empty. Forty beds waited in clean rows. She had built a place to heal, and she had nothing to heal with. No bandages folded. No salves ground. No jars filled. Patients would come at dawn, and she would meet them with bare shelves. She looked at the sun sinking behind the meadow. She had one night. She started with the field. The black fox trotted at her heels, nose down, weaving through the flowers and herbs. He stopped at a patch of yarrow and pawed the dirt. Delia knelt and cut what he found. He led her to comfrey, to mint, to the drying root by the fence. She filled her basket, emptied it on the cedar desk, and filled it again. The fox never tired. When she reached for a plant she could not name, he sat until she passed it by. Inside, she worked at the desk by lamplight. She ground leaves in the stone mortar. She strained oil into small jars and pressed corks tight. She rolled clean strips of cloth for wrapping wounds. The fox lay by her feet, ears up, watching the door. Twice he brought her a dropped root in his teeth and set it on her lap. She scratched his neck and kept grinding. The hours passed. Her hands cramped. Her eyes stung. She lined the finished jars along a shelf, one row, then two, then three. When her fingers shook too hard to hold the pestle, she pressed a palm flat to the floorboards and let her power work. A fresh sprig of mint rose between the planks. She cut it and ground it and did not stop. Morning came gray through the flower-framed windows. Delia sat slumped at the desk, surrounded by full jars and neat rolls of cloth. The shelves were stocked. The house was ready. The door opened. Nick stepped in, and his face changed the moment he saw her. He crossed the room fast. "You didn't sleep." "I finished," she said. Her voice came out thin. "Every bed. Every shelf. They can come now." He took her chin and turned her face to the light. He saw the gray under her eyes, the tremor in her hands. "You worked all night." "The fox helped." She tried to smile. "He found what I needed." Nick knelt so their eyes met level. "This can't be how it goes. You'll burn out before the month is done." He set his jaw. "One woman can't stock a hospital and heal it too. Not alone." Delia looked at the full shelves. He was right, and she knew it. The house was ready today. But tomorrow it would empty again, and the day after that. She had built something too large for two hands. "Then I need more hands," she said. "I need people who'll work for free."