Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 7 of 59

Delia found Bram Locket where she had last traded with him, at the edge of the meadow he once called his. His patchwork coat clinked with small bronze locks. She counted more than she could hold in her mind. He turned before she spoke, as if he had heard her coming for miles. "You planted three plants you cannot name," he said. "I can name them. You know what I want first." Delia laid three pressed leaves on the flat stone between them. "Then name them. I traded you my book already. That was the deal." "That deal is closed." He touched a lock on his sleeve, one of many. "This is new. Names cost. What do you bring?" She had nothing. Her coin purse was empty. Her herb book was his. Her field was full but not yet grown. She stood with her hands open and felt the cold rise in her chest. Bram's fox eyes moved to her bag. "You carry something. I smell metal." Delia pulled out the kettle. It was her grandmother's, silver with a gold handle, packed with three white cups trimmed in gold. She had brewed every healing tea in it. Her grandmother had poured from it before her. It was the only thing left of the woman who taught her which leaves cured and which killed. "This," Delia said. Her voice caught. "For the three names." Bram lifted the kettle. He turned it in the light. He tapped the handle and heard the ring of true metal. "Good silver. Old work." He set it down. "Three names for this. Fair." Delia's hand shook over the handle. She thought of tea steaming in her cottage, of hands warming around those cups after long walks. She thought of nightshade hidden in her rows, of the boy with the burned hand she had turned away. She could not heal what she could not name. A kettle poured tea. Names saved lives. She let go. "Take it." Bram slipped a fresh lock from his pocket and pinned it to his coat. Then he touched each leaf in turn. "Marsh cinquefoil. Draws out fever. Safe." He tapped the second. "Bloodwort. Stops bleeding. Safe in small amounts." He tapped the last. "Wolfsbane. Kills. Do not touch the root with a cut hand." Delia wrote each name in her ledger as he spoke. Three plants, no longer strangers. One more poison she now knew to fear. Bram wrapped the kettle in a cloth and hung a cup from his belt. "Deal holds," he said, and walked into the meadow without turning back. Delia closed her ledger. Her bag felt light and wrong. But every plant in her field now had a name. She could open her door again. She could heal the next boy who came. The garden she meant to build could hold no secrets she did not understand.