Elara Rootwhisper's Arc

Chapter 9 of 9

The mother wept on the low stool and held her daughter's ghost by both hands, though her fingers passed through the girl's wrists. Elara left them and opened her grandmother's notebook on the sorting tray. The next batch of cure-all needed a binding herb she had never gathered, never sold, never seen. The name was written in her grandmother's small hand: nettle-of-the-hollow. Below it, three words. Grows where light fails. Elara turned the pages back and forth. No drawing. No second mention. Six villagers still shook in their beds, and the twelve she had cured would relapse without a fresh dose within the week. She closed the notebook, wrapped bread and a stub of candle in cloth, and walked back up the path to Witchwood Haven. Elspeth Moonwhisper sat on the plank porch in the same place, feet bare, gray hair loose. Elara climbed the ladder and set the notebook open on the boards. "Nettle-of-the-hollow," she said. "My grandmother wrote it holds the brew. I have never seen the plant. I need it by morning." Elspeth read the words without touching the page. "I knew a woman who used it. She pulled it from under the moonseed. The roots share a bed." She pointed down toward the herb slope. "Your dandelion patch. Dig the pale ones. The nettle sits below, no leaf above ground. You will not find it by looking." "Then how." "Ask a ground-reader. Or ask the dead who watched it grow." Elara climbed down and crossed the slope to the animal graveyard. Meridian Gravesight was folding a small cloth over a stone. Elara said, "I need a root that hides under the moonseed dandelions. No leaf. My grandmother called it nettle-of-the-hollow." Meridian pressed her tongue to her back teeth and turned her head. "Three paces left of the ghost carrot patch. One root. Small." She looked at Elara. "One. Not more." Elara knelt where Meridian pointed, between the shimmering dandelions and the pale carrots. She pushed her fingers into the cool dirt and worked slowly. She found a thread of root no thicker than a bootlace and drew it out whole. It smelled of iron and wet stone. She wrapped it in a strip of linen and stood. Back in the tent, the mother had fallen asleep against the girl's shoulder. Elara laid the root on the tray beside her grandmother's notebook. She had it. One root. Enough for one batch, if she did not spill and did not burn it. She reached for her vital elixir flask to steady the brew and stopped. The flask was her last full one. She would have to open it tonight. She uncorked it, poured a careful measure into the clay bowl, and set the small root beside it. The binding herb was hers. The next batch would hold. The flask would not last another.