Fennel Thistledown's Arc

Chapter 19 of 21

The wilted stem had done its work. Lily and Oliver knew the seventh poison now by its smell. But the eighth grew wild, and no merchant would carry it. It grew by the stream, a twisted tree with dark bark and drooping leaves. Its clusters hung fat and vivid, purple and green, dripping poison down the trunk. Fennel had to show her students the living plant. She could not teach that danger from memory. She stood at her door and looked toward the stream. The path dropped and turned over loose stones. Her knees had gone stiff as old rope. She had fallen twice on lesser ground. If she led Lily and Oliver down and stumbled, she might send one of them into the poison itself. She could not risk their hands on those leaves without her own eyes close by. "I can't walk it," she admitted. The words tasted bitter. "And I won't send you to that tree without me beside you." Lily set down her basket. "Then we bring you to it." She whistled once, low, toward the stream. Something moved through the reeds. A cat came up the path, but no house cat. Its coat was green scales edged in pink, layered like leaves. Its eyes were pale blue and fixed on Fennel. It stood taller than any barn cat and did not blink. Fennel gripped her doorframe. "He guards my patch," Lily said. "He's carried me across the stones when the water runs high. He can carry you." She rested a hand on the scaled shoulder. The cat leaned into her palm. Fennel had trusted this girl with a fevered child. She could trust her with this. She lowered herself onto the broad green back. The scales were warm and firm. The cat rose without a jolt and walked the path with slow, sure steps. It picked each stone as if it knew where Fennel's fear lay. She did not slip once. At the stream stood the twisted tree. Poison beaded on its bark. A tiny creature scurried from under a root, red and blue, with a small trunk and elephant ears no bigger than a mouse. It sniffed the fallen fruit, then fled. "Even it knows," Fennel said. "Watch how nothing feeds here." She named the tree from the cat's back. She had Lily and Oliver mark the dripping clusters, the swollen fruit, the wet trunk. "Never touch the sap," she said. "Never let it near a cut." They repeated it back until she was sure. The cat carried her home before dark. Fennel climbed down at her door, sore but whole. Eight poisons taught now, four left. Her knees had not beaten her. She looked at Lily. "You solved what I could not," she said. "That beast is worth more than my own legs." Tomorrow she would teach the ninth, and the stream no longer stood in her way.