Lilith Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 12 of 21

The house held twenty-three rooms, and every room was empty of care. Lilith walked the halls with a lamp and a bucket. A rabbit needed fresh water on the top floor. A limping dog needed his wound checked below. A cat cried in a corner room she had not reached in hours. She could not be in three rooms at once. By morning some animal would suffer for her absence, and no amount of soft beds or clean bowls would fix it. The house was too big for one woman. Liko sat on the stair rail and watched her climb past for the sixth time. "You are not tired," he said. "You are outnumbered. Beds do not heal. Hands heal. You have two." "Then tell me where to find more hands," Lilith said. "The town will not send them. They come only to inspect and leave." "You know a healer who does not fear strange animals," Liko said. "Send for her." Lilith set down the bucket. She thought of the letters in her window, the ones that had vouched for her before the mob. One name on those pages had answered every question she ever wrote. She sat at the table and wrote again, plain and short. She asked the field creatures to carry it at dawn, folded inside their delivery. Two days later a knock came. Lilith opened the door to a short, gray-haired woman in white robes stained with ink. A worn leather satchel hung across her chest, fat with rolled charts. This was Rosalind Mercer, who ran her own animal hospital by methods other healers called reckless. She had traded letters with Lilith for a year but never crossed her threshold. Rosalind stepped inside without waiting. A horned kitten with glowing eyes trotted to her boot. Any other stranger would have flinched. Rosalind crouched, held out her palm, and let the kitten come to her. "Interesting eyes," she said. "Not sick. Just made that way." She stood and looked down the crowded hall. "You built a hospital and tried to staff it alone. That was the mistake." "I could not turn them away," Lilith said. "No. You could not." Rosalind opened her satchel and pulled out a chart. "Show me your patients. I sleep four hours and no more. You will learn to sleep the same. We split the rooms." They worked the house together until dark. Rosalind took the upper floors, Lilith the lower. The crying cat quieted under Rosalind's hands. The limping dog let her clean his wound. For the first time, every room had someone in it who knew what to do. That night Lilith slept four hours and woke to find the animals fed. The house had a name now, and it had a second healer. But Rosalind had walked freely past every horned kitten and glowing eye in Pawswell House. She had seen it all in a single day. And soon the town would send its own inspectors through the same open door.