Lily Brightbloom's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

Morning came and the barrier still held. Inside the hollow, the hare shook under its own fur and the jay's beak hung open. Lily touched the hare's ear and felt the heat run through her fingers. The petal crown was gone. The badger physician would not travel. She had told herself she needed more magic, but no one was coming with any. She had to make her own medicine or watch two animals die by nightfall. She went out into the grove with an empty jar. She scraped resin from the pines where the bark had split. She cut yarrow from the shaded bank and pulled moss from the north side of the roots. She crushed it all together on a flat stone and warmed it in her palms until the sap turned soft and dark. It smelled sharp and green. It was not magic. It was only what the grove had. A shadow crossed her stone. Lily turned with the jar half-closed. A fairy stood at the clearing's edge, brown braid over one shoulder, a leather satchel heavy on her hip. She had followed the scent of pine and crushed leaf in. Not one of the grove's animals. A stranger. "You mixed that wrong," the stranger said. "Yarrow first. Then sap. Otherwise it burns." Lily closed her hand around the jar. "Who are you." "Clover Wingwhisper. I'm looking for my sister. I smelled the resin from the ridge." She did not step closer. "I've seen sick animals. I can help you or I can go." Lily thought of the hare's shaking. "Help." Clover knelt by the stone and started again. She scraped the salve back into the jar in the right order and pressed it flat. She worked without speaking. When Lily brought her to the hollow, Clover looked at the hare, then the jay, and did not flinch. "Wound first," Clover said. "Then throat." They rubbed the salve into the hare's raw flank. They pushed a thin smear down the jay's beak. The hare's shaking slowed within an hour. The jay drank water for the first time in two days. Neither was healed. Both would live through the night. Clover wiped her hands on the moss. "You'll need more than one jar. That stand of pines won't last a season of this." "I know." Clover reached into her satchel and drew out a slim wrapped sapling, willow, its leaves shivering with a pale light. "A healer near the fen gave me this. Said it grows medicine if you plant it near water. I don't have water where I'm going." She held it out. "You do." Lily took the sapling. Her hands were still dark with sap. "My sister," Clover said. "If a fairy comes through here with a moonpetal, you send word." "I will." Clover left before dusk. Lily planted the sapling by the spring root. The leaves caught the last light. The hare slept. The jay slept. She had bought them time, and she had bought herself a way to grow more.