Misa Moon's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

The tallest traveler ate two bowls and slept where he sat. The second traveler ate and asked for more. The third did not eat. She sat by the fire with her coat still on, one hand pressed to her side. Blood had dried through the wool in a dark oval the size of a palm. Misa knelt beside her. "How long?" "Four days." The woman's mouth barely moved. "A branch. It broke off in me. I got most of it out." Mabel came from the kitchen with a bowl and stopped when she saw the coat. She set the bowl down. "That is not hunger," she said. "That is rot. Food will not touch it." Misa opened the coat. The wound was worse than dried blood. The skin around it was gray-green and hot. A splinter still sat deep in the muscle. She had bandages. She had clean water. She had no idea how to draw poison from a four-day wound without killing the woman who carried it. "I need someone who knows plants," Misa said. Hades was already at the door with their cloak. "The cottage by the winter garden. I passed it walking in. Stained glass. Herbs in the window." "Go." They went. Misa held the woman's hand and counted her breaths. The raven on her shoulder shifted toward her throat and stayed there. She did not know what that meant now. She only knew the woman's fingers were cold. Hades came back with a small woman in a green apron and muddy boots. She carried a satchel and a covered basket. A moss-furred rabbit sat inside the basket, eyes half-closed, breath slow. "I'm Eira," the woman said to the traveler, not to Misa. She knelt and took the cold hand from Misa's. "I brought tea. We'll drink it before I touch the wound. Is that all right?" The traveler nodded once. Eira poured from a stoppered flask into a cup Mabel handed her without a word. While the woman drank, Eira opened the basket. The rabbit stepped out and settled against the traveler's injured side. The gray-green skin lost some of its heat. Two small winged spirits drifted from Eira's satchel, ink-dark bodies and pale wings, and hovered above the wound in a slow circle. They dropped something like dust into the opening. The traveler gasped. The splinter rose to the surface on its own. Eira caught it in a cloth. She cleaned the wound. She stitched it. She did not hurry. When it was done she looked at Misa for the first time. "You have beds. You have food. You have no place to tend hurts like this one." "No," Misa said. "Then build one. I'll bring what I can carry, if you'll have me." Misa looked at the lodge — the moon carved above its door, the golden windows, the sleeping travelers. A sanctuary. Almost. "I'll have you," she said.