Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 26 of 29

Lavender came into the kitchen at dawn with her satchel open on the table. Luna was three days into broth and starting to sit up. But a boy from the middle cabin had spiked a fever in the night, and a girl in the cellar was coughing wet. Lavender laid her herbs out in rows and stopped. She counted twice. Then she looked up at Ninka. "I am short," Lavender said. "Short of what?" "Fireroot. Silverleaf. Bittermoss. I used the last on Luna. Without them I can slow a fever with my hands, but I cannot hold it down. Not for a child." Sylvara stood in the doorway with her wings folded tight. The edges had gone gray. "I grow what I know. I do not grow those three. They come from wet ground I have never walked." Ninka's chest went cold. "Where do they come from?" "A bog two days south," Lavender said. "I cannot walk two days. The children are sick now." Garrick set down his pot. He wiped his hands on his apron. "I know that bog. My father took me. It is a day if you cut through the ridge, but the ridge is watched." He meant her father. Everyone in the room heard it. "I can send someone," Ninka said. "I can't send you. You feed them." "Then send the book," Prismella said. She had come in behind Sylvara with a book under her arm. The cover was white-gold, set with rainbow stones. She set it on the table between the herbs. "Every plant in the meadow is drawn in here. Sylvara wrote the pages. I read them last night." "I don't understand." Prismella opened the book to a page of pressed leaves. "I read a story and the story stands up in the room. If I read a plant, the plant grows. I have not tried it with a real thing that has to work. But I can try." Lavender looked at Sylvara. Sylvara nodded once. "Read it," Ninka said. Prismella pulled a chair to the hearth. She read the fireroot entry aloud, slow, every word. The page warmed. A red shoot pushed up through the floorboards by her boot. She read the silverleaf entry. A pale stem rose beside the first. She read the bittermoss entry and her voice cracked twice, but she finished. A green patch spread over the stones by the fire. Lavender cut what she needed. Her hands were steady. She went to the sick children with Sylvara behind her. By noon the fever broke. By evening the girl in the cellar was drinking broth. Prismella sat by the hearth with her glasses off. "I can do it again," she said. "But the book only holds what Sylvara has already named. And my father saw the smoke from the chimney. He is coming down through the trees." Ninka looked at Garrick. "Then we feed the children first. And we get ready."