Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 4 of 33

By morning her wrists had gone hot. Scarlett pulled back the sleeve of her flannel and saw the thorn cuts had swelled into red ridges. Yellow beads sat where the deepest scratches had closed over dirt. She pressed a palm to the worst one and pushed her healing into it. Nothing moved. Her hands worked on roots and soil. They had never worked on her. She walked back to the house at the district's edge. Duke followed, curled tail sweeping left, his mismatched eyes watching her hands instead of the ridge. He pushed a picture into her head: her own arm, the red climbing past her elbow. A warning. "I know," she said. Inside, the house was still half a wreck. A broken shutter hung by one hinge. The back door didn't latch. She had meant to fix both for a week. If the fever took her tonight, anyone could walk in while she slept. She set a pot of cistern water on the stove. From a shelf she pulled the bundle she'd cut from the collapsed lots weeks back — yarrow, plantain, a stub of willow bark. She crushed them on the board with the flat of her knife, added a spoon of the hot water, and worked the mash until it held together in a damp green clump. The smell was sharp and bitter enough to sting her eyes. Duke sat by the back door and stared at the loose latch. Another picture: the door swinging open in wind. Then the door shut, a board nailed across. "Alright," she said. "You watch. I'll work." She washed the cuts with hot water first, teeth locked against the burn. Dirt came out in threads. She packed the poultice thick along each wrist and wrapped both in strips torn from an old shirt. The heat under her skin began to pull toward the cloth almost at once. Then she moved. She pried a plank off the collapsed shed wall and dragged it in. She braced the back door and drove four nails through the plank into the frame, left-handed, slow. She wedged the broken shutter shut with a shim and tied it off with wire. She swept the glass from under the window and laid a folded blanket across the sill. By afternoon the ash wind came. She pulled the black-and-pink mask over her face and kept going until the front room was closed tight. Duke lay across the doorway to the bedroom, blocking it with his body. She unwrapped one wrist. The red line had pulled back below the bandage. The swelling was down. The poultice had gone brown and stiff. She mixed a second batch and packed it fresh. She sat on the floor beside Duke and ate a piece of bread. The house held. Her arms held. Tomorrow she could go back to the rows. Tonight, for the first time in weeks, she could sleep behind a door that would not open.