Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 29 of 38

Thornwyn crawled the last three steps and stopped at the elf's side. The girl did not move away. She kept both hands on the staff, pressing it down against the wound below his ribs. Blood welled around the wood in slow pulses. His lips were grey. His eyes were closed. Thornwyn set her palm on his chest. The heartbeat was there, faint and quick. She lifted the staff and looked at the wound. The stitches from the shelter had torn. The hole beneath went deeper than any needle could reach. He would be empty by dusk. She had one thing left. She had used her magic to heal the deer and to quiet her own leg. The staff still hummed under her hand, but a wound this deep asked for craft she did not know. Cottage healing closed skin. This was inside work. Lung, vein, the wet places. Thornwyn looked at the girl. "I need your hands." The girl nodded once. "Hold the staff along his side. Do not let go, even if I fall." The girl shifted her grip. She laid the wood flat against the elf's ribs. Her small fingers went white at the knuckles. Thornwyn pressed both palms into the wound. She spoke the binding word she knew for skin, then the one for muscle. The words took, but slid past the deeper tear like water on stone. She tried again. Nothing held. Her arms shook. She stopped and breathed. She thought of the stitching in the shelter. She thought of the deer's lung, how she had matched the words to what she could feel beneath her fingers. She had not known those words either, until she used them. She closed her eyes and set her hands where the blood came fastest. She felt for the shape of the tear the way she felt for a root under soil. She spoke slowly. She used the word for bark closing over a wound. She used the word for a stream finding its bed. She made the words up as she went, and she meant them. Heat moved through her wrists. The staff under the girl's hands glowed once, dull green, then faded. The blood slowed. Thornwyn kept her palms flat and kept speaking until her voice was hoarse. The pulses under her hands grew smaller. Then they stopped. She lifted one hand. The skin beneath was raw and knotted, but whole. The elf drew a longer breath. His fingers twitched against the moss. Thornwyn sat back. Her vision swam. The chimera stood over them, breathing warm against her shoulder. Behind it, the piebald deer had raised his head from the leaves. The girl let go of the staff and put her red hand in Thornwyn's. "He'll live tonight," Thornwyn said. "We have to be gone before the riders come back." The girl nodded. She did not let go.