Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 37 of 38

Thornwyn came back from the market with a heavier pocket and a lighter basket. The matron met her at the door and shook her head before Thornwyn could ask. The elf had not stirred. He had swallowed a spoon of broth in his sleep and nothing more. Thornwyn set the coin on the table and went to the back room. The elf lay under a wool blanket. His face had gone the color of old paper. The girl sat on the floor beside him, one hand curled around two of his fingers. She had not left that spot in three days. Thornwyn knelt by the cot. She pressed her palm to his chest and felt the breath there, shallow and slow. The stitched wound at his side was clean. The skin around it was not. A red heat crept up under his ribs. She had healed the tear inside him. She had not reached the fever. She took the staff from where it leaned by the wall. She had one more pull left in her, maybe. She had spent most of what she had on apples and walnuts and a girl's full cheeks. "Hold him," she said to the girl. The girl moved without sound and pressed both small hands flat to the elf's chest. Thornwyn set the staff along his side. She spoke the words she knew for infection, then the ones she did not know, the ones that came when she listened to what lay under her hands. She felt the heat gather and shift. She pulled it out through the wood and let it go into the floor. The piebald deer stepped through the doorway. It should not have fit through the matron's house, but no one had stopped it, and now it lay down against the cot and pressed its long flank to Thornwyn's back. Her arms stopped shaking. The words came steadier. The elf's breath deepened. The red under his ribs went pink, then went nothing. His eyelids moved. Thornwyn set the staff down. She waited. He opened his eyes. He looked at the ceiling first. Then at the girl. His hand lifted and touched her hair. The girl made a small sound, the first sound Thornwyn had ever heard from her, not a word, just a breath with a shape. The elf turned his head. He found Thornwyn's face. His mouth worked. "You stayed," he said. "I stayed," Thornwyn said. He closed his eyes again, but his hand did not leave the girl's hair. Thornwyn sat back against the deer's warm side. She had a man who was going to live. She had a child who had made a sound. She had a village that had been paid, and a winter that had not. She would think about winter tomorrow. Tonight she watched them both breathe.