The venom in Christina Pirkle's blood had already stolen the feeling from two fingers. She sat on the cold floor and stared at the flower that had poisoned her. Its petals burned pink and purple, streaked with a green that glowed even in dim light. She had picked it three days ago, not knowing it would kill her slowly. Now she knew one thing for certain. The same flower that carried the poison also carried the cure. She only had to brew it right. But a cure needed careful work, and she had nowhere careful to work. She was crouched inside a hollow structure built like a squat dome, its dark stone cracked and veined with sickly green light. A carved skull leered above the archway. Toxin ran through the whole place like it belonged there. The floor tilted. The ground was gritty and uneven. One clumsy pour of her mixture would splash back on her skin, and her body could not take more poison. Christina flexed her numb fingers and forced herself to think. She could not brew on a bad surface. So she would build a good one. She crawled to the archway and dragged loose stones from the base of the wall. She stacked them flat, testing each one with her palm until they stopped rocking. It took an hour. Sweat stung her eyes. Twice her numb hand dropped a stone, and she bit down on a curse and picked it up again. When the platform held level, she pressed her weight on it. It did not shift. She needed a clean vessel next. Near the wall she found a narrow flask, its glass stained but whole. She scrubbed it with grit and spit until the inside ran clear. Then she set it dead center on her stone platform, where a spill would fall away from her, not toward her. Her hands shook as she pulled a petal from the flower. She held it over the flask and squeezed. A single drop of green fluid slid down the glass and pooled at the bottom. No splash. No spill. It landed exactly where she meant it to. Christina let out a breath she had held too long. For the first time since the flower cut her, she had a place to work. The platform was steady. The flask was clean. She could brew. Then she looked at the flower in her lap and understood the next problem. One drop had barely stained the glass. A true antidote would need far more of the plant's fluid than this single bloom could give. She turned toward the dark mouth of the archway, where more of the toxic flowers grew somewhere in the deeper hollow. She would have to go in and gather them, with two dead fingers and poison climbing toward her heart.

Christina slid the first drop of green fluid into a squat glass bottle with a cork stopper. She had found it near the wall, its sides streaked dark, its base marked with a small skull. It would hold what she gathered. Now she had to fill it. She pushed the cork tight, tucked the bottle against her chest, and turned toward the dark mouth of the hollow. The passage narrowed fast. Poisonous flowers grew thick along both walls, their petals fat and wet, glowing green at the edges. They blocked the path completely. One brush of that fluid on her skin would speed the venom already crawling toward her heart. She pressed her back to the stone and edged sideways, holding her breath. A petal grazed her sleeve. She froze. The cloth held. She breathed again and inched deeper, watching every hand-width of floor. Then the flowers moved. Not in wind. Something behind them shifted its weight. A creature stepped into the narrow gap, low to the ground, its body striped in the same warning colors as the blooms. Green scales, purple bands, spines down its spine like thorns. Its eyes caught the glow and held on her. It had been feeding on the petals, and now it looked at her the way a hunter looks at meat. Christina stopped. Two dead fingers. A half-empty bottle. No weapon. The creature's tail dragged across the flowers, and fluid dripped from the crushed petals to the floor between them. That gave her the answer. She could not fight it and she could not pass it. But it fed on the very fluid she needed. She crouched slow, set the bottle down, and pulled a wide petal from the nearest stem by its stalk, keeping the wet side away from her hand. She flicked it. The petal landed past the creature, near the deeper blooms. The creature turned its head toward the movement. It hesitated. Then it slunk after the petal, drawn to the fresh fluid, and slid into the flowers behind her. The path ahead opened. Christina moved. She snapped stalks by their dry ends, squeezing each bloom over the bottle's mouth. Drop after drop of green fluid slid down the glass. Her hand shook. Twice she nearly touched a wet edge and pulled back. The bottle filled to a third. Then half. Behind her the flowers rustled. The creature was coming back. She crushed one last bloom into the bottle, jammed the cork home, and backed out the way she came. The creature's striped head pushed through the petals just as she reached the wider passage. It did not follow into the open. Christina slumped against the archway, the bottle heavy and full against her chest. She had the fluid now. Enough to brew a real dose. But her fingers had gone numb to the second knuckle, and the deeper hollow now had a guardian that knew her scent.

Christina rested against the archway, the full bottle warm against her chest. She needed to reach her workspace to brew. She started back down the wider passage. Then she stopped. The striped creature blocked the way. It had come around, and now it crouched between her and the stone platform where her flask and stand waited. Its head lifted. It tasted the air and found her scent. It knew her now. She could not throw a petal twice. It would not fall for the same trick. "Stand still," a voice said behind her. A woman stepped from a side gap in the rock. White hair fell past her waist. She wore a pale robe, tied with a blue sash, and walked barefoot over the sharp floor without flinching. Christina had never seen her. She lived somewhere in these hollows, then, close enough to hear the creature hunt. The woman's calm annoyed Christina. Her fingers were dead to the knuckle and a monster stood between her and her cure. "It hunts by smell," the woman said. "Not sight. Cover your scent and you become nothing to it." "With what?" Christina's voice cracked. "I have nothing." The woman lifted a small charm from a cord at her neck. It was pale green and cream, shaped like a smooth arch, worn soft at the edges. She pressed it into Christina's numb hand. "Crush the flowers on your clothes. All of them. The bloom smell hides your own. Hold this and breathe slow. Fear has a scent too." Christina stared at her. It made no sense and every kind of sense. The creature fed on these flowers. It swam in their smell. She had no better plan and her heart was slowing under the venom. She knelt. She grabbed wet petals by the handful, no longer careful, and smeared them down her sleeves and across her chest. The fluid soaked the cloth. Her arms went colder. She gripped the charm and forced her breath long and even, the way the woman held hers. The creature swung its head toward her. It stepped close. Its nose brushed her knee. Christina did not move. She smelled like the flowers now, like the petals it ate. The creature sniffed once more, found nothing worth chasing, and turned away. It slid back into the deeper blooms. The path lay open. Christina walked past the platform's edge and did not stop until she reached her flask and stone stand. She set the full bottle down with both stiff hands. The woman had not followed. When Christina looked back, the passage was empty. She still held the charm, tight in a hand she could barely feel. She had her poison and her workspace both. But the flower fluid now soaked her clothes and her skin. The venom she had fought to bottle was already crawling up her arms from the outside.

Christina stood at her workspace with the full bottle safe. The green fluid still soaked her clothes and skin. Her arms burned cold under it. The venom that had hidden her from the creature now crawled deeper. She had no cloth, no water, nothing to scrub it off. Her hands shook when she tried to wipe her sleeves. The numbness had reached her elbows. She scanned the platform. A wooden chest sat near the stone stand. She had not noticed it before. The white-haired woman must have left it. Its lines were smooth and plain, the wood pale. A metal clasp held the lid shut. Christina fumbled the clasp with dead fingers. It took three tries. The lid lifted. Inside lay folded dry cloths and a small jar of clear oil. She did not know what the oil was, but the cloths were dry, and dry was what she needed most. She grabbed a cloth and scrubbed her forearms hard. Green fluid smeared onto the cloth and lifted from her skin. She wiped again, faster. Cold gave way to a raw sting. The sting meant feeling. Feeling meant the venom was coming off. A soft sound came from the chest's shadow. A creature crept out beside it. It was small, blue and cream, with a long tail and gentle eyes. It watched her without fear. It was not the striped hunter. This one moved slow and calm. It nosed the jar of oil, then looked at her. Christina understood. She poured the oil onto a fresh cloth and rubbed it over her arms and chest. The oil cut the green fluid where the dry cloth could not. It loosened the venom from her pores and carried it off. She scrubbed her neck, her hands, every place the flowers had touched. The calm creature sat and watched, still as the chest itself. When she finished, her skin was raw and red but clean. The deep cold pulled back from her elbows. She flexed her fingers. They moved. Slow, but they moved. The external poison was off her before it could kill her. But the fluid she had scrubbed away was gone. The green mask that hid her scent was gone with it. Christina held still and listened. Somewhere in the deeper blooms, the striped creature fed. She smelled like herself again now. If it came around the passage, it would find her. She looked at her flask and the full bottle. She had her poison. She had her workspace. She had her hands back. To brew the antidote she needed to stay here, unhidden, while the hunter roamed close. The small blue creature curled against the chest and closed its eyes, calm as ever. Christina wished she felt the same. She picked up the flask and began to work, one ear turned toward the passage.