Chapter 23: The Crone

After a few drops went down, Sasha cupped Lark’s cheek. Lark was going cold to the touch, lips rapidly losing color. Fear and exhaustion shaved years off both their faces.

“I’m here, La…” Sasha hesitated. “Felix. I’m right here. Just focus on me.” 

For as long as Lark was conscious, which wasn’t long at all, he did. It might have been a trick of the light, but one eye appeared paler than the other. Both rolled shut.

Sasha looked to Aine in the ensuing quiet. She murmured his name, touched his arm.

Even so, he felt profoundly alone. The once bright and happy wood pressed in at all angles, labyrinthian. There wasn’t much later left to rely on. There was now, and he had to figure it out on his own.

Aine didn’t seem affected by the pollen, at least. That was good. The damage it had inflicted in such a short time on Lark’s body, his throat, his…

Don’t go lower, Sasha’s mind warned. Don’t think about it.

Time. Less dependable than he realized; an hourglass, ever-shifting, ever-changing. The nightshade potion had topped them off with a few meager grains of sand.

As long as there was sand, a sliver of later remained. Sasha didn’t have to address what was happening below Lark’s collar. Not yet.

The moss. The hut. The hut was where they needed to be.

Sasha went to slip his arms under Lark’s back and knees, but a stab of pain and a wash of wooziness stopped him. He curved into both, forward, and touched his side. Wet.

Right. The beast had wounded him. He wasn’t used to wounds not healing. Its antlers had gauged his still-human half. The wetness was red.

There was a lot of it, dampening his pants. Aine murmured again, more fearful.

He pushed it from his mind, stuffing it into that little ‘deal with later’ slot. The slot was full. The wound bounced back to the forefront, bringing with it more dizziness.

No. He was the last leg; if he gave, there would be no one left to carry them.

He stubbornly slipped his arms under Lark again. They trembled under the weight, then went slack. Against his will, his body slumped over the one he was trying to lift.

Shadowy curtains, long and peaceful, draped his periphery—

No. The moss; the hut. Where they needed to be.

The harder he fought, the more the red spread, soiling the clovers, Lark’s blouse, grime-and-tear-tracked cheeks, bluish, blistered lips. The sand didn’t stop trickling. It stopped for no one.

Below the collar, Lark’s stomach was too hard. His pulse was too thready.

I’m sorry, Sasha thought as the curtains closed.

༻❁༺

An odd feeling, waking up to find yourself already in motion. Sasha’s legs were moving stiffly, one in front of the other. They stopped like soldiers at attention when he came to.

Icy weight on his back. He looked down to see two gangly, green-clad legs locked around his waist by one of his arms; limp wrists bound to hold his neck by his belt.

Aine had been walking beside him. She stopped too, beaming pleasantly. He was holding her hand, carrying Lark on his back, secured with a belt, but how…

The stubble under his nose was tight, crackly. Dried blood.

Oh. The girl had spelled him to move. Good.

He squinted down at her, baffled and impressed that she’d made such a difficult decision on her own. Lark would say she shouldn’t have to.

With sleepy eyes, Sasha then surveyed their surroundings. His thoughts churned. Where were they? Woods, mossier than usual. How much time had passed? No idea.

Why was he awake? Mottled grey had spread across his abdomen, touching the wound; his body was healing. So much red.

Was Lark alive? Breath ghosted Sasha’s ear, wet and labored. There was a cold stain on his shoulder.

They had been following the moss while he was out. They had to keep doing that.

But there was something shiny in Aine’s hand. She offered it up, chattering in a demanding way that implied she wanted him to do something with it.

A locket. The locket.

Still dazed, Sasha accepted it with the same care he would accept a baby bird. Its green enamel surface and solid gold edges were smeared with sludge. He wiped them with his thumb. Though Aine had been holding it, she remained unaffected.

“Felix,” Sasha murmured hoarsely. 

The locket did not respond, making him feel silly. Had Lark been having him on in those final—

Not final.

Sasha brought the locket closer to his lips. That time, he tried to sound less ‘doom and gloom’ and more ‘uppity blond.’

“Felix,” he said again, low voice as high as it could go. More ‘creaking door’ than anything.

To his surprise, the locket jiggled and sprang open like a book in his palm.

On either side of its interior were two miniature portraits. They must have been painted with a single-strand brush; that and a thick layer of gloss resulted in a hyper realistic finish. 

He was drawn to the left portrait first, the face of a scrawny young boy no older than eight or nine: sandy, disheveled hair, giant bobble head, toothpick neck. The portrait ended at his shoulders, but he looked to be wearing school attire.

Even without the name ‘Felix’ scripted below, Sasha placed the face without hesitation thanks to the pine green color of its eyes, their mischievous upwards curvature, their sweet sallowness.

The grin. He knew of no one else who could literally grin from ear to ear.

The sight of Lark’s face, bright and youthful, made Sasha uncomfortable—a sad, fluttery feeling in his stomach, as though he were staring at a ghost.

He cleared his throat, moving to the portrait on the right side, another happy face. His breath hitched. The locket fell. 

Aine picked it up and exploded in elated babble as she studied the portraits upside-down. She must have recognized Lark. 

Sasha collected himself. He patted Aine’s head as he’d seen Lark do, a thoughtless, subconscious mimicry, and took the locket back.

The face beside ‘Felix’s’ belonged to a young girl, presumably Lark’s twin sister. The name ‘Beatrix’ was scrawled along one of her dark, bushy brows.

Bee, Sasha recalled hearing Lark say once.

It didn’t come as a shock that Lark would carry his sister with him everywhere he went. Based on how his face lit up when he talked about her, she meant a lot to him.

That wasn’t why Sasha dropped the locket. He dropped the locket because the sight of her caused a hazy memory to return in color: grass green eyes, wild blond hair, olive skin.

Her smile was most damning, sunny and free yet more tempered, more confident than Lark’s goofy one. Child or no, Sasha had seen her smile before.

The mill woman smiled at him like that. Just like that, down the slight gap in her front teeth. Uncanny, the likeness.

The mill woman was Lark’s sister, the sister who meant so much to him. Lark’s sister, the sister who meant so much to him, was dead. Sasha had watched her die.

It was a sickening, staggering revelation, but if they didn’t get moving, Lark would follow in her flowery footsteps.

Not knowing what else to do with the locket and for some reason not wanting it to be out of sight, Sasha numbly slid it on.

He’d never worn a necklace before. He wondered if they always sat so heavy upon the chest.

༻❁༺

Apart from the occasional chirp from Aine (Sasha didn’t have the energy to decipher them), following the moss was a long, hushed, and plodding endeavor.

Sasha’s doubts about the dream and its meaning began to surface. The dream was all he had. If it had no meaning, he had nothing. He couldn’t save Lark with nothing.

If he couldn’t save Lark, he would never know what awaited him on the other end of the cloak. He would never again find someone brave enough to hold his hand in the dark.

The plague had laid waste to the land, taken the green away, and it now had his final scrap snared in its talons.

Just when the endeavor took a turn for the pointless, the hopeless, and Sasha’s feet started to drag with exhaustion, the moss-covered trees opened up.

He and Aine trudged into a mid-sized glade. There was no dreamy fog, but the sky appeared to be trapped in eternal twilight, shifting constantly between the yellowish warmth of dawn and the pinkish cool of dusk.

The hollow tree was ahead, as fanciful and surreal in person as it had been in Sasha’s dream. The hut’s architecture was more complex than he realized, dispersed all around the trunk. It allowed for at least seven stories’ worth of windows.

Lanterns hung from the branches, moss dripped from the shingles. Every single window, even those at the top, was glowing orange-soft. Must have been dozens, if not hundreds, of candles burning inside.

An overgrown garden stood before the flat, winding root that served as a path to the front door: herbs, vegetables, flowers. The sight of lilies triggered a surge of dread, but Sasha sensed nothing wrong below the soil. They were just lilies, plain.

The front door opened to reveal a very hunched, very hooded silhouette. An old woman. Her hood was low, the glade’s light scarce. Long cane in hand, she picked her way down the root path towards her visitors.

Sasha held off on getting any closer than the threshold between wood and garden. The old woman smelled strong, elusive, and heady, much like the jasmine half-blooming as her domain darkened from dawn to dusk.

It brightened to dawn again when she stopped at the end of the path, on the threshold opposite his. She wordlessly lifted her hood enough to reveal her face.

Not an old woman. Fae. There were a few subspecies one of her stature and age could fit into, most of their names impolite. We’ll call her the crone, ancient and wizened.

Her hair remained concealed by the hood. Her skin was a rusty color, the spitting image of an old paperbark maple tree, discolored and peeling in places. Even the cane in her wooden hand was fashioned out of the patchy branch of one.

She used it to hobble a step closer. Eyes like rainclouds, watery and grey, took in the sight of Sasha, of Lark hanging unresponsive on his back, and of little Aine shyly peeking out from behind his leg.  

“Aren’t you three a sight for sore eyes?” the crone mused.

Might have been more polite for Sasha to introduce himself, but he was there for a singular purpose. In the moment, it didn’t seem to matter who he was, who the crone was.

“My…” Of all the times to get weird about the word ‘friend.’ He shrugged to gesture at Lark, lamely coming out with, “Lark is injured.”

The crone’s wide nostrils creaked as they flared. “I can smell that.”

“Can you help him?”

“Can I? No.”

 “Why not?”

“Well, ‘your Lark,’” she said—Sasha’s eye twitched, “is infected, is he not?” 

“And you’re a hag,” Sasha parried—the textbook kind, of course, “aren’t you?”

Something about that caused a smile to bloom on her peeling lips. “My, my. There is no need for name calling, Sasha.”

It had only been a few days since they fled Malmuir. News of it certainly wouldn’t have reached her out in the middle of the wood.

Not unless she was working with the enemy.  

Alarm bells went off in Sasha’s head. “You know my name.”

The crone ignored the question, lurching closer. “What a fresh fish you have become. Glad you kept some of the whale’s teeth. You’ll need them.”

For someone who appeared to be older than dirt, she was spry. Her cane lifted all the way out of the mud to reveal its base had been sharpened into a stake.

Sasha grabbed Aine’s hand and hustled the three of them back. The hut was hardly the promised land his dream had made it out to be.

“How do you know the Whale?” he asked. Another red flag—Hellebore had called him that during one of their ‘sessions.’

“How do you know the palm of your hand?” the crone replied.

“I don’t understand.”

She hobbled closer still, enthusiastically driving her cane in and out of the mud with thick, wet squelches. She seemed to revel in Sasha’s discomfort.

He matched her every step. She might have been content to chase them backwards through the entire wood like that had her age not caught up. 

“Really,” she croaked. She hunched to catch her breath, wagging her cane at Aine. “Is this any way to treat the mother of your child?”

The question hit Sasha in dual parts, effectively shutting his brain down for a minute. With one brown eye, he looked at Aine. She looked back at him with two. Hers were much younger, larger, but…

“I made sure she had the best of us both,” the crone continued. “Grey may have suited my hair better, but I couldn’t part with your eyes.”

Not just Aine’s eyes. As if the lens had been wiped, Sasha saw her clearly for the first time: the childish heft of her jaw, her downturned mouth, that little frown—

No. Absolutely not.

“You must have questions,” the crone said. Sorest of understatements. “Since you went and forgot, the name’s Sebille. I just put the kettle on; still take it with a splash of rum?”

“Lark—”

“We’ll get to that, eh? Come, tuck blondie in and I’ll make us a nice cuppa.”

༻❁༺

The interior of the hut looked exactly how you’d imagine a seven-story fairy dwelling built into the hollow trunk of a tree would. Still, its cozy mushroom furniture and other whimsicality went largely unnoticed by Sasha.

Lark looked fragile. He was lying at the center of a vast, fluffball mushroom bed, without the volume of his puffy sleeves. Fuzzy, fibrous sheets were tucked neatly under his arms, leaving his bare shoulders and chest exposed.

That long scar, under a dusting of hair, stood out in contrast to the bloodless pallor of his skin. Sasha stepped closer, possessed by the urge to touch it. The bedroom door creaking open and Sebille’s voice at his back startled his hand away.

“You’ve just learned you have a child,” she said, “and I find you feeling up the patient? Thought you’d be running for the hills.”

The hills had crossed Sasha’s mind, but he couldn’t leave Lark. Not like this.

Because Lark didn’t smell right. He reeked of the plague, a given, but something lurked deeper—a sinister, necrotic foulness.

Death. It was death.

Sebille wasn’t put off by the lack of response. She dropped a cup of tea in Sasha’s hands; apparently, a splash of rum equated to mostly rum. She then deftly brushed him aside and moved in to examine Lark.

“Throat’s a wreck, barely intact; rigid abdomen,” she observed. She slipped a hand under Lark’s waist, clicking her tongue at its slightness. “Told him to ease off the corset. Weakens the organs.”

Sasha tore his focus from the sight of Lark being jostled like a rag doll. “You know each other?”

“Oh, he fell into my cots once or twice. I wore a different face then; a face like his.”

“Where? How?”

“Sure you want to peel those layers now?”

“What are you?”

Sebille paused mid-exam. She turned to Sasha, her wooden face a mask of glee.

His flinched when the papery peels on her cheeks suddenly curled upwards, returning to their rightful positions like old parchment being pressed flat.

Her wrinkles ironed out, her eyes cleared to a more periwinkle grey. Her skin, parts of it, softened to flesh before his eyes, dewy and supple—

The enchantment sputtered, peels springing back out of place. She returned to her ancient self. Her glee was replaced by exasperation.

“Blast it all,” she grumbled, redirecting her ire at Aine. “It’s your fault, you know.”

Aine hid her face in Sasha’s leg. His tune changed slightly. “Who are you?”

“As if you’d know chicken from scratch,” Sebille said. “Though you did turn out more bookish this time around…you may have read about my father. Well, father and mother. Goes by An Eadar.”

“An Eadar,” Sasha repeated dimly. “Shepherd of souls. Ruler of the underworld.”

“Grandfather of your child. Funnily enough, this is his plague, which means you and he have crossed paths. Not quite how I planned on introducing you to the folks.”

“I thought the plague belonged to Maul’s queen. Hellebore.”

“Is the little snot telling people that? Suppose you could call it her father’s plague, if you want to be technical. Kerr was something of a family friend. Clever man, if greedy.”

As much as Sasha wanted to know more, ‘your child’ and ‘grandfather’ and ‘father’ were needling and needling, sinking the thorn deeper into his paw. He lapsed into silence, sore and brooding.

It had to be a lie, a trick. Humans and fae didn’t, physically couldn’t reproduce.

Maybe all of it—the dream, the beast—was a trick. Maybe he’d only led them astray.

Their cup wasn’t exactly running over with options, though, was it?

Sebille prodded Lark a bit more, then huffed and straightened. Examination over.

“His gut’s got more holes than cheese,” she surmised, deceptively neutral. “Hemorrhaging. Badly. I give him an hour, two if he’s a fighter.”

More silence followed. Surely that couldn’t be all. “You’ll fix him?” Sasha prompted.

“What’s the sense? He’ll turn when whatever’s iced his blood to slosh wears off.”

“Fix him now.”

“Don’t be a brat.”

Sasha’s jaw clenched. Swallowing his frustration, he reached into his back pocket. The vial, only a quarter full, cooled his fingers to the touch. “He won’t turn as long as this is in him.”

“You’re prolonging the inevitable.”

“His life, you mean.”

“That?” Sebille waved a dismissive hand at the bed, at Lark who was just looking far too fragile. “That is no life.”

“Better than dying.”

“Better for who?”

Aine seized a burst of confidence and came out with a series of babbles. No full sentences, but she was as vexed with the old woman as Sasha was. He caught a Lark-branded insult or two in the mix.

Sebille’s bleary eyes focused on the child. “Of course, there is another way.”

Great. People in books only said that before proposing the worst, most difficult possible solutions to their problems.

“Which is?” Sasha pressed after a beat. Evidently, Sebille enjoyed having him hang on her every word.

“The girl inhaled the pollen too,” she said, “and still she is unchanged.”

“She isn’t red-blooded.”

“Neither was the Abomination you faced in the garden; neither was the ettin you killed. Resistance and immunity are not the same.”

“What are you saying?”

“I told you this is my father’s plague. He may have cast me aside, but he wouldn’t do the same to his only grandchild.” Sebille approached—again, Aine hid her face, that time in her hands. “She hasn’t changed because she cannot change. She is immune.”

“I…” Beneath Sasha’s scrutiny, Aine peeked through her tiny green fingers. “How is any of this possible?”

“You once told me we could do anything together. On the ramparts of the stronghold, the stars the only witness to our writhing—”

“That wasn’t me,” he cut in, flustered. “I’m not your…this child’s…” his voice lowered to a rasp on, “parent.”

“Biologically speaking, you are. Whether you wish to claim her is your business. I myself feel more compelled to eat her, as ‘hags’ are like to do.”

Sasha’s head was ready to burst. He struggled to maintain composure. All too much, always too much at once: Lark, Lark’s sister, Aine, Sebille, the de facto god of death, An Eadar.

Never a single fucking snowflake. Always, always, an avalanche.

Sasha sat heavily on the edge of the bed, forehead in his claws, and addressed the most pressing matter. “How can she help Lark?”

“He’s alive, which means it hasn’t touched his heart,” Sebille explained. “Think of her as soap, the infection a stain. Catch it early, I can scrub him clean…but I’ll need lots of soap.”

“Soap?”

“Sap. Blood, as you lot call it. One bucket should do.”

Aine was the size of a bucket. She must have understood the conversation to a certain extent because she shrank away a third time, towards the bed, to grab Lark’s limp hand. Sasha was no longer a comfort, as scary as Sebille.

Parentage aside, how could he take a child’s blood? How could he put a child through what Hellebore put him through? Lark wouldn’t stand for it, he wouldn’t want—

In that very same breath, he decided to start choking in his sleep. Aine cried out. Sasha shot off the bed as a thick mixture of black sludge, red sludge, and shriveled buds burbled from Lark’s lips.

The mixture collected on the fuzzy sheets, too cold to burn through them. Sebille wasn’t moving. Her old features held not an ounce of sympathy.

“What are you doing?” Sasha asked her, placing his hands on Lark’s shoulders to hold them steady. They were seizing. “Help him.”

“You know I can’t,” she calmly replied.

“Bullshit.”

“Language.”

Seizing, choking, gargling. The locket and a staggering amount of pressure, panic, was crushing Sasha’s chest. The potion could only freeze. It could not mend.

“He’s not breathing,” Sasha said to no one. Helpless. Useless. “He’s not going to—”

With an irritable sigh, Sebille trotted over to rest an open hand on Lark’s tightly knotted throat. She muttered a few words in old fae.

The seizure stopped. The smell of death remained.

“I will waste no more of my strength on a lost cause,” she ground out as the gargling, the horrid gargling, subsided. “How green you are, always snatching the lowest fruit available. You stand in the wake of your decisions now.”

Sasha sagged, still holding Lark’s shoulders, so cold, so hard, and could manage little more than a whisper. “Stop speaking in riddles.”

“Unclog your ears. What you gave to Hellebore cannot be taken back. In time, you’ll see there is no unringing that bell.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“These are the decisions that shape you, make or break you. You may try once more. The child’s life or that of your friend—which man are you, Sasha?”

༻❁༺