Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

“No,” she said, her face contorting with pain as a contraction took hold of her. “Nathaniel’s sister is a midwife, but she lives days away. She was going to come next week.” She opened her eyes. “There’s just you.”

It can’t be just me, I thought but didn’t say aloud. I’d helped Onal a few times when I was younger, but these were not normal circumstances. I also didn’t want to mention the wound on her neck. It was small, but it still hadn’t stopped bleeding.

I got her up the walk and helped settle her onto the bed. “I sent him away,” she said between contractions. “Nathaniel tried to warn me against speaking to Dedrick, and I sent him away.”

“This isn’t your fault,” I reassured her. “I’ll go to town, see if I can find a midwife or a healer.” Kate kept her sewing money in a can on the kitchen shelf, and I emptied it into my pockets.

“Please don’t go,” Kate begged, sweat standing out on her forehead. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“I won’t be long,” I promised. “Everything will be fine. I swear.”

* * *

In the evening light, the windows of Sahlma’s apothecary were empty and forbidding, but I rapped on the door anyway. Three, four, five times. I paused, then three times more. “Open the door!” I shouted. “Please!” I didn’t want to be here again, but I’d left Kate in too much of a hurry, neglecting to ask her for a name or address of someone qualified who could help. Sahlma was the only one I knew of.

It was a sour face that greeted me when the door finally came ajar, but it grew sourer still when I took down my hood and she saw that it was me. “Stupid wench,” she said angrily. “You dare come back here and disturb my peace again?”

“I need your help!”

“Go away.” She tried to shut the door in my face, but I slammed my hands against it before it could meet the frame.

“Don’t!” I said frantically, pushing past her. “Hear me out! Please! I can pay.” I took out Kate’s coins and slammed them onto the counter. “I have a friend. She’s about to have a baby, but it’s too early and”—?I swallowed hard against the lump that was burning in my throat like a coal—?“she was hurt by a wicked man and now she’s bleeding and bleeding and it won’t stop. She’s going to have this baby, and soon, and she or her baby could die unless you help me.” I knew the truth of it as I said it; even with help, Kate’s chances were grim.

Nihil nunc salvet te.

“Be gone,” Sahlma said with a cough. “And take your coins and your troubles with you.”

I said through gritted teeth, “Please. What about the baby? A mother should never have to be without her child.”

It was what Zan’s mother had said to Sahlma, right before she jumped.

She reeled back as if she recognized the words, but only for a second. “Get out.”

A small, gray face peeked out at me from behind her skirts. “Who is the little boy in the cap?” I asked, gently assessing the similarities between his young, spectral face and her weathered, aged one. “He’s your son, isn’t he?”

The little boy in the ca

p watched me, waiting.

Sahlma’s hand lashed my face. I could feel the sting of each one of her fingers on my lips, but I kept going. “You are the way you are because of him, aren’t you? Because you lost him.”

Her hand slowly lowered. “How do you . . . ?”

“I can see him. He’s right here with us, right now as we speak.”

Her voice began to shake. “You’re trying to manipulate me.” Her lips curled down in rage. “How dare you? How dare you use the memory of my son in such a way?”

I steeled myself. “I am not lying.”

All my life I’d been terrified of their touches, to see their horrific tales play out in front of my eyes. But I knelt down and held my hand to him. He stepped out from behind her skirts and looked from my outstretched hand to my face, as if asking for permission. I gave a slight nod, and he placed his small, pale fingers in mine.

It was like plunging my arm into an ice-ridden river. I gulped at the shock of his cold touch, but I didn’t let go.

Flashes of words and pictures and memories flew around my head like snow in a flurry. I told her, “He was named after your favorite bird. A . . . a kestrel. He’d always find a stick to carry when you’d walk from town to town, looking for work as a maid. Sometimes you had to take other work to buy him food. You’d make him wait outside in the street so he couldn’t hear what was happening to you, but he could hear. You hardly ate much; you gave what you could to him and put a little money aside—?to take him on a boat ride, you said. He loved boats. You’d walk past the docks with him every day and compare the ships in the harbor—?the colors and sizes—?and talk about which one you’d take him on when you had enough money saved up.”

Tears were shining in her eyes. Her hands were twisted up in her apron, which she knotted and pressed against her mouth, dampening her shrill wail of grief.

My entire arm was becoming a block of ice, but I held on. “Your husband was often gone for months, but he always found you when his funds ran dry. The last time, he stole the money for your boat ride and wasted it on bad bets. When Kestrel found out, he cried. But the crying just upset him. He tried to make Kestrel quit crying.” Breathless horror was suffocating me; I didn’t want to see this. “And he . . . and he—?”