The Twisting (17 page)

The older woman met her gaze, her eyes asking—pleading—

She tilted her sketchbook and nodded.

Miriam drew a breath and, with glistening eyes, bent over Henry again.

Annmar turned away. She’d done what she could. Later she’d find out how they’d gotten so badly hurt, but now she rubbed her fingertips across her left collarbone. Her skin heated, and the blue of her Knack filled her.

James squeezed past Mary Clare, who held her sister’s hand and wiped tears. At the end of the bed, Mrs. Pemberton pressed another layer of cloth to the wrappings around the twisted foot, her face set in a grimace. Jagged tips of bone poked horribly through the bloody mass. Annmar gulped. James unlaced Mary Beth’s remaining boot without her mother even glancing up from her single-minded task.

After he removed her sock and propped her bare foot on a pillow, Annmar began to sketch. Her vision unfocused from her moving pencil and found the broken blue threads within Mary Beth’s foot. Her pencil lines joined them, her Knack urged them to reconnect, and the blue lights wound into the sketch of the matching feet.

A startled cry broke from Mrs. Pemberton. James pulled her aside, and after a hushed, “Keep drawing,” Mary Clare joined him in telling her mother she needed to wait for Miriam to check Mary Beth.

Annmar drew faster, not daring to look up. Why wasn’t Mary Beth screaming? Annmar got her answer when she leaned around to confirm the taller, sturdier Mary Beth’s features were making it onto the page. The ashen young woman was out cold. Either shock…or the chloroform Master Brightwell complained about.

Annmar bit her lip. The sketch was done, just Mary Beth’s face and feet with the barest form of a figure between. Partial drawings healed as well as complete ones, something Annmar had learned when she’d looked back through her sketches from after the fight with Paet and Maxillon.

She closed her sketchbook, for the first time seeing Mary Clare’s red, puffy gaze on her. She tried to smile some reassurance, but a tear rolled down her cheek instead. She’d like to check how Henry was, but she had to see Rivley.

In the hall, Mary Clare caught her arm. “Mary Frances doesn’t know about Mary Beth or Henry. Mother kept her from them until they’d gotten them into the sickroom, so all she saw was Rivley in the library. Come—”

“Absolutely not!” Master Brightwell’s bellow from outside silenced everyone. Along with several others, they edged to the doorway. The inventor waved off the surgeon, awkwardly since a grower held a bandage to his bitten shoulder. Mr. White stopped unscrewing the cap of a bottle.

“No chloroform,” Master Brightwell said. “I promise you in seconds I’ll be flat to these stones.”

Annmar turned the page of her sketchbook. Holding it low, she started drawing Master Brightwell.

“I can’t let you take that. It’s not protocol, medical protocol,” the surgeon said patiently. “Using a home brew, you might have a reaction or, heaven forbid, die.”

“No.”

Annmar concentrated on sketching without looking or letting the others see, just forming up the inventor’s shoulder muscles with her Knack engaged.

“Please!” a familiar voice yelled from the library. “Let him have his brew.”

“Rivley,” Mistress Gere admonished from the same room. “Back in that bed!”

The crowd fell silent. Annmar added an oval head to her drawing.

“I will as soon as Master Brightwell has what he wants. The man knows more than the lot of us put together. Those stunners worked brilliantly with his brew.”

“Nary a bite to the night crew while dispensing with them,” said Master Brightwell in a raised voice.

“Exactly,” said Rivley, the word sounding more like a moan.

“Oh, dear.” Mary Clare tugged at Annmar’s arm. “Could you come see Rivley, ple—”

“Excuse me?” Iris edged though the crowd, holding a canning jar half-filled with a luminated blue substance.

Annmar gasped. “It’s the same as my blue.”

“What?” asked Mary Clare.

“Um…” Oh, Lord, this sounded crazy, but Mary Clare had stood by her through the rest of it. She leaned over and whispered, “That jar of…stuff glows blue to me. Like the threads I see through my Knack. What is it?”

Mary Clare snorted. “Fermented fungus. That’s what they’re putting in the stunners to knock out the pests. Is that what he wants instead of chloroform?”

Annmar nodded, but kept her gaze on the jar the girl was opening. Flickers of glowing blue sparked through the mix, and her blue threads squirmed. If only she could get closer for a better look at…fungus?

Oh, heavens. Annmar sagged against the doorframe, all the pieces fitting together in a flash of realization. A Knack like no one else’s. Seeing threads running through the ground that weren’t roots. Mother not being able to stay with her father because he was a different species. Her father bringing rare mushrooms to pay Miriam.

I’m a fungal.

Mary Clare’s granny was wrong. This type of Basin dweller hadn’t died out.

Annmar pushed the door, her need for a closer look at the fungus propelling her forward. Mary Clare caught her arm. “You better not.” She pointed to the sketchbook. “And remember Rivley? He could use some help.”

The words sank into her blurred thoughts. Yes, others needed her help. She could look at the fungus when things calmed down. She lifted her sketchbook. “I’ll be there after I finish Master Brightwell’s. A minute.” Mary Clare gave a nod and slipped through the crowd, leaving Annmar sketching Master Brightwell’s bearded jaw while he argued with the doctor.

“Left hand,” muttered a woman. “Fingers are chewed up.”

Annmar glanced up. It was Miriam. No one else had noticed her drawing. “Thanks.” She drafted out Master Brightwell’s left arm as he motioned Iris to tilt the jar opening to his lips, but a wrap of bandages kept her from seeing his hand.

With a flash of memory, Annmar realized she’d seen the inventor’s hands before, slender, dark-skinned and nimble as he twisted a screwdriver. That’s how they should look on the page. Annmar drew on her Knack, urged the glowing lines to meet up and sketched.

“As soon as I drink a sip, you put the lid back on, you hear?” he said to Iris. Then, holding his hands over hers, Master Brightwell tilted the jar to his lips. Another grower caught him as he slumped.

“Did you need a look?” asked Miriam. “The surgeon is unwrapping the linen now.”

Annmar glanced down. The drawing was complete.

“Why the hell is this wrapped?” grumbled Mr. White. The hand he held and turned over was whole. Bloody, but no cuts.

Did I heal him that quickly?
Annmar snapped her sketchbook closed so no one would see. She edged back, and ran into Miriam. The healer gripped her elbow, her gaze still on Master Brightwell.

Slowly, she turned to stare at Annmar.

Annmar shrugged one shoulder. Miriam cocked her head to the inventor. Mr. White was removing the bandage from Master Brightwell’s shoulder, revealing cuts and punctures, but none gaping or swelling.

“Surface wounds,” Mr. White said. “Muscles aren’t even bruised.” He rose and crossed the paving stones, headed inside. “Are there other patients to be seen?”

Miriam squeezed her arm. “Wait for me here, please.” She opened the screen door and ushered the surgeon into the house while Annmar shifted the sketchbook behind her and shrank back to the stairs. A wave of the healer’s hand sent the other onlookers scattering, and after a hushed couple of sentences, Mr. White went into the sickroom. Miriam closed the door behind him.

Annmar squeezed her eyes shut.
I hope Henry is healed
.

“Sit with me a moment.” Miriam steered her by the elbow to the stairs and eased her down. “What happened with Master Brightwell?”

Annmar thrust the sketchbook forward, her thumb still marking the page. “I drew him, the same as I drew the others.”

Miriam studied the picture. “Yet his hand healed rapidly, while his shoulder did not. Nor are the others showing this miraculous recovery. Think, Annmar. You did something different when you got to here.” She tapped the hand sketch.

It was incomplete, just the vague shape of a hand. Hadn’t she drawn it? “I added the arm, but couldn’t see either hand.” This didn’t make sense.

“Is that how you drew Mary Beth’s feet, looking at the undamaged one?”

Annmar nodded.

“There must be at least one thing you did differently as you drew the hand. Think. Maybe reach into your talent.”

“I was thinking of my Knack. The image of his fingers just popped into my head. When I looked down there was—” She gasped at the drawing Miriam had returned. “I didn’t
draw
his fingers. I imagined them on the page.”

Miriam covered her mouth, her eyes widening as she met Annmar’s gaze.

Oh, my. After watching Miriam’s efficient handling of multiple injuries last week, Annmar hadn’t thought anything could shake the healer. Confused thoughts swarmed her: Should she have done that? What would happen to Master Brightwell? It would be her fault if something went wrong. After all, she didn’t really know what she was doing—this was a far more serious experiment than the one she had conducted on Daeryn.
An experiment on people who didn’t know, for heaven’s sake
. What was she thinking?

Miriam dropped her hand. “No, you’re doing right,” she answered the unasked question. “It’s the only way to learn your skills. Now you know you have two ways to access this incredible Knack of yours. One will be slow and the other immediate.” But her brow was still creased, her gaze searching. She rubbed Annmar’s shoulder and upper arm in exactly the comforting way Mother used to do.

A wave of sadness swept over Annmar, as it had those first months after Mother died, when she’d been alone and facing the world with only her wits.

“You’ll do fine. You care.” Miriam pulled her into a quick hug, then held her at arm’s length. “I’ve seen many oddities in Blighted Basin, but still feel I must caution you: Save the immediate healing for dire circumstances. Or for friends who know you possess the Knack.”

She stood and pulled Annmar up with her, her demeanor once more returned to its customary efficiency. “Go to the library and have a look at Rivley, will you? Perhaps you can get him back out to work tonight. Someone has to either repair or destroy that Harvester.”

Chapter NINETEEN

Annmar tiptoed over
the library threshold. The fire had been built up, making the room warmer than the hallway. Not as much blood spattered the floor as in the sickroom, but enough. She clutched her sketchbook to her middle and willed her stomach to behave.

“Firm pressure, Mary Clare, while I see how much longer—” Mistress Gere spied Annmar. “Have you been sent to help?”

“I have, uh—” She eyed the bloody bandage in the lady’s hand and gripped her stomach harder. “Miriam gave me a few instructions.”

Mistress Gere sighed. “No one, least of all me, has time for questions tonight. If Miriam—
Miriam
—gave you an instruction instead of coming herself, who am I to question it?” She dropped the stained cloth in a bucket and cleaned her hands in another. The scent of hydrogen peroxide clung to her after she wiped them on a towel and put a hand to Annmar’s shoulder. “Rather delicate situation, and I don’t mean the blood. Are you ready for this?”

She nodded, and the lady moved aside. So pale his freckles stood out as dark spots across his chest and arms, Rivley lay sunk back into the cot, eyes squeezed shut, jaw firm with clenched teeth. Annmar gasped. Rivley, always lean compared to Daeryn, seemed somehow much smaller now. She’d never seen him still before.

“Oh, Annmar.” Mary Clare’s eyes swam with tears as she waved her closer.

She made herself step forward.

A sheet covered Rivley’s middle. His left leg bent out at an odd angle, and Mary Clare stood over it, pressing a thick wad of bandages high onto his inner thigh.

Mary Clare said, “What did Miriam tell you?”

Annmar glanced at Mistress Gere. The lady’s eyes were narrowed. “A, um, new method for my Knack. What’s wrong?”

“He got—”

“He can answer for himself.” Rivley glared from the white bed sheets, his brows forming ridges of hawk feathers. More sprouted over his crown. Mary Clare lunged for the hand that lay across his belly and clasped it tight. Rivley sucked a breath, but didn’t pull back. In seconds, the feathers disappeared.

He released the breath. “A gobbler had Master Brightwell, near the neck. Going for his throat.” He stopped and swallowed. “I grabbed it with my talons, but before I killed the thing, it latched into my thigh. I fell and changed. The others pulled it off, and its teeth ripped my muscle.”

“It’s bad,” Mary Clare whispered. “Have a look.” She whipped aside the sheet, baring Rivley’s upper thighs and…between.

“What the hell are you doing?” He yanked the sheet back with a string of throaty clicks.

Annmar backed from the cot, nearly dropping her sketchbook, but Mary Clare kept her hand on the bandages and leaned toward his face, her expression as fierce as any hawk’s. “She needs to see you or she can’t do a drawing to fix this.”

“She doesn’t need to see
that
much of me.”

Mary Clare’s free hand clenched into the sheet over his chest. “I don’t know what you’re grousing about,” she spat irritably. “There’s nothing to see, you all drawn in with the pain.”

“Thanks, MC,” Rivley snarled. “That’s a real flattering description to give a fellow when he’s down. Thank the Creator, you won’t be—” He glanced up and, in a lowered voice, ground out, “Won’t have those opportunities anymore.”

Mary Clare reddened, huffing her breath. “I didn’t mean…I’m…I thought—”

“No, you didn’t think, and that’s the problem between you and me.
Always
.”

“Rivley, Mary Clare,” Mistress Gere snapped. “Behave, or I’ll toss you both out of my house. Annmar is here to work, and neither of you is making it any easier on the girl.”

“Sorry,” mumbled Mary Clare.

“What’ll it be, Rivley?” Mistress Gere asked. “Heal on your own, or receive some help?”

His breath came in pants, and his face twisted into a scowl before he muttered, “The help.”

Annmar bit her lip. In all the confusion, she hadn’t asked any of the injured if they wanted her help. Oh…well. It was done now.

Mistress Gere nodded. “I am going for clean bandages. I’ll knock before entering.” She swooped the used bandages into a bucket and left.

Shakily, Annmar opened her sketchbook and poised the pencil above it before lifting her gaze to Rivley’s.

He met hers briefly, then his darted away and back again. “Do you have to draw”—he gestured to the center of the sheet—“everything?”

Annmar closed the sketchbook and lifted it with a shrug. “I, uh, may not need to draw anything.”

Odd looks shot at her, which she waved off. “Please, I’m not sure. Something strange just happened with Master Brightwell’s healing that Miriam wants me to give a try. Can I just see your uninjured leg so I know what those muscles look like?”

“Yes, but I”—he clenched the sheet and glowered at Mary Clare—“will do the lifting. Or something.” He closed his eyes. “Give me a second.”

A subdued Mary Clare squatted back on her heels, her hand still pressing on the bandage. A tear ran down her cheek.

Rivley lifted the sheet. Annmar tried to keep her gaze from drifting to the center of things as she studied the long sinewy muscles. Yet the back of her mind registered a very clear image. Not quite the shock as when she’d seen Daeryn naked. This time she could gaze at Rivley with a calmer demeanor and an artist’s eye for line and form.

Rivley squirmed. After a few seconds, he slid his free hand down and scooped…
things
away from his uninjured thigh.

That helped get her back on track.

“Do you need me to lift the bandage?” Mary Clare asked.

“I think not. Quiet a minute.” She closed her eyes and, with her fingertips to her warming collarbone, reached to see the blue threads. Instead of drawing an image, she shaped one in her mind’s eye. Rivley’s thighs formed vividly, mirror images of each other, long and lean, the fibrous muscle swelling out just so, until it trimmed over his bone to the knee. Where it met the hip was more of an abrupt denting in, with the broken threads near the crease.

Rivley wriggled. “MC. Stop it already.”

“What? You think I’d do anything after being yelled at?”

“Your fingers. Don’t poke my leg. It’s too weird.”

“I’m not,” she snapped, and they started arguing again.

Annmar wanted to hush them, but what she was seeing couldn’t be interrupted. The threads moved together, fuzzing into a blue haze as they connected again. The image of Rivley’s leg formed and stayed there. She blinked her eyes open. “I, uh, might be done.”

Rivley dropped the sheet, and for a few seconds the room was silent.

Then Mary Clare lifted her hand from the bandage and tentatively said, “How about a look under?”

“Great Creator,” Rivley whispered. “That pushing is still going at my leg, even with your fingers gone.”

“Oh. Don’t move.” Annmar bit her lip. “That is, tell me when it stops.” She placed her hand where Mary Clare’s had been and closed her eyes. This time the image of Rivley’s lean thighs popped up by itself, the undamaged threads a luminous blue. She focused.
Perfectly matched. No wounds. Strong.

Rivley’s large hand covered hers. “Done,” he whispered. She opened her eyes, and he smiled at her. “The twitching has stopped. Pain’s gone. Can we have a look?”

He brushed aside her hand, and when she realized exactly
where
she’d had it, heat rose to her cheeks. She straightened, embarrassed to look, but looking all the same as he peeled back the bandages. There was quite a bit to look at, lots of blood-smeared skin and…parts. She forced her gaze up, past Mary Clare’s bent head where she also examined Rivley, to his belly. Around his navel curled a bright silver spiral set with a glinting red crystal. The metal pierced his skin in two places. The boarding house girls had talked about piercings, but she’d never—oh, my, this might be something else she shouldn’t be looking at.

“I can’t believe it.” Rivley ran his hand over the undamaged leg, then rotated his knee in and out. He straightened the leg and lifted his foot. Suddenly, he laughed and swung his legs off the cot. “I thought I’d have to bear the pain until I’d slept it off.” He stood up and walked into the center of the room, rubbing his palms down both thighs.

He moved without limping, but, Lord forbid, did he have to do it nude? Annmar backed to the door, too tired to care or even to avert her gaze.

“You’ve healed me. I can’t believe it.” He pivoted. “Look at me.”

“Happy to,” Mary Clare said. “And this time you can’t blame me.”

That set them to bickering again while Rivley drew on his clothes, he insisting if Mary Clare acknowledged the seriousness of the problem Wellspring faced, she’d not be taking any time
off
, and Mary Clare retorting that her community
connections
had added help regardless of whether it was too late.

“Maybe you just ought to widen your connections more,” Rivley retorted. “Three additional faint-hearted plantas rode in with me. Quitting. It’s taking everyone the nocturnal team can scrape together to defend just the most valued crops now.”

Annmar searched blindly for the doorknob. Their barbs spelled out the reality of the Harvester accident in grim undertones. In their anger, the two were saying what no one at Wellspring had dared to voice.

The farm was falling apart.

She stumbled from the library into the empty hall and made her way carefully to the back of the house, each step harder than the last. Her heart and spirits sagged. An artist had no place on a failing farm. Wellspring would be struggling to keep on the people who knew farming. Would Daeryn stay? Would there be anything left to guard?

Even if she didn’t know farming, Annmar wanted to stay and help. Except, she couldn’t kill those beasts. And would it matter if they rid the farm of pests if Mr. Shearing had control of the farmers? With a sinking realization, she knew where she would be the most help. But dealings with Mr. Shearing were dangerous. What skills did she have to go up against him?

She clutched at the doorframe of the dining room to steady herself, nearly dropping her sketchbook. What was wrong with her? She barely had the energy to walk.

In sharp contrast to her thoughts of a cropless farm, Mrs. Betsy’s overloaded dinner platters lined the sideboard. It might help to eat, but fuzzy blackness threatened the edges of her vision. She made it to the nearest chair and collapsed, her head dropping to her crossed arms on the table before the spotted blackness overtook her.

The spots glowed and expanded to blue lines. They multiplied, weaving in and out in a dense mass like the luminated blue fibers filling Master Brightwell’s jar.
No, they couldn’t be.
But her Knack sense told Annmar his fungus fibers were identical to every thread of blue she’d seen while at Wellspring. This fungus the inventor used had to be the source of the blue light she saw on every machine, in the plants and during every healing.
They are everywhere
.

An image she’d drawn sprang to mind. The roots she’d seen upon her arrival, lacing web-like under the fields. The gossamer threads shimmered cerulean and loosened. Fibers swam and spread into pretty patterns that rotated and dissolved, only to emerge again and reform into another blue wonder. Was it fungus decorating each drawing she executed? Was the fungus performing the healings? She’d unraveled the mystery, only to find it twisting into something she dare not believe.

Annmar hadn’t thought of Polly’s fantastical stories since she’d arrived. Perhaps because the phenomena of her days rivaled them. Was it true that she had fungus within her? Could that part of her Knack have come from her father, the mysterious Michael? Or had her sanity indeed failed, and like Wellspring’s failure, no one would put voice to her plight?

A hand on her brow roused her. “Annmar?” Miriam said. “You’re quite cool. How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “I’m tired.”

“Drained, I imagine.” She left and returned in a minute. “Drink this.” She held a mug to Annmar’s lips.

Annmar sipped the warm tea, laden with sugar and cream. After she drank most of it, Miriam gave her the mug and returned to the sideboard to collect a plate of meat and vegetables for her. Eating warmed her body, and the weariness in her bones melted away. She could return to the library and help clean up before someone else needed her.

“Mrs. Chapman!” Running footsteps followed the shout from the hallway.

Miriam leaped up first, Annmar close on her heels, her sketchbook clenched tight. The healer ran past Mary Frances, not pausing to hear the little girl’s sobbed, “He’s vomiting blood!”

No!
She could only mean Henry. Stomach knotting, Annmar dashed after Miriam.