“Ronan,” Minerva sighed again.
“Minerva,” Evelyn croaked, “who is Ronan? Where is he? Are we at last on Buchanan lands?”
The old woman’s head lolled back on Evelyn’s shoulder, and she rolled her watery, black eyes over Evelyn’s face. “Buchanan lands? Nay, lass—we left Buchanan lands days ago. Days and days and days…”
Evelyn’s heart froze in her chest. “What?”
The old woman gave a skeletal grin. “We’re on MacKerrick lands. Ronan’s lands. Where my journey ends”—she drew a shallow, hitching breath and Evelyn felt the reverberations of it like a chilling sizzle in her spine—“and yours truly begins.”
It was then that Evelyn noticed that the sleet had stopped, the wind quieted. Impossibly fat snowdrops, the size of the tip of Evelyn’s thumb, now floated down, luminescent in the blankets of glowing lightning that rolled within low clouds. The forest seemed to hold its breath.
“Minerva,” Evelyn pressed, desperate to make the old witch understand. “The mare has fled, and our last provisions with her. In which direction do I seek this Ronan to aid us? No more riddles—I beg you.”
The old woman’s eyes closed, her mouth gaped open, and her frail frame quivered.
Minerva was laughing.
Then the black eyes opened and a gentler smile further creased the lined face as lightning flashed again. “He’s already here, lass.” She let a knobby arm fall to the rocks beneath her and she patted them fondly, the sound like wet parchments sliding together. “I’ve returned to him at last.”
Evelyn let her fledgling hope melt away like the snowflakes on her flaming cheeks. The old healer was obviously delusional in these last, horrible moments of her life. Evelyn could harbor no ill will toward Minerva, even though the woman had led the pair of them blindly past the certain aid of the Buchanan clan to die in this cold, vast wood.
Because there was naught else to do, Evelyn laid her cheek atop Minerva’s rough hood with a sigh and wondered if she herself would go to Heaven when it was all over with, and if she would at last meet her mother there. If she did, Evelyn knew the first thing she would ask Fiona is: Was I worth it? Was I worth your own life?
It seemed such a waste.
“Ye’ll nae die,” Minerva whispered, startling Evelyn from her morbid fantasy. The old witch raised her trembling hand from the rocks and swiped her thumb across Evelyn’s lower lip. “Nae for many a year.”
For an instant, Evelyn thought she felt the stones beneath her seat shudder. She realized she must have been biting her lip, for when she swiped her parched tongue across it, she tasted rich, warm blood.
Evelyn drew a searing breath, choosing to ignore the old woman’s cryptic prediction. “Shall I say a prayer for you?”
Minerva gave a silent chuckle. “Nae, lass—none of yer fancy prayers.” Her eyes locked onto Evelyn’s gaze, and when she spoke again, the old woman’s voice held a pleading note Evelyn had never heard in all the weeks she’d known Minerva.
“But we all should leave this world with love, do ye nae think?”
Evelyn swallowed past the slicing blades in her throat, the taste of blood still sweet in her mouth. “I do.” She leaned down and pressed her tingling lips to each of the old woman’s cool cheeks, in turn. “Go in peace, Minerva Buchanan,” Evelyn whispered. “You were indeed loved by many. Including me.”
Evelyn drew away and looked down into the ancient healer’s face, glowing pale in the dark, wet night, like a withered moon. Her black eyes were faraway and happy, her thin lips curved into a satisfied smile.
But the old woman made no reply.
Minerva Buchanan was, at last, dead.
Her own startled cry woke Evelyn from her slumber and she squinted, heart pounding, against the watery, gray sunlight filtering through the frigid fog of the wood.
Her throat felt as if it had been turned inside out and left out to dry, but the painful tightness in her chest had lessened by half. Her fever must have broken as well, for she felt frozen to her very bones.
Evelyn looked down at the dead healer, still cradled in her arms. Minerva’s face was covered by a crystalline layer of blue frost, her eyes open and staring at Evelyn, but now silvered and full of nothing. A gnarled hand still clutched the front of Evelyn’s cloak and she worked quickly to pull the garment from the rigid grasp, a sudden superstitious desire to be unlocked from the corpse causing her to pant and whine. Once the talons of death were empty, held frozen in the air, Evelyn saw the thin gash in the pad of the old woman’s thumb.
Evelyn scrambled from the pile of rocks with a whimper and tumbled to the frozen forest floor, her hand going instinctively to her lips. She scrubbed at her mouth with her fingertips—no tenderness—then drew her hand away to look down at it.
No blood, either.
Evelyn stared warily at the old witch for what seemed like hours, as if expecting Minerva to rouse from her icy sleep and descend the rock drift. When the corpse remained quiet, Evelyn rose gingerly to her knees and clasped her hands before her breasts. Closing her gummy-feeling eyes, she raised her face to the low sky.
But no prayer came. Try as she might, Evelyn could not beg the most simple, memorized verse from her mind. After months of prayerful life at the priory, her faith felt used up, tired, and impotent.
She’d once sought haven in religion but had encountered only death and debauchery, greed and hypocrisy. God had not heard her confused pleas then, and now she had forgotten how or why to ask for mercy. It mattered not. From the moment Evelyn had decided never to return to the priory, she felt she had damned herself. God would have no mercy for a strange young woman, once of noble station, who had deserted her calling out of fear and cynicism. A woman who would rather spend her time with animals than people, who understood them better than anyone had ever understood Evelyn. Her gift with beasts was an evil penchant, she’d been told many times by the monks. Sinful. Blasphemous. And evil, sinful blasphemies were aught in which the brethren were well practiced.
Her dark thoughts were interrupted by the screams of a horse, and Evelyn’s eyes snapped open. Had she, in her desperation, imagined the cry? Or had God not completely forsaken her, after all? As if in answer, the animal shrieked again, and Evelyn thought the horse sounded near.
Her heart pounded sharply—a hammer on cold stone. “Amen,” she breathed, although no true prayer had left her lips, and then scrambled to her feet.
She stumbled around the wide skirt of rocks that was Minerva’s pyre and farther into the wood, swerving drunkenly through the trees, ears straining for the horse’s whinny. It must be Minerva’s mare. It must be.
“Where are you, lovely?” Evelyn whispered. “I need that saddle bag.” Her life depended on it. Although it contained no food, the soft leather satchel tied to the mare’s saddle held two flint stones and Evelyn’s own dagger—items crucial to her survival. The other prizes in the bag were but outrageous luxuries at this point.
She paused, one chapped palm braced against the scarred skin of a straggling beech, and listened.
There! To her right, a rustling sounded, and a cracking like the snap of a fallen branch. Evelyn pushed away from the tree and tried to walk calmly in the direction of the sounds, despite the hysterical voice in her head screaming at her to run, run as fast as her watery legs would carry her. ’Twould do no good to spook the beast and send her deeper into the wood.
It began to snow again. Small, delicate flakes floating like goose down turned the world of the forest into contrasts of black and white, light and shadow, dusk and dawn at once.
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