I pull the cart into the clearing. Stop.
Acres of pale blue-white flowers stretching to the tree line on every side. Melori has gone still behind me. Her breathing changed—the catch, the tightness. Her cottage was in this direction. Through those trees. Everything she built.
"Mel?" Kestria's beside her. Hand on her arm.
"I'm fine." She steps forward. Her voice is steady. I can hear the effort. "We need to work fast. Petals lose potency after six hours."
I secure the animals. Goats to a tree. Chickens in their cages. Hands working while I listen to her move through the flowers behind me. Crouching. Picking.
I go to her.
"Show me."
She looks up. Eyes dry. Face arranged. Fingers in the dirt already.
"Show you what?"
"How to pick them. Which parts matter."
"The petals with purple edges. Those are the ones I need.White petals are weaker but I'll use them too. Separate piles. And the leaves—" She holds one up, turning it in the light. "Dry these and they bring fever down in about an hour. Don't mix them with the petals or you'll ruin both."
I crouch beside her. My knee almost touches hers.
"These?" I hold a stem. Careful with the base.
"Yes. Good. Drop it in the—" Her eyes snap to my hand. "Wait. Your fingers."
"What?"
"They're red. You're—of course you're burning. Why didn't you say anything?"
I look at my fingers. Red. Starting to throb, now that I'm looking.
"It's fine."
"It's not fine, it's moonbright. Here." She's already pulling cloth from her basket, tearing a strip. "Wrap this around your hand. Pick through the cloth."
We work.
Kestria joins us. Three sets of hands moving through the field. Sun on my shoulders. Sinuses burning. Hands aching through the cloth. Pick, check the edges, sort, drop. My hands learn the rhythm. Her knee is right there. Close enough to feel the warmth. Every time I reach for a flower my arm passes hers.
"You're fast."
"I've been doing this for a long time."
"How did you find it?"
"Got lost." Another one into her basket. "I was trying to find a creek I'd heard about, took a wrong turn, and ended up here. Stood at the edge for probably ten minutes just staring."
"Alone?"
"I was always alone." Her hands keep moving. "Nobody was going to come looking for me if I wandered off. So I could go as far as I wanted."
Alone.
"And the cure?" I ask. "Also an accident?"
"Also an accident." Her basket's filling. "The first wolf I treated was dying. Fever so high I could feel the heat from a foot away. Nothing worked. The yarrow, the compresses—nothing. He was just—going. And I'd been using moonbright for dyes and teas for years but never on wounds, because why would you put flowers on a wound? But I didn't have anything else. So I crushed the petals, mixed them with water, smeared the paste on his chest, and went to sleep because I figured he'd be dead by morning."
