But at last Lark called him back in, and he found Daylily clad in the Eldest’s old clothes, lying facedown with her shoulder exposed but dressed and well tended by Lark’s expert hands.
“It wasn’t deep,” Lark said to Foxbrush’s great relief. “Just a scratch. But I think she might be in shock. And she won’t let go of that.” She pointed to Daylily’s fist, which clutched the bronze stone.
Lark looked up at Foxbrush with sharp, questioning eyes. “She’s the lady they’re talking about, isn’t she. The one who killed Mama Greenteeth.”
Foxbrush shook his head. “Daylily couldn’t kill anyone.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew them for the lie they were. Still, he refused to admit it. For a moment he closed his eyes and tried, however desperately, to reclaim a fair image of her, an image he could bear: such as the time she visited his mother’s estate at Hill House for the summer, the first time he had seen her since they were children. She’d been a lovely girl of sixteen then, her hair piled high in shining curls tucked under a wide-brimmed hat to shade her fair complexion. Her hands had been gloved when she shook his in greeting, soft gloves of deerskin with jeweled bracelets at the wrists.
She’d scarcely looked at him then. She’d fixed her attention solely upon Leo. But it didn’t matter. Not then. Not ever.
Foxbrush drew a long breath. When he opened his eyes again, he found Lark studying him, her little mouth pressed into a line as stern as any scolding mother’s. “She’s from your time, isn’t she,” she said. “Is she your woman?”
“Not really,” Foxbrush admitted.
“But you’d like her to be?”
He shrugged, embarrassed at this bluntness from the child. “She’ll never be anybody’s.”
Lark nodded at this and looked down at the young woman under her care. In that moment, despite the childish roundness of her face and the older bitterness of Daylily’s, they looked very alike. Perhaps Lark felt some kindred link across the centuries. Perhaps she was simply too much a child to care about rumors. However it was, she bent suddenly, compulsively, and kissed Daylily’s cheek.
Then she faced Foxbrush. “I won’t tell my da. But if something bad comes of this, be it on your head.”
Foxbrush nodded solemnly and stepped back to let Lark exit. “She’ll not wake for an hour or so,” the girl said over her shoulder. “When she does, she’ll be in pain, so find me.” With that, she was gone.
Foxbrush sat beside Daylily, pulled his knees up to his chest, and waited. As he waited, he frowned and pulled the scroll Leo had given him out of his shirtfront. By this time, it should have been mashed and unreadable. But as though by magic, it remained whole and legible. Foxbrush unrolled it and read:
Oh, Shadow Hand of Here and There,
Heal now the ills
Of your weak and weary Fair,
Lost among the hills.
You would give your own two hands
To save your ancient, sorrowing lands.
“Ancient, sorrowing lands,” Foxbrush murmured, not realizing that he had begun to read the poem out loud or for how long. He stopped when he heard the sound of his own voice, embarrassed but thoughtful.
He put a hand to his shirt where the tears of the Everblooming had dampened it. And he shuddered suddenly at the closeness of everything, the nearness of the strange and fantastical pressing in upon his life.
When he looked up, he found Daylily watching him.
“Dragon’s teeth!” he exclaimed, dropping the scroll in his surprise. “You’re awake! She said . . . she told me you would sleep for an hour or more.”
“I never sleep long, no matter the drugs.”
Her voice was dark and low, quite unlike the bright, crisp voice Foxbrush had only ever heard her use before. He wondered if this was her real voice and the other was fake, another mask.
Daylily tried to turn and groaned, her brow wrinkling at the pain in her shoulder. But she ground her teeth and drew a long breath, then made her face go smooth.
“Shall I get help?” Foxbrush asked, half rising.
“No,” she said quickly. “No one. I—” She compressed her pale lips. Then she whispered, “I must go.”
“You can’t. You were . . . well, you were mauled by a lion.”
Her eyes flicked up to meet his again, and her eyebrows lowered, then rose. “What are you doing here, Foxbrush? What are you doing in this place?” Her hands gripped the animal skins beneath her, and she glanced about at the small, dark room lit by a tiny fire in the corner, smoky and dank and smelling of mold and animal droppings. It was the most unlikely setting in which to find the fastidious crown prince. And he the most unlikely figure of all! He wore skins like a native, and his skinny arms were bare and darker than she remembered. His hair, which she’d only ever seen flattened down with oil, stood up in wild, wooly tufts and sported more than a few leaves and sticks.