“You're not laying your pissing hands on me!” Sparky said. “No way! Bloody witch.”
Lucy-Anne groaned again, trying to roll over onto her back. She raised one hand and clawed at Jack's boot, her fingers hooking into a lace. He felt her pull as she tried to sit up, but he leaned forward and eased her back down, whispering to her, telling her everything was going to be all right.
“She needs you now,” he said, looking up at Rosemary.
The woman came. Jack backed away slightly, but he would not let go of Lucy-Anne's hand. He watched as Rosemary laid her hands on the girl's wounds, and he remembered the way it had felt when she had been healing the knife wound in his leg. There had been an intrusion there, an invasion of his flesh, but then he had passed out. Now, it was his turn to watch.
Rosemary healed Lucy-Anne's wounds from the inside out. Her hand seemed to enter the girl's torn neck, neither aggravating nor enlarging the existing wounds. Her fingers went deep. Then she slowly withdrew them, the tendons on the back of her hand flexing and stretching constantly, the fingers moving like individual living things as they emerged. By the time Rosemary had removed her hand fully, Lucy-Anne had stopped groaning.
The woman kept her fingertips in contact with the torn skin until it was healed over, and as she sat back with a sigh Jack leaned forward with his torch, searching for where the ugly bite marks had been, seeking the torn flesh, but finding smooth skin marred only by a smear of drying blood.
The others were silent. They had all been watching.
“That hand?” Rosemary said, nodding at Sparky's tattered right hand and wrist. The boy came forward, and Rosemary went to work again.
They waited in that subterranean room for an hour or more. Rosemary healed Sparky's hand and Jack's hip, and then she went back to Lucy-Anne and touched her more minor wounds. There were cuts and scrapes, bruises and bumps, and Rosemary's hands fixed them all.
Jack sat with Emily for a while, hugging her and talking with her. She no longer seemed to be afraid. He was once again stunned at how resilient his young sister was, and he wished he could live in the moment like her. The dead dogs disturbed her somewhat, but only because of the bloody meat of their injuries. The amazement at what Rosemary was doing seemed to wipe fear from the slate of her mind, and she watched wide-eyed as the woman touched cut skin and healed it without leaving a scar.
“It's just amazing,” she said, over and over, and Jack could only agree. But he was still shaken by the attack. And however benevolent Rosemary's touch was now, he could not help wondering how much more she had decided to keep from them.
Jenna came and sat beside them, and she and Emily giggled over something Jack could not hear. The girls had always been close—Emily seemed to be the sister that Jenna had never had—and right now Jack was very grateful for that. He tried not to feel selfish, but sometimes he needed time. Sometimes, he needed to be on his own.
And other times, there were things he did not want Emily to hear.
“Alligators?” he said, kneeling beside Rosemary. The old woman had sat against one of the side walls, resting her head back against the stone and closing her eyes. She seemed tired. Jack did not care. “Snakes? A pride of lions? What more will we have to face before we get there?” He was speaking quietly, but he was aware of Sparky watching him from across the basement. They'd arranged two torches so that they gave much of the room a diffused, even light, and Sparky had taken it upon himself to collect the four dogs’ corpses into one pile.
“Hopefully no more,” the woman said. “Jack, listen to me. You're the leader of this little group, whether the others realise or acknowledge that, or not.”
“We have no leader,” he said.
“Not true. You know that. I think maybe it's because you have Emily, and you have to keep rooted. Have to stay strong.”
“I'm looking after her.”