“And just so we’re clear,” Mom says, turning to me, “your apology is accepted, but you are still in serious trouble, and once this is over, you will have to make up for it.”
“What? You mean, like, you’re going to ground me?” The idea is so preposterous, I can’t stop the chuckle underlining my words. I’m a homebody. When I’m not at school or in the wood, I’m in my room. She has nothing to ground me from.
“I mean, like,” Mom says, “giving you dishwashing duties, and cleaning duties, and laundry duties, for as long as I see fit.”
My mouth drops. “I don’t have time for that. I barely have time to balance my schoolwork with my guardian duties as it is!”
“If you have enough time to go to a normal school and still perform your duties, then you have enough time to help me around the house,” she says. “Of course, if you want to revisit the homeschooling option again, I’d be more than happy to—”
“No, it’s fine,” I say quickly. “I can handle it.”
“Good. Now then, I’ll get out of your way so you two can get to work, but I’ll be leaving the door open, understand?”
We both nod.
I hold up a hand, telling Henry to wait in the study. I stop Mom in the hallway.
“I really am sorry,” I tell her.
She brushes a strand of hair off my face. “I know,” she says, “but it doesn’t change the fact that something special has been lost between us. It’s going to be a long time before I can trust you again.”
“I know,” I say, “but I’ll do everything I can to gain your trust back. I promise.”
She taps my cheek, then turns and heads into the kitchen. I walk back into the study and bury myself in old journals and treatises, my eyes straining for any mention of Varo or dragon’s bane.
XXXII
We look for hours, neither of us coming up with anything. We go back further, taking journals and documents written prior to the sixteenth century out of their protective, temperature-controlled glass cases, and begin flipping through them gently with white-gloved fingers. After a while, the words start to blur on the page, and I have to rub my eyes every few seconds for them to focus.
The next time I glance up at the clock, it’s after noon. I’m about to suggest we get some lunch when Henry says, “Winter.” He’s sitting hunched over Dad’s desk, with the lamp pulled to the center, creating a spotlight over a treatise he’s reading.
“What is it?” I ask, setting my book aside. “Did you find something? Is it Varo?”
He shakes his head. “Something else.”
I cross the room to him. He angles the book so I can see. I trace the words with my fingertips. The text is written in Old English, familiar and, at the same time, not at all. The handwriting doesn’t help; it’s beautiful, all giant loops and delicate swirls, but many of the letters look different from how I’m used to seeing them. It would probably take me all day to translate one page. Henry seems to be doing better, if the number of pages he’s already read is any indication, but he’s rubbing his temples as if it’s given him a headache.
It’s not the text, however, that catches my eye. It’s a sketch on the page next to it, depicting a tree with black leaves and pustules on the bark. I gasp and pull the page closer. “That looks like—”
“—what’s happening to the wood,” Henry finishes.
A plant grows beneath the tree, one I’ve never seen before. There’s a circle drawn around it, and a line that shoots out from it, connecting it to a bigger circle, inside of which is a sketch of the plant up close, as if it’s being viewed through a microscope. It’s the devil’s version of baby’s breath; white stalks with red veins and tiny black flowers. “Dragon’s bane,” I whisper, remembering what Uncle Joe said about how it was used as a weapon by Varo in the past.
Henry tugs the book back toward him, his fingers underlining the passage beneath the sketch. “‘A parasitic organism that attaches itself to the root system of a larger organism, most often a tree, dragon’s bane is the only substance in the known world with the ability to end an immortal life. While ingesting or infecting the blood with any part of the plant could lead to death, the most toxic component is the flower. Merely one small petal taken into the body by means of digestion or through the blood will cause certain death.’” Henry’s fists tighten as he reads, until the veins on his arms threaten to pop.
I lay my hand on his shoulder. “Remember what Varo said. Your parents are alive. The dragon’s bane didn’t kill them.”
He exhales, loosening his fists slightly. “Thank God for that.”
“What I don’t understand,” I say, angling the book toward me, “is how the disease is spreading. This makes it seem like every infected tree should have dragon’s bane attached to it, but I haven’t seen any at all.”
Henry chews on his bottom lip, thinking. “Varo said my mother must have leached it out of herself and my father and somehow transferred the poison to the wood. So perhaps it is traveling through the trees as it would travel through a body. Not with a plant attached, slowly extracting its host’s essence, but with the poison itself flooding the root systems as it would a person’s veins. If that were the case…” His brow furrows. “There would have to be a source. Wherever the infection began would, logically speaking, be worse off than any other part of the wood.”
“So if we can find where the infection began—”
“We find my parents’ last known location before their disappearance.”
And I’ll be one step closer to finding out Dad’s connection to all of this.
I smile. “Well, then. I think we have a source to find.”
*
Henry wants to head right into the wood, but I convince him to eat first. I don’t know what we’ll find, and the last thing I want to do is weaken our defenses from starvation.
I make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch while Mom and Henry discuss the socioeconomic impact of tenant farming in the late eighteenth century. Mom still eyes him with distrust, but her suspicion and paranoia begin to give way to more important things, like the pursuit of knowledge and lively debate. By the time I’ve plated the sandwiches and ladled out the soup, she’s staring at Henry like he’s the most significant archaeological treasure she’s ever unearthed.
I’ve just finished my sandwich and started on my soup when my phone rings. It’s Meredith. Mom looks up at me and I show her the screen. She nods.
“Hey. What’s up?”
“What’s up? You had a boy sleep in your room last night and all you have to say to me is ‘what’s up?’”
“Um … yeah?”
“WINTER. I NEED MORE INFORMATION THAN THAT.”
I pull the phone away from my ear. “Mer, stop shouting.”
“What did you two do? Did he kiss you, grope you, make you a woman? Did your mom kill you? Are you talking to me from beyond the grave?”
I hold up my finger and slide out of my seat. I wait until I’m in the back hallway to whisper, “Mer, nothing happened.”