She walked forward and saw that the vibrations of his voice actually flowed up through the trunk, somehow moving from sound to light and energy, dancing across the bark in little twinkling flashes of brightness. The vibrations spread and rippled along the branches, echoing around and through the globe of this place and offering Kindred’s mind rest and peace, though she accepted neither.
The entrance to the Forest, still visible back through the archway, continued to promise violence and danger. Had Barque, her warden, followed her along the path? Did he move through his own nightmare world in the Forest even now, chasing her with anger in his heart?
Kindred let her eyes drift again to the ceiling visible through the canopy of the bush, empty of shields over the Forest, dark and drab except for spots of light, weak and diffused, drifting along. At first, she thought them to be stray rays of light cast off by the shields above the grove, but no, they were too soft for that, too ghostly.
A shiver rolled through her, washing away the calm of the grove. They were the light of the lantern bearers, tracking their movements as they themselves tracked those who walked on the path.
And by the look of the lights, someone was moving closer and closer to the grove.
Kindred turned and began threading her way through the beds, not sure if she had judged the lights correctly, not sure if it was Barque coming for her but unwilling to leave her fate to chance. On the far side of the grove, off to her right, she saw Little Wing standing next to a bed containing Captain Caraway. A man who looked to be a guard stood nearby.
Captain Caraway was covered in strange vines and plants, and though she was awake, her eye stared up and away, her gaze catching on nothing, leaving the world behind.
But strangest was the flower, pale pink, and shot through with streaks and jags of black. It sat on her chest or grew from it, Kindred couldn’t tell. Like a breastplate, the flower splayed open across the captain’s chest, bigger than any blossom Kindred had ever seen.
Little Wing was crouched next to her, clutching the captain’s hand, her face a deadened slack.
Kindred turned away.
She found Ragged Sarah near one of the branched walls, sitting up and staring out through a break in the branches, her eyes far away, her hands folded on her lap, serenity embodied. Covering her were vines and branches, some twisting up from the thick grass below the bed, others descending from an overhanging limb, gnarled whorls of brown and gold and black and green, the colors of life and death.
At first, Kindred thought the branches and vines were surrounding her, some kind of strange pirate healing blanket, but as she neared Ragged Sarah, she saw they actually wove into her skin, which had begun to take on the colors of the vines and branches at the points of insertion. An arm gone gold all over to mimic several slender shoots of gold curled around and into it; her neck and jaw going from their usual light brown to a shining, verdant green.
“Well. Hello, you,” Sarah said, pulling Kindred’s eyes up from the plants. Her voice was a croak rattling around a dry throat, quieter than Kindred was used to, yet a fire that burned low still burned.
Kindred felt the sudden and overwhelming urge to just move, to throw away everything, the man chasing her or waiting for her back at Cruel House, the pirates and this city and the Sea and her grandmother and all of it, to throw it away for the tiny forever there, the existence she saw in Ragged Sarah’s dried lips, the collapsing space between where she stood now and where Ragged Sarah lay.
After everything, Kindred found comfort and safety and life here, kindling between the two of them, a fire sheltered in the curving hollow between their two bodies, growing in the pause between one word and the next, feeding on meaning and desire and something deeper and bigger, a force that braided circlets of grass and made mattresses into escape ropes.
“Hello,” Kindred said, standing on the precipice of something.
I go.
“I was hoping you would stop by.”
“I’m sorry it took me so long.”
I go to lose myself.
“I heard about the prisons. The test. You shouldn’t have had to go through that.”
Kindred nodded.
“I was worried . . .”
Kindred remembered the feeling of loosing her hands in the Sea, in the chaos of it, her breath containing the world. The feeling of dew coating her arms, fresh and sweet.
The feeling that she could leap out into the green and watch it become more.
The space between them collapsed as Kindred stepped forward, her unburned hand reaching out and tangling in the mess of Ragged Sarah’s hair, her breath becoming Sarah’s and Sarah’s breath becoming her own as their lips met, parted just so, cracked and desperate for water and moving against one another. Kindred fell into that kiss, lost herself in it, the weariness of the past days gone in that tiny forever.
“Oh,” Sarah said as they broke apart, her eyes wide.
“Yeah,” Kindred said, her heartbeat thrumming in her chest, her neck, the palm of her hand. “Sorry, I—”
“Oh, no,” Sarah said, her face breaking into a smile. “Don’t be sorry. We should have been doing that a long time ago.”
A cleared throat brought an end to the moment, and Kindred pulled back to see a healer glaring at her. He was a younger man, balding and bearded, arms folded.
“Visitors are not allowed to walk—or act—freely among the sick,” he said, his voice low and annoyed. Whatever calming effects the grove had, they didn’t seem to have any impact on this man. “You must be accompanied by a healer.”
“Sorry, Sunu,” Ragged Sarah said. While they kissed, she had threaded her fingers through Kindred’s, and though Kindred had stood up and taken a step back from the bed, Ragged Sarah still held her hand. “She didn’t know.”
Sunu huffed his displeasure and arched an eyebrow at Kindred.
“I have work to do here. Could you take a step back?”
Ragged Sarah winked at Kindred and squeezed her hand at the same time before letting go. Kindred stepped back, feeling the echoes of Sarah’s hand in hers.
Sunu fussed about Ragged Sarah and mumbled almost continuously about “inconsiderate guests” and “ignorant buffoons,” but Kindred saw how seriously he took his work and how he cared for his patient. His hands were careful and soft as they checked the vines and branches connected to Sarah’s body, applying pressure here or cutting away smaller growths there with a small, bright knife. In one case, he even removed a vine growing into Sarah’s leg, offering her a root to chew on before pulling the vine out, his words no longer bitter or angry, his voice suddenly soothing, harmonizing with the hummed chant reverberating throughout the Shepherd Scrub.
He gave Ragged Sarah a drink of water from a skin and told her to take it easy before leaving, eyeing Kindred with plain dislike.