Page 61 of The Woodsmoke Women's Book of Spells
Carrie
“I don’t think I can make it back down.”
I fall to my knees at his side, sweeping my eyes critically over his body, his chalk-white features. He’s alive. I’ve found him and he’s alive. Relief rushes through me, heady and brimming. If he’s alive, I can keep him alive, I can get help, I can—
“My leg, Carrie. I can’t walk. I—I think I passed out, I don’t know. It’s not cold anymore.”
A chill runs through me. I blink slowly, ransacking my mind, trying to remember anything I might have picked up in all my years. Anything about fractures, about blood loss. Anything about exposure and survival.
“Drink this,” I say quietly, passing him my water bottle with the trickle of water left in it. His features pinch as he moves his arms, the slightest shift of his weight sending pain reverberating through his whole body. I assess him quickly, taking in the shard of bone, the blood, the ledge above us he must have slipped from. “How long have you been out here?”
He closes his eyes briefly after draining the last of the water. “I think this is the second night. It’s been dark before, I’m sure.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. He’s been out here too long, utterly alone. “Did you bring any water with you, any food?”
He shakes his head. No water, no food all this time, and the blood loss as well as the shock... I swallow, trying to hide my fear, trying to remain calm.
“I have to get you help. We have to get you to a hospital—”
His laugh is a husky shadow. “It’s too late for that, I think. It’s—it’s a miracle you’re here.” He lifts his hand to my face, runs his palm over my cheek. His fingertips scrape against my skin, leaving a trail behind that’s limned with a bright flame. “I can’t believe you’re real.”
“I’m right here, and I’m real. And so are you.” I release a shuddering breath, then hunker down next to him, aligning my body with his. I can’t take my eyes from his face, his bent frame as I constantly assess the shifts in him, the changes and all they could mean. I wish I had come better prepared. I wish I had told someone where I was going. If I leave him here now, will I be able to find my way back? Will I be able to get help in time? “Please don’t give up, not yet. Not now.”
“It’s warm now at least. You’ll be warm enough,” he says slowly, his voice thick as treacle. Fresh fear courses through me. It’s not warm. It’s not warm at all. At night on the mountains the temperature drops to near freezing, and my exposed skin is coated in a nettling cold.
I try to keep him awake, try to keep him talking. I can’t share any more body heat with him without the risk of jostling his broken bones, and I don’t know if there’s further damage from his fall. What if he’s bleeding internally?
“Tell me more about the trails, Matthieu. Have you come this way before?”
“Once, just once. With Henri.”
“Your brother.”
“He was here... I’m sure of it.”
“You left a note on the map. You’ve been searching for him? All this winter?”
He swallows painfully. “I hoped with the stories of magic, I hoped I would somehow find him. How foolish. What a desperate fool I’ve been. These mountains... they do not give back those who are lost.”
Before I can answer, the wind whips up, and the trees moan as they shift overhead. Sharp cold hits my face, and I catch Matthieu’s flinch in the dark. His words are so eerily similar to Cora’s warnings that I wonder if now we are lost too. We are the lost ones this time, and I know how that tale ends.
He drifts in and out, talking about the creatures of the mountains, the cabin. Me. When he begins to talk about me as though I am not here, I pass a hand over his forehead and feel the scorch of fever. After a while, I’m not sure if he knows I’m here beside him at all. He screams at one point, flinching away from something that’s not there. I try to tell him it’s okay. I try to calm him; I even sing, digging a French lullaby from the edges of my mind that perhaps was sung to him as a child. Anything to keep him still, to stop that blood from flowing afresh from his leg.
Anything to anchor him to this world.
When he finally falls into a fitful slumber, his head against my shoulder, I cry quietly. My tears are tiny flashes of heat stinging my skin before I wipe at them with shaking fingers. I begin to talk then. To the mountains. I know what I have to ask for.
Somehow I’ve always known it would end this way. The mountains demand bargains. They require beating hearts and blood. They’ve been the subject of too many stories to ignore. There are too many unexplained things that could be magic, that could besomething, and maybe I should have paid better attention. Maybe I should have had a bit more fear.
I know what I might need to offer in return.
Cora let me see enough of the book over the years that I came to know how bargains work. The magic of this place requires—is thirsty for—balance. It seeks life. And only a Morgan woman can give the place what it requires.
“How much blood is soaked into this place? How much have you taken over the centuries?” I croak, searching my rucksack for the pocketknife I carry. Opening the blade, I see that the edge is only a shade sharper than dull and useless. I hesitate, readying myself for the next part. Jess and I whispered it to each other as children, glancing up from huddled groups on the playground to eye their looming presence. We’d cast what we believed to be spells, and sometimes I’d wondered if they worked. Cora made potions with us, scattered salt and lavender to create wardings, but these were lesser things, fripperies and fancies, in comparison to the real bargains. I know what they truly require in moments like these. What the Morgan women have sacrificed before me. Every bargain steals something from you and is always sealed with a drop of blood.
“You know what I ask for. For his life, for his heart. And for my own heart not to break.” I stifle a gasp as I slice down the edge of my palm, just below where my thumb connects with my hand, parallel to the scar from the cut that Jess and I made many years ago, in a pale imitation of this act. The blood pools, warm and rich, and I let it drip on the ground, into the shaft of silver moonlight, just as I know it says to do in the book. “Take this, and take whatever else you want. But do not take him. Please,please, don’t take him from me. Not like this. I—I’ve only just found him.”
I bandage up my hand, aware of how watchful, how still, the small hours of the night have grown. As though the mountains have leaned in and are listening to every syllable and silently counting the drops of blood falling from my veins into the silver moonlight. I lean back, closing my eyes for a moment as the tiredness seeps into my very bones. “Please,” I say softly. “Whatever the cost, whatever the price, I’ll pay it.”
