Chapter 12: No More Tea

I did the only thing I knew how to do.

"Willow charcoal," I said. "The black jar on Nan's shelf. Ewan, run."

He was out the door before I finished the sentence.

He came back in six minutes, soaked again, with the jar in his fist.

I ground the charcoal in warm water and spooned it into Jory a sip at a time.

I kept him sitting up and talking, and I made him drink until the cup was empty.

I held his wrist the whole night.

By midnight, his heart had slowed, and his pupils had shrunk back to grey.

He slept on Ewan's couch under three blankets.

A runner had carried word across the creek to Garrick, and Garrick would come at dawn.

I stood in the doorway of the front room and watched Jory breathe for a long time.

Ewan came up behind me.

He did not touch me.

"He'll be all right," he said.

"I don't know what he's been taking."

"We'll find out."

I turned around.

He was dripping on the floor, with a charcoal smear on his jaw and his hair stuck to his forehead.

He looked at me.

I was so angry, and I was so tired.

I did not want to be angry any longer.

I wanted to feel something that was not grief.

"Come here," I said.

He didn't move.

"Rowena, I don't deserve..."

"I didn't ask what you deserved." I took him by the front of his wet shirt. "I said, come here."

I dragged him down the hall into the bedroom and shut the door as quietly as I could, because a six-year-old was sleeping thirty feet away.

I shoved him against the wall.

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