Chapter 19: What the Thread Held

Marlo's POV

The witch was waiting at the gate with her basket when the sky went pale.

Caius stood beside me with the lamp, though the light was already coming.

Winnie stood a step behind him in her yellow rain jacket, with her arms folded tight.

"Sit on the wall," the witch said. "Give me your right hand."

I sat.

She took my wrist in her dry fingers and turned it palm up.

"It will not hurt," she said. "It will be worse than that."

"Just do it."

She wound the grey thread three times round my wrist and tied it.

Then she began to pull.

I felt nothing in my fingers at first.

Then the feeling went out of them, one knuckle at a time, until my hand lay in hers and I could not tell it was mine.

She did the left hand the same way.

The thread came off my wrists in two grey coils.

She dropped them into the basket and covered it with her shawl.

"A season," she said. "Don't try to heal so much as a splinter."

"And the rest of it?"

"Gone from the ground." She looked past me at Caius. "That was the second thread. The first went with the stone."

She picked up the basket and went down the road, and she did not look back.

Winnie came and put her arm round my shoulders.

"You're going to hate this," she said. "I'll cut your food."

"I can't hold a fork."

"Then I'll be your fork."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

My hands hung in my lap with the palms open.

I could see them, and I could not feel them, and it was worse than I had thought.

Caius had not said anything.

He set the lamp on the wall, knelt on the gravel in front of me and took both my dead hands in his.

"I can't feel that," I said.

"I know."

"I want to."

"I'll feel it for you," he said, "until you can."

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