“Don’t you hate that nickname?” Kay asked as they rose up the stairs and entered to pay for their rooms.
Ella balanced the coin on her hand as they waited at check in, rolling it over her fingers and back before catching it with her thumb.
“He means well,” she said.
“They didn’t when they gave it to you,” Kay said.
Ella rubbed her thumb over the scratched surface of the coin, deeply warmed by the thoughtfulness of the gift. Mark had always been a hard and gruff man, but not to her.
“His cousin was executed for murder when I was in medical training,” Ella said as Kay handled the check-in process. They both started up the stairs to separate rooms. “It had been my turn that month to take the bodies back to their families. I had his cousin and the man he’d killed on my rotations. You know the rest.”
They started down separate hallways, exchanging glances and stopping as Kay’s expression softened. “I see what you mean,” he said, but kept looking at her, his bag hanging in his hand. Ella waited for him to keep speaking.
“Why did you start doing that?” he asked, “stitching people’s bodies back together even though they were dead already?”
Ella glanced down the hall to her room. Looking back at Kay, she added, “if you ever had someone deliver a family member to your doorstep, even if they were a criminal, you’d understand,” she said, “the world can be brutal, but it doesn’t always have to be. I never wanted anyone to see their loved one in pieces.”
Kay smiled. “I remember when Jade introduced me to your team. With names like Crow and Stitches, I wasn’t exactly excited.”
Ella laughed, “Don’t forget, Jade and Alex’s parents were both Madness worshippers. I think you have a type. Makes me wonder what’s wrong with you.”
Kay rolled his eyes, “No kidding. Well on that note, goodnight Stitches.”
“Night, Grape Eyes.”
“No,” he objected firmly, waving her offas they went to their separate rooms and settled in for the night.
†††
Their journey started early the next morning, and getting to the forest was easy enough. They’d been warned that the thicket was too dense for the horses and they left them in Mark’s care. One thing was clearly true from the stories. The woods had been deserted.
Tunedyl forest looked ancient a thousand times over with the trees and abundant brush to speak for its years. Had one not known the stories about the woods, Ella felt that it would be easy to assume people wanted to live in the untouched woods and never return.
There was peace in the sunlit canopy, Ella and Kay discovering and rediscovering overgrown paths while Kay referenced old maps he’d pulled from the town library. There were no bodies or bones, no sightings of cursed warriors set out to hunt them. Ella was pleasantly surprised when they arrived at the pool with little to no disruption at all, the noon sun inching above them.
Kay double-checked the map. “This must be it,” he said, peering over the small pool of water surrounded by trees. “Suspicious we got here so easily though.”
She looked up into the canopy, spotting an old wooden ladder nailed into the tree nearest the pool. She pointed, and Kay traced the trajectory from a particularly high branch into the pool.
“You’re kidding me,” Kay breathed.
“Maybe that’s why no one makes it back,” she said, releasing a long whistle as she approached the tree to climb.
“Yeah, they misstep by an inch and hit the side of the pond. It really only just occurred to me, but what if they only threw objects down as offerings or something? Have people ever even tried this?”
“I’m sure,” Ella said, trying not to sound suspiciously confident and give away her doubts.
“For non-sacrificial reasons?” Kay replied with a nervous nudge.
“Not sure. I’m just the doer. You’re the knower.” She lifted herself up and started climbing the tree. Kay folded up the map before following her.
She scanned the terrain below as they started on the long climb, reaching a great, wide limb that extended over the pool. There was still no sign that anyone else had been there. Maybe the mutated man had died after all? Or it was really just a man trying to scare people off for some reason? Either way, the forest seemed untouched.
“So that’s it? We just jump in?” Kay asked as Ella walked out on the limb, peering over the edge. Kay balanced out with her, crouching closer to the limb so he could touch it with his fingers.
“Do you want me to push you in? Good sign is I don’t see any skeletons down there anywhere.” Ella inspected the pool below, tossing down a piece of bark and watching where it landed.
“Great to know. Thanks.” Kay said back to her dryly.
