“You have to help me, here,” she whispered. “Just put a little weight on your good leg.
He grimaced, and she saw sweat slick on his pallid face.
Together they limped up the stairs.
Liv settled him into the wheelbarrow, trying to arrange his injured leg to reduce the pain as they bumped through the woods.
“Stephen, what happened?” she started to ask, pushing him away from the house, but he didn’t respond. Stephen had slipped into unconsciousness.
Roots and brambles slowed their journey, but Liv made it to the road. Spellway Road was not exactly well travelled, but within five minutes, she spotted a truck. She threw a sprig of dill onto the dirt road and crossed her fingers behind her back. The man slowed and pulled over.
“That young man needs a doctor,” the driver told Liv with a frown.
“I know. My dad’s a doctor. We just need a ride.”
George would have frowned at her use of the word doctor, but she didn’t have time to explain the ancient power of Norse healing.
It took some convincing to get the man to drive her all the way to Kalkaska, but eventually he agreed, shaking his head and muttering under all his breath all the while.
The man helped her hoist Stephen into the passenger seat. She rode in the bed of the truck, clutching the wheelbarrow and watching Stephen’s waxy profile. He’d woken several times, grumbled incoherent things about blood and bare feet before drifting back into sleep.
“I don’t feel real good dropping you off here, Miss. There ain’t a house for miles, far as I can see,” the driver told her when he stopped at the edge of the Stoneroot Forest.
“There is,” she assured him. “My father’s place is in the woods. No road to get there, but I know the way.”
The driver and Liv lifted Stephen into the wheelbarrow and with a final wave, she left the driver behind, his mouth drawn in a frown.
She’d barely slipped into the tree line when George appeared, as she knew he would.
“Liv,” he said. “I told you not to bring him here.” He spoke the words, but nudged her out of the way and took the handles of the wheelbarrow.
Liv practically walked on George’s heels as they pushed Stephen back to the cabin. Stephen’s face had grown paler, as if drained of blood completely.
Liv had seen dead people. Sometimes people appeared at George’s cabin with their dead mother or child. In their desperation, they believed he could raise the dead. He could not. But still he brought the bodies in, laid them on the rug, and drummed for the spirits to guide the departed into the afterlife. The people left calmer, their fingers unfurled, the wild anguish in their eyes softened.
Stephen looked like the corpses Liv had seen.
“What happened?” George asked as the cabin came into sight.
“I don’t know,” Liv whispered. “He was locked in his cellar. I think his mother…” She trailed off as Stephen let out a little moan.
Liv opened the cabin door, and George carried Stephen inside. He laid him on the rug near the hearth.
Stephen blinked open his eyes, but did not seem to see George.
“Mother,” he said in a tiny voice. “Daddy’s in the basement.”
George frowned, and Liv knelt beside her friend, wiping the sweat from his brow with a towel.
Gently, George started to extend Stephen’s left leg.
Stephen’s eyes flew open, and he cried out in pain.
“Volva, please get me two strips of linen.”
Liv hurried to the chest near the bed, pulling out a long roll of fabric and cutting two lengths.
It took several minutes and a lot of coaxing, but George gradually pulled Stephen’s leg straight. Stephen’s knee was swollen and dark. George wrapped his knee, compressing the injury.
When George rolled him onto his side, the back of Stephen’s head was matted with blood.
“Hold him in place, Volva,” George whispered, mopping at the thick dark hair.
The gray rag grew darker, and Liv watched the tendrils of red swirl out and away as George dipped it in a basin of water.
“Should I get the drums?” Liv asked.
George pursed his lip and shook his head, no.
“We’ve treated his wounds. He will recover.”
“But,” Liv started, “his fever, and his words. He’s plagued, George.”
“That is not for us to decide, Volva. Our spirits cannot heal him.”
Chapter 27
Liv
“I got it,” Stephen announced, striding across the clearing to the decayed log where Liv lay long, allowing the sun to lull her into sleep. She sat up with a jolt when Stephen appeared. She hadn’t seen him for the three days since she and George had delivered him to the big house in the woods.
His limp had lessened, and had she not known he was injured, she might have thought him perfectly fine.
“What happened with your mom, Stephen? When you got home?”
He looked at her as if she wasn’t talking sense, and then waved a dismissive hand.
“Nothing. But look at this.”
He thrust a box toward her. When he peeled open the lid, a foul smell filled the air between them.
“Ugh.” She covered her nose with her hand. “What is that?”
Something dark and oily lay in the box. The sun’s glare made it hard to make out, but as she studied it, she recognized a small black eye, the curve of a black nose.
“A cat?” she asked, horrified.
“A black cat,” he said, closing the lid. “Just like in the book. Don’t you see? We can do the spell now.”
Liv frowned at Stephen. His hair, usually neatly combed, was unkempt and standing on end. His pale eyes looked darker, most of the blue obscured by the huge black pupil.
“Stephen, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he shrilled, shaking the box at her. The dead cat thumped inside.
“We decided on the Night Haunts spell, Stephen. We don’t need a dead cat for that. Where did you get it?”
He pulled the box away.
“Just in case,” he muttered, placing it in the shade of an oak tree.
“I brought you this.” Liv handed him a jar of cream for his leg. “Use it every day. You’ll be healed in no time.”
He took the cream and set it on the ground. When he peeled up his pant leg, Liv saw the mottled yellow bruise covering his shin and knee.
“Does it hurt?” she asked
He shook his head.
“Not much anymore. It feels better if I don’t straighten it. I don’t know if I thanked you, but thank you, Liv, and George too. I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
Liv didn’t like to think of that either, and she wanted to probe Stephen. His mother must have said something, but she knew asking would only upset him.
Liv pulled several sprigs of grass and began to braid them together. It was hard to look at Stephen. Her throat had grown thick with tears she refused to shed.
“I’m dreading your being gone,” she murmured.
“I’ll still come home. I’ll hop the trains. I am an expert stowaway now.” He winked at her.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asked. She wanted him to come home, but she thought again of him locked in the cellar, his knee swollen and dark.
“She’s better when I’m not home. When I’m at boarding school, she gets lonely, so when I do come home, she’s nicer.”
“Has she always been like this, Stephen? Your mother?”
Stephen gazed out at the lake; his mouth turned down.